<Begin Segment 17>

TI: So let's move from Amache to Crystal City, and let's talk about why you needed to move from Amache to Crystal City first.

KK: Okay, so then we found out that there was a family camp in Crystal City, in which the men who are going to be deported could join with their family and then wait there to be deported. And so my (father) said, from Santa Fe, he said, you know, let's go there, so my mother says all right, so she took the three of us. Ernie had just turned eighteen and he decided to join the 442nd. He went all the way to Santa Fe to get my father to sign the paper, came back to camp and found out he had a hernia. He had to have an operation before the army would take him, but he went in the army and...

TI: But before that, so you, why did Ernie have to get your father's signature? He was eighteen, so did he... I'm not clear why the signature was needed.

KK: I don't know why, but that's what he did.

TI: And when he did this, because your father at that point was thinking he was going to be going back to Japan, and here Ernie was going to join the U.S. Army, do you know if there was a discussion about that between your father and Ernie?

KK: Well, Ernie always said that my father said that he wouldn't see him again and that he should go and he should die for his country. And Ernie felt that his dad had said, "You should go and die," but really what my father was saying is that, you know, "You're a soldier of this country, you should go and be prepared to die." Well, anyway, that for many, many years Ernie held it against my father.

TI: So how do you know the other, how did you know your father said to fight for your country?

KK: Much later, when I heard about what happened, and then when I heard from Ernie how he felt, and then I heard my dad, and my dad said what he said and then my brother finally forgave my dad.

TI: Oh, so there's a miscommunication.

KK: Yeah, there was a misunderstanding.

TI: I see, okay.

KK: But that's how he went to Italy, with this feeling that his dad wanted him to die. But my mother said none of the boys would die, they'd all come home.

TI: Now when your mother said that, did you believe her? Like there was, like, "Wow, Mom knows this," or... what would you, what would you think...

KK: I did, because every time my mother had said something it was true, so I've always believed my mother, you know.

TI: Amazing. So Robert, Edison and you go with your mother to Crystal City, to meet your father there.

KK: Yes.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.