Densho Digital Archive - Ted Tsukiyama Interview

Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Ted Tsukiyama Interview
Narrator: Ted Tsukiyama
Interviewer: Pam Funai
Location: Honolulu, Hawaii
Date: March 26, 2012
Densho ID: denshovh-tted-02

<Begin Segment 1>

PF: Okay, and today is March 26, 2012, and we're at the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai'i. I am the interviewer, Pam Funai, and today we're going to talk to Ted Tsukiyama about his, the ending of World War II and his postwar experience. So can you tell me a little bit about how the war wound down for you as your work with MIS?

TT: Well, actual combat duty, I ended up with the Military Intelligence Service, although I started out with the 442nd. And it was during the basic training period that the MIS desperately needed Niseis who had some, I wouldn't say competence, but some knowledge of the Japanese language which they could convert into ability to conduct an intelligence war against Japan. So I ended up the war, the last year and a half in the MIS. And was ultimately sent over to the India-Burma sector to, well, conduct... I was assigned to what they call the radio intelligence field, signal intelligence, and this essentially was, we're trained to eavesdrop on the Japanese enemy communications. So I was out in India and Burma the last half of 1944, and up to, I guess August of 1945. And I was out in Burma when we got news that the atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima and thankfully the long, terrible war was over.

One of my fears at that time was that they were trying to recruit Niseis to serve in the occupation, and that is something I didn't want because I'd had my education interrupted, and I wasn't about to spend four or five more years prolonging my education. Somehow I avoided being selected or drafted for occupation duty and I was able to come home. This was at the end of 1945. And I was able to pick up where Pearl Harbor had interrupted.

PF: So you went back to the University of Hawaii?

TT: I was a junior on December 7th, and so I had, say, a year and a half left of college education. I did spend one semester at the University of Hawaii, the first semester of 1946. But I found that with all the veterans coming back and all veterans, I think the heaviest of scholarly pursuits was reading comic books for four years. We were not in very good shape to pick up our education. [Laughs] The university was not a good learning place. And so I decided to go to the mainland. And one of the professors there, Professor Alan Saunders, he helped me get into Indiana University, which was one of the few universities where they took out of state students. I found out later that it took the action of the Board of Regents of Indiana University to decide to admit a Nisei.

PF: Why was that?

TT: Apparently during the war they didn't. I got the feeling somehow that I could have been one of the first if not the first Nisei to enroll at Indiana University. You know, it's out in the Midwest, and not in the mainstream of the education, Chicago or New York, East Coast. So I spent my final year there at Indiana University and got a degree in, well, economics and government. Basically a pre-law curriculum, and through a professor at the University of Indiana who was a very highly regarded figure in the legal circles, Professor Oliver P. Field. When he wrote letters of recommendation to law schools, I got admitted to all of 'em. I had my pick.

PF: Who did you apply to?

TT: Well, the Big 5 at that time was the University of Pennsylvania Law, Columbia, Yale, Harvard, and the University of Michigan. And during Easter vacation, I toured and visited every one of them. And I decided that Yale Law School was the place where I'd like to get my legal education.

PF: What about Yale was, made it your favorite?

TT: Well, one thing was that during the war, there was a professor Eugene Rostow at Yale University, and he was the first, I think, public figure to come out in 1943 or '44 with an essay or article in one of the leading periodicals in the U.S. criticizing and condemning the evacuation of Japanese during wartime, and criticizing it from a legal standpoint, I think, you know, a violation of constitutional rights. And so in a way he was my ideological and intellectual hero. And if he, if that was the kind of professors they had at Yale, well, that's where I wanted to go. I think that would be at least one reason why I selected Yale, other than it was outside of the big city, it was in New Haven, sort of the sticks as compared to New York or Boston. And I thought in a quiet atmosphere I might be able to study better, so I picked Yale. And also, Yale... there's a big difference between Yale Law and Harvard Law as far as legal philosophy, legal education philosophy. And Yale Law at that time had just... well, the dean, the former dean, Hutchins, was a proponent of the Progressive Education approach to education as applied to legal education. And so that was, whereas Harvard was more traditional, the Ten Commandments on the wall type and you memorized that type of approach.

So I selected Yale and I have no regrets. It was progressive. Some of the stuff was kind of far out, a little beyond comprehension, but it taught that law is not a written set of sanctions by itself, but it is really made and administered by human beings. So the application of law really depends on by whom it is administered and shaped. And so that's why, for instance, if you look at the Supreme Court, what used to be outlawed, like segregation, in the course of the years and with the changing of personnel of the Supreme Court justices, that whole thing was reversed. Law is an instrument of human relations and human action, and it's more realistic and you find that it's true. And like, for instance, even now, we have a five to four definite schism in the Supreme Court where there's five conservatives and four liberals. So actually there's one swing vote on the Supreme Court that decides the law of the land. It's maybe lamentable, but that's the way it is, you can't help it. Personally I'm kind of apprehensive about the present issue before the Supreme Court, the legality of, the constitutionality of the so-called "Obama healthcare law."

PF: What are your thoughts on that?

TT: And so the legal result or decision is going to be shaped by nine justices who are human beings, and it's kind of almost inescapable that their personal philosophies are going to color their interpretation of the law. And I'm afraid that we're gonna get a conservative result.

<Begin Segment 2>

PF: So getting back to your experience in law school -- thank you for that, by the way -- I was just very curious. Did the GI Bill cover all your expenses, or did you have to work to pay for your tuition?

TT: You know, one of the... in fact, the best thing that I got out of the army, which was basically a very miserable experience. When we got out, a grateful nation had promulgated PL 345, I think it was, the so-called GI Bill of Education, which gave educational support, financial support, to all the veterans, all who served in the war. But over and above that was something called Public Law 16, which was that same support for education, but it was for the veterans who had incurred disability through their war experience and combat experience. And in my case, being a Military Intelligence specialist, a linguist, operating far behind the combat lines, I was not in the path of injury or mortality. But I did contract malaria while I was in Burma. And as a result I got a rating of ten percent disability when I was discharged, which enabled me to get the benefit of PL 16, which paid more benefits than the ordinary PL 345. So I can say that I owe my legal education to one mosquito bite.

PF: Did that cover the rest of your...

TT: Just about everything.

PF: Everything?

TT: Although I did have a part-time job as a waiter at a student dining facility.

PF: What was that like?

TT: Well, we got a free meal, for instance, free lunch. Well, in fact, maybe that was about all that it was. It wasn't much, but at least it was supplemental.

PF: Were you in touch with other Nisei veterans while you were in school? Were there others who were also in school?

TT: There was one other Nisei who entered with me, he was from Hawaii. But he never finished. This I found out later, is that I was the first Nisei to be admitted and to complete law school at Yale.

PF: What was the other vet's name?

TT: I'd rather not mention. [Laughs]

PF: Oh, okay. Did you speak pidgin? Did you have a pidgin accent when you went to Yale?

TT: No, I don't think I had a... although I am capable of speaking in impeccable pidgin English, but I may have said this before, but from first grade on I was, I was educated in what they called the English Standard System where you had to speak proper English to be admitted. But maybe because I lived out in the Kaimuki district where it was not one of those "Japanese ghettos," and my fellow students were just a rainbow coalition of other races. And I guess better English was spoken, but anyway, I started out at Ali'iolani, which was one of the English standard elementary schools, and I completed my high school education at Roosevelt, which was, at that time, the only English standard high school in Honolulu.

PF: So tell me a little bit more about what life was like at Yale for you while you were going to law school. Where did you live, who were your roommates?

TT: Well, first of all, to get into Yale was difficult. It was a long... many more applicants than are admitted. So to get in is hard, and it's, first of all, a wonder that I did get in. It could be that my minority status may have helped in trying to help the law school achieve some kind of racial balance. But only the real smart people are there, and that's what you've got to compete with. When you first got to school and you go to the first class, almost everybody's wearing a Phi Beta Kappa pin. So when people began to see that, oh, this is just common jewelry, you stop seeing these Phi Beta Kappa pins because everybody was, that was commonplace for almost everybody. That's the kind of scholastic and intellectual level that constituted your colleagues. So I said, "Gee, I got to study." So when you asked me what my life was like, it was mostly study. In that kind of competition, I wasn't trying to become the valedictorian, but just merely to survive and get a diploma. That was my objective. And I did succeed; I survived, I survived my three years of education. There was a common wisdom at that time.

At Harvard, there was a famous story that in the first day of class, the professor would announce that, "Look to your right and look to your left because at the end of three years, there's only one of you going to be left." That didn't apply at Yale. Once they let you in, they decided that their judgment was good, and then they kind of dropped you out. And so if you did drop out, it was not from the pressure of the school, but from your own inadequacies.

PF: What are your best memories of law school?

TT: I think my acceptance by my fellow students. You know, they're all educated, and like I said, a high intellectual level. And most of the men were veterans, so they're more mature. They're three, four years more mature than the average college graduate. And so in other words, being a person of Japanese ancestry, I just encountered, I can't think of a single instance where I encountered any discrimination or prejudice or whatever. I was completely accepted. And the funny thing is, on the East Coast, there's a distinct division, you might say, if we're talking about racial relations, those so-called WASPs and the Jewish. And you know, the Jewish kids are smart, and they were, constituted more than half the student body. But I observed that somehow the Jewish guys would hang out together and the WASPs hang out together. But here I am, this one Japanese American from Hawaii, I was totally acceptable by, embraced by both sides. So when you say how was I treated at Yale, I was treated, I think, I couldn't have asked for better. It was a pleasant, like I say, it was one of the pleasantest years of my life.

PF: What kind of law were you studying or what did you focus on?

TT: Well, law school you have your mandatory subjects, and then in the last year or so, you can go into electives. But at that time I had no, you know, I wasn't going to be a patent lawyer or going to be a litigation lawyer. I just wanted a general education. So electives, well, let me tell you one elective I did choose. You know, the common wisdom when you go to law school is, when you get a chance to get electives, don't choose the course, choose the professor. And at that time, well, there was labor law, but there was also a course called Arbitration. And Arbitration was a new concept at that time. This is what is now known as "alternate dispute resolution," but it's all these out of court forums for resolving disputes, arbitration, mediation, fact finding, conciliation, and so forth. This was sort of maybe a pioneer course, and it was taught by Professor Harry Schulman, who was a leading figure in labor law circles. He was so highly regarded that in... he was called to Detroit, and he was the permanent arbitration umpire between Ford Motor Company and the United Autoworkers. And yet here he was, he was our dean also, and he taught arbitration. So I thought I'd take arbitration, never thinking that I'd ever have to use it. It was just to broaden your legal education.

And then to jump ahead, ten years after I got out of law school, I get this call from Ed Nakamura who was the attorney for the ILWU. He calls me up and he says, "Hey, the sugar and pineapple industry here in Hawaii, which has a labor contract with the ILWU, they want to, they have decided to invite you to serve on their arbitration panel." So they have five arbitrators named on a panel, and for disputes between the ILWU and the industry. The people could any one of the five. So I said, okay, I'll go. All I had was this one course. But that turned out to be what ended up as my specialty in my professional career.

<Begin Segment 3>

PF: What did you do right after you graduated from law school? Where did your career take you or your life take you then?

TT: Well, let's see. First of all, we had to study for and pass the bar exam. So we graduated in June, and then as soon as we got home, we went to a bar exam cram school here. And then we took the exam in October, and then December of 1950, I graduated 1950. In December of 1950 they announced the results of the law exam. I was one of fifteen out of forty-five applicants that passed. And so I was licensed to practice law in December of 1945.

My first job was being a law associate of attorney Masaji Marumoto, who was regarded as one of the top if not the top Nisei lawyers here in Hawaii. And I got several other offers, but I decided, I heard about it and I respected this attorney Marumoto and thought this was the kind of guy that I'd like to practice with and learn a lot.

PF: What kind of law did he practice?

TT: Well, you know, general practice. But he, of course had a large clientele of Issei businessmen. He was very well-schooled in Japanese, so he was bilingual verbally as well as literarily. But I just helped out by doing some of the more menial jobs like taking his divorce cases to court. You know, the kind of stuff that you can trust a young greenhorn just out of law school. I spent a couple of years with attorney Marumoto and I was called by and was invited to serve in the city and county attorney's office, which would give the you government law experience. So from 1953 to '56 or so, I spent at least three years at the city and county attorney's office. And in 1956 I left and went into private practice with Sueaki Okumura who was a more senior attorney than I, who had also left the city and county attorney's office three or four years earlier. And then in a few years, Masaji Marumoto was appointed to the Supreme Court to be a judge, and so his law practice was sort of inherited or passed on over to Okumura. So we had a very busy years of law practice. And it got so that the Marumoto law practice and the Okumura law practice merged, and so that became the beginning of what they called Okumura and Takushi law partnership. And for the next ten, twelve years or so, I practiced with that firm, you know, doing general law practice.

During that time, I had been appointed as contract counsel for the Honolulu Redevelopment Agency, and this was the agency charged with the slum clearance program here in Honolulu, and also did contract work for the Hawaii Redevelopment Agency, which from 1961 or so, to do the Tidal Wave Rehabilitation Project in Hilo following the tidal wave devastation. And this was all part of private practice, and I think from 1967 on, I went on my own. I became a single practitioner. And you might say, although I associated with other younger, several younger attorneys along the way, the rest of my legal career from 1970s up all the way through, I guess it's the year 2001 when I finally retired my law license. So that was fifty-one years. From 1950 to 2001 is, what, sixty-one years. And from 2001 I have not... of course, I can't practice law, but I have been active in all this time, from 1959 on, I developed a very active and successful arbitration practice where I'm called to be the arbitrator, in other words, a private judge to determine disputes between, mostly grievance disputes between the various unions and the various employers. And actually, that work, that career still exists until today. I still get called.

PF: How many cases do you do a year now?

TT: Well, at the height, I did forty or fifty a year. But now I'm down to... oh, I'm lucky to get seven or eight cases a year.

PF: That's a lot, considering you're retired.

TT: Yeah, I'm semi-retired.

<Begin Segment 4>

PF: What made you decide to come back to Hawaii after law school as opposed to staying on the mainland or going somewhere else?

TT: Oh, I had no thought of ever settling in the mainland. I was always going to come back home. Most of my fellow graduates, well, the real smart ones, they aspired to get jobs as clerks of the U.S. Supreme Court or some federal judge's office, and that was a springboard into high paying jobs with the big firms in New York or other big cities. But I was just content. I may have said it, but those guys... you know, in other words, all through law school, my idea was not to try to run a four minute mile, but just to finish the whole thing. Likewise, as far as job concerns, I just wanted to be a general practicing lawyer and not seek a career like those guys on the mainland where they had very high ambitions. Some of them wanted to be high-placed judges, or especially get, become partners in these high-priced law firms in Washington, D.C. or New York City. Well, there were a lot of others from around the country, they, too, wanted to go back to their hometowns and practice. There were those.

PF: Were there other minorities besides yourself while you were in law school?

TT: Well, like I said, it was just, I think ninety-nine percent all Caucasian. We did have a few blacks, few blacks, and of course, they were smart.

PF: Did any of your classmates make it to the big time?

TT: Well, yeah. Like I remember when we used to go back for law school reunions, one of them ultimately went in from law practice being general counsel of, say, Aetna Life Insurance, to become the president of Aetna. Or there was this guy in Milwaukee who started out as counsel for Allis-Chalmers and ended up as their president. So that when he came to a law school reunion, he came in his private jet. And then going home, he offered me a ride on his jet to Chicago. So talking about guys who really made it. And a lot of them, of course, didn't stay in law. Like one of my closest friends, Jerry Katcher, settled down in Florida and somehow got into the banking business, and he became president of a bank in Florida which did so well that he got, his bank got bought out by one of these big banks, Chase Manhattan, some big New York bank. And so he retired from banking with a big pile. And now, I noticed that in public radio, PBS, all these rich guys sponsor various programs, and I see every now and then Gerald Katcher Trust. So, yeah, some of them got very successful. I mean, far beyond the kind of ordinary level of law that I experienced.

<Begin Segment 5>

PF: So while you were, before you came back to Hawaii, you had met your wife Fuku. Can you tell us about the story?

TT: I met her during...

PF: During school?

TT: During school, yeah. Let's see. Maybe it's a long story. I met her in my last year in law school when I was, went down to Washington, D.C. to find a summer job. See, in those days, kids from Hawaii during summer vacation, we couldn't afford to come all the way back to Hawaii. In the first place, you had a train ride across the continent, then get on a boat and come back to Hawaii. And by that time you only had three or four weeks to spend, you've got to turn around and go back. Nowadays, kids go on Halloween, Thanksgiving, every conceivable break of their own here. There was nothing like that. So anyway, we had to find summer jobs. And I was in Washington, D.C. looking for a job.

But the story goes way back to my army days, military days, when just before we were going overseas, we got one last pass. And at that time I was training in McDill Field, Florida, and we got a pass to go to visit Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C. So as we were going through Washington, D.C., I called up my friend Kazuo Yamane, who I'd known at the University of Hawaii, and he was one of the Military Intelligence soldiers. Actually, he was one of the first Nisei to be allowed inside the Pentagon, 'cause in those days it was highly restricted. Anyway, he was serving in Washington, D.C., and I called him. And he said, "You want to go out for a date?" I was with another guy, Nakahara. Said, "Sure." And so he fixed us up, and we went out to dinner. And so there were two Kotonk girls that he invited as our dates. We went to a nice restaurant in Washington. Not my date, but the other date named Ann Kurimoto was a very warm, friendly person. And so even during the war, she used to send Christmas cards and all that to both of us when we were out in India and Burma.

Well, anyway, rolling back the clock to 1949 I guess, summer, I'm in Washington, D.C. looking for a job. There was a big firm, Arnold, Fortis and Porter, that I had called on for if they needed a summer clerk. And after I left there, I noticed it was on Sixteenth Street Northwest, and that was the same street that this Ann lived on. So I thought, gee, maybe I'd give her a call. So when I went up to the apartment and knocked on the door, door opened and I was greeted by a girl named Fuku Yokoyama, who became Mrs. Ted Tsukiyama. That's how I met.

PF: It' s a great story. So after you graduated from school, you had kept in touch with Fuku and you decided, what, how did you maneuver all of this?

TT: Graduate? Well, yeah, after that, my last year, we had weekends like the Yale-Harvard game, we'd invite friends to go see the game and attend the picnic and all that. So I called, invited Fuku, so she came up to Yale a couple of times. So by the end of that school year, with the exchange of correspondence and so forth, we got engaged. So by the time I graduated... no, I wasn't engaged yet. But anyway...

PF: How did Fuku feel about the thought of moving to Hawaii?

TT: Well, I guess if she was gonna, was willing to marry a Hawaii boy, she knew that she'd be ending up in Hawaii. So she didn't turn down my proposal, so I guess she was willing to live in Hawaii. I came home first, straight after law school, because I said I wanted to pass the bar and be a lawyer with the ability to earn an income before I bring anybody down to get married. So it wasn't 'til December 1950 that I passed the bar, so that's when I called Fuku to come to Hawaii and then we got married. We got married February 17, 1951. See? I know the date of my anniversary.

PF: What was Fuku doing in D.C.? Was she working?

TT: Yeah. Well, her story is, of course, that her family from Salinas, her father was a very successful farmer. And they grew, like he was a lettuce farmer. They didn't just have garden plants, they had acres and acres. But all that was, they had to give up. When they were ordered to evacuate, and so her family was moved to Poston, Arizona. And incidentally, her father was taken away because he was one of the community leaders of the Japanese community in Salinas. So Fuku had three brothers and a sister younger than she, and her mother, of course, didn't speak English. So Fuku, being only a sophomore, junior in high school, sort of became like the head of the family. And so in Poston, I guess she was there a couple of years, near the end of it, at that time you could go out of camp if you were going to school or had a job. And so she wanted to go to nursing school, so she was able to leave camp and go to Philadelphia to a St. Elizabeth Hospital nursing school. So she became a nurse, and then in 1948 or so, '49, went to Washington, D.C., to get a job as a nurse at the Georgetown Hospital in Washington, D.C. So that's why she was in Washington, D.C. when I met her.

<Begin Segment 6>

PF: So once you got back to Hawaii and you had started practicing law, were you involved or aware of the Democratic Revolution that was going on in Hawaii with the Democratic party and the unions?

TT: Well, let's see, I started practicing 1951, actually. And I guess I paid attention to my law work, and although my fellow veterans at that time were being, shall I say, "courted" by Jack Burns and maybe some of the labor union leaders to form a Democratic party, you know, the Sakai Takahashis and the Matsy Takabukis and that group, I wasn't... you know, I should have been part of that group but I wasn't. I guess very early I realized that I didn't have the competence or the talent to be a politician. And so I never got active. Although to get a job at the City and County at that time, we had to sign a Democratic party card because at that time, Mayor Wilson was a Democrat and all appointees, political appointees were, owed their appointment to a, at that time, a Democratic mayor, so we had to sign a Democratic card. But even then, I was never active in the Democratic party, like being a precinct leader or attending their meeting and so forth. Generally I stayed separated and aloof from politics. And so to make a long story short, I never ran for public office. I, again, realized that I wasn't made for...

PF: What were your thoughts about what was happening? Did you have...

TT: Well, I wasn't too aware, although certainly I was in sympathy with the fact that Hawaii needed to be changed. In fact, even throughout the war, whenever we talked about going home and all that, I remember many discussions with fellow veterans, soldiers at that time, from Hawaii, that, "When we get back, things got to be different. Hawaii has to change." In other words, up to that time, Hawaii was dominated by the so-called Big Five Oligarchy. And socially Hawaii was structured vertically with the haoles on top, and then all the other races were aligned along a vertical stepladder. And the Japanese were somewhere in that lower hierarchy. And before the war, it was, you know, the opportunity ceilings were, for Japanese was scarce. And even university graduates could only aspire to get a certain, achieve a certain level. And, of course, downtown, a university graduate could not expect or think of getting a job with Castle and Cooke or C. Brewer or any of the Big Five companies. They didn't hire Japanese, And actually, even after I got out of law school and came home, the so-called "Big Five" law firms that did all the work for the Big Five, they did not hire Nisei lawyers. For the first maybe almost a decade, from 1950 up to maybe the end of, before 1960, in that period, it was still hard if not impossible to be hired by a Big Five, what we called the Big Five law firms. So there were these ceilings. And we didn't think that was right. Every guy should be able to rise to the top of their ability.

So when you talk about whether we realized that change was needed, sure, change was needed. And those who were more indignant and active about it were willing to cast their lot in a path of political change. And as history has disclosed, that came when the Democratic party fielded enough candidates and the 1954 election is when, for the first time, the legislature came under the control of the Democrats. And it has been that way ever since. Yeah, we were aware of that change. I personally, you might say that I was on the sidelines. I was not in the midstream or mainstream of this political activism led by Niseis and labor in forming the nucleus of the Democratic party.

PF: You said that during the war, you and other soldiers had talked about how things have to be different in Hawaii. Was there discussions or thoughts about how it should be different and what you could do to change it?

TT: There may have been, but I guess nothing concrete, because it could be only, you know, aspired results rather than anything that was concrete, because that never happened.

PF: Did you think about your service in the military, how that was gonna impact what would happen after Hawaii?

TT: How do you mean?

PF: I mean, a lot of the conversations had been that by proving their loyalty and being successful, that when they came back they were in a position, they were in better position to influence what was going on in the community.

TT: Yeah, because to be a Japanese in Hawaii, going back two decades, back to the big sugar strikes of 1909 and 1920, from that point on where the militancy of the Japanese sugar workers, it put such a shock and scare into the establishment, that the Japanese, the whole population, in other words, not just the Issei, but even Nisei, were regarded... well, during the strikes they were labeled as agents of the imperial government of Japan that was intent on taking over Hawaii. You know, smearing it point on, the Japanese were, in terms of economic, but social and political, and of course, even military threats to the security and welfare of Hawaii and the nation. And so, you know, Niseis labored under that stigma and that burden really for the first two decades of their lives, all the way through the war. I remember, if you're talking about what we dreamed and aspired as we were soldiers, I remember just before coming overseas I wrote a letter which was maybe in the form of an essay or narrative, and I think it was called "Our New Hawaii." And there were two or three pages of my thoughts at that time, the basic theme being that we have, or we are and we will prove our loyalty as 100% Americans and that we deserve to live in a society that gave a square chance to everyone to be able to achieve the American way of life. I remember doing that, that's in black and white.

PF: Do you still have that?

TT: Yes, I found it, yes.

PF: You have to share that with me. I haven't read that one.

TT: Very idealistic. But yet, like I say, I think it reflected the yearnings of every Nisei from Hawaii who went out and was willing to serve his country.

PF: Do you think it came to pass?

TT: Yeah. I think it did. I think it did. I think the war, you know, was maybe, like some people have said, a blessing in disguise. As hard and bitter and cruel and tragic as it was, yet the ultimate result was it was a pivotal event, not only in history, but for Hawaii. I think, for instance, that the coming of war and the martial law broke the control of the Big Five over Hawaii. And that's why the Big Five fought so hard to remove martial law even from the middle of 1942. After the Battle of Midway, there was no danger of Japan invading Hawaii. There was no need for real martial law. Yet the military kept control for the next two years against the desperate objection and struggle of the Big Five to removal martial law so that Hawaii, both the government and the economic conditions of Hawaii were back in the control of the Big Five. It never happened. I think the war, one of the effects of the war as far as Hawaii's concerned is that it did change the face of Hawaii. Hawaii's never been the same since.

PF: What did you think about the move to statehood?

TT: Pardon me?

PF: What did you think about the move towards statehood in the '50s?

TT: Yeah, I think statehood was the tail end of that dream or aspiration that we deserve to be a part of the, integral part of the United States. And, well, I think that was shared by a greater majority of people in Hawaii. It was only a small minority that was, of course, afraid of the so-called "Japanese problem" or the "Japanese menace." They were afraid of the numerical and therefore political potential of the Japanese, that Hawaii would end up in the control of the Japanese, so to speak. I think there was a segment of the Hawaiian population that objected to statehood. But other than that, well, even the Big Five, maybe for practical economic reasons, favored statehood because that way they could get a voice, a vote in Congress so that they could do something about sugar quotas and legislation that affected the success and well being of the sugar industry. So even the powers that be did favor statehood. Of course, the everyday common citizen like us, why, we felt that that meant that was the ultimate status and symbol that we are now full Americans, not qualified or hyphenated.

PF: How do you think Hawaii was different after statehood, or was it different?

TT: Well, like I mentioned, first the economic control, and then of course the political control that affected the government. And although, I think the first governor after statehood was still a Republican, Quinn, starting from the election of Governor Burns, the political control, of course, has been dominated by the Democratic Party of Hawaii. And you can see by the type of political candidates from all the whole racial spectrum are now able to get elected. Maybe sadly, at least for the Republicans, Hawaii is... for instance, we're the leading state in the nation to support President Obama. Not just because he's considered one of us, but the people of Hawaii, I guess, with their basic racial tolerance, have no problems with having a President who's black. Although there's so many millions of Americans that have a hard time living with that to this point, and actively seeking to have him removed.

<Begin Segment 7>

PF: Your work in arbitration, when did that start taking off? I know you worked in a few firms and doing general law, and then you were appointed, right?

TT: When did that start?

PF: Yeah, and how did that flourish? 'Cause I know you spent most of your career doing the arbitration work. Can you tell me about that?

TT: Yeah, well, my appointment... let me say a few words about that. Like I said, Eddie Nakamura, who was the... he's a fellow VVV veteran, 442 veteran, a neighbor since I knew him from childhood. When he approached me to be an arbitrator, he had apparently persuaded, first, Jack Hall of the union to nominate me to become an arbitrator. But his problem as the attorney, was that he said that the arbitration of cases prior to that were won mostly by the employers. And that was because most of the, most if not all of the arbitrators were haoles. And there were... the few haoles that had a, who were not sort of bound into the establishment, were, and Harold Burr was head of the social security, he was, I guess, brought in from the mainland. So he wasn't a local, he wasn't indoctrinated into being an establishment type. And then William Cobb, who served here in the navy intelligence during the war, and ended up being a, for instance, collector of customs, I believe. Anyway, Burr and Cobb, and I was the third, we were appointed in 1959. And according to Ed Nakamura, that leveled the playing field so that thereafter, the unions were winning their share of the cases. In other words, again, the composition of the decision makers racially apparently had an effect prior to our appointment. So after our appointment, Ed says that the unions felt that they were getting a square shake, and even starting from the 1960s, I began to get more and more appointments. And, you know, I was spending a considerable amount of what should have been spent as a lawyer. I was selected and performing, deciding arbitration disputes. That started in 1959, and it continued for the next five plus decades.

PF: Are there any cases that stand out in your mind over the years as you've arbitrated?

TT: Oh, yeah, yeah. Mostly, you might say, labor management issue oriented decisions like, for instance, we'd have a lot of grievances filed by the teacher's union objecting or contesting the discharge of teachers who were fired because of medical or mental breakdown, not because of performance. And, you know, when a person is discharged, it should be fault-oriented. If you're at fault, then you deserve to be disciplined and even discharged. But where you're like a teacher who has been teaching on the job, and through strain or stress or otherwise, they have mental or psychological breakdowns, those are not fault-oriented, they're other than, they're non-fault. And so I remember in my decisions, introduced the concept that questioned whether discipline and discharge for non-fault reasons should be upheld by arbitrators. Like, for instance, a good case would be a telephone operator at Hawaiian Telephone, it was called Mutual Telephone company in those days. And this old-time telephone operator had been at the job maybe thirty years, and so she was getting older and maybe burning out, she was making more and more mistakes, so they fired her. Although it was performance based, the poor performance was attributable to a medical or some cause that was beyond her fault, beyond her control, beyond her fault. And so I remember -- I forgot exactly what I decided, but I said, I made the analogy of, like the faithful fire horse that pulls the fire engine for many years, and when he's too old to pull the engine, they send him to the glue factory? I said that's not right. They should pasture him up. Same thing here. I think in that case I said the company should try to find some other job that this person can perform and promote her sideways rather than summarily firing her. I did, I remember interjecting some of the extraordinary decisions that you might say changed the perspective of labor arbitration. Joyce Najita can tell you more examples of other areas where I may have innovated some remedial changes.

PF: Did she work with you?

TT: She's an arbitrator herself, but she's the head of the Industrial Relations Center, of the University of Hawaii. So she's an arbitrator herself.

<Begin Segment 8>

PF: Over the years you've been the historian, officially and unofficially, for the 442, but also for the Nisei military veterans in general, and to a certain degree, the larger story of Japanese Americans' experience during World War II. I guess what interested you or what made you so passionate about doing that all these years? It's clear that you are the go-to person, obviously, about a lot of these issues, especially dealing with Hawaii. So I was just curious how you came to be that historian for us.

TT: Well, basically I have a propensity or even a passion for history, to start with. If I have to point to a starting point, it could be 1977. The army, there was an Army Day ceremony at Fort DeRussy, and they asked me to speak about my wartime experience. And I told the story about being in the university ROTC and being, then serving in the Hawaii territorial guard and how we were, all the Niseis were discharged. In that first day of the Pearl Harbor attack, I told how the ROTC was called out to, the very first order was to be called out and the whole regiment of ROTC kids were marched to the bottom of St. Louis Heights to form a defense line to defend against Japanese paratroopers that had landed on top of St. Louis Heights. And we were, our orders were to prevent their advance to the city. All that, of course, turned out to be one of those many frantic hysterical rumors that were spreading around Honolulu on the day of the December 7th attack. But the University of Hawaii ROTC apparently was the only ROTC unit in the United States to be called to service in the war. And although the UH ROTC served only for about five or six hours at the most, mainly involved in defending St. Louis Heights, because that afternoon, the military governor converted the ROTC into the Hawaii Territorial Guard. So even the university ROTC, they were only in so-called "combat" for a matter of hours.

But for that effort, the ROTC, university ROTC, in 1977, was belatedly awarded a battle streamer for being the only ROTC unit in the U.S. to, in effect, go to war. And on that occasion, I was called to speak. And in the audience was Bud Smyser, the editor of the Star-Bulletin. He liked my speech, which, of course, traced the ROTC and the Hawaii Territorial Guard and the Varsity Victory Volunteers, which sort of formed the initiative or one of the factors that led to the decision to form the 442 and, of course, the MIS. So the year after that... also, he asked me for a copy of the speech. And then so the next year, in 1978, in the Star-Bulletin, the speech was printed. And I noticed that after that, I began to get called out to speak, and every time I speak, I write it out so that I have a written essay to go with it. I guess that's how I guess I acquired the repute of being a military historian.

But coupled with that, I was always interested in basically the history of the Japanese immigration to Hawaii. So the whole story that JCCH is, the reason they're in existence, they used to tell that same story, and I'm very interested in that. So all aspects of it. Currently I'm interested in trying to tell the story of the Nisei labor leaders who were pioneers, that people, very few people know about. People like Jack Kawano and people whose pictures and names are out there on the board there. But I'm interested in the history of the Japanese here in Hawaii.

PF: Have you recorded your own history and your family's histories?

TT: I'm starting to.

PF: Good. Where was your family from, originally?

TT: Well, you mean parents?

PF: Yeah. Your parents were Issei?

TT: Uh-huh. My parents were Issei. My father was what they called in Japan an Edokko, a native of old Tokyo. And so he was born in, there's an old section called Hachobori, and when you're born from there, then you're a real old-timer. So that's where my father was born. Somehow, though, and I don't know how his family afforded it, but they sent him to Keio, and so he's a graduate of Keio. But already here in Hawaii we had other relatives, the Isoshima family. So they called him to come to Hawaii and manage one of their stores. So that's how my father came to Hawaii. My mother's family was already in Hawaii. In the 1890s, my grandfather, Kagawa grandfather, was already here. And he did all kinds of things including a stint at raising pineapples out at Wahiawa. And his neighbor was James Dole, so he raised pineapples with James Dole. Unfortunately, James Dole became the successful pioneer of the sugar industry, but not my Grandfather Kagawa. Anyway, my mother was born (when) Grandma was (visiting) Japan, so my mother is technically an Issei because although she should have been, if she was born here, she would be a Nisei. But she was also educated in Japan, so she's... well, both my parents are bilingual. My father studied English night school when he was in Japan, and, of course, my mother came back to Hawaii and she's an alumni of Castle Kindergarten and Royal School. She's bilingual, bilingually educated.

PF: Your mother came back as a young child?

TT: Young, maybe baby. She should be a Nisei.

PF: What year was that? When was that?

TT: She was born in 1895. My father was born in 1890.

<Begin Segment 9>

PF: So I know you are, Hemenway is one of the most influential people in your life, so tell me about your thoughts and feelings about him.

TT: Charles R. Hemenway. Well, actually, I guess I got to meet him during the VVV days, but he was one of the people instrumental, I think, in sanctioning and supporting the formation of the VVV because he was, of course, you know, his two pets were Hung Wai Ching and Shigeo Yoshida, who were, during their university days, were members of the Hawaii union, the debating society of which Mr. Hemenway was advisor. So going back to those days, he was very impressed with Hung Wai and Yoshida. So when the time came to, as the threat of war approached, when Mr. Hemenway felt that there was a need for an organization or institution to try to provide stabilized race relations in the case of a conflict with Japan, that they should have local representation, and Hung Wai and Yoshida were the only non big shots that were appointed, largely because they were nominated or named by Mr. Hemenway. And, of course, they were, they idolized Mr. Hemenway. So it was a very, overall, a very fortuitous relationship in having a man like Hemenway in the position that he was.

PF: Earlier you had said that he was influential between the military and...

TT: Yes.

PF: Tell me more about that.

TT: I think he was advisor. In fact, the Star-Bulletin, they have an article written by an editor, Bud Smyser, in talking about Mr. Hemenway, and said, "He is the man most responsible for saving Hawaii from the tragedy of evacuation and internment that the Japanese on the mainland suffered." And that was because his advice and counsel to the military governor was significant and weighty. And, of course, going back, the military governor here at that time, Delos C. Emmons, commander of the whole Hawaii defense, had the same authority that General DeWitt had on the mainland, which is authority under Executive Order 9066. And Tom Coffman's passion is to tell the story of the different outcomes between California and Hawaii's experience in dealing and handling with the Japanese. And here General DeWitt takes his authority under 9066 and virtually imprisons the Japanese people, whereas General Emmons here in Hawaii, having the same authority and power, listens to the advice and counsel of people like Charles Hemenway and Frank Atherton, and I heard even Dillingham and the local people, to put off any urgings by Roosevelt and Secretary of the Navy Knox to evacuate the Japanese from Hawaii. He resisted that. And that's probably his greatest achievement and contribution during his service as military governor here in Hawaii. But again, central to the kind of advice that he got in making his decisions was the fact that he had this group of local leaders, citizens, and influential Big Five positions, that apparently California didn't have. In fact, I've written an article called "The Tale of Two Generals," telling the difference between the two generals, how they handled, they used the same authority in such different ways. But Mr. Hemenway is, he supported Hung Wai and Yoshida's concept. Hung Wai and Yoshida are really considered the fathers of VVV. It's really their concept, and he supported it. And he even took the trouble to -- well, of course, he was very close to Ralph Yempuku, too. And Ralph Yempuku was our leader. So he had a personal interest in us, and I have five or six handwritten letters from Charles R. Hemenway sent to me when I'm way out in the jungles in Burma, just one personal letter, basically, encouraging us to hang in there and do our part, and also saying that, "When you come back, things will be different." And here he is, he's a big man. He's a big man in Big Five, and he takes the trouble to write letters in his own handwriting, sending it out to nobodies like us, just young kids. You've got to take your hat off to a person like that. That's why I am now willing to be chairman of the Hemenway Scholarship Committee.

<Begin Segment 10>

PF: Can you tell me more about Hung Wai Ching?

TT: Well, Hung Wai Ching is, again, another story. A real, you know, a make or break figure. I think the Japanese in Hawaii were so fortunate that a man like Hung Wai Ching, with who he was, and his attitudes, and the positions that he was put in, that really, I think, changed the outcome. If he didn't have the idealism and the foresight to conceive of the VVV movement, in other words, getting these Japanese kids who were fired to turn around and offer themselves for some other service in wartime, at a time when the most critical threat of invasion from Japan, the first three or four months of the war, all this occurred during that time. And the fact that he did succeed, and the VVV was put into action, and among other things that happened, I think the VVV helped to prevent the evacuation. There was such a fear and distrust and animus directed toward the Japanese immediately after Pearl Harbor, and the fact that this demonstration by Japanese when there was so much question about the loyalty of Nisei. Lot of haoles felt that they were, that they couldn't be trusted, that they were incapable of ever being Americanized. And that kind of atmosphere this VVV took place, and Hung Wai is behind all this. It was a real, you might say, a stroke of genius. And the fact that here he's Chinese, there's people on the mainland that are so in wonderment that, "Who is this Chinese man that was willing to go out and stick his neck out and help the Japanese?" I've seen letters like that. They want to know more about Hung Wai Ching.

Well, Hung Wai Ching is a local kid. He was brought up in the slums of upper Fort Street, and he grew up with all the kids in Hawaii, and then he became YMCA secretary of Nuuanu YMCA, which was really the social hub of the slum area of Honolulu. And so all these kids and mostly Japanese, so he had no question or qualms about whether these Niseis are loyal American. And he insisted on verbally articulating that from his position, which was he was the liaison between the military governor's office and the rest of the Japanese community. It was a key role, and here he is, what good fortune... California never had anybody like Hung Wai. And, in fact, Hung Wai, he said he paid the price. He told me a lot of these Chinese come up and told him, "Why are you helping these goddamn Japs?" He didn't have to, he never got paid for it. He really died a poor man. He never made anything out of this. I delivered the eulogy at this funeral, I don't know if you've seen it, but it's some of the things I'm telling you now. In fact, I'll try to find it and send it to you. But he was just one of a kind.

PF: Tell me about Shigeo Yoshida?

TT: Well, Shigeo Yoshida was maybe a sort of a godsend, too. Because among all the Japanese leaders, they were maybe ten years older than we were, so they were already established leaders in the community, Japanese community. He was a very brilliant man, brilliant. He was articulate verbally as well as as a writer. You know, the VVV petition, that classic petition, was written by him. But he was also a visionary and an idealist, and one that also yearned for a new and better Hawaii. So he funneled and channeled all of that toward, well, during wartime at least, to try to first of all assure that the Japanese community was loyal, and secondly, to try to assure a better future for the Japanese. And so luckily he happened to be a classmate, a schoolmate of Hung Wai, so they were close. They made the team because Mr. Hemenway saw fit to appoint both of them. And Hung Wai himself says, "Hey, Shigeo was the brains, I was just the mouthpiece." And so although Shigeo kept a low profile, and also that's another reason. Hung Wai said, "We made a good team because Shigeo had the ideas and the brains, and I was the front. So I could go places and do things and say things that Shigeo could never say because I'm Chinese. I'm not under the gun." And so they made an ideal combination, and Hung Wai recognized that and he said so. It's all in that statement, "Shigeo was the brains and I was just the mouthpiece," he says.

PF: What was Shigeo Yoshida's profession?

TT: Well, he was an educator. He was the principal of Liliuokalani at that time. And for a while he was so good that they promoted him to administration of the Department of Education, but he didn't like that. He wanted to get back into the classroom, and so he went back. I think he was principal... well, December 7th, he was principal at... anyway, the department of education, the superintendent was Oren E. Long, who later became our delegate. And Oren E. Long realized that the service and the contribution that Shigeo was making during the war, and he said, "Shigeo can spend as much time as he wants." So I don't know who was running the schools, but he was doing so much work not only as the part of the three men in the military governor's morale section, but he was also, I think, secretary of the Emergency Service Committee, which was this committee of Nisei leaders, and spending all that time. And he was being paid by the Department of Education for his principal's pay. Hung Wai, I don't know who was paying him. I think the YMCA. So apparently the YMCA was tolerant about him spending all this time. The third one was Charles Loomis, who I think strategically was a good choice because he's Big Five, but he was head of the Institute of Pacific Relations, IPR, which was founded by the YMCA. And so he was like a representative of Frank Atherton. And Frank Atherton is one of the big figures in Hawaii who was very supportive of the Japanese during the war. Not much is said of him except he was there, and I think more and more credit should be given to Frank Atherton.

PF: Did you know of him or did you meet him?

TT: No, I've never met him personally. But Hung Wai, of course, knew... Frank Atherton was very strong as a, I guess, missionary descendant, Big Five, yet he was practically, I guess, one of the founders of the YMCA here. Very strong backer of the YMCA and therefore... you know, the YMCA, for instance, offered its facilities as a, I guess, the home and headquarters of the Emergency Service Committee. They were totally dedicated to supporting and helping out the Japanese in Hawaii during the war. Of course, Hung Wai was there. John Young was another, he's a haole, old time secretary of the YMCA. And there were others, but I guess when you tell the story of the YMCA in Hawaii, most of its contributions all flowed out of the normal YMCA, not the Central Y. It was sort of segregated. Central Y was for the haole kids predominately. And Nuuanu Y was for the slum area kids. Not so subtle form of segregation. But were we on the subject of Hung Wai yet?

PF: Yes, you can still continue if you more to stay about him.

TT: Well, yeah, I think somebody said it pretty clearly: would there have been a VVV without Hung Wai? I don't think there was. And if there were no VVV, how much would the course of history, war history in Hawaii taken place? Without the VVV happening, which VVV occupied the eleven months, the gap between the Pearl Harbor attack and the formation of the 442. Otherwise the VVV was like holding the fort, keeping the situation stable. When you look at the overall picture, that's, to me, the significance and importance of the fact that there were this bunch of university kids who gave up their education to do this kind of labor work ostensibly to serve their country, but you know, basically as a demonstration of showing that Niseis were loyal.

PF: Who was in that group with you under the tree at the UH campus?

TT: I don't know. I can't remember any specifics, and so far I've met nobody who was there with me. But I was one of eight, nine or ten people that Hung Wai Ching addressed. I remember pretty vividly what Hung Wai said and did to inspire these very downhearted, dejected guys to turn around and go volunteer.

PF: Do you remember who else was with you in the ROTC?

TT: Oh, yeah. That one is, I can trace that very clearly, not only a big group photograph of Company B of the ROTC, which became Company B of the Hawaii Territorial Guard, it was just the wholesale transfer and transformation of ROTC to HTG. And through recent research, we've uncovered a list of all of the Nisei who served in the Hawaii Territorial Guard, and ninety-nine percent of them are university ROTC kids. And so all the names are there, and so I can tell you.

PF: Name a couple.

TT: Who was in it?

PF: Yeah, name a few.

TT: Well, like Edward Nakamura was one, Herbert Isonaga...

PF: Herbert's family was the family your grandfather came over, or your father...

TT: No, no, Herb Isonaga.

PF: Oh, you said Shimo, I'm sorry.

TT: Yeah, Harry Tanaka, oh, just the whole slew of them went on to, they were the 160 or so that volunteered, signed the petition for the VVV. But they were all in the HTG, and a lot of them were in Company B, which happened to be the ROTC company that I was first sergeant of. So I knew them. All the names are there if you want to know.

PF: So going back to Hung Wai and Shigeo Yoshida and Hemenway, when you came back after the war, did you keep in touch with them, did you stay involved with them?

TT: Oh, yeah. Hung Wai Ching, after the VVV disbanded to go volunteer, then the 442 became his baby. And you've read and heard about how he even went to Washington, D.C. to see the War Department to try to move the 442 training out of the South into a more racially tolerant area. He didn't succeed in that, but... and then he'd come home and he'd go to all these gatherings and talk about how the boys were doing in Camp Shelby and all that. And then after the war, he headed movements... besides personally helping guys, he also formed the scholarship aid groups to help the veterans continue their education, which, of course, combined with the GI Bill of Rights, was just a boom. That was a real game changer if you're talking about the postwar impact of the Nisei experience. He helped guys get jobs, and he just, yeah, his name is a household name among the Nisei. And all of this, he never benefited financially. He did it 'cause that's what he wanted to do. And even to his dying day, his closest associations were with the VVV boys.

PF: When did he pass away?

TT: Oh, it must be at least ten years ago.

<Begin Segment 11>

PF: So tell me about Masaji Marumoto.

TT: Well, there's a book.

PF: What do you remember about him?

TT: Well, he was family friends. He knew my parents, and, well, he had a remarkable story, but he was a remarkable person in that he had a tremendously high IQ. And just intellectually head and shoulders above all the Nisei. He's the smartest Nisei that I've ever come across. He also had a great power of focus, concentration. My first job was with him, and I remember he's so intense that he's walking down the street, and you said, "Hello, Maru," and he wouldn't even hear you. He'd just walk right past. You know, we started each day, he had so many things to do and all that, I learned to leave him alone. Don't get near him during his busy time when he's doing one thing. And only late in the afternoon when he's more relaxed would I approach him, because he was so intense. A remarkable guy. He did not have the social charms, he was not a bedroom warrior, and one that strokes you and all that. Usually blunt, direct, you knew where you stood with Masaji Marumoto. And, of course, his legal abilities were, you might say, legend. I remember Hung Wo Ching, the great financier and businessman, his attorney was Masaji Marumoto. And people said, "Hey, how come you're using a Japanese lawyer?" And he says, "I can't trust pake lawyers like I can trust Maru." And that's the way it was. Yeah, usually most pakes will stick with pakes. But it just shows how exceptional his exceptional character and talents stood out for people like Hung Wo Ching. And he was classmates with Hiram Fong and Chin Ho and all those big successful guys. The class of, McKinley class of 1924, I think, that whole class was real big names. Ten, twelve top leaders in the community all came from that same class. He got into Harvard very easily.

During the war, I don't know how they allowed him to volunteer, and here he was married with one or two children already, but somehow the authorities wouldn't let Shigeo volunteer, but they allowed Maru to volunteer. And so Masaji was with the first group of Nisei here who were recruited in June of 1943. So he went off to Camp Savage, and, of course, his Japanese for some reason was excellent. He could read, he could read a Japanese newspaper. And most of us, like me, we went twelve years of Japanese school, we can't read a newspaper, but he could. So I guess they recognized that at Camp Savage and they even made him an instructor, and for some reason, at a time when they were not commissioning any Nisei to become officers. They picked Maru to go to OCS, so he was one of the, maybe the only one if not the few who became officers and were sent to Judge Advocate school. And I think his story, you can read it.

So he had a, well, he contributed a lot to the rebuilding of Okinawa. One of his first jobs when he got to Okinawa was to go around and visit all of the refugee camps to recruit some of the old leaders of the Okinawan community to come back and serve as interim leaders for a temporary government to help U.S. Civil Affairs... CAR, USCAR. And to this day, his name and memory is very highly regarded in Okinawa because he was there to help them rise out of the ashes. And all that, and then he came back and opened his practice. So he was with attorney Robert Murakami, Murakami and Marumoto was a partnership. But somewhere around 1950 they split, and right after Marumoto split with Murakami, he was a sole practitioner. And the first associate he hired was Ted Tsukiyama. [Laughs] 1950.

PF: So he got his law degree before the war.

TT: Yes. He was a lawyer before. No... yeah, he was a lawyer before the war. One of the pioneer Nisei lawyers. The title of his book kind of points out that he had a remarkable, he was sort of a one of a kind. I forgot the title of the book, but...

<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.