<Begin Segment 14>

VY: One thing we didn't talk about is who else was in camp with you? What other family members were in camp with you?

DS: I don't remember my uncles, but I do remember my youngest uncle, Chip, who was recently married to the love of his life, Alice Funai. She was a beautiful young woman, vivacious. She came from a large farming community family. And it turns out she was expecting when we had to be evacuated to Minidoka, and she was in the last weeks of her pregnancy. It was a terrible ride for her on the train. Uncomfortable, nine months pregnant, oppressive heat. And when she was ready to give birth, marginal medical facilities. She did give birth to my cousin Freddy, and in the spring when Freddy was just a baby, we had our group picture taken by a government photographer, and you can see that photograph on the Bancroft collection and in the National Archives. It turns out that her brother, George, at that time, or shortly thereafter in April of '43, was a member of the U.S. Army before the war. And because he was Japanese American, he was a (Nisei). He was discharged because he was of Japanese descent, from the army, put into the camps, where he then reenlisted and volunteered to serve in the U.S. Army, went over to Europe, fought in Italy, and was captured by the Germans and was a POW in a German POW camp. At the same time, his sister, Alice Funai Sakura, was essentially a POW in an American concentration camp. You think about the irony, it's incomprehensible.

VY: It is incomprehensible.

DS: I think war brings lots of ironies, but this is right up there in terms of irony. Her brother George was behind barbed wire. Alice was behind barbed wire with her newborn baby. And her husband, Alice's husband, my uncle Howard, ("Chip"), I remember following them. I saw them walking hand in hand in the camp, so I spied on them as they were walking hand in hand. And my uncle Chip then left his young family and he went with the 442nd into Italy.

VY: So your father and your three uncles all joined the military?

DS: They volunteered, two of them were accepted and went into training. And sometime after basic training, my father came back and we had that photograph taken with my father in the U.S. Army uniform. And he was in his late thirties, and he was very proud of the fact that he had completed the very rugged basic training that prepared soldiers for war. And, in fact, was proud of the fact that he even helped the younger twenty-year-olds complete their twenty-mile full pack march. So he was quite proud of the fact that, when he was at Camp Shelby, a large contingent of Hawaiian Americans were trained. And if you read Dan Brown's book, you read about the tension between the Hawaiians and the Mainlanders. But my father grew to love Hawaiian music while training at Camp Shelby. And all, when he came home, he started a collection of Hawaiian music, played the ukulele, he really became a Hawaiian, lover of Hawaiian music because of his exposure to the Hawaiian boys at Camp Shelby.

VY: That's a great story.

DS: So all is not lost.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.