<Begin Segment 27>

MN: Now your wife and yourself are out in southern California and you were about to move into a house in Gardena but you didn't, what happened?

AI: Well, the farming didn't work out, so meantime I was just working for people and I figured I got to do something and everybody says quick money, why don't you start the gardening? So I says okay, I hate gardening but anyway I says okay I think I will. So I was going to start the gardening and we rent the house in Gardena then about ready to move then I got recall notice for Korean incidents. Here I'm back in army again.

MN: And that was because you were in the MIS reserves?

AI: Yes, because I was in the MIS reserve.

MN: Why did you join the MIS reserves?

AI: You know, I figured that since the war with Japan is over and they're not going to need any interpreters for Japanese speaking and they're not going to have any war with Japan anymore, so why not join the reserve MI. It turned out to be backward.

MN: So when you got recalled, did you have to go through basic training again?

AI: No, no basic training but they called that refreshing course. We went to Monterey to have the one month we were there refreshing course. Which we didn't have a teacher or we didn't have anybody, self-studying so being veterans nobody going to study, we just sit in the room until the time comes. Soon as time comes we're out. [Laughs]

MN: Now all these people in there, were they all Japanese Americans?

AI: Yes.

MN: And so from Monterey where were you shipped?

AI: Pardon me?

MN: From Monterey, California, where did they ship you?

AI: From there we were... ten of us shipped to headquarter in Tokyo.

MN: And then what was your assignment there?

AI: There we got I think two guys went to Okinawa and two guys went to CIC and one went to Hiroshima, Kure, Hiroshima, military government and that's what two, two, five and one. And three of us stays in headquarters, I was one of them to stay in headquarter.

MN: And you mentioned CIC and that's the Counterintelligence Corps.

AI: Yes.

MN: What did you do in headquarters?

AI: Headquarters all the headquarters already set, MI was kind of shorthanded and I learned the drafting at the school, in high school so that came in handy. We had all the prisoners in Russia or Manchuria when they came back, MI they interrogate trying to get all the information available and one of the thing was they drew a map, crude map by hand and my job is to get the map and the other guy's map and the other guy's map and we put all together and trying to make a map out and location where prisoner was and what was there and what's not. And that was my job is to make the map out.

MN: Now meanwhile while you're in Toyko, your wife is here in the United States and she's a Kibei. How was she supporting herself?

AI: Soon as we got... that was the first thing came to my mind, what am I going to do with her? So I say here's a chance that why not put her in schoolgirl and let her go to school and learn while I'm gone. So one of my relatives was doing gardening for one family, Van Vorst, they talked and says, "Oh yeah, we'd love to have." So I says okay. So I told them this is only long as she can stay would be until I get discharged and come back. When I came back, they love her so much they didn't want to let her go. I didn't want to stay in that family. Finally after a little while I says no I got the gardening work established, start going and we rent the house in Pasadena, small house behind another house, we moved out to there. I had her go Pasadena City College after she graduated.

MN: And that's how she learned her English?

AI: Yeah.

MN: Now how long were you stationed overseas the second time?

AI: Ten months.

MN: That was '51?

AI: '51.

MN: Okay, now I want to change the subject and I want to ask you about camp again. After the war have you visited Jerome, Tule Lake or Minidoka?

AI: No, none of them.

MN: Why not?

AI: I just don't want to see anymore. I'm not interested to see. I had enough camp life. That's my feeling.

MN: Well, 1988 the government issued an apology and reparation money. How did you feel about that?

AI: Not enough. Not enough for what we lost.

MN: Anything else you want to add? I've asked all my questions.

AI: No, I don't think so.

MN: We covered everything?

AI: I think so.

<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.