<Begin Segment 23>

CS: Do you know, at Hattiesburg, this fellow, Mr. (Finch)?

TI: Yes.

CS: I guess the officers in our unit must have contacted him and said, "There's two fellows that could be salvaged," and my name and Matt Matsuoka was on, so (Finch) always invited us to dinner, you know, and he tried to convince me to get out of the outfit, and I didn't think nothing of it at that time, but I kept saying no to him. And then I started thinking back, I bet you he was instructed by our officer, "Rehabilitate these two guys. These guys can be rehabilitated."

TI: I'm interested in Mr. (Finch). And so when he would invite you over to his house, can you describe...

CS: Yeah, he took me to lunch... near the end, I turned him down, 'cause I know what his purpose was, so I saw through that and I said, and I got, I didn't bring it, but I got several letters written from him, very nice letters saying that he knew I wanted to go back to Japan eventually and study again. He was trying to talk me out of it. If you're interested, I could send you those letters.

TI: No, I would like to see that. So he was trying to talk you out of going back to Japan?

CS: No, talk me out of... I forgot what it was.

TI: Or talk you out of saying you won't serve?

CS: Oh, well, he wants me to get out of the outfit, I think. So if you want, you want me to mail those letters?

TI: Yeah, I'd like to see that.

CS: I'll forget. [Laughs]

TI: I'll remind you later. In terms of, can you describe what Mr. (Finch) was like? I mean, I've read about him, I don't know much about him.

CS: He was really a nice fellow. He really took an interest into the Nisei, especially the 442nd boys. And they had the USO there, you know, and he liked the Japanese Americans. He was sincere, and I think he was called a "Jap lover" and all that. He had a nice store there, where he made his living, I think. So he spent all this money for the, mostly for the 442 boys.

TI: But it was interesting, he also had a, it sounded like a pretty close relationship with the officers, the Caucasian officers. And so he was almost like a, I'm not even sure, like a go-between sometimes when there were sensitive issues, he would come into play. So after you were discharged from the 1800, where do you go next?

CS: Well, my folks were already deported to Japan, so I went to Boyle Heights. And where we lived, the next door neighbor was a hakujin neighbor that owned, was the owner of our house. So she took me and I had a place to go back to. In fact, during the war, she was, all the Japanese were in camp, but she was the only one that would -- excuse me -- send me cookies and all that, you know.

TI: And so when you, and so after the war, you would go there and she would take care of you?

CS: Yeah. See, her son, she had three sons, one became a minister, one became a doctor, and one became a police officer. And I have a close relation, always had close relations with them. But that minister, we used to go, after the war, we'd go golfing. And the one that was the police officer, he was the closest. And his daughter, the granddaughter, I'm still in touch with her.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.