Sukeo Oji spent a happy childhood on his father's vegetable farm in Sacramento. Two other Japanese families lived nearby, and Oji would go along with one of the Kumagai sons to hunt for meadowlarks, robins, and even sparrows. Oji fondly remembers how his mother would box lunch for them to take on their hunting ventures.
<br><br>With such tranquility there still existed racial barriers for Japanese Americans. For instance, Oji and his friends always swam in the river even though the community had a public pool--the facility was closed to the Japanese. As Oji says, "Such discrimination was part of our living. It was so ingrained in us it was part of [our] way of life."
<br><br>From a young age, Oji had various chores assigned to him. Being a member of a large family consisting of eight children, one of his jobs had to do with guarding their farm from poachers. In his early teens, he would deliver truckloads of cantaloupe and vegetables to wholesale markets. All the while, he and his siblings attended both regular and Japanese schools daily.
<br><br>Oji's interests in engineering and craftsmanship started early, indicated by his love for making model trucks, boats, and airplanes. While attending high school, he won first prize in a national drafting competition, which yielded him a set of drafting tools and a certificate. Fortunately, he had opportunities to continue pursuing his love for mechanical things both during the war and in his postwar career. 
<br><br>Also during his adolescent years, Oji would often dream of flying as he watched army fighter planes jetting past the family fields. He fulfilled his wish when he obtained a license from the Civilian Pilot Training Program at Sacramento Junior College. He was about to start training to become a flight instructor when the Army drafted him on November 6, 1941. Soon after, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and as Oji comments, "things were in great confusion" at the army base where he was stationed: "My first sergeant handed me a 03 rifle with 200 rounds of ammunition and ordered me to guard one of the electrical transformer stations, telling me I'll be relieved in couple of hours. It was morning before he remembered to relieve me." Orders arrived then for Oji to be placed in inactive reserve and to be sent home. Soon, Executive Order 9066 forced  the Ojis off their farm with only one suitcase for each family member. He recalls how he sad he was at having to leave behind a decorative table that he had so proudly crafted. They ended up at the Gila River Detention Camp, having to start a new life in the isolated and desolate desert of Arizona. Later, in recollecting his war years, Oji would write, 
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It was so ironic to see our people being incarcerated like this while we were in uniform of the government who forced our people in places like these....we all, I'm sure, reflected on the injustice of our government and more so we soldiers, somehow, had to show this government that we are true and loyal citizens of this country.
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<br><br>Under the Student Relocation Program, Oji and a group of other Nisei had the opportunity to leave the camps and continue their education. With assistance from the program and the Wesley Methodist Foundation, he began classes at the University of Nebraska. He would never complete his studies, as he received his call for active duty in his senior year. Assigned to the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, Buck Sergeant Oji took a position as a Heavy Machine Gun Squad leader. Though he was supposed to move out with the unit to Europe, fate intercepted and again, Oji did not go out into the war zone. While in basic training, he was approached by recruiters from the Military Intelligence Service (MIS) and asked to read the word "<i>Nihon</i>" (Japanese word for Japan). "That's good enough," was the interviewer's reply as Oji read the two-character word for him. Soon, he was transferred to Camp Savage to attend the MIS Language School. After graduating from the nine-month course, Oji was accepted to attend the Officer Candidate School in June 1945. Few months later the war ended and Oji received his commission as Second Lieutenant.
<br><br>During the Occupation, Oji worked with the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS) briefly before receiving assignment to be part of the 164th Language Detachment at X Corps located on the campus of Keio University. At Sugamo Prison in Tokyo, Oji and the other team members censored all incoming and outgoing mail related to the Japanese prisoners who were incarcerated while waiting for the war crime trials. His next assignment brought him closer to his real interest in engineering, as he transferred to the 583rd Engineer Construction Group which had been desperately searching for a Japanese-speaking engineering officer. Oji took charge of some 30 Japanese engineers with responsibility of making field surveys, and planning and preparing engineering and construction plans for troop and family housing units. By the time it was completed in 1948, the project included not only housing but also a commissary, post exchange, theater, school, chapel, and officers and service clubs. Oji continued to work in this capacity and was involved in many more postwar construction projects--both in Japan and back home in the United States.
<br><br>With the Korean War, Oji received orders to take charge of the Interrogation Prisoners of War (IPW) team and join the 2nd Infantry Division. The team consisted of three officers and 14 enlisted men, all Nisei except for one Russian linguist. Because Japanese was the second language for many Koreans--a direct result of Japanese colonialism--the Nisei linguists proved valuable in their work as interrogators and interpreters.
<br><br>By September of 1950, Oji and his team had seen countless numbers of prisoners and realized from the POWs' physical conditions that the enemy was wearing down and lacking food and supplies. With Gen. Douglas MacArthur's successful landing at Inchon, the U.S. forces began their offensive attacks: "The enemy in front of our line collapsed. The enemy practically disintegrated and many disappeared into the hills and mountains." During the period, Oji remembers seeing many horrific incidents involving captured South Koreans.
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They [North Korean army] corralled many political prisoners and finger pointed civilians and incarcerated them in the existing prisons. When our rapidly advancing units pushed the enemy, they did not have time to evacuate nor properly dispose of their prisoners. They apparently decided to dig mass graves and shot most of them. Even then they did not have time to bury them and left the bodies stacked like cords of wood beside the trench. When the enemy hastily retreated, the family and relatives, women and old men were looking for their loved ones and taking them away in makeshift wooden boxes. It was a dreadful sight and experience.
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<br><br>Their division advanced with very little resistance, and Oji and his men were able to interrogate and process hundreds of prisoners. In their questioning, the MIS men would find out the prisoners' names, units, rank, and serial numbers and separate them according to this information. Then, the IPW members interrogated some enlisted men and the officers while the rest of the prisoners were shipped out to Corps headquarters.
<br><br>As they got closer to the Korea-China border, the U.S. soldiers received nightly visits from "Midnight Charley," an enemy slow-flying biplane that would fly over and drop small bombs in the area where the soldiers bivouacked. Evidence of Chinese Communist infiltration in the war surfaced as Oji and his men began to see Chinese prisoners wearing North Korean Army uniforms. Soon, the Chinese Communist Army began a full-scale offensive along the Yalu border.
<br><br>In November 1950 the IPW team and other headquarter personnel found shelter in an abandoned schoolhouse. At night, they had to lie flat on their backs in shallow foxholes, as mortar fire dropped all around them and they heard the distant rumbling of artillery fire. The next morning, they discovered that two enemy regiments were right behind and had set up roadblocks on either side of them, leaving only a narrow one-way dirt road as an escape route. As the U.S. soldiers made their way through the road, small arms fire hit them from above and one of Oji's men, Private Shizuo Motoyama, was wounded as he tried to climb onto a truck. By the time they transported him to the medical station, he was dead. These conditions continued all day:
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We fought through this roadblock of about three miles from eight in the morning till about five at night. We were stalled every time one of the vehicles in front was hit by mortar fire or small arms. The soldiers had to get up from their cover along the roadside and push the vehicle off the road into the adjacent streambed before we can advance again. Meantime, we all tried to fire back at the invisible enemies dug in the hillside....There were many casualties....
<br><br>Our division took the brunt of the enemy onslaught, and lost so many fighting men that we were only 25% combat effective.
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<br><br>With both loss of soldiers and high turnover of linguists due to rotations, the Army decided to open an Interrogation Prisoner of War training school to replenish the rapidly diminishing supply of MIS personnel. Oji was assigned the job of organizing the school and conducting the training. In the classes, he oriented the students to the fundamentals of seeking and identifying intelligence information of value as well as map reading and interrogation techniques. Later, the training school was integrated into the Advanced Allied Translator Interpreter Services (ADVANATIS) team, the highest military intelligence collecting agency in Korea.
<br><br>After teaching three classes at the IPW school, Oji opted to rotate out of Korea and returned to Japan to work in the Japanese Liaison Office at Gen. MacArthur's Headquarters in Tokyo. Soon after, Oji received reassignment back to the United States and resumed work in engineering, serving under the Master Planning Division at the Presidio of San Francisco. Responsibilities involved coordinating all matters pertaining to army installations being planned for various sites including Fort Ord and the Presidio of Monterey. In this position, Oji had many opportunities to visit the installations and to continue training as an Engineer Officer. In August 1954, he received another overseas assignment to Japan. He became involved in liaison work with the Japanese Construction Ministry to ensure that the construction program to build alternate facilities for the U.S. Armed Forces was being handled correctly and meeting standards. Other construction projects included troop barracks and support facilities in Yokohama, Kobe, and other cities around Japan.
<br><br>Before heading on a tour of duty in Europe, Oji fulfilled yet another assignment at the Presidio of San Francisco as Assistant Chief General Staff Officer in charge of coordinating all military construction programs for the 6th Army. For this work, he received a Commendation Ribbon with a Bronze Star Medal.
<br><br>In September 1959 Oji received orders for an assignment with the Central Command in Frankfurt. As a Post Engineer, he had under his charge well over 800 workers to man a 500-bed U.S. Army Station hospital and a major Quartermaster General Depot. Before retiring from the military, he served one last assignment as a Post Engineer at the Sierra Army Depot near the California-Nevada border. On July 1963, Oji retired as a Major after 22 years of military service.
<br><br>In his civilian career, Oji continued working in the field of engineering for the federal government. For example, as a General Engineer, he was responsible for the establishment and maintenance of the Utilities Management Report for all naval installations spanning several states. Other engineer positions led him to work at Sharpe Army Depot (Stockton, California), Oakland Army Base, and the Public Works Center in San Francisco. His last position as Head of Utilities Service Contract Branch led him back to the Western Division Engineering Command in San Bruno, California. After more than 40 years in the federal government, he retired in 1980.
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