For the next three years he worked in Los Angeles produce markets. Then he heard about a way out. An agricultural association was seeking young men to train in a technique for chicken sexing. Norman explains, “If you’re a farmer, you want to make sure the chicks you buy are close to 100 percent hens, and this was a simple hand–eye manipulative technique to identify genders that was new and, ironically, developed in Japan.” He signed on, was trained, and was sent to northeastern Ohio.

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Ikari and his crew worked for ten hatcheries and were on the road nonstop from January to May. More than hard-core prejudice, he says, they met surprise, curiosity, and ignorance as they tore back and forth across the state, trying to keep up with hatching season. “And,” he grins, “we made good money.” So he enrolled at Los Angeles City College, thinking vaguely about a premed major. Then, toward the end of his second semester, Pearl Harbor was attacked. “Everything went on hold,” is how he describes it. “Many of my Nisei friends didn’t show up at class afterward; they were worried.”

They were right to be. On December 11, the U.S. Army’s Western Defense Command became a theater of operation. Its commander, Lt. Gen. John L. DeWitt, was eager to rout out Japanese saboteurs working inside the United States. He was far from alone. A few days later, though there was no evidence of sabotage, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox told the press that with the possible exception of Norway, where traitors working from inside contributed to its downfall to Germany in 1940, “I think the most effective fifth column work of the entire war was done in Hawaii.”

On January 20, 1942, Norman Ikari was drafted into the U.S. Army. After reporting to the Reception Center at San Pedro, he was shipped east to Camp Grant, Illinois, for basic training. There he heard no more Japanese Americans would be drafted or allowed to volunteer for the American armed forces. “Then,” he says, “I was informed that my family had been evicted from their homes as a result of EO9066.”

Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, was the equivalent of a blank warrant. It authorized military authorities to “exclude” virtually anyone from anywhere without trial or hearings and thus set the stage for the mass eviction, evacuation, and incarceration of 120,000 Issei and Nisei into ten relocation camps. Originally built for Works Progress Administration laborers during the Depression, the camps were all over—Arkansas, California, Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah—and easily adapted as holding pens.

The Ikaris were split among three camps: Willy went to Rohwer in Arkansas; George was sent to Manzanar in eastern California; the rest of the family was shipped to Poston, Arizona, which received 7,450 internees within three weeks of opening on May 8.

The first thing Norman did when he finished basic training was hop a bus to Arizona. He was in uniform when the guard at the gate stopped him: “Where’s your pass?” Norman eyed him quizzically. “I need a pass to visit my mom?” he asked.

Later, Norman and a couple of other Nisei went into Parker, a nearby town, to pick up beer for a party. As soon as the men poked their heads in a bar, the bartender sneered, “We don’t serve Japs here.” Norman kept telling him, “We just want to buy it. We don’t want to drink it here.” The bartender waved to two big guys, the presumed bouncers, so Norman’s crew left in bemused frustration. Outside they spotted a Native American soldier wearing Timberwolf patches of the 140th Infantry, who grinned at them. “Guys like us, we should never go into places like that,” he said.

Back at Camp Grant, Norman was assigned to the Medical Detachment, Station Hospital. “The training battalion shipped out and left just us Nisei there, about 300 of us,” he recalls wryly, “and not a gun around anywhere. Some army post.” He was learning basic lab work and got promoted to technician fourth grade, but “I was bored, though I really should have had no complaints. I had a good job. I was learning useful skills. But I felt like I was out of things.”

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