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MN: So let's see, you graduated from Poly High School, what year did you graduate?
Mo N: '54.
MN: So then after that, you attended Los Angeles City College, right?
Mo N: Uh-huh.
MN: And then, but then you didn't last very long. You went into the army in January 1955?
Mo N: Uh-huh.
MN: Now what prompted -- you actually volunteered. Why did you volunteer?
Mo N: Well, I wanted to get that GI Bill, Korean bill. When I got out, there wasn't any jobs when we were in the post-Korean War recessions. So there wasn't hardly any work out there, so everybody else was going to the school, was going to City College, so I figured I'll tag along, too. And I didn't know what the, what was going on, so I just enrolled in classes that they said to enroll in and stuff like economics. I didn't have the slightest idea what the hell it was about, so I was flunking my whole load. And here we were playing cards and talking with the people and stuff like that. So they said the Korean GI Bill was running out, so that if you wanted to get it, you'd have to get in the army now. So I went to advance my draft, and they told me if I wanted to advance, I'd have to wait 'til probably the summer. I was nineteen at the time... eighteen? I think I was eighteen when I graduated, and so I think the fastest you could advance your draft was probably around nineteen, something like that. So if I wanted to get the GI Bill, I had to advance my draft, I'd have to volunteer. And so when we asked that recruiter, when I asked the recruiter would I get the full benefits, he said, "Yeah." So I signed up. I did that completely on my own, too. My family, we were having family meetings and stuff, so we're supposed to share all our stuff, I just came in and told 'em, "I'm going into the army." They were pretty disappointed about that. But yeah, I went in January, then I found out that I was only gonna get benefits for the month of January that the bill covered. So then we started raising hell. I guess a lot of people felt like I did, joined because, like I did. So Congress went and extended it, so everybody who got in by January would get the full benefits, but that didn't happen 'til afterwards.
MN: So where did you do your basic training?
Mo N: I did my basic at Fort Ord, Monterey.
MN: Any of the non-Nikkei soldiers give you a bad time?
Mo N: No, no. This is after, like I say, this is after the Korean War, so the Japanese had a pretty good name by then. The U.S. was trying to build up Japan so that it'd be a foreign base to Asia, so they weren't beating us up too bad in the press and stuff like that. Where we were getting shit was in the civilian population on the street. I mean, it used to be that you'd take, I'd take my friends up to Fort Ord to take 'em back to base, and you couldn't eat on the white side of the tracks. You had to cross over to the colored side and find a restaurant or something to eat at, and I think it was the [inaudible], the people right in front of us that would be during the Korean War itself, they had that discrimination outlawed, at least while you were in uniform.
MN: Was that just in California that this law was enacted, or was that a federal law?
Mo N: Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I just know that it happened here in California.
MN: And then after you did your basic in California, Fort Ord, where did they ship you?
Mo N: I went to Fort Sam Houston in Texas, San Antonio, Texas.
MN: Now, was Texas still a segregated state?
Mo N: Yeah. Yeah, that's right, when I got off the train, I mean, I'd heard all these stories from black folks that I grew up with, they talked to their families and listening to stories about the South, so I knew about the "colored" and "white" rooms and stuff like that, the drinking fountains, all of those things, the movie theaters. But when I got there, I realized where I was at and I thought, "Wow, where do I fit in?" We never talked about that when they were telling me stories. So when I got off the train, I looked up and I saw that sign, said, "white" and "colored." "Oh, man, where in the fuck do I go?" And I'm in uniform, but I don't want to take no chances in getting hassled. So I walked around the train station, I didn't go through it, I walked around it. Got out in front and hailed a cab and asked the cabbie to take me to someplace where he knew I would be able to get a room. And it was a sleazy white hotel, but that's when I found out that Asians were considered "white" in the South. Got into some trouble with friends, go to town, and couldn't go to the black side, so you go to the... I mean, to the white side, so you go to the black side, and you could go in, they wouldn't give you no shit about that, but other customers would. We went into one place and someone said, "What the fuck they doing in here? I can't go over there, why are they here?" and all that kind of shit. So we got up and left. But yeah, that was an experience. That was an experience. Although there was integrated sets after dark, where mixed crowds could get together and shit like that. I went to a couple of those kind of clubs, and that was kind of interesting. So I was there in Texas for about six months.
MN: And then from Texas where did you go?
Mo N: I went to Fort Campbell, Kentucky.
MN: And what was Kentucky like?
Mo N: Worse. Of course, we weren't in the deep South, that's still a bastard state, right? Texas is kind of a border state, too. But segregation was clearly there, I mean... but got a chance to see some, what poor whites were like over there. Pretty sad case. I mean, we went to, we had a Christmas drive, so we took some stuff out to the countryside there to these poor whites out there, and shit, live in a house where if you want -- a dirt floor, so if you fuck the dirt floor up really bad, all they had to do was pick the house up and move it to a new clear patch of clear dirt. Yeah, all them stories about only thing they know how to say is, "Where you going?" "Yonder." "Which way is west?" "Yonder," that kind of stuff. [Laughs] That really kind of, people didn't have any educational opportunities and stuff like that. And black people lived even worse than that. They lived in these goddamn, on the side of the railroad tracks or by the sheds of the railroad, the corrugated metal kinds of roof and stuff like that. Stuff was pretty, yeah, it was not nice.
MN: And then from Kentucky you were shipped to Germany and you were in the air corps?
Mo N: Airborne.
MN: Airborne.
Mo N: Yeah, parachute troops.
MN: What was that like?
Mo N: Scary but fun. [Laughs] I'd like to tell the story that the first airplane I ever went for a ride in I jumped out of.
MN: And how many years did you serve in the army?
Mo N: Three.
MN: What year were you honorably discharged?
Mo N: '55, '56... '57. December of '57 I was discharged.
<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.