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BT: So I did a lot of those on my own, and started, after I graduated from high school, it was 1950, and that's when the Korean War started. So I felt that, wow, this is a good chance to prove my loyalty, because although I was not old enough to answer the questionnaire, loyalty questionnaire, I felt that all those people who were sent to Tule Lake were considered disloyal, and the government said it, and also the Japanese community, many of the veterans and so on considered us to be disloyal. So I didn't want that stigma to be hanging around all over me for the rest of my life, so I felt that this would be a good opportunity for me to prove my loyalty as a person. So I joined the U.S. Army and went to Fort Ord in Monterey to get my basic training. And after six weeks of basic training, while I was being assigned, they assigned me to KP, kitchen help because of my schoolboy work, I was good at washing pots and pans. And so I found that if you do good, they will use you again. It's not like if you do good they will give you some other, better job, but they just kept me every day after roll call to assign me to this kitchen help to do pots and pans. So I said, oh, this is not what I really wanted to do. So I finally admitted that I spoke Japanese, and the army language school tests that was occurring in Monterey because they wanted people with Japanese language ability to work, go to Korea and interrogate the prisoners and so on. So I took the tests, and because of my intensive training in Tule Lake, I was able to pass it and I got into the class of Monterey and spent almost a year going to, learning military language in Japanese.

And after that was over, then when I got assigned to the Military Intelligence unit and was assigned to Tokyo where my brother was already living there and making a living. So then on weekends then I would go to his home and spend time talking and so on, that's when I learned a lot of things. And that's when I asked him what happened to him when he was sent by the MPs. And he said, well, the FBI and so on talked to him a lot and asking questions and trying to find out if he was loyal or disloyal and so on. And one day, after all those questions, then they took him out and put him before a wall, he could see military police in front of him with rifles, and he even heard the command, "Ready, aim, fire," and he heard a lot of "click, click, click" sound, but no "bang, bang." And what they were trying to do was to scare him into showing that they were the boss and the next time they would have bullets in there. And so this was the way that my brother was forced to experience, and I'm sure that he remembered the time, in that short time between the "click clicks" that this old man in Topaz, who was walking... they say that he was walking his dog, but as far as I know, we didn't have any animals to use in camp. So I remember it as being, this man was in this direction from Block 37, so outside our block area, it was in this direction that this man was shot because he got too close. My remembrance was that he was picking seashells and what we do, I've done it too is that because it was all ocean at one time we would check and the sand was filled with seashells and we would pick a seashell and squeeze it, and if it breaks, we throw it away, but if it didn't break, then we would keep it and give it to the ladies, and they would make necklaces and so on, rings and trinkets out of it. So that's what, my understanding was that that's what he was doing. And so then so he didn't hear this guard saying, "Get away, get back, you're too close to the fence." The man was about fifty-five, I understand, and possibly also hard of hearing and also concentrating, and so the guard just shot him dead. And so my brother probably remembered that incident as well as this one in Tule Lake where this truck driver, he was in the next barrack right next to us, and he used to talk to us. He was a big man, but he used to come and talk to us kids about different things, and that kind of a nice gentleman. And he was, as a truck driver, he would take the farmers out to work on the fields and then bring 'em back to the camp. And one day, the guards stopped him from coming in, so he got out of his truck and went towards the guard to find out what was the matter. And the guard got scared and just shot him point blank as he was coming towards him. So those are the two instances that I remember. In Topaz, I remember the direction this way, but when I went to a Topaz reunion, they said that the person died this way and the person was walking his dog, and I couldn't believe that. But anyway, the two stories, I don't think there were two killings, but anyway, there were different stories that I found. But anyway, so my brother got that treatment, and then I found out, I thought my brother was the only one that was experiencing that. But when I went on a pilgrimage to Tule Lake several years ago, I found that there was another group in Tule Lake that refused to do something. And as a result, they were put before a firing squad with the same incident happening, with, "Ready, aim, fire," click, click, click. So evidently that was the thing that the MPs did to keep us subdued and taken care of, so that they were the bosses and that we would have to obey what they say. So that was the kind of thing that I remember, and my brother told me about when I went to Japan to see him.

And when I was in the military in Japan, then eventually I was sent to Korea to interrogate prisoners of war, the Chinese and the Korean, North Koreans that were that were captured. But I didn't speak their language so I had to use an interpreter. And I would ask the question in Japanese to him and then he would talk to the Chinese or the North Korean in their language and give it back to me in Japanese, and I would write it down in English. So that was the kind of procedure that we followed to get information about conditions and so on. To this day, I keep thinking, I hope I got it right, because all the interpreting that had to go on in that situation. But evidently it was okay because later on, I also interrogated the fishermen that were caught by the Russians in the northern part of Japan, and we had to ask them questions. And their dialect was something else, too. But we managed, so I guess it was, everything okay.

[Interruption]

VY: Okay, so continuing with, when you were in Korea?

BT: After that assignment, during interrogating and so on, they said that they were going to start a Korean language school in Japan, and would I be interested? So I said, "Oh, yeah." And they said, well, but in order to... I said yes, that I would be willing to go to this class to learn, but I said, instead of learning Korean, because they were going to teach Chinese and Korean, I said, "I'd like to really learn Chinese because that would be a better future than the Korean language." So I said that and they talked to Tokyo and they came back and said, "Okay, that's fine." So I went back to Japan to learn, in the hopes of learning Chinese, but then when I got to the school, they said, "Oh, no, you're Japanese American, they're teaching Korean language to Japanese Americans, and to Chinese Americans they're teaching them Chinese." Which was logical, but at the same time, that wasn't part of the agreement. So I had no choice but to start learning Korean, but then one month later, Tokyo called me back into, back to Tokyo. Because this was in Chiba, which is a little bit away from Tokyo. And so I had to go back into headquarters in Tokyo, and they said, if I go to this language school I would have to extend my enlistment from three years to one more year, or I think it was two more years, in order to benefit from the language. So when I went back to Tokyo, they said, "How come you didn't extend your army for two more years?" I said, "Well, because the agreement was that I would go back and learn, go back and extend if I learned Chinese. But I had no choice, I had to learn Korean." So they said, oh, and it was recorded there, thank goodness, that that was the agreement for me of going back to the class. So then they said, "Okay, well, you can go back, but you're going to still have to learn Korean." So I went back and I didn't have to extend my three-year enlistment, and I just went there and I was learning Korean. And I was getting pretty good, we were able to answer questions in Korean, and give it back, and we used to also write in Hangul, which is their phonetic alphabet, so I was doing pretty well. But then my father got ill in San Mateo with cancer, so I was given a Red Cross emergency leave and come back to San Mateo, and I was assigned to Fort Ord to stay there and to end my enlistment, but go back and be close to my father, because he was in pretty bad shape. So that's how I got back to San Mateo.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.