<Begin Segment 15>

TI: Now because you were a worker, was it easier for you to get things to your father, like those rags and things?

YI: Yeah, I would tell, you know, the MP what it is. He'd kind of look at, I mean, but I think they would furnish some tools, like saw and hammer and chisel, you need those things to make geta.

TI: So in some ways your father was lucky, he got two visits a week then, from you and then your --

YI: Well, no, the family visit I think maybe was about every other week or something. Because they cannot have all the families going at one time. I don't think the mess hall was that big because that mess hall, if I remember correctly, was for the military. I think my father, folks had a separate area to do their own cooking I think.

TI: So a smaller place? Yeah, because I look at that concrete platform, it was pretty big.

YI: Yeah, I think that's for the, what you call, the MPs and the military.

TI: Did you get a sense to, were you able to look at or see the living quarters for your father and what that was like?

YI: No, no, but theirs was... so you know I don't see that in the pictures, it's a wooden structure, like, you know, a lean-to like and there must have been about six, at the most, eight people sleeping in bunks, you know.

TI: And so you saw that?

YI: I can see that because it's right inside the fence, yeah. And most of the time they were all sitting on the steps and, you know, it was pretty hot in there.

TI: Yeah, that's what, there is no wind or anything.

YI: They'd all be, what you call, in their t-shirt and BVDs and all be sitting outside.

TI: And so did he ever talk about life in camp, what was it like for him?

YI: Well, I didn't have that much time, you know, I mean, because I was supposed to working, right. So, I would ask him how he's doing, especially I was concerned about his ulcer. He said it's okay, he can eat regularly. But eventually though, after he came out of the camp, he had surgery, you know, and then the plantation doctor operated on him. They took out almost three-fourths of his stomach, you know, he survived 'til he was a hundred years old.

TI: Oh, really, a hundred years old, after removing so much of his stomach, that's interesting.

YI: See, I think he kind of willed himself, you know, President Reagan signed that executive order that internees --

TI: Oh, the Civil Liberties Act of 1988?

YI: Yeah, the people who were living on that day he signed it, would get some remuneration. So I think that was August or something?

TI: Yeah, he signed it in August 1988.

YI And he died in December of the year, December 1988, so he must have been hundred and about three months. But the money came to us survivors, we had to file a claim, $20,000 came to us.

TI: But he... back then he knew if he lived long enough, or lived after the signing --

YI: So he got his apology posthumously.

TI: Interesting. Going back to your father, anything else about Honouliuli that kind of strikes you as interesting, about the camp, because there aren't that many people who actually know about that camp and saw it.

YI: Not really, you know, because actually it didn't look like a POW camp. And of course, you know, I really didn't know what a POW... I mean, later on I read about it and saw pictures of what a POW camps in Philippines and even in Europe, but it was nothing like that. I think it was very peaceful, no animosity, you know, I mean, I think people accepted the fact that they were there. And I think, for one thing, I think they were well fed, you know, I think their needs were met. The Italians used to ask us, they want soda cans, and we asked why and they said they wanted to make lighter, you know, cigarette --

TI: Soda can, they would make a lighter?

YI: I don't know how they... but I think they were going to use it for something else, you know, so we never did, we never did give them cans because, you know, they can do all kind of things with it.

TI: How would they ask, while you're working, you were doing things?

YI: Yeah, the fence, I mean, some of them spoke, yeah. That's about it but they were farthest in, see, in the camp, I mean as we walked down into the camp, and you know where the aqueduct was, further in, they were the deepest in the camp. But other than that, because, actually it didn't concern me, except that the fact that my father was there, and then, he was well taken care of.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.