<Begin Segment 10>

TI: Okay, so talk about your life. During these, these weeks and months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, what were you doing?

DK: Well, I worked there in the shipyard 'til October of '42, and in July of '42, Jeanette and I got married, and I, just like everyone else, had a draft card, and when it come up, I went up and joined the Air Force in Los Angeles. And I was swore in at Presidio Monterey and took my basic training in what is Castle Air Force Base now, it was Merced Air Force Base at that time.

TI: Now, I'm curious, why did you choose the Air Force?

DK: 'Course, I'd always liked airplanes. I'd only flew on one, I flew on one right after I joined at, took Jeanette back to Kansas City to live with her sister, and I flew on a plane back. So that was the first one, but I wanted to be a mechanic. I was a welder, I wanted to weld, go to welding school to learn hideyart. That's the only thing about welding I didn't know at the time and I wanted to learn that.

TI: Okay. And then after you did your basic training, then where were you, went back?

DK: We were stationed there and our son was born in Merced, and then in '44, I was picked to go as a -- I never did get to Air Force welding school. I took up sheet metal and learned to, what they call sheet metal specialist, to patch bullet holes. So I was picked and one other fella to go to Europe, to Italy. And so I got sent down to Kearns, Utah, to take overseas training. Took that, Jeanette and our son come up to see me, and then talked about reading the Japanese Americans books and the hard times that they spent in, in these internment camps. My hardest time in all this was leaving my wife and six-month-old son, and not knowing whether I'd ever be back or not. And so I got sent to Italy and was at a big air base in Italy for the next seventeen months patching bullet holes on B-17s and -24s.

And so I'd like to comment on the, there's been a lot written about how bad these camps were. And, 'cause I lived in Jerome for twenty years after I got out of the service, and I know a lot of people who worked there. And the part about what's out there now, the plaque that's out there now, says that it's a concentration camp, and I don't agree with that at all. There's no comparison. During my service time, for the first three or four months, I'd have loved to have had a tarpaper shack for shelter. I had generally a tent and a foxhole, so, and as far as disrupting my family, as far as what's been written about the internment camps disrupted the Japanese family, as far as most of what I've read, the families got to go in these camps and stay together, in fact. One time I had, that's on the internet now is that it was eight children in the family and there were going to be nine, and they had two parts of a barracks for their, so that's so much more than a foxhole. So that's the reason I want to tell what I know about it.

TI: So let me, let me summarize a little bit before you go on. So, so what you're saying is during times of war, people have to sacrifice.

DK: Right.

TI: And, and in your case, during war, you had to serve in, in Italy, or Europe, go to Italy, and as part of that, you were separated from your, your wife and newborn child, and not knowing you would come back. And so during this time, when the United States is in World War II, this is a time when a lot of people had to sacrifice. And that the, the people at a camp nearby here, the Minidoka camp, you're saying... and you mentioned you lived in Jerome twenty years later. So I'm thinking that you're saying that, that Jerome is not a bad place to live, I mean, in terms of, of...

DK: No.

TI: ...in terms of geography. And so you're saying that, that in... that it wasn't that bad for them. But, so, I'm going to throw something at you and see how you react. I mean, so earlier you talked about how one of the things that people in the United States sort of react to, sort of passionately about, is sort of protecting their freedoms.

DK: Right.

TI: And, and when I've interviewed Japanese Americans, that, that is kind of a similar thing. In some cases, you're right, the conditions in some cases were, were not terrible; they weren't death camps or anything like that, and then sometimes the weather got a little hot or cold and things like that, but the thing that they, they do comment on, the thing that was hardest for them, was being sort of stuck in a place where their freedoms were taken away, and that's what they were most passionate about. What do you have to say about, do you think that, can you understand that kind of feeling from these people?

DK: Oh, yes. I, I have read every book I could get on it, and it was. It was a hard time. But when Germany and Italy and Japan decided they wanted to take over the world, and for one, I read where the 442nd had never backed up; they went forward, they were... and the same way with the Japanese that were fighting for Japan, they, they were, fought to their death. And I think you'll find that people are doing that for freedom. They, the first Japanese to come over here, I read, is in the 1800s, they come to make their lives better. And so, and that's when, when my ancestors come from Germany, they come to make their lives better. And so there's nothing in the world that's more powerful -- there's two things: prayer is the most powerful power there is in the world, and freedom is the next. And you'll find that more people will fight to death over that than money or any, any other source.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2005 Densho. All Rights Reserved.