Uploaded November 2021 | Updated September 2026, 4 days ago
Roy Aka, a veteran of the Military Intelligence Service, grew up on Maui before the war, with a brief time spent in Okinawa. His father was a Japanese language instructor in Hawai'i who, after Pearl Harbor, was taken from his home and sent to camps both in Hawai'i and on the mainland. Yoshimori himself enlisted in the military and eventually entered the MIS by way of one of his brothers, Raymond, who was an instructor at Camp Savage in Minnesota. Though he was initially not fluent, he took such an interest in Japanese language that he graduated as one of the most progressive students in his class. In this clip, Roy recalls a day in the life at Camp Savage, and the difficulties of their intensive language training.
Roy Aka, a veteran of the Military Intelligence Service, grew up on Maui before the war, with a brief time spent in Okinawa. His father was a Japanese language instructor in Hawai'i who, after Pearl Harbor, was taken from his home and sent to camps both in Hawai'i and on the mainland. Yoshimori himself enlisted in the military and eventually entered the MIS by way of one of his brothers, Raymond, who was an instructor at Camp Savage in Minnesota. Though he was initially not fluent, he took such an interest in Japanese language that he graduated as one of the most progressive students in his class. In this clip, Roy recalls a day in the life at Camp Savage, and the difficulties of their intensive language training.
