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AL: To skip forward again, so you said you went to Camp Hood? From there where did you go?

EO: From there... I finished my basic training there. And we were told to prepare for embarkation to Europe, as replacement for the 442. One week before we were scheduled to go to the port of embarkation, the POE, two of us in the battalion was sent up to G2, to MISLS, language school, Military Intelligence Service, in Minnesota. And I was sent up there. I didn't want to go. I wanted to be with my buddies and go to Europe. But they sent us up there. We ended up in an area called the Turkey Farm. A little square building about, oh maybe 15 feet square. It looked like a turkey barn so they called it the Turkey Farm.

AL: Why do you think they chose you to go to the MIS?

EO: Yes, you know, I found out later, I gathered what it was. See, while we were in, up there at Fort Snelling, I wanted to get into the military and go to Europe. Another kid and I, we tried to apply for like the airborne, to get in the airborne, we tried the army, we tried everything but they wouldn't release us. And he went down into Military Language School there. I went for a while. But I wanted to get out real bad and be in the fighting. So they sent me to see the major, it was Major John Aiso, he later became a colonel. But Aiso and... we were talking about it. But then going up to see him, I had to take my personnel file. When we got into the military, before we... I think it was probably during the period of our pre-induction physical, or it could have been during our physical, going into induction. We had to take an IQ test. It covered the radio signals, you know, "beep, beep, beep," radio signal, mechanical aptitude, and our general IQ. I looked at that, if I still remember correctly, I looked at my radio IQ, my score on that was about a sixty-three. I was an idiot on that sound thing. I looked at my mechanical IQ, it was about a hundred and sixty something.

AL: Wow.

EL: It was really good. And then I went and looked at my general IQ -- I don't mean to brag by telling you this -- but it was a hundred and twenty, twenty-one or something like that. I can't remember. And that was probably one of the reason they sent me up to G2. We knew that a hundred and ten or a hundred and eleven and we were eligible for OCS, Officer Candidate School. But for G2, mine was hundred and, I guess it was hundred and twenty-one.

AL: So what, how did you serve in the MIS?

EO: I went to the school there and when I tried to get out I told John Aiso, Major Aiso, that I wanted to get out of Japan, Japanese school because I didn't want anything to do with Japanese. Now, we were raised as Americans. Going back a ways, I remember going to grade school. We went with the neighbor's kids, Ted Olson, and we would talk about what our fathers did. Ted said, "My dad works for the WPA." Work Project Administration. "He drives a caterpillar tractor for them, grading the roads. He makes $30 a month." I said, "Thirty dollars a month? Wow." I got home, I went to Dad, said, "Dad, Teddy's dad works at the WPA making $30 a month. Why don't you go work for the WPA, too?" Dad looked at me and said, "I can't. I'm an alien. I can't work for the WPA." Another big throw, big rock into my feelings. I didn't want to be a Japanese because of these little discrimination things. I didn't want to be. And that's the reason when I went to G2, that carried me over. I didn't want to be a Japanese. So I didn't want anything to do with Japanese. And when Dad tried to teach us Japanese, he gave us little Japanese elementary books. Talked about Momotaro and all that, all the little things. Now I kind of learned that, few of the kanji. I was able to write my name, various different things about kanji. Like "kawa" was a very easy one to remember, looked like a river, you know, running. All those things. But I didn't want to be a Japanese. And I told Major Aiso, "I want to get out of it. No, I don't want it. I want to go overseas." But anyway, I ended up on headquarters company. And two time I worked in the battalion, school battalion, twenty-five hundred students plus the personnel, I guess it was. Mail, and finally they put me in the battalion rations division. And I was in the butcher shop and I even learned how to cut meat, probably because of weightlifting because I carried quarters of beef from downstairs up the stairs, upstairs to the meat cutting block, and cut meat there. Ended up in charge of the (shop) where some of the kids were beginning to become discharged after the war ended. I ended up in charge of that, taking care of the rations for the school battalion. And when it came time to move the school battalion to the Presidio San Jose -- Monterey, I moved the operation to Monterey, set up the shop down there, and had some of the folks that worked for me take over, take care of that. And I got my discharge.

AL: So you never... they respected your request not to go to Japan then?

EO: Not to learn Japanese.

AL: Not to learn Japanese.

EO: Yeah. I would have gone to Japan, but not for Japanese.

AL: That's interesting. I'm surprised they didn't send you back to the 442.

EO: Well, I was hoping that they would.

AL: Uh-huh.

EO: Yeah, to Europe. We tried to get into the airborne, too. No luck.

AL: So after you were discharged, where did you go and what was your career?

EO: Dad was farming in, I think it was in Roy, Utah, at that time. So I went to Roy. No, wait a minute. He was farming in Layton, Utah. Layton... he was sharecropping tomatoes. So I went down there and helped him with the farm the first summer after I got out. And, I can't remember... then the second summer, he did some more. But I ended up helping him and also hauling a lot of the tomatoes from the farms nearby to the cannery up in Ogden. But then, later on, I got out. I did various different work for different people. But I ended up in Roy, Utah. Dad moved there, that's where he died. And then after that I moved down to Murray, Utah, stayed with folks I became friends, my youngest brother was friends with them. That was Tadehara. He was from, George was in the 442. He was in Europe and he was with the group that was with the "Rescue of the Lost Battalion." He came home, fifty years later he got in the mail his bronze star.

AL: That's slow. What... the, did your father become a citizen in 1952?

EO: He died in '48.

AL: Oh, so he never had a chance.

EO: He died an alien.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.