<Begin Segment 19>

EG: You were saying... say that again about what happened when you were in the library with this pamphlet.

TM: Well, this little booklet had a lot of errors -- the booklet on Japanese. I don't know who published it, but it was a small book, and smaller than Readers' Digest and fewer pages, of course. And so anyway, I was laughing and then I guess somebody reported that I knew Japanese or I seemed to know Japanese and somebody reported, and somebody else did something else and then in September I had an order to report to Camp Savage, Minnesota. And so I went there by train. And I expected a big army camp and the train stopped at a so-called square, train stopped by Savage, a town of Savage, a population of maybe eighty or a hundred. And a colored porter said, "Soldier, this is where you get off." So I said, "Where is the camp?" And he said, "I don't know nothin'." Anyway, I got off, took my duffel bag with me and then went to the small station and didn't know what to do. So I was just waiting there, and then a car pulled up and asked me if I was Matsui, and I said yes. "Okay, you come with me." So the driver took me to so-called Camp Savage. [Laughs] Which was sort of like a rest area. It wasn't, it didn't look like a camp at all.

EG: And when did you find out what, what this was all about?

TM: Huh?

EG: When did you find out what you were there and what this was all about?

TM: Well, the driver took me to the commandant's office. And Colonel Rasmussen -- I don't know whether it was Saturday or Sunday -- but Colonel Rasmussen, who was a commandant, interviewed me and asked me if I could read a book, which was a Japanese book, and asked me if I knew what it says. And he says, "Well, what does it say?" So I said it in English what it said. And then he asked me where I learned the language and I told him where I learned, that it was my mother tongue. And how much education did I have and all that. I guess he knew, but he, I guess he was testing me, and he said, "Well, this is where we are teaching Japanese." And this was the first time I heard about it. And so it's been going on since June and classes are halfway over in September. But he said, "You will do. So you go to class A1." And well, I got my supplies, beddings, and the first sergeant told me which barracks to go and then a fellow there says, "Well, this is your bed," and I left everything in there then I reported to class A-1. And it was filled with fellows like me. Most of 'em were Kibei boys.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.