Densho Digital Archive
Twin Cities JACL Collection
Title: George M. Yoshino Interview
Narrator: George M. Yoshino
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Bloomington, Minnesota
Date: June 17, 2009
Densho ID: denshovh-ygeorge_3-01-0017

<Begin Segment 17>

TI: Let's go back to your training. So after Fort Douglas, where did you go?

GY: Okay. When we came here from Fort Douglas, I guess it was, Utah, we came here in August and went to basic training in Alabama for two months, two or three months. Then we came back here just before Thanksgiving the same year, (...) '44. Then we started our training, language school. So we'd start in the morning and end up at night, weekends we had free, so I ended up at the University of Minnesota campus, I joined a bunch of students there. The reason I did that, because my brother was here first, and he went to some government training center which broke up. He had some friends at the university and I went there. I followed him through... after that, after he left, I went there all by myself on weekends.

TI: Oh, so because of your brother and his connections, he introduced you to people that you...

GY: Yeah.

TI: So would you bring other guys from the MIS to University of Minnesota?

GY: Oh, that part I don't know. I know one man that was there that was in the group, he's still here. I forgot his name. You know Somekawa, Carl Somekawa? He's a CPA man. He's still alive, and he was there when I was knocking around. They were nice days.

TI: Any memories from the training that you want to share, like any stories?

GY: Training, there wasn't much to talk about. It was writing and reading, that's about it as far as recitation or anything that you had to do yourself, I don't think we did anything like that. It was all memory work.

TI: And how difficult was the training?

GY: It wasn't too hard, it wasn't too stiff. They told you to do this and this. You learned it, retained it, or forgot about it.

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