<Begin Segment 12>

TI: So let's go to your situation, so you go back to the camp and then you mention now that all of a sudden there's these jobs, you know, defense jobs available. So what did you do?

YI: Yeah, well, what you call... well, let's go back to the May event, okay. In May 1944, I don't exact date, I think it was about the 20th or something, they had a big ordinance explosion in West Loch. You know, that thing was, as a civilian it was spectacular, oh, what a spectacular fireworks. But a lot of people got hurt, okay, and this happened on a weekend. I think it started Saturday night and went all day Sunday. And Monday morning my father went to work and he's goes to work about four o'clock in the morning.

TI: And where's your father working at this time?

YI: He was working at Oahu Sugar, yeah, he was doing his custodial job. So, you know, about four, four-thirty he went to work and about a little after seven I think, I was a freshman at the U and I used to commute from home. My father came home with two FBI agents, you know, so I asked him what happened, said, "We're going to take your father in for interrogations." So, came home, have him change clothes and then some clothing... and that's the last we saw him.

TI: So this is where I don't understand, so did he have any contact at West Loch, did he do anything --

YI: No, see but, you know, they have this blacklist I think, right? So if something like that happened, they go to the list and pick people up, that's the way they operated, you know, the FBI and the so-called G2s. They have some suspects but not enough, I mean, my father probably was a suspect because we took in this Shinto family of kids, you know. So when that incident happened, the ordinance explosion, they went through the checklist, it was Kakuji Inokuchi came to pick him up.

TI: So even though he had no connection with this explosion, you're just thinking that so they... so as things happen, they keep these lists and then when something bad happens, just to really in some ways just show that they are doing something.

YI: That's right, some accountability I guess, that they are performing their job. Because 1941, my sister was already home, she came home, she finished her schooling, she was home. So we really had no connection with Japan except in that we had relatives. All Japanese in Hawaii had relatives in Japan.

TI: And at this point you were a freshman at the University of Hawaii. And we should back up a little bit because, you know, after you graduated from MPI, you tried to actually enlist into the army, the MIS.

YI: I know that was the freshman year at the UH, you know, they asked for volunteers, you know, to go to language school and most of my classmates at MPI were freshmen at UH. So we went, filed our application and then we went to a physical, I think we went to Schofield Barracks for a physical. But I was not accepted, I had a punctured ear drum so all my friends went but, you know, I became what they call a 4-F.

TI: So you were rejected for physical, because you didn't pass a physical.

YI: In fact, I'm not boasting but I was the most fluent in Japanese among all my classmates that were accepted for language school. [Laughs]

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.