<Begin Segment 5>

gky: How did you get to the MIS?

SI: I was not tested. I was ordered to go to the school, so I guess they looked at my background.

gky: What was Camp Savage like?

SI: Well, Camp Savage, see, we were the first ones there. That was an old folks home and it was in very bad shape, so in June when we first went there, we had to clean it up. I had no idea what we were doing this for, then we later found out that it was going to be a school. They never -- when I first went there, they never told us this is going to be a school; you're going to be a student. They never announced that. They said, "Just clean the mess up." And then they started forming classes. And then I realized that this was a school.

gky: So, you hadn't heard anything about the first class, the class at the Presidio then?

SI: No.

gky: It really was a secret.

SI: Oh, yeah.

gky: What did your mother and your father say to you when they found you were going to language school, or did they?

SI: No, they didn't know where I was going when I first was inducted. Now, this is an interesting thing. You know Niseis, mothers and fathers, Isseis had a going away party for -- there were three of us who had been inducted. They had a party for us. The interesting thing is that my friends, the Niseis, they didn't think of having a going away party for us. It was the Isseis that did this. So I had to speak to them in Japanese and say, "Oh, yes, thank you very much," and so forth. And, of course, my father wanted to get this load that I had, presumed that I had in my mind about going to war against Japan. He said, "You're an American and you have to fight for your country." What is surprising is I've talked to many Nisei whose parents said the same thing to them. "Don't shame the name of your family. Don't bring haji." Haji is a very good term, haji; I always use that.

[Interruption]

gky: The Japanese giving a going away party and how you were not to bring haji. Did you feel that, did you really feel that strongly that you were not to bring shame on your family or on your community?

SI: Oh, I certainly didn't want to. Someone who did something to bring shame, yeah. That's very firmly ingrained in me and practically all the Nisei that I know or spoke to. You just don't do it.

gky: Are there any other Japanese values like that that you felt you really had to live by, live in terms of your life and how it reflected on the entire community, not just on you?

SI: Well, of course, you -- the whole idea of haji is that you live a proper life and don't do anything that would bring shame onto the family. That, I think, is very firmly entrenched in most of the Niseis that I know. I think that the fact that practically every Nisei that I know of has gone to college, even though their parents, you know, are not that well off. They ingrained in us the fact that we have to have college education, so we were sent to college. This, I hope, is instilled in my children too, because I like to have, I like to know that the children's children, and so forth, and so forth, would carry on this tradition.

gky: When you were shipped out, did you know where you were going?

SI: No.

gky: So you guys don't know, you're just going somewhere?

SI: Well, we shipped out from San Francisco, so it's obvious we were not going to England. But we were on a converted liner and we left San Francisco harbor and went to -- one destroyer escort. After the first day, the escort left us and we were on our own because we were dependent on our speed, you know, to maneuver.

gky: So when did you find out finally where you were going?

SI: On board ship they announced that we were assigned to I Corps. I Corps is, well, actually, the only U.S. corps that MacArthur had, and they were already out there, and the corps, because this is two divisions, the 32nd and the 41st. So I said, "Well, we're probably going to Australia." That was true. Went to Australia from there and went into New Guinea.

gky: Did you know you were going to be eventually assigned out, you know, that it would not be all of you serving together, but that you would be serving on a team of ten?

SI: No, we didn't know that.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2000 Bridge Media and Densho. All Rights Reserved.