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BN: So we're here on May 17, 2022, for the second interview with Frank Sata at his home in Pasadena, California. My name is Brian Niiya and I'm one of the interviewers along with Brian Takeda, and Evan Kodani is shooting the video for us this morning. So we will get started. Where we left off last time is Frank was talking about his year at the Berkeley School of Architecture and leaving after a year, and we wanted to start this session with his stint in the army. So, I guess the first question is, how did you end up in the army?

FS: Well, I think a lot of us, during the time I was at Berkeley, we were quite aware of the Korean War. And the draft was going on, and so in a way, I think leaving school, I knew that I would get drafted. So that was a transition for many guys. We either fully graduated and then got drafted or... I was near completion, I think, I just sort of walked away, but I got the credits. Then when I came back to Pasadena, then I was called up.

BN: So was it that if you were in school, you would not be drafted?

FS: I'm not sure because I know a lot of the talks with certain guys that were, we were kind of roundballs, we played a lot of basketball, that kind of stuff. And we used to hang out and talk about the possibility. One of the good friends, he became a permanent bird colonel in the military, and I think he flew around a lot. But yeah, it seemed like a natural transition. A lot of guys my age got drafted about the same time, so we just accepted that and moved on into the stuff you had to do in the army.

BN: So where did you end up going once you were...

FS: We started out at Fort Ord. Most of us, again, we all had long hair. I didn't quite have the duck tail, but had the hair, so that was quite an experience to have that all shaved off and stuff like that. And then the, I remember vividly my assignment, we were in the 63rd, which is, they were called The Flying 63rd because it's the furthest from the rifle range. We had to do double-time all the way there, things like that. It was a pretty much automatic sixteen-week basic because they were training people to go to Korea.

BN: Then amongst the other people you were training with, were they people from the same geographic area, or who...

FS: No. Actually, my barrack is probably the most... another thing I'll never forget is that my bunkmates, they're double bunks alongside of each other. And the one above me, and on three sides, they were Black guys and they were from the South. And I think some of... and they're really nice guys. But they only had like third or fourth grade education, and that struck with me and stuck with me for a long time, how... yeah, the importance of education, so the army really helped me grow up. And I knew a few Japanese guys, or I met them, and what I recall most was the fact that they were smaller. I wasn't that big a guy, but at that time, I was one of the taller Nisei types. All the equipment and all the stuff you had to carry and the rifle, and to have to double time to the firing range, that kind of reminded me of the 442 guys. Because it's a lot of weight, and even though I was a ballplayer type, it was tough. So I do recall that type of thing.

BN: You talked before, considered the 442 guys like heroes. Was that part of why you wanted... I mean, were you thinking about them when you went in?

FS: No, I think it's more in retrospect, because of the timing and I remember... and I'm not sure when that first movie came out, Van Johnson. I think, I might have been already about getting out of camp or about that time...

BN: Go for Broke!, yeah, that was 1951, so that had been out for a couple years by then.

FS: Oh, okay.

BN: So I remember that movie, and you know how small the guys were and how inspiring for me? I had no role models, because I don't have any siblings. For me, that was very special. So the thing of education, I guess, to be... I did have three years of college, and so then to have my bunkmates be Blacks that didn't even get a chance to go past fourth grade. And they were, you know, normal, nice guys, and I really... yeah, that's kind of kept with me and other things I've done in my life.

BN: So you said sixteen weeks?

FS: Yeah. Well, when I was in the army, I thought of joining OCS, and so it had an additional eight weeks of leadership school, prepping to go back east for OCS. And yeah, I got my samurai roots and everything, I was quite good at marching folks around and looking spic and span and all that kind of stuff. So I was a pretty good cadre they called it, they got blue helmets and all this stuff, and you march the military, the other soldiers, the basic people around. And there was all... I think my whole experience in the army helped me in the rest of my life. I wasn't a quiet Nisei certainly because of that. I mean, it did help me be stronger and hold my opinions, or not hold it, but to share it. And I really looked back at that period as being a very positive time of growing up. I didn't know what I was going to do, so it was good for me.

BN: Did you ever experience, you feel any discrimination for being Asian at that time fighting... we were at war with an Asian country and so forth?

FS: I didn't sense anything like that because of the circumstances, I think, that I was in. And the timing of the basic, I didn't go abroad with that troop that I was training with. But we bonded because -- and not just the Black guys, but others. Something about the military and the forced marches and all that stuff, I felt that was a very positive relationship. I could see how you can bond in the military, and I can understand what I read about some of that kind of stuff in the war, and the kind of guys that I had as trainers. You always watch your back, and these are guys that were master sergeants that came back from the war and they have always told stories about the guys that were trained OCS (Officers Candidate School) or the lieutenants coming out of the army training to be officers, schools. But they didn't always succeed even though they had a bar on their collar and they were the leaders, supposedly, but they didn't understand what the fighters were about, and the kind of cohesion you need in the military. So they reminded us about what it's like to go to war and things like that. So I didn't feel any, for me, any discrimination. And because of my second term there at Fort Ord to do... I had a little more time as part of the training for OCS, I could play basketball. And we had a pretty good basketball team that went around and played other Buddhist churches in Northern California. We had a good team because we had some guys that played in college.

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