<Begin Segment 9>

CH: But the time 1941 came on, well, Terminal Island population grew. They grew from, all Kibei came. See, my older brother, about three of 'em came, wartime, before the war.

TI: And did they all come because...

CH: No, they didn't come together.

TI: But did they come because they sensed that the U.S. was going to war with Japan?

CH: My third brother, second brother, found out the third one, you know, he was indoctrinated, brainwashed. Out of four sons, at least one's got to serve in the Japanese army. He didn't want to come. Dumb guy, huh?

MN: Futomi?

CH: Yeah, he got brainwashed. I think I never got brainwashed like that. When the war came between Japan and America, I told my mother and father, all the people, "Japan gonna lose the war. A big man can't beat up a little man." They all got mad. Yeah, my father, "Kami no kuni," he said, "Japan is a god's country." All these war, they never lost. But this one, they're gonna lose.

MN: So since we're talking about this, let's talk about Futomi. Now, all your other siblings started to come back to the United States from 1934, Futomi stayed behind. What happened to him?

CH: My oldest brother came 1933.

MN: Oh, 1933, okay.

CH: Yeah, 1933, and then my other sister and brother came 1936, I think. Around there someplace.

MN: And Futomi stayed behind. What happened to him?

CH: He's brainwashed. He was, see, like him, see, he graduated West Point of Japan, army, that school over there. West Point. They called it something in Japanese. Anyway he graduated, that's why he got out of that school as a lieutenant, same thing, West Point lieutenant. So then the war, there was war going on already with China them days. So he sent that letter, America and Japan gonna, that was in November or October, October or November. "Japanese and American gonna have a war, so you better come to Japan," he said. So my father was to go November, Japan, no worry. But the last boat that was coming here, they turned back, and that's right, he never went. Good thing he didn't go. Was just go to Japan because my grandfather and grandmother was still living, and they didn't see each other for something like thirty years.

MN: This is November 1941.

CH: '41, yeah. December it started. November is, the boat stopped coming.

MN: Your father was planning to go to Japan.

CH: Exactly. And my mother was going to follow later.

MN: But so Futomi was still in Japan, and he's now in the Imperial Army.

CH: Imperial Army.

MN: What happened to him?

CH: He died in a, he died in, he got killed in some part of China. Not Manchuria, but China someplace. That's why my father was getting... see, when he died, he was a lieutenant colonel already. See, that's why the government support him when my father went Japan, 1945, from Tule Lake, he went Japan. So we didn't have to send him a social security check. He never got it. He could have got it. He never got that. So he was living on my older brother's money, they sent it to him.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.