Kaoru Inouye was born on Hume Ranch, located between Los Gatos and Saratoga, Calif., in 1915. Four years later the ranch closed, and Inouye's father wanted to buy some of the property but had to circumvent the Alien Land Law, which prevented immigrants from purchasing land. His father teamed with an American lawyer to establish a corporation that purchased a portion of the property.
Inouye's grammar school consisted of one room with students ranging from first through eighth grades. After graduation, he continued his education at Los Gatos High School, and in 1933 he enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley.
At Berkeley, Inouye tried to enter the Reserve Officer Training Corps but failed his physical and was deferred. He wanted to enter a field with a promising future and decided to major in chemistry, but seemed exclusive--there were few Asians and no African Americans. After five years of studying, he graduated in 1938, and made the decision to continue his education. After one semester of graduate school his father fell ill, and Inouye quit school and found a job at a laboratory to help his family.
On the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Inouye returned to his rented hotel room and found it boarded up. A Secret Service agent told him it had been seized by the government. Although he worked at his laboratory job until the eviction of all Japanese on the West Coast, he lost his room and moved in with an old classmate.
When Inouye finally returned to Los Gatos, he helped his parents lease their property, sold their car, and then left for Santa Anita Assembly Center. In September 1942, Inouye moved to Heart Mountain Detention Camp and signed up to teach high school chemistry and physics. In the first year the camp did not have a school building, but by the second the school had stocked itself with supplies, developed sports clubs that competed with local schools, and became accredited by the State of Wyoming.
Although Inouye was in poor physical condition, the Army still wanted him for his technical expertise and university education and drafted him in August 1944. During his basic training at Fort Blanding, Fla., a replacement center for the 442nd Regimental Unit in Europe, the Fort's headquarters called him almost everyday for interviews. Finally, one evening the commanding officer announced all the men who would be transferred to the Military Intelligence Service Language School (MISLS) at Fort Snelling. Inouye looked around at the others who had been called and realized they all had studied at West Coast universities.
This small group of educated linguists studied the school at Fort Snelling. Because of Inouye's background in chemistry, he translated documents on explosives for mines, aerial bombs, and torpedoes. Although his Japanese did not compare to that of the advanced classes, his technical knowledge helped him properly translate the documents into English.
While Inouye studied, his father passed away and he returned to Heart Mountain Detention Camp for the funeral. After six months of studying at Fort Snelling, he received a promotion to S. Sgt., took a short furlough to visit his family and friends in Heart Mountain, and then with 536 MIS linguists boarded a ship headed into the Pacific War.
When he landed in the Philippines, Inouye quartered in a tent at the Santa Anita Racetrack right next to the POW compound:
I had the opportunity to talk to the POW's, many of whom were high executives/technical personnel of Japanese firms operating in PI [Philippines] and members of the Japanese Consular Service, besides Army and Navy officers. An interesting discussion was held with a captain of the aircraft carrier used for bombing Pearl Harbor. The discussion disclosed dissension between the Japanese Army and Navy, lack of logistics for invasion of Hawaii, miscalculation of war effort of United States; denouncing the use of English language, and the use of Niseis as linguists. [Autobiography]
After Japan surrendered, Inouye was scheduled to take one of the first planes to Tokyo but the weather stopped all flights. Instead he traveled with the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS) headquarters staff to Japan. When they arrived along the coastline, the captain could not find the entrance to Tokyo Bay. Inouye described to him what the bay looked like when he first entered the country in 1927, and they arrived safely.
Upon arrival, Inouye looked for family members: his brother's house had burnt down and he had moved to Nagano; his uncle's house had also been incinerated and he had moved to Chiba Prefecture. The next day Inouye took a train from Tokyo to Chiba and saw his uncle, aunt, and cousins and learned that the entire family had survived the war.
In his first assignment he reported to Kure to replace ATIS linguists who had returned to the United States. He met an ex-Japanese Army officer who knew his family in Hiroshima, and for the first time in 19 years he met his brother. They arranged to meet again at the family's home the next day. Taking an Army jeep through the city's ruins, he was followed by a pack of children to his family house where his other brother from Nagano had come to visit. Inouye lied to his 92-year-old grandmother that his father was okay, but told his father's oldest sister that he had passed away right as the war had started.
As the non-commissioned officer of the 167th Language Detachment of ATIS, he assigned linguists to various military organizations. Part of his work included escorting a well-known Life magazine photographer and helping stop a riot between Korean nationals and returning Japanese POWs.
In July 1946, Inouye finished his two-year tour of duty and he requested a discharge in Japan to accept a civilian position with the intelligence service in Tokyo. He signed up as a technical investigator and followed the chemical research activities in industrial, government, military, and education institutions. He also interrogated key scientific personnel returning from Manchuria during 1947-1949 and came across a Nisei friend who had been a Ph.D. student at UC-Berkeley.
In September 1947 Inouye married a Japanese-American woman who worked for the Miyagi Military Government. In 1950, as the Korean War began, he decided to return to the United States to put his education to use. He eventually moved to Los Angeles and worked for Aerojet, designing propellants for rockets and publishing papers on microchemistry.