<Begin Segment 20>

EG: Yeah, I understand that the language school, the MIS language school was largely made up of Kibei.

TM: Higher classes were.

EG: This class, yeah, yeah. The Kibeis as a group get all kind of mixed stories about them in terms of loyalty, disloyalty, and so on. But how did you find it with this group of people?

TM: In there?

EG: Yeah.

TM: They were like myself. I didn't find any controversial people. I guess they didn't come. They didn't come to the camp, I guess. But later on, the following year when I was asked to go on a recruiting tour, I found some, you know, diehards, and Kibei that didn't understand. I met some of them. But at the school, I didn't see any of them like that.

EG: The people that, that volunteered for the school were loyal Americans or they wouldn't have volunteered, I guess. Where did you do your recruiting? Where did you find people to try to recruit?

TM: Well, I finished together with the rest of the boys in December. And then we were told we could have ten days' furlough. So I went to see my uncle in Minidoka, Idaho, where the Minidoka relocation camp was. I went to see him. Then I went back and then I was told that I had to stay as an instructor. And they gave me a promotion to staff sergeant, which meant more money, ninety-six dollars -- which was good -- instead of twenty-one dollars. And April of 1943, Colonel Rasmussen said a Caucasian officer -- who was in Japan before the war and so his Japanese was pretty good -- he and I were to cover about six relocation camps. To see if we could find volunteers. And we give them test and we got the cooperation of the project director to gather would-be volunteers, and then we give 'em test, and we got some kind of a commitment from them. And so we went six relocation camps and how many came as a result, I don't know. But quite a few showed up because I knew whom I interviewed. And they were volunteers. There were some Kibei but a good many of 'em were regular Nisei -- never been to Japan but learned some Japanese. But their Japanese could been improved much. But during the course of recruitment or recruiting tours, I met some Kibei who didn't think much of us. But they couldn't say much to me, I was already in uniform. But I think they were giving bad time to those who were thinking of volunteering out.

EG: Uh-huh. Did they know that you were a Kibei? Well, they wouldn't have known unless...

TM: Who, the Kibei boys?

EG: Yeah, the ones that gave you a bad time? Did you say, "Hey, I'm Kibei"?

TM: I don't know whether they knew I was a Kibei or not. But, of course, we were speaking English and I could tell they were Kibei by the way they talk. What they thought of me, I don't know. But they didn't give me too much of a bad time. They said things, they said things that I wouldn't approve of, but well, under the circumstances there isn't much I could do. There isn't much they could do. If they want to make a situation bad for themselves, that was their business.

EG: Okay, what was it, what was it like at the language school? How did, how did, what were your experiences there?

TM: My experience, in simple term, was an easy life. Teaching them Japanese which I already knew, and I was not a Nisei who stayed in this country, in the United States, all the time. I started in Japan and I didn't have to study much. I enjoyed it. It was easy.

EG: Good duty. [Laughs]

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.