<Begin Segment 19>

TI: Okay, so Kenji, we're coming back from a break, and we had just gotten you to Minidoka, and kind of some of your first impressions. And we talked about how it was pretty organized in terms of getting you from the train onto a bus, into camp, and then right to your tarpaper barracks. So describe what you did when you got off the bus at your barrack? What was that like?

KO: Well, whoever, like I say, organized it, knew exactly where the bus is supposed to take us. And then someone at the end of the ride said, "Onishi Family is assigned to Barrack Number 1, Apartment B. Of course, the whole experience of being lifted, forced from our home to camp five months prior to this, and a couple years before that had made me so angry, the insults that we endured. But almost -- I don't say almost as soon as we got there, maybe a week or so, the anger, of course, I harbored for three years.

TI: I'm sorry, the three years that you were there?

KO: Yeah.

TI: But how about after? And we'll get into this, but were you angry after the war about what happened?

KO: No. Well, I better not say that I wasn't angry after. But my anger, the stewing that I had inside of me disappeared almost immediately after I was inducted into the service. Because for the, from May (1942) until I was eighteen, I was so angry that I said, "Damn, I'll show them what color my blood is." And I could hardly wait until I was eighteen. And when I passed the preinduction physical and was inducted into service, I said, "Oh, this is the day I get to do, show you who I am," and the anger disappeared.

TI: And it's in many ways, I'm thinking at that point, too, you are just an American GI. You're probably being treated just like every other American there.

KO: Right.

TI: Maybe not well, but you're being treated kind of essentially the same.

KO: Because it was a time when black soldiers were still segregated. And I was now a "white soldier." When we got to... one of the first things that happened when I was in the service was when a train came to the Texas border with New Mexico, they unloaded the train. They unloaded all the people on the train, and then told the black passengers, "You guys get into that train." And the white passengers get to stay in this train. And I'm thinking, "Well, what am I supposed to do?" And someone said, "Well, you go over there with the white people." But it was that way in the service, too. I was a "white" soldier.

TI: So it's really interesting, in some ways I would think, maybe not confusing, but it's very, here you just left a period where because of your ancestry, your race, you were singled out and put into this place, and now you come out, and you're being treated in a very different way. And it sounds like that difference in treatment really kind of shifted your thinking about being bitter or angry, and now, because you're treated this way, you're not as bitter.

KO: Well, just the fact that the government has, three years before that, they shut off the military draft to Niseis by saying "ineligible for military service." And now you're saying, "You are eligible for military service, and we welcome you into our ranks."

TI: Well, and to continue to the military induction, many of the Niseis, I was going to ask you, this was at a time period you came out of Minidoka, the war was either, at this point, either over or just winding down. And a lot of the Niseis were recruited to join the MIS to help with the occupation, especially those Niseis with Japanese language skills because they were needed and they were actively recruited. And so I was curious, so when you were inducted and you went through basic training, what area of the service did you go? Where did you go?

KO: At the time, the Air Corps and the Army were one. The Air Force was formed later in, closer to 1950-something. I just happened to, after the aptitude tests were given, they assigned people according to their aptitude, and I was assigned to the Air Corps.

TI: During those tests, did they ever test for Japanese or ask you about Japanese?

KO: No, no. I did take a Japanese test after I was at, in the weather service, because sometime in late 1946, I don't remember what month it was, but might have been October or November, they did come and ask if I would take a Japanese language test and go to Japan, because they were transferring air bases in Japan back to the Japanese. And I couldn't even read the first word. [Laughs]

TI: I mean, would you have been interested? Then you would probably have to re-up and stay in the military longer.

KO: I was interested... I was hoping to go to Japan, I mean, just because I'd never been there before. But I don't know if I would have... I enjoyed every day of the service, but I don't know if I would have re-upped to do that. [Laughs]

TI: And so where were you stationed?

KO: I was stationed in the Panama Canal zone for my overseas.

TI: And you were doing weather service?

KO: Right, weather observing. It's drawing weather maps from which the forecasters make their analysis.

TI: So it sounds like a, for you, a pretty good job, pretty interesting.

KO: It was.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2014 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.