<Begin Segment 19>

TI: So then what, after Fort Douglas...

FS: Fort Douglas, I got sent home for some weeks, and I can't tell you how long that was, but, and I don't know why the process took so long, but I went down to Fort Douglas, I guess this must have been July or so, and it wasn't until they sent me orders to report to Mississippi, and that had to be towards the, towards the middle or end of August.

TI: So during that period in Spokane, what did you do?

FS: I worked at the laundry, bummed around, tried to impress the girls with my uniform. [Laughs] I don't know. I did, I know I worked at the laundry.

TI: And how was it with your, your parents? Did they...

FS: No, they had, they had pretty much, they had already, they had already resigned, resigned themselves that I was going to, I was in the army and that I would have to go. The scene was not as tense as it was originally. They had accepted that I was going, and of course my brother was already in Fort, still in Fort Riley doing something, so my mother was, again, she was really upset about it all, but she, I think she, she was very stoic about things most of the time.

TI: Now, your older brother Roy, so he was already in the service, many of those men who were already in the service went down and became the, sort of the non-coms...

FS: The cadres for the 442nd.

TI: ...the cadres for the, for the 442. Why didn't your brother do that?

FS: Well, you had to, the guys had to volunteer, and he, says, "Boy," says, "I'm not gonna volunteer for one more damn thing in the army," and he didn't. So he didn't, he never, my major concern is when we got overseas and we started getting the replacements, I thought they would send him as a replacement to the 442nd. That, for some reason that really haunted me. I said, "God, I hope he doesn't get sent here." And he never did; he ended up in the New York National Guard unit, the 44th Division, which ended up in, fighting in northeastern France. He fought into, he fought into Berchiesgaden and then into Czechoslovakia.

TI: So he fought in an integrated unit.

FS: Well, he fought, well, he was the only one in the integrated unit. He was the only Japanese American in at least that whole regiment, I think, and I don't know how he ended up there, but he said he did not volunteer for any of that, he just got stuck in these places.

TI: Interesting. Yeah, I'd like to talk to him one of these days about that.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.