<Begin Segment 41>

TI: Okay, so tape four, we're in the fourth hour with, interview with Joe Sakato. And so we're now, it's after the war, you've met Bess, and, and you've gone to school already. I think you just mentioned going to school.

GS: School for diesel mechanic.

TI: Okay, so why don't you continue the story here.

GS: So when we finally got to California, I entered National School in Los Angeles, and I'm learning to become a diesel mechanic. And then I was working nights at the post office, and so then I thought, well, then I got a job in Coolidge, Arizona, converting marine diesels into water pumps. So two of us went to, went there and helped a man, gentleman to sell diesel engines to the farmers for water pumps. But the farmer says, "Well, they stay in their house and they pull a switch and electric motor starts, pumps water." So the gentleman, he couldn't sell very many diesel engines, so then in the meantime, my (wife, sister) says she's gonna have a baby, so my wife would have to go to Denver to help her. So I, the mechanic says, "One of us is going to have to go," I says, "Well, I'll go since I have to go to Denver anyway," so we moved to Denver. I said, oh, I'll get a job at the railroad station, trucking companies and everything, I was able to get a job. So we got to Denver and we, I was, got a job for one trucking company extending truck beds a little longer, fishplate, so I was busting a few nickels, asked for the railroad station and they asked, "You got ten years' experience?" I says, "How am I gonna get ten years' experience? I just got out of the army." But they looked at me and he, a "Jap." They didn't want to hire me. Another trucking company looked at me, "I'm sorry, there are no jobs. We'll call you when we're ready." They never did call me, but this one company says, well, to extend the trucking beds a little longer, after busting a few knuckles on that. Then in the meantime, I was, part-time I was working in a grocery store, and then I says, "What am I doing this for? Think I'll go to the post office, there's no discrimination in the post office." So I applied for the post office and got in the post office. Thirty-two years in the post office, I retired.

TI: So I want to ask you, going back to your, your military service, how did that change you? When you think about Joe Sakato in Phoenix before the war, and Joe in now Denver after the war, how did that experience change you?

GS: It didn't change me too much, it's just a matter of, Distinguished Service Cross was nothing.

TI: Or I'm thinking about maybe the friends dying, maybe just your outlook on life. I mean, did that change because of, of seeing how quickly life can end or things like that?

GS: Well, that's why we had to take a trip to, me and my brother had to get away from this war by taking a trip to visit different places. So we had a friend that used to live in Colton, was living in Indianapolis, Indiana, so we went to see him and his family in Joliet, and so we talked to him and then came to Denver. So this kind of got our minds off the war. And as far, if I had to stay home and think about the war, I don't think, you know... I, to me, I have to talk about it. If I had to keep it in here, I think I would go crazy. That's why I thought in my mind I'd rather talk about it, so I'd get it out of my mind, get it out.

TI: And so in those decades after the war, who would you talk to about the war? Would it be Bess?

GS: Anybody. Anybody wanted to inquire about what happened, so I tell him how it was. I had to keep it... 'cause sometimes I had nightmares, I'd get up, I'd be laying on my back and I thought, "Oh, the Germans stabbed me in the back," you know. But, "Oh, I'm home." Or I get a pain somewhere else, got that, "Did I get hit, concussion?" When I look, "Oh, I'm home." That's, now and then I have a few nightmares, think about, horror, but after I realize where I'm at, then it passes. But if it was still dark or something, then I look, "Where am I?" and then I, I have another thought that I'm still at war. I usually talk about, that's... so when I finally got out and I got, retired from the post office, thirty-three years, "What am I gonna do now?" So we take trips here and there and I talk about it, and then, then somebody'd invite me somewhere and I talk to them about, different schools wanted me to talk with them.

<End Segment 41> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.