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TI: So now I'm going to jump ahead to something else. So we talked a little bit about Puyallup, from Puyallup you went to Hunt, Idaho, or Minidoka. And you went there in the fall, and then a few months later, in January 1943, so just a few months after being at Hunt, the U.S. military decides to form a segregated army unit, and they started calling for volunteers to join the army, to join this unit, the 442. As part of that, a month later, they come out with a "loyalty questionnaire," a questionnaire that was designed to determine how loyal people were to the United States to help determine whether or not they were suitable for military service, or also if they were suitable to be eventually released from the camps to go work. On this questionnaire, there were two questions in particular that were somewhat controversial. And what I want to do is, one by one, read the questions, and then I want to ask you how you answered these questions. So the first question is called Question 27. And the way it's worded is, it says, quote, "Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty wherever ordered?" end quote. So when you saw that question, how did you answer?

GA: Thinking it over, I thought to myself, "It sounded like you're gonna volunteer." Well, we'd been pushed around quite a bit, and I didn't like it, and so I said, "I don't want to be pushed around anymore, so I'm going to answer 'no,' I'm not going to volunteer."

TI: Okay, because yeah, you heard about this new unit, you knew they were gonna ask for volunteers, and so you thought this was the question that was saying, "Would you volunteer for this unit?" and you said, "No."

GA: That's the opinion I had.

TI: Okay, good. The second, the next question, Question 28, goes, "Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any and all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance to the Japanese Emperor or any other foreign government, power, or organization?" How did you answer Number 28?

GA: I answered, on 28, I said, "Yes," because that was three questions all put into one. The first one was, what was it?

TI: The unqualified allegiance to the United States.

GA: I said "yes" to that one.

TI: And then the second one was defend the U.S. from all attack by foreign...

GA: Yes, I said "yes" if our forty-eight states -- at that time we had only forty-eight -- were attacked.

TI: And then the third part, and the third part was forswear any allegiance to the Japanese Emperor.

GA: I never, I never swore any allegiance to Japan, I've always been an American, and pledged allegiance to our flag all my life. Therefore I said "no" there.

TI: Because you never had allegiance to the emperor, so you couldn't "forswear" allegiance.

GA: That's right. If it, if I was, I was too young to know what the heck I was saying, especially in, trying to speak in Japanese. So anyway, I said "no" to that question. And two questions out of three was "yes," therefore my last answer to the whole question was "yes."

TI: Okay, so let me make sure, so Question 28, what you're saying is that, actually, they're asking you three things. Of those three things, two of them you were "yes," and third one where forswearing any allegiance, you said "no" because you never had allegiance. But based on two out of three being "yes" and one being "no," you decided to answer "yes" to Question 28.

GA: Uh-huh.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.