(Japanese) If you look at Argentine history until now, Nikkei have been fairly well trusted. In Argentina we are called Japonés. We get put into a particular place socially by being Japonés, but basically we are entrusted with a high degree of confidence. So my immediate supervisor was still quite young — an army warrant officer just out of college — and I became a close associate of his, being in charge of communications.
Communications was a very different thing back then. You had to carry around the radio was in a huge box, which weight about 7 kg. And you couldn’t just charge the radio; it needed about twelve batteries to work. So I was assigned to manage it and be in charge of communication with a headquaters. In terms of communications, some messages were encrypted. So I was told that I had to remember all encryptions. They said to me, “Japonés are smart and has a good memory so you should be fine for this.” In the end, I had to memorize a lot.
Date: September 22, 2019
Location: California, US
Interviewer: Yoko Nishimura
Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum
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