SGT Chito Isonaga Oral History

title:

SGT Chito Isonaga Oral History

creator:

Isonaga, Chito

subject:

Women's Army Corps (WAC)

description:

Chito Isonaga was born in Koloa, Hawaii and grew up there with her parents, two younger brothers, and two younger sisters. She attended Japanese language school when she was young, and graduated from Kauai High School in 1933. After graduating, she went to Japan with her mother and one of her younger sisters. While her mother and sister returned home, Chito stayed in Japan and studied at and intermediate school in Yokogawa and Hiroshima Jogakuin, also called Hiroshima College for Women. After six years studying in Japan, she returned to Hawaii in 1939 and began working at the newly-formed KTOH as a radio announcer. In late 1941, she also began acting as an interpreter for FBI agents who had come to Kauai from Honolulu. One night before the attack on Pearl Harbor, she remembers ironing her dress for church the next day and hearing an announcement in Japanese over the radio, warning that there might be war in the Pacific. After the attack on December 7, 1941, she was on the Kauai Morale Committee and with the police department on Kauai, then volunteered to work at the Office of Censorship in Honolulu. While working there, she waited until the last day of recruitment of Nisei women for the Women’s Army Corps and volunteered to join, so she could avoid the publicity of being one of the first to do so. She went to basic training at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. Chito shows several photos of herself and other Nisei women she trained and served with in the Army. After basic training, she went to clerk school at Fort Des Moines, Iowa with most of the Nisei she was in basic training with. In May 1945, she and three or four other women were ordered to go to Washington, DC and worked with the OSS. While working there, they heard they would be going overseas and were officially told to pack up to go to Fort Snelling in November 1945. She and another Nisei WAC, Fumiko Segawa, were assigned to teach at Snelling, but they were instead sent to Japan with 9 other Nisei WACs at the beginning of 1946. In Japan, most of her work was translation in Colonel Rush’s office. One of the most important and memorable things they translated was the diary of a political figure that was used as evidence in the military tribunal held after the war ended. While stationed in Japan, Chito talked to someone while at the snack bar who encouraged her to apply to work at the CIA, and since she knew the Army would downsize and she would likely be discharged, she filled out the application while in Japan. She and a friend then went on a month-long trip home, taking a ship from Japan to Europe, spending three weeks in Italy, France, and England, and returning to Hawaii in August or September. The reduction in forces she anticipated happened that fall, and around Christmas she reached out to see if she had a job at the CIA, which she did. As a civilian at the CIA, she worked in Japan again and continued to complete translations, learning Chinese and mostly working with the agriculture section of newspapers. She worked at the CIA from 1954 until retiring in 1975 and returned to Hawaii in March of that year. She made it home just in time to see her father before he died, and her mother died exactly five years later. When she left the service Chito had reached the rank of sergeant, and for her service she was awarded a Women’s Army Corps Service Medal, American Campaign Medal, and World War II Victory Medal. A transcript of this interview is available.

publisher:

Military Women's Memorial Foundation

contributor:

Tanabe, James T. | Oshio, Yoshinobu

date:

2003-05-02

type:

Moving Image

format:

DVD-R

identifier:

1103; 2008.1103

source:

CLIR - Recordings at Risk | OHP

language:

English

relation:

044911

coverage:

World War II (1939-1945) | 1944-1946

rights:

Unrestricted