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gky: Now, when you actually moved to Minnesota, first class had already graduated. Matter of fact, the first class that had been shipped out?

SK: Well, graduation was on, I believe it was May the 1st or around that time. Some of the more capable students had been shipped out already to the South Pacific area, to the Fiji Islands, to New Caledonia. The problem was that the commanders out in the field were so disorganized that they didn't know what to do with the graduates of the Intelligence School, so they were ordered to drive trucks around. And anyway, to set up the new school in Minnesota we had to have instructors. The original four had been supplemented by Mr. Tanimoto, Mr. Tekawa, Tad Yamada, and Mr. Tsukahira, but the number of faculty members was insufficient to take on the load anticipated at Camp Savage in Minnesota, so the ten best graduates of Section A were ordered to Minnesota to become the cadre, the enlisted cadre for starting the new school. And so they all, they all proceeded by train to Camp Savage, and Camp Savage was an abandoned old men's home. The grass was three feet high. In one large building called the mattress factory there were hobos living there. The hobos living there in the mattress factory, mattresses were filthy with fleas, lice, cockroaches, even rats, and the first ten students, the best of the graduating class, were ordered to clean out the mattress factory, cut the grass and so forth. They dragged the flea-infested mattresses out into the open, chased the hobos away, poured gasoline on the mattresses and burned them up. And here these sergeants were expecting to be teachers at a school, had to chase off hobos and burn mattresses and cut grass to get the school ready for instruction. [Laughs]

gky: And these were from the first class, the November class at the Presidio? These ten instructors?

SK: Pardon me?

gky: These ten instructors were from the first class at the Presidio?

SK: Yes.

gky: Okay. Tell me about your trip across country.

SK: Well, the Japanese American population of California were in assembly centers, and the political situation in Nevada, Idaho, Dakotas, was not clear. There was a talk of the possibility that Japanese Americans traveling in that area might get shot, might get arrested, and so the army gave each of the instructors personal escorts.

[Interruption]

gky: Can you tell me again about, a little bit about the trip across?

SK: The army was a little worried about us, the teachers and their families being able to cross the continent without any incidents, so for each instructor the army attached officers. These officers were students at the Fourth Army Intelligence School. Right after Pearl Harbor all of the army personnel in the entire United States who had any language training in Japanese at universities, such as the University of California, University of Stanford, University of Washington, were called up to active duty, and one of these a Captain Eugene Wright. He came to the Presidio to study in December of 1941 and he was assigned to us, that is John Aiso, Sumi Aiso, my wife Aya, and myself. And in the escort car was Captain Wright, his wife Esther, and their child, Jerry, so we traveled in a group. We, our car met the car from San Francisco at the highway between the end of the Bay Bridge and up north to Sacramento. So we met there on the highway and then we proceeded to Sacramento, went, drove to Orino and stayed at the downtown Orino Hotel, had our dinners without any problems. Then we moved to Ogden and we moved to Yellowstone National Park and proceeded across the country. The only time that we ever had any inkling of trouble was in North Dakota, at Bismarck. One Caucasian couple in the restaurant where we were having dinner kept on staring at us, and Mrs. Wright, Esther Wright didn't take kindly to being stared at, so she got up and went over to this white couple and said, "What are you staring at? What's your problem?" [Laughs] And the people said, apologized and said, "I'm sorry," and the matter was settled. But one of the groups traveling across the country, escorted by two Chinese Americans officers, Captain Pang and Captain Chang, were having lunch in Pocatello, Idaho, with their group of Japanese American teachers, and the sheriff told the two Chinese officers that they were to report to the police station for questioning. They didn't say anything to the Japanese instructors. They told Captain Pang and Captain Chang, "Where are your papers? What are you doing here in Pocatello?" And they said, "We're reporting from Fort [inaudible] in San Francisco and we're proceeding to Minnesota," and they showed the sheriff their papers. The sheriff said, "Okay, I'm gonna phone the Fourth Army to verify that these documents are valid and not a counterfeit." And the charge, or the suspicion, was that they were Chinese or Japanese officers masquerading in American army uniforms. [Laughs] They called Fourth Army and the matter was straightened out, but they proceeded on their way.

gky: It just seems odd that the government would send Chinese to escort Japanese when you, a lot of people can't really tell the difference between the Chinese and the Japanese.

SK: Well, there're only a limited number of officer students available who were proceeding with the group to Minnesota, and I guess the assumption was made that if you have an American uniform on that you're beyond question.

gky: Is, was Judge Wright, or was Captain Wright a student at the MIS school?

SK: He took some courses at the University of Washington in Seattle, and when he was called up to duty he was sent to the Fourth Army Intelligence School. And he was our escort officer and finished his training at Camp Savage in December of 1942, and he went on to the Solomon's Campaign with the, I believe, the 45th Division.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2000 Bridge Media and Densho. All Rights Reserved.