<Begin Segment 11>

DG: So what did you... how should I say, what did you think America was versus Japan at that time?

GF: At that time I was kind of young yet. Let's see, I gotta think back what I thought.

DG: Weren't they invading China at that time?

GF: No, that was way after. See, when they had --

DG: Well, there was some skirmishes around early '20s.

GF: Oh, yes. There's always See, Japan had to expand someplace and that is the only place they can... they treated the Koreans rough. That goes way back. They took... that's in a lot of Koreans, the older Koreans, they don't like Japanese and I don't blame them because they were mistreated. And then we went into Manchuria. You remember we had a Japanese Russian war. That was way back, too, but that was before my time. And they went to --

DG: But there was some more of that, wasn't there, during --

GF: There was a lot of skirmishes here and there. Japan wanted to take over Manchuria so we were --

DG: So in the schools were you trained?

GF: We were trained.

DG: How?

GF: As soon as you get in high school from the first year, even in the junior high school, you're trained to be a militant. You have to, they give you wooden guns and then we go to war.

DG: This is during school time?

GF: School time, one of your classes -- like, in high school they had military training.

DG: But what about before that?

GF: Before that, in grammar school, not too much of that.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.