<Begin Segment 17>

SY: You graduated high school when?

FK: '51, summer of '51.

SY: When did you graduate high school?

FK: Summer of '51.

SY: Oh, I'm sorry okay.

FK: And that's when my dad called my brother from Japan. He was a junior at Doshisha University which is a prominent university in Kyoto. He was accepted there and he was going to stay and finish his senior year but my dad said, "Well, it's summer vacation so why don't you come on over to meet your family?" So he brought him over and then the Korean War broke out and now he couldn't go back because he's a Nisei, so my dad had him enlist and myself as well, enlist in the National Guard to be deferred from draft. So my brother went through and continued his school here and he graduated from SC, and then he got his master's in engineering and he got a job immediately at North American. And myself, all my friends were being drafted and I just felt... I don't whether it's boys or men or it was a Japanese thing but you feel that your buddies are going into the army and why aren't you. And you had the guilt feeling and but my dad said, "No, I don't want you to," because he lost his son and I understood that and all but it got to a point where I just felt that and I got out of the Guard and immediately within a month I was drafted.

SY: So that was really a conscious decision. You purposely got out of something that could keep you from being drafted. I do want to back up a little and talk about your brothers because we didn't mention that. Your two brothers who were still in Japan, this was the first time you'd been reunited with the one brother, right?

FK: That's right, since he left in 1937.

SY: So it had been about twenty years.

FK: Oh yes, many years.

SY: Twenty years. And the other brother, what happened to him?

FK: Well, George, he was seventeen at the time when he volunteered for the Japanese army.

SY: And that was during --

FK: That was World War II, yes. And he volunteered and I don't know whether he was placed or whether he volunteered for the suicide unit, it was not on the plane, it was not the kamikaze pilot, but he was on the water where they trained them to guide a... it's like a rowboat with an engine on the back with a bomb on the back and their job was to ram the enemy ship and to sink it. So it's a suicide where one person, one bomb and one boat and of course we didn't know anything of that. And he volunteered and I met a gentleman that was... my brother was in group number two, unit two. Unit one went toward Okinawa and they were all killed at Okinawa. My brother was group two, was shipped to the Philippines and a ship was sunk enroute right near the Philippines so that's where he passed away. And this gentleman that I met, he was in group three and he was saved because when his group was ready to move that's when they dropped the bomb in Hiroshima. So he was saved but then he was training near Hiroshima so he went into Hiroshima as a -- this is my friend, not my brother -- and he went into it right after the bomb and he got the radiation. And of course he didn't know that at that time and he being also about eighteen at that time and then the war was over. And then they found that he's a Nisei so they drafted him for the Korean War. So he was in the Japanese army and in the American army, and he had an interesting story and we convinced him to give his interview. And they did an interview at the museum about a year and a half ago and he passed away last year. So between him and my brother, we put a lot of pieces together in the puzzle of my brother that passed away near the Philippines.

SY: He knew your brother then?

FK: He didn't know him, no.

SY: He was on the third --

FK: He was in the third group. He says, "Oh, I know that group that went out."

SY: And what was his name the one that passed away?

FK: Suto, Henry Suto. Yeah, you might want to look him up in the archives in the museum.

SY: I guess there were no interview procedure for being drafted into the Korean War where they would ask him?

FK: Well, obviously they knew that he was in the Japanese army.

SY: They did know.

FK: I'm sure they did. And so at that time he only spoke Japanese and his English was very limited and he was not sent to the front but he did a lot of work within Japan.

SY: So when did you find out that your brother had passed away?

FK: We found out in 1945. He passed away in October of '44 and so it was more than six months after that we received the information, the letter from Japan stating that, "This is what happened to your son," to my parents. That was the first time I saw my dad cry, first time.

SY: And your oldest brother was... that was your oldest brother?

FK: That was my oldest brother.

SY: And so the one who ended up coming here never --

FK: He was fourteen years old so he was saved. But he was working in the ammunition or one of the weapons factories during the war.

SY: And do you know if your parents had contact?

FK: No, contacts until after the war.

SY: Until after.

FK: And my relatives in Japan didn't know as well of what happened to George. So we all knew about the same time.

SY: Amazing story.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.