<Begin Segment 15>

BN: And then you were drafted?

MT: I was, yeah. Then I was drafted. Gee, you guys get into areas that I forgot. Yeah, I was overseas in Okinawa. And I went to MP school of all things, went to Okinawa. And you have two weeks' orientation and you go to class and then you go to the mess hall and then you see all these guys with bandages and arms this way... what happened to those guys? Oh, the Marines had a weekend off and so they came into town, one of the towns, raising hell. No big deal, they'll live. They're all at least sixty, at least. I'm still growing, I think, I must have been 5'8", 5'9", 135 pounds, 140 pounds. Then they were looking for an interpreter. So a sergeant came up to me and said, "Hey, Takano, you speak Japanese?" I said, "Why?" He said, "This guy named Uchimura from Los Angeles, from California, is rotating back, and the colonel was looking for an interpreter. It's a good job, he said it's the best job in this whole island. That guy has his own car, he never has to come in, he'd just report to anybody. He reports to the colonel. I said, "Okay." He said, "Just call them and make an appointment with this sergeant up there." I made an appointment and the guy looks at me and he said, "You speak Japanese?" I said, "Yes, sir." And he said, "Can you read and write?" "No, sir." I told him I could only speak. He said, "Well, you know what, Takano?" He said, "I got no choice, you're on." "Yes, sir." Gave me a car. "This is my car," he says, "but I'll ask you if I need the car." [Laughs] "You drive it wherever you want." So I was really fortunate. I was working with the CID, the criminal investigation because they needed an interpreter. And I did some interpreting for the colonel. We had our own army, Okinawan army, no one knew this. We had 950 people, they had full uniforms, carbines, and we had two sections, north, south and midsection.

And they had a captain, U.S. captain in charge of each, they reported to the colonel. We have a first meeting and the colonel looks at these guys and he says, "Captains," he said, "this is the new guy, Takano." I don't even have a stripe yet, just came up. And he said, "Anything you want, you ask it. Don't come to me, he'll give you an okay or no." But as it turned out, it was nothing hard to learn. It was stuff that they could have... I was surprised at the inadequacy of the captain, U.S. captain. They couldn't make a decision. They'd call me and they'd say, "Hey, Takano, would you ask the colonel, would you give an appropriation for... we need some new uniforms. We got twenty-five new guys coming out and I got some funding for that." I said, "You got it, not to worry." "You sure?" I said, "Yeah, you got it." Who's going to say no? New recruits. So I said, "Yeah, you got it, take it. Just put in the paperwork," all the easy stuff, you know. But these captains, I was really surprised. Maybe that's why they were in MPs, I don't know. Wouldn't want to meet them in a back alley, I guess. But I had a good time, and I was teaching English, and I would just go out Monday morning and go teach English Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays.

BN: Who are you... you're teaching to the locals?

MT: Oh, locals, yeah. The kids in Okinawa, they were smart, too, they got smart kids. They could pass all the tests to get into a university or college -- not all of them, I'm sure, but most of them -- in Japan. But they could not pass the conversational. They just couldn't pass the conversational. They couldn't comprehend it, they couldn't speak it. So I used teach them three hours each day, and I used to sneak off and just tell the colonel, "I got a visit this morning, be back at noon." But one day I'm teaching, I'm in uniform and I'm teaching on the blackboard, and some guy's taking a picture with a flash camera. And I had two assistants, one guy had a PhD from Michigan State, and one guy had a master's from Yale, and they're two Okinawan guys, but they could teach them. "This is the bar, this is the object, this is the verb," teach them all that stuff, I just taught them conversational. And this guy's taking pictures, so I asked him after it's over, I said, "Who were those guys?" And he said, "It's from the paper, newspaper, Okinawan paper." "Is he going to publish it?" He said, "Oh, yeah." I said, "You can't do that." He said, "Why?" I said, "I'm not supposed to be here." What happened, the government ran out of funding from the U.S. government, and they had a civilian, U.S. civilian staff, and they weren't going to get paid so they quit. So the Okinawan kids were out of it. So I said, "Hey, I'll do it." Don't have to pay me, don't tell anybody. But anyway, so I said, well, maybe it won't come out, they won't see it, maybe the colonel won't see it. The colonel had another colonel boss, and even the provost marshal.

One day this guy named Murakami, he reads and writes, and he's a career Hawaiian kid, Murakami, he calls me in and he says, "Takano, come to my office." I went over and he says, "What's this?" Shows me these pictures. I said, "Where'd you get that?" And he said, "I take the paper." I said, "Hey, trash it." And he said, "Why?" And I said, "I'm not supposed to be there." He said, "Well, my job is to show the provost marshal all this stuff. Every publication printed here, I go through and pick out the stuff that relates to the U.S. Army. I got to put this in. So I said, "Oh, Murakami, my colonel's going to get in trouble, I'm going to get in trouble." And he said, "No, no, well, I can't help you. You better warn your, does Kohler know about this?" I said, "No." So I go running back to the office and I tell the colonel what happened, and I said, "I have a feeling McKeprin's going to call you in, maybe me too. But I just want to forewarn you what I've been doing on these." He said, "You've been going to teach class on those days that you said you were busy?" I said, "I was busy." [Laughs] And he says, "Well, that's okay." Just then the phone rings, colonel's in the other office, he said, "Kohler, get Takano and you in my office right now." I could hear him, oh, gee. We go marching over there and we sit down, and Colonel McKeprin says, "Takano, I want to congratulate you on your good job. And Kohler," he said, colonel, he said, "why didn't you tell me this was happening?" And he said, "Well, it was not a big deal, so I didn't want to say anything." He said, "Look at this," and he shows the pictures and everything. And the colonel says, McKeprin says, calls his press guy in and, "I want this in every Stars and Stripes, East Asian publication, I want it in the U.S., I want it in everything. This is the kind of stuff we need." And I'm going, oh. Fell in a pool of mud and came out smelling like a rose, you know. And the colonel puts it down, we're walking back to the office and he said, "Good job, Takano." But anyways, I had fun in the army, I did well. I did well.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.