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Des Moines Life

Could you tell us where you were sent after you signed "Yes-Yes" to the Loyalty Oath?

From Tule Lake we went to Amachi.

That's because you said "Yes-Yes?"

Yes. I had finished my junior year in Tule Lake and I thought I'd better get out of camp and go to an outside school to get a diploma. That would give me a better chance of entering college after I got out. So I asked the camp director—in charge of personal movement—that I wanted to get out. As much as my loyalty questionnaire was positive he said "Where would you like to go?" I said, "Anywhere is okay with me, I don't care. It's going to be something new for me anyway." So he said, "Well I could send you to New York, but there's quite a bit of people there already. You can go to Philadelphia, nah. Maybe Chicago? Oh no there's too many people there already," so he said "How about Des Moines, Iowa?" and I said, "Where's that?" Well, it came to the point that I didn't care. I said "Yeah, okay. I'll go to Des Moines, Iowa." Anyway, he said "Okay, we'll get you a ticket, a train ticket." I don't know if he gave me any spending money. I got on the train and a few days later was in Des Moines. I got to the depot there, the train stopped in the morning right there at the depot. I was wondering, after I got off the train,with my one suitcase were my only belongings, "What will I do next?" Whether I should call a cab or just "What am I going to do?" Before I did anything a man came forward and he said "I'm Ross Wilbur, I'm with the Quakers and we run this hostel in Des Moines and I'm here to pick you up." I said, "Oh gee, that's wonderful, thanks." I got on this station wagon, he had a station wagon at that time, and he brought me to the hostel. The hostel was organized so that the people that came out of camp, like me, had a place to stay until we could find a more permanent place to stay. Mr. Wilbur picked me up, brought me to the hostel and he said, "You must be pretty tired from the travel. After you freshen up, come down and we'll talk about what you want to do here." I was anxious to get going, so I washed my face and went downstairs and I said, "Mr. Wilbur, I can talk to you now?" He said, "What would you like to do?" I said, "Well, I'd like to find a home where I could do chores around the house and get my room and board and then in the daytime go to school," and he said "Well, I think we have just the family for you." I said, "Well great! When can I see this family?" So he said, "Well, I'll call them up and see if they're open for an interview." So he got on the phone, called and talked to Mrs. Allen and Mrs. Allen said, "Yeah, send him up." "When?" "Right now!"

I walked up to Mrs. Allen's house, big house, owned by the judge and Mrs. Allen, judge Allen, Municipal Court judge and prominent figure in Des Moines, Iowa. I went for the interview and we chatted for a few minutes. Mrs. Allen said, "What would you like to do?" I said, "Well I'd like to work around the house, earn my room and board and then go to school." She said, "Yeah that's fine, that's fine. Well, we'd like to have you!" I said, "Really? That's great!" So I said, "When can I move in?" "As soon as you can go and pick up your baggage and come back you can move in." I went back to the hostel, picked up my baggage and went to Mrs. Allen's home and she showed me to the little room that I would occupy and she showed me the back door. I'm like the servant; I don't come in the front door, I come in the back door. To make a long story short, when I was about to leave Mrs. Allen and the household she told me, "Next time, Marvin, you come into town you're going to come in the front door."

It was an amazing family—the Allen's. The son-in-law was a Navy lieutenant on one of the destroyers—or whatever it was—working in the Atlantic. And their son, Don Allen, was an airplane pilot, and he flew what they call B-24's. He came out of North Africa and bombed part of Rome, Italy. Mrs. Allen wrote letters to her son-in-law and the son and told them that they had this Japanese boy, a house boy, and what they thought of it. A letter came back and it said, "We have nothing against the boy." They understood war and they felt that the family was doing the right thing to help a poor Japanese-American boy go to school. They had no arguments about having the family house me. I heard later on that the neighbors were apprehensive, thinking that a Japanese boy was in the neighborhood—that's what Mrs. Allen told me later on. The neighbors saw me working in the yard, helping to do this and that, and pretty soon, the neighbors family wanted me to do some work. They talked to Mrs. Allen and said she could spare me to work over at their house. The neighbors would ask me to do what they wanted me to do. I remember this neighbor, they had a cook, a pretty wealthy family, and this cook, every now and then, made apple pie. One day she asked me if I wanted a piece of pie, so I said, "Yeah, what young kid wouldn't enjoy a piece of pie?" Every time I did some work for the neighbors, she would come out with at least an apple pie or something. They treated me well. Mrs. Allen told me at first, neighbors were apprehensive, but when they saw me walking around they finally realized that it was okay.

Did you get any discrimination when you went to school in Iowa?

No, no. The Allen's were very good. Number one: I told them that I was a Methodist and so they talked to the head minister of the Methodist church in Des Moines, Iowa and asked about the youth group there, the Methodist Youth Fellowship. I got involved with them. Then, when school started, in September, Mrs. Allen's daughter took me to the school, got me registered at the school and I was the only Asian-American there at Theodore Roosevelt High School. I was wondering how I was going to be treated, but it was no problem. They wanted me to play basketball with them and they'd come talk to me. To this day, I think that I should have kept up with some of the guys that befriended me there. There was one kid named John Mackey and I often thought I'd like to look him up, but you know, like all the good thoughts that you have, it just doesn't get done. John Mackey was one of the good guys and there was another fellow that had a car, so he would pick me up—Stan I think was his name—would pick me up and go to the Methodist Youth Fellowship meetings on Sunday night and then bring me home. That's the way it went. The Methodist Youth Fellowship wanted to know, just like you're asking me questions today, about how it was and I would tell them and we'd exchange information. I didn't feel any sort of discrimination or anti-Japanese feelings there. I guess I would be one of the luckier ones that my experiences have all been positive. But, people say, if you see a dog coming and the dog is wagging its tail, you have the tendency to pet him. But if the dog's got his tail behind his legs, then you say "Oh no, this dog might not be so friendly." As long as you're like a tail-wagging puppy...In my case I tried to be as friendly as I could and these students helped me a lot. They welcomed me. We had a basketball team, and they wanted me to play basketball with them and stuff like that. It was great.

Were the other students and your peers aware of your situation and did they know that you came from an internment camp?

They were curious, they wanted to know. That's why they asked me to talk and I talked to them and they asked questions. They took me right in.

The M.I.S. and Revisiting Japan

So, from there, how did you get involved in the military and the M.I.S.?

At one time, they didn't want any Japanese-Americans, they cut off the draft board, but now with the war in Japan getting hotter and hotter. I think the higher-ups thought they needed linguists. So, not only did they go to the camps—like I was telling you earlier—and asked for volunteers; they opened up their draft again. Here I am, just about to graduate high school, and I'm draft age now. So I thought, "I'm going to write a letter to the Military Intelligence Language School," which was located at Fort Snelling at that time—it moved from Camp Savage to Fort Snelling at that time. I wrote to this recruiting officer and he asked that I write something in Japanese, so I did my best and wrote something in Japanese. I forget what I said, but right away he said, "I want you to come in. I want you to come right away as soon as you can."

What motivated you to join the MIS? Was it your brother?

I knew a little Japanese and my brother was already in it, and I thought that rather than be a rifle-toting infantry man, I wanted to be something a little different. I thought using that my Japanese language knowledge would be the way to go, so that's why I joined. I went to Fort Snelling; they sent us to Alabama for basic infantry training. After that was done I went to these classes for nine months and after that was over we were sent to Manila via Kivojaneel and from Manila. When the shooting war ended in August of '45, we were sent to Tokyo and I was with the Chief Engineers Office of what was called a "Utilities Section." Our job with the Utilities Section was to renovate these bombed out buildings used by occupation forces and for men and women. The men came first and then the women secretarial workers, and that type. We needed to fix up housing for them, so we took over these buildings and brought them up to shape for use by the occupation forces. We didn't do the actual work, we had Japanese contractors by that time to do the heavy lifting and our job was to supervise their work, make sure that they were doing their work according to what we wanted, according to what the engineer section wanted. My job was to go along with the officer and check on these various projects and we wanted to make sure that they were on time. If there was something troubling the contractor we wanted to know that. For example, in those days, right after the end of the shooting war, the Japanese transportation system was pretty bad. The trucks were run on coal and they weren't too powerful, so this one building needed a great, big transformer and that transformer was too heavy for all the Japanese coal-burning trucks, so they couldn't bring the transformer into the building from the factory, or warehouse. When we heard that, we arranged for our two-and-a-half ton army trucks, to pick up the transformer and bring it in to the building side. We did things like that. If they were having trouble transportation-wise, we'd offer to help. If they had trouble getting whatever they needed we would go and fill out these procurement papers and get the things and bring it to the site so that they could finish their work.

The boss of the section was Colonel E.A. Fullerton. We kept in touch after occupation. For a long time, when he used to come in to San Francisco, he'd always call me and we'd have lunch together and stuff like that. We got along real well. The poor thing about Colonel Fullerton, the boss, was that he lost his younger brother—the only family he had—a younger brother. He was killed in the Philippines, he was bitter. Anyway, we got to know him, and he got to know us and he treated us like family members. On weekends, he'd say "Hey, you guys come and have lunch with me or come visit me at my residence." One time we said, "Hey, we don't have transportation." He said, "Well, I'll get you a Jeep." There was no problem. We always had a Jeep so we could go anywhere we liked on weekends. Then again, our experience had been very, very positive, but there was one that wasn't so positive and that was in Manila. I think this officer was kind of drunk. I was in town and I was trying to get back to my billet. This driver was a sergeant, or a private, and he saw me hitchhiking and he said, this drunk officer started calling me bad names, so I asked the driver to stop and I got off and made my way again.

Was he making racist remarks?

He must have a been a racist drunk. I thought I couldn't make a big fuss about it because the guy was drunk. If he's one of those hard-heads and he sees me in the U.S. uniform that should be enough to tell him "Hey, he's on our side!" But these, what you call bigots, they have such a hard head that you can't convince them otherwise. They'll believe what they want to believe. I just hope that we don't have too many of that kind in the country. You want to know what it was like in Tokyo?