Densho Digital Archive - Jim Tsugawa Interview (denshovh-tjim

<Begin Segment 20>

AC: So when did you graduate high school?

JT: 1951, May of 1951. And then I went to Lewis & Clark College on a scholarship.

AC: What kind of scholarship?

JT: You would ask. Football scholarship. And I played ball for Lewis & Clark for two years. I played behind a guy on our varsity, right halfback, and now, how would you pick? If a kid was six feet one, hundred ninety-five pounds, ran the hundred in ten seconds, and then over here is a five feet three, a hundred and thirty pounds. [Laughs] So I played behind Caley Cook, a nice man, nice guy. And that freshman year we had a championship team. We had a freshman left half, sophomore fullback, right half was a freshman, and then sophomore quarterback, it was all young guys. And we took the championship our freshman year, and then sophomore year we didn't do as well because that front line there was all veterans and big guys, and then they all graduated, and, of course, then we had your, it's the line that makes the back. Okay, then I said I better get out of school because I wasn't a student.

AC: Tell me about that.

JT: And I, geez, I was really a bad student, you know. Missed class, and god, I remember this one course, the guy said, the prof said, "I'll let you guys make it up. Now, you come to class at ten o'clock in the morning and we'll give you the test again," and then we didn't show up, that type of a student. So I withdrew from Lewis & Clark College without a flunk on my record, you know, I didn't want to have a flunk, so I withdrew. And since we, all four of the guys that we just kind of headed for bumsville, we put our name up on the draft list, you know, and by god, that was, December I quit school, February I was in the army during the Korean war.

AC: So what were you doing? Were you just not going to class and just partying?

JT: Yeah, partying and just having a good time and not studying, and it was dumb, just dumb. So I quit school and then went in the army, took my basic training at Fort Lewis, Washington, and those, the Korean War was going hot and heavy, and those guys that fooled around, goofed around, got in trouble during basic, went to Korea, and then I went to our, the good guys were the guys that, good soldiers, I guess you'd say, went to Europe. And we hit the port of Bremerhaven and then we trained down to a place called Zweibrucken. Zweibrucken was a military base that interviewed all the, about eighty-five percent of the troops that hit Germany, or Europe, came through this depot, and you would be assigned a cook, or be assigned an office job, or assigned driver. And at the time, I interviewed with a sergeant, and he said, "You know, Jim, we need another Asian on post." God, at that time, they had this allotment of... and so I interviewed with a captain from Lake Oswego, Oregon, and we talked about, I told him I went over to the lake when I was in high school and swam, and talked about Portland and Lake Oswego, and he said, "You have to take this job." And I said, "You betcha I'll take this job." So I went from a walking soldier to office, and I was in C&A, Classification and Assignment, and I handled the records with a bunch of guys in records. So when the troops came in to Zweibrucken and were interviewed, then say you went to Zweibrucken or Heidelberg, I would have to pull your records and make sure that it went with you to Heidelberg. So when the ships didn't come in, it was like a college campus, you just didn't work. And you fooled around and had all the time in the world to yourself, but when the ships did come in, you worked hard.

AC: So it was lucky that you were a "good soldier" at Fort Lewis.

JT: Yes. [Laughs] Speaking of "good soldiers," after basic training, they let you go out for furlough for a few days, and then I reported to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, the embarkation center for Europe. But I came in white cords and a white shirt, civilian clothes, and I got called before the commander of Camp Kilmer there, and he said, "You don't report to your next station in civilian clothes, you report in military clothes." KP for the rest of the time I was there, okay. So at six-thirty in the morning, you fall us out, and at that time I was a smoker, and it was dark six-thirty in the morning, it was dark, and I was in the back ranks there smoking, which you don't smoke in ranks. And he said, "Who's that smoking in the back ranks there?" And I thought, off limit, and of course the sparks flew, you know. So they picked me out right away. Alton, KP all the way over the Europe on the ship. I never learned. [Laughs]

AC: By KP you mean scrubbing pots?

JT: I scrubbed pots the whole time when I went across the ocean. Geez, it was hot.

AC: And the kitchen is not staying still.

JT: And the kitchen doesn't stay still, but I didn't get sick, thank goodness. But I remember scrubbing those old pots and pans. And then I'd go, stationed at Zweibrucken, and again I played sports again. But on the battalion level, and we played flag football, 'cause it was a small post. And played basketball and softball. And basketball we had a, I think we had the post champion. And then we entered a tournament in Stuttgart, and thank god we came back from, I think, fifteen point deficit in the fourth quarter to beat these MPs. Yeah, so I think we won one game and lost a game, and then we had to go get out. But it was a fun time. And then softball we were the base champs. We had an Afro-American pitcher, Bennie was his name, heck of a, fast. So when I played second base, I was over mostly almost by the first baseman, because they never get around you. So that was my duty there in Zweibrucken, and my section chief said, "Jim, doesn't that bother your conscience that you take off for practice and do that? And he said, I told him, no, it doesn't bother me at all. So I would get off work to go practice basketball, football, softball. And, Alton, those fellows that I met, you know, that I bonded with over there, I still, we still keep in contact. Let's see, how many have... two have passed away. But god, one became a lawyer, one became a dentist, one became a professor at the University of Minnesota, one became a CPA in Michigan. Let's see, what else? Oh, then one became a basketball coach, athletic director, and then he was inducted into the athletic director's hall of fame for the state of Illinois. And then Fernley was, owned a service station garage. Geez, they really amounted to something.

AC: What about the four guys, the others, there were four of you who joined up the army originally? What happened to the other three guys?

JT: The other three guys, this guy named Dick Wise said, "Jim, let's go do airborne, parachute." Says, "We'll get to stay in the States longer." And I said, "No way am I jumping out of airplanes. I'll take my chances in Korea." Ed Zirflew, we had a company party for graduation, we had a company party, chick and a beer, and we ended up getting a case of beer out of the PX, and then we had a, somebody had a car and we went into some woodsy area. Zirflew was climbing a tree and he fell out of the tree and broke both wrists. He was Tarzan. And the other guy, he passed away early. Then Ed ended up in... I can't remember the name of the camp, in California as a clerk, company clerk. But Wise would write to me every now and then, he'd say, "Here I am up in this airplane. What in the hell am I doing up here?" [Laughs]

AC: Was he posted to Korea?

JT: No, he stayed right there. He was a tough bugger, and he was not that big. He was probably about 5'7", probably 165, but he played army ball with, geez, some of the big guys. He was a tough one, he really was very good. He matured after high school. He was a young senior.

AC: Whatever happened to the guy who broke his wrists?

JT: He became a schoolteacher and retired as a schoolteacher. He's the one that just passed away.