Talk:Ben Oda

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Additional sources needed and provided

Currently (11/8/2023), this article's biographical information looks based on the Kirby Museum's article. As important as that article is, it still is incomplete and has missing information.

Here are my first thoughts on how to improve this article.

1) Ben Oda's wife's name was not Nishi Oda. It was Michiko (Morita) Oda. Possibly she went by "Michi", a common short name for Michiko, and that was misremembered or mistranscribed for the Kirby Museum article. See, for example, the 1950 census for New York JRD 31-1068 page 23. It shows his wife Michiko Oda, son Kenneth Oda, and Ben H. Oda. Todd Klein's blog, linked below and written with help of the Oda family, says her maiden name was Michiko Morita.

2) Ben's full name was Ben Hatsutaro Oda. See for example his draft card from October 1940.

3) Ben Oda was born in Florin, California. See his draft card.

4) Ben Oda's birthday is described as January 6, 1915, which matches most records. However, his birth year was apparently actually 1913. This discrepancy should be included in his biography. His birth record is included in the "California Birth Index, 1905-1995" in Ancestry, under the name "Hatsutar Oda". It lists his mother's maiden name as "Yamashit", which matches his mothers name, Tsune Yamashita, listed in his Social Security application after his death in 1984. The date of birth in the index is January 6, 1913. This is consistent with the 1930 census, where he is recorded with his mother Tsune Oda in Sacramento at age 17, and 1930-17=1913. Maddeningly, two federal documents give his birth date as December 21, 1913: his draft card and his Social Security record. The draft card is signed by him. The Social Security record has a "cycle date" of 1937, but I'm not clear if that means it dates from that time or not. A transcribed database version is available through NARA "Application (SS-5) Files, 1936-1997". However, the same year as the draft card, he was enumerated in 1940 living in Sacramento with his brother Frank S Oda and mother Tsune Oda with an age of 25, and 1940-25=1915. This date continued in the future, with the 1950 census with his wife and son show him as age 34, and 1950-34=1916 (we should expect the math to be off by up to a year based on the date of the census enumeration). It gets worse. The transcribed US Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File and also the US Social Security Death Index 1935-2014 have yet a fourth birth day for him, listing December 21, 1915. It could be that some of these "1915" errors are actually transcription problems that arose after his death. Probably an actual birth certificate is the only way to clarify his date of birth. But a broader mystery is what he thought his birth year was, and what he told others. I'm reminded of comic artist Ernie Chan, who lived under the wrong name for many years because of a bureaucratic mistake. Perhaps Ben's year of birth shifted to 1915 because of a documentation error that he decided it was easier to live with?

5) Ben Oda had an older sister, Alice Haruko Oda, who married Karoku Kozumi and took his last name. Their mother Tsune Oda lived with Alice and Karoku and three children 16 to 22 in the 1940 census, in Sacramento County. Per the "Japanese-American Internee Data File", they lived in Isleton, California. Tsune entered the Tule Lake prison camp with the Kozumi family, while Ben Oda served in the U.S. military and prepared to fight in Europe.

6) The 442nd was mostly created with draftees and volunteers from prison camps on the West Coast and from Hawaii. Ben Oda, however, was drafted from Los Angeles in the very first general draft in October 1940 (enlisted February 1941) in preparation for America's seemingly inevitable entry into World War Two. According to page 70 of the Florin, California "Once-In-A-Lifetime-Reunion" pamphlet, "the very first Nisei to be called [in the draft] from Florin [California] was Ben Oda." Ben's presence in the 442nd and his interactions with the West Coast and Hawaiian soldiers seems like an incredibly interesting story that is not even hinted at in the current biography's form. According to Densho's article Military resisters, about 5,000 Japanese Americans were drafted prior to the Japanese navy's attack on Pearl Harbor. Commanders were given the option of discharging them, and 1,440 remained. According to the article, "most were assigned to menial tasks in various facilities across the country". That probably was Ben Oda's experience. His own 75 year old mother was sent to the Tule Lake prison camp, but we're not left with any mention that he resisted or refused training as some other early Japanese American draftees did in early 1942. His relationship with volunteers and draftees from the prison camps in the 442nd must have factored into his later friendship with Bill Yoshida, who himself was sent to the Manzanar prison camp. It's confusing and capricious that Ben Oda was allowed to continue serving after December 1941 while Bob Fujitani was kicked out of the Navy and investigated as a possible enemy agent.

7) Information from Todd Klein's blog needs to be incorporated. https://kleinletters.com/Blog/ben-oda-prolific-letterer/

8) Who created the Odabaloon font? At the time of his death, according to Todd Klein, none of the family were trained at lettering. I wonder if perhaps Bill Yoshida worked with members of the family to create it? Or did someone have computer design skills and was able to make it from scans? Roket (talk) 14:59, 8 November 2023 (UTC)