Densho Digital Archive - Ernest Uno Interview (denshovh-uernest-01-0008)

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LD: When you were out there, were you thinking about your family much, and to write home much? Did you give any particular thought to how things might be better for them, or what was happening with them? Was that on your mind, or do you think that was on the mind of your fellow soldiers?

EU: I think in terms of the number of letters I used to write from the foxhole, on these v-mail forms that we used to get -- I don't know if you're familiar with the v-mail. Recently my sister Hana returned to me a whole packet of the letters that she had saved, letters I had written. There was a time when I didn't, wasn't very good about writing, and I had to be reminded by one of my, a sergeant who was friends with my sister, who apparently had gotten word that I, they were wondering because they hadn't heard from me. He gave me royal bejeezus because I hadn't written, and they were wondering at home whether I was okay.

LD: If sergeants did that, they would...

EU: Yeah, there was a sergeant, but he was not my sergeant, he was from another company, actually, but he was a friend of my sister's. And she had written and asked him, I guess, to look up and find out if I'm okay.

LD: And what did he say to you?

EU: Oh, gave me hell, that's what he did. [Laughs]

LD: He said what?

EU: Well, in essence, he said, "Ernie, what's wrong? How come you're not writing to your sister? Your family's worried about you. Don't you think you should write?" Okay, I got chastised, and I reluctantly said, okay, I'll drop a line. But I did write. And my sister Hana and I were very regular correspondents.

[Interruption]

EU: When I was in the service, sure, I used to think an awful lot about home. But not so much in terms of what was happening with the family. I guess, at that time, still just being an eighteen year old, I knew at that time that even the government was taking care of my mother, my brothers and my sisters. I didn't have to, necessarily, to worry about them. I knew that my two sisters, Hana and Mae, were... although they were in camp, they were going to go up to Minneapolis where Hana was going to get a job and such, they were leaving camp. Since my mother and my three, my two younger brothers and my sister Kay were going down to Crystal City to stay with my dad in an internment camp. So I really didn't think too much other than just to keep up correspondence with my sister. One of the reasons I used to write to her was that, like everyone else, we used to write home to request for goodies. Oh, I knew that she could get, from, even from some of the delicatessens in Denver, things like, oh, pickled radish and such that we all looked forward to. But one thing Hana was going to send me -- and this is one of the reasons we corresponded so regularly -- is because, after this guy got on my case, was that she was gonna send me a wristwatch. I didn't have a good wristwatch, in fact, I had one that didn't work very well. So she was going to send me a good wristwatch. And I kept asking her about it, and she would write to tell me that it was on its way and such. It was very interesting because several of our letters contained reference to this wristwatch. I noticed when she turned over to me this packet of letters I had written to her, those were all censored, not only by the army overseas, but they were postmarked in Colorado, in Lamar, Colorado. And the letters themselves, inside the envelopes, were stamped with a cancellation. And they were underlined, wherever reference was made to a wristwatch. And apparently there was some suspicion that a secret code was going between Hana and myself, and must have had some connection with my father's internment. But in my own mind I see some connection, although I can't... I don't have any additional facts to make any kind of a case for it. It's very interesting that those things that had reference to a wristwatch were underlined by a censor on the mainland.