[00:05:01] Host: Nori, do you remember any incidents of discrimination growing up before?

[00:05:06] Nori: Oh, I still remember as a youngster, I guess I must have been five or six years old, with my Caucasian classmate, we went to a grocery store to buy ice cream cone, and my three friends were served the ice cream cone and the owner of the grocery store didn't serve me. I still remember that. My three friends felt real bad that I wasn't given the ice cream cone. Then after we got out of the concentration camp in Wyoming, we moved to Brigham City, Utah, a Mormon state since my parents had no place to go, since we lost our farm in Campbell, California.

I enrolled at the Box Elder High School in Brigham City. Us Japanese, when they had dance classes, we were not allowed to participate, and they just put us in one room until the dance classes were over. All movie theater in Brigham City, we were not allowed to sit in the center section, we had to sit on the left or right side, I remember that. Then service, in the service, I remember an incident where they're picking the soldier of the month of the unit that I was in. There was a blonde headed kid in my cell that was selected, but the captain had to pick one. He picked the blonde-headed kid telling me that I needed a haircut, and the funny part of it is I had just gotten a haircut.

[00:07:00] Host: Nori, what do you remember about when you heard of the bombing of Pearl Harbor? Was there a sense of fear? Was there a feeling that something bad might happen after the attack?

[00:07:17] Nori: I remember the incident clearly. My uncle came to our home and told my father that Emperor of Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. At that time, it didn't hit me. I just wondered where Pearl Harbor was. Then as far as the Emperor of Japan bombing Pearl Harbor, I guess it didn't mean too much to me as a youngster. Shortly after that, as you know, we had to prepare to be put into a camp and I remember my uncle or my parents buying a small suitcase for each one of us, and we put our name on the suitcase with our family number, 33201, I guess our prison number. [laughs]

[00:08:09] Host: How did your family explain to you and your siblings what was happening during the relocation?

[00:08:16] Nori: My parents never did say anything. I guess they were told that we had to prepare ourselves to evacuate to go into the Assembly Center. They never mentioned anything about it to me, if I can recall.

[00:08:33] Host: What happened to your family's home and the 5 acres of property that they had?

[00:08:38] Nori: You see, after our parents raised enough money, they bought a 5-acre rundown walnut farm in Campbell, California under my uncle's name because my uncle was a born United States citizen. The land was not level and they spent night and day leveling the ground so they can plant strawberries and they planted strawberries. There were two homes on there, a large garage in a packing shed, and then we had a typical Japanese bath house, and had a tractor, an old one to farm tools, and my parents just sold it for $500 to a Oklahoma transient food picker, a ready-to-harvest strawberry field.

Then we went on. Rode a train to Pomona Assembly Center. We stayed in Pomona Assembly Center. That was, I think-- We went to the Pomona Assembly Center like in March or April of '42. Then we remained in the Pomona Assembly Center until the 10 concentration camps were completed. They were all in desolate parts of the United States, and they had a barbed wire fence with guard towers with searchlights, manned by United States Army soldiers armed with rifles, machine guns, and pistols. That's where we remained until the end of the war.

[00:10:26] Host: When you talk about the camps, you use the word concentration camp.

[00:10:31] Nori: Yes.

[00:10:32] Host: I'm wondering why the language is so important for you. What do you see the difference between internment, incarceration, and concentration camp?

[00:10:41] Nori: Well, I didn't realize it. I always called it internment camp or relocation until a newscaster by the name of Tom Brokaw, he came to Heart Mountain. This was after the end of the war, but Tom Brokaw came, and I guess he came as a-- invited to be a speaker or something like that. He was the one when he went back after seeing how we had lived, on Good Morning America, he blurted out to the people that, "Hey, Heart Mountain was a concentration camp." [laughs]

[00:11:27] Host: Yes. He was the one that brought that up.

[00:11:29] Nori: Many years ago after that, the chairman or president of the Go For Broke Foundation, Mitch Maki, he was giving a speech about the internment. He was a professor at Dominguez College or university, and then took over the chairmanship for the Go For Broke Foundation. He was making a speech, and one Jewish person who was incarcerated in a concentration camp in Germany, he said, "Hey, the Japanese were not in a concentration camp." He resented the word being used as concentration camp for the Japanese Americans. Mitch Maki told that Jewish guy-- He said, “Hey, your camp was a death camp.”

[00:12:21] Host: It is. That's true. Nori, will you give us a little bit about the day-to-day life in the camp?

[00:12:29] Nori: Sure.

[00:12:30] Host: How did you stay busy?

[00:12:31] Nori: For me as an 11-year-old, I thought it was great because I was amongst other Japanese kids my age that looked like me. It was a lot of fun being able to play together, play baseball, basketball, football, and all that, but I'm sure for the older people, it was a traumatic experience to be behind a fence with guard towers. As an 11-year-old, the one thing I thought that was unusual was when the guys that were eligible for draft were being drafted out of the camp into the army. To me I thought that was unusual.

[00:13:18] Host: Were you ever scared during this whole experience, during the journey to Pomona or to Heart Mountain? Was there ever a moment of fear of the unknown?

[00:13:30] Nori: For me, no. I had no fear at that time. I just went along with my folks and I thought it was fun for me after being in camp. Like I said, being amongst other Japanese American kids, I didn't have no fear as an 11-year-old.

[00:13:50] Host: At what point in your life did it hit you, what you had to go through and your family and 100,000 other Japanese Americans?

[00:14:00] Nori: I guess it was probably when I was in high school, when I started the American High School, to be segregated, not allowed to participate in a lot of events. Then I realized, “Hey, I guess something different than the Caucasian people.”

[00:14:20] Host: Were you angry about what had happened, especially considering what happened to everything that your family owned?

[00:14:29] Nori: Yes. I guess for me since I went in as a youngster, it didn't bother me that much. I thought it was unusual. When we were sent to camp, we were placed in a-- the barracks were-- It had six apartments or units, and they were all in different sizes, depending on the number of people in the family. I think the largest one was 20 by 40 feet, and that's the one we lived in. Then they had one that was 10 by 20. When we were placed in the room, I thought it was kind of odd, because there was only one hanging light bulb. Since when we went to Heart Mountain, Wyoming, they had a coal burning stove. That was it.

Then we had metal cots for our bedding, and our mattress, originally were-- we had to go out in a certain lot area where we stuffed the mattress covered with straw. That served as our mattress until we got a real mattress. That was our living conditions for three years. There was no bathroom in the rooms that we were in. They had a communal bath, men and women. Toilets were all lined up and no privacy at all. We had our meals three times a day, morning, noon, and night at a mess hall, and the food was lousy. In our case, Heart Mountain, somebody noticed that the land was real fertile to grow vegetables. I remember even as a kid, we went out and then dug up all the sagebrush, all the old timers, got a tractor and cultivated and started raising all types of vegetables.

[00:16:41] Host: Everything just seemed strange and different, but as a kid, you're just happy to be with other kids and this communal experience.

[00:16:54] Nori: Yes. Like I said, for us young kids, it was nice to be together with kids that all look like us.

[00:17:07] Host: Did you ever see the struggle from your parents, the emotional struggle that they were going through?

[00:17:17] Nori: No. That's what amazes me to this day. They lost that ready-to-harvest strawberry farm, and they never, I never heard them complain about the loss. I guess it's the old Japanese saying. The word is shikata ga nai, cannot be helped. To this day, it's unbelievable that they never complained about their loss. It's really amazing. They really struggled to develop that 5 acre farm, rundown walnut farm into a prosperous strawberry, blackberry, and raspberry farm. To this day, I cannot believe that my parents never complained about that.

[00:18:12] Host: Then once the camps closed and you were told to leave, tell us about where you went. Without having a home to go back to, without having that property in that farm, where did you go?

[00:18:28] Nori: We were one of the last to leave Heart Mountain, Wyoming in November of 1945. Fortunately, our friends that live across from our barrack found a Mormon farmer by the name of Earl Anderson in Brigham City, Utah, who was allowing Japanese families who were interned in a concentration camp to live and work on his 1,000 acre farm. To this day, it amazes me that he did such a thing.

After many of the other Japanese families that made enough money working on his farm, they all returned to California, whereas my family, since we had no place to go in California, remained in Brigham City, Utah. My father worked for the Anderson farm. In fact, worked, but they allowed him to do whatever he wanted to do. They allowed-- like it was his own farm. He retired at the age of 91 years old, or 90 years old on the farm.

[00:19:46] Host: I want to talk about your service, and after experiencing this and witnessing what happened to your family and 100,000 other Japanese Americans, were you conflicted when enlisting in the army and putting your life on the line to support a country that could do this to its own citizens?

[00:20:17] Nori: Well, I didn't think too much about what happened to me, I guess, but, yes, I graduated, like I said, from high school at 17 years old when they were still drafting men into the service, army, when I graduated high school in 1948. I decided, "Heck, I might as well join and get it over with." When I joined, I had an option of joining for what is 21 months or something like that, which meant that I had to serve in the reserve after I got out, so I decided I'm going to join for three years, and then I won't have any obligation of being in a reserve or anything like that.

I joined and went to Fort Ord, California, and then from there, after my taking all the examination and physical was sent to El Paso, Texas, where I took my basic training and also ended up in the anti-aircraft artillery unit, fortunately. I'm glad that I ended up in that unit. Then after our advance and basic training, our unit was shipped to Michigan, Fort Custer, Michigan. Ironically, Fort Custer, Michigan, the 100 and 442 regiment of combat team people were at that camp where they took the training. In fact, after they left there, they closed the camp down and we opened it up.

Then I got my notice to go to Okinawa, and that was I think in March of 1950, and then I went home on furlough. Then I came back to Camp Stoneman, California to be shipped to Okinawa, and then that's when the Korean War started on June 25th, 1950 and everything changed. We were put on a ship in San Francisco, shipped up to Seattle, Washington. From Seattle, I met a friend who we became real close friends, and he was also trained in the anti-aircraft artillery. Since we trained at Fort Bliss, we never did separate.

We were together all the way through Japan and fighting in the Korean War. Yes, we were shipped to Japan and then ended up in the northern part of Japan, now Aomori Prefecture at Misawa Air Base where we guarded the air base. We had gun emplacements all around the base in 1951, July, I guess it was. We finally, our whole unit went to Korea, landed at Incheon. Since we were anti-aircraft artillery, we guarded Kimpo Air Base. While we were at Kimpo Air Base, that's when my friend and I were called to Pusan to be interviewed.

At that time, a linguist was short in demand, and here, I couldn't read or write Japanese, and the guy that was interrogating me was speaking in Japanese, and I was answering in English. We both ended up in the 521st military intelligence unit interrogating prisoners of war. I guess I'm getting off the subject and I--

[00:24:19] Host: No, you know what, this is great, Nori, because there is this element of pride for your service and pride for your country, which I think is hard for people to understand after going through what you and your family went through, but you were able to find that pride and that support for America and American causes.

[00:24:50] Nori: Well, one of the things, I think, most of us Japanese-Americans that fought in the Korean War, we knew what the 100th and 442nd went through. We wanted to uphold their status of what they did. We didn't want to degrade the Japanese race. It was a good experience fighting in the war, the forgotten war, as matter of fact, I didn't even know where Korea was.

Once I got there, then found out a lot about what the Koreans went through because they were dominated by the Japanese for over 40 years. Yes, that's the other thing that's amusing on my service records. They had my race as Mongolian.

[laughter]

[00:25:53] Nori: I didn't realize it until-- Patty was the one I think that pointed it out, "You're a Mongolian."

[laughter]

[00:26:02] Nori: All Japanese Americans were classified as Mongolian. I never even thought about that as being odd, not until Patty was the one that pointed it out. Mongolian. Yes.

[00:26:18] Host: Well, Nori, would you like to leave us with anything else about the experience or your thoughts now 85 years later?

[00:26:32] Nori: No, I guess even though the older Japanese American, what they went through, I still take pride and I'm happy that I'm an American-born citizen. Now things have really changed. The one incident when I started to work for a company, the manager, he grew up in the San Fernando Valley area, and he grew up with a lot of Japanese Americans. I remember him saying that if he had it his way, he would've hired nothing but Buddha Heads.

[laughter]

[00:27:16] Nori: Yes. I still remember him saying that if he had it his way, he would hire nothing but Buddha heads. He really thought highly of us Japanese American. I still remember that incident, "If I had it my way, I would hire nothing but Buddha heads." Yes. It's been a good life and I had a lot of ups and downs, but real fortunate that I was able to be born and grow up in the United States of America and then being able to do a lot of things like my friend and I, we published a book called Americans of Japanese Ancestry in the Korean War.

There was 255 of us, or I shouldn't say us, but there were 255 Japanese Americans that were killed and missing in action in Japan-- Oh, 247, I'm sorry. 256 was-- Yes, we knew of some of the surnames with American surnames that were half Japanese that were killed. There has to be more American surnames that were half Japanese that were killed in the Korean War. In fact, one of the TV announcers here in Los Angeles mentioned that we didn't have any of the half Japanese who had American surnames on that wall we have in Los Angeles. Kind of a difficult thing to try to find out all the-- what we call Hapa, half Japanese, half American that served in the Korean War.

[music]

[00:29:22] Host: We'd like to thank Nori Uyematsu for his time, his expertise, and his passion. Medium Historyis produced by Chapman University's Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, and Past Forward. For more socially conscious content, visit pastforward.com or follow us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast.