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| [http://www.unr.edu/nevadasilverandblue/archive/2007/spring/NSBS07TellMe.pdf Roy Nishiguchi's oral history of Gerlach duing WWII,] (UNR's Nevada Silver & Blue: Tell Me How Nevada Was, From the files of the University of Nevada Oral History Program)
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| Fighting For The Same Side
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| Roy Nishiguchi, a Fort Ord, Calif.-based
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| U.S. Army medic, saw his Japanese-American
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| family become outcasts during the war. His
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| father, Masaichi Nishiguchi, had been a section
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| foreman for the Western Pacific Railroad in
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| Gerlach, Nev., 70 miles north of Reno, since
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| 1933. But after Pearl Harbor the railroad forced
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| him to leave his job and his property in 1942.
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| Roy Nishiguchi, who attended the University
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| for two years just after war’s end, picks up the
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| story in his own oral history, dictated in 1992.
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| He is a soldier in conflict, devoted to both family and country. His excerpt about wartime in
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| this country tells the other side of the Art Smith
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| story, although both Smith and Nishiguchi,
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| ironically, were fighting for the same side.
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| Many years before the war my dad was
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| carving a toy boat for me, whittling away and
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| talking about war. He said, “roy, if Japan and
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| america fight who you
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| going to fight for?”
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| i said, “Japan.”
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| He said, “Baka (fool)!
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| You were born in this
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| country; you are an
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| american. You fight for
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| your country.”
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| i was about 2 or
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| 3. “You told me how
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| Japanese would fight to the
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| death for their country,” i said. “i’m Japanese,
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| so i’ll fight for them.”
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| He said, “You are american. This is your
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| country — you fight for this country.”
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| dad wanted to be an american so bad that
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| he even adopted Sam for his first name; but
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| because of his race, he was out — immigration law prevented those born in Japan from
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| being naturalized. even though he was bitter
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| about this, he studied american history and
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| read american literature. “i’m going to keep
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| on reading,” he told me. “everything i read is
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| for me. Whether anybody else wants it or not
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| doesn’t matter.”
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| My dad loved his job and thought that being a section foreman for the railroad was all
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| a man could want. He had tried to persuade
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| me to follow in his footsteps: “You have your
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| house furnished; you have your coal, and your
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| kerosene for lighting,” he had said. “What
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| more could you ask? You can’t get that anywhere else.” The railroad was his life.
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| in January following Pearl Harbor, the
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| Western Pacific kicked my father out — took
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| his job away, claiming he was a security risk....
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| He and Mom were ordered to leave their
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| house and get off railroad property, and since
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| the railroad practically owned Gerlach, they
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| didn’t know what to do. Their other son, art,
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| had been inducted into the army the week
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| before, but one of my friends who hadn’t yet
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| been drafted helped them. He got a bunch of
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| fellows together and rented a little trailer for
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| Mom and dad. it was just big enough to hold
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| a double bed, and they moved it to a site that
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| was off railroad property, which meant it was
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| out in the desert, out in the sagebrush. Stuck
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| out there in the boondocks that’s what my
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| mother and dad lived in through the winter.
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| No toilet facilities, no nothing.
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| My sister Mary and her husband, Chad
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| Chadwell, journeyed from Tennessee to care
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| for my preteen sisters, who had been separated from Mom and dad. When Mary wrote
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| to me and told me about the situation, i borrowed money from army buddies and made
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| my way back to Gerlach. i walked out to the
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| trailer and knocked on the door. at first there
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| was no response: Mom and dad were scared!
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| They were afraid that someone had come out
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| there to blast them. i called out, “it’s roy,” and
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| my dad finally opened the door.
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| Well, there wasn’t a thing i could do for
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| them. i only had a seven-day furlough, and
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| no money. What could i do? i didn’t know
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| anything. My friend Paul Wayne told me, “Go
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| back to Fort Ord. We’ll look out for your mom
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| and dad.” So i went back to Fort Ord, and
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| eventually Mary was able to rent a house in
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| reno and move our family into it.
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| The army pulled all the Nisei off the West
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| Coast and transferred us to inland units.
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| although we didn’t know where we were
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| going, i, for one, thought that i would soon be
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| in combat. Boy, was i wrong! We Nisei were
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| americans, soldiers in the united States army;
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| but for a year following Pearl Harbor, my group
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| was given only the kinds of jobs that had been
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| performed by work details from the stockade. i
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| ended up assigned to the 85st Service unit at
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| Camp Wolters, Texas, a trained medic serving
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| the army by emptying garbage cans.
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| after the war, Nishiguchi enrolled as a 30-
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| year-old at Nevada on the Gi Bill, but did not
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| finish his schooling. He became material facilities officer at Stead air Force Base, located
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| just north of reno, and then was warehouse
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| supervisor for K-Mart in reno. He retired
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| from K-Mart in 1986 and died in 2002.
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| In 1995, the program published excerpts from
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| Art Smith’s and Roy Nishiguchi’s oral histories in
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| War Stories: veterans remember WW ii.
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| Roy Nishiguchi
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| == See Also == | | == See Also == |
| * [[Black Rock Desert Gunnery Range]] | | * [[Black Rock Desert Gunnery Range]] |
| | * [[History]] |
| | * [[Timeline]] |
| | |
| | == External Resources == |
| | * [http://www.unr.edu/nevadasilverandblue/archive/2007/spring/NSBS07TellMe.pdf Roy Nishiguchi's oral history of Gerlach duing WWII,] from UNR's Nevada Silver & Blue: Tell Me How Nevada Was, From the files of the University of Nevada Oral History Program. A first person account of being of Japanese descent during WWII in Gerlach. |