Densho Digital Archive - Masamizu Kitajima Interview (denshovh-kmasamizu-01-0035)

<Begin Segment 35>

TI: So I want to pick up now... so you graduate from high school. Then what happens next?

MK: I went to New York, to the Academy of Aeronautics to become an aircraft mechanic.

TI: New York, so you're in Kauai and you go all the way across the country. Probably as far as you can go. Why, why'd you choose New York?

MK: Exactly. [Laughs] You just said it. So I could get as far away from Hawaii as I possibly could.

TI: Why? Why so far away?

MK: I hated Hawaii. I hated Hawaii so badly because of the way I had been treated since I came back from, from the camp. Swearing that I'd never come back to Hawaii.

TI: And how'd you find about this school in New York?

MK: I loved it. I loved the people in New York.

TI: But how did you find out about it?

MK: Oh, through the library reference material, seeing what they, what schools offered what kind of education. And the reason I picked the... this is part of my personality, I guess, that I picked up when I was in camp, and maybe it's my dad's heritage or whatever. But at one time -- I must have been in the junior year or the senior year, someplace thereabout -- one guy asked me, "When you graduate high school, what you going to be?" I said I'm gonna be an aircraft mechanic. Guy says, "What?" I said, "Yeah, I'm gonna be an aircraft mechanic." He said, "How can you be aircraft mechanic? You Japanese. There's no Japanese, Japanese mechanics except with Japan air force." I said, "No, I'm gonna be a mechanic." Then I told him, "You watch me. If you think I can't be a Japanese, a mechanic, I'll come back to show you that I'm a mechanic, aircraft mechanic." So I decided I'm gonna be a mechanic.

TI: So it sounds like the best way to get you to do something is tell you you can't do it. [Laughs]

MK: You can't do it, that's right. Don't tell me I can't do it. [Laughs] Because I'll do it. That's how I always did, after, after that I always did. My dad said I couldn't build a house. I said I'd build it. "I'll build you a house." A year, it took me a year and a half, but I built it.