<Begin Segment 18>

TI: In camp at the same time, your mother was there, and was your sister and younger brother also in camp at the same time?

JY: No, just my sister. My brother was already in the army.

TI: So when you talked with them about the situation, your mother and sister, what was their reaction about what was happening in camp with your father?

JY: I don't think we had too much discussion about it, just that he was getting better, that he was okay. And there was a lot of neighborhood people that I knew from before there, and they were all very cordial and welcoming me. But at the same time, there was a lot of rumors in the camp about the progress of the war, and one of them I can recall is this very strong rumor that the Japanese navy was approaching Seattle.

TI: So these were rumors by, predominately by pro-Japanese...

JY: Well, I don't know. The rumor was floating around, I didn't inquire as to who was promoting it.

TI: And that essentially Japan was winning the war.

JY: That's right, yes.

TI: And that soon, yeah, they would all be free. So I'm thinking, it still feels almost like this huge elephant in the living room. Your father was just beaten, and I'm curious, did you have any discussions with anyone about this? Did anyone say, "Jim, your dad has to be more quiet," or he has to be more careful, or, "we're behind your dad but we want to protect him." Was there any discussion like this?

JY: No, no one brought that up. Just a neighborhood kid coming back to see his family kind of feeling.

TI: Did any of the Niseis who beat up your dad, or people associated with them, say anything to you?

JY: No one came up to talk to me about it.

TI: So no one came up to and said, "Your dad needs to be quiet or things will get worse"?

JY: No, not once.

TI: How long were you in camp?

JY: About a couple weeks, I think.

TI: Did you feel any sense that you needed to protect your family or your dad while you were in camp?

JY: Well, it seemed like things were... not for my mother and sister, no. I didn't think they were at any risk at all. And I thought probably something, they would make some procedure to protect my dad. Eventually he was removed from the camp.

TI: Besides your father, were there other people who were attacked at Jerome?

JY: Not that I know of.

TI: Yeah, because I haven't heard this before of Jerome. This is a new one for me. So after two weeks you're going to leave to go to St. Louis. Do you recall any conversations with your mother, your father or your sister in terms of advice or thoughts?

JY: No, just a visit. Just a family visit.

TI: How about any friends or anything that you can recall?

JY: Just that the friends were cordial, and just like a neighborhood visit to them. "How are you?"

TI: And how did you feel as you left camp? I mean, here you saw thousands of people, some people from the old neighborhood, behind barbed wires. And as you were leaving, any last thoughts?

JY: Yes, I was still extremely apprehensive that this was still the first phase of the war. What else could they do to us? They asked people behind barbed wires to send their sons into a fighting unit, and yet wouldn't allow their families to come out of camp. I said, what kind of thinking was behind this kind of thing where they ask a family to send their son to die for their country, and yet not give them the basic rights to leave camp? Extremely concerned that wondered, this is the nature of people and countries? I think there was a feeling that just embedded in me that the future didn't look too bright here.

TI: Yeah, it must have been a, sort of, foreboding sort of feeling. So you go to St. Louis and you finish an internship there. Was it at that point that the army wanted you to come in, is that about when they wanted you to come in?

JY: Well, once we were in internship, the war was progressing quite rapidly, and the internship was shortened, and many were getting orders to serve in the army or navy as soon as possible. Some of them went before they finished their short internship.

TI: Because there was just this critical need for medical doctors.

JY: Yeah, it was anticipation of the need.

TI: Now were the other doctors, the other ones, yeah, the doctors that were doing their internships, were they, similar to you, had they enlisted into the reserves? Did they have that kind of training?

JY: I don't know just what their status, how they... I guess I wasn't paying attention to that. All I knew is that everyone was in the draft, and that if they were a young doctor, their service would be needed, just everyone expected that.

TI: Yeah, because under normal circumstances, if you don't take race into consideration, I would think someone with your background and the fact that you had already enlisted in the reserves, that instead of waiting around, you would have been one of the first ones to have been called in. And here you were kind of waiting while you saw the ones around you being drafted and leaving, and that was just why I asked that question.

JY: Yeah. In fact, most of the fellows that were inducted were sent to fight in units, and they were either at the landings in Okinawa or all of those, Iwo Jima, or they were in the combat areas in Europe. We were just the right group to be in the front line, minimum medical training, yet enough to accompany and give aid in the combat area.

TI: Do you have any sense how many of that group, how many of them were killed in action or missing and things like that, or did most of them come back?

JY: Most of them came back, I think.

TI: So do you ever do like a Marquette reunion from your class and just see how many people...

JY: Yeah, we've had reunion at the fiftieth year, we had a fiftieth year reunion, and people would tell us their experience.

TI: That's good. So eventually you joined the army, and you were assigned to the 106th.

JY: Yes.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2005 Densho. All Rights Reserved.