Roy Uyehata grew up in an agricultural community in northern California. In spite of all the hard farmwork he had to perform, he still managed to attend both regular and Japanese language schools on a daily basis.
<br><br>In April 1941 Uyehata was drafted for military service and sent to Fort Ord for basic training.  After basic training, he and other Nisei soldiers in the 7th Medical Battalion moved to Camp Wolters. Because of the distrust that prevailed between the Caucasian officers and the Japanese-American enlisted men, the camp commander had most of the Nisei do menial labor such as collecting garbage--duties typically assigned to stockade prisoners. Soon after, Military Intelligence Service (MIS) recruiters selected him and 25 others from Camp Wolters for the first MIS language class at Camp Savage, Minnesota. Meanwhile, the rest of his family followed Executive Order 9066 and moved into the Poston Detention Camp in Arizona.
<br><br>During the war, Uyehata served in the Guadalcanal, Bougainville, and Luzon campaigns. In Bougainville, he and others on his team conducted interrogation after interrogation of Japanese POWs who had been captured on the island. One particular interrogation Uyehata completed on March 8, 1944, led to an advanced warning of an attack that was planned for March 23. Uyehata recounts the details:
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As I was interrogating a private first class, the POW interrupted by asking how he could get off the island. The question surprised me. I...knew through experience that no POW ever wished to be recaptured by Japanese units. He was apparently fearful of being retaken in a counterattack....Worried about the dilemma in which he seemed to find himself, he blurted out that he guessed we knew that we were going to be attacked at dawn on March 23--a very auspicious day to mount an attack since it is a holiday, special to the Japanese Emperor...I knew that this top secret information had not been given to our Army commanders, so I misled the POW and told him that the attack was not "new" information since a number of other prisoners had also provided the same news to me previously.
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<br><br>Uyehata then continued the interrogation for a short while after which he excused himself from the interrogation so that he could expedite this critical information to Captain William Fisher. At first, the captain cast doubt at the information, but after more interrogations of other POWs the plans were verified, and the captain immediately passed on the information to the commander of the XIV Corps. On the evening of March 22, U.S. forces launched a preemptive attack on the Japanese.
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The combined artillery and naval gunfire barrages were so thunderous that the ground under XIV Corps headquarters, which was located approximately two and a half miles from the front, shook with the rolling motion of an earthquake....
<br><br>Our victory was decisive. The Japanese soldiers were totally unprepared for the artillery barrages which caught them without cover of foxholes and bunkers. When casualties were counted after the battle, there were more than 5,000 enemy dead and more than 3,000 wounded.
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<br><br>For their work that led to the victorious Second Battle of Bougainville, Uyehata and another MIS member Hiroshi Matsuda received Bronze Star medals. Captain Fisher also had his parents visit the Poston camp to inform Uyehata's parents that their son had committed a heroic deed for the United States.
<br><br>In another incident, Uyehata's assistance during an interrogation led to the identification of code designators, which allowed the Signal Corps to break the four-digit Japanese code. Though the Signal Corps captain who conducted the interrogation was awarded the Legion of Merit, Uyehata received no recognition for his role in the interrogation.
<br><br>Having been discharged in late 1945, Uyehata returned to California to begin farmwork again. Ironically, he came back "home" before his family returned from the detention camp. It was not until their return that Uyehata learned his father had some unfavorable experiences at Poston because his son was in the U.S. military.
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When they were in Poston before the re-segregation took place, when the pro-Japanese supporters were shipped to Tule Lake, my father was called "<i>inu</i>" [Japanese for "dog," used to connote a traitor] by so many of the people, just because he was [a]  parent of [an] MIS soldier.
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<br><br>For better economic opportunities, Uyehata decided to change career paths and turn to a technical field. Having earned a bachelor's degree in engineering, he sought work in the computer industry but like many other Japanese Americans, he found great difficulty securing a job. In 1950, he was working at the U.S. Marine Corps Depot in San Francisco when he was recalled to active service for the Korean War. During this war, he participated in military intelligence duties, including Operation Rat Trap. This project involved the rounding up of hundreds of communist civilians (North Korean guerrillas) located near the southern end of the Korean Peninsula. Through the MIS men's interrogations, communist cell leaders from all over South Korea were identified. Eventually Uyehata's work in Korea would earn him a Commendation Ribbon with Medal Pendant. After serving in various capacities as a reserve officer, he finally retired in 1977 as a Lieutenant Colonel.
<br><br>From 1954 to 1992, Uyehata worked in numerous high-tech companies, including Applied Technology, Memorex, and Seagate Technology. He devoted his spare time to the pursuit of historical data related to Nisei veterans and Japanese Americans in general. In the 1990s, he was able to locate the family of a deceased soldier whose diary Uyehata had found during the war and had kept for all these years. He promptly returned it to the soldier's daughter.
