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HH: And after you graduated from Lehigh as a chemical engineer, what did you do?

AO: Well, we have to go back a little. In my senior year, of course, Pearl Harbor occurred December 1941. And as a consequence, when I graduated, no one would want to have a Japanese American working in their area. However, a friend of mine who was a chem, chemist, got me a job in a German electroplating plant up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. And I worked there at a very low salary and stayed there working as a chemist for the plant. However, I heard about the Japanese American unit being formed as a fighting unit during 1942, '43. And I thought that it was my duty as a son to help my brothers and help my parents out to be recognized as someone who had a person in the army. So I volunteered for the Japanese American unit. And when I volunteered for the Japanese American unit, we... at that time, we were classified in the draft board as 1-A or 4-F, 1-A being able for military duty, 4-F for a medical disability. And all of us Japanese Americans were classified as 4-C whether we had a citizenship or not, and 4-C is the classification which made you an "enemy alien." So when they decided to form this 442nd unit, we had to volunteer for that unit. And when I volunteered for that unit, I had a three-month FBI investigation of my character, starting from everyone that knew me from when I moved into the Willow Grove area, Abington area, through the high school through all the schools, through the college, and everybody that I knew, and I was classified and reclassified as being 1-A, so that I could join the unit. When I went into the unit after I passed the physical, they said, "You know that you're only able to join the Japanese American fighting unit." I said, "Yes, that is why I volunteered."

HH: And what was your experience in the unit?

AO: I went all the way through. I was among the last three hundred volunteers to train with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team in Camp Shelby, Mississippi. I went overseas with them, I went through four campaigns, I got three Purple Hearts, one Bronze Star, and four campaign stars. I came out of it in the November of 1945, and came home before the actual unit all came home. In fact, when the unit actually came home, these were practically all replacements, so most of us who were original members, came home before that.

HH: This was a very special unit.

AO: It certainly was. It was made up of all Japanese Americans. The original group was made up of all Japanese Americans who volunteered for that unit. I would say approximately half were from Hawaii and half were from the camps. Now, very little has been said about those in the East Coast who volunteered, and there were quite a number of us, and I have yet to see anything written down saying this many people, or so and so has volunteered from the East Coast for that unit. When we joined the unit down there, many of the officers were white, most of the officers were white. There were a few that were Japanese Americans. And, of course, by attrition and being wounded and so forth and so on, the numbers soon became so that we were getting almost half and half, white and Japanese Americans.

HH: This was a unique experience for you being with so many Japanese Americans probably for the first time in your life?

AO: It was like taking any white person and putting him into a community of all Japanese. Because I had never seen so many Japanese in all my life as when I stepped off the train and went into Camp Shelby, Mississippi.

HH: And how would you describe your comfort level or lack of it when you joined this group?

AO: I had a very unusual experience. Because, number one, I was East Coast, and there weren't that many East Coast people in the unit. Many, I would say, of the unit that I was with, the company that I was with, half were from Hawaii and half were from the West Coast. And I must say that the people from Hawaii were very pleasant to me, and I find that the people from the West Coast were very, very cliquish, and didn't have much to do with the Hawaiian boys or the East Coast boys. So I made friends first very fast with the Hawaiian boys, and then with the West Coast boys. However, during the war and after the war, I have very many friends who are from the West Coast and very good friends from the California/Washington/Oregon area.

HH: How would you say that this experience in the service changed your life?

AO: It had changed my life very drastically. Because when I came home, I met my wife here who had been relocated into Philadelphia. And up until that time, up until the time I went into the army, I didn't have much to do with the Japanese or Japanese Americans. So as a consequence, meeting my wife and wanting to go out with her and so forth, I had to associate with the all-Japanese, Japanese American crowd, which was the JACL, the Japanese American Citizens League. And I forget that I think there was a, another group called the Nisei Steering Committee at that time in Philadelphia. And I had to become acquainted with those people because they were the people that she associated with. So to be able to go out with my wife and to get to know her better, I had to associate with that group rather than the Caucasian group that I was used to going with.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 1994 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.