William Hirashima knew from the onset that for people of Japanese ancestry, the best and most available jobs were in agriculture. So despite having attended college, he decided to work for a vegetable exchange in Salinas, California. Though he had attended Japanese school in his childhood, Hirashima remembers growing up feeling distaste for "anything Japanese."
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We were raised probably more American here in this area, Santa Barbara, than in any other city or town because there were very few of us. And we were accepted, we were not in competition with the other people.
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<br><br>Soon after being drafted into the Army in early 1941, Hirashima was approached by a recruiter from the Military Intelligence Service Language School (MISLS) and sent to the first language school at the Presidio of San Francisco. After graduation, he was sent to General Headquarters in Brisbane, Australia. In May 1942, he and the other Nisei linguists attached to the 126th Infantry Regiment moved on to Port Moresby, New Guinea. Hirashima recalls a long and arduous march through jungle trails, carrying not only basic gear and weapons but also heavy dictionaries. Eventually, he was forced to discard most of the original equipment to lighten the load during the two-week journey. Ironically, during the campaign in Buna, the Allied soldiers' worst enemy seemed to be not the Japanese but a disease--malaria.
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We had a number of casualties [from battle] but nothing like malaria. It just took the unit by storm. I think it was safe to say 50% of the people were down with malaria....They kept people on the line who were very sick....Those were trouble days for all of us.
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<br><br>During the Buna campaign, Hirashima and the other linguists interrogated prisoners, most of whom were so ill that they would die just days after the interrogation. In fact, Hirashima remembers that most of the captured Japanese soldiers were either too uneducated, suicidal, and/or so sick that they could provide useful information.
