<Begin Segment 14>

BN: So, now you were sixteen when the war started, so you graduated high school...

JK: In '43. When I went to the university, it was an empty campus. There was a guy who sat next to me, Shizuo Oka, who worked all night and came to chemistry class. I had to share my notes with him, 'cause he was tired. There were quite a few people like that, but it was mostly females. When the boys started coming back -- and I was active in student government at that time -- when the boys started coming back -- the whole campus atmosphere changed.

BN: What were you studying? What was your major?

JK: My major? Well, I didn't want to be a teacher because I said, "Oh, across the street they study too hard." I was in (school) for a good time. So I majored in Psychology and minored in Sociology, which prepared me for no job. [Laughs] But fortunately, because I had been active in student government, I was offered a job by the university.

BN: This is after the war?

JK: Yes. So as a program counselor. Of course, that's the kind of stuff I used to do. And I didn't realize until much later, that was a non-teaching faculty position. I was impressed, because when I went into DOE after going back to school for a year and a half, the first paycheck, everybody compares. Oh, mine was much more than what everybody else got. I called the DOE and said, "I think you folks made a mistake. I'm a first-year teacher, and this is what I got." The guy said, "Well, let me check your records." He said, "Oh, no, no mistake. Keep the check, because you had a non-teaching faculty position at the UH." I didn't know until then.

BN: We'll come back to that. I want to just get to the end of the war. How did you find out about the atomic bombings and what was your...

JK: Well, much of it came through the news. I don't think we even discussed it among ourselves.

BN: But (many) of the (families were) from Hiroshima.

JK: (Yes), and my mother is from Hiroshima. I had gone to her family in 1938. Imagine, one day I heard that my neighbor children were going to Japan. So I told my mother, "I want to go to Japan like them." I was only eleven." The next morning she said, "Itte irasshai." So I went to Japan. I turned twelve in Japan. At that time I visited my father's place of birth with my aunt who had lived in Hilo. And I had visited, she took me to my mother's side, so I kind of knew the family. And so, but I did not worry about them during the war. I'm sure my mother did. It was only after the war, then I wondered, "I wonder if they're alive." Because Hiroshima was bombed. But as a child of twelve, I didn't know that my mother's Hiroshima is near the Okayama border and not in the Hiroshima city area which was bombed. So I did some needless worrying.

BN: So she didn't have anyone in her family who was directly...

JK: No, no. But she must have worried, because the news that we got was "U.S. Air Force strikes Hiroshima." You don't hear other details, and that's the only way we got our news.

BN: Do you remember the reaction kind of in town at the end of the war?

JK: Oh. There was a lot of dancing, all of Bishop Street was just chuck full of sailors and citizens alike, local residents, and on to King Street. First Hawaiian Bank, which was called Bishop Bank at that time, was situated at the corner. That whole place was jammed with people, and people were throwing all kinds of confetti-like stuff. But you know, I did not participate. I knew they were doing that, and I could have walked very easily there. But I think I sensed... because I had met my relatives, for me, it was a relief. I did not feel the same exuberance that other people felt. I was relieved that the war had ended.

BN: Did you later get in touch with...

JK: Oh, my mother did get in touch with them. Of course, there were (her) two daughters also. And oh, we used to send care packages, so many of them to Japan. And you know, when I later went to Japan, relatives tell me they remember the Hershey kisses, gingami no chokoreeto, because that was such a treat for them. (The older folks) used to send seeds, vegetable seeds and stuff like that, that I would never have thought of.

BN: You mean to plant?

JK: Yeah, you know, lettuce for example, the seed packages.

BN: I was thinking crack seed. [Laughs] Which they probably also wouldn't know what to do with.

JK: And we sent a lot of fabrics. People used to come to the store to buy a lot of fabrics to send.

BN: To send that.

JK: At first it was primarily foodstuff, but then as the time went on, it was fabric also.

BN: A lot of the areas where Japanese immigrated from were heavily impacted. Hiroshima, also Okinawa.

JK: But you know... and we sent our old clothes, but I've never seen anybody with my clothes. [Laughs] I always look, and, "What did they do with my clothes?"

BN: The other thing I wanted to ask you about, which I've always been fascinated by, is within the community there were all, there were these kachigumi groups, too.

JK: Yes.

BN: Did you, were you... not involved, did you know any of these?

JK: I knew one person who was kachigumi. And there was a professor somebody who was the leader of the (group). But I could not sympathize with them. I felt that America had won the war. And I felt that, "Hey, you guys, you've got to wake up." And later when I went to Japan, my uncle told me, "Japan should never have bombed Pearl Harbor, and they should not have entered the war" -- because there's such a big difference between the material, rich material resources that America had compared to Japan's very limited resources. He says, "We could never have won the war." It's only by that spirit that they thought they could do it, but they couldn't do it.

BN: Everybody at the time was, logic kind of, there was kind of a hysteria.

JK: But the kattagumi, oh, yes, "Japan is winning the war."

BN: And won the war.

JK: But they were a strong, small but a strong force. And being in business, you hear these kind of rumors even more.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.