Last updated: November 20, 2025
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Kay Sasaki
Courtesy of Yuri Woo
Courtesy of Yuri Woo
Before the War
Kay Sasaki was born in Yuba City, CA in 1923. His father, Hikoichi Sasaki, was a farmer and very good at pruning trees, to the point that he would show pruning techniques to agriculture students from UC Davis. Kay attended Yuba City High School, and despite numerous moves during his adult life due to his military career, he maintained a lifelong friendship with Gerald McJenkin, his best friend from elementary school, who saw no reason why Kay’s race should affect their closeness.
While he was aware of racial issues, prior to Pearl Harbor, he never felt discriminated against in his hometown. That changed after December 7th, 1941.
During the War
Kay turned 18 the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Some of the white children in his town started to shy away from the Japanese kids, thinking they may be connected to Imperial Japan. Kay remembers some people questioning his loyalty, despite him being an American citizen.
After Executive Order 9066, Kay and his family were forcibly removed from their home in Yuba City and sent to Merced Assembly Center. It was the first time Kay had seen so many Japanese Americans in a single place. He remembered feeling empty inside there, like he had been separated from mainstream America.
Though the rest of his family had already left for Amache, Kay was one of the last people to leave Merced, as he was working in the Dieticians Office of the hospital. He arrived in Amache in September of 1942. “I thought the US government couldn’t have picked a more dreary place.”
Courtesy of Yuri Woo
Shortly after arriving at Amache, Kay applied to be a farm worker in nearby Rocky Ford, Colorado. He enjoyed the opportunity to be outside the barbed wire for a while but returned to Amache after the harvest season in November of 1942. Shortly after returning he applied for indefinite leave to attend college, first at Colorado State College of Education in Greely, Colorado before moving to Denver. In Denver, Kay was stopped by the FBI in Denver for failure to update his address but was not punished.
Courtesy of Yuri Woo
For two years, Kay worked on the “outside” while occasionally returning temporarily to Amache to visit his family. His older brother was hearing impaired, and remained in Amache overseeing the care of his parents and younger siblings rather than seek work outside with Kay. The three younger siblings were all school age. Kay was able to not only visit his family in Amache, but he was able to take his dad out for an occasional hunting trip for rabbits and pheasants.
Early in 1943, before the formation of the 442nd, Kay tried to join the Army but was told “we don’t want your kind.” Kay recalled mixed feelings of resentment to the United States for forcing him out of his home and incarcerating his family versus a desire to join the military and fight for the country.
In 1944, Kay enlisted into the military . Before he left, his father told him to “be loyal, responsibly serve the United States, and do not do anything that would bring shame or dishonor to the family or Japanese people.” Initially, Kay trained at Fort Hood in Texas, but just before he was to be sent overseas, he was interviewed and selected to go to a secret intelligence camp near Hagerstown, Maryland. There, he trained as a counterintelligence officer with the US Army Counterintelligence Corps (CIC), which became a lifelong career.
After the War
Kay had multiple overseas tours with CIC in Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam. He received a Bronze Star for his actions in the Korean War. He became a civilian special agent in 1965 and was stationed in DC, Hawaii, and Japan. Kay retired from federal service in 1986 after 42 years of counterintelligence work.
Kay passed away in 2017 at the age of 93.