<Begin Segment 18>

EG: And when you finished basic training, then you were recruited to MIS. Is that right?

TM: Not quite.

EG: Not quite, okay.

TM: We finished basic training in July. Bad, hot July in Arkansas. And again, everybody was being assigned here and there and pretty soon nothing but Japanese left. And we had about, again maybe fifteen or twenty of us, and we were doing all kinds of odd jobs, painting a fence or sign, and then we were shipped to Wyoming. Fort Warren, Wyoming and assigned to the headquarters company and that means in the army term, bull gang, and don't do anything worthwhile. 'Headquarters company,' that's what it means. And we were doing all kinds of odd jobs every day and moving things from one place to another to back to same place just to, just to keep busy I guess.

EG: Now, this was a group of all Japanese American men, was it?

TM: A whole bunch of us were there.

EG: Yeah. So it sounds like at that time, even though the army did draft you, they were getting into this bind. The bind that they got into with segregation and then they were kind of not knowing what to do. Huh. I didn't know about that, that is new.

TM: But not all the Japanese Americans were there. No, no, just... I don't know where they came from, but a good many of them came from Arkansas, Little Rock, Camp Robinson. I think some others came from some other place. And then, in fact, some Japanese Americans were here and there, all over the United States. But Wyoming was one of the places. And gosh, I don't know how many we had. Maybe close to a hundred. And that was July. I stayed there until September.

EG: And where did you go in September?

TM: In the Headquarters Company library, there was a booklet, "How to Speak Japanese," or "How to Read Japanese," or a booklet on the Japanese language. And I was looking at it and I found a lot of errors written. The Chinese characters were wrong and the translation was wrong, so we were laughing. And I was telling my friends who didn't know the Japanese, why mistakes like that were made and why books like that were available. And I believe a first sergeant or somebody was listening to what I was saying and I kind of think he reported it to the company commander, and maybe he reported it to somebody. Because in two months or so, yeah, September, I had an order to report to Camp Savage, Minnesota, all by myself. And they wouldn't tell me what the place was and why or anything. They just said, "You go to Camp Savage." So I went to Camp Savage. [Laughs]

EG: You're the only person I know that was assigned and sent to MIS, rather than asked to volunteer.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.