<Begin Segment 12>

PF: So sort of jumping back to the postwar period, you said you knew Ah Quon McElrath. How do you know her?

TT: Let's see, how do I know Ah Quon? I guess just casually. Not through arbitration as such. I never came across her officially. I know she was a social welfare worker for the ILWU. But she, in these last years, she was about the only survivor of the prewar labor movement that could give you firsthand information about what it was like, what happened, and I always told her, "Hey, I want to come talk to you about these early leaders." She said, "Anytime." And somehow we never made it. I regret that she passed away before I could sit down and find out the stories of Ichiro Izuka and Jack Kawano, Bert Nakano, the Hilo Massacre and all those stories about the early struggles of the labor movement.

PF: Did you know Jack Hall?

TT: He even appeared as an advocate in some of the ILWU grievances.

PF: Uh-huh. Did you get to know him over the years?

TT: No, not personally. He was, you know, by this time, postwar, he no longer had to fight the taint of the Communist accusations and all that, he was respected and maybe even feared.

PF: Did you know any of the others in that group?

TT: No, no, not directly. Actually, maybe that helped me in being appointed as an arbitrator because you're supposed to be neutral. And if you don't have any past relation or connection with either labor or management, you're clean. So I think that helped, they just really plucked me out of nowhere to do this. Then again, I owe it all to Eddie Nakamura. Incidentally, a book, his biography, is written by Tom Coffman, and it's going to be coming out in a few months.

PF: Tell me about Ed.

TT: About Ed Nakamura? Oh. Well, he's a smart guy. Again, he's one of the, you know, quiet, very low profile, not much personality, but apparently a very smart guy. I think he's one of those that I think Miles Cary used to regard highly.

PF: He helped get you appointed?

TT: Yeah. He's the younger brother of Henry Nakamura, who was my classmate. And they live on Tenth Avenue, and from 1933 to... no, 1927. 1927 to 1933, what is that, six years? I attended Palolo Kaimuki Japanese school, Tenth Avenue Palolo. And Eddie's family lived on Tenth Avenue, so I'd have to pass his house every day walking to and from Japanese school. So that's how I know the Nakamura family. So in other words, from when I was seven years old, I knew the Nakamura family. I knew Henry more than Eddie. But then I was to know him at the VVV when he was one of the volunteers. And they... I don't know whether he volunteered or they assigned him to be part of the kitchen crew at VVV, and he became the baker. And so he'd get up at two o'clock or three o'clock in the morning and get up and bake the bread and all that for our breakfast. And I think after that, I used to tease him, after that he'd kind of disappear. He had no more work because he did all his baking, so he had time to go to his bunk and read and do his things. But anyway, he never, he was never ostentatious about his intellect, but he was a very deep, profound guy with a heavy social conscience.

I guess that showed because in the artillery -- and incidentally, when I was with the 442, I was assigned to field artillery, and I landed in the B Battery, the same company that, B Battery, that Eddie Nakamura was in. So he was on one of the big guns, and I was on another gun. So we trained together at Camp Shelby. And when we got there, what the army did was to gather up about three, four months ahead of the, all the draftees, I mean, all the volunteers assembling. They gathered up all these kotonk soldiers that the army didn't know what to do with, and they had 'em in Fort Riley and all these places, they were washing garbage cans and driving jeeps and all that. And suddenly here they're gonna form a Japanese American combat team, so they said, gathered up all these kotonks and sent 'em down Camp Shelby to train them to become the cadre. So cadre means first sergeant, master sergeant, buck sergeant and so forth, all the way down to corporal. So when us volunteers showed up in Camp Shelby, all of our leaders, noncommissioned leaders, were these kotonks from the mainland, and we're all buck private. That went over like a lead balloon. But the army doesn't know the difference between, you know, the Japanese Americans from the mainland and the ones from Hawaii. And yet a practical aspect is that we found the kotonks to be really haoles with a Japanese face. Whereas, of course, the guys from Hawaii, the locals, they're Buddhaheads. Totally different culture. That's why there was, it was traumatic I think for some. But there was a cultural clash that wasn't resolved apparently until somebody had the bright idea of sending a couple of truckloads of Hawaiians to visit Jerome and Rohwer. And then these Hawaii guys for the first time saw, hey, barbed wire, guard towers, machine guns pointed in, and they realized that, hey, the Japanese on the mainland, they're prisoners. And that these kotonks volunteered from behind barbed wire to sneak out at night to become 442. They asked themselves, "Gee, if this happened to me, would I volunteer?" So they said they gave these guys a lot of credit, and I guess the kotonks got newfound respect. And according to Dan Inouye, after that, the 442 became a cohesive fighting unit.

PF: Do you remember any of that while you were there?

TT: Yeah, well, you know, I have no problem with kotonks, because in 1940, the Atherton YMCA sent me as one of the YMCA delegates to Asilomar conference, and there we met a contingent of kotonk YMCA and YWCA students. And so, well, I got to see them, and I could see that we're different, but of course... we're at university, we're supposedly a better, higher level, and more maybe tolerant and understanding. No problem with them. I had no problem.

So when I went Camp Shelby and there were all these, run into all these kotonks, I had no problem, but some of these guys from Hawaii, especially those guys that came from the plantations like that. Even here, generally here in Honolulu in the urban areas, among Niseis, if you talk good English, "Hey, you think you're haole or what?" Part of that is envy, but a lot of that is don't try to be high hat and try to act like you're better than I am. All that is associated with speaking good English. Yeah, you go up there and all these guys speak good English, which, to me, I think exacerbated the nascent inferiority complex that local Niseis had. I think secretly maybe they wished they could speak good English. But if you want to be one of the gang, you talk pidgin. You don't try to be high hat. "Hey, don't be haole, yeah?" [Laughs]

PF: I just had one more question. How did Eddie Nakamura, what was his relationship with Jack Hall, like he recommended...

TT: Well, the one thing I wanted to say about Eddie is I give him credit that he had this compassion for the working man, and therefore he had an affinity toward the labor movement. So when he came back from law school, I suppose he could have gotten a government job, legal job, even with one of the law firms. But he chose to go work for Bouslog and Symonds. And at that time, Bouslog and Symonds were the ones defending the Hawaii, infamous Hawaii Seven, or Jack Hall, Fujimotos, Freeman, Koji Ariyoshi. So Bouslog and Symonds was, quote, a "Commie law firm," unquote. And so if you worked for them, gee, you either call me a sympathizer or maybe you're a Commie. And Eddie labored under that stigma, and I think his book when it comes out will tell you that he got ostracized and all that. But yet he went to work for them.

PF: Is he still alive?

TT: No, he died. And, of course, in the end, turned out Jack Hall is now a respected community figure, he leads in a community chest raising money in the annual drive and all that. And Bouslog and Symonds became a accepted law firm. It was no longer a matter of stigma. In other words, it took a lot of guts. He and Lowell Chun Hoon is another guy. Lowell Chun Hoon comes from the Chun Hoon family.

PF: The market?

TT: Yeah. And with that reputation, he could have maybe even got a Big Five law firm job. But no, Lowell went and worked for the... Lowell is still alive, so maybe you can ask him, "How was it to go work for Bouslog and Symonds?" I think he'll tell you.

PF: Anything else you want to say before we sign off?

TT: No, except you know that I can speak impeccable pidgin English, too, when I have to.

PF: [Laughs] Yes, I know. I've heard you. Thank you so much, Ted, we really appreciate it.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.