As a Nisei, I am frequently mistaken for Chinese, Korean, Filipino or, sometimes East Indian. When they discover that I am of Japanese ancestry, they think of me as a Japanese national rather than an American. This is one incident that happened to me as a soldier in the U.S. Army stationed in Korea.
During the Korean conflict, I was assigned as a clerk to the Surgeon’s Office, X Corps Headquarters, near Inge. Although my assigned duties were that of general clerk, I performed a great variety of jobs, mainly because of the shortage of personnel. One of my duties was that of an interp…