<Begin Segment 6>

MW: You left in '43, and what branch of the service were you in?

EH: Air Corps.

MW: The Army Air Corps.

EH: Uh-huh.

MW: And where were you during the war?

EH: Well, I went to Denver, Colorado, first, and then to Fresno, California, Hemmer Field, and then to Ephrata, Washington, and then to Gardener Field in Spokane, Fort Lawton, Fort Warden, back to Fort Lawton, then on to Okinawa. But when I was at Ephrata was when I got in there, well, I got to tell you about coming up from Fresno, California. There was only ten, twelve of us, I think, and we were wash out cadets. They didn't have any railroad cars for us, but they had parlor cars with private dining rooms, private bedrooms and so forth. They were really old. They brought them out of, from way back. And there were three cars of us, and they would go along and they would hook us on to a train headed north. All we knew, we were going to Ephrata. And we got into... boy, I want to say Modesto. And we laid there for quite a while, waited for a train, another train to come along that we could hook onto. And a troop train from Fort Ord came up, and they had one of those cattle cars, a whole bunch of them, and they were going to Fort Lawton. And they could not get off of those cars, but we could get out and walk around. And the officers on board, oh, they were just furious, because here we had all this free liberty, and able to walk around. And we got into Portland, we laid there for a while, and we finally ended up getting into Seattle. And we parked for three days right across from the ferry dock, on the railroad tracks there. But we were cautioned not to leave the area because they didn't know when they were going to hook us onto another train.

MW: So you were across the street from the ferry but you couldn't go home?

EH: I couldn't go home. I called my mother, and, "What are you doing in Seattle?" I said, "I'm going to Ephrata." "Where's that?" She didn't know and I didn't know. I knew it was out in the Columbia basin.

MW: Now, you have a story that you've told about, was it Ephrata where you were?

EH: Yes.

MW: Would you tell us that story?

EH: Okay. Well, the first pass that I got on, I caught the first bus out of Ephrata for Seattle. And I'm sitting there and I'm looking out the window, and here's two of the Koba boys. And boy, they came up and we were hanging on each other, and, "How are you?" and oh, gee, all this. And about that time, then the bus driver, he said, "Close the window, we're leaving." And I forgot to find out, but I did find out that they were in Moses Lake. And Junkoh Harui told me that there were four families there, and I said goodbye to the boys, closed the window, and somebody up in the front of the bus smarted off about "those Japs." And I don't use that word, but that's what quoted from there. And I stood up and said, "Those kids are just as white as everybody on this bus. They're good kids, they're born in Bainbridge Island, they went to Bainbridge High School, and I went to school with them. And they're good American kids." Sat down. The person that said it didn't have the guts enough to come back and apologize. But it was complete silence in the bus 'til we got to Seattle. And I've never seen those Koba boys since, and I wish I had, but Jerry told me that they both have passed away, which was a shame. But the Kobas didn't come back to the island. I think they lived in Seattle or something.

MW: That's a great story. What did Jerry talk about in the letters? Was it mostly just what he was doing? Did he talk about their situation at all?

EH: Well, he said that the quarters that they had wasn't the best.

MW: How did he describe it?

EH: That there was a lot of sand, and I think they ate in the mess hall. And so they had plenty of food and a place to sleep on a mattress that was stuffed with straw, I believe it was. And he said they played a lot of baseball, a lot of games, and he got a job doing something and I can't remember exactly what it was. But I told him about the life back on the island without them there, and that I was going into the service. And at that time, then I was an apprentice machinist down at the shipyard and I was working six, seven days a week and overtime.

MW: That's when they were building minesweepers?

EH: Uh-huh.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.