Densho Digital Archive - Jim Onchi Interview (denshovh-ojim-01-0007)

<Begin Segment 7>

SG: When you were, you said during World War II, you lived here in Portland. Tell me about that.

JO: World War II, I was in Gresham. There's three of us that went together, was in Fort Warren, took my basic in Robertson, Arkansas, I believe. Then I was in Fort Wyoming, Fort Warren. Then they shipped us to Mississippi where they formed the 442 Combat Team. I was one of the early, first one to be in, when they started, activated the 442 combat.

SG: Did you join the army before the internment camps?

JO: No. Internment camp came after I was in the army, and my brother and my mother was farming. And in fact, I had a share in the farming also, and I had sell out everything practically for nothing. So I couldn't see my brothers, my mother for a whole year because they didn't allow us soldier to go on furlough to the West Coast. So I didn't see the family even though I had furlough leave. I just went to the other, Minidoka camp. And after the family moved to Jerome, Arkansas, I was able to go visit them over there in the camp. And that's where I met the other people, my father, I mean my mother, my brother, and that's where I first met my wife even though she come from Portland. I didn't know her in Portland, so I met her in Jerome, Arkansas. And then I went on a leave there from where I was, and I got married there in camp after, on a three-day pass, and we were there in Mississippi.

SG: How did you feel when you heard, you're in the army, how did you feel when you heard that they were rounding up Japanese Americans and putting them into internment camps?

JO: Well, to be honest, I didn't know about it. We did, everything was a secret when I was in Fort Warren. I was in Gresham when the war broke out. I just went to like Vancouver, Washington, just for ride how it feels having the war with Japan and how the people here react to it. So of course, right away, I'm being a Japanese, it kind of make me wonder, kind of helped that discrimination. I felt that. Well anyway, we didn't have no trouble. I know the people in Hood River had a lot of trouble. But anyway no sooner when the war broke out, well, I got in the army, so I had my basic. There were mostly German people. They were kind of segregated too. So I had my basic training with a lot of German people, you know, and then I was shipped to Fort Warren, Wyoming. I kind of, since I was taking judo, I teach officials over there, judo, a little bit. Then we had order to go to Mississippi, I didn't know where they're going to send us, they just put on the shipping. Those days, we didn't fly. We had to travel on railroad only. So we were sent to Camp Shelby, Mississippi. And that's when I found out we were the first group of cadre to teach the others. There was a big shipment from Hawaii came in, and that's when we, I realized that we're in a special unit, combat unit. I didn't know until then.

SG: Was it hard for you to, what kind of feelings did you have being, fighting for the U.S. and having a sister in Japan at the same time?

JO: Well, it did bother me, yes, but I was over here teaching a lot of the new people coming in and from the camp also. And I was, of course, I knew they had to move the people from the West Coast because it was close to the coastal to Japan. And I couldn't take a furlough leave to the West Coast. I couldn't see my family.

SG: That make you mad?

JO: Of course, I was just a kid yet. So you don't really feel the effects. It was too much, I guess, when you're growing up until you grow up a little bit. You wonder this war really changed our ways and feeling about discrimination, and we did feel quite a bit when we come back for a while.