<Begin Segment 23>

MN: Now when you went to Korea, you were in the engineer battalion. Did you ask for this transfer?

DM: No, you were assigned.

MN: So was this unit all Japanese Americans?

DM: Oh, no. It was Caucasian battalion, and just a few of us from the language school were assigned to it.

MN: Did you know anything about engineering when they transferred you?

DM: We had classes how to operate the survey equipments.

MN: Now you said an earlier unit had already marked the boundaries. This may sound like a stupid question, but how did they mark the boundaries? Was it with a rope?

DM: You have equipment and it's called... well, I remember it was called a Dumpy telescope or Dumpy something, which would sit on a tripod with a scope. It was marked 38th in the back there, the telescope with marks would center on that marking and flip it over 180 degrees, and then they would select a point on the other side. So that's why it was called Dumpy equipment. I think that's how they did it across the peninsula, too, put a post marking where the 38th would be.

MN: How many miles is that peninsula?

DM: Across the peninsula, I think, gee, a couple of hundred miles.

MN: How long did it take you to do that?

DM: Well, we were there over a month. Of course, out in the sticks, too far to go back to the base, so we had our own tent and cooking unit that came with us.

MN: So how many men were involved in going across the peninsula?

DM: I'd say about thirty people.

MN: So you didn't go back and forth to the base camp?

DM: No. We stayed out until the mission was accomplished.

MN: So what was it like working out there, and were you working every day, seven days a week?

DM: Every day to get the job done. And the country around there was pretty barren, no trees. Because that's an old civilization, they probably chopped down the trees for fuel and use like that. So it was barren country, hilly, mountainous country.

MN: You really roughed it out there.

DM: So you could call it roughing it.

MN: How much interaction did you have with the Korean people?

DM: Most of the older Koreans wouldn't talk to us, talk to me, anyway, to the Japanese, Niseis. Of course, the kids younger than five or six didn't speak Japanese, but they learned English. So a lot of contact with young kids.

MN: You said a lot of the Korean people didn't really talk with you, or were they hostile to you?

DM: Not hostile, but they weren't friendly.

MN: Now, you spent the New Year's out there, working out there.

DM: Probably did. I don't remember what happened. I don't even remember from what month to month it was. But it was winter, cold.

MN: I understand it gets really cold out there. The ground freezes like three feet under?

DM: That's what they say, but, of course, if you tried to dig, I imagine you would run into frozen ground.

MN: How long were you in the army?

DM: I was discharged in summer of '46. So from summer of '44, so almost two years, I think.

MN: And where were you honorably discharged from?

DM: Seattle.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.