<Begin Segment 24>

TI: Now, how about the mainlanders? Especially the ones on the West Coast that came from camps. Did they ever talk about their families and where they were?

VW: Yeah.

TI: So tell me about that.

VW: Well, they'd talk about their dad. I remember Sadataki, Bill Sadataki talking about, they, the government wanted a man to be moved, and the insurance company didn't want him to be moved because he was insured by the Metropolitan or one of these companies, big insurance companies, on his health. And they said, "You can't move him. He might die if you move him. Well, they made 'em move him anyway. And when they moved, he did die. And I'll, I always remember that. Bill Sadataki'd tell me about that. And I remember, too, that he said that a lot of the people put their furniture in a church to preserve it, and take it out of the house, and so people would break in and take the furniture, and then they'd burn the church down. You know, that's hatred. That's so bad. And this just should never have happened, really. But the newspapers and the government were, were all for that at the time, at that time. And I remember James Michener talking about it in a, in the introduction of a book that was written called Years of Infamy, and that's where I learned that certain names in the government, like Stimson and Knox and all those guys, they were, they sure had a prejudiced viewpoint, completely prejudiced viewpoint of, of the Japanese Americans.

TI: So I'm curious, did the men ever learn about your background, the fact that you were a pilot, a flight instructor?

VW: Well, that must have gone around some because what happened was that my sister was so distraught about, about me being trained as a pilot, and being a good pilot, too, and still being demoted down to a private in the army when I couldn't use the piloting skills that I had, of which I was trained. And so she wrote a letter to Mrs. Roosevelt and, telling her about it and sending a picture of me in my uniform as a pilot. And she said in her words saying, "Isn't it a shame that, that my brother was a trained pilot for the Air Corps, in the Air Corps, and now he's, he was pulled out and sent as a private in the army. And within two weeks, a letter came back from the War Department saying that they were transferring me, that they had received her letter. So Mrs. Roosevelt must have sent it to them. And, "You are being transferred to the artillery," because they have two observation planes there of which I can fly. Well, I was transferred, yes, but they wouldn't let me fly. They still would not let me fly those planes. And so I was selected to go to the Fire Direction Center of the artillery.

TI: So I'm curious, who would fly the planes in the artillery?

VW: They were officers that had been trained to fly observation planes. And so you had to be a pilot, I suppose, in order to be, in order to fly. And, of course, I wasn't an officer. I had applied to be in Officer Candidate School, but they weren't allowing anybody of Japanese American descent, Japanese descent, to go to Officer School either. And the 442nd had all Caucasian officers; they weren't allowed to have Japanese Americans as officers.

TI: So although they transferred you to artillery to possibly fly with these, they didn't let you fly?

VW: That never materialized.

TI: So before we go to the, to the, what you did in the 522, I want to go back to the infantry unit. Because you were a big farm kid. You were over six feet tall, strong, I mean, did they have you do, compared to most Japanese Americans who were much shorter and lighter than you, I mean, because you were such, bigger than them, did they have you do things that, that were special projects or special jobs because of your size?

VW: Well, they, first thing they do is handed me the BAR, the Browning Automatic Rifle. Now, that, that rifle weighed about twenty-one pounds with the tripod on it. And now, if the M-1, for example, weighed about 9.3 pounds, and, of course, that was the rifleman's, they carried that weapon, the M-1. But it was only 9.3 pounds. And, but the BAR, they gave it to me, and they also gave me the flame thrower. Now, the flame thrower was something you strapped on your back, and that was all the volatile material that you carried on your back. And you push that button and it would shoot out a flame seventy-five feet, just engross it in flames. And so if you saw an enemy, you push that button, and he would just be gone. He'd be all full of fire right away, and wouldn't have a chance. But the flame thrower wasn't used very much in combat. But the BAR was used a lot in combat because it was such an accurate weapon, and a very vicious instrument. And lot of firepower, very straight-shooting weapon. And, but, of course, when I left, then somebody had to be the BAR man, and I don't know who took over, but somebody must have.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.