Frank Inami | Interview 2 | June 24, 2014

DUNHAM: Today is June 24, 2014, and this is tape 3, interview 2, with Frank Inami. If you want to start us off.

FUKUMOTO: Sure. So camp life, your whole family was together in Jerome?

INAMI: Yes. Well, we started out at the Fresno Assembly Center. See, Madera is just north of Fresno, so from Madera they took us to Fresno because the camps weren't finished yet. They'd just started building them. So they put up some very temporary tar-papered buildings at the Fresno Fairgrounds. So that's where we went, from Madera to Fresno. Let's see. We went in May 17. Dad said, 00:01:00"Remember this particular day," so I still remember it. It wasn't until October that they had finished the ten camps. So what they did was, we had a kind of a temporary setup. Let's see, since it was October--well, even during the summer they had summer school. For example, I got a chance to teach advanced algebra. Mostly girls in the class; there were one or two boys. We had to meet in the washroom, where they did the clothes washing. But I got a chance to teach. Teach 00:02:00the girls, basically. Some of them were pretty sharp. So we had kind of a make-work. If you wanted to work you could in the mess halls. You could work as a janitor, cleaning the latrines, things like that.

FUKUMOTO: Was it the US military that organized all of that, or was that coming from your community? Having classes and organizing all of that. Do you know if it was the military that organized the classes, or did that come from you guys?

INAMI: Oh, it was internally. Internally organized. There was a camp newspaper, and there were people who had run the high school newspapers, and they ran the 00:03:00[camp newspaper]. So they kept us informed. There were about 4,000 in that little area there. I should say, it was all--well, I take it back. There was a group from the Sacramento area. There's a place called Florin, south of Sacramento. There was a group that came in from there. See, there was another camp--or we called them assembly centers, to distinguish them from the permanent camps--there was one in Pinedale. Pinedale is a little area just north of Fresno. There was an assembly center [there].So there were two assembly centers in Fresno itself. So I think that group, they brought them in from the state of Washington.

DUNHAM: You mentioned the newspapers that were started. What kind of articles would be written in that that kept you informed?

INAMI: Well, we had baseball, basketball, various leagues. No bowling, because there was no bowling alley. But things like that. Then just little tidbits of information as to, so-and-so is from a certain area. As I recall, there was no formal high school or grammar school. A lot of it was, like I mentioned, voluntary, organized by people. So since I got to teach, it was better 00:05:00than--see, since I was a double E, electrical engineer, I was in, you might say, the electrical, going around changing light bulbs and things like that, which is boring work. So I was glad to get out and do a little teaching.

So around October, there were a lot of rumors flying around. But they used the camp newspaper to get information out. In fact, gee, I think my brother still has a copy, where it says it's finally decided we're going to Arkansas. That was 00:06:00quite big news at the time, because we didn't know that there were two camps in Arkansas being built, Jerome and Rohwer. Because there were three camps in Arizona; and of course Manzanar, which was in California; Tule Lake, in California; Heart Mountain, in Wyoming; and Minidoka, in Idaho. We knew about those, so we thought the chances were pretty good that we'll end up in one of those. But to find out that we're going all the way to Arkansas, that was quite a--so I thought, "Gee, I'll get to teach there, too."

But because I did not have a degree, they wouldn't let me teach, because they had a formal system, patterned after the Arkansas school system, and they wanted 00:07:00to bring in--I think I mentioned in the last interview--the doctor's association. The medical association wanted to bring their own people in, and the government said, "We're US government"; they have their--in other words, internees--they have their own doctors, medical people. Some of them probably have better education than you do. So we had our own medical people. Also with the teachers--I think the head of the teaching staff was white. Also in engineering. I mentioned in the last interview, there was a guy named Matthew. 00:08:00He was head of the engineering department. But the chief electrical engineer was my classmate. He was a class ahead of me. So he was the chief electrical engineer, and I was his assistant, assistant electrical engineer. So we were able to do our own engineering work, and I got a chance to learn quite a bit from that.

FUKUMOTO: What did your parents do while in the assembly, in camp?

INAMI: Oh, in the assembly camp?

FUKUMOTO: Yeah, or how did they deal with it? Were they just silent? Did they show any emotion while this was happening, or did they just--?

INAMI: Yes. See, the feeling was that the old folks, our parents, thought that 00:09:00this will be great because you have guards--we're enclosed in, so they'll have a good chance to discipline us. Well, it turned out to be the opposite. We went to chow hall. See, they had centralized eating places. So our own age group, various age groups, would stick together. And the old folks, we found out that--see, my parents worked seven days a week, practically twenty-four hours a day, trying to raise us. All of a sudden you're stuck in a place where, if you didn't want to do anything, you didn't have to do anything. So they would get together and talk about the old times. Especially if they came from the same 00:10:00area in Japan, like Hiroshima, various other places. They would get together and talk all night long about their--. So it was a good experience for them. Not only that, we estimate it really gave them a vacation, in a sense.

But Dad always liked to carpenter. See, first, I was raised on a farm, vegetable farm. Then a little later, he started a little mom and pop grocery store. However, he said that he liked to carpenter. He was a pretty good carpenter. Kind of sloppy, but he really got things done. He'd build a house and things like that. So he got on the carpenter crew, and he'd go around fixing the 00:11:00barracks, going out to the woods and chopping wood to keep us warm during the wintertime. So he had a good time. What was it now? I think he got paid sixteen dollars a month. So it's a kind of a make-work type thing. My mother didn't do anything, as I recall. But after a while, it got so boring that she, I think, went off and worked in the mess hall, washing dishes or something like that. If you wanted, you could just work a few hours a day. Or if you wanted to work a regular eight hours, you could. So she also felt relieved that she didn't have to--.

So as a result, I think we missed--for example, my sister's seventeen years younger than I am, okay? So I remember when my sister got into high school, they gave her a car; they gave her money to spend time in Europe. So I would complain bitterly, saying, "Hey, how come I never got all that?" My mother would sit me down and quietly tell me, "Look now, she's seventeen years younger than you are. That means that when we die,"--the parents--"when we die, she's going to miss out seventeen years of our love. Or you're getting seventeen years more of our 00:13:00love." So things like that really stuck. But unfortunately, my younger brothers never got that guidance from our parents, because we were in camp and they ran around with their own group. There was really no discipline because there was no need to, because you were enclosed, with guards, and you couldn't go out. Although toward the end, they let them. My brother-in-law--he's retired as a dentist, my wife's youngest brother--they used to crawl underneath the fence and go into town. I'm sure the guards knew that. But this is toward the end of the 00:14:00three-year period. So he thinks he had a good time, because they could--without the parents. His mother was quite strict.

FUKUMOTO: So in many ways, a little bit more freedom for young kids. There was a little bit more freedom in camp for young kids.

INAMI: Oh, yeah, yeah, there was a lot of freedom. Because there was a bed check at ten o'clock, eleven o'clock. I think it was ten o'clock. They'd go around to each barrack and check. Of course, they didn't look at each bed. Just somebody there would say, "We're all here." So you knew that your kids were back there. At ten o'clock, they had to be home. Then in the morning we all got up at the 00:15:00same time, because breakfast [was] at a certain time, and if you didn't go eat you didn't get to eat.

FUKUMOTO: Right, that was it. How was the food in camp?

INAMI: Well, food was like army food, which is meat and potatoes. And bread, of course. Toward the end, after a year or so, they were able to get rice. The main thing they missed was shoyu, soy sauce. They were able to grow a lot of the vegetables, like carrots and napa, which is Chinese cabbage, things like that. And they were able to make--but see, I missed out on most of that, because I got 00:16:00there in October, and I left in March, to go to Chicago.

FUKUMOTO: To go to Illinois Tech.

INAMI: I had gone to Chicago, stayed there for a year and a half. Meanwhile, Jerome had closed, and they moved everybody to Rohwer. I would come home maybe once a year or something like that. But when I got back, in June of '44--yeah, June of '44--when I got back to camp, they were already in Rohwer, in another camp. They tried to keep people together. Like Madera people would be one area, Fresno people another area. There was a lot of Caruthers, Kerman, all these 00:17:00little places. When they moved us from Jerome to Rohwer, they just put them in wherever there were--. You were allowed to go out, if you could find a place where they would guarantee that you would not become a ward of the government, you wouldn't get on welfare or anything. So if you could find somebody that would vouch for you and guarantee a job, or go to school, you could get out, see? They started that rather early. In fact, let's see. We got there in October, and I think by December, there were people being able to leave. Of course, I wanted to leave right away, to go to Chicago, to go to Illinois Tech. But I think I mentioned that because I had put down that I was a Buddhist, that 00:18:00counted against me. And the fact that I had an unflattering recommendation from my high school principal, that held me back. So I wasn't able to get out until March. But there were quite a few other--. So there were empty spots in Rohwer, so they put the Jerome people where there were empty holes.

DUNHAM: So they didn't keep them by area, because there were these vacancies of people having left.

INAMI: Right.

DUNHAM: I wanted to ask, back at the assembly center, before you went to Jerome, you mentioned before the article came out and you found out you were going there, there were a lot of rumors flying around. I was curious; what kind of rumors or speculation was there?

INAMI: Well, the worst rumor was--there were some pretty bad rumors--that they 00:19:00were going to segregate the men from the women, and take all of us men and gun us down with machine guns, see? There were rumors like that. But those rumors started when I was still back at Cal. They were very negative. I never believed any of that. But then we didn't know what was going [on] over in Europe. Hitler was murdering all the Jews. Maybe by bad luck, we could have been one of those. But nothing like that.

DUNHAM: With those kind of rumors, were some advocating taking proactive action of some kind?

INAMI: Oh, within the camp, you mean?

DUNHAM: Yeah.

INAMI: Yeah. We used to have meetings, the block. There were forty blocks. Each block had a block leader, and we'd get together. There were some people who were very vocal, and they said, "Heck with this government; let's all get together and go back to Japan." I'm the type that I keep my mouth shut most of the time. But every once in a while something really gets to me. Well, I got up, and I stood up and I said, "Look. Look at the way the Japanese are treating the Koreans. The Koreans are treated like second-class citizens. They make them change their names to Japanese names. They really take it out on the poor Koreans. Well, the US government's doing the same thing to us. So Japan is no 00:21:00better, as far as discrimination is concerned." I really caught heck for that.

DUNHAM: Yeah, how was that received?

INAMI: Yeah, because they said the people that were from Japan, like my parents--. Dad never told me, really cautioned me; but my mother said, "Why don't you keep your mouth shut?" [laughs] "You get us in--." Because what they do, they use this pressure. They don't come to me and say, "You shouldn't be saying things like that." They'd go to my mother and said, "How could you have raised this son like that, who doesn't know what he's talking about?" Things like that, see? See, that's why when we volunteered to go in the service, there were those that were against volunteering. Maybe I didn't mention to you.

DUNHAM: I don't think we've come to that yet--

INAMI: Yeah, I think I mentioned to you. As a result, my mother told me--. But it didn't do any good, because I just went again.

DUNHAM: Yeah. I don't think we did discuss that. I've seen that in a previous interview. Although we're going to talk about more of the MIS later. But go ahead, since you brought it up. What happened? What did your mother say to you when you volunteered for the MIS?

INAMI: I guess you never heard the term "baka"?

FUKUMOTO: I have.

INAMI: Oh, you have? B-A-K-A?

FUKUMOTO: Yeah. Stupid.

INAMI: Meaning stupid. My mother called me "baka nokotowo shita," that "You did a stupid thing." Because her argument was, they were just starting the draft at that time. She said, "If you get drafted, you can't shikataganai. You can't do 00:23:00anything about it; you've got to go. But to volunteer when the government has stuck us in concentration camp--." So she chewed the heck out of me. She rarely did that to me so strongly. But I think in looking back--the buildings are all open, the top is open, and you can hear everything--I think she did that because [of] the pressure on her to saying, "Gee, how could you, son, volunteer? What kind of a dumb thing that he did, and it's because of you." They put the pressure on her, see? I have a feeling she did that.

Then I went to--I had volunteered through the local draft board. See, the draft 00:24:00board really liked us, because every one of us that got drafted means that one white Arkansas young man doesn't have to be drafted, see? Because we filled the quotas. I went back and looked at the newspapers, back in '44, '45, and there're all kinds of names. The draft board would put down the names of those who were drafted. You'd see mostly Japanese names from camp. I think I mentioned--what did I do with that?--866 of us were drafted or volunteered. Didn't I show you that?

DUNHAM: I'm not sure if we saw that, yeah. Do you know about what percent 00:25:00volunteered versus were drafted? Was it more that volunteered or more that were drafted?

INAMI: Oh, I think more were drafted. Yeah. But I thought I showed you the newspaper. See, this is the newspaper, dated March 15, '45.

FUKUMOTO: March 15, 1945, yes. Oh, yeah.

INAMI: See? Eight hundred sixty-six.

DUNHAM: So this is not the camp newspaper, this is an Arkansas newspaper.

INAMI: This is a local Arkansas, McGehee Arkansas paper. And you can see--

FUKUMOTO: Oh, yeah, you're right. All the Japanese.

INAMI: --my name and my brothers' names on there.

FUKUMOTO: Oh, that's crazy. And block. So all the blocks, that's where you were living in camps? They called it block? I notice on the top it has, block 14, 00:26:00block 15. That's just where you lived?

INAMI: Right. Yeah. They were all in the--.

FUKUMOTO: Do you want to see, or you got it?

DUNHAM: Yeah, I'll look again later.

INAMI: You want to copy it?

DUNHAM: Yeah. Yeah, we'll do that. That'd be great, yeah. Well, let's talk about, then, when you were able to transfer out to college. So explain again about the clearance issue. So you had other friends who were able to leave before you, for college, then?

INAMI: You mean there were others who--?

FUKUMOTO: Who left before you?

INAMI: Oh, yeah, they were all--but I think I mentioned in there that those who put down "Christian" as a religion seemed to go out earlier.

DUNHAM: How did you deal with that frustration of being held back because of that, and worried that you might not get to go at all, maybe, right?

INAMI: Right, maybe I couldn't go, that's true. But since I was working as an 00:27:00assistant electrical engineer, there was always plenty of work to be done. That kept me busy. Then I brought my books along, so I did some studying. Plus my future wife, Setsuko Matsubara, from Hanford, she was working in the clerical pool in the engineering department. So I got to know the girls in the pool there.

DUNHAM: Were you dating at that time?

INAMI: Well, there was dating, but I wasn't into that. But the only reason we kept in contact is that my future wife has a very good--well, she's a good 00:28:00conversationalist, but also she writes. She always writes and always sends out Christmas cards. So when I left they gave me kind of a going away party. She said, "Be sure to let us know how life is on the outside." So I did send her one letter. So at Christmas of that year--yeah--she sent me a Christmas card. But it took me a month or so to get it, because I was in the Army, moving around from building to building, and it sort of got lost. Meanwhile, she had moved to Philadelphia. She had moved out, got a job there as a kind of a baby sitter. So 00:29:00I would send her a card, and because she moved around, she wouldn't get it until a couple months later. So it was just that thin, thin thread that we kept in contact. That's about all.

DUNHAM: Do you remember that first letter and what you wrote to her about life on the outside, or just what your impressions were then, having been in camp and then getting to go to school? What was that like?

INAMI: Oh, yeah. Well, I wrote to the group as a whole. Nobody in the group bothered to reply, except my future wife, because she's very good at answering letters.

FUKUMOTO: Do you remember what was in that letter? What was your experience like 00:30:00when you left for Chicago?

INAMI: Oh, yeah, Chicago, number one, the weather was--let's see, this was in March, so the weather was pretty good. Then during the summer months, the stockyards were right next to Illinois Tech, next to the college, and it would stink up the whole place. So things like that I would write. And there was no campus. The campus like Cal, you have high spots and low spots, and you have the Berkeley--it's really trees and flowers. But you go to Illinois Tech, it's right 00:31:00in the middle of a residential district. Hardly any trees. Of course, in the wintertime, the leaves have disappeared. It took me almost an hour to commute from my place in northern Chicago to essentially, southern Chicago. Had to change streetcars downtown, which wasn't too bad, but riding that streetcar, especially on a snowy or cold or hot day--.

DUNHAM: Why did you live so far from the campus?

INAMI: Because the Japanese community was in the northern part of Chicago, around Clark Street. And my benefactor, the friend that looked after me, Ben 00:32:00Nagata, he was in that area. He found a place. People were coming into Chicago because there was all kinds of work, so living places were not so easy to find. So that's why we stayed there, instead of the southern part of Chicago, which is basically a residential area.

DUNHAM: Were there many other Japanese Americans attending the university?

INAMI: I would say, we never made a--maybe thirty. There weren't too many. In fact, I don't know if you've heard of Senator [Samuel Ichiye] Hayakawa.

DUNHAM: Mm-hm.

INAMI: You've heard of Hayakawa? He was a professor there. He didn't tell me directly, but he told other Japanese Americans, he said, "Don't be too conspicuous. When two of you are together talking and a third Japanese American comes, one of you have got to leave." He said, "Be inconspicuous." Well, his wife was white, you may know, so that he was saying we should assimilate with the group so we don't get discriminated against. Well, in my double E, 00:34:00electrical engineering classes, I don't think there were any Japanese Americans; there were mostly Jewish. They were Jewish. Some of those Jewish guys really kept up the grade point average. And some of them were the opposite. The ones that were opposite were just trying to get a degree so they can get deferred. See, if you got a degree and you got a job--. And most jobs in electrical engineering, or any kind of science at that time, you had to work for a company that was doing classified work, so you automatically got a deferment. But you had to have a degree to be working for that company. So I remember one Jewish guy would come to me and wanted to copy my homework. He said, "I'll pay you." 00:35:00another Jewish guy heard about it. He said, "If I were you, you wouldn't give him your homework. If you give him your homework it raises the average and doesn't do you any good; it doesn't do him any good. So don't do it." I never did. I didn't need money that badly.

DUNHAM: Were there any women in the engineering classes?

INAMI: Well, not that I know of.

DUNHAM: Were you socializing or dating or going to dances or that kind of thing?

INAMI: Never did, because, see, we went all through the summer. See, number one, I got behind because of the--I got one semester behind. See, at Cal, all you had to do was what they call bonehead English. All you have to do is pass the 00:36:00English test; you didn't have to take it. Well, at Illinois Tech, you had to take a semester of English, see? You also had to take American--not literature--civics, a civics course. At Cal, all you had to do was cram and take the civics course and you could get by. So I had to make up all those grades, and, well, it got me behind, almost a whole year.

FUKUMOTO: Did you get along with the Jewish students?

INAMI: With the rest of the students? Yeah. I had no problem, basically. The thing that surprised me--see, at Cal, in Berkeley, in Madera, everywhere you 00:37:00went there was a curfew, eight o'clock curfew. You couldn't be out driving around or anything. Well, you go to Chicago, nobody cared. You just kind of melted into the group. So they didn't know whether you were Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Mexican, even. So it was very easy, in that way. Yeah.

DUNHAM: So with that, being outside of the camp and experiencing that kind of level of freedom, just all of it, what was it like returning to camp, when you said you did visit with that newfound--?

INAMI: Well, when I got my degree in June of '44, I went back--well, meanwhile, 00:38:00I had volunteered. See, the reason I volunteered for the service is mainly because I couldn't get a job. See, the government had classified us 4C, "enemy alien, unfit for service." So with that they wouldn't even interview me, because they couldn't hire. You had to be a citizen in order to--see, you're in a kind of a catch-22 problem. With 1A you're immediately eligible for service. So if you're 1A, they wouldn't hire you. And of course, if you're a 4C, they wouldn't hire you. I couldn't even get an interview.

So I had two alternatives. One was join the service in the 442, and get sent to Europe; or I could join MIS, Military Intelligence Service, the Japanese language, and go to Fort Snelling, in Minnesota, for Japanese language training. I had a choice between them. So I volunteered for MIS. I went back to camp, and that's when my mother chewed me out. Then a few days later, I got sent from the McGehee draft board to Camp Robinson, in Little Rock, and a two-day physical. I took the physical, and I thought I did okay. There was a medical officer who makes a final determination, whether you're eligible or whether you pass the 00:40:00physical and mental exam and things like that. So he looked at me, and he says, "Hey, what the hell you volunteer for?" Kind of shook me. I said, "Why not?" Says, "You guys are getting killed over there in Europe. What the heck you volunteering for? You just came out of camp. The government has put you in camp. You have no obligation to serve." It kind of floored me. I said, "Well, I want to do my part." "Well, you don't have to do your part. See this little square here? All I have to do is check this little square, physically unfit for military service. Sit this war out. You have no obligation whatsoever." I said, 00:41:00"Why?" He says, "Look, you're 20/200 in one eye. You're practically blind. And you've got flat fee." See, if you've got flat feet, you have trouble marching, so you can be a 4F, physically unfit. So he said, "With a clear conscience, I can check this thing for you, and you sit this war out." He just kept chewing me out, right? I couldn't figure it out.

DUNHAM: This is a white doctor?

INAMI: Yeah, a white doctor, an MD. Here my mother chews me out; a few days later, he chews me out. I think he thought he was doing me a favor, because the casualty rates coming in from the 442 were terrific. What is that? To rescue 200 00:42:00white Texans, the Japanese-American unit suffered 800 casualties. 200 killed in action, 800 total casualties just to save those 200. He was right, see? He said, "You guys are getting--."

DUNHAM: So what compelled you to want to not have him check that box? Why did you want to serve?

INAMI: I wanted to serve because, number one, I had no other choice. Well, I had another choice, that's let him check this off, and I could find menial jobs, which I was doing. Soon as I got to Chicago in March of '43, they had everything 00:43:00organized for us. They sent us to get a Social Security number, all these sort of things.

DUNHAM: Who was "they"? Who was organizing that?

INAMI: Oh, there was a Japanese-American resettlement group, or the various--the Buddhist church and the Christian churches. And the government also helped staff it.

DUNHAM: And were the Quakers, the American Friends--?

INAMI: Right, the American Friends were part of it, also. They were all in there helping us, so they had it well organized. They had jobs. Said, "Hey, there's a job out here in an engineering company." I thought, "Oh, boy, this is great. So I went out there." It was on Clark Street. Took the streetcar out there. She 00:44:00said, "Oh, yeah, we can use you. Fifty cents an hour." That was the going rate at that time. You made little round brass rings, and you cut a little hole in it. You did that all day long. Oh, I went crazy. But that's money. She says, "After a couple months, you come to work, you're diligent, so we'll raise your salary to seventy-five cents an hour." See? But then by then, I started school. I told her, "I'm starting school, so I'm going to quit." She says, "No, no, no. You don't want to quit. You can go to school later. We'll give you a dollar an hour." I said to myself, "I'm not going to--."They call that a screw machine. 00:45:00You screw a little hole in there all day long. She would call me. I gave her my phone number and address, and she would call me and says, "Hey, a dollar and a half. Dollar and a half."

FUKUMOTO: Oh, that's funny.

INAMI: I said, "No thanks." It was a very nice couple there, no sign of discrimination or anything, and they always took good care of me, but--.

FUKUMOTO: Work was not fun.

INAMI: But jobs like that were plentiful during the war. There was all kinds of jobs. Now, I had a roommate. I think he came out from another town. We just happened to run across each other, so we roomed together in Chicago. He got a 00:46:00job, same sort of job, making cardboard boxes. You sat there and you stamped these. All day long you're stamping.

FUKUMOTO: So where did you serve? Where did you end up going after you volunteered?

INAMI: Oh, we went to Fort Snelling. The Military Intelligence Service, Japanese Language, which was started in the Presidio of San Francisco, back in 1941, a few months before the war started. Then they had to move that school over to a place called Camp Savage, in Minnesota, just south of St. Paul. That's where 00:47:00they moved the school, to Camp Savage. Then they got too small, so they moved it to Fort Snelling. There was, I think, a railroad group there. They kicked them out, moved them out, and it was there until we moved it to Monterey. So I spent two years at that school. So I started, this was in July of '44. Yeah, I graduated in June, from Illinois Tech, and then in July of '44--. The actual schooling didn't start until December, December of '44. In the meantime, see, 00:48:00what they would do is you take a--it's a six-month course, so every six months, they would start a new class. I got there at the wrong--not the wrong time, but just in between. So what they would do is if you came in just about when the school was starting, you would go for six months, and then they send you to basic training, two months of basic training. If you came in before, you went to basic training first. So a group of us went to basic training in Camp McClellan, in Alabama. So we went to Alabama for two months of basic training; then we came back to Snelling.

DUNHAM: What was the basic training like? How did that go? With your flat feet, 00:49:00was it any problem?

INAMI: Well, these are all very interesting trainings, because all Japanese-American units, the competition gets fierce. Even in school, guys are studying day and night, just to get ahead of the other guys.

Let me backtrack a little bit. I met a guy named Junji Ozaki. He was a pharmacist. He had a degree in pharmacy, and was working in Detroit, something like that. He was originally from San Francisco. We kind of hit it off because we were kind of opposite. See, I was gung-ho, saying that we should do our part 00:50:00in the service, and he was just the opposite. He got drafted, and he was bitter. He said, "Boy, I'm going to screw this thing all up." He had gone to Japanese school in San Francisco. The so-called Kinmon Gakuen Japanese school in San Francisco rates as number one, number two in California, Japanese school. It was so good that you could go to any college in Japan and be able to pass there. He was that good. But he says, "I know I'm good. I can pass these things. He's kind of a very self-confident.

FUKUMOTO: Cocky?

INAMI: He says, "I'm going to screw this thing all up." So they give you an entrance exam. So he purposely missed all the questions. He didn't want to look 00:51:00too bad, see, because they'd know that he's doing it. So he would make mistakes and so forth. So they put us in according to how well you did in the entrance exam. So I got up on the top of the list, and this guy Junji he was kind of way down toward the bottom. He says, "I'm going to not study at all. Goof--"

DUNHAM: What was the purpose of that, though? What was his rationale?

INAMI: See, he's a pharmacist. See, he had a pharmacy degree. When he got drafted he said, "I want to go into the medical field." "Oh, you've got to sign up for three years." See, whereas if you went to a Japanese language school you only had to serve two years. So he said, "I want to get out in two years. I don't want to get stuck for three years." At that time, as I recall, when we were at Fort Snelling, some of the guys went into town, into Minneapolis, and got into a big fight and got into a lot of trouble. These guys from Hawaii. You know, they're pretty independent. So they restricted the whole group. They said nobody can go into town anymore.

DUNHAM: The fight was with locals, like whites, or amongst the Japanese?

INAMI: The fights were with the whites. Those Hawaiian guys, they--. [laughs] So we got restricted. We couldn't go into town for weeks. Now, when we got to Camp 00:53:00McClellan for basic training one day we had a group assembly; they got us together. As I recall there was a colonel--I've forgotten his name--but he got up, and we thought, Junji and I, "Boy, we're going to catch it." Something happened, and they're going to ball us out." So the colonel got up and said, "You know, I just came from 442. I was over in Europe leading the Japanese Americans there. I heard that last night some of you guys went into town and tore the bar apart." We thought, "Uh-oh. Here we gotcha." He said, "Look, I 00:54:00fought with you guys. You guys are really good soldiers." He says, "Next time that happens, we're going to go in a close that bar down." Junji comes up to me, and he says, "You know, things are changing. Things are changing; they're really going to treat us like good people." [laughs] We were friends for years after that. He changed.

But getting back to school, he was in this dumb class, we used to call it. One day about halfway through--it's a six-month course--he comes running up to me, and he says, Hey, tutor me." "What do you mean, tutor you?" [laughs] He knew I 00:55:00was in the top classes. He says, "You know, I look at these dumb guys in my class. Some of them don't even have a high school education, and they're getting better grades than me." [laughs] He says, "Tutor me, so I can--"

FUKUMOTO: Oh, so he felt the pressure.

INAMI: Oh, yeah. He later became an osteopath. An osteopath is almost like an MD, except they can't do surgery. He was in LA, and I kept in contact. We'd see him from time to time. But there was a gradual change in the attitude of the people that were leading us.

DUNHAM: Of the white commanders.

INAMI: Yeah, white leaders. In fact they were bringing up--in fact at Fort Snelling the--well out in the Pacific people were getting direct commissions. See, we would train for six months and get one extra stripe. The white 00:56:00guys--they had white guys like you, quite a few of them--they got a whole year to learn the language, and the got a commission, second lieutenant. See, at the beginning they didn't trust us, so they had the white guys who knew just enough Japanese to be able to tell whether we were being truthful or not, see? But then they found out that the Japanese Americans were much better in Japanese than the whites, so they gave them direct commissions, quite a few. I remember at least two or three of them. And they came back to school and became our leaders.

So there was visible evidence that progress was being made. In fact, that's what 00:57:00I--after two years they wanted me to join the reserve. I said, "Give me a commission, and I'll join the reserves." But they said, "No, we can't do that." I said, "Forget it." Two years later--they must have kept a record, and they sent me a letter saying, "We are now ready to offer you a commission. Do you want to take it?" Remember, this is 1948. The world was--everything was calm. I figured nothing was going to happen. So I took the commission, second lieutenant.

Two years later, 1950, Korean War. About a year later I find myself over in 00:58:00Korea telling myself, "Boy, I really got myself into trouble." Not only that, I end up way up in the front lines with the peace talks at Ponmunjom. I was in charge of being electrical engineer, signal corps, communication. So I was in charge of all the communication. Not only that, it's a neutral area. We weren't allowed to carry guns. I always carried a pistol underneath my--they gave me a Jeep. I had about fifteen guys that were draftees, all white, one black guy, as I recall. And I always carried a gun underneath my seat on the Jeep because, 00:59:00see, we were supposedly surrounded by the Marines. US Marines, First Marine Division. But you never know. The opposing communists have a reputation of not honoring a lot of the neutral area. But fortunately it's the Chinese--you know, 300,000 Chinese came in and almost pushed us off the peninsula. But by the time I got there things had kind of stalemated, so it wasn't too bad.

DUNHAM: You never had to use your gun.

INAMI: Never did. [laughs] I learned how to lead my men at least trying to be 01:00:00the best that I could. For example, the chaplain came to me, because he would see me at the Sunday service. Of course there was no Buddhist service, so this was a Christian service there, Christian--well, they call it Protestant and Catholic. So he'd see me at the Protestant service. He said, "You know, I don't see any of your men there, and we'd like to have them come to the service." So I 01:01:00got the men together, and I said--see, instead of saying, "You should go to church, " I said, "I understand some of you may want to go to church--." See, we had these radio stations; we had to keep it going twenty-four hours a day. So you work in shifts. "So if any of you are on a shift on Sunday, and you want to go to church, let me know. I'll take that shift myself."

Well, [laughs] see, there's a sergeant that's in charge. In the military system 01:02:00the officers live separately. The enlisted men live by the--whatever machines, the radios that were there. And there's a sergeant there that's in charge. He lives with them, and he does most of the discipline. So I asked one of the men, "Hey, that sergeant, he's a redneck from Alabama, Baptist, and he won't let us Catholics--. He puts us on a shift purposely so we can't go to church." So that's why I got the group together and said, "Anybody that wants to go to church, let me know. I'll take that shift." Well, the-- [tape ends]

Audio File 4

DUNHAM: This is June 24, 2014, tape 4 with Frank Inami, and we just wanted to wrap up, I think, with a few more questions. I was kind of curious, back to when you started with the MIS and this new group of Japanese Americans coming together. You mentioned some of the things, with the Hawaiian Japanese being 01:03:00more independent-spirited. So I was interested in kind of tensions or challenges with that group. Then also the other group you mentioned was sort of the volunteers, versus the draftees. Now, you mentioned becoming great friends with the one who had a very different--but were there other tensions between that group, as well, the volunteers versus the draftees? So if you could speak to either of those two kind of groups coming together, or other things around that.

INAMI: Yeah, this is the first time I was able to meet the people from Hawaii. As I mentioned before, they're much more freer. In Hawaii, you could intermarry if you wanted; here, you couldn't. There's all kinds of discrimination. Even though there still was quite a discrimination. Well, they discriminated against their own people. Like the people from Okinawa were considered inferior. In 01:04:00fact, they would tell me that it's better to marry outside your race, rather than marry someone from Okinawa. There's that sort of discrimination. It's interesting you mention the conflict between the Hawaiian Japanese and the American Japanese. I was able to breach the difference between the two. In fact, we got into a sort of a hassle, because the instructors were, let's say, half from the mainland and half from Hawaii. And the director of the school was from 01:05:00the mainland, so there was a little bit of friction within the faculty. Not just the faculty, but between the director and the Hawaiian group. For example, we had just about finished the six months critique, and we were supposed to write up--. What do you call those things at the end of the--?

DUNHAM: Evaluation?

INAMI: Evaluation, right. The teacher that was with us said, "Make sure you don't write anything bad about the teachers because the director reads every 01:06:00word that you put down, and if you put anything negative, he takes it out on the poor teacher. So don't put anything bad in there." Well, there was one guy in the class, he's a lawyer, he had a law degree. He was in my class of about ten people. He put it in the critique, Sergeant So-and-So says, "Don't write anything negative, because the director comes in and takes it out." Well, director read that. So what happened? Well, before the director came in--see, 01:07:00there's a underground going on. So the teacher who was in charge of the homeroom teacher that said that, that told us not to write anything bad, see, well, he came up to me and he says, "Hey, Inami, can you do me a favor?" Then he qualified that, saying, "You don't have to." Says, "The director's going to come in, and he's going to ask, 'did this teacher say such and such?'" [laughs] He says, "Can you stick up for me?" I said, "Sure."

So, sure enough, the director--he's a major, see; he's way up there; here we're almost down at the bottom of the list--so he came in. He's a very brilliant guy. 01:08:00But unfortunately, his people skills are not--he rules by fear, rather than rule by being calm. So he came in, and he was angry. He got up and he said, "I hear that your teacher Sergeant So-and-So said such and such. Is that true?" Nobody said anything. So I stood up and stuck up for him. I said, "No, the way I interpret it, he says, 'don't be vindictive. Just because he did something to you or something, don't try to be unfair.' I took it just to mean just what he said." Boy, he glared at me. He says, "Private Inami, wipe that grin off your 01:09:00face and sit down. He chewed the heck out of me.

Then apparently, there, another guy in the class stood up and said, "Oh, I agree with Inami, yeah. He didn't say anything like that." Now the director, he's directing the whole school there. He realized that he'd been had. [laughs] He didn't realize that we were stooges in the group. By the way, the teacher was 01:10:00from Hawaii, see, and I'm from the mainland. The director's from the mainland, see. Well, I heard that the director, you had to be careful; he'll take it out on you. He'll get some way to get even with you. And the way he did that was very--see, we finished the course, and by that time--remember, this is 1945; the war was just about to end, and the school was supposed to double its size, for 01:11:00the occupation forces, they wanted us to--. So what happened was they had the double the size, double the faculty; and a lot of the faculty had been there four years, and so they were getting out. So I got stuck as an instructor. The list came out, and there was my name on the list. Well, we knew the war was going to end in a few months. So a group of us--especially from Hawaii, again; those guys, they're not afraid to do anything--they got a petition going. There must have been ten of us that were supposed to stay back as instructors. So they said, "Hey, Inami, you want to sign this petition?" "What for?" I said. "Oh, we 01:12:00don't want to teach. We want to go to Japan. The war's going to be over, and we can have a good time in Japan." So I signed it. He called us in, the director, the same director. He called us in. Oh, he was angry. He said, "Next time you guys do this, I'm going to court martial every one of you." Court martial, that dooms you. You're through. So I knew that he put me on the list, probably.

DUNHAM: You mean to be spiteful for when you had stood up?

INAMI: Yeah. In fact, the word gets around the school: "Boy, this guy is a buck 01:13:00private; he gets up and speaks against a--." Says, "Aren't you crazy? You're crazy, trying to speak against the director. He's a major. Boy, you're just doomed for life. You better get out of the military right away." Well, I found out later--and in fact, I have proof there that when we graduated, I graduated as the outstanding student. I got the faculty award. The faculty award, I found out I had a stooge in the office. He says, "What the heck does this director have against you? Boy, he's really--." I said, "What happened?" Well, the faculty got together, and they said they were going to give me the award, and 01:14:00the director objected. He says, "He doesn't deserve the award." The faculty stood up and said, "We're the faculty. It's our award; we can give it to anyone that we want. You don't have a say." See, you had guys in there, they had already been master sergeants. They'd been there four years. They were ready to get out. They didn't care.

So as a result, I got the award. Then to top it off, see, they were expanding, the groups were getting bigger. I was thinking, "Boy, I'm in really trouble, because the reason my grades were up there is because you cram the night before." You take the exam; you forget it the next day. Now, there were guys who were raised in Japan. They knew their Kanji; they knew all this, see? But me, I 01:15:00just crammed it. So I'm just imagining the worst. I'm going to have to cram like heck the day before and give my class and--. But what they did for me was they put me--see, they have four divisions, and each division had--usually it's a civilian; I think they had one military, but they're mostly civilians who headed up the group. Of course, they report directly to the director. Then they have a guy like me, chosen as an instructor, to be kind of the division leader's right-hand man. I had to set up the schedules. I had to keep track of the grades 01:16:00and this sort of thing. They put me in that position.

Well, I think I did one group of teaching because the teacher was sick that day or something, but I didn't have to hardly any teaching at all. I learned the politics. The politics, this whole thing. The word got around, Frank Inami is not afraid to stick up for the Hawaiian guy who could've been in trouble. So they looked after me. And all those guys that looked after me, they all disappeared because their four years are up. One of them went to law school, all this sort of thing. So I learned a lesson in politics. If you're going to stick 01:17:00up for somebody, stick up for somebody that might mean something, see? [laughs]

DUNHAM: Why would you have preferred to go to Japan, rather than stay back in the teaching?

INAMI: See, there's a term called Kibei. Kibei means return to US. See, as a young--some of them maybe six, eight years old--they're sent to Japan. They claim that the discipline and the work, schooling is much better there. Not only that, their argument--in fact, I almost got caught in this thing. See, I'm ten years old. Dad took us to Japan, and he was going to leave us there. My mother confessed that we were [tape skip] ten years old, so you can get the better 01:18:00Japanese education. Not only that, there's no discrimination. On top of that, see, there were guys who got even PhDs here and couldn't find jobs. You go to Japan, you could find a job, see?

DUNHAM: Because of discrimination here?

INAMI: Yeah. For occupation, you could find something. So I almost got stuck there. But fortunately, I kind of speak my mind at times. But to get back to your question. The Kibeis, those that trained there and came back from Japan, they would say things like, "Japan is a man's country." And you're king, you 01:19:00can--it turns out that they were right. Because the guys that went to Japan, they really had it good. See, because they knew the language, they had the eyes and ears of MacArthur, and they were having a great time. For example, my friend from the Fukui Mortuary. I mentioned this mortuary in LA. Well, he went to Japan. He was in the same class, graduated same time. They went to Japan. Of course, Soichi was married at the time, so he left his wife in Minneapolis, and he told me, look after her, while he went. He was having a good time with all 01:20:00these other classmates and friends and so forth. For example, he bought a Jeep. Because even when I went there in 1952, '51, during the Korean War, see, if you were in uniform, you got a lot of meals for free. But especially, you could ride the trains; you can get on the train any time. Phone calls were free and you have living quarters. You had all kinds of privileges. So I missed out [on] a lot of that.

DUNHAM: So you were back in Fort Snelling, in Minnesota, when the war ended. Do 01:21:00you remember hearing about V-E and V-J Days and what were the reactions there?

INAMI: Oh, okay, yeah.

DUNHAM: Victory over Europe and then Victory over Japan, and especially being in a Japanese-American community--

INAMI: Right. Well, I'll mention one incident. There was a Sergeant Suzuki. He was on the faculty, like I was. So one day--it was a few days after the atomic bomb was dropped. Since he was educated in Japan, he had--see, we used to--I didn't do it, but we used to monitor the Japanese language radio broadcasts, 01:22:00shortwave broadcasts. What we would do, they would pick up the messages, the news from Japan, and Suzuki would transcribe it into Kanji, into the Japanese, and mimeograph it, and the students would have to translate it back into English. So I went into the office, and there he is, scratching out some words. I said, "Hey Suzuki, what are you scratching this out for?" "Oh, we just got word from Washington that the atomic bomb was dropped by parachute." See, bombs usually--you don't drop by parachute; you just let it drop. Well, I had asked him, "What you scratching out, the word rakkasan, by parachute?" So he said, "We 01:23:00got word from Washington that the bomb was dropped by parachute, and we had to scratch that word, because that's classified information."

Suzuki's still living. He's an artist in Berkeley. I saw him one day, and I mentioned. He doesn't remember that incident at all. However, through ham radio, I met a ham in Chicago, Joe Joji, Japanese American. He had spent the war years in Japan. He was in Hiroshima. He saw that bomb come down. He was maybe five, ten miles away. He saw the bomb come down. He says, "I've seen other bombs come 01:24:00down, and they come straight down. But this thing came down by parachute. It's the first time I've seen a bomb--." I explained to him. See, in some of my military training, you learn how to drop bombs, or you know how to--especially atomic bomb. You want it to drop slowly, and you want to detonate it maybe a couple thousand feet, maybe half a mile above the ground, because if you let it go down and hit the ground, all it does, [it] will make a crater, and it only kills the people maybe several thousand feet. Whereas if you drop it way up, it 01:25:00covers a much bigger area and see, it kills, what, 10,000 people? Something like [that]. It's one of the principles I learned in command and general staff school, how to use the atomic bomb, compared to ordinary bombs.

DUNHAM: How did you feel when you heard about the atomic bombs being dropped?

INAMI: Oh, the atomic bomb? I kind of knew what was going on. See, University of Chicago, not too far from Illinois Tech, it has a good engineering school. Yet they wouldn't take us. I found out--I think I mentioned last time--that Enrico Fermi, a nuclear scientist, was right underneath the football stands. Underneath 01:26:00the football field stands, he had a nuclear pile working, to show that the atomic bomb would work. See, the idea was if he blew himself up, it'd blow up the whole stadium. That's why they didn't want us there. They didn't want us Japanese around there. But see, because we had to take physics, you knew what the nuclear--see, that's another thing that saved me, you might say. I knew how the atomic bomb works. So when they were interviewing me for the award, one of 01:27:00the things I mentioned to them, how radar works. They want to know how radar works. Well, I learned that in school. They want to know how the atom bomb works; I know the basic principles of how you bring two subcritical pieces together and make them critical. Very simple. I got the reputation, "boy, this guy knows all this."

DUNHAM: Well, when did you meet the blonde, green-eyed woman? When did that occur?

INAMI: She was living next door to us in Madera. We had this little grocery store. She's ten years younger than I am, and her mother was a single mother with three kids. We had some interesting discussions, because she didn't know 01:28:00anything about what happened or what was happening to us. So I mentioned that. And of course, she knew my parents because they were working in the store. Said they were born in Japan, they could never become citizens. Then to even buy land--they had an anti-alien land law. If you were an alien, you couldn't own land. So here I am, ten years old, and the land is in my name. Of course, I was older than that at that time. Remember, this is after the war. Must've been, yeah, about four or five years after the war. And I'm explaining these things to her. Then I mentioned, "For example, I could never marry you." She says, "Why 01:29:00not?" "Oh, there are law[s] against whites and Asians marrying." "No," she says, "it can't be." This is after the war. So I went down to the local county office, said, "I want to marry this green-eyed blonde." She says, "We can't give you a license." So I went, the next day, a few days later, I told the blonde. Said, "See? They won't give me a license. We'd have to go to Arizona or some of the other states to get a license." She says, "I didn't want to marry you anyway." But she said she didn't realize.

Meanwhile, the gal that I met in camp, Setsuko Matsubara, we kept in contact. She had moved from Philadelphia to San Francisco, and she said in her Christmas card, "I just moved to San Francisco." So I knew where she lived. Yeah, I just had the letter. So after the blonde turned me down, I wrote to her, and I said, "Are you still single?" essentially. And she says, "Yeah, I'm still single." So I would drive three and a half hours up to San Francisco. I used to go back and 01:31:00forth. Let's see, in '48, I got my commission. The war started in '50; in '51 I got recalled to the Korean War. So I told Setsuko, I told her, "Hey," after three dates and so forth, I said, "Let's get married. I'm being sent to Fort Monmouth, in New Jersey for four months' training, as a signal corps officer. So let's get married. You had lived in Philadelphia for years. Philadelphia's not far from Fort Monmouth." She says, "No, I don't want to marry." I said, "Okay." So I went. When I got to Fort Monmouth, the whole class, this class of training, 01:32:00we're being sent to Korea because that was our purpose.

The rumors start to spread. Rumors were we were going through--there's an Army base, Fort Lewis, in Washington, near Tacoma, Seattle. So I heard about it, so I went to the Pentagon. There was another gal I met. She was a widow with three kids, a Japanese American. I had met her at Cal. She knew her way around the 01:33:00Pentagon, so she said, "Oh, I'll take you over there." So I drove from Fort Monmouth, picked her up in Baltimore, and then went to the Pentagon. She told me where to go. She sought the place where they gave the orders. So I went, and I had my ID and everything. I said, "Where are we going? Where am I going?" Said, "You're going through Fort Lewis, in Washington." I said, "You know, I've got a girlfriend in San Francisco. Any chance I can go through San Francisco?" Because I knew there was a POE, port of embarkation. They're sending troops out of Pittsburg, this Pittsburg here. He says, "Oh, I think we can arrange it." When 01:34:00the orders came out, I was the only one going through San Francisco. So now I got a chance to see Setsuko again.

After a couple of dates, I said, "Hey, let's get married, because I'm going overseas. I've got two weeks. They gave me two weeks, so we can get married in two weeks." She says, "No, I don't want to get married." I said, "Why?" She says, "You might not come back." Because the casualty rates were high during the--we talk about 4,000 getting killed over in Iraq. There were 30,000 killed in action during the Korean War. I think there were quite a few Niseis in that group. So I said, "Why not?" She says, "You might not come back." I said, "Well, 01:35:00if you don't come back, you get $10,000." With $10,000, those days, you could buy a house. Just put half of it down, buy a car. She can buy two cars, three cars, for $5,000. She said, "I don't want money like that." I said, "Okay, I'll go. I've got to go." That green-eyed blonde, through the grapevine, [I heard] she was living over here in Rio Vista. You've heard of Rio Vista?

FUKUMOTO: I have. Yeah.

INAMI: She was living there. So I found the phone number. She was, oh, working at a card shop, greeting cards. So I called her, and I said, "Hey, I've got one 01:36:00evening free before I get shipped out. You want to go out?" She says, "Okay." So we went to Stockton. Went to a Chinese restaurant, and then I took her back to Rio Vista, said goodbye. Next day they sent me by airplane, to Japan. Meanwhile, the blonde sends me--she said she was divorcing her husband. Yeah, she was 01:37:00divorcing her husband. At that time, there was a one-year waiting period. You had to wait a year before you could remarry. Yeah, they've changed that now. What is it, three days or something like that? So I wrote to her. She wrote back, and she said, "My husband and I, we're back together again, and we're going to have a baby." The baby was born in April. Yeah, that's her son. The baby was born. So she sends me a letter, "I gave birth to a baby boy." What happened? Yeah. I can figure, so I figure back nine months, and when we had gone 01:38:00out, she was already pregnant. She didn't tell me that. She's usually pretty talkative, and we can talk about--. She was very quiet. Maybe she's quiet because I may not come back, all kinds of things going through her mind. But she was already expecting. But apparently, she was--what do they call it--separated at the time. Anyway.

Then over the years, we kept in contact. Fortunately, my wife is very understanding. She'd come over, and we'd take her up to our--we have a cabin up at Tahoe; we'd take her up to the cabin. She tolerated her. She went through 01:39:00that divorce, another. Oh, she married another guy that she met in Madera. He was a union boss, I think. Apparently these union leaders, a pretty rough life. They have to negotiate all night long. He had a secretary. Her husband got the secretary pregnant. So he asked for a divorce, so she gave him a divorce.

DUNHAM: But anyway, you guys stayed friends all through the years and are still in touch, which is not--

INAMI: Right.

DUNHAM: How did you and your wife eventually get married? When did she finally 01:40:00say yes?

INAMI: Oh, okay. [laughs] That's right. So I wrote to her from Korea, saying, "I've got a chance to get out of the reserve, so I'm coming back, and I hope we can get married." She wrote back and said something to the effect that, "I'm glad you're coming back; I'll be waiting for you." But the way she worded it, it could mean [laughs] "I want to give you the bad news; I don't want to marry you." So I come back, I get off the ship, and I call her, and she says, "I'm 01:41:00busy tonight. I can only see you for half an hour." So I'm wondering, "Now, what the heck's she up to?" So we were parked on Geary Street, near Japantown. She was living near Japantown. We're parked in the car, and I said, "The way you said you were waiting for me, what do you mean?" She says, "Let's get married." But I found out that she likes to see plays. San Francisco has a lot of shows. She found out that if she ushers at any of those places, you get to see the show.

FUKUMOTO: Right.

DUNHAM: Yeah, we've done that.

INAMI: Right. The only thing you have to do, if someone comes in late, you have 01:42:00to go up to the front and show them the--. So that's why she was in such a hurry. She wouldn't tell me that. She'd keep me guessing, just to--.

FUKUMOTO: Just to torture you.

INAMI: Just to see. That marriage lasted fifty years. She died--let's see now. Yeah, the 442 had a reunion--well, they included MIS--in April. So I said, "Let's go. Because this will be good, with our fiftieth wedding anniversary, because the wedding anniversary is March 28." So April 1 we went to Hawaii. Came back, and the following September, September 12, she had an aortic dissection. 01:43:00You've probably never heard of it.

FUKUMOTO: No.

INAMI: Your aorta comes out of the heart, comes down, and it splits in two. Well, apparently, the thing just tears apart. It's rather rare; only about 5,000 cases a year in the whole United States. You've heard of John--? Three's Company.

FUKUMOTO: John Ritter?

DUNHAM: Ritter.

INAMI: Ritter, John Ritter.

FUKUMOTO: He had it?

INAMI: Same day, same problem. He wasn't feeling good that day. He was taping a show; he wasn't feeling good that day. I think he started to faint or something like that. Hospital's right across the street, so they rushed him to the hospital. They diagnosed it as aortic dissection. They tried to patch it up, but 01:44:00he died right there. Same day, same problem, aortic dissection. In fact, it was so uncommon that I remember Time magazine had an article on it, aortic dissection.

So within half an hour, she was essentially brain dead. She went right here. That morning--she's lazy; she doesn't like to get up early. So she got up early. I said, "What are you getting up so early for?" "I've got to get my hair done, eight o'clock." I said, "Okay." So she went to get her hair done right down the street here. About ten o'clock, hair finished, got in her car, put the key in 01:45:00the ignition, locked the doors. All of a sudden she realized she's supposed to call her girlfriend. See, she doesn't like to cook, so she's always looking for easy ways to get a meal. So she called up her girlfriend in Pleasanton. She doesn't drive, so she says, "Carmen, I'll pick you up and we'll go to the senior center in Dublin or--yeah, in Dublin--and have a barbeque lunch." That's all. Apparently, the aorta really got to her, and she just slumped over and she was brain dead. By the time they got to me, she was in the hospital, and they showed 01:46:00me the--what do they call it--encephalogram, that showed you--you could see the blood just shooting out of the aorta. The doctor says, "You know, if you want, we can operate. But there's only 10 percent chance." That's what they did with John Ritter. Except John Ritter's wife sued for $65 million, because her future TV earnings--. The judge threw it out of court. Said, "That's an aortic dissection. It's so rare that they--." See, she claimed that there's another type of--ABC, or triple A is it? Aortic aneurism? See, there's an aneurism. 01:47:00Aortic abdominal aneurism. That's a different; those you can usually save. But this one is so rare that the judge just threw it out of court.

FUKUMOTO: Wow, that's quite a story.

DUNHAM: Yeah. I wanted to wrap up before we get kicked out of our conference room.

INAMI: What time is it? Oh, I don't think he's going to come after us.

DUNHAM: Oh, okay. Well, we mentioned being back in Madera. I was curious, after being in the camps, for your parents, what was that transition back for them like?

INAMI: Oh, you mean coming from camp back?

DUNHAM: Yeah, yeah.

INAMI: Okay. There was a Chinese family who offered to take over the grocery 01:48:00store. Now, when they released, I was in the service, but the rest of the family was still in Rohwer. But they let the people come home before the war ended. See, the war ended in August of '45. Unfortunately, my younger brothers and sisters don't remember much of the details of coming home. But anyway, they were told they could leave, and they gave them train fare to come home. They were afraid, because the contract said the contract is good for the duration of the war. So since the war had not ended, they were afraid the Chinese would not give it up until [the war ended]. So they were ready to do something else, find 01:49:00something to live, until the war ended, okay? They were all ready to do this. So they came home, they found out the Chinese family--the housing was in the back of the store. So the family had moved out, all ready for us to move in. We wondered why. This blonde who lived next door says, "Oh, didn't you know? They heard the Japs were coming home; they're going to bomb the place when the Japs took over." So the Chinese figured they'd better get out of there, in case they get mistaken. So they hightailed it. They were glad to turn the store over to 01:50:00us, see?

DUNHAM: They thought that residents were going to attack? Or who did they think would bomb?

INAMI: Oh, yeah. See, the blonde tells me that there was a movement going around the neighborhood. "The Japs are coming back; don't trade there." This kind of thing.

DUNHAM: So how did it go, trying to run the store? Did your parents have a hard time? Did they get business?

INAMI: Yeah, for a while, but--see, what happened during the war was, for example, as I recall, on the night of the evacuation, we had to leave the next morning, okay? That night, we took inventory. At that time, the inventory was $2,000. A little, dinky store. So the Chinese guy, Lee, says, "I'd like to give 01:51:00you $2,000, but I've only got a thousand cash, check. So I'll send you the other thousand." Well, we've got to leave next morning; what else can you do? So we took the thousand. He never gave us the thousand back. But at the end of the war, or when he came back, prices had gone up. They had a lot of inventory. So the inventory had gone up to $4,000. So we owe him $4,000. He owes us a thousand, so we still owe him $3,000. See, Dad always told [us], the Chinese are very shrewd businesspeople. So he says, "Be careful." Sure enough--. So we had 01:52:00to come up with the $3,000. I don't think we had to pay it all at once, but somehow he was able to, see?

Another thing during the war is that they had rationing. Meat was rationed, see? So the government would go up in the hills, [to] the cattle ranchers, says, "How many head of cattle do you have?" The rancher would have, say, 120 head, but he'd report 100. So he's got twenty head of cattle he claimed, cattle will die and this sort of thing. So there's an extra twenty heads. Now, the hundred head is rationed through ration stamps; but the twenty head is for him. So he would 01:53:00slaughter those, bring them downtown to little stores like us, and sell the meat to the grocer, and the grocer would double, triple the price. People [who] don't have ration stamps, they're glad to get the meat. Then you'd make all kinds of money.

DUNHAM: Interesting.

Fukumoto: Yeah, very.

INAMI: So we could've made [that money] during the war. All kinds of money, we could've made that.

DUNHAM: Yeah. Well, I just wanted to wrap up. Reflecting back on the whole wartime experience--being taken away to camp, serving in the MIS--what's your perspective, particularly on how Japanese Americans were treated during that time?

INAMI: Oh, well, I feel we were mistreated. I definitely feel that especially 01:54:00during the war, I could've gotten my degree, worked in the defense industries, make a contribution. The Japanese language, I was glad to make that contribution. But the experiences kind of--let's see, let me make a comparison. My white classmates from UC Berkeley, or even from Illinois Tech, they all got good jobs, and they were advancing ahead. For example, my classmate Dick 01:55:00Mack--did I mention he's the one that hired me after?--he had moved up to be the assistant head of the engineering department. He was able to hire me, just like that. As I recall, I think my grades were about equal to his. He's quite a religious guy. He wanted me to go to Burundi. You've heard of Burundi? Right in Central Africa. He wanted me to help him set up a radio station to broadcast the Christian message. He kept bugging me. So I helped him piece together some of 01:56:00the--. And locate the equipment. But meanwhile, they had a revolution. It's a little country. Burundi and Rwanda, two little [countries]. And it's unstable. So we never did go. It's a good thing. But that's a comparison we could've--.

DUNHAM: Right, the significant setback of your career path.

INAMI: Right. Right. In fact, I only made it up to--even in the military--from a buck private, all the way up to lieutenant colonel. The rest of the group who stayed in the Reserve or stayed in the service, they all made it up to full colonel, see. So you can make that comparison.

DUNHAM: But you were able to have a pretty long, successful career at Lawrence Livermore.

INAMI: Oh, yeah, I was able to--but I would think things changed, especially right after the Korean War. I was surprised that, for example, to work at the lab, you need what they call a Q clearance. It's above top secret clearance, see. I was able to get that clearance. They checked everything, checked all my background. I'm not the only one; the other Japanese Americans who had a good record, as long as you didn't have a felony or anything like that, you were able to get this security clearance.

DUNHAM: And you worked much of your career around nuclear weapons and such, is 01:58:00that correct? What were you doing at Lawrence Livermore Lab?

INAMI: Oh, at the lab. Yeah, I was an electronic engineer. We would go out to the Pacific to set off the--. They were prototypes of the bomb, hydrogen bomb. Then we had a test site in Nevada. You never heard of the Fukuryu Maru? Fukuryu? The Lucky Dragon. See, there was a Japanese ship. They were fishing for tuna out in the Pacific, and they got clobbered. They got hit by one of the nuclear devices.

DUNHAM: The tests.

INAMI: Yeah, it's known as the Lucky Dragon, Fukuryu. Fuku means lucky or fortunate.

FUKUMOTO: Right.

INAMI: I guess you know. Okay. Fukuryu Maru. Yeah, I don't know whether it's on the internet or not. It's Lucky Dragon. I was on that shot that clobbered them. I think they were fishing for tuna. There were about twenty, I think, twenty, twenty-five sailors on that ship. Twenty-five years later, they wrote a book of that incident. Twenty-five. All twenty-five were still living, except for the radio operator. See, the Japanese radio operator licenses are pretty strict. You have to know a little bit of physics, a little bit of chemistry. So when those 02:00:00white ashes came down, the rest of them were superstitious. They said, "We're near the equator. It can't be snowing." But the radio operator says, "I'll prove to you it's not snow." So he took a handful of the ashes, stuck it in his mouth and said, "See? It doesn't taste like snow." He got radiation sickness, and he died a couple months later.

DUNHAM: But none of the others--?

INAMI: Well, all the rest are still living. Twenty-five. Twenty-five years later. I have the book. It's all in Japanese. I met another ham, a real Japanese ham. He's emigrated to Canada. A guy named Fukuma. He had met this radio 02:01:00operator, and he said he had taken the ashes, put it into his handkerchief, and stuck it up in the radio rooms. Those radio rooms are really crowded. You could barely get in there. So he got all this radiation.

DUNHAM: Well, the tape is nearly over, but are there any last thoughts you wanted to share before we close our interview here today?

INAMI: Well, I want to thank you for making this interview possible, because this means someday, maybe some of my kinfolks will be reading it or looking at it or whatever.

DUNHAM: Well, it's our pleasure. Yeah, thank you so much for participating--

INAMI: Well, thank you.

DUNHAM: --and sharing so much of your diverse experiences. We really appreciate it, so thank you.

Fukumoto: Yeah. We learned a lot. So thank you.

DUNHAM: Thank you very much.

[End of interview]