Densho Digital Archive - Bob Fuchigami Interview (denshovh-fbob-01-0023)

<Begin Segment 23>

RP: This is tape three of a continuing interview with Bob Fuchigami. And, Bob, we were talking about the departures from camp of some of your older brothers. And it sounds like the family began going off in a lot of different directions, and sort of disintegrated.

BF: Yeah. It... that's what happened. Some, some of the families were able to stay together. Ours were at an age, I guess, when people started moving in, in other directions. Whether that would have happened anyway, I doubt it, but that's, that's what happened to our family in the camp. I was telling about the one brother who, George, who was MIS and then Walter went out to college but he eventually ended up MIS and Bill, went off to do some farming in Keensburg. Before that he had tried on a short-team leave to pick peaches in Grand Junction. And, but he was eventually drafted and sent to, sent to MIS. And by the time he got through, the war had ended and so he ended up with the occupation forces in, in Tokyo, worked out of MacArthur's headquarters. And then I had a fourth brother who, who eventually got drafted and ended up with the Counterintelligence Corps, CIC, and ended up in Japan. So they, they all, they all served in the military.

RP: Felt that strong sense of...

BF: Duty, honor.

RP: Duty, honor bound type of...

BF: Yeah. No one, at least in, in our group ended up being draft resisters. But then again, there were others...

RP: There were.

BF: ...that we found out about that, that became draft resisters and they, they all had good reasons for doin' it.

RP: And, you know the image that's always painted of Amache is, quote, "a very patriotic camp," because so many young, young Niseis did go from camp into the armed forces.

BF: Yeah, I think there were... well, on the honor roll that they had in front of the co-op, they had over nine hundred names, men and women --

RP: Men and women, right.

BF: -- who served. And thirty-one were killed overseas. And, of course there were a lot more who were wounded. There were, like our, our family had four who ended up in the military. There were others that had five and six in the military. I remember reading about one family, they weren't in Amache, but they were in another camp, they had nine in the military.

RP: Nine?

BF: Yeah.