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TI: And when your father was gone what happened at the house after that?

AO: Well, it was nothing but gloom, nobody knew what to do but we all listened to the radio and that is when I heard an announcement on the radio that there were calling in the ROTC cadets from the University of Hawaii to report to the University Armory, that service was required. Well, like I said earlier, I had already been out of... I served my time as an ROTC cadet so to speak during my freshman and sophomore years so there was no place for me to go to the University, they were calling in only those people who were in the ROTC at that time. So what I did was ride around and the next day I went to the armory and the armory was a building located where the state capitol building now stands but for the life of me I can't remember how I went from my home in Manoa to the armory, whether I walked all the way or went by bus but I turned right around, of course, I told my mother, "Well, I got to go." And so I turned right around and just went and volunteered my services to serve in the territorial guard.

TI: Although you said, "I got to go," you actually, when they made that call, it wasn't really for you because you weren't a cadet so you were just thinking at this point, "But even though it's not specifically for me, I'm still going to go to volunteer"?

AO: Yes, because I knew myself that I had received ROTC training, both in high school and at the university anyway so they probably could use people like me with background in ROTC work. So I felt, you know, the country is in dire need of people, I go.

TI: Was it difficult given that just hours before, they picked up your father?

AO: No, well, to me it wasn't that difficult. My father, yes, my father had been arrested, taken in, but there wasn't anything anyone of us could do as far as that's concerned, you know. Well, I don't know, we could've brooded and whatnot but at the same time a call is being made for volunteers and I felt that was something I could do so. Of course, when you look back some people might think that wasn't a very smart or very good thing to do after seeing your father get arrested to turn right around and to volunteer your services as a soldier for the country that arrested your own father. And when you look back, some people might think back but I don't know. As far as I'm concerned at that particular time, I felt that it was my call that I should do something and do my part and that was it.

TI: Okay, good. So when you got to the armory to, you know, to volunteer for the HTG, the Hawaiian Territorial Guard, what did you find, what was the kind of the state of the situation when you got there?

AO: Well, it wasn't very well organized as you could expect, there were other boys, or other men who had come to, for the same purpose, to volunteer and the first thing they were asking us to do was to sign some papers and of course none of us knew what we were signing except that we were volunteering. And then there was a whole bunch of equipment and arms on the floor of the armory and they told us, "Okay go ahead and get your uniform, whatever uniform that will fit you," and so we went there and tried on some uniforms, they were mostly too big for us, we were so small. The shoes were mostly too big, the helmet was the old time World War I helmet, the flat type, the old gas mask was the same old World War I type of gas mask. Like I said, the shoes were mostly too big but we picked the best we could. And then we were issued what they called a 1903 Springfield rifle, the bolt action type and they handed us a rifle. And then at that time they also gave us a clip of bullets which I never realized at that time, but I see from the records that the clip held five bullets. Of course, there wasn't very much anyone could do with five bullets but that was what was given to us at that particular time. And then we were told to report to certain groupings and that was our squad and from then on we followed whereever the squad went.

TI: And what kind of things did they have you do when, you know, in the HTG?

AO: Well, different companies and different squads were assigned to different areas that the main function was to, in as much as the National Guard had been federalized, in other words they had become, from the territory that had become federal people, the territory had no soldiers of their own and we were the soldiers for the territory. And what they did was, they said the territorial guard soldiers were given the assignments of guarding different government installations, government buildings, utility buildings, the gas company, telephone company, the water company, water tanks, the waterfront, downtown government buildings and some of the important bank buildings because they were I guess holding the funds for the state. And things of that type, you know. In fact, some of us were even sent to some fire stations so that they could be protected in order to provide the protection in case the need was there. And there were, some of us were sent over to different water tanks because they to preserve the water supply for the people of Hawaii.

TI: Now when you were on duty with HTG, at night were you then, did you go to barracks or did you... were you then just sent home to sleep in --

AO: No, no, we never had a barrack as such. We were with our squad and we stayed with the group wherever we were assigned to, in other words, one of the first assignments I was given with our group was to guard a fire station and so we bunked at the fire station and we guarded the facilities there. We also guarded water tanks, fresh water tanks to safeguard fresh water supply but we never went home. In fact our families never knew where we were until somebody told our families, "Oh, we saw your son at a certain-certain place standing guard and so forth," you know. But, no, we never had contact with the families as such until later on.

TI: And what kind of reaction did you have from, you know, people when they walked by and they saw you, did you ever talk with people and what did they say?

AO: No, I can't remember, I don't think we did much talking. I think everybody realized the gravity of the situation and there wasn't much talk. You must remember it was only two, three days after the attack, you know, and so like my friend, Tsukiyama says, I didn't feel the same way but he says in his case, when his squad was sent over to St. Louis Heights near the university, they expected Japanese paratroopers to drop down and start attacking the grounds over there and so, you know, it was all high tension things over there. But in our case, we were told to guard different installations, in fact one of our assignments was to guard the KGMB radio station and so we stayed in the station right through maybe for several days until some other squad came to replace us and we were sent over to guard other buildings and facilities.

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