WT: Oh, that was certainly a shock to see the condition of the camp. The barracks were just filthy. Apparently it was a place for an old folks home, old men's home, they were dirty, like the screen door on the barracks were falling off, and we had to go in and clean up the inside of the barracks. The latrine was filthy and dirty and all that, and we had to clean all that out before we could occupy it as our barracks when we went to school at Camp Savage for a period of six months.

gky: That's pretty unusual also, you go in the army, go back to school.

WT: Well, the thing is... you see, the thing is, prior to World War II, when the army decided to train soldiers for linguistic duties, they went around to all the various camps to recruit, and they were amazed to find that there were very few that would qualify for the language school. And so there were not too many available. Within the army they were still recruiting, and sometimes recruiting people that went to Camp Savage and still didn't, they considered unqualified for linguistic duties. And they ended up as overhead, working in the mess hall or as cooks or KPs or different jobs instead of continuing with the language studies.