Before entering elementary school, Thomas S. Kadomoto was surrounded by Mexican laborers who worked on his father's farm. As a result, he spoke Japanese at home and Spanish on the farm, and it was not until he entered public education that he began speaking English. When he turned 12, his parents decided to return to Japan to school their two boys in a Japanese school. 


When the family returned to the United States, his father learned that he had terminal stomach cancer. All the farm equipment they had bought was sold, and they returned to Japan where his father hoped to receive treatment. Nine hours after they landed in Japan, his father passed away.


Using insurance money, Kadomoto's mother invested in real estate in Tokyo and continued to send her children through school. Seven years later, Kadomoto decided to return to the United States and worked as a salesman for a nursery in Gardena, Calif.


On July 21, 1941, the Army drafted him and he trained as a medic at Fort Ord, Ill. When he learned that Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor he immediately went to his captain and said, "I am an American and I am willing to fight for America." [Biography]


In March or April the Army transferred him to Fort Riley, Kan., where he found a thousand other Nisei doing menial work. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt came to visit the fort, without notice or explanation, all the Nisei were rounded up into a warehouse.


The Military Intelligence Service (MIS) Language School came for recruits and Kadomoto decided to sign up, and in December 1942 he arrived at Camp Savage, Minn. After six months of training, he received a few weeks of leave and with his wife went to Arizona to visit her parents. When they stopped to buy gas, the woman attending the station told him, "We can't sell gasoline to Japanese." A week earlier a nearby station had been fined $1,000 for selling to a local Japanese farmer thereby breaking Arizona's state law.


On November 11, 1943, Kadomoto received the rank of Master Sergeant and led 90 MISLS graduates to Brisbane, Australia, to join linguists already working at the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS). 


After a few months he left for New Guinea to join an Australian regiment. At the camp, he tasted mutton, learned to eat corned beef two or three times a day, and did not interrogate a single prisoner. 


As the war progressed, Allied troops moved to Leyte, Philippines, and Kadomoto was put in charge of five Nisei linguists. After a visit into an inland headquarters, he returned to his station along the coast when a few scared and starved Filipinos saw him and began yelling, "Japon, Japon." G.I.s pointed their rifles at him until one of them recognized him and said, "Don't shoot, that's one of our men."


In the Philippines, Kadomoto received a document from a G.I. who said it was from a Japanese Army captain. With fresh blood still on the paper, he translated the document, which contained information on an air raid that would take place two days later. Headquarters evacuated the area, saving many lives.


After the war ended he received a Bronze Star and a field commission of 2nd Lt. From the Philippines the Army transferred him to Kure Naval Base in Japan. As soon as he could, Kadomoto wrote to his mother in Tokyo who had remained in Japan throughout the war. His brother also visited him and told him he had served in the Japanese Army and had been near Hiroshima when the atom bomb was dropped and had felt the concussion of the blast. Seven months later his brother died, possibly from radiation. After visiting his mother in Tokyo, Kadomoto returned to the United States to be discharged and settled in Arizona where he completed his business degree and began to work as an accountant.

