<Begin Segment 15>

MH: I'm going to go back again to when you were going to school at Brigham Young University. Tell us more about how you felt about the people who were there in Salt Lake, etcetera?

EF: Because when I first got there, they had this shooting at this FSA camp. Boy, I says, people must be pretty hostile around here, I thought. And I came in there all alone, so I really didn't know anybody. But before too long, I mean, other friends had showed up that I knew. So as I said, we all stayed in this basketball gymnasium dorm because that was the only housing available for us. But we later moved into this building, medical building, that had a room for us. Five guys crammed into small quarters, but we managed. There was cooking facilities there too.

MH: You mentioned that you thought people were fairly hostile at Brigham Young. Who ran Brigham Young University? Who ran it? Who actually owned the university?

EF: The Mormons.

MH: The Mormons. So are you saying the Mormons were hostile or --

EF: Well, if there was a, if they were not hostile, I'd like to see that. I'd sure have to see it in writing because I think they're the ones who caused the problem.

MH: So you think they were pretty prejudice against Japanese Americans?

EF: Well, I say they are although they're, I think they are against prejudice, but I think they are very prejudice.

MH: And you felt it when you went there?

EF: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, we felt it, yeah.

MH: You were there you said two quarters, why did you leave?

EF: Because I was getting ready to get drafted.

MH: You were drafted and you went to where?

EF: I went to Camp Fannin, Texas, for basic training. And after seventeen weeks of training, we went to, we were getting ready to go overseas, so we went to Camp Picket, Virginia. But then they decided to send us to Fort Snelling, Minnesota, to the Japanese language school, so about fourteen of us were transferred to Fort Snelling. So I spent six more months there, but I never went to school because they transferred the school to Monterey, California. So in other words, the war was over by then and they didn't quite need that many interpreters, so few of us were left behind, and I was in that group. So we ended up in Kentucky, Campbell, Kentucky, where we finished out our army career with a Signal Corps group where we learned the international Morse code, so we learned something.

MH: So you never got to go overseas?

EF: No.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.