See also Re: Re: Initializing Hashes of Hashes (of Hashes) in thread Initializing Hashes of Hashes (of Hashes) for a solution to a similar problem.

I've tried using references to solve it, but that seems to be failing me.
This sounds familiar. The answer could be to add another level of indirection. I'm not referring to any code in particular here, but it still might be what you're after.

Brad