Volunteering to serve for the U.S. military in Japan

The Kona Island community Going to Japanese school Starting work at five years old Traveling the world seven times Remembering December 7, 1941 Being an American soldier and an "enemy alien" Volunteering to serve for the U.S. military in Japan Meeting Japanese Americans from the mainland in MIS Awareness of concentration camps as a Japanese American Not relating to Japan Americans' experiences on the mainland Visiting family in Japan Being stationed in Japan during the American occupation Rebuilding Japan Investigating labor movements in Japan Feeling closer to Japan as a Japanese American Serving as a lawyer to Americans in Japan To serve as a lawyer Defining the term Nikkei

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Well I had good grades and Japanese was easy because that time I could memorize. Japanese language is memory, that’s all. You memorize words and characters so it was very easy for me. I taught Japanese until the end of the war. The war ended in forty-five, and I was hoping to get back to school. But I wanted to visit my relatives in Japan having heard from my mother about them all the years I was in Kona. So I decided to volunteer to serve in Japan, and the requirement for us was to be commissioned as Second Lieutenant to go over to Japan. To become an officer, I had to go through basic training for three months in Fort McClellan, Alabama. And after that I was commissioned and went to Japan in 1946.

Date: May 29, 2006
Location: Hawai`i, US
Interviewer: Akemi Kikumura Yano
Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

army language