<Begin Segment 10>

SF: When all the community turned out to wish you and your other draftees well, political events by 1940 were pretty tense, right, with Japan.

SI: Right.

SF: Was there any sort of sense that there was this kind of conflict or whatever, that somehow you were going to go and fight for the United States Army and somehow America was now getting into a rather...

SI: You mean amongst the Japanese community?

SF: Yeah, among the Japanese.

SI: I suppose there was. I can't help but think that there might have been, but to us this wasn't, it wasn't expressed to us or apparent. The feeling I got that they were really proud that we were going to serve in the military. And I suppose in Japan that this was what they did when a young male went into the military, the whole community celebrated, gave him a royal send off, and this was just a carry over of this tradition. With regard to their feeling, having mixed thoughts about this, to me at least it was not apparent, and I really didn't feel this way at all. My great fear of going to Sacramento was that gosh, if I flunk my physical, what the hell am I going to do? How can I show my face back in Stockton because I have flat feet, but I walk, and my eyes, I wear glasses. When I was in the eighth grade -- I'm not very outgoing and I'm usually rather shy so I used to always sit in the back row of the class -- and I couldn't see the damn blackboard and the teacher would write. I didn't know what was wrong so one of the other strikes against me was that I didn't know what was going on in class until I finally went and got glasses, then I was found, like my mother was, to be quite nearsighted and so I wore glasses. I had about 200 or 250 over 20 or something, and I take off my glasses I couldn't see very well. So I thought my gosh, if they're going to flunk me for my glasses or my flat feet or whatever else I might have, I'd have to go back and face all my family and friends again. [Laughs] Well, they tested my eyes without my glasses and they kept shaking their head. I could barely read the A or AB or the first two rows. They said, "Put on your glasses." Then when I put them on, this way and this way, I could read so they passed me and I said oh, thank God. [Laughs] Then they put us on the train to Fort Ord in Santa Cruz where they gave us shots and uniform and all of this, and they said, well finally I was a private. I said wow, private, that must be some rank 'cause at that time I knew very little about the military. I didn't know what a corporal or sergeant or a lieutenant was, and it was a complete new world for me. And we'd line up to eat breakfast and get on KP or whatever, and as I look back I think that I accepted all of these new things that turned up as something interesting, something I should make the most of and accept. So I did it and I guess I continued it.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.