<Begin Segment 31>

RT: And so when we got to Camp Patrick Henry, Virginia -- well, I'll just, I'll just give you a little blurb on something else, was -- after I reported into Camp Shelby, fourteen of us all of a sudden disappeared from Camp Shelby. And nobody knew where we went. We were quietly told that we were on orders to move out. And we got on the truck, and usually they leave the back gate open and everything. Everything was closed up. Gee, we're lookin' at each other, "Wonder what the hell's goin' on here? Fourteen, what the hell we do wrong?" And they put us on the train, pulled the shades down, and they said, "You are not to associate with anybody except your group." And even 'til today, we do not know where we went to, 'cause when we got to our destination, we didn't get to see nothing. They put us on the truck, closed it all up so that we can't see out, and they took us out to some camp. And it was just a nice little spot out there.

RT: And we found out finally, at the end, that we were picked to be dropped in Japan. And the reason for us being picked to be dropped in Japan was we were each from a different area. See now, like I come from Kagoshima. If I started to talk real Kagoshima-go to even born and raised Japanese, they wouldn't understand what I'm saying. So they picked guys like me, and they were gonna drop us in Japan.

TI: So they pulled you out, and it was going to be sort of like a secret mission?

RT: Yeah.

TI: But you were still in the States, they, when they were doing this?

RT: Yeah.

TI: Okay. Keep going.

RT: So, well, we were, we stayed there for two weeks. And then they told us to pack up. And we left the place, just like we came in. We didn't get to see what anything of the camp looked like. All the time that we were there, we were confined to that little area. And then when we left the place, they threw us in the trucks, and the all the flaps were down. And got on the train, pulled the shades. And when we got to camp, back to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, then they let us know we were in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

TI: And during those two weeks, what kind of activities, I mean, did they train you or...?

RT: No, they weren't training us because most of us had Japanese army training. And not only that, we found out that they were picking us because of, we each were from a different prefecture. And they were gonna drop us there, so that we can be the spies for the United States. And so we don't know what made them change their mind or anything. We just, they just packed us back up and we came back. So like I say, the United States pulled a lotta shenanigans against us. But you can't blame the generals or anything like that, because they're doin' the best they can.

<End Segment 31> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.