<Begin Segment 34>

TI: Which brings up a, I forgot about this, but another project that you worked on, have been working on for the last probably fifteen years or so, was to sort of get names of the veterans who were killed in action during World War II, for a monument in Pierce County.

RM: Yeah.

TI: And why don't you talk a little bit about that?

RM: Yeah. Well, that started with the eight Japanese who were killed, who were from Tacoma and Pierce County. I was going to erect a monument to them, and I sent for their war records, and they said, "No, they're not from Tacoma, Pierce County." I said, "You've gotta be kidding me. They went to Fife High School, they went to Stadium, they went to Lincoln, they went right into the service," and then I suddenly discovered, no they didn't, they went to Minidoka and they enlisted from Minidoka, and they're credited to Idaho and Minidoka, particularly the ones who were killed. And I said, "There's something wrong with these lists." These are the federal, official federal and in-state lists of those killed in action, wounded in action, died of wounds suffered in action, and missing. And so they called it finding in death, they don't call it "missing" anymore. And the lists were inaccurate.

And so 1991, I set about trying to straighten out the lists. I, I just had this compulsion, as you know, I get off a little track, and I was determined that I was going to find those. And I was working on this, and a couple of Nisei vets said, "Ron, if it's that bad with the eight Japanese, what about the, the others? There's nobody listed from Fife, Caucasian or otherwise, as being killed, and we know that there were eleven, because their names are up in the high school. What's going on? Why aren't they listed from the county? Why are they missing all these people?" And so that began in 1991, the search for the right lists. Because there is no list of the Tacoma, Pierce County killed in World War II. There is a list, but it's not accurate. And so I've been working on it, and finally, we've got it down to 615 people we know for certain who were killed serving in World War II. And we have approximately forty people who could be from Tacoma, and as a, we have a committee that are investigating whether these people are really Tacomans or not. And I don't know how bad this is for the rest of the United States, and I found it appalling how, that so, the lists were so carelessly put together, that I couldn't believe it. I've always believed, in World War II, when I'd look at the New York Times in the library, and I'd see this "War Communique" and it would list all the people, where they were from, how they got killed in action, that something like that could happen here, I wanted -- and I still, I have this passion to see that done and finished. And to get it as far as we have has been incredible.

TI: And what would a finished thing be?

RM: It's gonna be a monument. There are people in the community who want to put a monument up. The site hasn't been picked, nor what kind of a monument or anything, but the fact is, we're going to do that. It should be done. I ran an ad in the News Tribune Memorial Day weekend, and I said, "Gone, but never forgotten," and we listed the names of the 615 that we have, and we said, "Do you have, do you know of anybody else that should be on this list?" Gotten five replies so far. That's, that's another issue, but it did start with just trying to find the eight, what happened, why these eight Japanese weren't recognized. And the experts in the field, who really covered it, said one of the, one of those that's reported by the federal government as being a Tacoman can't possibly be from Tacoma. I said, "What?" "He never was in Tacoma." I said, "There's gotta be a mistake." I said, I said, "I've got the records, I've sent for the records. He is from Tacoma. He enlisted here." And so, and yet the Japanese community didn't even know him. So it's, it's that kind of struggle.

TI: Interesting.

RM: But that's what I'm doing.

TI: Yeah.

<End Segment 34> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.