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AC: So what year did you join the service?

JS: 1941.

AC: So 1941 that you joined.

JS: I picked my time. I went to the recruiter and I said, "I'd like to go in in July." So I went after the Fourth of July. In those days, why, you had to be 1-A, if you're gonna volunteer. I don't know if you were, when you were drafted, whether you could be drafted 1-A or 1-B or something like that. But generally they wanted 1-A, and so I gone under training with a bunch of guys here in Ontario, went to Portland. When my dad told the neighbors, why, we had a bunch of Japanese families here at the city park, had a watermelon feed. And some of those other guys were going [inaudible], you could see what was going on. One of 'em tried to take all my money away from poker, 'cause these Japanese have a habit of giving you an envelope. Darn, first thing I know I'm getting in a little poker game and geez, I'm losing every hand. I can't figure that out. That god dang guy was a card shark. [Laughs] He wanted me to keep playing, and finally I wised up and I decided, this is no good, I won't have any money left. Then we went to Portland, and that's were our reception center was. We, some of the fellows went out on a 2 the next day 'cause they didn't pass, and you get a nice send-off from home and then you don't make it, you got to come home. I was especially worried about that, but I had no trouble passing. I went from, went from Portland to, then we went up to Fort Lewis, Washington, and we were processed out of Fort Lewis to... I don't know what you call it. One of 'em was my reception center, anyway, and the other one, Fort Lewis, we were processed to go someplace. I don't know who, I don't know how they split us up, but I went with a bunch to Camp Grant, Illinois, which is near, that's near Billois, Wisconsin. It's Rockford, Rockford is the place where I went to. And in those days it was four months training, seventeen weeks of training, and it was all, it was all, we all trained together for seventeen weeks. Now the service says you go so many weeks and you learn basic military training, and then you go into specialized areas. In those days you didn't do that. So went, got our twenty-one dollars a month and we survived for four months. And then it was still peacetime, so we were given options of where we wanted to be assigned to. They gave us two choices. You could pick your first two choices, and I don't think they named the post. You had to be familiar with where you wanted to go, I guess. Well, I asked for Gallant Field in Boise, Idaho. It was a small post then, but I came here, and I was here for two months, I think, until right after Thanksgiving. Then I got orders to ship out to go overseas, and so I was with a delegation ship to San Francisco and we were put on Angel Island. I don't know whether you know where Angel Island is or not. Just about there, beyond the prison island. We spent, I think until December 6th.

On December 6th they put us on a ferry, brought us back to shore and took us to, trucked us over to a place called Fort Mason, and that was the embarkation point. And so on the afternoon of December 6th we sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge, and I remember, I don't know why this figure still sticks in my mind, but it's five o'clock on Saturday afternoon, we're going under the Golden Gate, headed for Manila. Well, our orders were Manila, first go to Hawaii, and it was a three-week trip to Manila, but I forget how many days it was to Hawaii. And we were gonna get off and have some exercises or training, just to keep us occupied maybe. I don't know how much additional training they would've given us there, but we were on a ship, USS President Grant. Anyway, it was a President Line ship, and the army had taken 'em over, and I was on the Grant. And I think we were the slowest ship out on the Pacific, because we were attacked the next day at Pearl Harbor. I think it was about noon the came -- we were out on the ship, and kind of a funny situation too, I'm, only about one or two Japanese on that whole ship, but we weren't, nothing was, nobody was prepared for war, either mentally or physically. I mean, we had two-and-a-halfs tied on deck, roped down, I think they were all two-and-a-halfs, and the ship was then adapted to being a military transport. And we slept down in the, I don't know how close to the bottom was. It was pretty bad; we weren't clear to the bottom 'cause in the, at the bottom there was, the kitchen was down there, and so the smell was constantly coming, the kitchen, from there. But, so on December 7th we were out there wallowing around, and I don't know whether we were doing, going either direction. But the word was, it finally came, I guess, that all the ships were supposed to head for the nearest destination. Monday morning we're back in port in San Francisco. But I remember December 7th. The ocean was rough and the sergeant, they had non-coms in charge of groups, so sergeant wanted me to go, wanted to know if I can go up on a crow's nest, watch for submarines. I don't know if they wanted throw me overboard or what, but I said, "I'm too sick. I can't go up there." But doesn't that sound kind of stupid, though, having guys up there? We didn't even know what a periscope looked like. I'm supposed to try to spot 'em, I guess. Anyway, so our orders read to report to General MacArthur in Manila on a certain date, three weeks from the time we departed. So that was my experience overseas, as far as I ever got.

So we came back into... I think four days' quarantine, tied up in San Francisco. I remember getting even, getting a pass or two while we were tied up there, and one of my friends from Emmet, just a town over here, he had been drafted earlier in the year, so he was in Port, Fort San Francisco. Anyway, he had, I don't know where he, where his first station was, but they started a language school and that first language school was at, in California. There used to be a little airport there, Quonset-type huts there, and they became their quarters, and that was the start of the language school. But I remember meeting him, and we went out a few times, had dates with some of the girls that he'd met. And of course, Japantown was boarded up then, so people didn't know what they were gonna do and it was a pretty tough time. But I've, I listened to the Rose Bowl game -- it was a transplanted. That's the only time a Rose Bowl game hadn't been played in the Rose Bowl. It was, it moved over to Duke, I think, in Durham, North Carolina. Duke and Oregon State played the Rose Bowl that year. So we listened in the day room or something there on Angel Island. Interesting things can happen in a place like that. That's all it was, just a place for guys to live and eat and sleep until they got shipped out. And I was fortunate enough on that Christmas to get a weekend pass, so another fellow and I, a big Caucasian fellow and I, he was a good cook, and anyway, he and I ended up with, billeting with a family who was, this Japanese kid that lived, came from San Francisco, Louie. He was on KP and he couldn't get loose, so we filled in for him, not to see his folks, but to see his Caucasian family, this lady and two daughters. So we spent Christmas with that family, so I had some good times there, despite the fact that it was terrible times for the Japanese civilians.

We came back on the post on, after the, our weekend pass and heard about the food poisoning. Some turkey had gotten contaminated, and all this garrison was was just a place to, like I say, eat and sleep. I don't know how many thousand soldiers were there, but I don't recall whether -- there was east and west garrison -- I don't remember whether it was both garrisons or just one garrison, but they had food poisoning. And I mean, the latrine, that latrine must've been a block long, almost, every one of 'em stopped, plugged, toilets plugged up. And they said you look out there on the beach at night, you can see all the guys lined up on the beach takin' a crap, vomiting or whatever. If you never been food poisoned you don't know how bad it is, but I have, and I know how it is. But we stayed there until the, it was later January or somewhere. I ended up on a troop train going to, back to Fort Lewis, and in Fort Lewis I was assigned to a tank destroyer battalion, as a medic on there. I was given a choice what I wanted to do, even though it was after Pearl Harbor, and I was treated fairly all the time. And everyone, the guys on the post at Fort Lewis, all the Nisei, were taken off duty and they moved over to a tent city somewhere. I don't know whereabouts in Fort Lewis it is, but they, they were doing nothing. But they could get passes to go to Tacoma or wherever.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.