<Begin Segment 22>

MN: Okay, so you're in the army. Were you sending part of your paycheck to your parents?

DM: Yeah. I joined the program where being the head of the family, they deduced half of my pay, and Uncle Sam matched it and sent a check to my father every month.

MN: Half of your pay is a big chunk, right? I don't imagine you had a lot of money to play around with.

DM: I think my pay at that time was thirty-nine dollars a month, so twenty dollars was deducted from my paycheck.

MN: So you said for, on your free time you went to see the movies? And I guess you really don't have a lot of other spending money to do other things.

DM: No.

MN: Now, going back to the MIS school, how long were you with the MIS school?

DM: It was almost a year, I think something like eleven months.

MN: And when did you ship overseas?

DM: It was in the summer of '45. I can't remember what month or date.

MN: Which port did you ship out of?

DM: I think it was San Francisco. And I still remember the name of the boat was SS Copiapo.

MN: Did you stop at Hawaii?

DM: No, it was straight to the Philippines. And just before we got to the Philippines, Japan surrendered. So the boat made a left turn and headed for Yokohama Bay.

MN: Did you even get off the ship at Manila?

DM: No.

MN: So when you got to Yokohama, what did you do?

DM: Then they trucked us in to Tokyo and we were billeted in the NYK building, which was the headquarter of ATIS. ATIS stands for Allied Translation and Intelligence Service. And I stayed there for a couple months. And in that time, I was able to go visit my mother's place in Kanazawa.

MN: How did your mother's relatives survive the war?

DM: I don't know if there were any casualties, but some of the, my cousins were in the Japanese army. One, especially, was stationed in Manchuria where he didn't see any action. So when he came back, he was kind of hostile to me. He figured that he didn't lose to me. And he wasn't too friendly. But my other cousins, the female cousins, made my stay very enjoyable.

MN: Did you bring a lot of things from the army PX?

DM: Did I buy a lot of things?

MN: To give to them?

DM: Yeah, whatever I could. But sugar was one thing that they didn't sell at the PX, so I would scrounge sugar from the dinner table in the army and scrape enough sugar to take home to them, which they appreciated very much.

MN: Now, you got to Tokyo right after Japan surrendered. What did Tokyo look like?

DM: Devastated. The kids were all walking around in rags. I didn't see a lot of destroyed buildings. Kanazawa was never hit by any enemy action.

MN: Now you're in an army, U.S. Army uniform. Did a lot of prostitutes proposition you?

DM: There were a lot of 'em, I guess.

MN: But you didn't get involved in that.

DM: I don't remember. [Laughs]

MN: Now, how long were you stationed in Tokyo?

DM: It was around two months. And then I was assigned to an engineer battalion that was going, that was shipping to Korea. So we were shipped to Korea, place called Yong Don Po, which used to be a camp of the Korean army. And our mission there was to survey the 38th Parallel which divided the South and North Korea at the time. There was a unit that already had surveyed the peninsula marking the boundaries, but we were there, sent there to resurvey and verify the markings of the 38th Parallel across the peninsula.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.