Densho Digital Archive - Shig Kaseguma Interview (denshovh-kshig-01-0023)

<Begin Segment 23>

RP: Yeah, so you ended up at Fort Snelling and what was that? What was training?

SK: Training was intense. Very intense. Not like you go to college and you're on your own. But there they're hammering you all the time, day and night. Not night, but day, all day long, they go from class to class. It was very intense.

RP: And did you receive any specialized training in a particular area like some guys learned radio operation, some learned how to write propaganda.

SK: No, because, we were about, a little over half through. And I think from then on, maybe they would have sectioned us off. You go to this kind of class, that kind of class. But we were still going at it full blast, learning the basic Japanese. And then the war ended. All of the sudden they said, "The war ended." [Laughs] So what's gonna happen? They said, "Well, you guys are gonna be shipped out." Oh yeah, but we didn't finish school yet. "Doesn't matter. You guys are goin'." So by October, we were on the boat and ready to go. We went to Yokohama.

RP: Yokohama, uh-huh.

SK: In fact, it was so stormy, it was the worst storm. Brand new liberty ship, and we had toilet, the toilet was flooding. And we crossed the international borderline twice, it pushed us all the way back, and we went back again. And we blew an engine. So we were on the auxiliary, and we finally pulled into Yokohama.

RP: How long was that?

SK: Everybody got sick.

RP: Yeah, was that about a two week trip or something?

SK: Oh, it was fourteen days, it took us.

RP: That's the longest you'd ever been on a boat.

SK: Oh, yeah. But I'd never got sick. There was only about ten of us that went to dinner or lunch and breakfast. Everybody else was sick.

RP: Did you have any expectations about what you were gonna see when you got to Japan?

SK: No idea. We knew that the atom bomb fell in Hiroshima and (Nagasaki). But we didn't know how much Yokohama and Tokyo were hit. But when we saw Yokohama, we knew that it was really bombed. Especially at night, you realize, oh, my God, it was dark. And we went to Zama, which was a camp for military personnel. When we first got there, they shipped us right away. We got on a train and we went to, got on the buses, went to Zama, which is a little far away from Yokohama. But it was so dismal at night. There was hardly any light. And they wouldn't let us roam around anyway, 'cause they didn't know how we'd be treated out there. But it was quite an experience when we first got there. I thought, "So this is war. Oh, God, this is what happens to a city."

RP: Even Tokyo worse with firebombing.

SK: No, Tokyo wasn't quite as bad. But Yokohama was worse, especially on the waterfront. They were trying to hit the shipping lanes, so it was quite a experience. But being pretty naive about these wars, I'd never seen war before. You really don't realize what happened. But all the people that were killed and houses were burned down. Because the Japanese homes are built pretty flimsy, you know. You caught a fire here, the whole area gets burned out. It was quite a experience. I think everybody was kinda silenced by all that they saw going, driving through when we first got there.