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GY: So Chicago was the coming of age of Nisei. And, of course, it didn't last very long. It was from the -- from the frying pan to the hot, boiling pot of something or other. [Laughs] We were inducted into the Army at Camp Grant -- I'm not sure. Doesn't matter. And I thought, gee, I have flat feet. Maybe they'll defer me. No, I didn't have that, such luck. The American army in Europe, which was part of the Allies, Great Britain and France -- where France, of course, was conquered and occupied by the Nazis for a while, but mainly the British and the United forces were part of the Allied. And things were getting better and better and better for them, and the Nazis were slowly retreating, so forth. Things were going quite well in the war. And then in the Far East, the, the Japanese were doing so well, we were being, again, forced back. The American Navy was built up, and things improved rapidly for the American forces.

In that respect, though, I think that we have to give credit to Niseis who volunteered, went to school to improve their Japanese language facility at one -- at the Fort Snelling in Minneapolis. And there were six thousands of us who studied day and night to improve our Japanese facility, and we became translators, interpreters in the Far East during the combat, then, during the occupation, provided a lot of the services that were needed for Japanese speakers. When I was inducted, I was sent with many others, other men who were both -- of course, who were mostly whites -- but a large group of Niseis went because I guess there was a concentration of Niseis in Chicago at that time. We were sent to Fort Knox. And the purpose of that was that Fort Knox, Kentucky, this area was a armored training area. And we learned to operate tanks and to use firearms and so forth and so on connection with the com -- the, a tank, tanks. And so we were trained. And the idea originally, which I learned about this fact much later was that the armored division or group would be a part of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. And as we were undergoing training and close to the end of the training, the war was progressing so well for the Allied forces that I think they gave up on the idea of, of providing a, a armored unit to assist in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team's efforts.

So upon the completion of our training, Niseis were -- in this particular group were sent to Europe, and by then, the war was over, VE Day, was over. In fact, the VE Day was May, or May the 5th, 1945. So fortunately, these men did not have to go into, to battle or to you know, any combat, so it was kind of neat, nice for them. Now, I say "these men" because I did not graduate with them. I volunteered to go to Fort Snelling to, to become a person with some language facility in Japanese to work as an interpreter or whatever. It wasn't required of us. And so Fort Snelling was a time of, of learning kanji and katakana, reading maps, et cetera, et cetera, translations, and was not easy because most of us had very, very little instruction in Japanese. We could speak a little bit, conversational Japanese, but that was about it. And it was something we didn't like to do, didn't want to do, any of us. But nevertheless, because of the war effort, we were a part of this program.

<End Segment 34> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.