<Begin Segment 6>

BN: So I guess it was about a year later, in 1943, that they announced the formation of the 442nd and there was a call for volunteers.

GK: Yes. And I remember that incident because I did not want to volunteer. And there was a call for all the young people to join, I don't know what the... join the army. And I remember going to the Waialua fire station to join up. And I think my mother is the one, she told me, "You volunteer. This is your country." So I had to go.

BN: Even though her, even though your father had been interned.

GK: Oh, yes.

BN: She was, was she angry about that, or what was her views about...

GK: Oh, I think she, her feeling was that, well, it cannot be helped. So that's why she did all the services as the priest of the temple. And, you know, when the boys died in the war, they had a service over here.

BN: So at her urging, you did volunteer.

GK: Yes.

BN: Were you a part of that first group?

GK: Yes, I was.

BN: It was something like ten thousand people tried to sign up, and they could only take about a quarter.

GK: Yeah. I remember we went to the Waialua fire station first, and then we were transferred to Schofield, and then we marched down King Street (to the ship in port).

BN: So you were part of that big group that was sent off at Iolani Palace?

GK: (Yes), we had to carry the big bag.

BN: The big bag?

GK: Duffel bag.

BN: And then from there, you went off to basic training?

GK: Camp Shelby. And I was assigned to 3rd Battalion, Company L, 1st Platoon. And I went right through the war like that.

[Interruption]

BN: We were just going to start talking about your volunteering and going off and beginning your basic training. I was going to ask you for your recollections of basic training. You mentioned a little bit about the whole Buddhaheads and kotonks that you met in basic training. Did you want to talk a little bit about that?

GK: Yeah. Well, part of the problem that caused the problem in basic training was that all of the noncoms were from the mainland. And they happened to be drafted before the war, and they finished their basic training. So they became the cadres. So all of the cadres, sergeants, were kotonks. And that didn't help the situation. But I wasn't involved in that because, I don't know, I don't remember whether it was a fight between the kotonks or fight between the island boys and the haoles, but practically every night at the PX beer garden, there would be a fight. And that's about a block away from where I used to stay. They come down and wake everybody up, say, "Wake up, you have to go to fight at the beer garden." But that's how the boys were.

BN: What is your recollection on where the terms came from?

GK: Huh?

BN: Those terms "Buddhahead" and "kotonk." Like Buddhahead, was that something that was used before the war?

GK: No. I don't think so. And kotonk, I don't think so.

BN: Something that was coined at that time. Was there... I mean, based on your own experiences, was there a real sharp distinction between the two groups?

GK: Well, like I said, all the noncoms were kotonks. And they used to give the orders and we didn't like it. But after the others came in from the relocation camp, and then we realized that they volunteered from a relocation camp, everything stopped. Like close by to Camp Shelby was Jerome (relocation camp). And we used to go there on the weekends just to eat rice.

BN: You actually went on, you actually visited the camp?

GK: Yeah.

BN: What did you think?

GK: Oh, it didn't impress me too much one way or the other. Because we were only interested in eating rice.

BN: Not the girls?

GK: No.

BN: You also mentioned, you know, the South, getting a sense of the segregation, the treatment of the African Americans.

GK: African... oh. Yeah, when we joined the 92nd Division, that was in April... March, April, 1945. And the African Americans didn't move from the place where we left them. And so I understand that somebody asked them why they didn't move, they didn't go forward. And the answer was, "This is a white man's war." And I could see (why they said) that.

BN: As Japanese, people of Japanese ancestry in the South, where did you fit in?

GK: Oh. That's where when we first went to Camp Shelby, we didn't know how they were gonna treat us. So in our first furlough visit to Hattiesburg, we'd catch the bus. And we thought we'd have to sit in the back with all the blacks. No. They said, no, we don't sit in the back, so we sat in the front. But I noticed that the blacks, even the other day, when we went to Las Vegas, the blacks naturally went first to the back of the bus. That's how bad it was. And I don't blame them for saying, "This is a white man's war."

<End Segment 6> - Copyright &copy; 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.