<Begin Segment 1>

TI: So, Min, today is Monday, July 18, 2011, and this is your second interview and we are in Los Angeles. On camera is Tani Ikeda, and I'm the interviewer, Tom Ikeda, and so, Min, I'm gonna actually start with something I saw about two years ago. I was, I was actually channel surfing, and I'm a big sports fan and I was looking at ESPN and they ran this video special at Santa Anita, and I think the way they prefaced it was that they were shooting for the Breeder's Cup or something and they came across a group. And you were part of that group, and so can you describe a little bit about what that video was and how that came about?

MT: See, I'm part of the Japanese American Korean Veterans, an organization of Korean veterans, people in the Korean War era, includes people that didn't serve in the war and were other places like Germany or even Panama Canal. But we, because of just circumstances, luck of the draw, they ended up going where they were and some of us ended up in Korea. Well, the thing that happened is that every so often we go to the Breeder's Cup time 'cause it's a special time and we have a, we sponsor an outing there. We have a luncheon and people pay, pay the money, they go in, and we go in there. And part of that is a tour of the stables, 'cause that's the only thing remaining of Amache, I mean, I'm sorry, of Santa Anita Assembly Center that we lived in. And I'm one of the few guys that are in our group that was in Santa Anita and also have a pretty good memory of Santa Anita. So anyway, we were all set to do that and we had a tour that we're gonna have and I'm gonna narrate some of it, and we have other people, like Horace Yoshinaga, he was gonna narrate one of the rides. So anyway, we were there and were preparing for it when we get a call saying that this fellow from ESPN is doing a, a shoot and was talking about, I forgot his name, memory's gone, the...

TI: Seabiscuit? Or the...

MT: No, no, the Sansei jockey.

TI: Oh, the jockey, that's right. Yes.

MT: Yeah, they're gonna do a thing on him, and they were talking about, then they found out that we were gonna go over there, so therefore they decided to incorporate us into part of that. And so they called us and they asked us if we were willing to do that, and I said sure, we'll be willing to do that. Bacon Sakatani, who is, was the person who was, he then asked me to help him with that, so I helped him be kind of the co-chair of that organization, of that particular outing, and so we did that. And I didn't know exactly what they're gonna ask or anything, they just asked for some people that had been in Santa Anita. In the meantime there were other people that joined us who were not, who ended up knowing about Santa Anita being there, and one of 'em happened to be June Aochi... now I forgot her name. She used to be, was Nisei Week queen a long time ago, and she was in Santa Anita as a youngster. She was probably ten years old or so. And she was gonna be interviewed, as well as her brother, who was a little older than I am and he was gonna be interviewed too. So there were several of us that were interviewed in that particular segment of ESPN. Some of the people, of course, didn't want to go on TV and be interviewed, so they declined. So that's how I got on that TV, and it was interesting because we were trying to, we were going there for an outing and suddenly this thing appeared. And it was gonna be ESPN, so I looked at it as an opportunity to maybe educate the American public to do this, not knowing that it was gonna be nominated for the Emmy. They didn't win, but --

TI: Oh, I didn't realize it was even nominated.

MT: It was nominated for an Emmy.

TI: Do you have a sense of how many people saw this clip?

MT: I'm not sure. You might be able to go to ESPN and find that. I'm not sure. But I, but it was seen and was nominated for an Emmy. It was, I believe it was important for us to do that.

TI: It was, the production values and how they did it was very well done. I was very, I was very impressed, thinking it was, it came out of their sports, or ESPN, which is traditionally sports, it really had a strong human touch to it. I thought it was very well done.

MT: At my age my memory's gone, but I, her name is June Aochi Burke. [Laughs]

TI: And what was the reaction when it was aired? Did you hear from other people about the airing of the ESPN segment?

MT: No. I'm a little bit feisty and I don't, I don't care -- care meaning I care that it's being said, I didn't care that people might misunderstand and say something or report something that was wrong 'cause I would rebut them each time. One other thing is you can always say I was there, don't tell me what it's not like. I was there. I knew what it was about. So that's why I was able to, I didn't mind, and in fact, I was happy to be able to be interviewed for that.

TI: How about within the community? Did people within the community see it and comment?

MT: Yeah. Some people did, not everybody. Some people saw it. There's a certain amount of, in the Nisei community, they wouldn't say anything anyway if they saw it. They may say something to you personally, but not to, not in a public way. So I understood that and that's fine. Long as we were able to get this down on tape is, is a bit of a, trying to show history, for what it was for someone that was there instead of someone researching it and coming up with their conclusions. Too often I see so many things that were written that were not right, that were wrong, whether it's my camp, Amache, or Santa Anita or anywhere else, or even people that were there, because the perspective is different from my perspective. And I understand that.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 2>

TI: So this is a good segue now to talk about, I want to ask about your experiences at Santa Anita, and in the previous interview you had described how in some ways your mother wanted to go to Santa Anita and so you use an address that would put you in an area that would be sent to Santa Anita.

MT: That's correct.

TI: And that's, that's kind of where we left it at the last interview, so why don't we pick it up from there in terms of the journey from Los Angeles to Santa Anita, and what was that like?

MT: This was Central Avenue in south central L.A. It was a Japanese boarding house and we had to go where they were gonna pick up from that area. And we boarded a bus, the area that was chosen, we knew where it was, and we boarded a bus and we went to Santa Anita. And as we entered Santa Anita, of course, the gates opened and we went inside, and I could see the barbed wire, see the guard towers, and we went inside. All this time the propaganda was, "We are putting you into these camps to protect you from the American public who are so upset about Japan bombing Pearl Harbor," and so that was a rationale that they had to use with us. I didn't believe it. I had two kinds, I did have, did know some news stories about some Japanese being beaten up and I think somebody even got killed from some people, and there were people that were upset with the Japanese because their homeland was invaded or things like that, and they would, and they were picking on some Japanese kids. I knew that was happening, but I know that when I went to school my friends were still friends, my friends. They didn't take me as part of Japan, so I knew that not everybody felt that way, and even at that thirteen years of age I felt that, that if you reasoned with people, explained to them that they would have, they would, they had some intelligence, they would understand. So when they said it was for our purpose and went into camp, went into Santa Anita, I could see the barbed wire fence. I could see the guard towers, and I noticed the guard towers had MPs in them with guns pointing at us, inside, not outside. That didn't mesh with protecting us. I realized then they were not protecting us but to keep us incarcerated.

TI: And how about the people around you? What was the mood, the feeling as you, as you recognized this?

MT: Well, I think people, I think more people were curious, wondering what's gonna happen to us. There was some fear of, are they going to, you know, put us together and kill us? There were some Isseis who felt that may happen and kind of quietly, but I didn't think that was gonna happen. I just couldn't believe American would do that. And I felt very more, mostly curious. What are they gonna do to us? And then we got out there and they gave us our number, our tag, 12803, still remember that, and that's our family number which we had all through camp, and then we went to, then they would give us assignment and we found we were assigned to the horse stables. And in reality that was the worst place you could go, because in the stables -- and by the way, my address was 12-A-20, was Stable 12A, I'm sorry, I guess in Stall 20, 12-A-20 was our... and what it was was they had taken the stable and they put walls across. As you, if you think of stables, they have Dutch doors, the two part doors with the horse sticks his head out and things. Well, they opened the, I'm sorry, it opens inward. It opened inward and then they put a wall, about equivalent the size of the stall, out to the edge of the overhang over the stall. So now you had two rooms and that was your room, and you're supposed to have up to five people in that.

TI: At this point, I mean, your family was size of five?

MT: Four of us.

TI: Four of you, okay.

MT: But also my cousin and her mother -- my uncle had died 1940. He was the one that owned the fishing boat and called my father, sponsored my father in the United States. He died 1940, but his, but his wife, my aunt, and her daughter, who was at the time, let's see, she must've been twenty-one, twenty at the time. She's twenty at the time. They were, they were assigned to a barrack with some two strangers 'cause you couldn't have two people in a room. So they were with this elderly Issei couple and my cousin and her mother, and my cousin said, "I don't want to stay with strangers," and she moved in with us. So we ended up with six of us and were, maximum was supposed to be five, so we were bed to bed in that room. [Coughs] Excuse me. And so it was a, the room was, the stable inside, they put a thin sheet of asphalt over the dirt so that you wouldn't be directly on the dirt, and then they whitewashed the walls, but they didn't care about what they whitewashed because horse hairs were stuck on there and different things and they just painted right over it, just one coat of paint, I'm sure. The other thing was the walls went up about, I would say maybe fifteen feet, ten feet, I'm not sure exactly, about ten feet probably, and then the roof of the whole stable, one stable, is pitched roof like this and then cut in half and then one stall face this way and opposite way. But when you went up ten feet, then the ceiling from there was open, didn't have any wall, just open, so what happened is that at evenings, we found out, is that, even the daytime, you could hear people talking. There was no insulation or no way of preventing any sound from traveling from one place to another. And so you could hear babies crying, people fighting, you could hear all this, and at nighttime you could hear people snoring, and so it was, it was not very private in this place.

Now, that was bad enough. Was worse in the summertime. We went in in May. About May 4th is when I went in. We were kind of late; compared to some of the people in April we were late. And some of us came in, some people came in after us. In fact, I think people from Mountain View came after us. Anyway, the problem was when it got hot. The asphalt started getting soft, and the cots would sink into the asphalt and the smell would come up and so stench was in the place. And so what some of us did, some who had a little more freedom -- we had a lot of freedom, actually, as teenagers -- what we did was, what I would do is in the morning I would go have breakfast at the mess hall, I would come back and get all the things I needed for the day. Now, toilet paper was rationed, so I had to take enough toilet paper just in case I have to go to the bathroom and took that, and then I would take off. I would stay all day with my friends and we would play sports or we would go to school or we would go to Boy Scouts, and we would do anything or, for thirteen, a friend of mine, Bob Asamoto and I, we would wander all over Santa Anita meeting girls. [Laughs] Even at thirteen.

TI: Now, during that time, especially when it got hot and the stench would come up, would anyone stay in the barracks, or pretty much everyone would kind of take off?

MT: Most people would, they created benches and stuff. They would leave, go outside. And some people, I'm sure some people stayed inside, but as time goes anything you can get used to, anyway. But so a lot of the Issei men had benches. They would sit out there, they would play shogi or they would play go or something outside. And others would just wander around, just walk around.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 3>

TI: Okay, so tell me about what thirteen year old teenagers would do with lots of time on their hands.

MT: Most, most of the kids, what they did, and which was a smart thing to do, they want to keep the kids occupied, people, so they wouldn't create a hostile environment as they become disgruntled, so they had a lot of sports programs. They had Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and Campfire Girls and whatever have you. They had all these things going on, and they had, and the older Isseis knew, Niseis knew that it was important to keep us occupied, so they volunteered for Boy Scouts and different things like that, and in the evenings they had sing-alongs and they had bands or something playing, they had performances by different talent shows, things like that, to keep us all occupied. Now they also had, made camouflage nets. What it was is a big netting, which, and they would weave in pieces of burlap in there. Now, unfortunately I was allergic to that burlap and I had very bad allergies, so I just had to avoid that place, although it was on the end of the grandstand and our school was on the end. And going to school for me was finding where the girls were and going to that class, so I took an algebra class. And the other day I was talking to a friend of mine, we were trying to compare notes how, this girl, how we ever met, and nothing clicked and she says, "Did you go to school?" Yeah. "What did you take?" Algebra. "Oh, I took algebra." Then we were in the same beginning algebra class. And I took algebra, not because I had taken algebra before and I was supposed to take it, but my sister had taken algebra and as she talked about algebra I picked up what, the principles of algebra, so it was easy so I went in, went into class. It was just to keep us occupied. It was not to learn. It was not for credit or anything else like that. And it was older kids, some kids in high school or people older that taught those classes. Mostly people that were older taught those classes.

TI: And this was mostly, boy, it was like in the summertime, so it was kind of like, not when you really had to go to school, but they just said we need to keep the youngsters occupied, so things like school activities --

MT: They didn't tell us that, but I realized that's what it was too.

TI: Now just exploring the, the confines of Santa Anita, what were some of the landmarks or interesting things that you would go explore?

MT: Well, of course the grandstand was there. That's where they had the races. And inside the grandstand they had some, they built some temporary warehousing to put some things in there, and they had, people that brought cars in, they drove their cars there, they had it in the infield. I don't exactly know what happened, but I assume that they sold those cars and they got the proceeds from those cars. They had those. But in the practice one, we called Anita Chiquita -- chiquita means small -- there was a practice, that's where the Boy Scouts used to have their outings, and all the sports, the baseball diamonds were there and kids that played football and different things that, sports that they did, they had it right there. And baseball was very big, and some basketball, but baseball was very big. Had a lot of teams in there, and some from communities and some from teams. The young kids formed teams. We, they had a stream. That was uphill from the parking lot, so they had a drainage stream that had water slowly trickling down into the, through Anita Chiquita and into the camp itself, which, the barracks were built on the parking lot of Santa Anita. Today Santa Anita's much smaller than it was then, but it had a huge parking lot. They built, well, it's smaller now because they have shopping centers built on the lot. And as population, or people attended, horseracing got smaller, they sold off pieces of it and they built, or developed pieces of it for shopping centers. And through, and through that area and down into outside of Santa Anita the stream, ditch with the water, would go down there, and that was an interesting part, interesting story about that too. Anyway, we used to do that, and I remember Girl Scouts had an outing in the evening and they were telling ghost stories, and I couldn't see so I climbed up a tree. I was watching. And they become scarier and scarier 'cause the guy was very good, and so I shifted my weight and the branch broke. I slid down and I said, ooh, and I pulled myself back up. And it was dead silence for, I would say fifteen seconds or twenty seconds or maybe more, suddenly the girls started screaming and running. [Laughs] It's a funny thing that happened. And I was stuck, I find myself stuck between a branch. I couldn't, every time I move I make a little noise, everybody look at me, so I can't move. [Laughs] That was a thing, that was in Anita Chiquita, right outside of grandstands.

TI: That's a good story. So it was almost like it was part of the overall story. You're probably the ambience for you to have done that. [Laughs] That's good.

MT: But anyway, these are the kind of things that, activities they had. They had these talent, talented people -- they were quite talented -- play, whether it was classical music or it was modern music. "Don't Fence Me In," they would sing that song and things like that. It's most appropriate for us, of course. And it was big band days, so they would play band and some of the people danced, would have dances and things for the older kids and stuff. But I didn't dance, so I didn't participate.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 4>

TI: Okay. So you described some of the social things and perhaps some of the fond memories. At Santa Anita there was also a fairly well-known disturbance that happened at Santa Anita.

MT: Yeah. I know exactly. We called it the Santa Anita riot.

TI: Right, some people call it the riot. So can you tell me about that, how it happened and what you saw?

MT: Well, some of the things are hearsay and some of the things are things I witnessed. The hearsay, of how it started, 'cause obviously I wasn't there. What happened is that there was some bad judgment made somewhere along the line. First of all, the camp was never prepared for any, for babies or prepared for people that were in dietary requirements. There was must mass food that you served in the mess hall and you just ate it, right? If you didn't like something you just don't eat it. Well you can't tell that to a baby. They have to have baby food. So Nisei mothers, Issei mothers might do that, but a Nisei mother wouldn't chew the food and give it to their child and so they would have to resort to different kind of things, and they would have friends on the outside, because even while we were in Santa Anita some Japanese Americans were not incarcerated, so they would come and see their friends, they would come into the place and see their friends to give them things that they needed. And what people started, women started doing, families started doing, they would bring in hotplates so they can make food and things like that, dietary food and so on. The food in the mess hall can't be very good, particularly at the beginning when they didn't have Japanese cooks. It was terrible. We were not used to that kind of food and they didn't care, so it was bad. So what happened really is that people started using a lot of hotplates. Well, those were the days of no circuit breakers. There were fuses, and so too many people used the thing and somebody had fans 'cause it's hot, and it'll blow the fuse and so they would have to get fuses and requisition the fuse from the authorities. And pretty soon they're all gone, and they would get their friends to bring it in. Well, some people, less than enterprising, dangerous, would put pennies in there to short circuit the fuse, and it was pretty dangerous 'cause once a fire started it'd be really, really dangerous. That place would've been just a massive tinderbox. So the authorities said we got to stop that, so they're gonna take, confiscate all of those things that would create the problem 'cause they weren't supposed to be there in the first place. So they started to confiscate, but then they said, well, we're gonna take the food away that people have 'cause you're not supposed to have food in the thing. Mothers have baby, got baby food, and this creates a problem for them, and people with dietary problems. But they didn't think about those things. And then they said that they'd, and then what happened is that they brought the civilian guards. Inside the camp were civilian guards.

TI: So these were Caucasian civilian guards?

MT: Caucasians, all Caucasians.

TI: Okay.

MT: And outside were the MPs, who, by the way, patrolled outside the camp, not inside. If they were trying to protect us they should've been inside the camp protecting us, but no, they were outside looking in. And so they were nice, the MPs were nice; they didn't give us a hard time or anything.

TI: And were the civilian guards, were they armed in any way?

MT: No, they were not. I don't remember them being armed at all. They might've had batons, but other than, they didn't have guns. So they were the ones now coming, and they had a Nisei, or a person of bilingual, could've been something else, that knew Japanese, interpreting for 'em as they went through each barrack room, and in our case every stall room, going through everything, in fact, ransacking rooms, looking for things. And the rumor has it, 'cause I never witnessed this, was that they were now ripping mattresses, cutting mattresses 'cause the Japanese had hidden the money there, cash. The people that were afraid of what's gonna happen in banks and how they're gonna get their money had taken the cash with them and they were hiding it, so they discovered that so they were trying to... because they would ask people to leave the room and they were ransacking.

TI: So it sounds like the civilian guards were actually, yeah, again, you said hearsay, but stealing. They were taking valuables, money.

MT: They were taking advantage of us, starting to take advantage. Not at the beginning, but as they became a little aware that we were prisoners and we had no rights, that they can do anything they want. The rumor has it that... then after we were through with our thing we had, didn't have anything. We didn't have any money, we didn't have anything, so it didn't matter. But then we didn't have food either and so it didn't matter, but when... so I went out to see what's happening out there and I happen to be in an area where, they were telling me, that suddenly when the riots, just as the riots started, I saw them -- it was just before noontime -- they had the tables set in the mess halls and there was a guy, they claim he was Korean or half Korean or something and he was a spy for the -- they said he was Korean, I don't know if that's true or not -- but that this fellow, Asian fellow was a spy for the authorities. And they caught up to him. The rumors were going on, when this thing broke up they started going after him, and they did injure him badly. I know that they claim that a typewriter was thrown on his head. I know he was cut and was bleeding, blood, later on I saw the blood. But they started chasing him through the mess hall and as they went through they would pick up the dishes and the cups -- they were porcelain, earthenware -- and they were throwin' at him as they would pass by. That I did witness.

TI: Everyone was?

MT: Huh?

TI: Everyone was doing that, or lots of people?

MT: No, I just saw him in that one mess hall.

TI: No, but in terms of who was throwing, was it lots of people were throwing?

MT: Several. These were all teenagers and older, older teenagers and older were doing that, chasing him. And one of the things that happened as the riot was going on is a lifelong lesson that I received, and that lifelong lesson was that, when I was watching one of the camp officials, a white official, stood up on one of these milk boxes, those sturdy boxes, and he said, "Stop it, stop it. You're gonna make it bad for yourself. Don't do this, don't do this. You'll make it worse for yourself." And I thought, wow, he's brave to do that. And this one guy, young, one teenager, older teenager said, "What do you care? We're all Japs." And he says, "No, no, you're Americans. Don't do that, don't do that." I'm thinking, wow, is he brave. And pretty soon he left -- I'm sorry, before he left I saw this, this one Kibei fellow, he was probably in his thirties, mid-thirties, he had gone down the ditch -- you remember the stream I talked about? -- and he picked up a rock about so big and he brought it up to a kid about seventeen, eighteen years old and told him in Japanese, "Nage yo." "Throw it." And I thought, what? Even at thirteen I realized how bad that was. I thought if that guy threw that rock -- he didn't -- if the guy threw that rock, hit that man and injured him, and he got caught he would go to jail. Whereas the guy that instigated it would be scot free. And I said, wow, that's a life lesson, lifelong, it was a lifelong lesson for me. 'Cause I would be in corporate situation or other situation, I'd be sitting there, whether it's school or anywhere else, if somebody say -- because I'm a little outspoken at times -- they would say to me, tell 'em this, tell 'em that. And I would always say, you tell 'em, and invariably they won't say a word. Lifelong lesson. In corporate, in corporations that would happen to me. I'll be in a meeting and somebody would say, tell 'em that, tell 'em that. No, you tell 'em.

TI: So that's a very powerful lesson, just that imagery in terms of someone trying to get someone else to do their dirty work for them.

MT: Oh yeah. Yes, and getting off scot free, not being blamed for it, instigators. It's a great lesson for me. Anyway, so that's happened there.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 5>

TI: Going back, earlier you talked about how the civilian guards were going through and ransacking, did anything ever come of that? I mean, it sounds like the riot, the disturbance was more focused on this Korean incident. Was that, were they --

MT: Well, for individuals, but they, then they started going after the guards.

TI: Okay.

MT: The MPs came in, and then the MPs came in when the riot started, and a friend of mine was right at the fence, right where they were. Again, another funny incident he told me about, he said that they blew the whistle for assembly and the guys came running out in their T-shirts and shorts. They said, "Get your clothes on." They ran in, they put their clothes on came and the sergeant told 'em, they came back out, he says, "Where's your weapon?" Ran back in, got their weapon. [Laughs] 'Cause they could see that the riot's going on, and then they came in, and I was at that main thoroughfare, which was very big, next to the, one side was the stables and one side was the barracks, and they came in. And they came in and in front was a man with a BAR, Browning automatic rifle, a large automatic rifle, carrying that, and suddenly people started giggling and laughing. He had his fly wide open. He had forgotten to button his fly and he's walkin' down there. Everybody start laughing, he couldn't figure out what it was until finally somebody told him. [Laughs]

TI: But still, it was kind of like, I mean, a BAR is a very dangerous, lethal weapon.

MT: Oh yeah. We had no weapons.

TI: And people were, would still laugh at him even though he carried this weapon?

MT: Because he had his fly wide open. And it wasn't, it wasn't just open, it was wide open, so his shorts were showing. [Laughs] So that's why everybody started laughing. And I know that they came in with a tank. Maybe it was a weapons carrier, but they had an armored like that vehicle coming in and so forth, and so everybody calmed down and parted ways and let them come in. Now, afterwards I was in the, near the Santa Anita, the grandstand 'cause I heard some commotion going on, and what happened is I heard this MP yelling at, which I later found out was a guard, to get out of there. He was in the boys' room, men's room.

TI: So this is an MP yelling at civilian guards?

MT: Yelling at the civilian guard to get out of there. So he comes out, and told him to get moving and the guy didn't move fast enough. He had his bayonet; he put his bayonet on his buttocks and tore his pants. The guy then moved. He was kind of... and what people suspected was he was in the bathroom flushing the money away. Now it may not be, he maybe had to go to the bathroom 'cause he was so scared.

TI: You mean essentially getting rid of the evidence? I mean, that it's things that he had probably stolen and he was...

MT: Yeah. Oh yeah. That's what the rumor was. That, again, was the rumor.

TI: And that the MP guard was upset about that and that's why he was so harsh.

MT: Trying to get him out, get him out of there. Told him to get 'em all out of there. And so anyway, that wasn't, that was part of the incident that I witnessed.

TI: And what were the repercussions of this? I mean, did life at Santa Anita change after this?

MT: Well, there was, yeah, life did change, a bit. Recognition, people that were, that needed special care and so forth, and food, I think the food changed a little bit, got a little bit better. And I heard nothing more about inus or spies around. There were no more rumors about that. There was tension, of course, at that time, but people kind of calmed down and life became as it was. That's all I remember.

TI: But did the administration tighten security on people or make it harder? It sounds like they, they listened to the grievances of, of the...

MT: I was not involved with any of those things or even heard about that thing, and I don't remember, you know, they censored all our papers. It was the Santa Anita Pacemaker it was called, and I have a copy of that, one copy, one edition of that, but that's what it was and it was all censored, so it was, they didn't put anything in there that would be adverse to the administration. They changed the camp director. They removed him.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 6>

TI: So any other stories, Santa Anita, before we move on?

MT: Well, one thing is that I remember a parody one of our Boy Scout leaders did after this, and there was a song called White Cliffs of Dover before the War, and it's about a young boy having to, being able to come back to his home after the, when the war is over and so forth, and they'll be bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover manana, tomorrow, just you wait and see. That's how it started. And its parody was: "They'll be blackbirds over Camp Santa Anita manana, just you wait and see. There'll be fights and riots and," [sings] "there'll be fights and riots..." I can't quite remember the words now. "Forever after, fights forever after, manana, just you wait and see." Oh, "there'll be love, there'll be love and fight and riots ever after, manana, just you wait and see." So it was a play on what we had, it was our assistant Boy Scout leader Jimmy Ikeda, who wrote the parody, which I basically remember from those days.

TI: And did he write that while he was in camp? This was something that people sang?

MT: Yeah. Santa Anita, we were in Santa Anita, after the riots. [Sings] "And Joe Zaki would go to sleep in his own little stable again. There'll be blackbirds over the Camp Santa Anita manana. Just you wait and see."

TI: Good. Anything else about Santa Anita, like family members, anything that you can remember?

MT: Pardon?

TI: Like family members, anything that happened to your, to your mother or...

MT: There were some incidents that, for instance, there were latrines around barracks and things where you had to go and had no partitions at all, and the women particularly, Nisei girls particularly, were very modest and they just dreaded going to the bathroom. And they would do all kinds of things to try to not go when other people are there, to the point where there was one enterprising girl who somehow found a large cardboard box, and when she had to go to the bathroom she would carry that, put it around her when she went to the bathroom. The baths were communal baths, what they did was they took the horse bath in, where they would wash the horses, the big round edifice that they had, and they put a partition in between the two and the boys would be on one side and girls'd be on the other side. But they were open, open showers, and the girls had a terrible time going to take a shower like that. And some would bathe in their underwear, some would bathe in their swimming suit, and others would go late, late at night when other people weren't there 'cause they were, they didn't want to be naked in front of other people. And the boys, of course, were used to this. They didn't care. They didn't, they showered their side.

TI: And tell me more about the bath. That, that's sort of unique. I mean, yeah, I've heard about the showers and things like that, but at Santa Anita they actually had a communal bath?

MT: No, no. It's a shower.

TI: Oh, the shower.

MT: Just, it was a big shower.

TI: Okay. Big shower.

MT: Huge shower.

TI: Okay, but it wasn't...

MT: It still exists, by the way. That building still exists today.

TI: And that's the place where they'd wash down the horses sort of?

MT: Yeah, before. And they do now. But for us we were the new horses. Put a partition in between for the boys and girls and that was our shower.

TI: Got it. Okay.

MT: The problem we had with the toilets we had, they were basically flush toilets, flush meaning flush down a trough and down, stuff like that, but the problem was they went to cesspools, didn't go into sewage, so it'd fill up, back up and it'd come out. And they'd drill another cesspool and they'd put pipes into there and so forth, so when it overflows, of course, it really smelled a lot. So it was, they were unprepared for us. They were unprepared for a lot of things. The barracks were minimal. We think the stable is bad; the barracks were bad too 'cause they were green lumber, green lumber that, with knots in it, which meant that as it dried, of course, the openings widened and there were no, and the knotholes, so people were doing different things to cover it up, putting paper and so forth. And some families had two families in there, like I told you before, two families in one room and they might have been, they were strangers, so they would up bedsheets or they would put different kinds of bedsheets or any kind of covering to create partitions so they would have some privacy.

TI: Now, so when you say privacy, I'm thinking also of couples, I mean, like the older teenagers, when they're a couple, if they want privacy at Santa Anita what would they do? Where would they go, how would they get privacy?

MT: You're talking about if they were not married?

TI: Yeah, not married.

MT: They would, they would try to find somewhere it's dark and see if they can hold hands and, hold hands wasn't too bad, but if they wanted to kiss they couldn't do it out in the open so they would try to hide where it's dark, where, like where the grandstand, they had some, they could find some privacy. Or they would go to, if they could find somewhere where no one was there, maybe get into a rec room that, recreation room that was empty. But that's, but you had a curfew, so you couldn't stay out late. They had searchlights every night, searchlight going on the thing, and it became kind of like a game a little bit for some of the younger, some like us who would see the searchlight, come and hide, see it's gone and come out, back and forth. And they, they could detect from some of the reflection that we were there and then we'd come back.

TI: So it was like a game for you guys to play.

MT: Game, yes, a game. If they shot someone then there would no more be a game, but I don't think they were ready to shoot anybody at that point. And at one time they put a bed check. You had to be to your room by nine o'clock and they, a civilian guard and an interpreter came and would count heads, see if there, if you were all there, all the people who were in that room. So you had to be in that room or else, I don't know, put you in the jail, I guess.

TI: Now was that, like, random, or did you guys know?

MT: No, no, went to every house.

TI: No, but random in terms the night they would do that. I mean, did you know, like --

MT: No, it was every night.

TI: Every night.

MT: For a while, then they stopped.

TI: Okay.

MT: That's how I remember it.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 7>

TI: And earlier you mentioned that some people had visitors at Santa Anita. Did your family or did you ever have a visitor?

MT: Yeah. Surprisingly, this, my father's partner and their family, 'cause we lived at their house after the war started, my father was taken December 7th at 8:30 in the evening and I, in about October of 1941 they FBI came and interrogated him.

TI: Yeah, we got that story earlier, so --

MT: So on, when the war started he was immediately taken away, so we moved to, when the, when my father's partner got moved away, arrested because of his relationship with my father, nothing else, then his wife called my mother and said, why don't you come live with us, because my mother was in charge of the company and she had to go to the, sign checks and do other things. So my mother, we moved into the Seinan area, Twenty-Seventh and Arlington in Los Angeles, and the wife was a Nisei, so she drove my mother everywhere. And so when we went to camp, when we went to Santa Anita they had moved, in order, they told her that if she moved to Zone Two -- there was Zone One and Zone Two -- in that area of California, then her husband could come out. So he came out, so they moved to Orosi. You write it Orosi, but you pronounce it Orosa. Near...

TI: Tulare?

MT: Tulare. Tulare, out that way, central, south central, south of Fresno. He came out, and we were in Santa Anita when they were notified that they had to go to Poston. And they said, they voluntarily said, we want to go to Santa Anita because there're relatives of ours -- we're distant relatives, but we are relatives -- and so they came to Santa Anita and they lived in one of the barracks, not in the stables. Well, they were, they had friends in Los Angeles and we became friends with them, neighbors, and so they, they came to visit us, the Shintanis and us, and we would go there. One of the fellows was Filipino. He was a retired chief in the navy, wonderful man, Mr. Milo we called him. He just, that's his last name, wonderful man, nice. I could imagine that if the other Filipino people found that he was coming to visit us that they would've been very upset with him, but he didn't care. He drove to see us. And we would ask them to buy things for us, whether it's food or different things, and they would buy for us and give it to us, things that were not contrabands, of course. And so that's what we did. By the way, the contrabands that they took were knives too, any knife over five inches, I think it was, and that means sewing scissors were confiscated. Anyway, he would bring us things. And so other people had other people visiting them, so it was okay and they were, as long as they didn't bring in contraband they would visit us.

TI: And when they visited were you separated or anything, or was it just like they would be allowed in?

MT: There would be across the table from us. Just across the table, no, no windows that they, that I remember. Maybe they did later, I don't know. After the riot they may have done something. I don't know.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 8>

TI: I'm gonna go and jump after the war, because in a previous interview we talked about Amache, coming back to the L.A. area, and where I want to pick up is your military service. And so let's establish, so right before you join the military, what were you doing prior to your military service?

MT: I was working. I was working at Grand Central Market. It's a market where inexpensive produce is sold. When I was going to high school a friend of mine's uncle had a stall in Grand Central Market and they were looking for people to work on Saturdays, so he recruited myself to work over there and so I started working there. And my brother, my younger brother had gone too, but he, they wanted somebody stronger, that could lift crates and stuff like that. And so, because ice carrots weighed a hundred and twenty-five pounds or so, and so they have, we have to stack those things. My brother was a tenth grader and so they wanted, and when they found they had more than enough work out of us they just kept myself and the nephew. He wasn't strong enough either, but they kept him. [Laughs]

TI: So you're working at the Grand Central Market, so why did you decide to go into the military?

MT: Oh no, I was working there and then I worked near a year and made enough money to save, to go to UCLA. I was accepted at UCLA, so I went to UCLA. Went to UCLA a year and a half, and I quit and then went and started working again, back at Grand Central Market. At first I didn't work there. I wanted to get into another market instead of Grand Central, but I couldn't get a job, times were a little tough then. This is 1950, and so, '49, '50, and so I went back to Grand Central Market. Worked at a different stall and, Iwasaki's stall, and I worked there, and then the Korean War started.

TI: Okay, yeah, I want to just go back to UCLA just for a second, so you were working, went to UCLA, dropped out, then went back to work. We talked a lot about, in the first interview, that you did well in school.

MT: No, not when I... I had a problem when I went to, when I went to... high school was a breeze, and all you had to do in those days to get into the UC system, have a B-plus in your average, in your, and not have bad grades also, and I didn't have a problem getting into UCLA. I got in. But I didn't have to study. Mostly I didn't study, but, just do enough homework and get by. So when I went to work, now I, my friends that I developed after that time were guys that went to work after high school, and so going to see girls, go to dances, go see girls, doing things like that, so now I'm in their rhythm and I'm doing that, having a good time. Now it's time to, now it's time to back to school, go to school, so I go back to school. Well, I not only have a hard time studying because I'm not used to studying, but on top of that my friends still come by and say, let's go out, let's go out, let's go out. And I say, I can't go, I got to study. "No, no, no. Do it later. You can do it later. You'll do alright." So I'm weak so I go, go out. I come home and I start studying. Three o'clock in the morning I'm still studying, right? So by the time I get to school I'm really sleepy and, 'cause I didn't have a car, I had to take the bus to school or hitchhike or see if somebody would give me a ride, so I had to wake up fairly early in the morning and go to school. I'd get to school and I wasn't getting much sleep. School, I made all kinds of excuses why I wasn't doing so good at school. I was not a good student anymore.

TI: Okay, so school was not a, college was not a priority for you at that time.

MT: Yeah.

TI: So you leave UCLA then go back to work.

MT: So I said maybe I'm too dumb. I rationalized that I'm probably too dumb to go to school, so then I decide to -- but I wasn't studying either, but I rationalized that -- so then I, then I leave and eventually go back at Grand Central Market working and, 'cause I was an experienced young guy, so my salary was low so they hired me. But I did get, but I ended up being a journeyman anyway, but I worked there and in, course, in June 25, 1950, the Korean War starts. And I hadn't been in the service so I thought, well, this is it. I'm gonna go. And I was the first of my friends, all my friends to be called, and they had a party for, basically for all of us going in the service, or will end up in service. And everybody I knew except a few that were 4-F and one guy that I knew that had gone to work for the aerospace industry as an engineer, he was exempt and, poor guy, all his life he regretted, felt guilty not going to the war because all his friends did. He died early, but...

TI: Even though he was serving in a sense of forwarding the aerospace industry.

MT: Yeah.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 9>

MT: Again, we all have that hanging over us is the, is the World War II, the 442 kind of thing. They sacrificed and died for us, so we have that kind of guilt. I'm sure that played its part. His brother was in the MIS, well, in fact, he was an instructor in the MIS. But we, almost everybody went, just a matter of weeks. I went in first, my best man went in -- after I got married, he was my best man -- and he went in a week later. He went to Germany, luck of the draw, spent his whole service in Germany. I got put in the Fortieth Division, California National Guard, and I thought, oh no, I don't want to go in the National Guard. And we took an interest test in Fort Ord, but I knew enough to game the interest test. They give you a, basically an IQ test, and if you are hundred and ten and above, I think, or something, you could go to Officer Candidate School or something like that, or you could go to -- so anyway, they had an interest test, what you were interested in. And my biggest interest was I was not gonna be a cook, 'cause I don't like cooking, or be a medic, because there was some stigma -- later on proved I was wrong -- being a medic in the service, 'cause they were conscientious objectors. They didn't want to fight. That was not true. They had high casualty rates and they were extremely brave. In fact, one guy eventually got a Medal of Honor. But I had that mistaken notion, so I didn't want to be, so they had a one, two, three, each time they would give you three occupations in one category, one slot, and then you would rate it one, two or three, and so I would always make cooking or medicine three. My problem is when both were in there. To show you how, how I gamed the thing, one of 'em said, would you like to be, cook at a Waldorf-Astoria, a gravedigger, or something else, and I made Waldorf-Astoria number three.

TI: [Laughs] You'd rather be a gravedigger than... okay.

MT: Yeah, right. [Laughs]

TI: They probably do that on purpose to see who was gaming the system too. [Laughs]

MT: Well, anyway, but they had GIs lookin' at this thing so didn't matter. So anyway, went through the thing, when I got through with the thing the examiner corporal said, "Wow, I never saw anybody so negative in cooking and in medicine." I said got it, got it, I did it. So then I get assigned and then we have to, all of us that were all together there, only people that were, that had special services or something, got pulled out, but rest of us all got sent -- oh, and at that time blacks got all pulled out -- we got all sent to Fort Ord, I'm sorry, Camp Cook in the 40th Division. And I, then I found out later why they pulled all the blacks. There was only, there were no blacks except for a singing group that was a special services in the 40th Division, and they were National Guards.

TI: But at this point I thought Truman had gotten rid of the segregated army.

MT: The National Guard was segregated.

TI: So the military was, was integrated, but not --

MT: Yeah, that was national, see. This was the state. And so we went there, but Japanese Americans were not considered, they were desirable, not segregated out, so we go through the process and I thought, when they're getting people they wanted guys that were six foot and two hundred pounds for artillery. I was five eight and a half, weighed a hundred and forty-five pounds. There's no way I can do that. [Coughs] Excuse me. And so then I, so I get assigned to the infantry, which is fine with me, infantry regiment. And then they sent, I go to the 224th Regiment over there. Now they're processing us. The first four names went to Able Company, next four went to Baker, next four went to Charlie, next four Doc. I wonder where I'm gonna be. The last four names were Street, Thompson, Tonai, Vandever, medics. I said, "Sergeant, you made a mistake. I'm not supposed to go to the medics." He says, "Medics." I said, "No, no, look at my 201 file," that's the personnel file. "Look at my 201 file. It says that I'm not supposed to go the medics." "Medics." I said, "No, no, no." He said, "Soldier, you either go to the medics or you can go to the jail." I said, "I'll go to the medics." [Laughs] I entered the medics and eventually I ended up liking it, liking medics.

TI: That's funny. You try to game the system, you actually gamed it, and then it didn't matter. [Laughs]

MT: Didn't matter, 'cause every four names, they divided by four, yeah, it was every four names went to a different company and we ended, I ended up in... because we were filling up the National Guard. The National Guard had all of the choice positions. They took what they wanted, and each company was based upon on where they're located, so our company came out of this area that were mostly either from, they were either people that came from Oklahoma during The Grapes of Wrath, during the Depression, and they settled in a place called Mira Loma, around that area, all in that area. So we had all these people that were from that area. They spoke with an Oklahoma accent. And then we had other, we had others that were not, they were regular, normal Californians, but not everybody was that way. And we had one guy that was a UCLA grad, was a chemistry major, and he ended up being the pharmacist for the company. Because he joined in '48 when I, a lot of my friends were joining, when I was there, because they wanted to escape the draft. So they joined the National Guard. Then when the Korean War started they got --

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 10>

TI: Well, in your case, going back, so when you were drafted did you have a choice to go to National Guard or --

MT: No. We were now forced to go into National Guard 'cause they want to fill it up 'cause they just had a very small, my guess is twenty-five, thirty percent that they called up for the National Guard. That's all they had, so they had to fill it up. They took all the draftees and a few RAs, or volunteers, and they put 'em in there. And so I just happened to be in that, if I had been one week later I would've gone to Germany, right? If I had been one week earlier I would've gone to some other outfit, but I just happened to be there, so it's all luck of the draw. Now, the National Guards in our company particularly resented us because the captain, the first sergeant, "The guys that are coming in are older than you," 'cause these were young kids, some were sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen years old, and we were, I was the youngest of the group and I was almost twenty-two. So they said, "They're older than you and better educated than you, so if you guys relax they'll take over, so you got to give 'em a hard time."That's what they did.

TI: So these are teenagers essentially giving you guys a hard time.

MT: They all got stripes. The first sergeant's brother above him was mess sergeant, his brother-in-law was a platoon sergeant, and his youngest brother was not in National Guard, found out they're being activated and he joined. It was about September. I don't think it was August, must've been September. August, September he joined, and by the time they were activated, which was in September, he was already a corporal. In those days you had extra, you went in as a recruit, then you became a private automatically three months later, private, then he became PFC, then corporal, so he had gone up three grades in those two months. So that's the kind of family system they had. The doctor, the company commander was a doctor and he was the family, most of his family doctor. The executive officer was their insurance agent. So it was really a family kind of thing. Everybody knew each other. And primarily these young guys joined 'cause then you go into the National Guard, you could drink, you could gamble underage, and they could fool around and then do things. And they got paid.

TI: And so your group was kind of a threat to them.

MT: Yeah, absolutely. And so they were, they were trying to do that. Now this isn't to say we always, that all of, we were given a hard time by everyone. We were not. There were some really persons, guys we really liked. Others, they were fearful of us so they stayed away from us. Then there were others that tried to give us a hard time. But eventually all evened out. And so here we were in Camp Cook to train. Well, the National Guard wasn't trained. The medics are supposed to go to Camp, I'm sorry, Fort Sam Houston in Texas, San Antonio, Texas, to -- no, I think it's El Paso, Texas, around there -- in Texas to get their medical training, and that's what you're supposed to do. But they made an announcement to us, "We're gonna change things now. We'll try an experiment. We're not gonna let you go to Fort, you don't have to go to Fort Sam. We're gonna teach you here and we're gonna see how it works out." We're older, we're wise to the world, and right away I knew, and others knew too, I'm sure, the reason they couldn't do that is they took all the medics and sent them, even the National Guards weren't trained, a lot of them, most of them were untrained, so if they took us and sent us all to Camp Cook, we couldn't even call, have a sick call. They had to keep us. The only way they could do that is by training us there, but they had to give us an excuse why we weren't going to Sam Houston. 'Cause some, there were two guys that were at Sam Houston from National Guard who later came to join us. So we were, guys were drafted who were twenty-four years and eleven months who had not been in the service. If you didn't serve twelve months, I'm sorry, twelve, they were eleven months and, eleven months in the service, in the service, then they got called. They had not -- one year, eleven months, I'm sorry, one year, eleven months -- if you had not, and the rule was if you didn't serve two years you got redrafted again, called in again.

TI: Wow.

MT: So a friend of mine's brother was in with us. He served a little over a year and World War II ended and they said, "You want to get a discharge?" Yeah. Now, he came, and those poor guys had to serve a full two years, not the amount of difference in the two years and the amount they served, but they served two full years.

TI: So, I'm sorry, an additional two years? So they...

MT: Additional two years. Sad, unfair to them.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 11>

MT: But anyway, they served. And we, so we were older quite a bit. We had guys that were by, while we were in training they're twenty-five years old and older. Twenty-five, I guess, about the oldest we had. And so someone, none were married. They couldn't, unless you were reservist, reservist or if you were one of these that got called back in 'cause you didn't serve long enough. If you were married you didn't have to go at that time. They eventually later had to serve. So some guys married just before they went in, and their girlfriends, they wanted to get married right away, so they got married. But that was the kind of atmosphere that we were in, and the thing is that they would take us out to the, into the sagebrush, we would sit on our steel helmets and we would listen to the National Guardsman read the manual, who may not even have been trained at all. And we knew that because there were some medical terms they couldn't pronounce.

TI: So that was your medical training, just --

MT: That was the medical training, read the manual. The only difference, some of the guys were so bitter -- by the way, at the end of the week they would give you a test. If you didn't pass the test you couldn't get a weekend pass, so the incentive's at least do that, so the smart guys would just listen to enough to pass the test. But being Japanese, I was fatalistic; they were telling us we were going to Germany, I said fat chance. We're not going to Germany. We're gonna go to Korea. That's where the war is, not in Germany. And so I thought I'm back in school again and I took copious notes 'cause I figured if I, because I'm angry at these guys for what they're doing, they can't even pronounce the words, and I don't study and I don't know what's going on. I get into a war situation and a guy's dying and I don't know what to do with him because I didn't pay attention. The guy that did, gave us the poor lessons is gonna be scot free -- it's the other lesson, right? -- scot free and he's not gonna, nothin's gonna bother him, but me, it's gonna bother me for the rest of my life. So I said I got to study, got to study. Then had no problem with tests or anything. Only thing I didn't study was military 'cause I had taken ROTC at UCLA. It's pretty straightforward, and at the end of the class then we had, they said we're gonna have a test. First sergeant got up and he said, "Alright, we're gonna have a test, what you've learned. All those who've done, run well will get rank." We didn't have any rank. We were privates. The other companies were making draftees PFCs, but they wouldn't make us PFCs. They said we don't have time, we don't have time. There were those kind of excuses they gave to us. So we, all he draftees, of course, and especially the guys that we hung around with are all people who had gone to college or graduated college or something. We said hooray. Then he said, "All those who do poorly will lose their rank." Hooray. [Laughs] Well, then we took the test, and next day I'm walking and Sergeant Williams, who's a World War II vet, good guy, strict and everything else, good soldier, not partial, very good, he said, "Tonai, I want to talk to you." "Yes, Sergeant." He says, "Congratulations." I said, "Congratulations for what?" He said, "You came number one in medicine in the company." I said, "Really? Well, that's good." He said, "And you came number two in military." "Oh. That's good." The guy that came in number two in medicine was a guy that went to a medical school but before he graduated he was declassified as substandard. He later went to become a RN, then he became a chiropractor. He came in number two, 'cause he probably thought he didn't have to study, right? But he also was in the navy during the Japanese-China war. He was on, I believe, on a hospital ship, and in that for bravery he got the Navy Cross, which is second highest in the navy, next to the Medal of Honor. And so he used to have his, all his stripes and everything else, and so he was really chagrined.

TI: That you beat him.

MT: That I beat him. [Laughs] But he came in number one in military, of course. But anyway, so then Sergeant Williams says, "I want you to report to the dispensary." "Dispensary?" "Yeah, I want to report there." "Okay." "Tomorrow morning." "Okay, Sergeant." So I go next morning to the dispensary. I walk up there and this sergeant, young sergeant, National Guard sergeant, SFC or tech sergeant, two stripe sergeant, two [inaudible] sergeant, he says, "What are you doing here?" 'Cause I'm Japanese he knew who I was, and he's yellin' at me. I said, "Well, Sergeant Williams told me to report here." Whoops. He's not gonna cross Sergeant Williams, so, master sergeant, anyway, and then so he said, asked me, "Are you good at math?" I said I'm okay. I've taken some college math courses. I was okay. He said, "I want you to do this," and that is to make sure that everybody signs in the roster when they come in sick call. At the end of sick call, and then you hand them an emergency tag and he gets, and whatever treatment he gets, prescription or treatment that he got, will be recorded on there, and he would hand it to the guy. And then at the end of the day I would collect those and compare it with the roster to make sure I have a tag for each one. If one's missing I got to go find it. What if I have more tags than signed in? Throw it away. That was my mathematical ability. So I said it's stupid, but it's sure better than sitting out in the tulles, right? So I -- in the sagebrush, as they say -- and so I, 'cause they started another session of medical training again to keep us occupied, so then I'm sitting there and I'm doing that when up comes Sergeant Williams. "What the hell are you doing here?" I says, "Sergeant Crouch told me to do this." He goes up and chews the poor guy upside down. "He came in number one in the company in medicine, better than you did and all the other guys, and you've got him doing this stupid thing." He says, "Tonai, I want you to go into consultation." Now I'm upset. Consultation is where everybody goes in and that's where they diagnose the person, and they say this is the treatment you get with the medicine you get.

TI: So acting like a doctor.

MT: Yeah. And I'm saying, "Well I don't know anything about that." "Don't worry. Corporal Carter will tell you what to do." So I sit in with him, so he enters, Carter, and he says, "Sit in with him." So I'm listening, and mostly he's giving APC pill, which is [inaudible], and he's giving, take the ankle up 'cause they sprained an ankle or something like that, so relatively simple work. Occasionally some things I don't know about, there's this fungus and he's putting some salve on it and so forth, fungicide. And so I'm taking notes and figuring out what's going on. Two days later, "All right, Tonai, you take over." He takes off. I'm in a quandary, 'cause I don't know what to do. I want to do a decent job and I don't know what to do, and in the process I talked to the chemist, the UCLA grad. He said, "Go buy a Merck Manual. That'll help you 'cause that'll tell you a lot of the stuff that you don't know." So I bought a Merck Manual and that was my bible. I would say, "Just a moment please," and I would go in another room and look it up to find out what I'm supposed to do. And because I found out that the doctor, the National Guard doctor, he had a thyroid condition and so he wanted to stay in the army. He didn't want to go back to civilian life 'cause his thyroid condition. He had an operation, but he was still very nervous, and he then decided that he, the Table of Organization, TOE, said that he could be a major -- he was only a captain -- so he started chasing a, the commanding officer, who was a West Point grad -- that's stupid, the guy would know what he was doing -- and going, following him all over the place. So he was not available. When I left six people one day, he chewed me out. He didn't have time for six patients, a whole day. So now I'm in a quandary, what to do, so if I didn't know what to do, I couldn't figure it out, I would send them to division, to their medical company, medical division, company there. And sometimes they would get mad at me, say, "This is a, why don't you treat him like this? You shouldn't send him out here." But I didn't know what to do, so that's what I would do.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 12>

MT: And in time I started getting knowledge of a lot of stuff, and also, the other thing is how people react to going to sick call. Some people just fake it and so I found out how people fake it, and I would ask them questions and I would be able to outsmart them and they'd wonder how. Well, I was getting, as people found out that I was being serious about trying to treat them properly, more and more people started coming. I would tell people who had a dental problem, with, particularly with a cavity, I said, "Don't go to, I won't send you to the dentist unless you want it pulled out 'cause that's all they do, is pull teeth. What I want you to do is go to a civilian doctor out here in Santa Maria and get your teeth taken up so you save it. But if you want to have it pulled I'll send you over there." That's what we used to do. That's what I used to do. But one day, then we got a new doctor, a civilian doctor, Dr. Spencer from, Opie Spencer from Utah, Bryce, Utah. A tremendously nice man, very capable, obviously much more capable than I am. And when he came in he didn't know anything about military and we had to teach him how to dress militarily and stuff like that so he wouldn't look like a greenhorn. So anyway, he appreciated that, and so then he started looking at patients and I could take all the ones that I had any doubts about, send it to him and he'd be able to take care of them. One day, though, a National Guard guy who, a corporal who was taking care of the bar chart, of how many patients come each day, he's yellin' at me, "We saw two hundred and fifty patients today." Meanwhile I'm going crazy, a nervous wreck, seeing so many patients, just trying to do a decent job, and I was just so nervous and I was just having real trouble trying to do a good job at the same time. And when the doctor heard that he came to me, he says, "What can we do to, that's just too many patients for you to see. What can we do to..." I said we have, there's a way to doing that. All the medics have been trained already and they're assigned to the companies, so they could take a sick call and they could put the band-aids on, they could give the APC pills out, they could do things like that and take care of the bulk of the people coming in.

TI: So just treat that out in the field more, just taking care of.

MT: And he said, "That's a good idea. I'll give that order." And the numbers just went way down and it became -- don't forget, at three o'clock I had to be through with all the patients 'cause we had the GI, the dispensary. We, not the National Guard, we had to, the draftees and RAs, and we, initially they gave us the GI soap, the green bar, greasy soap, and it would leave residues and so we'd have to do it over again, so we used to chip in and buy powdered soap and so we would use that so that it'd be easier for us, we could do it just one time. And so to do two hundred and fifty patients, GI afterward, I was, I was a nervous wreck. And then when this happened then everything became really easy for us, became a slam dunk, was not hard at all. So, but I started enjoying doing that.

TI: What a tremendous learning experience for you, to, to...

MT: Yeah. And what it did also for me, to get to know Doc Spencer, and then he understood what I can do. Every time we, from there we went to Japan. We went to Japan because northern Japan was exposed because all the troops went to Korea and they were afraid of invasion from Russia or from North Korea, so they put the 45th Division there, the other National Guard division from Oklahoma, put them into Hokkaido and put us into Tohoku in northern Japan, and that's where we went. And first we went to repo depo in Zama. Zama is outside of Yokohama, southwest of Yokohama, and we were there about a month. I was put on advanced party.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 13>

TI: Before we talk about what you did, how did feel about going to Japan? Were you excited about that, or did you have any feelings?

MT: Yeah, because I had a grandmother and I have a sister. My older sister remained in Japan, and so she got married there, and so to me I had a chance to see them. My, this is my mother's mother was still there, and she was always kind to me. I fought with my other grandmother, when I was five years old. She was always kind to me. So, and they lived in Tokyo, which was not the country, and so I was kind of excited about going there. And I thought, well, I guess we're not going to Korea, and so that is a relief in some respects. All my friends that got drafted after us, so many of them went directly to Korea after their basic training. And so anyway, we go there, Camp Zama, for a month, and before the month is over they forced me to take a driver's license, get a driver's license, military. And I said I don't want to, 'cause they want to make me be a jeep driver. I said, why do you want to make a job that calls for PFC instead of become a sergeant where I'm at now? 'Cause the company commander deemed it so. So I was so far against it the executive officer came with me to make sure I took the test. And then I tried to flunk it, speed, rolling stops, all those kind of things, but the examiner knew he had to pass me and he knew I could drive, so he said, "Just watch the speed limit and the signs," and he passed me. I couldn't flunk. [Laughs] And then the company commander came and says, "You don't have to be a driver. You can be my orderly. How's that?" I thought, how stupid does he think I am, you know? He's company commander, so I can't say anything.

TI: So why would they do that given your value in terms of the medical side?

MT: No, they looked at my Japanese ability.

TI: Oh, at that point, I see. Okay.

MT: See, in the 40th Division they, even though you passed the test to go to Presidio to go to, to take Japanese, go into MIS, they would not let anybody on because they didn't want anybody to leave the 40th Division. Only people that left were people that went into the 40th Rangers from our company. I didn't want to be a Ranger, so... but that's why we were in, that's why we never went to take a test. We had Kibei guys that were quite good in English as well as being very good in Japanese. A lot of these guys came out, came back from Japan just before the war started, I mean, the Korean War started, and so they got drafted right away. There was guys that couldn't speak English, and this one guy tried to hang around me all the time because he couldn't understand what they were doing. We were in Fort Ord, we're in the same group, and they would say, "About face." He wouldn't know what they're saying and he'd be faced the wrong way. He'd see everybody turn around, so he would turn around. The biggest problem was about, to the rear march 'cause he'd be, everybody's marching, he's marching, said, to rear march, and he'd be marching, run into the guy in front of him. And so he, things were really rough for guys like that.

TI: So I get this, so the, the company --

MT: So he wanted me to be his interpreter in Japan.

TI: Right.

MT: He says it'll just be a while. He says, "Give me a month and I'll learn Japanese." I think, what is, how naive is this guy? Who does he think he is? I don't care if he's a doctor, he's not gonna learn Japanese in a month. But I don't say anything to him, but he's just, he's just to placate me. So anyway, I end up going in the advanced party for that camp, but this time they did, I was not the driver. He had his regular driver with him, and I sat with him and then we went to advanced party to Camp McNair, which is near the town of Fujiyoshida in Yamanashi ken, right on the northern slope, kind of northeastern slope of Mt. Fuji. We got there and they still had snow on Mt. Fuji. We only had summer sleeping bag, I had an overcoat, we didn't have proper shoes, the driver and I. The doctor, of course, went into the POQ, the cots, and slept there. We were, had to sleep outside, no tents. The tents weren't up yet. There's a tent city they were building. So we didn't know what to do; it's getting cold. So we got the rice mats that they put, grass mats that they put to, instead of using chemical like they use in United States, keep from drying too fast, they use grass mat to put over it and to keep it moist, so we got the grass mats and a couple of 'em wrapped around ourselves. We put a shelter half underneath, on top of that. We did, put everything we can on top and try to sleep, and both of us chatted, chattered all night long 'cause it was so cold. Wind was blowing and it was so cold. So next morning, course, captain comes out, says, "How was it? I had a very pleasant evening." We're saying, this guy is so full of himself. I already know that. So anyway, that was, and then we had to also sleep for the second night, same thing, but the third night the troops came. I don't know he went as advanced party, by the way, 'cause he did nothing. By the time, the third night the tents were by then going up, so it was, we had tents. But so we stayed there for one month and there was, it's now an artillery practice range for the self defense force for the Japanese, the military, and it, we're there for a month. And strange thing that happened is that they still had orders that we could not wear ties. But what happened is that in the camp our commander said you have to dress militarily, so we had to put ties on and a cap, the soft cap, not the overseas cap, but it's a soft one. But when we went outside we had to wear the other caps, overseas cap and take our ties off, and when, we took the tie off soon as we left camp. We couldn't take it off until then because the rule was that you could not wear that when you were...

TI: Why would they have a rule like that, no ties?

MT: MacArthur was the one, he didn't like to wear ties. He set up the rule. Later on, when Ridgeway came back, then it changed back to wearing ties, but until then, so we had to have... so every chance I got on a pass, weekend pass, 'cause we were far enough away that I couldn't make it there and back, I would go see my grandmother and my sister. I'd take them out to the PX.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 14>

TI: And how well did they survive the war? I mean, how hard was it for them during the war?

MT: Times were tough. City folks had it tough. They would raise their own vegetables outside their house. They had a little plot of ground that they could raise vegetables and stuff. She used to raise flowers there, my grandmother, but they had to raise vegetables. And then I didn't know it, I would go there and I would buy stuff at the PX and I would take it to them. My sister couldn't go 'cause she, even though she was a U.S. citizen, she didn't have a military pass, so, and the first time we went there it was very sad because I asked her what would she like to have from the PX and she said Babe Ruth, Abba-Zaba, Uno bar.

TI: So all this candy.

MT: Candy, 'cause she's eleven when she left the United States.

TI: I see, so these were her fond memories from American food, is candy.

MT: So I just bought boxes and stuff for her, and then I bought other things too.

TI: So this was your sister, so she left --

MT: My older sister.

TI: She left when she was about eleven.

MT: She's the one that took my hand when I was a baby and took to see my mother when she had my brother. She was always good to me.

TI: Back on Terminal Island, back then?

MT: That's right. She came to America once when she was about sixteen, summer vacation. She never wanted to be in Japan, but she was deemed to be a companion to my brother who had to be in Japan, so it was very sad for her, always sad for her. Then she had, ended up being adopted by my mother's family 'cause they had no children and taking a yoshi and carrying the family name. So when I used to visit her afterwards, when she said "home" she meant America.

TI: And how about your brother, what happened to your brother?

MT: He came back in 1948. My father said, he's my oldest son. He has to come back. And he brought him back in 1948, and he went to Poly High School for a year to learn English 'cause he, he was nine when he went and he forgot all his English. Only thing yes, no, Papa, Mama, about all he knew 'cause... and they say nine is a crucial age. If you leave, if you're eleven or older, or if you're nine, up through nine, after nine, then you can remember the language. Eleven you're pretty good, and my sister was eleven. She could, her T-Hs and Rs and Ls, her grammar was a child, but her English was impeccable, pronunciation. My brother knew nothing. He had to learn it all again. And then he went to Poly High School to learn -- just digress a little bit -- poor guy, we, I decided that he has to, we have to give him total immersion to learn faster, so my sister and brother agreed with me that we will not speak to him in anything but English. If he talked to us in Japanese we won't answer him. He had to speak English. This is after he'd been there for a little while. Very cruel, but he learned English fast. My friends couldn't believe how quickly he learned English.

TI: And so why would you say cruel, I mean, if it helped him?

MT: Well, because he couldn't speak. It was hard for him. Here, I'm his brother, younger brother, and he was eldest son of the Tonai family, the whole clan, and yet I was telling him what to do. He, if he said it himself it would have been different, but I did it. So that's what was cruel. I'm sure that nobody ever did that to him previously like I did to him.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 15>

TI: To go back to your military service, I just want, you mentioned this a little bit, but I wanted to follow up, the knowledge of the 442 or the World War II Japanese Americans and what that knowledge, what you knew about them and the influence they had.

MT: Two things. We were almost all Niseis. Our parents were the same age, same age or around the same age as the parents of the World War II veterans. We were brought up with the old Meiji, Meiji customs, so we were brought up the same way, and then we knew about the 442 and the MIS and it was important for us, I feel, at least I felt that way and I know some, a lot of my friends did, that there's no way that we could bring shame upon our parents, or to the 442 guys, that we had to be brave. And that was the way we looked at it, I looked at it. In fact, actually I thought that, that when I went up to Korea that I would die, I probably would not survive 'cause I'll probably be put in a position where I would have to die, as a medic. But I was, it was okay with me. Did I want to die? No, no, I didn't want to die, but if it happened it happened. But I think that was just generally the case of most people, most Niseis. I can't speak for all of 'em, but that I think was the case.

TI: How about the non-Niseis in the army, the non-Japanese Americans? Were they aware of the MIS and the 442?

MT: Very few. People that were in World War II remembered. Like the new exec officer we got when we were in Korea, he approached me and says, "I was in the ambulance company behind the 442. They were the bravest soldiers in the world. They were the best soldiers." Said, "I really admired them." So when I was getting discharged, getting, rotating home to get discharged he said that he would give me a field commission if I would stay. But I had to go to a different company; I couldn't stay in the same company, same outfit. But he would get me a field commission. I said no, thank you. I said I pushed my luck too far. [Laughs] But that's how much he admired the 442, 'cause he had direct experience with the 442. Just imagine how busy he must've been on that ambulance company as a young lieutenant.

TI: Yeah. So how would you say your military career, or service, changed you? You're now about twenty, what, twenty-four?

MT: You know, what it's really made me is much more loyal to America. I feel very strongly about America. That's, that's something that I didn't think about when I went in, but today they play the Star Spangled Banner, I stand up and I sing it. "Pledge of Allegiance," I say it. In camp I thought it was ironic, 'cause here we were in camp behind barbed wires and at the end we say "and justice for all," and we didn't have justice. So, but the military made me much more...

TI: That's interesting. So it's almost like military service brought you back or reconnected you to America.

MT: That's right.

TI: The camp experience kind of pushed you away or separated you, but now it brought you back.

MT: I left camp bitter and then, and I'm still bitter about being sent to camp, but I also put everything in context and I became more loyal. I, if somebody doesn't bare his hat the Star Spangled Banner's playing, take your hat off, is what I say. My wife gets very upset, but... [laughs]

TI: And how were you changed as a person? I mean, did you see anything in terms of you as a person that had changed?

MT: Coming out of the service I realized that, I had injured my leg in, my knee again. I injured it first playing baseball, then I reinjured it badly in basic training, going over the obstacle wall. I knew that I couldn't do physical work anymore, so all my rationalization had gone out of the door. Now I knew I had to go to school and give it all I got, whether I'm gonna be a C-minus student or what, I had to graduate. That was the most important thing, and so I determined to study hard. That's what I did, and I think getting a good score on that medical basic probably helped, and also the not studying and still getting number two in the company on military helped too, but not something that I thought about, but I'm sure that in the back of my mind it was there. So I decided I'm gonna study hard.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 16>

TI: We just have a few more minutes before we're out of tape, and so I wanted to just, like, open it up now because you've been involved in so many different things over these last several decades, for the community, politically, all these different things. I'm gonna let you decide. What do you want to talk about? What are some of the, when you think about some of the activities that you've been involved with, what are some of the highlights?

MT: One of the things is continuing the heritage we got from the Isseis, also not to forget our Japanese heritage. Those were some of the driving things that I had. The other thing is, of course, about the camps, that it's extremely important that we not forget about that and to correct any mistakes that people have, are passing on or saying because there's a lot of misinformation out there, and it's perpetuated. One person hears and passes it on, and I try always to correct it if I can, whether it's written or otherwise. And I think that Japanese American heritage is very important for the coming generations, and my activities within the various organizations has to do with perpetuating the knowledge of the past, whether it's JACCC and bring in kabuki or whatever have you, it's still part of that past. And the other part that I, Japanese culture, is that a lot of Japanese culture has now become American culture, sushi, taiko, and so it isn't so strange anymore. And I've always felt from the very beginning, very beginning when I got involved, is that if people, American people got accustomed to Japanese culture as they did with French culture, as with English culture, Italian culture, then it won't be so strange to them, and the byproduct of that is we will not be so strange. Say, "Oh, you're Japanese," or Japanese American, "Oh, I..." they can talk about things, whether it's just a conversation piece or being...

TI: So this is interesting to me. When you think of, when I think of Japanese culture, because you have Japan and you always have the opportunity to sort of, as a touchstone, go back to Japan or have Japanese come here to talk about Japanese culture, I see that living over time. But when it comes to, say, you said remembering the Japanese American experience during World War II, when essentially the Niseis, or the people who experienced the war, when they're gone, say, twenty, thirty, fifty years from now, what do you think's gonna happen to the story?

MT: Well, that's why I think Densho's very important, and it's not trying to give you platitudes, but doing something like this, it's not a written word, it's a spoken word that we're talking about. Now, some of it may be mistaken, some of the things may be done, but at least you have words there of people that experienced it and their own likes and dislikes and problems that they had, and all those things are there, all the words are there. And so I think it's very important. I supported from the very beginning the Japanese American National Museum. I was on one of the early boards there. I contributed to them, and because I'm a Nisei I contributed as much as I can. Then maybe I may not have any more to contribute, but I contributed as I can. So what I feel is that those are legacies that we want to keep up and going.

TI: But how confident are you that in fifty years the story will be still going strong? I mean, again, when the people who lived through it, who probably have the strongest sort of urge to keep it going, when that generation's gone, sure, you have the museum, Densho, we're collecting, but what will happen to the story?

MT: Well, that's why I would like the scholars to become more interested. Instead of taking information from books and papers and things like that, that they would spend more time finding out what other people thought, what they did. Not everybody is willing to talk, I realize that, particularly Niseis, and some people are not articulate. I understand that. And some people are so young they don't even understand what happened, and people talk about how much fun they had in camp. Well that's because they were young and they had friends. They didn't think about their parents, they didn't step back and see what this did to them as far as education, as far as attitudes. They didn't do any of those, they didn't think about that, and I don't fault them for that, for not doing that. It's just kind of too bad. And I think it's the scholars that should be trying to get that information, but it seems that scholars are more interested in what other people wrote than in trying to go to first person, 'cause we're the last of the Niseis and they should be talking to us, not only to me but to other people. But they don't. At least I know of nothing, and I'm pretty close to UCLA and, and we talk about some things. I remember early on I talked about some things. They were not, some of those people were not even interested in hearing what I had to say. I could detect it and so I stopped talking.

TI: Okay.

MT: They wanted my money, but they... [laughs]

TI: So yeah, we're almost at the end of this tape, so, Min, thank you, again, for doing this again, the second interview. I'm glad we had this chance.

MT: My problem is that I, it's always disjointed and things, 'cause I'm --

TI: No, no. You're an incredible storyteller, so again, thank you very much.

MT: You're welcome. I want to thank you.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.