<Begin Segment 9>

TI: Let's now go to Camp Shelby and describe what Camp Shelby was like when you first arrived.

DI: I think you should go a few days before Camp Shelby.

TI: Okay. Let's go a few days before.

DI: When we were on the ship, we had no idea where we were headed for. We knew we were going to the mainland, and when we saw the Golden Gate, it was a beautiful sight. We landed in Oakland and we got on trains. And we did our traveling 24 hours and the only time the train stopped to let us off to stretch ourselves was at night. When you think back, it's understandable. If we went through a town or city and let us off at three o'clock in the afternoon and we walked out, people might stone us, they might think we're prisoners and so everything was done at night. Just about the time we left Oakland, the word spread around that we were headed for Mississippi. I'm telling you, the reaction was just one of disbelief and horror because after all the only thing we knew about Mississippi as young men was that Mississippi was a state where they lynch people, that they didn't like colored people, and we were colored. And so all these scenarios became part of our imagination. What's going to happen to us? Are they going to put us in a special camp? But I must say this much, though the Mississippians treated blacks strangely, they accorded us a lot of friendship. They opened up their homes. In fact, in the early days and throughout our training, the USO operated and young ladies served us coffee, danced with us and such. And something strange happened the first month we were there, we received a letter, which was read by every company commander to the assembled company, and the letter was from the Governor of the state of Mississippi. And it went something like, "Welcome to Mississippi. You will do your training here to prepare yourselves for service to our country. While you are here, you will be considered white." [Laughs] When we heard that, I thought, "Oh, my God. We're haoles now." [Laughs] And my company commander was a young man from Hawaii and so he was brought up living with us. He was furious. He put on dark glasses on that day because he didn't want us to see his eyes of anger, but he was required. He said, "I have to read this because I'm ordered to read this."

TI: I don't quite understand. Why was he so angry?

DI: That we would continue to be targets of discrimination, either reverse or otherwise. And then we were told that we should conduct ourselves like white people so we can't sit in the last three rows of a bus, which we thought was ridiculous. We're standing while the three last rows are empty, no one is sitting there. And we have to go to a restaurant that's declared to be white. And I learned a phrase. As a young child there was a theater here, Hawaii Theater, with a mezzanine, and the mezzanine was for us the preferred area because you could look at the screen without anyone obstructing your view, and it was called "nigger heaven." And I didn't think much about it. "Let's go up to 'nigger heaven.'" Then in Mississippi I realized why, because in movie houses there were mezzanines in just about every movie house and that's where the African Americans were required to sit. They could not sit in the lower floor with the rest of the white people. They all had to sit up there and it was called "nigger heaven."

TI: And this term went all the way to Hawaii even though it wasn't practiced in Hawaii, this segregation.

DI: Yeah, somehow it got to us, but at that time we had no idea why it was called "nigger heaven." We thought it was called that because it was very dark up there.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.