<Begin Segment 15>

AH: So, tell me a little bit about what was happening with respect to the coming of the war, and your estimates of it. You're a smart person, you come from a family of bright people and they're in a position to be able to understand this situation, and it's not happening just, bang, overnight. There are other developments going on in world history at that time. What kind of intimations did you start to have about, what if a war breaks out, where does this leave us? Where does this leave me?

JA: Now as far as I was concerned, I knew exactly where I was. Therefore, I tried to get into National Guard, ROTC, and when the war broke out, within a few days I was down taking my physical, "Now take me." When they said no, then why don't you -- I could speak Japanese -- why don't you start a, or I could start a language... and I went that far. Trying to... and then just like I say, I tried to get in navy and they... it was that the navy construction group, yeah.

AH: And some of these things you were doing even in anticipation of a war involving Japan and the United States.

JA: Oh yeah, I knew where I was and otherwise I wouldn't be trying to get into all the service, right? It's not JACL that told me that I should do this, this, this. No, I was doing it on my own. But when I went down and took my physical I didn't see any Niseis down there, I was the only one.

AH: One of the problems sometimes with people who are in engineering in college is that they have to take so many units and that may reinforce sometimes a rather narrow view of life, as though this technical stuff is sealed off from the wider sort of world. I mean, they are not anxious to take literature courses, they're not anxious to take history, political science, they don't read the paper. Was that your situation?

JA: Well, I didn't do a lot of outside reading. Strictly, you know, my school, that's it. And like newspapers, I'd go through it pretty quick.

AH: And what newspapers did you have available to you?

JA: Well, there were Times and the P-I.

AH: And did you take any of the vernacular newspapers?

JA: Like what?

AH: Did you read the Courier?

JA: The Courier, no.

AH: You didn't. So you didn't have Japanese American newspapers coming into your house?

JA: No, but then I think the community was small enough, even though I didn't get in there to get involved, I'd be hearing it from someplace.

AH: Tell me about when it started to become real to you, when there's a crisis. How did this crisis --

JA: You mean the war crisis?

AH: Yeah, the war crisis.

JA: Like me, it just came, boom, all of a sudden. So like on December 7th I was down at the ice arena, skating when the announcement came over the PA, that the guys who were in the National Guard, "You got to all report." And that's when the guys came over and says, "Okay, Jim, we'll fight the Japs, you take care of the girls." And that's how we were. They knew I had tried to get in and they wouldn't take me. So they said, "You take care of the girls, and we'll do the fighting," and that's it. And then when I came home, shortly, or maybe the FBI was already there.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.