Densho Digital Archive
Loni Ding Collection
Title: Ernest Uno Interview
Narrator: Ernest Uno
Interviewer: Loni Ding
Location: Hawaii
Date: December 8, 1985
Densho ID: denshovh-uernest-01-0005

<Begin Segment 5>

LD: You wanted to go in very, very badly, and was willing to do anything --

EU: [Laughs] Yeah.

LD: You really wanted to go in.

EU: That's right. There was a group of us who buddied around together, and we were all the same age. We always said that...

LD: Go back and tell us that you're in Amache.

EU: Okay, that's right. We were in Amache, Colorado, which was a camp near...

LD: Start again.

EU: We were in Amache, Colorado, in a camp of something like six thousand people, sixty-five hundred, which was close to a whistle stop called Granada. Granada is on the line between Garden City, Kansas, and Lamar, Colorado, right in the middle of what I call the Arkansas River Valley dust bowl. When we got there, a bunch of us guys, there might have been, oh, eight to ten of us, had pledged that if and when we come of age, and if and when the army would ever allow us, we would all volunteer to go in the army, we would voluntarily enlist. Then when the army made enlistment available, opened up enlistment to those of us that were in camp, we all, of course, as we became of age, went down to the selective service in Lamar, Colorado, to register for the draft, and actually to enlist. And I among others were told that we were 4-F. And in my case, I asked him, "Well, what do you mean 4-F? I'm physically fit. What's wrong with me?" And the examining physician said, "Well, young man, you've got a double hernia, and we can't take you in the army that way." And I asked him, "Well, what would it take to get in the army?" He said, "Well, you'd have to have an operation to repair the hernia." I said, "Well, is that a big deal?" He says, "No, well, it's no worse than getting a broken arm fixed." So I said okay. I went back to camp and I went to see... in Amache we had a full blown hospital with at least two doctors. One of the doctors was in our particular block in camp, so I went to see him there in his office at the hospital, and then I went into see him. At that time, he had the name Dr. Higa. I went in and I said, "Dr. Higa, I need an operation to repair a double hernia." He says, "What do you want to do that for?" I said, "Well, I want to get in the army." And he chuckled and he says, "Are you sure you want to do that?" I says, "Well, that's what they told me, and I got to get in the army." So he consulted the other physician and they agreed to do the surgery. And so I underwent the double hernia operation, it took three weeks flat on my back. But by the time, well, mid-July rolled around, I was considered well enough, although I was still pretty well suffering from the effects of the stitches and such. In those days, because they kept us in the hospital flat on our back for so long, muscles atrophied and such. So when I reported down to Camp Shelby, I was still kind of doubled up, you know. I couldn't stand straight at attention like the other guys, it took a little time.

But it's interesting, when I talk about Dr. Higa, he happened to be from Hawaii, and both he and his wife were, I believe, doing their residency at a hospital in Los Angeles, White Memorial Hospital, it was a Seventh Day Adventist hospital. And he was caught there in Los Angeles at the outbreak of the war and couldn't get back here to Hawaii, so he was evacuated with us. However, sometime at the end of the war, he and his family relocated back to Hawaii. Recently, within the past... I think it was past couple years, I had gotten a call from a Dr. Ben Higashi. So I picked up the phone and he asked me, "Is this Ernest Uno?" I says, "Yes." "Were you in Amache, Colorado?" I says, "Yes." He says, "Well, I'm Dr. Ben Higashi." I said, "Oh? Oh, you're the former Ben Higa." He says, "Yes." He says, "Ernest, I wanted to call you because you're the only one I remember who said that, you came to me and said that you needed to have an operation because you wanted to get in the army. All the other young men who came to see me wanted to see how they could be classified 4-F." [Laughs] That was my claim to fame as far as he was concerned.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 1985 The Center for Educational Telecommunications and Densho. All Rights Reserved.