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WT: Okay, so initially, they had Nisei as well as the rest of the troops, you know, Caucasian, or whatever nationality they were, to serve. and I was in a company that was sent out to the beach. There's a place called Dillon's Beach out on the coast, and here we went out there and we had to set up machine guns on the sand dunes, carry our rifle, and then pull sentry duty, or guard duty on the sand dunes. In other words, they feared that there was going to be an invasion of California, apparently, because we put these machine guns on top of the sand dunes and we were prepared in case of any landing that we would fire our machine guns and we had our rifles. And this was in the December of 1941, and so there was some nights that the rain, just pouring rain, you know, the rain poured down. And I remember one night, about midnight, I was going on post and just a small creek that ordinarily during the summer dries out and there was no water and here there was water right up to my waist. And I had to cross this creek that was being flooded to get to my machine gun post.

And so I was serving there, and I can't recall how long I was there, but pretty soon, one day, I got a call from a runner that the captain of the company ordered that all the Japanese Americans be, report back to the company headquarters. So, in that company, there were maybe about four or five of us, or something like that. But, anyway, we got on a three-quarter-ton truck and they took us back to the Santa Rosa fairgrounds. And that's when they had us inside of that exposition building where there were a lot of troops. And we were all bunked in cots right out in the open inside the exposition building and then they never said anything to us. And then one day, they didn't even have us go out for any duty or training or anything. And here they were, by the time we assembled -- there were about ten of us Nisei -- and they, one day they came and they relieved us of our personal weapon, which is the rifle. They took our rifles away, and they said nothing further. And we sat there and just sat around while the rest of the troops, they went about doing their business. So then we thought it was strange, you know, what's going on here? Well, finally, they put a Caucasian second lieutenant in charge of us. And so he was in charge of us and he just took us out for a hike. Every morning he took us out for a hike, and otherwise, we didn't do anything else. But we were being observed, apparently. And then one day they brought county prisoners in to work inside of this exposition building because there were like close to a thousand men, you know. And inside of the exposition building, the troops, when they walked around on the dirt floor, the dust started rising. And this is December, and because the dust was rising, everybody was catching a cold, and things were pretty bad, so they decided to asphalt the floor of this exposition building. So they brought in county prisoners and they called upon us. We were ordered to work with the county prisoners and shoveling asphalt to tar the floor so that the dust wouldn't fly. So, boy, when we had to work with prisoners, county jail prisoners, I felt pretty bad about it. I really thought this was really taking us to a point where we were being discriminated, and not treated like other American soldiers.

[Interruption]

gky: Well, when you had to work with prisoners, did any of them make any comments to you all? There was only Nisei working with the prisoners, Nisei soldiers, correct?

WT: This is overseas now?

gky: No, no, this is at Dillon's Beach, it's, I mean, when you went back to the Santa Rosa fairgrounds, I mean you were only Nisei that were working with the prisoners.

WT: That's right.

gky: And did the prisoners ever comment to you about what you were doing, and your race?

WT: No, no. I never had any conversations with them.

gky: And what did you say among yourselves?

WT: Well they -- what's the big deal here, you know, how come we're working for, with prisoners, county jail people, you know. This is certainly discrimination, and how come they have to treat us like this when we were American citizens like everybody else?

gky: Did you think you were going to be fighting the duration of the war with a pick and shovel?

WT: I thought of that later when I was in Fort Custer, Michigan, yes. But prior to going to Fort Custer, Michigan, we went to Gilroy. So they took all of the Nisei out of the battalion at Santa Rosa and they sent us down to Gilroy where they housed us in one of those prune warehouses in Gilroy. And then we slept inside of the prune warehouse. And they had a field mess tent where they fed us and we were transported by army trucks down to the Pajaro River on the south end of Gilroy, the town of Gilroy, what we did there was we worked... some of us worked in the detail to cut down willow trees in the Pajaro River, and then we loaded them up on the trucks and took it to the side of the hill along Highway 101 south of the bridges there, and then on this hillside dug trenches like a trench position. And you know what... a dirt trench, when it rains fills with water and your shoes get muddy, your boots get muddy. And so the willows, the willow logs that we cut were thrown down into the trench, so that in walking in the trench position, you don't get all muddy and wet feet. And so we cut willows. And there was another detail that worked on the hillside where they poured concrete to build pillboxes. And so we wonder, "What is all this?" In Gilroy, of all places. Of course, the 101 intersects with the smaller road that goes towards Watsonville and towards the ocean, and whether they were looking for the possibility that an invasion force or something that might come up the road and -- but it seemed ridiculous that why would they be invading Gilroy and when there's nothing there except it's a rural area? This was apparently a training phase of an engineer unit to practice building trench positions and pillboxes and when their training phase was over with, then our job there was finished.

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