Densho Digital Repository - Hal Keimi Interview (Densho ID: ddr-densho-1000-458-19)

<Begin Segment 19>

BN: And then what did you do after you graduated high school?

HK: After that, well, I went to L.A. City College to see what I could find out. Because a lot of other Japanese Americans went to L.A. City College, too, so I went there for about a year and still didn't know what I was going to do, so I ended up looking for a job. And so, let's see, that was close to '52. So as soon as I dropped out of school, then the Korean War was on, so bang, the draft came along. So I was no longer in school, so I was in the army for two years.

BN: Was your brother still in the army at that point?

HK: Was he what?

BN: Because your brother, you said, had joined the army.

HK: Yeah, he joined the army as soon as he got out of high school, so that's from '46 to '48, so he was out of it.

BN: He was gone by then. So what happened then in terms of... once you got drafted, what happened?

HK: Well, I got drafted, and so the training camp I went to was Fort Ord, which is up in California, right next to Monterey. So I went to what they call basic training, and at the end of basic training, then you get your orders to go ship out somewhere, so then I fully expected to go get shipped to Korea. But what happened to a few people, got picked out to go to a school, clerk typist school. And I'm just guessing, when we first joined the army, you fill out a form, and I think I put down I knew how to type. And so I'm guessing that put me in this list, so maybe a half a dozen of us got picked out to go to clerk typist school at Fort Ord. So I went to clerk typist school, at the end of clerk typist school, then I got assigned what's called "permanent party" at Fort Ord. So I spent two years at Fort Ord. Two years in the army, I never got out of California. But for me, it turned out to be good because I'm right next to Monterey. Monterey has a nice big Japanese community, and so after I got permanent party, I can go to spend, especially Sundays, we'd go to the Buddhist temple service. After service, the local ladies, they had a nice big Japanese lunch that would be provided for service people. And I got to meet a lot of the Monterey families, and they were really super nice. And so that was a nice experience for me, so I was very lucky.

BN: So you do your two years, were you at all disappointed at not going overseas or were you happy?

HK: Well, one was, I was wondering if I would have enough nerve or be good enough to actually point a rifle and try to shoot it and kill somebody, I wanted to know if I could do that. But then otherwise, no, I'm glad I didn't go to Korea after reading about the conditions if you had to go through a winter there, and especially some problems, stories about, because I'm Asian, some problems of where if I'm a good guy or I'm one of the enemies. So no, I'm overall very lucky that I got what I ended up doing, just staying there in Fort Ord.