Masato "Mas" Inouye was born on the central Coast of California in San Luis Obispo and grew up in nearby Santa Maria and remembers having a "normal" childhood.

Although the Japanese in Santa Maria numbered only two or three hundred people, they did have a small Japanese school that Inouye attended. After regular school, the Japanese students separated from their Caucasian friends and studied Japanese:

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My friends were both Caucasian and Japanese. However, I'll have to say that outside of school hours, relationship was mostly with the Nisei group. The relationship with the Caucasian friends terminated after school hours, so it was very much outside the school environment. Of course, in those days, we had to go to Japanese school several days a week after school. And so they kept up pretty busy. We didn't have much time to socialize in any way except to bear down and study.

 After school, which would normally be about three o'clock, we would go to the gakuen [school] as they say which is the Japanese language school and spend anywhere from one to two hours studying Japanese. Of course, we had recess and we all looked forward to recess because nobody seemed to want to study too hard, especially after a full day at the public schools. But somehow, it worked out. [Oral History]
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After he graduated from high school in July 1935, Inouye's parents encouraged him to continue his education in Japan. He boarded a ship and 14 days later arrived in Tokyo. After finding a boarding house for Japanese from abroad (mainly from Hawaii), he began studying Japanese in preparation for studies at Meiji University. Despite his limited Japanese proficiency, he decided to pursue a degree in law and graduated with an equivalent to a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1939. 

During his stay in Japan, he spent most of his time studying to keep up with the other Japanese students and became involved in the Japan America Student Association. With this international group he took the opportunity to visit Korea and Manchuria, which were then under Japanese control-a sign of the growing Japanese militarism:

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Although I was just a plain civilian going to school, I did notice a lot of activity, especially around the railroad stations where the Japanese soldiers were going to war and there was quite a bit of this so-called martial atmosphere-waving of flags, singing of songs, quite a bit of that going on. I noticed my classmates at Meiji University-they were concerned that they would be conscripted-drafted into the army. I heard many stories about some of these guys would drink a lot of shoyu [soy sauce] so that it would show up in their urine test so that they would be exempt from the draft. Not everybody, all the Japanese, wanted to be the drafted.... But for the most part there was great support for whatever the Japanese government was seeking to achieve. [Oral History]
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Sticking to his original plan, Inouye decided to return to the United States in 1939. Inspired by a visiting professor from Yale University whom he met in Tokyo, he applied and was admitted to Yale's graduate school in international relations.

In 1941, the Army started the draft and as his number drew near, Inouye decided to enlist. He visited his widowed mother in Guadalupe and then went for his medical check. The doctors discovered a spot on his lung, which they thought was active tuberculosis. The Army rejected him and he went to a sanitarium in Monrovia, Calif. Lying in his hospital bed, he heard the news that Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor.

He spent two months recovering and then returned home for more rest, but Executive Order 9066 evicted his family from their home and sent them to detention camps. He and his family moved into Tulare Assembly Center and then to Gila River Detention Camp:

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My feelings [were] not of anger. It was a terrible disappointment in the government for doing such a thing to us. Even with all that going on, I never lost faith in our country. They'd realize the gross injustice [that] they did to us. But still you can't help but feel [that] this meant a lot of suffering for innocent people. And I was especially concerned about my mother.... But I felt at the same time that if they issued such an order that we should go along with it. [Oral History]

Imagine, living in barracks... some people had to live in these, what is it, horse stalls was it? We were in one of these new tar-paper barracks.... You don't have any freedom, no privacy, poor sanitation, bad food. As a matter of fact, I had a bad case of diarrhea for several months. Worst part of it is [that] you don't have a life ... like you're put in jail.... The old people are the ones that suffered the most, I think. [Oral History]
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Despite the hardship, Inouye accepted the government's orders. In camp he worked in community service, playing records in the evenings to keep people occupied. 

While in Tulare, he courted his future wife Kimiko, and then in Gila River Detention Camp they married. With some help, she found a wedding gown and he rented a tuxedo. For their honeymoon, they were driven from Gila River Camp 2, where they lived, to Gila River Camp 1, one mile away. They spent their first evening together in an empty barrack.

Inouye spent only a short period of time at Gila River, from April to December, 1942. When Military Intelligence Service (MIS) Language School representatives came to recruit, he decided to apply for a position at the University of Michigan instead of the MIS Language School in Minnesota. He wanted to stay close to an academic institution. After being accepted, he and his wife moved to Ann Arbor, Mi., where he taught Caucasian students from top colleges around the country. His students studied with him for one year of basic Japanese and then continued their studies at MISLS:

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I think all of us felt that we were doing our share in the war effort in training these young men so that we could do our share in winning the war. Because there's a definite need for linguists. And these fellows we taught could never achieve the proficiency of, say, a good Nisei linguist. But their job is, I guess, as detachment commanders.... I had some fellows I know who became good linguists. [Oral History]
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The war ended in 1945 and the Japanese school in Michigan closed. Over the next two years, he worked on various projects translating documents. On one assignment, he worked for the Manhattan Project, and another forced him to move to Dayton, Ohio. At age thirty and with two daughters, he remembered his first rejection from the Army and decided to enlist. He went to Fort Dix, New Jersey, for basic training and then received orders to teach Japanese at the language school in Monterey, Calif.

He taught for two years and then applied for a commission in military intelligence. In April 1950, he received his orders as First Lieutenant for the Far East. He moved to Japan and became General Ridgeway's interpreter, but in June the Korean War began and his family could not join him. The following year, his wife developed stomach cancer, and he returned to the U.S. to be with her, but she passed away three months after surgery.

The Army allowed him to change his assignment and he stayed in the United States for three years. The Army asked him to study Korean. After a year of study he left for Tokyo in 1955. Instead of going to Korea, they sent him to Army Headquarters in Japan where he interpreted for General Taylor and then became the aide-de-camp for General Lenmitzer for three years.

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In 1950 when I first reported as a serviceman in Tokyo, there were still signs of the devastation. But when I went back for the next tour, which was in 1955, there was a tremendous difference. Japan was well on its way back to normalcy. They were building the nation up and that was quite a pleasant surprise. [Oral History]
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During these two tours through Japan, Inouye had the opportunity to meet international dignitaries at high-level meetings, interpreted speeches at banquets and baseball games, and helped open communications between the United States and Japan.

In August 1967, Inouye retired from the service and returned to California. At his retirement ceremony, received the Legion of Merit for "exceptionally meritorious service as Director, Office of Doctrine and Literature, United States Army Intelligence School, Fort Holibird, Maryland from January 1966 to July 1967." [Oral History]
For the next 15 years, he worked as a counselor for the Veteran's Administration. Thinking back to his childhood Inouye says:

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I remember when I was young, growing up in Santa Maria Valley, California, they spoke often how great it would be if we, the Nisei, could somehow contribute to the understanding and friendship between the two countries, United States and Japan. And I always had in the back of my mind this ideal or dream. And even now at my age-ripe old age of 75-I still have that dream of closer relations between our two countries. [Oral History]
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