Oral History Videos

Iwao Yokooji
Interview Length: 1:59

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT:
In Hawaii, peculiarly because of our environment, we have pidgin English, pidgin Japanese.  And we were never, because of the environment, we never had the opportunity to improve our language.  But then when we went to the mainland, you know, we see all these kids.  A lot of them don't have the kind of education we had.  When we first entered the army, the first thing we had was this test - mental and mechanical aptitude test.  We stayed in Schofield Barracks for about a week before we shipped out.  Before we were shipped out, we were unofficially informed that we were the "most highly educated unit in the history of the United States Army."  On an average they were, we were all high school graduates.

Well, we would pick up part in training.  We'd pick up pieces of paper.  And us guys are foot soldiers.  We were trudging along, trudging along.  We see someone pick up a piece of paper.  It turned out to be a love letter.  And when you look at the grammar, it's atrocious.  It is between two Caucasians. You know, women may not be able to speak as well as they did at that time.  But our written language should grammatically correct, you know.  And this is why, it is how we learned that the, hey, the Caucasians were no better than we were, you know.  They're not superior to us.  That is why we were able to stand shoulder to shoulder.  At Camp Shelby, there were 70,000 Caucasians.  And we only had about 4,000 in the farthest corner of the camp.  But hey, we don't have to play second fiddle to these guys.  We're just as good as they are.