Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Henry Miyatake Interview III
Narrator: Henry Miyatake
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: September 21, 1999
Densho ID: denshovh-mhenry-03-0010

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HM: But, and when I got down, got to Baltimore, they, they process you through a kind of a informal oral and written examination. They're looking for certain individuals and certain psychological traits and background. And usually it's between hour and a half and two and a half hours of interrogation. And you got field grade officers, at least three of them, sometimes five field grade officers doing all the questioning. And they wanna know everything about you. And by that time they fairly well establish that you're not a security risk. And during the time you're in this process, they're investigating you all the way back to your birth. And this takes a while, so the screening process is a pretty elaborate one. Usually if a guy goes into this oral questioning period, if he comes right back out you know he got rejected because there's something substantially wrong from the findings of the board.

TI: And when you go into this, is your intent to score well, to keep going on because you want to stay there? Is that...

HM: Well, some guys, they don't care. I mean they have no -- because they don't know what they're getting in, themselves into.

TI: Well, how about you? What were you thinking when you're --

HM: Well, my brother was in CIC before. So I figured well, I don't know why they're examining me, or why they're interested in me but (I'll) just go in there and be just my normal self. So the, the head of the board introduces himself, and he introduces the rest of the board. And he says, this guy is a lieutenant colonel, and he asks my name, identify myself and he says, "Do you have a brother named George?" And I said, "Yes." And then he starts asking me a bunch of questions about my last job. And I didn't know this guy was my brother's commanding officer in Tokyo. So he says -- he just asked me the preliminaries and it lasted maybe about five minutes. And he says, "Gentlemen, we've looked at his record, I move that we accept Miyatake into this organization." So the guys just agreed. I mean he was a ranking officer there and just rubber stamp thing. So I go walking out of this room and the guys all say, "Gee, I'm sorry." [Laughs] They, they thought I'd flunked out, very quickly because it didn't last very long. I didn't even last fifteen minutes in there. So the assignment sheet goes up and here's my name on there. And some of the guys like Kato didn't make it. He just got dropped off. And Hanano got put into a administrative training group which is kind of different. And the other guy, they assigned him to MI.

TI: So CIC was sort of the elite of the ones who were there?

HM: Well, they were looking for certain types of individuals. And most of those guys that were in the next barrack, the, the high class college guys, most of 'em made it for the entry into the school. And the school was -- that's where they really screen, screen you out. That's where Ted Kennedy flunked out. [Laughs]

TI: I didn't know that.

HM: Well, I got put in the same cadre room he, as he was. As it turned out, they assigned Kato to MI in -- they wanted him to do a brush up course in Japanese at Monterey before they sent him to Japan. So it was a kind of a short assignment there. So, Hanano and myself were the only ones left of the bunch of Nihonjins. We had another kid named Kondo. He was a, he was a five feet zero inch height character. And he was a black belt judo guy. And his reputation in Fort Ord was that he threw a six feet four inch sergeant on the self-defense stuff and since he was black belt judo well he gave him a koshinage and he just threw him. [Laughs] And, and this was in front of a whole regiment of personnel, and this was a demonstration of self-defense. And here this small dinky Japanese kid throws this big sergeant, the instructor. And he had this notoriety of doing that, so you know everybody -- when we got to Holabird they point at the guy. "Don't, don't mess with that guy. He's liable to throw your ass." But Kondo got, he got put into another MI group I guess, and that was, that was it. They were all gone except for Hanano and myself. And so, Hanano, he didn't give a hoot one way or the other. And during the course of the, the school session, I had this guy at Higgins Pontiac drive me down a brand new Pontiac from Detroit again. Here's one car in Seattle --

TI: And one in Baltimore.

HM: I can't bring that car because they transported me by airplane. They wouldn't give me ground transportation, right? So I had Higgins send me down -- well this guy's name was -- the same salesman I bought it from before --

TI: So this guy from Michigan drove all the way to Baltimore?

HM: Yeah. Well he wanted to eat the, the soft crab on the east side of the, the Chesapeake Bay, there was a --

TI: Now outta curiosity, how many cars did you buy from him at this point?

HM: Well, gee, one every year. At least one every year, and then we bought two cars, let's see, that's was my fifth car I bought from him.

TI: He must have really liked you then to drive all the way --

HM: Oh yeah. It was a pretty easy deal for him because he would try to find out the cars that were available, and he, when I talked to him on the phone, he says, "Well, these are the cars available, which one would you want?" So I said, "What, what colors?" For some reason I was fascinated with green, and I wanted a green Hornet. So I bought a, a brand new Pontiac, eight cylinder, and it was one of these fast backs. Anyway, he drives it down to, to Baltimore and he tries to get into the base and they wouldn't let him get in because they had pretty high security there. And then we had trouble with, with these guys, the Buick, Oldsmobile, Pontiac Chevrolet plant used to be right across the railroad tracks from Fort Holabird. And they used to have these guys that used to get kind of drunk and they used to come into the fort and right across the railroad track was a WAC detachment, and so he used to molest some of those WACs.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.