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LT: Well, in January 1945, you got notice that you were to be drafted, and you were in camp. So what did you think about that, and what did you do?

TT: Well, not much I could do, but I guess I didn't think too much about it because everybody else was going in anyway ahead of you. So if you didn't go in with them, you start wondering how come they haven't called me yet. I was one of the later ones, I guess. So we just marched waiting to go in.

LT: So the United States government was asking you to serve while your family was in camp behind barbed wires. Was that a predicament for you at all?

TT: Everybody said it wasn't right, but then it just happened, so there's nothing we could do about it, or I could do about it, anyway.

LT: Your father said that he was worried when you went into the army. He told me, "If you go into the army, maybe die, so I can't see him again. Do I don't like to go army. No, I don't tell. All I said was goodbye." What do you remember about leaving your father and your mother and going into the army?

TT: Well, I don't remember anything. My dad came -- when we left, he came to see us off, but my mother didn't, but my dad, I remember he came to see the bus off going to the camp. All he did was give me some money to spend, so that was about it.

LT: Okay. He didn't tell you how he felt?

TT: Huh?

LT: He didn't tell you how he felt?

TT: No.

LT: Did he give you any advice?

TT: No.

LT: So where did you go for your training, and what do you remember about your training?

TT: We went to a place called Camp Walters in Texas, and we trained there for about three weeks, I guess. And from there, we went to Fort Meade as the kind of gathering place to go overseas. So we all went there, and from there, we took a ship to Italy. But all of us had trained together for the gathering there, all the Niseis. Half of them went to Italy and then half of them went to Fort Snelling in Minnesota to the intelligence training, I guess, to go to Japan. Just because you trained with them, you didn't go to the same place. I don't know how they separated us, or if somebody asked to go there, I don't know.

LT: And in September 1945, you went to Italy. What do you recall about that? Where did you go and what did you do?

TT: Where did I what?

LT: Where did you go in Italy and what was your role?

TT: We landed in Naples, Italy, then they shipped us up north where all the, place called Leghorn, where most of the Nisei camps were up there, so we got stationed there for, in different companies. And we got sent to different companies. We just did, I don't know what we did, we did some yard work. And then I'd go around as a train guard from Naples, hauling supplies, army supplies for all the camps up there, north. So I guess the ships came in to Naples and unloaded there, and with the train, they're going up north to different camps, so they needed some guards to guard the train while we were going up there, so I got on the train guard there for a while.

LT: And the war was over, so you were taking the supplies to the Allied camps.

TT: Yeah.

LT: And at some points, you also served as a guard at prison camp.

TT: Yeah, where we were stationed, I was in I Company. Right near there, there was a German prisoner of war camp, and our job was to go on the tower and guard it, different shifts.

LT: And can you talk about what it looked like and the prisoners who were there and what your job was?

TT: What we were supposed to do was watch from the tower that nobody escaped. But I don't even remember what the camp looked like, prison camp. All I saw was the edge of the camp, so I don't know how to... although those prisoners, they came into our camp and did some work for us, for the U.S. Army camp, like our company. Our company barber was a German prisoner of war, and they did other odd jobs, I guess.

LT: When they did jobs for you, were they protected in any way, or did they have armed guards on them?

TT: No. They were free to run around in our camp. Being a barber, they were, nobody was guarding them. I don't think they would have escaped anyway. They probably didn't know where to go if they escaped. They were just like another soldier, only they are a German soldier. Because at that time, there were a lot of German prisoner of war in the United States even, because of, like, when we went to Camp Patrick Henry to board a ship to go overseas. Those guys working in the mess hall were all German prisoners of war that were sent over to the U.S. earlier.

LT: Okay, thank you.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2014 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.