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TI: Now, when you were at Fort MacArthur, were there other Japanese Americans who were also there as kind of new draftees?

YU: Oh yeah. We were, there was quite a few of us. We got to know each other, quite a few. Says, "Hey, where you from?" and introduce each other, and we find that they're not more than twenty-five miles away from us, somewhere in Santa Monica or from Glendale or something.

TI: And so what did you guys talk about? Were you still talking about, "This must be a mistake?" Or as you were in there longer and longer, you started thinking, well, maybe you're gonna be here for a while?

YU: We say, "Uh oh." I said, "We're get, looks like this is gonna last for a while." I said, "I hope not." And then that's about the extent of the thing. And says, "Well, what'd you do?" I said, "I went, I was going to school." "Where were you going?" "I was down in Santa Barbara or some place." Or, "I was at Cal." I says, "Oh yeah?" So we'd get to talking about school.

TI: So the ones that you ran into, they were, the commonality was that you were all going to college.

YU: Right.

TI: Now, I guess during training or even after training, were the Nisei soldiers treated differently than the white soldiers? Was there, like at some point did they send white soldiers to a different place than Nisei soldiers, or anything different like that?

YU: That, I don't know because we were all put together. But nobody said, "You Jap, I'm not gonna eat with you," or anything like that. It was just... they all felt they were in it together.

TI: Well how about when training was done, were the, like, white soldiers sent into action and the Japanese soldiers held back? Or how about that?

YU: Well, now from Fort MacArthur we went to basic training, and that was in Little Rock. In basic training we all worked together, and I think they were, the officers in charge, they didn't think, they didn't, they weren't, to me, looked like they really liked us being there. But whenever we did physical exercise and everything, we were right on the top. We might be small, but like climbing the six foot wall, we were able to hit the wall and bounce right on top and over we went. Whereas the Caucasians, they couldn't do that, and I think one of the reasons were we were in college, or we had just come out of the college area, we always were active and played basketball or played something around the school. And we were not obese, and we sort of raced against each other, the Niseis. We says, "Well, I'm gonna do it faster than you." And so it was between us. And of course, the company commander was just shocked because we were so much faster and we got things done so much faster than any of the Caucasian soldiers.

TI: So some of these courses that you had to go through, you guys were the...

YU: We were fast.

TI: Okay.

YU: And I think in us we had, we didn't want to be shown to, shown up, so I think we fought harder.

TI: But it's interesting too, I could see where for maybe some of the white soldiers, there might be some resentment. And did you ever get hassled by any of the white soldiers?

YU: No, they didn't, nobody hassled us, because... I don't know, we never, they were all from places like Minnesota and they never saw any Japanese before, or they were from Chicago area, they had not been, seen any Japanese, so there was, I think that they couldn't believe that we were in the army.

TI: Yeah, because in some ways they're thinking that they're gonna be pretty soon fighting against someone who looks just like you, right? I mean, that's probably the...

YU: That could be, but sitting there, and we were telling a story to each other, and some of 'em would say, "Oh, I was a mail delivery, I drove the mail delivery truck," or another guy would say, "Gosh, I got to get out of this place. I miss my two ton truck," or something like that. Said, "What was so good about that?" "I like that shift and the [makes revving sound]." [Laughs]

TI: That's interesting.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.