<Begin Segment 8>

SS: What did you do after you finished, finished school? You were drafted, I guess.

HW: I was drafted in, actually, I was drafted in 1940, November 1940, but I didn't have to report 'til February '41.

SS: What did you think when you got that notice?

HW: Well, I was listening to the radio and I knew that they had, I had a draft number of 15. And I was listening to the radio when they were pulling the numbers out of the fishbowl in, at Washington, D.C., at the White House. And my number fifteen was the seventh number to be pulled out of the fish bowl. So I knew I was gonna be gone, you know. So the Japanese community had a big dinner for me, being the first draftee. [Laughs]

SS: What was it like for your parents?

HW: Well, it was not traumatic to my father and mother because soon as I was in high school age, Father notified me that, "You are a dual citizen. You have citizenship in Japan. The reason why you have citizenship in Japan is because I reported you to the Japanese consul." And the reason why I did, he did that, was because he had some property in Japan and needed to identify who's going to take the property in case he dies. And so I told him, well, I didn't know that, but then I had no interest in property in Japan. Then he says, "Well, you think about it for a while." And then we discussed it again, and I said, "I don't want the property in Japan." So he says, "Who shall we name it for?" And I says, "Well, name it to my cousin there, that I had met. I had been in Japan for a few months when I was nine years old. And so that's what was decided. So we went to the consul's office and renounced my citizenship, and changed the beneficiary over to my cousin.

SS: What, at that point, were you dreaming of? You know, what did you want to do with your life?

HW: Well, my dream was to get into aeronautics. But I was busily getting involved with farming. Because, by the time I was a sophomore, I was already helping my father on a time-available basis. Supervising crews on the field and, I'd been keeping books for him ever since I was about fourteen years old -- the family books and the payroll books for the people that are working -- so that kept me pretty busy, and going to school. And so other than just having the desire to be in airplanes, that was about it. And then I was offered the chance to go to aeronautical school, and Dad says, "Well, we'll send you to aeronautical school." And he was serious about it. And I says, "Well, no, I don't want to go because what's the use of spending money on that when I can't get a job when I get out of school, because they won't hire me anyway. They don't hire anybody of Japanese ancestry." So that's the way it was until, and then along the way, my father always said that, "I live in America with you kids, Mama and I, and America is our home. You are citizens of America, and we want you to remember that Japan is not my home anymore." Well, the reason why he said that is because, that's the way he felt. And Japan had been at war with China for several years already. But he didn't have any allegiance. Even after I was in the army and I visited home in July of 1941, he made a very specific mention of that. He said, "I want you not to forget what we decided, that America is our home. So don't you worry about me, because I don't wanna go back to Japan, even if there is a war." So it was clear-cut.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 1996 Densho. All Rights Reserved.