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TI: At Shelby this is where the Hawaiian contingent met a lot of the Americans of Japanese ancestry from the mainland. Tell me how that went, what the relationship was between the mainlanders and the Hawaiians?

DI: Well, the original encounter, I'm sorry to tell you, was not positive, it was not friendly. Both sides, especially the Hawaiian side, looked upon the others with some, I would say, well, distrust. For one thing it was easy to note that the mainland Japanese spoke a better brand of English. We, for the most part, spoke pidgin, which was absolutely foreign to the mainlanders because our pidgin was very unique and exclusive for Hawaii. It was a mixture of Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, and a combination of strange construction. And so oftentimes people like Kash might be listening in to our conversation, and they would smile because it's funny, and some of the Hawaii guys didn't take that too well, "What are you laughing at?" And bang and fights became commonplace. It got so bad that at one stage during the early days of our training, senior officers of the regiment seriously discussed the possibility of disbanding the regiment, that if we could not work together, how can we ever consider going into combat together. Because a unit had to work together in discipline. And so frantically they tried all kinds of things: psychological gatherings, discussion groups, social hours. But fights continued and the kotonks would go on their own and we would go on our own. Then suddenly -- I don't know whose bright idea it was -- each company received invitations from two camps. Now keep in mind, we had no idea about these camps because to begin with our relationship wasn't good and they didn't tell us. They never discussed the camps. And so I think Jerome and Rohwer were the two camps in Arkansas. E Company received invitations from the people of Rohwer, Arkansas. I think the whole battalion went there. Each company sent about fifteen men or so, and by coincidence when we lined up, we were all from Hawaii, not a single mainlander. And for the most part, we were noncommission officers, opinion molders. I was a corporal at that time so I was one of those invited. And we thought well, we're going off to Rohwer and there's a large Japanese community -- we didn't know the community was in a camp. And so we got ourselves all gussied up, getting ready for a weekend with the young ladies. We had our ukuleles with us, and our guitars, and we left Mississippi early in the morning because it was going to be a long drive into Arkansas. Then I remember when we turned the corner, the bend of the road, and the valley came into view, and what we saw was row after row of barracks. Now, we thought this was a military camp and that we going to pass that to go someplace else. But no, we came up to this camp and stopped. High barbed wire fences and there are machine gun towers all around the camp with men there with machine guns. And greeting us at the camp, at the gate, were men in uniform with rifles and bayonets. We are in uniform and I thought, "What in the world is happening?" Then you look into the camp and there they were. And then it dawned on us what had happened, and at that moment thank God the men had the good sense not to search us. I can imagine if the guards began searching us. I think we would have had some bloodshed around there. But then the gates were opened and we were escorted in. And we found that these barracks had been vacated by families who either doubled up with other families so that we could stay in the barracks. And we said no, we'll sleep in the trucks or in the mess hall. And we tried our best to be happy and sociable, but it's not easy realizing what was happening there. And when we left, the atmosphere was totally different. Because when we arrived, we were all singing and playing ukuleles and having a great time, and when we left, it was absolute silence all the way to Mississippi. No one talked. And I can imagine what was going through their minds, and I think almost all of us must have asked ourselves -- would we have volunteered? That's a good question.

TI: And when you got back...

DI: Then when we got back, we could hardly wait to tell the fellows. And this is what they anticipated and so overnight the regiment was formed. Next morning you had the 442nd.

TI: That's a wonderful story.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.