<Begin Segment 16>

MA: I wanted to ask you about your grandfather in Japan and if you kept in touch with him during the war, or what happened to him during the war.

GH: During the war, my one uncle, when we were just arriving in St. Paul, my father got the telegram that my uncle died. He was killed in the atomic bombing. He was the only one out of the whole family, because my aunt and her family were there, my grandfather, my grandmother. But this one uncle, that's the one uncle that didn't want to stay here, and he is the one that told them to, they all had to go into the hills, into the mountain and hills. And he told them to go and he has to look after his property, 'cause he had a lot of property, too. And so at that time, he got, he got killed. And then the other uncle, my aunt's husband, he didn't, maybe he had injury or something. Because when they moved over here to Hawaii, eventually he had, he must have gotten radiation. A lot of them had some aftereffects. And he died from cancer. A lot of them, it's from the atomic bomb. But my one uncle, my father got word that he died and he was just so crushed, you know. We just got there, and so that was it. He found out my grandparents were okay. And after we came back to Hawaii is when, 1946 we went back. '49, my sister was getting married. My brother got married, they both got married the same year. And my grandmother wanted to give my sister her kimono, wedding kimono. My sister got married in a wedding, Japanese wedding kimono, and so my father said, "I'm going to Japan," because his parents were still alive. I think his parents were still alive, because I think my grandmother wanted to give him that. Either that or... I lose track of the time.

But anyway -- oh, and before that, though, my brother, my brother, when he was in the service, he was stationed in the east because he was drafted in Chicago. He was living in Chicago, so he was with all the mainland people and more white people in the service. And from there, they transferred him, he was going to Japan. Just as we were going, coming back to Hawaii, he came through Hawaii. So it was good timing, and then he was shipped to Japan. And in Japan he got to see my grandfather. He got to visit them, and he was bringing them all kinds of food because this was postwar where they were suffering. My grandfather, you know, he always had everything he wanted, and now they had not enough food and he liked to eat steaks and all these things. My brother used to give him things that he couldn't before. So it was good, he got to see them, and he got to see Hiroshima and all of that.

MA: Where was your grandfather living?

GH: Hiroshima.

MA: Oh, he was in Hiroshima?

GH: Uh-huh, that's where the bombing was, atomic bombing.

MA: And your brother, so he was working with the occupation, the American occupation?

GH: No. He was just transferred over there and stationed there for, I don't know, a few years. He was signal corps, I think. And then he came back here and got discharged. So the timing was very good. He was in East Coast, he could fly out to St. Paul, or train, take the train to St. Paul while we were in St. Paul, so he was always nearby, so it was good.

MA: And then you mentioned your father received a telegram informing him that his brother had been killed. And do you remember hearing about the atomic bombing?

GH: That's when we heard about it.

MA: So you heard about it from this...

GH: Uh-huh. We heard about it before that. We heard about atomic bombing -- I'm sure my father was very worried because that's his parents, where they live. We either heard about it in camp... as we were leaving, the war was ended, so I think it happened while we were in camp. And by the time the telegram got to us, we were outside in St. Paul already. I think it's all around that time. The war was ending as we were leaving. So we heard about the atomic bomb. We didn't have access to a lot of news, except radio maybe. That's right. So we probably heard about it through the radio.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.