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TI: Which I want to talk about a different kind of tension. Because here you were kind of fifteen, sixteen years old, hanging out with these older boys, all the way to college age. And after several months when you were at Minidoka, they come in with this written questionnaire, kind of the, commonly called the "loyalty questionnaire," where young men who were eighteen and over, in particular, had to fill this out and do that. Do you remember that, and did that cause tension with, inside the OTs? Because you had this group of, pretty much, older boys who were draft age, and they're being asked things like, "Would you be willing to serve in the U.S. Army?" and things like that. Do you remember that?

VI: If I remember correctly, by the time that questionnaire came out, they were already accepted, people had already volunteered for the 442.

TI: Yeah, so the way the sequence happened was the, they opened up, in 1943, they opened it up, the volunteering.

VI: Right.

TI: But they also, to help decipher that, and also to allow people to start leaving camp, it was called a work release. And so that came out at the same time, roughly early 1943. And then the draft happened in 1944. And so there was a period where men were volunteering in 1943, and people like Mas Watanabe, for instance, he volunteered in 1943, and then a year later was the draft.

VI: Right. So you could see it didn't affect everybody, because at Minidoka you had the biggest group volunteer.

TI: Okay, so people in the OTs, did some of them, they started volunteering for the army, is that it?

VI: Yeah. Because the one that kind of was my big brother, Sam Sakai, he volunteered. And some of the closest friends, they volunteered while others didn't. So the "no-nos" didn't come out at that time.

TI: Because that was 1944, so a lot of the original, the early guys who volunteered had probably already left.

VI: They had already left. So that didn't affect, they didn't have to sign that thing because they had already volunteered.

TI: Now, was there any kind of pressure amongst the OTs for the men who could, were draft age or military age to join to volunteer? Like was there peer pressure to do one thing or another?

VI: No. But what happened is by the time that the thing came out, you already had the 442. They were either at Camp Shelby or they were already in Europe, but I think they were at Camp Shelby.

TI: Yeah, early they were at Camp Shelby. It wasn't until really when Bako was killed, he was like an early killed in action. It was not until '44, like spring/summer that the 442 really got in action. So anyway, what I'm looking for, though, is kind of that early discussion amongst the OTs. Because you mentioned, it's an interesting group because you guys were so cohesive and I'm wondering how they navigated that.

VI: Well, the group itself didn't have to make that kind of decision whether to volunteer or say "no-no." Because that came at a different time period.

TI: Right, so initially it was just volunteering.

VI: Right, so once the volunteers, they had no idea what was happening in camp. Of course, when they came to be in the draft, that's when...

TI: But before the draft, some families answered that questionnaire in a way that they were then sent to Tule Lake. Did any of the OT families or individuals go to Tule Lake?

VI: No.

TI: Okay, so none of them did. Because it reminded me because when you mentioned how the zoot suiters from Tule Lake came to Minidoka, that was part of this process where some people from Minidoka went to Tule Lake and some people from Tule Lake went, and that transition...

VI: The people that went from Minidoka to Tule Lake were not any acquaintance of us, so that we didn't know any family that we knew, or friends that went to Tule Lake.

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