<Begin Segment 6>

gky: When you look at your experience, not in the Korean War, but with the MI in World War II, how do you feel about it? How do you feel about having served your country?

RU: Well, it was, we took it for granted that all the Niseis were mistrusted, so that's the reason, only reason why we couldn't get a commission until the war nearly ended. I got my commission, field commission, on August the 4th, of '45. That's when we knew that we were trusted, because any time you get a commission, we could enter the G2 tent, operations tent, and look at the situation, but until you have that second lieutenant bars, you cannot go in there.

gky: I didn't know that.

RU: Oh, yes. Warrant officers couldn't go in there. Even though they were promoted to warrant officers, you couldn't go into the G2 tent to look at this war situation map.

gky: Did any of your fellow soldiers, either officers or enlisted men, treat you especially well, or especially poorly?

RU: Well, after the second battle at Bougainville, they really started to trust me. They really did.

gky: That's in real contrast then, to Camp Wolters.

RU: That's right. That's right.

gky: And how did you feel about that?

RU: Well, I think that was a natural outcome after you did something that, you know, that was a very loyal act I thought, and so they started to really trust me.

gky: Why did you decide to leave the service? A lot of people stayed in you know, after the war, either in Japan, or even came back here. But why did you decide to leave?

RU: Well, because I had to support my parents. That's the main reason why I got out. I've always had to support my parents. They were depending on me for total support. That's the reason why in August of '45, when the atom bomb was dropped and my parents in Poston were afraid to come out of the cab, so he requested that Red Cross to have the army ship me back so I could find a home for them. So I came home without going to Japan in 1940...

gky: So you were never, never visited Japan as a...

RU: That's right.

gky: You used to tell people that when they look at your service record and that you served during the war, you'd say, "I was in the Military Intelligence." "Well, what did you do?" "Interrogating military prisoners." Obviously, you couldn't tell them much more than that because...

RU: That's right. I couldn't even tell them that I interrogated prisoners. All I could tell them was I was fighting in the Pacific, until 1972 when President Nixon signed that Executive Order 11652 [classification and declassification of national security information and material].

gky: That must be pretty tough for people to have such an important part of their lives. It's kind of like in the black.

RU: That's right. Because all the 442nd people could tell what they did during World War II, and here we are, we couldn't say a word, what we did. We weren't allowed to.

gky: That's pretty loyal for people to not say anything about you know, you all were not allowed to, but being sworn to secrecy. I mean, I find it, I guess, a little odd that so many people, you know, thousands of Nisei didn't say what they did during the war.

RU: That's right, and even then, until I found out personally that President Nixon had signed that executive order, nobody wanted to believe that we were allowed to say something about it because that signing of the Executive Order 11652 was never publicized. Never publicized. Niseis didn't know that President Nixon had signed such a document.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright &copy; 2000 Bridge Media and Densho. All Rights Reserved.