<Begin Segment 7>

FK: Well, did your father have any feelings about your brother being in the military or you being in the military?

IY: No, well, he was kind of surprised my brother got into the service 'cause he was, he had asthma before, before he got in the service, that was in '42. He was surprised that he got into the service. He went to Camp Savage, language school. He didn't see him then. I mean, that was it. 'Cause when they went overseas, then they start evacuating us. I mean, my dad was pulled and my brother was already gone. My oldest sister was already gone.

FK: So where was your brother serving?

IY: At the Intelligence, Military Intelligence.

FK: You said he was already overseas?

IY: Australia.

FK: That's right, okay.

IY: Then that, that's why there was just my sister and myself that was left on the island with my mother and then we went. When we got in the service, this friend of mine, him and I, we stuck close together, did everything together as we went into the service. We went to Fort Douglas, Utah. That's where we got inducted. From there went to Florida, Camp Blanding, they call it, for infantry training. At that time, the World War II was still on. They cut us our training three weeks short and we were supposed to replace the 442nd. After we got to Fort Meade, that's where the embarkation was, they transferred us from there to New Jersey. From there we got on the ship, liberty ship, it's the small ones. We all had to go down below. We couldn't see anything out. I don't know why. They say you can't see how you're leavin'. But after we were half... oh, maybe about other side of the bay in New York, they say we can come up. We all came up deck and looked around, and New York skyline was way in the back. We could see Statue of Liberty. It was about that big.

FK: So, were these all Japanese Americans?

IY: No, it was just a few of us.

FK: It was mixed.

IY: Yeah. After we got to... well, after we left New York, we got to France, where they call Le Havre. From there we got to move down south out into Germany. Just after we got to our second assignment in Germany they said the war is over and we ended up in occupation force, which wasn't too bad. I thought well, we don't have to fight. I mean on our way down we had snipers then firing and so forth. But you couldn't see 'em anyways, just heard the noise. So we ended up as occupation force. That's... from the last station we were in in Germany we were supposed to go little further to replace the 442nd troop coming back. But then, before that, they wanted volunteers to go to Pacific. There were, there were two of us volunteered to go to Pacific. That's when they had war with Japan. They said they wanted intelligence, interpreters more or less. I said, well, that's not bad. We left early in Germany. There were two of us. When we got to Minnesota, that's where they have the Army Language School, they realized that I didn't have enough time, so they just assigned me to headquarters instead of goin' to school. From there on, I mean, I've been the service until 1971, I retired.

FK: So you made it a career.

IY: I made it a career out of it, yeah.

FK: How high up did you go in rank then?

IY: E-7. SFC.

FK: So, what other, what other wars did you fight in?

IY: World War II and Korean War. I guess I can say I was another lucky one. When we got to Korea in 1953, I think it was April, and in August the war ended and came back. And then the Vietnam war, they were asking for a recall for transportation personnel. So anybody with transportation experience they wanted back. I was one of them. Then they sent us to the language school, Vietnamese language school. They call it the "crash course" at Fort Bliss, Texas. They had a language school there next to, was it Camp... I forgot that camp, training camp... they had a crash course, so we had to take it, three, three months, crash course. It's supposed to take one year, Vietnamese class. You don't know how tough that was. We had couple suicides 'cause they couldn't take it. Yeah. That was terrible. I finally made it. Then they send me to Vietnam. That was just where they had that Tet Offensive. That happened there were got, quite a few got wiped out, military... As we were going in I could see, at the base where we're all gonna land. You see all kind of, holes from the bombs and mortars. I said, "Wow." Wasn't exactly relaxing, you see all that. After we landed there it wasn't too bad. We didn't hear any fighting or anything like that. After I got assigned to the airbase, I'm military, army, and my headquarters was in Saigon, but I was attached to the Air Force, what they call Benoit. I took care of the Army personnel at the base and personnel that's leaving the state, going to inter state, delivering supplies and so forth. I was in charge of the army military.

FK: During World War II or any of those, Korean or Vietnamese wars, did you ever find that it was a problem being Japanese or a problem being Asian in the service?

IY: No, that's... I didn't have that problem at all. I noticed, heard some people had a hard time or they give them a hard time. To me, I... goin' through all three of 'em, I was treated okay. I guess that's why I stayed in until I retired.

FK: Did your brother stay in Australia all that time?

IY: No, he came back and he got out about three years or four years after... he put in his time.

FK: But he was in Australia during the whole Second World War?

IY: He was. But how long he was there I'm not sure. 'Cause I was in the service then I was more or less out of contact with my family.

FK: One thing I'm curious about and while you're in camp, what kind of information did you have from outside the camp? Were there newspapers or were there news reports about what was goin' on in the rest of the world? How did you guys find out what was going on in the rest of the world?

IY: Well, gosh, I don't recall how we got our message... we got the news. I think it's more of a grapevine, I think. I think they did have a paper in Manzanar, that camp Manzanar that... they delivered house to house, I mean, barrack to barrack. But as far as receiving information, I don't recall how we got it. 'Cause I don't recall anything that much, of the news. Just from people would get together and they'd say, well, you heard about this... you heard about that? I don't know, maybe the older people did that was there, had more information and received all the news, or bad news, good news.

FK: What did you do for recreation in camp? What did you do for fun?

IY: In Manzanar, after they... halfway through the camp period that we stayed, they had a field that they kind of leveled off for baseball. They all sent out message that anybody want to start a team, sign up and we'll get a game started. Like they had lot of L.A. team, young teams. And San Diego and Venice. Now the Bainbridge people, they were mixed, I think, with the others. They each all had names. I forgot what their names were, but I can't forget mine. 'Cause our group, there were only two Bainbridge people, myself and another fellow. Rest of 'em was L.A. We called it The Sloppy Nine. It was sloppy all right. I don't know why we called us sloppy, but I thought we played pretty good. We didn't get the championship or anything like that. That's the... that and we did a lot of dancing. We used to go to mess hall. After a while all the mess hall they had... they cleaned the mess hall and moved aside the table and everything. They had dancing. They had music. That, that's about it. They had outdoor music. What do you call these, amphitheater type? It wasn't too much. That was... most of our entertainment was mostly baseball and dancing. We're older people now. But we were, what, sixteen, seventeen. You're just about the age when everybody want to go dancing. Now in Minidoka, it was the same thing. They had dancing. They used, they used to have movie. So, like Glenn Miller. Who was the other trumpeter?

FK: Harry James?

IY: Yeah, Harry James. They had that movie. So while they had that movie on the screen people danced with that music. They didn't have no band or anything. Most of the time they had record.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.