<Begin Segment 9>

DG: Let's go back and talk a little bit more about when your family left to go to Tule Lake. Can you tell about that?

KS: Well, we just got the notice. We had to, certain amount of packing we had to do, and that's all we could carry, and we're supposed to meet at Clarksburg school, schoolyard. So I don't know how we got to the schoolyard, whether my neighbor, one of our neighbors took us there, or, somehow we got to the schoolyard, and then they put us on these army trucks and took us to Freeport Bridge. That's where the train was waiting, right by the Freeport Bridge. Transferred everything onto the train and took off, whatever we could carry.

JS: So you went directly from the Freeport Bridge to Tule Lake?

KS: That's it. We were the first Californians to go to Tule Lake. They had Oregon and Washington people already there, so we were mixed into that group there, so I got to know a lot of Oregon, Washington people. Yeah, they were all nice people. That was quite an experience for us, because I'd just turned eighteen, so we got, all we did was roam around all over camp looking for people and interesting things happening.

JS: Did you have a job in the camp?

KS: Yeah. I was working in the mess hall. They all, we all decided, my uncle especially, said, "Let's all go into the mess hall, work in the mess hall. At least you get to eat." So we all joined there and we were cook's helper and things like that. Then afterward we were servers. We had to serve all these people.

DG: Your father and your mother too?

KS: No, my father, yeah, he worked in the mess hall, but my mother didn't. No, she stayed home, stayed home. But my father helped in there. He was one of the cooks, helped out a little bit. It was quite an experience. We, like I say, I was, I just turned eighteen, my brother, my older brother's twenty and my next brother was sixteen, so yeah, we had, we had a pretty good time. Got to know a lot of people, Oregon and Washington people. They were already there in the camp. And otherwise we'd, I don't now, we wouldn't have known any of the Oregon, Washington people. They didn't, I didn't even know they existed up that way.

DG: So you said you were in the military. Were you in the 442nd?

KS: No, I didn't go in the 442nd, although I trained for it. But by the time we were halfway across the ocean, war ended in Europe, so we continued on and let the veterans come home and we took their place as, constabulary forces they call it. They didn't call it occupational force; they called it constabulary force. So we had to do a lot of policing, make sure everything was alright. Yeah.

DG: Where were you stationed?

KS: In Stuttgart, Germany. It wasn't too bad. It was nice. I was a supply sergeant, so I had all, anything I want to eat. [Laughs] Supplies, I got, yeah, came through me first.

JS: What was Germany like after the war?

KS: Huh?

JS: What was Germany like?

KS: When we first got there, it was a mess. They wouldn't, they had dead animals out in the field and everything, and airplanes burned up and everything on the side. But they really did a good job cleaning up everything. Yeah, they did a real good job. And by the time, maybe about six months later, you couldn't tell there was war there. The buildings were all rebuilt. So I was stationed in Stuttgart and that was pretty good.

DG: So Tule Lake had a different history than the other...

KS: Well, yeah, at the beginning it was just like any camp. Then they decided, decided to, there's a lot of people wanted to go back to Japan and they were, what do you call, hardheads or whatever you wanna call it, and they were, these people were trying to get most of the citizens to join them and go back to Japan. And most of 'em were hardcore. By that time I was out of there. We were working in Idaho, farming.

DG: So when -- your whole family?

KS: No. The first year my brothers and I and some friends, we all went to Idaho to work, and the following spring, that's when my, I took my father and my brother-in-law, and we all stayed together on one farm.

DG: How did you hear about the work in Idaho?

KS: Well, I guess some of the older ones, they went to work for harvest time, only just for harvesting. Soon as the harvesting was over they all came back, and we all greeted them. They all came home on the bus and they all parked on certain blocks, I guess it was. We were living in certain blocks, and they came and unloaded over there and we said, "My goodness, what a good thing to do, go work and get paid for it and all the eat you want." So the following spring we signed up and we left. We didn't want to stay in camp. So we went to Idaho. That was close as they could, they couldn't hire us in California. Probably west, no, eastern Oregon and Washington we could've gone too, but Idaho seemed like ideal place, so we went to Idaho.

DG: And that was just for the season?

KS: Yeah. We, first year was just during the harvest season, maybe two months, I guess it was. And the following year, we went in springtime and stayed all spring, and I think until fall, then I got my draft notice, so I went back to camp. And then they caught up with me. I sent in the change of address, they sent me one in camp, so I says, well, a bunch of us says, "Well, let's go back to Idaho." So we went back to Idaho and then we had, still had to, change of address, we had to send it in to the county, so they called, caught us again. Then finally, instead of sending us a regular... they sent us a physical, we had to go get our physical. It wasn't just a draft notice; it was a physical, as if we were already in. So we had to go, then that's how they got us. We were in the military.

DG: So you didn't want to go?

KS: No, not necessarily. We were eighteen, nineteen years old, and the war was still going on. So until they drafted us and told us we -- like I went to Fort Sill, Oklahoma and I was in the field artillery. We learned... I guess they go by education or something. I didn't go to college, but I did pretty good in high school, so all the smarter ones went to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, learned field artillery. But when we were halfway across the ocean, ready to go fight in Europe, the war ended over there. So we were lucky. Yeah, we thought we were gonna turn around and go to the Pacific, but no, they kept on going, sent us to Europe.

DG: So with those "loyalty questions," you must've answered "yes."

KS: Yeah. "Yes-yes."

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2012 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.