<Begin Segment 16>

TI: And why don't we go to Bill? And Bill, why don't you talk about -- Louise actually did a good thing, she talked about both of you. Why don't you talk about Louise and Sadaichi, and how important they were to the whole process?

BT: Well, I wouldn't have gotten started without bumping into Sadaichi from old Hilo days. 442 got to stick together, most of them here from Hilo. [Laughs] No... I don't know. And the person that Sadaichi wanted to help was, you know, another 442 person. I had good friends in I Company, especially Tsuneo Shiigi. So here was someone from I Company, and if I could help, I said fine. And then as we went along, got to know Louise over the phone. We developed -- we became pen pals. [Laughs] No, you know, sometime Kash would lean back, I guess back out a little bit, then she would push him back in front again. So without both of them wanting to go ahead, at least we knew that they didn't want to impose on us. But as long as I felt that they wanted to go ahead, bring this to a logical end, hopefully successful conclusion, I was all for it. Sadaichi knew that there was no holding back.

That's why in that small special court-martial orders, there were only two names, Suro and Kobayashi -- he was the adjutant. It took me about couple months to track him down. And I Company, I don't know I Company people I called. Finally, an I Company guy said, "Oh, I went to school with his brother." And his brother gave us the address. I couldn't reach him. So I called one of our headquarters guys that lives in California -- Fremont, close to San Francisco -- and had him make the contact for me. Well, what I wanted to do was check out everybody that was on that list, the name, make sure I touched all bases. I didn't want anything to come back that, that we were on the wrong path. And while this person didn't know anything that had happened about the trial, but at least I had checked him out. So it was fun as I went along.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.