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FA: You spoke about the effort to get volunteers from the camps. How successful was the effort to get volunteers, Nisei volunteers for the army?

MW: Terrible. It was simply devastating to the extent that the Provost Marshal General's office, which was the top police of the military arm, they gloated, they said, "Ho, ho, ho." You know, the Provost Marshal General's office's job is to establish concentration camps. And they said, "Wow, we had good reason to build those camps. You see, those Japs can't be trusted." And there was this statement by somebody, I forget now, somebody said, "Yeah, but listen. They're spilling blood over there on the other side. They're good soldiers." And the Provost Marshal General's office said, "Well, they may be spilling blood, they may be trying to prove their loyalty, but once they get back, and once they're out of uniform, how can we tell the difference? I mean, if they're in uniform we can assume that they're loyal, but once they're out of uniform, how can we trust them?" And that was the attitude within the military; that the average person is not aware of. We feel that we have proven by spilling blood on the battlefield that forevermore, people will honor that enormous demonstration of loyalty. But within the Provost Marshal General's office they said, "You know, we did find an awful lot of disloyals. They did not volunteer. They all, so many of them, qualified their answers or answered 'no-no.' Because of that, I think we ought to establish a file for future generations so that when it comes to people in foreign service, let's say, no Japanese American should be considered for foreign service until we allow them first to examine their wartime record," so that was the suspicion throughout.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 1998, 2005 Frank Abe and Densho. All Rights Reserved.