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LT: So your father was the eldest son, what was his full name?

GI: My father's full name was Henry Masami Itano.

LT: And when and where was he born?

GI: He was born, my father was born November 17, 1917, in San Pedro.

LT: So he was a Kibei.

GI: Yes, he was born here and educated in Japan and then returned.

LT: So around 1934, your grandfather chose to leave Japan and come to the United States. What were his goals?

GI: I have no idea. I can only surmise by his behavior and kind of the attitude that I would inherit from my own father, his son.

LT: And what would you surmise?

GI: Well, he was very easygoing, and my mother would tell me that he enjoyed... well, he would put my father into school, and I think he went to what is now Riverside College. And at that time, it was Riverside agricultural school because my grandfather, I know, was fond of agriculture. And along that line, he would become a sharecropper. He would pick the crops and between the crops, he would dive into his giant steamer trunk and he would pull out this Abraham Lincoln suit that he hated wearing in Japan, and he would go into town between the crops and carouse around. And then when the next crop started, he would put everything back in the steamer trunk and he would go off and pick the beans or the strawberries or whatever happened to be in season. He was a character that way.

LT: So your grandfather left Japan because he wanted to be treated as a regular person. How was he treated by the others when he came to the United States?

GI: I have no idea. I don't know what the attitude toward foreigners were, but, I mean, if you read The Turner Diaries, the East Asians, the Japanese samurai, are like second only to the Ashkenazi Jews. [Laughs] So whenever I come to a white nationalist, I just tell them, "Hey, you're talking to an East Asian, I'm higher than you guys." So I don't know what the mores were at the time, so I'm sure he was subject to whatever was prevalent at the time.

LT: Your father was a teenager when he came to the United States with your grandfather.

GI: Yeah, I don't know the exact dates, I just understand that he came... when he came, he was old enough to be put in school, and I don't know if his first school was the agricultural college or what.

LT: Well, in 1941, World War II began for the United States. Do you know what your grandfather and your father thought about war?

GI: Well, I think, at the time, my grandfather had already returned to Japan. And just myself, learning about samurai traditions and ethics and history and that sort of thing, I think they just looked at war as kind of a practical matter, life and death and that sort of thing, a political thing, it had a lot to do with right and wrong. So based on those parameters would determine how you felt about whatever was happening. And I imagine, just like everybody in the world, they thought it was, like, an economic disagreement.

LT: What did your father do after World War II began?

GI: Well, being a gung-ho, red-blooded American, he wanted to go fight the enemy of his country. So he volunteered for the army or draft, or just volunteered to fight. And being a Kibei, all the Kibei were rejected at first. And shall I tell about how he actually got into the army?

LT: Sure.

GI: Okay. So he was rejected by the, as a Kibei, because he had been "polluted" by the teachings and the Japanese and loyalty to the emperor and that sort of thing. But then after the first wave of Japanese American soldiers sacrificed their lives and became the most highly decorated group of soldiers in American history, the army concluded that these guys were really good fighters, you know, what they say about samurai and all this stuff was true, so we got to get all these guys in, and basically, they'll be our cannon fodder, willingly. So they now drafted all the Kibei who they rejected previously.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.