Densho Digital Archive - Henry Fukuhara Interview (denshovh-fhenry-01-0016)

<Begin Segment 16>

JA: And a lot of what you lost wasn't just money and physical things, was it? In terms of pieces of your life?

HF: Yes, that's true, yeah, because we were just, in our case, we were just, we were just getting on our feet when Pearl Harbor happened. If the Pearl Harbor didn't happen, I don't know what would have, you know, I don't know where we would have gone after that as we continued. But I think the one, one great benefit of the war, Pearl Harbor and evacuation and so on, is that the Japanese people were dispersed all over the United States. Before that, the Japanese people were... they were very much to themselves. They were very much to themselves, they had their associations, they had their, they had their annual picnics of where they came from, their prefectures that they came from Japan, and they were very... what would you say? I would say that they were too much to themselves, and if it wasn't for the war I think that they may still be. And because of the war, a lot of the, the students that graduated high school in camp went to college, not in California, but they all went to colleges in the east, or those that graduated high school, that just graduated, that went to camp, they went east. And those people that are like ourselves, for instance, we went east and started a brand-new life, and I'm sure there were thousands of them that did the same thing. So there were, there were Japanese in the United States today that there weren't there before. Like when we went to Farmingdale, we were the only Japanese in Farmingdale. And when we went to Deer Park, we were the only Japanese in Deer Park until, until the war brides happened to reside in Deer Park, but...

[Interruption]

AL: I'd like to know a little bit more about his brothers in the military, and why they decided to serve, if they were drafted, volunteered, where they served, and if they all survived.

JA: How did your brothers happen to decide to go into the military?

HF: They were... they didn't decide, they were picked -- what do you call them when they were --

JA: Drafted.

HF: Drafted. They were, they were drafted -- they were working for the... they were working for the International Harvester Company in Chicago when they were drafted, my brothers.

JA: And where did they serve?

HF: The, the one next to me, Frank, he went to MIS, but he didn't go overseas. The one next to him, Jimmy, he went to MIS and he went overseas. He went to the Philippines first and then he went to Tokyo, and he worked in the Daiichi Building where General MacArthur was, and he said he used to see General MacArthur every day. And then the third brother, George, he went, he went to Germany and France as occupation. So those were the three that went into the service.

JA: Did they all survive the war?

HF: Yes, because they, they saw no action. You know, they weren't, they weren't in the 442nd or the 100th Battalion, so they were... they had it pretty easy, I would say, as far as being a soldier.

JA: What is MIS?

HF: Military Intelligence Service. That was, they were the ones that went to the South Pacific. In the early part of the war, they went to the South Pacific to be interpreters, where the Japanese were. So, so that's where, that's what the early recruiting, early recruits of the MIS did. But my brother Jimmy went, he went in the tail end so he didn't, he didn't... he went to the Philippines but didn't stay there very long, and he went to Tokyo, so he didn't see any action at all. Yeah, my brothers all went into the service late and so they, so they didn't see any action.