<Begin Segment 17>

TI: So let's go to the Fort Belvoir, the Officer Candidate School. And so what was that like?

YM: It was mainly going out in the field and learning how to build bridges. There were different kind of bridges, timber bridges, pontoon bridges, Bailey bridges, we were doing all that sort of stuff. All engineering kind of work.

TI: Now how was that for you? Was this pretty interesting, kind of applying your engineering...

YM: It was tough, really tough. You go out in the woods and you live out there in a little pup tent. We'd go out and cut down trees to build the bridges and then you go to a river and you put these Bailey bridges together. They're steel bridges, they come like an Erector set, you put 'em together. Learned how to put those across a river. That was really tough.

TI: Tough meaning the physical...

YM: Physically, physically, yeah. Living in the woods, you know, and I remember being chewed up by chiggers, they get all over you while you're sleeping. [Laughs]

TI: Okay. About this time, the war actually comes to an end in Europe.

YM: In Europe, yeah, and then we're in training out in the hills, we were at Fort Belvoir. The war in Japan -- I remember we were in the woods and an officer came driving up and said, "Oh, they dropped a bomb on Japan," and that's about all we knew. We didn't know it was an atom bomb or whatever, he says, "The war is over," or something like that. That was August, I think it was.

TI: Now, I'm curious, with your, sort of, engineering training, when they say "drop the bomb" and they said, at some point, atomic bomb, what did that mean to you? Did you understand...

YM: Well, we didn't even know what an atomic bomb was. It was just a terrific bomb that was dropped, and that's about all they said. And in a few days, the war was over.

TI: And so what did you do next? You're in Officer Candidate School, the war in both now Europe and Japan is over, so what do you do next?

YM: Well, I decided that I didn't want to continue with Officer's Candidate School. And so I made that fact known and they told me that, "Well, you can resign, but then we'll have to send you overseas right away." So that's what they did.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright ©2009 Densho and the Twin Cities JACL. All Rights Reserved.