Densho Digital Archive - Ehren Watada Interview (denshovh-wehren-01-0012)

<Begin Segment 12>

TI: So, so what happened next? So you're accepted, you've told your family, your friends, so what, what happened next?

EW: Well, I finished off the rest of my college year, my senior year, and I graduated in May 2003.

TI: Now, I'm curious, in that last part of your college year, was it different because you knew you were going into the military and you were accepted as, into officer training school? Or, yeah, did you just feel different because of that?

EW: Well, it was only, let's see, when I accepted, it was only about three months before I graduated. And I think, for me, it was, at least I knew where I was gonna go after I graduated, so there wasn't that uncertainty or unknown.

TI: Now, how common would it be for people at your college to do what you did? Was it a very common thing? If you walked around and talked to others, would there be others who would be doing the same thing?

EW: No, I think it would be uncommon. Certainly, the Hawaii Pacific University has an ROTC program in conjunction with the University of Hawaii, so of course you're going to have the seniors who graduate and are in the ROTC program, they're going to straight off to the military. But as for me, graduating and going into Officer Candidate School, I think it was very uncommon. I don't think there were any others from my school.

TI: Did you ever come across someone on campus who tried to talk you out of it? They thought that was a bad idea, and, "Ehren, you shouldn't do this"?

EW: No, there were -- Hawaii Pacific University has a lot of military, or former military who take classes, and there were, there were a couple of army guys who said, "Don't join the Army, join the Air Force," but I didn't really take into account what they said.

TI: Now, why the distinction? Why Air Force and not Army?

EW: I don't know, they didn't really explain why. I think they were actually working in the ROTC office at Hawaii Pacific one day, and I walked in, and I was asking them questions, but they didn't really go into depth why. They just said they had been in the army.