<Begin Segment 26>

AI: Well, tell me about your basic training experience, 'cause you had never been to Arkansas before?

AS: Basic training in Arkansas, and when we left Chicago, it was still wintertime because it was in May. And so we, so we were still in our winter uniform. And we arrived in (Ft. Smith), Arkansas, around noontime. And they sent us to a mess hall, straight from the train. And we couldn't, we couldn't even take our jackets off. And here Arkansas was hot already. And so we went to mess hall and I got my food in the tray, put it down on the table, sat down to eat. I couldn't eat anything, with perspiration pouring down, my food. [Laughs] I couldn't eat it so I just drank my tea and got out of there.

AI: Oh, what a surprise.

AS: It was, because it was almost a hundred.

AI: That must --

AS: And here you couldn't even take your jacket off.

AI: Oh, that sounds unbearable.

AS: 'Cause there it's summertime, it gets a hundred and twenty in the shade.

AI: Oh, my gosh.

AS: So there was no, no double time because I think a year before, somebody keeled over and died.

AI: Because of the heat?

AS: Double time, yeah.

AI: Well, so how were you treated during basic training? Were you the only Japanese --

AS: I was the only Japanese, and there was one, I think there was only one black kid. So then we didn't have any discrimination or anything. The only thing was, some of the Southerners, they used to call us Yankees. You know, all the, all the northern guys, Yankees. So like when were driving to rifle range or when this, something like that, they would really go all out to, to beat us. They want to get a better score than the Yankees and things like that.

AI: So the big competition was between the Southerners and the Yankees?

AS: Southerners, yeah, no Japanese or black guy or nothing like that.

AI: Did that surprise you?

AS: Yeah.

AI: Being called a Yankee?

AS: Oh, after all these years, you know, they're still calling us Yankees? It really surprised me.

AI: Well, was that strange to you? Because you didn't grow up learning about United States history.

AS: No. Yeah, it was, it was really strange.

AI: And you didn't really... did you learn or find out or did someone tell you about the U.S. Civil War and the South?

AS: Well, I knew a little bit about it. But I didn't think they still feel this way after all these years.

AI: But they did.

AS: But they did, yeah.

AI: Well, at that time, did they still have the segregated bathrooms?

AS: Not in Arkansas.

AI: Not in Arkansas. So you didn't see anything like that?

AS: No. But this is what, this is '53 right? '53, '52, '53. But then in, I got married in 1955 and then we went to honeymoon in, down in Florida. Well, then when we went down to Tennessee, Kentucky, those people had this, go to a different bathroom. And, in fact, my wife didn't know which, which side to go on. So I said, "Just go to the 'white' side," because we weren't quite white, we weren't black either, so... and they didn't have any in-between so I told her, "Just go to the white side."

AI: Hard to know what to do.

AS: Yeah, especially when... you know, because, like in Chicago there's no such thing. And all of a sudden you get, you see these things, so you kinda, you're kinda hesitant to...

AI: Not knowing what to do.

AS: Yeah.

AI: Well, so then from, getting back to...

AS: But, but in Arkansas, we didn't have that problem. We would go to Camp Chaffee which is a city near the camp, and there, no such thing.

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.