Born in rural California, Kazuo Inouye grew up in the small community of Kingsburg. There he attended regular high school on the weekdays and Japanese school on Saturdays and Sundays where felt he lived a relatively prejudice free life.
Then he received his draft notice, and instead of waiting for the draft to call him, he decided to enlist in the Air Force:

> I didn't feel any prejudice until the draft. I tried to volunteer for the Air Force, and I was turned down because I was Japanese. However, they told me I can go into the Army. [Oral History]

He waited, and then Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in December. In January the Army drafted him. After training on the West Coast, he moved to Camp Riley, Kan. He met a recruiter for the Military Intelligence Service (MIS) Language School, but the commanding officer told all the Nisei soldiers that they would never get a promotion. On Easter Sunday, President Franklin D. Roosevelt visited the base:

> That's when they threw all the Japanese in the warehouse and had Caucasian officers with machine guns guarding the door. That's the kind of an officer he was, the Command General. He would mow us down, so who would volunteer? [Oral History]

Eventually, Inouye received orders to board a train, and he found himself at Camp Savage, Minn. On December 4, 1942, he graduated and shipped out to Brisbane, Australia, to work with the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS).
As an interrogator, he worked with "hard-headed" Japanese soldiers-the ones who refused to talk. Later, he went to the Philippines and interrogated prisoners as they were brought in. At San Fernando, about 20 miles north of Manila, he had to interpret for five Japanese soldiers who had been caught as spies:

> They all snuck out of the hills, came to Manila and stole civilian clothing so they won't attract too much attention. They said they came to assassinate General MacArthur. They actually said that. They had a trial and I was the interpreter. A captain of the U.S. Army was on the defense and he was very good. We gave them a fair trial. If you're caught behind enemy lines in wartime in civilian cloths, you're a spy. So they were tried as spies and sentenced to hang. One fellow had a lump in his pants pocket, so we said, "What do you have in there?" He had his army cap, Japanese Army cap. That saved his life. Yes. The others were hung the following morning because they did not show that they were soldiers. [Oral History]

In another incident in Pampanga Province, Luzon, he was speaking with four Japanese prisoners at the local jail:

> One prisoner that I was talking to, he had a photographic mind. He was a former college instructor in Japan. He came out voluntarily and he wanted to tell us. He told all about their defense. The second day I went, he asked me, "Is there a Lieutenant Silver in the Air Corps?" I said, "How come you know that?" He said, "Well, one of the prisoners was an air corps pilot and he was interrogated by this Lieutenant Silver from Clark Airfield Base." That was 20 miles north of where I was staying, San Fernando. So I went back that evening and I asked my Lieutenant, "You know a Lieutenant Silver of Clark Airfield?" "We were classmates. I know him." So, he called this Lieutenant Silver and told [him] about this prisoner, his name was Koike. And before he left, Koike and three other classmates gave Lieutenant Silver a bon voyage party. They were friends, you see. And that's when I realized that while war is hell, and their countries are fighting, people don't hate each other. [Oral History]

On a sailboat in Subic Bay, Inouye heard over the radio that Japan had surrendered. He left for Japan, but had enough points so he would be among the first to return to the United States. Assigned to Kyoto, the one large city not destroyed by bombs, he stayed with the G-2 6th Army:

> When soldiers gather, they get into trouble, for stealing a keg of beer from a beer joint, and we had to track it down where it went. I remember when they stole the Geisha clothes. That's about all. [Oral History]
> When we were in Kyoto, we asked the civilians how did it feel to be defeated. They gave us a surprising answer. They said [that] we were glad. You see, they've suffered so much under the military, that if Japan won, civilians would be like slaves. So they were happy. [Oral History]

After only a few months in Japan, in November 1945, he returned to Kingsburg, Calif., and continued to farm and work as a welder and machinist. He met his family who returned from Jerome Detention Camp, and in 1949 he married Kazuye Yamasaki.