<Begin Segment 18>

TI: So where there ever any incidents that you can recall, that maybe didn't happen to you or the family, but maybe others, or other parts of the island, that you heard of?

HH: No, not, not much.

TI: How about during the war? The Japanese community, in terms of, as the war's going on, you know, especially the early weeks of the war, Japan was doing, was really doing a lot in terms of advancing, a lot of military success. Do you recall any, like, pro-Japan feelings in Hilo?

HH: Oh, they were here and there, I think. You know, some felt that Japan was winning the war. That kind, but mostly accepted that this is U.S. and we are American citizens. Then you had the 442 come in and they had a lot of volunteers going off.

TI: This is the part I'm trying to understand because this is where Hawaii is a lot different, I think, than the mainland. So I think in some ways Hawaii's closer to Japan, and the communities like Hilo were much more concentrated than on the mainland, so I'm trying to get a sense of how that all worked in terms of some of the pro-Japan, you know, you have the 442, so you have all these different perspectives. And so how did people get along, or where there, like, discussions, or even fights about that inside the community?

HH: I don't know. You, with martial law you had to kind of stay close to home, so there's not that much contact, and you didn't have too many community gatherings. But you worry about, "Oh, those guys are volunteering." And my brother wanted to volunteer, but my mother refused to let him volunteer because her husband was taken by the U.S., so she refused. But then he was drafted, and with his meager knowledge of Japanese they sent him to the South Pacific.

TI: So he went with the Military Intelligence, or MIS?

HH: No. Oh, I don't know what he was in, what he was... yeah, probably because they would question. I don't know how much Japanese he knew. He skipped school so often.

TI: So going back, yeah, so when some families, like for instance, if someone, like a son, volunteered, did that family sometimes come under pressure from other families, like, "Oh, you shouldn't do that"?

HH: Oh, no, no.

TI: So it was more of a family by family decision.

HH: Yeah.

TI: And in your case your mother felt because her husband, or your father, was in an internment camp, that the son shouldn't volunteer.

HH: Yeah, so he didn't.

TI: And why, what do you think your mother was thinking? That it would be, what, disrespectful to your father if a son volunteered, or what, why was...

HH: No, no, no. We, if he went, there would be no male around, and you kind of feel safer with a grown male than, you know, little children.

TI: Okay, that makes sense. So by just having the --

HH: Male, at least one guy who might be able to work. But when he went, immediately he made a allotment, so that came in.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.