Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Terry Aratani - Fred Matsumura - Kenneth Okuma - Henry Bruno Yamada Interview
Narrators: Terry Aratani - Fred Matsumura - Kenneth Okuma - Henry Bruno Yamada
Interviewers: Matt Emery (primary), Tom Ikeda (secondary)
Location: Honolulu, Hawaii
Date: July 3, 1998
Densho ID: denshovh-aterry_g-01-0011

<Begin Segment 11>

KO: I like to say, too, that you must have heard that there hasn't been an AWOL case, AWOL case, in the 442. You know what AWOL is? Absent without leave. In fact, many of them who got hurt, in the hospital, ran away from the hospital to rejoin the gang.

HY: That's Kash.

KO: That's the kind of spirit you see there. They wanted to be with their boys again. Most of the time even if you hit, you don't want to go back again. It's natural. So many of them wanted to go back.

TI: Yeah, someone told me that, that they looked into records, and the 442 had the highest incidents of AWOL of all the units, but it wasn't that they were trying to leave, they were all trying to go back. That, in terms of desertions, there were none.

KO: Yeah.

ME: There was never a problem with that.

KO: Yeah.

TI: And you said it was almost like a running joke because they would see people come back to the front lines, and say "You AWOL?" and they'd say, "Yeah."

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.