<Begin Segment 7>

MA: So you, then were, were actually drafted --

GF: Yes, I was drafted.

MA: -- is that correct, into the army? Do you remember what, when that was? Was it... it was after Pearl Harbor, right?

GF: Oh yes, because Pearl Harbor was '41, right? And I went in the service in '42, March of '42. I was already signed up for going to the service but I didn't go in until March of 1942.

MA: So you, you had enlisted or you were drafted?

GF: No, we were drafted.

MA: Drafted.

GF: I think most of the boys, at that time in our community, was drafted.

MA: Most of the boys from Ault?

GF: Uh-huh.

MA: Even the Japanese Niseis?

GF: Yes. I heard where they wouldn't take the Japanese because they were, they were Japanese and, but that wasn't the case where we were. I mean, we were, were all taken. I guess we were, 'cause I was about the earliest one there, in that area, taken in the draft.

MA: So when you heard the news that you were gonna be drafted, or you were drafted, how did you feel about going into the army?

GF: Oh, I guess I didn't feel any, bad about it because I knew that we were gonna have to go. So...

MA: What about your parents? How did they -- I mean, I guess because you were the oldest and you were, had the responsibility of the farm -- how did they feel about you going off to war?

GF: Oh, I guess they didn't say a whole lot because my mother said to me, that she said, "Well, I keep worrying about you." I said, "Well, I'm sure you do." But they didn't say I can't go or, "Don't go," or anything like that.

MA: Did your parents have to hire help to, for the farm at that point or what happened with that?

GF: Well, I don't know how many more they might have hired. They... you know we always had to hire some people for some of the manual labor, which we had to do. But for the big part of it they probably did not hire any more because he cut down on farming. The reason he cut down on farming is after I went, evacuation come, and my dad had a lot of farm there so there was one family, he was telling me that he'd give 'em the whole, one block of farm that he had. He had onions and sugar beets as the two crop that we planted early. You'd plant them early and... and he already had all that done and when these people come, he let them have the whole farm there with all the crop in the ground already and the equipment, he let them use his equipment. And, so he got some of the land reduced, so by doing that, well, then he'd have less help, he needed less help.

MA: And this was a family who had come from the West Coast --

GF: West Coast, right.

MA: -- a Japanese family? Oh, interesting.

GF: Yeah. And he... and then others, there's some other families, too, he said he helped a little bit, whatever he could, you know. With this one farm and family in particular he let them have the equipment, the farmland that he had already worked on and everything and, and we don't even know where they're at. [Laughs]

MA: Wow, that's very generous, yeah, of your father.

GF: Oh, yeah. Dad really helped a lot.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.