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SG: You had mentioned that after, and you went, you decided to go to University of Minnesota?

GK: Yes.

SG: And you worked as a houseboy?

GK: Houseboy.

SG: What was that like?

GK: Oh, okay. I would not let my children do what I did. [Laughs] It's just no fun. I was working for a rather nice family, decent family. My primary responsibility was to take care of a nine year old and a twelve year old boys, and they didn't need taking care of, you know. They were smart kids, and, but someone, they wanted someone to be there when they got home from school, and that was an easy job. So in addition to that, I had to clean the house. I had to shampoo the rugs. I had to do all the yard work. I had to tar the garage roof. And they were business people, and the part I didn't like was they equated every hour that I worked, they gave me thirty-five cents an hour for every hour I worked. So I had to keep track of every minute I worked, you know. And when they ran out of work, the mother wanted me to start the shampooing over again of the rugs. So here I was shampooing this darn rug over and over again just to put in my hours. And if I worked over so many hours, then I'd get spending money, so that wasn't bad. And I didn't eat with the family, and I did the dishes, you know. I just didn't feel like I was part of the family. But it worked out. I survived, I survived, and I didn't have too bad a time.

But later on, I got another job as a houseboy. This is after I was in the service, and that was quite different. I went to the University of Minnesota. So I was working as a houseboy. And then doing all of my studies, I was able to complete two quarters, and then Uncle Sam came after me. "We want you to be in the armed service." So, I said, "Okay. Let me finish the semester, and I'll join up." And so I joined up, and I went into the service in Saint Louis along with a lot of other boys from the Midwestern states, North Dakota, South Dakota, Missouri and all that. And we were sent to Fort Livingston, Louisiana, and I think there must have been a half dozen Nisei boys in the company, all doing well, and we got along fine. And basic training was as bad as everyone says, but the Niseis got through it probably better than most. We were in pretty good shape to begin with. And then after basic training, the question is, to me was, "Where do you want to go? Do you want to go to the, with the 442nd in Europe, become a replacement, or would you want to go to Military Intelligence Service in Minneapolis or in Saint Paul?" Well, that's where I was drafted from, and my girlfriend was there, so I didn't have trouble deciding that, well, I want to go to Minneapolis. So I was assigned to Fort Snelling, Saint Paul, in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and I enrolled in the six month language training program. And so I had a good time in Saint Paul with my girlfriend and learning how to speak Japanese.

And I guess I should say fortunately, before we graduated, the war with Japan ended, and, whereas, we would have been prepared to go to the Pacific anyplace where we were assigned, we went right into Tokyo. And when we got to Tokyo, we got rumors that gee, our graduating class is going to be shipped to the Philippines. And I thought, my gosh, I don't want to go to the Philippines. And then I bumped into this lieutenant who I took basic training with, you know. We were both buck privates in the training program. I says, "Al," he was a lieutenant. He went to OCS while I went to MIS. And I said, "Al, if you can get me a job, get me a job." And he had a job where he traveled around Tokyo in a jeep, and he already had an interpreter, a Japanese interpreter. And he got me another job, so he had two interpreters, one American interpreter and one Japanese interpreter. So I spent my, I didn't go to the Philippines with the rest of the group. I was able to stay in Tokyo and meet all my family, my relatives and families. And that was an experience because I was just in Tokyo for a couple days, and a GI from Seattle came in and said, "Are you George Katagiri from Portland?" And I said, "Yeah." And he says, "I met your cousin." And I says, "Where?" And he says, "On the black market." Well, everything was done on the black market at that time. I says, "You know where he lives?" And he says, "Yeah." I says, "Take me to him." So immediately, I was in touch with all my relatives, well, you meet one cousin, you know where all your relatives are. So I had a good time interacting with my cousins in Tokyo. And of course, I had the cigarettes and I had the soap and I had the candy and things of this type. And my parents had a favorite nephew in the country in Nagano-ken, and I kept them up on what was happening. And they said, "Well, find out how Ichiro is doing." So I wrote to my aunt and uncle in Nagano-ken. And they wrote back, and they says, "Well, Ichiro has been in Manchuria for the past so many years and the last we heard, he was trying to escape from the Russians." And I thought, "Oh, gosh. Well, I'm sorry to hear that. But next week, I'll be back, and I'll have some days off, so I'll come out to see you." And the following week, I went out there, and who's standing there but Ichiro. He'd come home that week, and he was telling me, "George, I came back last Wednesday. And when I going back to the village, I hid in the woods. And when it got dark, I snuck home." So he was ashamed to come home alive, and so he hid in the woods until he could sneak home at night. And immediately I got, beginning to understand the Japanese soldier and all that. So here he was all skin and bones, but he made it. And eventually, I met all my relatives, and I was the conduit through which the soaps and the cigarettes and the candies were sent by my folks. By that time, they were in Chicago. And they worshipped my parents for helping them through these lean years because they were starving because I had nephews who spent their time on the upper branches of trees picking out the new buds and ate them right there on the tree because they were so hungry. And so they were praising my parents for all this. And later on, I was thinking, my gosh, my parents just got out of the internment camps. They have no funds, you know. They were sending them everything they had, and that's the way it was.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.