Densho Digital Archive - Chester Tanaka Interview (denshovh-tchester-01-0001)

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I: This is oral interview number 3 with Chester Tanaka, member of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Chester Tanaka served the entire length of the regiment's term in combat. Chet Tanaka was member of Company K, 442nd, and retired from the service as a technical sergeant. This is side number 1, the date is October 8, 1980. Mr. Tanaka, where was your family from and when did your parents -- you're a Nisei, when did your parents emigrate to America?

[Interruption]

CT: Eddie, Ed Tanaka, Edward Tanaka. So there were three of us that served in the U.S. Army during World War II. In St. Louis where I grew up, there were four Japanese families. I really didn't get to know any of them very well. There was a consul, the family on the consulate, two other people ran a restaurant, and I think there was an old medicine man, doctor. But we maybe got around seeing each other, my family, the older folks, got together once a year, maybe Christmas or whatever, but the children never, myself, we never got together. Maybe once a year, but we really didn't know each other. I grew up essentially with Germans, Italians, and a sprinkling of French. This is essentially the St. Louis population, of course, there was a mixture of all the races, but strongly German and Italian. And this is where I grew up, in a German neighborhood, really, with the Italian neighborhood just around the corner, over the hill, as they say.

I: Did you have any identification with the Japanese culture? Did your parents talk of Japan or tell you stories? Did you have any identification with Japan?

CT: There was very little discussion about Japan in the family. I think they came from rather severe conditions back home. After the war they did mention something to me something, somewhat. My mother came from a broken home, they had remarried and so forth, and she was sort of a, if not... I'm not quite clear on it, but she evidently wasn't happy because of this second, her second father, or whatever you call it. My dad evidently came, he was the son of a sake foreman, but the whole area, Kyushu, which is a southern island near Fukuoka, I understand, had been depressed during this period economically, and so many Japanese left there, I guess, even as the people from other countries leave depressed areas. So they came to the U.S. looking for a new source of livelihood.