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gky: You've been recruited for the MIS and for the first class at Camp Savage. What was that like when you got to Camp Savage?

WT: Okay. The thing is, some people ask me, "Did you volunteer to go to Camp Savage?" And I tell them, "Well, I volunteered to go, but there was a reason behind it." I wasn't particularly thinking about that being a loyal thing for me to do. The thing is at Fort Custer, Michigan, from Gilroy, you see, they sent us, about a hundred of us on a troop train to the Midwest because apparently they didn't want Nisei soldiers on the West Coast. I guess maybe they feared, you know, that maybe we weren't loyal Americans, they didn't trust leaving us there. That's the only thing I could think of. But anyway, they loaded us on a train and pulled all the blinds down so we couldn't see out or people could see us inside. And we ended up in, about a hundred of us on that particular train, and we ended up in the Midwest. And part of us, part of our group dropped off to go to Camp Grant, Illinois, to Fort Sheridan, Illinois. And finally the remainder, we went to Fort Custer, Michigan. And at Michigan there were different duties, but they looked at my background. And so here I'm a country kid that grew up on the farm and had work with farm implements, pick and shovel, and you know, things like that. I got assigned to duties at Fort Custer to pitch coal into the furnaces. And so it's snowing in Michigan, yet and every night I took my turn at going around to all the barracks and pitching coal into the furnaces, shaking the clinkers out and pitching coal into the furnaces. And here I was doing that. I don't recall how long I was there exactly, but it might have been a few months. I can't recall any more, but when a team came from Camp Savage, Minnesota, and they wanted to, asking for volunteers who would go to Camp Savage, Minnesota, take a test and if they pass, go to Camp Savage to the army's Military Intelligence Service Language School. And so I thought, "Well, anything's better than pitching coal into the furnaces." I thought that if for the duration of the war, I'm going to be doing something like that in a unit which they called the "Detached Enlisted Man's League," and this is the -- another name for a service unit that did various service jobs at the various army camps, and whether it's latrine duty or clean up jobs around. But, anyway, I volunteered and I passed the exam, so that they said that I could go to Camp Savage, Minnesota.

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