<Begin Segment 12>

FK: Well, sounds like you were moving around a lot. Tell me about being drafted.

TM: Pardon?

FK: It sounds like you were moving around quite a bit. Tell me about being drafted into the army.

TM: Oh, well, I got, they told me to report to Fort Douglas, I guess, Utah. That's... Fort Douglas, Utah? That's where I got inducted into active service. I was in the reserves, and already several other exams... so they sent me to Camp Fannin, Texas, for basic training and stayed there for about seventeen weeks, I think, or whatever it was there.

Meanwhile, they'd been trying to get me to go to Fort Snelling, language school, and I didn't wanna go there. So they said, "Okay, we'll send you to Europe then." But they give, give you a furlough first -- that's a leave, you know -- to go back, go back to camp for a while. That's what I was gonna do, and then they said, "All you Japanese guys, fall out here." Said, "You're on the way to Fort Snelling now." That was about wintertime, and they sent you to Fort Snelling there. Fort Snelling, there's real nice buildings there, all brick and all the classes were conducted there. But for the new recruits, well, they had tarpaper shacks back there, just like camp, only smaller, and about eight, eight person, people per cabin, I guess. The wintered us there for a while, during all that zero weather they have back there. They said, "Okay, the class starts soon," so they would move you back to these brick buildings here and go to school there. So that's what they did. I stayed nine months in the Japanese class there.

Meanwhile, they decided to move the school to Monterey, California, because they were gonna make a Veterans Administration offices there where Fort Snelling was. So here we packs up and move to Monterey there for about two months, I guess. Then they said, "Now, your eighteen months is almost up, and you can get out now. So if you want to go to Japan, well, you have to enlist for one more year." I said, no, that's it for me. So I got out of the army in less than eighteen months.

FK: So how would you compare being in the army and being in a concentration camp? How would you compare the two?

TM: Oh, the army's worse. Twice as worse. [Laughs]

FK: Why is that?

TM: Well, camp, you sleep in if you want to, you don't... in the army you got a bunch of no-brains hollering at you, you know, just to, just to make life miserable for all the recruits. Yeah, the army's the worst place I've ever been.

FK: Now, you said you didn't really want to go to Camp Snelling. Can you tell me why you didn't want to really go to Camp Snelling?

TM: Oh, because I didn't, I didn't care to learn any more Japanese or go to Japan. Anyhow, they didn't, they didn't need as many Japanese linguists or whatever it was, as they expected, I guess. Some people, like Tosh Ishihara, then they got in, they went as language interpreters and then they got a job in Japan in the civil service, I guess. They made a good thing out of, out of it. I don't think the majority of the guys got anything out of it.

FK: So when you went to Fort Snelling for MIS school, were there other people from Bainbridge in the school at the same time you were, or were you the only one there?

TM: Is what?

FK: Were there other people from Bainbridge, from the Japanese community that went to school at the same time you did, or were you the only one there from Bainbridge?

TM: Yeah, I was the only one at that time. I guess it was quite a few of 'em went, though, Paul Isaki, and Paul Sakai, and the Sakumas, Terashitas, Okazakis.

FK: So what year was it when you got out of the army, then? Was it after the war was over or was it before the war was over?

TM: Yeah, the war was over. The German war was over while I was still working. Then, then I think the Americans took a beating at the Battle of the Bulge, I guess, and that's when they called, that's when they got me, I guess.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.