Interviews

1. Growing up in segregated schools

2. Feeling prejudice while looking for jobs

3. Joining the army

4. Generosity of the Italians

5. Animosity between the Hawaiians and the mainlanders

6. Being scared during combat

7. Never feared that he wouldn’t come back home

8. On saving the Lost Battalion

9. Coming home to his mother after the war

10. Getting a PhD under the G.I. Bill

11. Invited to teach at Harvard by his boss

12. Feeling at peace with himself

Ito,Susumu “Sus”

(1919 - 2015) Nisei who served in World War II with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team

Feeling prejudice while looking for jobs

I went one year to junior college, but – and I enjoyed it very much – I got accepted to UC Berkeley, but then my parents said, “You know there’s not much future to go college,” – because you either had to become a doctor or dentist and work amongst the community, it was even difficult to get civil service jobs.

And I was quite good and I enjoyed repairing cars, driving them, “so why don’t you go to auto-mechanic school?” So, I went, learned the mechanic’s trade, and even then we felt prejudice because we couldn’t join the union. So you’re obliged to work in Japanese service stations or garages, which I did. I must confess it was rather boring. I was no future, perhaps someday I’d run a service station, or a garage, or something. But then the drafts came in 1940 and “wow!” (laugh)

Date: January 3, 2015

Location: California, US

Interviewer: Lily Anne Y. Welty Tamai

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

Interviewee Bio

Susumu “Sus” Ito was born in 1919 in Stockton, California, to Japanese immigrants, Sohei and Hisayo Ito. Like many other Japanese American families in their community, the Itos worked as tenant farmers, sharecropping to harvest celery, beets, and asparagus. Sus Ito grew up with few luxuries.

In 1940, at twenty-one years old, Ito was drafted into the military—before America’s direct involvement in World War II. Initially, he was assigned to a non-segregated Quartermaster truck and vehicle maintenance unit at Camp Haan near Riverside, California. During the war, he served as a Lieutenant in the “C” Battery of the segregated 442nd Regimental Combat Team’s 522nd Field Artillery Battalion while his family was held in the American concentration camp in Rohwer, Arkansas. After World War II, he studied Biology with the help of the G.I. Bill and later received his PhD in Biology and Embryology. A pioneer in his field, Dr. Ito joined the faculty of Harvard Medical School in 1960, and has been professor emeritus since 1991.

He passed away on September 2015 at age 96. (September 2015)