<Begin Segment 20>

SF: To kind of follow up that point, on the military side of the questionnaire, was it generally understood that this was, if you answered a certain way, you would be subject to the draft? The draft was a possibility? Or was it that you could be asked to volunteer for the 442, or you could volunteer for the 442? Or was all that very hazy as to what it meant to answer, say "yes-yes"?

FM: The... yes, it was a little hazy. There was a question of volunteering for the, the combat unit. And, on the other hand, "yes-yes" did not, I think it was fairly clearly understood that you were not necessarily volunteering for the unit. But "yes-yes" would mean that you would make yourself subject to the draft by agreeing that you would be willing to serve in the Armed Forces.

SF: At that point, would you say that the majority of people in the camps were favorably disposed to volunteers, or people volunteering for the army, or would they say that, "The volunteers, they're stupid," or "they shouldn't do this, we should not send our people to support the army"?

FM: Well, at Tule Lake, the attitude was that volunteering was not a sensible course of action, that... I don't think there was very much sentiment in favor of volunteering. The issue was, as a matter of fact, more like "should we answer 'Yes' to the question of 'Are you willing to serve in the Armed Forces of the United States?'" "Was that a reasonable kind of reaction?" "Given that the Japanese American population had been forced out of their homes, and deprived of their citizen rights, why should Japanese Americans then be, express willingness to serve in the Army?" There was this kind of issue that was debated publicly, and privately. But I don't think there was much sentiment for volunteering at Tule Lake. Minidoka was a little different in that regard. But there was this other kind of issue as to whether, you know, it was reasonable to say "yes-yes" because of the draft possibility. On the other hand, I think there was a lot of sentiment, among Nisei at least, Japanese Americans, that wanted -- didn't want to voice disloyalty to the United States, and didn't want to say, "No." Although, although it was felt there was a lot of ambiguity to these questions. In fact, more than ambiguity, it was they were very poorly phrased questions. For example, the issue, one of the questions, was stated in the form, "Do you forswear allegiance to the Emperor of Japan," and so on. Well, if you had never felt any allegiance to the Emperor, why should you forswear [Laughs] your allegiance? This kind of thing. So, the wording was very poor, and there was a lot of sentiment that the whole thing was very poorly handled, which I think it was, in many ways. But, again, it's -- my interpretation is, that it's the way the military and the bureaucracy functions in a wartime period. You hastily do a number of things which, under more careful consideration, you might have done quite differently.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.