Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Rudy Tokiwa Interview II
Narrator: Rudy Tokiwa
Interviewers: Tom Ikeda (primary), Judy Niizawa (secondary)
Location: Honolulu, Hawaii
Date: July 2 & 3, 1998
Densho ID: denshovh-trudy-02-0027

<Begin Segment 27>

RT: And then when we went over-, gonna go overseas, they kept, I was in 1st Battalion. I won't tell you what the company is, so they won't know who I'm talkin' about, but I was in 1st Battalion. And 1st Battalion was being kept back as cadre. They were ones that formed the 171st. My brother was in, in the, he was in Able (A) Company. And so since he was in Able Company, he was in 1st Battalion, too. So all of us, I wasn't gonna go and he wasn't gonna go, because I had just made buck sergeant. But I was a little bit, I guess disturbed. I don't know what, how you'd say it. So I popped up, and I said, "What do I have to do to be sent overseas?" And I won't use the word that they said, but they said, "Just become a screw-up, and you'll be sent overseas immediately." So I says, "Okay." So that night, I went into Hattiesburg and picked a big fight, and I come back with MP escorts. [Laughs] A week later, I was in Company K. So that's how I become, I got to go overseas.

TI: So you wanted to go overseas bad enough that you went over there and picked a fight just to...

RT: Well, I figured I'm in the army, I may as well do what I feel I should be doing.

TI: Because otherwise, you would've been left back to help train the incoming replacements?

RT: Yeah. I'd be left back.

JN: His brother did.

RT: So I went overseas. And the best part of it all was, (Harry) Madokoro was one of the guys that was in Company K, who was the chief of police that kept me from goin' to jail. So naturally, my mother talked to Madokoro, told him, "Please take care of him. He's our youngest son," you know and everything. So Madokoro, I'd go out and I'd get drunk and come back with a headache and everything. And he'd put a cold pack on my forehead. And I tell him, "You don't have to do that." I said, "Bakatare enough to go out and get drunk and get headache, that's my problems." "No, no, no," he says. "Your mother told me to treat you like my son, take care of you. I gotta take care of you. I told her I would." See, I was a troublemaker, too.

JN: Yeah, he was quite a bit older, wasn't he?

RT: Oh, yeah. He was about twenty years older than I was, see. So that's how come I became a Company K member. And then, so I thought I'd be, I was assigned to 4th Platoon.

<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.