<Begin Segment 15>

BH: And so you took a full course load, did you communicate with your family while they were in camp?

KH: With my family? The only way we could communicate was by writing letters.

BH: So you wrote, did you write frequently?

KH: Not... Auntie May used to write quite often, and then she would tell me what's going on in camp. Then we were starting to have lot of, the rumble about volunteering. I think... well, Uncle Bako did volunteer, and he went through a physical, and he was declared 4-F. And...

BH: And 4-F is unfit to serve?

KH: Yeah, he had kidney problems and they wouldn't take him in the service. So he would come home, he'd be home, and just wishing that he could go with his friends. And so my, my mother made this real bitter, she called it nigagori. It's a bitter medication that will clear up your kidneys, and so Bako took that and then he went back in for another physical and he passed, so he was accepted into the army. And I think after Bako died in the, in the war, and they got the notification, my dad said it was because of my mother that Bako got killed, because she made the medication and cured him when he was 4-F.

BH: So it was in July of 1944 that you received notification of Bako's death.

KH: Uh-huh.

BH: So can you describe that experience? You said that you had been working at a hotel in Chicago during the summers.

KH: Yes. I left St. Catherine's just for the summer and went down to Chicago and stayed with Hiroko. And she got me a job at Stevens Hotel, where she was working at the time, I got the job. And then I worked at Stevens Hotel and they were, they got this telegram, and they couldn't find my sister. She had just changed jobs to go over and work at Maryknoll. And the telegram caught up with me, and what I was doing was trying to find which rooms were vacant in the building, in the hotel, and I was working with an older lady, and she's the one who brought the telegram in. She says, "You know, Mary Jane," she says, "this doesn't look very good." There's, you could tell by the number of stars on the outside of the telegram whether somebody was killed in action or whether it was missing in action. And I don't remember how many stars, but she says, "This has so many stars," and she says, "it's not good news." So I opened it, and sure enough, it was a telegram from camp saying that Bako had been killed in action. And I think they told us to come back to camp, my mother and father. So I had to track down my sister, I found her at Maryknoll, went over to Maryknoll by streetcar and told her that Bako had been killed in action. And when I went to Maryknoll in Chicago, I remember distinctly Brother Charles, who was in, a brother, and drove the buses in Maryknoll in Seattle, he was in Chicago. So it was a close family relation that we got, we, my sister and I both cried and Brother Charles sympathized with us. I don't think Father Tibesar was there. No, he was there, he was out of camp then, when Bako died. I'm not very sure on the dates.

BH: So you took it pretty, pretty hard.

KH: Uh-huh. 'Cause I had been corresponding with Uncle Bako. I think I just had a letter from him. That's, that what was so sad, because he had an R&R and he was walking the streets in Italy, according to the letter. And then you find that here he had been in action shortly after, and killed in action.

BH: So you wrote with Bako a lot? You, I remember you said that when you were in college...

KH: Yeah, Ish, Ish wrote, too. Between the two of us, I guess he said he didn't know who wrote more letters.

BH: You said that you had wrote him about, say, your struggle in college, and he would send you helping advice.

KH: Yeah, he could write and I couldn't. Compositions? We had term papers, and he says, "Just write." But I had a block. [Laughs]

BH: So what was the reaction of... your father, you said he was, almost blamed your mother for Bako's death. Did that create a sort of rift in the family?

KH: No, you have to accept the fact that no matter what happened, the way Bako was so despondent that he could not go in, you can see why my mother wanted to help him, you have to accept that.

BH: So they came to terms with his... but I take it your parents both were very upset.

KH: They're what?

BH: Very upset.

KH: Oh, yes. Well, anybody would be upset, upset when a son dies. That's why it bothers me to see what's going on right now.

BH: In Iraq.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.