Yeiji "Gene" Kono grew up in a small rural town called Biola in California's Central Valley. The Japanese community members had established a Japanese language school, and he attended classes through high school. After high school he majored in mechanical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, Kono was in his senior year at UC Berkeley, and President Roosevelt's Executive Order made it impossible for him to graduate from college. Under the leadership of the University's president, however, all Nisei Seniors were provided enough credits for graduation. Kono received his diploma at the Fresno Assembly Center. In October 1942, the War Relocation Authority moved him and his new wife, Irene Kanase, from Fresno Assembly Center to the detention camp at Jerome, Ark. By December he and Irene had moved to Chicago, Ill., to seek a new life.
After some difficulty, he landed a job at Superior Type Company, a commercial rubber stamp company, and soon began assisting in the war effort. On May 1, 1943, Kono's photo appeared in a front-page article in the Chicago Sun about the "relocation" of Japanese Americans from the West Coast. The article encouraged other Japanese Americans in detention camps to move to Chicago.
On August 1, 1944, the U.S. Army drafted Kono and placed him in the Enlisted Reserve Corps until November 14, 1944, he was called him for active duty. They sent him to Fort Knox to train with the U.S. Armored Tank Corps, and then selected him for Officer Candidate School (OCS). After graduating from OCS, the Military Intelligence Service (MIS) recruited him and in June 1946, he had graduated from the language school at Fort Snelling, Minn. Graduating from Class B-1, he and the only other officer in the class were transferred to the Washington Document Center in Washington, D.C.
A joint intelligence operation of all branches of the U.S. military, and British, Canadian, and Australian intelligence officers, the center focused their research on the Soviets. In May 1947, the Army transferred him to MIS Language School in Monterey, Calif., and then in September he moved again to G-2 Far East Command in Tokyo.
In Tokyo, he worked in Maizaru, a port where overseas Japanese were being repatriated, and he interrogated POWs returning from Siberian labor camps. The U.S. Army wanted to track Soviet activities in Siberia, which included military shipments to North Korea and the first experimental atomic weapon test.
After two years in Maizaru, Kono contracted tuberculosis and spent two years in a hospital. After recovery, he retired on September 30, 1950 and started to work as an aerospace engineer in Los Angeles, Calif. Later, he opened his own company that imported and exported goods and technology with Japan.