<Begin Segment 11>

SK: But prior to going back we were called out for about a week. We didn't do anything as far as construction is concerned. Then we were called back to work and this time (...) to clean up. Oh, what a mess. What a mess, I tell you. All those barracks that we built was just torn to pieces. [Laughs] And some of those already occupied buildings, we had to move bodies out, go through the rubbles and pull out dead bodies, and all those things. It was really a bad experience, yeah. And I found shrapnels with Japanese wordings on it so that showed proof that the Japanese came.

TI: What were you feelings of the workers as you did this cleanup? Was it anger, was it fear, or what were people thinking?

SK: I guess more anger. We, in our group, we had a mixed group of workers -- Japanese, Portuguese, Filipinos, and especially the Filipinos were kind of antagonistic towards us because the Japanese invaded the Philippines so they had bad feelings towards us. And the, we didn't -- at that time we didn't have much hakujin workers in the labor area, and most of the carpenters were Japanese, the older people. They were good at carpentry. So bad feelings -- it was only the very few people kind of looked at us with scorn and said, "What the heck you Japanese doing here working in the military area?" But to me it just rubbed off my shoulders. "If you think of me that way, it's okay. It's your own thinking," so I just kept on working. I worked for about a month or so, cleanup, then I went back to Hilo, and I worked for the sugar company at that time before I enlisted with the 442.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.