Densho Digital Archive - James "Turk" Suzuki Interview (denshovh-sjames

<Begin Segment 18>

TI: Okay, so let's go to Camp Shelby. So what was that like, what were your impressions of Camp Shelby?

JS: Well, military life is certainly not a normal life. You're, you have follow orders. [Laughs] Nobody likes to do that, but you get used to it and you fall in when you're called out, and the meals are never that great, but it's, that's the way life is in the army. But training was difficult in the sense that -- not physically -- but the, interacting with the Hawaii boys was difficult. They had an opinion of the mainland guys and they spoke funny. [Laughs] And so at first, there were some hard feelings between the mainland guys and the Hawaii guys, but they were the greater in number. Actually, of the -- I'm just gonna use an example -- but of the 3,000-plus men in the Regimental Combat Team, two-thirds were from Hawaii.

TI: And so when you say "difficulties," how would that show up? I mean, were there... yeah, what would happen when you say "difficulties"?

JS: Oh, there were some fights, and they had their groups. And we were kind of left out because we were mainlanders, and they were the greater in number also. But we came together pretty well, considering everything. But once we got overseas, then everything was fine.

TI: How was it just being in the South? This was your first time away from home.

JS: Yeah, that was different, too, because we were considered "white" by the southern populace, and so I know that some of the guys mistakenly went to -- they had segregated toilet facilities for the colored and for whites. And we were, if we wandered into a black designated toilet area, restroom area, we were severely reprimanded, "Hey, that's not for you." And so in a way, it was different for us. It's something that we had not experienced before, the attitudes towards the blacks. Of course, we didn't call them "blacks" in those days, they were either "Negroes" or "colored" or whatever. But we became used to the fact that we, we cannot go into the colored restrooms.

TI: And so how did that make you feel, or what did you think about that?

JS: Well, we had to recognize, this is the South, and it's different. But having felt discrimination ourselves, we felt that, that it was not right, but there isn't anything you could do about it.