<Begin Segment 9>

TI: Well, shortly after your father returned to Minidoka, so we go now to January 1944, the U.S. military now decides to impose a draft on Nisei men to try to get more people into the army. And so January 1944, so this is about a year after they let the volunteers in. And so they needed, essentially, I think, more replacement troops for them, so they imposed the draft. And a few months later, they actually started drafting men out of Minidoka, and you were in that first group. So what was your reaction when you were drafted?

GA: Well, I recalled things that I had thought and expressed in the past two years, was that two years? From '41 through '43, and thought to myself, one of the things that I learned in my civics class and while in high school was you are free until you are found guilty. Well, I felt that I was not guilty, and I wanted to express that point that, well, we haven't been given our rights, so I'm, just like on the Question 27, I said to myself, "I'm not going to be going." Not until the day that the FBI came to pick me up, my parents didn't know which way I was gonna go. All they said was, "It's up to you, this is your life, your country, so you do what you think is right." But my mother said, at the same time, "Would you give me a crop of your hair and some fingernails, that if in case you're taken away, and we may never see you again, to, that we could have some service for you with what remains of your clippings," in the envelope that I enclosed right here.

TI: So what action or inaction did you do that let the government know that you were refusing the draft? I mean, how did they know that you were gonna refuse the draft?

GA: Well, they were, we were supposed to assemble together at the administration area at a certain time to get the preinduction pledge and all that. And I didn't go to that.

TI: And so it was after that that the FBI then...

GA: Yeah, they came around one o'clock, one of 'em came and said that, "You're under arrest, that you didn't go to the service, so you're coming with me." And so they put me in a car. And when I got in the car, there was another fellow, a fellow Nisei in the car, and I thought to myself, "Oh, this is great. At least I'm not gonna be all by myself, I have somebody." Otherwise, I thought I'd be all by myself. But yeah, we wound up together, and at the entrance, they checked us out and they checked us out as "indefinite leave." So thought, "Well, don't know what's gonna to me now." And the trip, the three-hour trip to Boise (County Jail) followed.

TI: Why do you think you were in that first group? I mean, here you were younger than other draft-eligible men, you were, this was 1944, so you were what, eighteen years old when this happened. So you were barely draft age, and there were other Nisei men in camp who were nineteen, twenty, twenty-one. But they, but you were chosen in this first group. Why do you think that happened?

GA: I had no idea, excepting that they must have thrown all our names into -- excuse me -- into a bowl or a box, and just pulled out names, and mine happened to be it. Or could it be that, "The older Akutsu was a troublemaker, so maybe the younger brother, let's see what he does." I don't know.

TI: So that comment at the end was that because your older brother was viewed as a "troublemaker," they thought, "Well, let's take his younger brother and see what he does, 'cause that'll be an indicator of what his older might do"? Is that kind of what you're thinking?

GA: Well, I think they thought possibly -- this is all guessing -- that there's an organized resistance group in Hunt, and if so, let's find out. But if they put me in, called me in and I refused to go, then they would start thinking, oh, could it be that there are others that's being influenced by my brother not to go. (This was only my guess).

TI: Okay, that's interesting. And later on, your brother also was drafted.

GA: In July.

TI: And decided to resist, okay.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.