<Begin Segment 9>

LT: On December 7, 1941...

SI: Yeah, Pearl Harbor happened on December 7th. And Katsumi Sato was my neighbor, and we were buddies, so Kats and I went to selective service vote in Hood River, told them we'd like to get in the service. So January 6th, I think, within a month of Pearl Harbor, we volunteered to be selected in social security -- not social security -- as a draftee for the Hood River county. So we were the first, Kats and I were the first Nihonjin that was in the, went to service. Of course, up to then, there was already a draft going on for a couple, three years with numbers. I think like Taro Asai, Bill Yamaki, Sho Endo, they were already drafted, so they were in the service already. So Kats and I went into Fort Lewis, and they sent us to a place called Camp Grant, Illinois, which was, they call it medical, administrative corps, and that's where we took our basic. But meantime, all the draftees that were drafted after Pearl Harbor, and there were some Niseis already in the service. So they didn't know what to do with us, so they were sending a lot of Niseis from California and all the different places to kind of put 'em over there at Camp Grant, working in the hospital complex and ordinance. Not ordinance, but, oh, yeah, department that furnishes clothes and food and things. So there was quite a group of Niseis gathered at Camp Grant. We were just put to work, whatever work there was running a hospital, ward boy to cook or anything. So I was just stuck in an office, and I was pretty lucky. I didn't have to do no physical work. [Laughs] Stuck in an office, and had to learn to run the office. We had a lot of paperwork. But it was quite an experience, 'cause you deal with an officer, work with an officer. He kind of keeps you going all day long. Even when we have that spare time, he says, "I'll teach you how to play cribbage." [Laughs]

LT: So you took basic training at Camp Grant. I don't know a lot about basic training. Can you talk about what happens there?

SI: Oh, just soldiering. You have to, they always did calisthenics in the morning, and then they had to do marching or hikes. They have to go to, they had to go to a lot of training like they used to have a gas mask drill, which was kind of a, everybody had to know how to use a gas mask. And that was quite a thing, 'cause in order to go learn the gas mask drill, we had to march about five miles or so, get to the, they had a big room, little bigger than this, maybe. Anyway, they'd take a squad, platoon, for a gas mask drill, and you'd have to put on a mask, they'd teach you how to put it on and test it. And in order to really test the gas mask, they would put out a tear gas in a room. And you got your mask on, and it worked, so you don't feel the tear gas. But the last minute before you go out, one by one, they said, about five or six foot from the door, they say, "Take off your mask and you can get a whiff of it." So that gives you confidence to wear the mask. That was quite an experience.

LT: I can imagine so.

SI: But the thing that really personally, to me, when I went to that mask, gas mask drill, when I got home, I developed... I guess that tear gas was on my fatigue collar, and I developed a rash around my neck. And I had that dang rash all through my service life. And the army didn't know what to do with it. But the good thing happened was when I got home and started farming, we were putting on the spray called Firbam, which was black like a charcoal black powder, black powder, but it was a fungicide. And when I got home and started farming and I got that thing on there, before I knew, it cleared out. I think it was about the second or third year after I got home. I didn't realize that that bacteriacide was putting on our fruit was that helpful. And that cleared up. So when I got discharged, they gave me a disability for having that rash. But as soon as it cleared up, they said, "You're off." [Laughs] So I didn't have a permanent disability.

LT: So you moved to work with the medical administrative corps?

SI: Yeah, that was just kind of basic. They didn't teach you anything medical about it. But then we were just learning the base to be a soldier is all, for about, I think it was four or six weeks, four weeks, I think. Well, week of that, I got a mumps, I was in the hospital for a week, so I missed out on some of that training.

LT: But you did learn about litters?

SI: Well, they said they practiced putting the people, carrying it, you know. But my squad, they're all six-footers, so they said, "You get on it. You don't need to carry," so I was always a patient. [Laughs]

LT: And how did your size vary from the six-footers?

SI: No, I wasn't that tall like those guys. Six-footers, so they're all big guys.

LT: Sure, sure. So during your military career, did you get promoted?

SI: Yeah. After about, I think six or seven months, they gave me one stripe. Buck, you don't have no stripe, you get one stripe. Then the next is two stripes. But it took me about six months, they gave me one stripe. But the second stripe, I didn't get it for just about a year or so. My officer said, "We'd better go see what's wrong here." So we went to the, they call it provost marshal office. Anyway, we went there, and found out that when the FBI raided our (home), start of the war, raided our... they raided all the Japanese houses to see what they got, they were turning in guns and radios and all that stuff. Anyway, they found a... I happened to send an aerial view of Camp Grant map, pretty good sized paper like this home to my sister. And they saw that map at the home, so they just marked it up as something fishy, I guess. Anyway, they said, "That's the reason you're not getting another stripe." So I told them, "You were selling that thing in the store," what they call PX in the store, in the camp. It was openly sold. I said, "Nothing there." I just thought it might be interesting to see what kind of camp it was. So after that, they gave me another stripe, after that session. [Laughs]

LT: Well, eventually you went to Honolulu and served there. Can you talk about that?

SI: Well, that was... see, during '42... about the beginning of '43, they were asking all the Niseis either make a choice. I was there, what, two years, two full years, '44, I think, '43... around the end of '43 or '44, they were telling the Niseis to make a choice. Go to Military Intelligence School or go to what they call combat unit, 442nd. And I wasn't going to volunteer for anything, but eventually they sent me to a place called Camp Savage, which is the beginning of a school there for Japanese language. And I wasn't very happy there anyway because... anyway, they put me into a school and I wasn't learning fast enough. So about two or three months, they said, "Oh, you can't make it," so they shipped us out of there.

And we ended up in, us outcasts were, ended up in an MP unit. And the MP unit was supposed to be what they call prisoner of war processing unit, so the unit composed of about six or eight Nisei, and it was photographer, fingerprinter, and a few other people. Anyway, they made a unit, I guess it's, they had two or three of those units was made. So when the prisoner was captured, it was supposed to make a personnel record of the prisoner for the International Red Cross. So we were used as an interpreter for the prisoner of war. Well, you all heard that Japanese never got captured, 'cause they all either committed suicide or they just got (killed), they didn't have a real Japanese prisoner of war camp itself. So over there in Honolulu, they had a prisoner of war camp, but there were not, quote/unquote, "Japanese," they were young Koreans. And the Koreans were drafted by Japan as a support for the troop, young Koreans were used as support for the Japanese soldiers. So there was, I guess eventually, there was about one thousand Koreans captured. But I ended up in a prisoner of war camp in Honolulu called Honouliuli, and that was just strictly prisoner of war camp for Koreans. They were all young Koreans, soldiers of our age, that captured all of our Pacific islands. So I read in the internet news that eventually that had one thousand Koreans imprisoned in Hawaii. We had over three hundred where I was stationed. And then at that Honouliuli camp, Niseis were used, supposed to be kind of a translator and whatnot, but all we did was guard duty, twenty-four hours for two years.

LT: So can you talk about your guard duty was like?

SI: Well, we had to, they had their twenty-four hours on the post or walking around the fence, just playing guard duty, that's all.

LT: What did you think of it?

SI: We had a, the camp itself was just tents, over there, so it was just a tent for us. But we had a little building, I think there was six or eight of us, slept in that building, protect that building. And we had a few of those for us, so all we did was two years of guard duty, not much translation or anything like that.

LT: Well, thank you.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2013 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.