<Begin Segment 20>

SY: When did you end up leaving?

FK: Meanwhile, while I was there, I was in the midst of the Korean language school, this is 1954 in April.

SY: Did you learn very much Korean?

FK: Well, you learn eight hours a day so it's mostly conversational and then... the Korean language is very easy to learn. The alphabet is just, there's less in the Korean alphabet than the English alphabet. It's just a matter of putting words like if it's ka put a k and a a together and it's a ka. So it's very easy and you could read it. You may not know what it means but I can read pronunciation. I can pronounce and read so then the structure, the grammar structure is the same as Japanese. It's not like English which is more difficult. But while I was in Korean language school, my dad got sick and he was in the hospital and then I was told, "If you can come back on an emergency to come back," because they didn't feel that he could live much longer. And so I went to the airport, got my papers right away, and I got to the airport that day and then I was bumped every day, bumped off, bumped off for three days because an officer took my place. And that's when I felt that life is not really fair. If you have a viable reason to go somewhere or do something and you're bumped because somebody with a higher rank or someone with more money than you got on, this is not fair. And I still remember this day and because of that I came home on a Saturday and my dad had passed away on a Thursday. So I missed seeing him and it was in time for the funeral and then about a month later I had to go back and then resume my... so I started the Korean language school all over again. So the class that I was in, they had graduated and they went to Korea and I so I started all over again.

SY: And you managed to avoid going to Korea?

FK: Well, there was no really action or anything but the about the second month of, might have been about the third month in Tokyo, I mean in Camp Drake, they moved the camp to Etajima which was a naval camp. That was where the Japanese navy trained their officers and it's a beautiful camp and it was an island right off of Hiroshima, and so during the weekends or whatever we'd take a boat, half an hour boat to go on land and then we'd go into Hiroshima.

SY: Hiroshima must have been --

FK: Yes, they had just started accumulating pictures and so forth and I remember going to that and it was just a building, a very plain building and they had the pictures and whatever was left after the bomb, the melted metal and soda bottles and things like that, yes.

SY: That must have been awful to see. And then you ended up being at that particular camp?

FK: I was there for about three month and then I graduated and then I only had about four or five months left on my two year stint so they figured well no use to send me to Korea so I stayed in Camp Drake and I was a courier, a military intelligence courier and I had a holster with a .45 pistol and I had a driver. I carried documents back and forth from the airport.

SY: So it was a comfortable job?

FK: And I did that maybe two or three times a week and the rest of time I was on my own. So I used to spend my time in the supply office and it was a very difficult time. [Laughs]

SY: So in the meantime were you thinking in your mind, "How can I make money here"?

FK: I'm thinking in my mind I'm going to re-up and stay in the army because it is such an easy job. But my dad had passed away and I thought I'd better report home and tell my mom that I want to go back into the army again, and when I got back she convinced me that I should help the family business.

SY: So that's what you did.

FK: So that's what I did.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.