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TI: Thank you for sharing that. These are kind of the questions I wish I could have asked some of the guys in the 442 more. We didn't get into what it felt like.

HY: The day they left, the last day they had with their wife. You know, not long ago, we put our dog down. It was an old dog, but we had a vet come to the house and we put the dog down. I remember how the dog got up in the morning, and we took him out and came back in, and how trusting... we knew that it was going to end, how it was going to end. And it was that same sort of feeling, you know, this dread that it was going to end. That kind of reminded... that's all we talked about, how it was the last day we had together. Fortunately, I survived and got back, but I know many others who didn't, how their wives must have felt afterwards.

TI: So on the trip across the Pacific, how was that for you? Because you now probably had a lot more time to think about things, what was that like for you?

HY: We did have a stop in Hawaii, and we did have two days of liberty in Hawaii. So I looked up my cousins, visited one or two of them.

TI: And these are the cousins who served in the 442nd?

HY: No, they were older. In fact, they were living in California by that time, but my cousins that were more my age, one of my cousins. You know, Hawaii was, the people in Hawaii were tremendous. They knew we were a Marine battalion and they could suspect where we were going. They would treat us to drinks and things like that. The people in Hawaii were just tremendous. I remember when we left Pearl Harbor, the battalion, we manned the rail, you know, stand on the rail as we went out of Pearl Harbor. And I remember there was a young kid on a bicycle who was trying to keep up with us, and I was wondering, where would he be in a couple years if this war went on. And a few of us, or there were some of us, of course, who were there, that was the last time they saw the U.S. Leaving is always such a hard thing to do when you're facing something unknown.

TI: During the interview you've mentioned a couple times your faith and how important that is to you. How did that come into play during this period for you?

HY: Yeah. It was a help. I mean, it was a strength knowing that this is, no matter what happened, we were in the hands of God, so that was helpful. My brother-in-law, George Tsuda, was a very good Christian, and he gave me a small bible when I left, kind of a pocket bible. And he wrote in that. So I kept that with me for a while, but when I was in Qui Nhon in the first part of my assignment, we worked with the Tiger Division from Korea. And for some reason I got to know the chaplain of the Tiger Division. And when he knew I was moving up to Chu Lai, he came and visited me, and he gave me a Korean bible, small Korean bible. So I didn't have anything, so I gave him the bible that I had gotten from my brother George. And over the years I lost track of all that, but then when I worked for Hitachi, I had business in Korea so I started to inquire if anybody knew this chaplain. And it turns out that he went to North Carolina and started a church which had thousands of members. And we corresponded once, and he said he still had that bible.

TI: Did you ever get a chance to meet him?

HY: I never got to meet him. I think he's probably passed away by now, but it's kind of interesting how that bible ended up in North Carolina. I don't know... it was this huge church, Korean church.

TI: In North Carolina, I would not have expected that.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.