<Begin Segment 16>

MN: Earlier you mentioned doing some interpreting. Did you meet other Niseis in Korea, and were they MIS?

RW: Yeah, I met a small MIS group of guys. In fact, one of 'em, he came up to me at one the VFW reunions and mentioned that, "Hey, I remember you in Korea." His name was Jimmy Umeda. I didn't remember the name, of course, because I met those guys, but I just didn't remember their names, but apparently he remembered me. We're still in touch off and on. They were assigned to the Marine Tank Battalion, but they were Army MIS, when I met them, I first met them at this one area we were in, and I walked over there to their tent 'cause they invited me to come over. I went over there and I smelled cooking, and I went into their tent and a guy's sittin' there cooking something like okazu, just Japanese stuff, rice and everything, and I says, "God, where'd you guys get all this food?" He says, "We requisitioned this stuff from Japan and they send us whatever we want, especially for the prisoners." So I was really surprised to see them eating Japanese home-cooked stuff. But yeah, I met that little group, and it turned out that my brother Jack, when he came home, he was at Fort Ord in Monterey and one of the MIS guys went up to him and asked him if he was related to a Bob Wada that was in the Marines. He said yeah and he kind of described me to them, and then they said, "Yeah, that's him, that's him," so apparently they still remembered me and they talked to him about me.

MN: I would imagine because there weren't a lot of Niseis in the Marines you probably stood out.

RW: Yeah, that's true. And then I ran into those guys again because the Battalion sent me back to prisoner interrogation. Kind of a short lecture, or school, for one day. I went back to Division Headquarters, and these guys were the guys that were conducting on how to treat the prisoners, how to question them, what to question 'em, and what not to do in their treatment, stuff like that.

MN: So is this also about the time you adopted this dog named Booze?

RW: Yeah. It was during the fall, I think, early, just before winter. One of the guys had a dog at Headquarters and he had some puppies that were born in his tent, so they were just trying to get rid of 'em, so I said, "I'll take one of those." I took one and had it in Headquarters, and as we're raising the dog, some of the guys started giving the dog beer and so from then on we named the dog Booze. And it grew fast, surprisingly, in just a few months. Then when I got transferred to a tank, then all the different guys in headquarters wanted the dog, so I gave it to one of the guys.

MN: Now were you, when you were in Korea did you correspond with your mother?

RW: Yeah, it was kind of a Mickey Mouse method of communicating, but I guess she was able to read my letters. What we did was I made chart and I wrote in English the A-I-U-E-O and all those vowels, and then I had my mother write in simple Japanese next to it as a chart.

MN: Hiragana?

RW: Huh?

MN: Hiragana?

RW: Whatever it was, she would, in the very simply Japanese, write the symbol next to it, then made a chart on how you write it, from the right to the left, I guess it was, something like that. So then I would look up "ma" and then I'd write it, then I'd put "ma" again, Mama, shimpai nai, and I'd look up those symbols and write it. Then I guess my Japanese was not that good, so I used the word boku, for, "Boku wa ii desu," that's about all I'd send her. But then she'd write long letters, but then what I did is I'd take it to the interpreter and we'd sit there and he would read it to me. But letters didn't come too often.

MN: Did she send you care packages?

RW: Yeah. Our family was Mexican food eaters, so chilis were our delicacy, the yellow chilis, so she would carefully pack a jar of yellow chilis and stuff like that. And I told 'em don't send candy 'cause each tank got a big box every couple of weeks, of candy, cigarettes, toilet paper, shaving stuff, everything, so candy was the last thing you needed. So she would send me the chili. The unique thing is there was a little houseboy named Pak that was hangin' around all the time, and one day I was sittin' there eating one of my chilis and I'm a chili nibbler, not a biter, so I'm nibbling on a chili and he says, "Can I have one?" And, "No, no, too hot for you. Too hot." "No, I like. I like." So I said, "Well okay, you can have one, but they're hot." "Okay." He took that chili and put the whole thing in his mouth in one bite, gulp, and he just ate it. I mean, it's nothin'. And he wanted another one, so I gave him another one, but it was shocking to me for him to do that, but I guess there they eat hot food. I didn't know because, we just passed through cities, but we never were there to experience food and things like that, or to really meet people. We were always in the mountains, so the only communication I had with them was a couple of kids like that.

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