Densho Digital Archive
Oregon Nikkei Endowment Collection
Title: George Nakata Interview
Narrator: George Nakata
Interviewer: Masako Hinatsu
Location: Portland, Oregon
Date: August 23, 2004
Densho ID: denshovh-ngeorge_2-01-0035

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MH: You said you went into the service and came back and went to school on the GI Bill, is that right?

GN: Yes.

MH: College. So what university did you graduate from and what field did you get into?

GN: I went to Lewis and Clark College and graduated there in 1957, and I enjoyed Lewis and Clark very much. I was not a good soldier. I was not built to be a soldier. The truth is I disliked the army, to put it mildly. And when I was drafted in 1953, I found an ARSR regulation, army regulation standard operating procedure that stated if you can register into an accredited university one day after the 21st month, you can be discharged honorably from the U.S. Army. Well, since I went in September 23, 1953, I looked at July 22, 1955, and I targeted a date, rather June, and I targeted that date, and I found that Portland State University summer session starts on that day, so I sent in an application. I was accepted. And rather than travel back on a tramp boat, troop ship, liberty ship taking nine and a half days to cross the Atlantic and half the people getting sick, they wanted to keep me there in Studgaard until a day or so before my discharge, so I was flown from Studgaard, Germany, all the way back to SeaTac, discharged at Fort Lewis, came back to Portland, got off, went to register at Portland State University. So it was quite an interesting way of shortening my tenure of service in the military. Some people may disagree with my attitude, but when I was taking basic at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and one day in our Barrack Company C, we had to all just put the number of educational years that we have had, and I looked at that list and I happened to have the biggest number. The fellow below me went through the third grade. The fellow on the next bunk went through the sixth grade, and there were racial fights between the blacks and the whites. And my sergeant, first question he asked me was, "Soldier, do you speak English?" And I was pulled out of ranks by the company commander during dress rehearsal days, and he pulled me out. And in his thickest Southern drawl, he asked me whether I knew English. I saluted and told him, "Yes, sir." And as I ran back to my ranks, I thought to myself, "Gosh, Colonel, do you speak English?" So having gone through all of that and all the jokes that they played, I went to Germany, and fortunately after two weeks of doing nothing because they wanted to clear me for what's called confidential, secret and top secret, I was cleared for top secret, and I was designing escape routes for the Fifth Army, Sixth Army, in case of conflict with the Soviet Union at that time. So I was drawing all these routes and the bird colonel would go out with these charts and brief the troops out on the lines, and I have to say that it was a very nice position. On these charts because of a little bit of art talent, the colonel, bird colonel, really enjoyed it when I drew a little truck and drew a little tank and drew some troops down here and kind of dressed up his, his chart looked better than any other colonels' charts when they made the briefing, and so he was the one that kept me there until the very last minute and flew me back. I had the low rank of corporal and no bitterness, but did my twenty-one months, came back, went to summer school at Portland State University, not any heavy subjects but taking enough hours to make it legal and then going back to Lewis and Clark. I took management, took marketing. And unusual as it sounds, I got into marketing, but I got into it in the international way, global marketing, exporting/importing, foreign trade. That's what I really got into. But the groundwork that I learned there in terms of marketing and advertising and communications and all the things that are part of the marketing curriculum I think served me well. I graduated with honors, made the Dean's List. The last year there, I was on scholarship from Lewis and Clark. But basically, the question of the GI Bill at that time really paid for even a private institution like Lewis and Clark College. So really the tuition, the lab fees, the books, all of those things were almost completely paid for by the GI Bill. After that, I did go on to the International Marketing School down in Phoenix for a short time. But really, my formal education at the university level was done here in Portland at Lewis and Clark College.

<End Segment 35> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.