<Begin Segment 22>

TI: Okay, so we're now going into our third hour of the interview with Art Abe. And Art, I wanted to go back, we had talked about that tragic event where your father got lost looking for greasewood in the desert, and after three days, they found his body, and so he had, he had died from, I imagine, exposure out in the cold. After they found the body, can you, can you tell me the series of events that happened afterwards in terms of what happened next?

AA: We had a funeral for him, a tremendous amount of people came to the funeral. I still remember that. And rather than being, than being buried in a desert out there, we decided to cremate his body, and so we took him down to Salt Lake City and had him cremated. And then about a couple of months after that, the army came and started recruiting for the 442.

TI: Before we go there, I'm just... what was, what was the impact on your family, like your mother? Because this was just like this sudden death. I mean, he was healthy, a prominent person, and for him to be taken away so suddenly must have been quite a shock.

AA: Yeah. But my mother held up pretty, pretty well. My sister, both sisters did quite well, too.

TI: How about the impact on you? Like do you recall how it was for you?

AA: Shortly afterwards, you know, they had, they had the turmoil about the questionnaire, "loyalty questionnaire," and they had a lot of meetings and things going on. And that was, I guess that was during that period of time. But December 7th, nothing happened. They, people were expecting to get a lot of turmoil at that time, but in Minidoka, nothing happened. Because they are, it was the aftermath of my dad passing away and the funeral. Then shortly afterwards, they started recruiting, and lot of the fellows that were searching for my dad were volunteering. So I decided... it was a tough decision for me because I felt that I should look after my mother. But I finally decided to volunteer.

TI: And what helped you decide to volunteer was because of the, of the men who really worked really hard to try to find your father, they were the same men who were actually volunteering to go in the service.

AA: Yeah. That was, that was part of it. And the fact that I grew up in the Caucasian neighborhood, I felt that the United States was my country.

TI: What was the reaction of your, your mother when you decided to volunteer?

AA: Well, I don't think that was a problem with my mother, 'cause her brother was already in the army. Hiromu had volunteered for the army during World War I, but the war ended before he actually did any service. And he was married to a Caucasian woman, so later on, he had this girlfriend at the time.

TI: But it must have been hard for you then, just knowing that your father had just died, and your mother was, was without him, and you were the eldest son. And that was probably what, what probably made it difficult for you to do this.

AA: Yeah.

TI: So you decided to volunteer and then what happened next?

AA: Well, I went down for my physical and I didn't pass the physical for front line duty because of my eyesight. And so they put me in a class they called "limited service," but since no other branch of service was taking Japanese Americans, I was held in limbo. And so I spent another year in camp, going out to work in the harvest. And then when they lifted the restriction on keeping us in, they said we could go wherever we wanted to for outside employment, I decided to go out to New York City. We weren't able to go back, back to the coast, so I thought the best opportunity was go to back east.

TI: And what timeframe was this? What, when was this?

AA: This was early 1944.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.