<Begin Segment 16>

TI: And then what did you do after that?

GY: I got drafted, I volunteered here.

TI: So you volunteered or were drafted, which one?

GY: I volunteered.

TI: Okay, you volunteered.

GY: I was ready for the draft, and so I volunteered.

TI: And why did you do that? If you knew you were getting drafted, why did you volunteer?

GY: Because I went back to camp when my brother was also drafted, going to be drafted, and I said, "Okay, you go one way and I'll go the other way. I'll go to the language school 'cause I know a little more of that." So that's where we went. He went and joined the 442 and I came up here with the MIS.

TI: So why was it important to you that you go one way and he goes the other way?

GY: We don't want to get both popped off. No use both of us getting killed, so he'd go one way and I'll go the other way.

TI: Oh, so you thought that would improve your chances of at least one person surviving.

GY: Yeah. My third brother, my other brother, I don't know what happened to him, but he ended up in Japan with me. But he didn't stay there very long, he got sick and he transferred back to the States. That's how it went.

TI: So when you volunteered, how did you get picked for the MIS?

GY: That's what I volunteered for, the MIS.

TI: When they did that, did they give you any tests to test your Japanese?

GY: We didn't get tested until we came to Fort (Snelling in Minnesota).

TI: And do you remember what the test was?

GY: No, I don't. All I know is I didn't know as much as the test. [Laughs] I thought I knew quite a bit, okay, so they tested us. Wrong. I didn't know that much.

TI: Because oftentimes you were going up against, like, men who had been educated in Japan, so they knew a lot more Japanese or had been to Japan. And you had just done Japanese language school on Saturdays.

GY: Oh, yeah. As far as Japanese language, speaking to the population over there, just ordinary speaking. I mean, you didn't know technical terms or anything. But here, a translator or interpreter like in a court case, that's something else. You had to know what you're talking about. That dropped into, for guys that knew quite a bit more. Like me, I'm run of the mill. In Tokyo, sure, I was supposed to be an interpreter, I went out on an interpreting job once. And I met with an officer, we looked for housing, Western-style housing for the officers. That was it. That was it, the only thing I did. Before that, I was in charge of a typing unit, a native women typing... documenting written things from the trials and stuff like that. They had to be typewritten. So that's the first time I saw a Japanese typewriter. You pick one character up, brought it over, and bang. Put it back... [laughs].

TI: That seems like a little, pretty slow. [Laughs]

GY: Yeah, it was like this, you know.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright ©2009 Densho and the Twin Cities JACL. All Rights Reserved.