<Begin Segment 20>

TI: So eventually you go down to Mississippi, Fort Shelby.

FS: Yeah, Camp Shelby, yes.

TI: Camp Shelby.

FS: Yes.

TI: So what, tell me what Mississippi was like.

FS: Well, even at that, at that young and dumb age, you have this image of a completely segregated area where blacks are separated completely from white people, and I, we were sent to a staging area, a reception area where we took train to, took the train to Chicago and then the train south to, to, I guess, Camp Shelby, or I mean, Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and then bussed out to the, out to the, to Camp Shelby, the reception area. And of course, we were in the section that processed us and white people, and I guess I didn't really see any black folks at, around there at the time. That was nothing unusual, except that the next morning we were, somebody from the, from the regiment, the 442nd, came down with a... there were only a couple of us in the jeep, and we rode the jeep to the regimental area, and I was assigned to A Company. And one of the things that, one of the things that they told us is that, at the 442nd, is that, "In Mississippi, you're a white man now. So don't go, don't use the black facilities, don't go to the bathroom, the water, and stay out of black people's restaurants." [Laughs] I thought, "Geez, this is really strange." It was a just completely different world for us.

TI: Do you recall what you were thinking or feeling when, when you heard this?

FS: Well, you know, after being, after being the subject of all of this racial tension and stuff, it was, it was different. I just, well, I really didn't know what to take of it. I still, still expected to end up in the back of the bus, so to speak. Never, never happened.

TI: You mentioned earlier, when we were talking off camera, how you actually joined the 442 in terms of training a little bit late.

FS: Yes.

TI: I mean, the group had already been together for, for a while.

FS: The Hawaiian kids went en masse down to Mississippi, and they were, they joined the cadre that, these guys were all, the cadre were mostly draftees or people that enlisted before the war. And so they formed up into, into companies and did, did basic training as a unit. Now, there were, there were a whole bunch of us who, who showed up late like I did, and they formed recruit companies. And so we would, we would train separately. They ran us through basic in these, in these smaller units. And at that point, at that time, the main part of the unit, the main part of the 442nd had completed their basics, they didn't know what to do, apparently, so those guys, a whole bunch of 'em, a whole battalion of them went over to Alabama to guard German prisoners. The German prisoners were harvesting peanuts or something, and so they were over there for, I don't know, a month or two months doing this. It was pretty soft duty, from what I understand. And then when we completed our basics, then we were integrated into each, into the rifle company that we had already previously been assigned.

TI: Now, your group that said, trained a little bit later, were there a lot of men that came from the various camps?

FS: Yes. They were almost all from camps. Some of the -- well, there were some of the guys, and then some of them were from, from, for instance, Spokane, there were several guys who, who volunteered at about the same time I did. So, but we were all, they were all haoles, all mainlanders, and yeah, but the bulk of them were from camps. They were the guys I had met, some of 'em I met down in Mississippi -- I mean, in Utah, at Fort Douglas.

TI: Now, so did you ever get an opportunity to talk to the men about what the camps were like, what they came from? Did they ever talk about that?

FS: Never talked about it. I don't, it was not, it was, I think, I think they blocked it out, really. I know, I recall talking to somebody, and well, and he said, God, they mistreated his family when they found out he was, he was volunteering. They broke windows and stuff like that. So it was, it was not always pleasant for the families of those who volunteered.

TI: Now, how much did you know about the camps and what, what the men were coming from?

FS: You know, it's not until after the war that I read this stuff about the camps that I really knew much about them. I knew that these guys had been evacuated and that, that had, they ended up, you know... and a lot of these guys were from California, and so they were from the camps in, were there some in Utah or Colorado? Something.

TI: Yes.

FS: And then they were, yeah, and I remember, well, and then the ones in Idaho, there were some from there, too, come to think of it.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.