<Begin Segment 31>

TI: I'm curious, kind of connecting some of the things that we talked about earlier, have you ever talked with, or were you able to ever talk with either the cousins who were in the 100th or your uncle Heek in the 442 about what you went through?

HY: You know, I wish I did, I wish I'd talked to my uncle about it. I remember he came over once, and I thought maybe we would talk, but I guess I was waiting for him to talk about it and he was waiting for me to talk about what I experienced. But, yeah, I wished... that was a missed opportunity, I wished I had talked to them.

TI: Do you think he knew what you went through?

HY: Yeah, I'm sure, because he was in combat. You know, there's a lot of people who are in Vietnam, but very few were in combat just like a lot of people in World War II probably were not in combat or in intense combat. I think my uncle, because of Anzio, that he had been in combat. You know, there's a, I've seen some studies done, and it says that people who were intense combat probably were able to handle things in life better because they had been in combat. And I can understand that, because in my career, in my business, I would always ask myself, "What's the worst that could happen?" And I'd already seen the worst, so I can move on and do things. So I think that's the same with my Uncle Heek. He had a very good life afterwards.

TI: So my last question as we're kind of finishing up here, when you think about all that you've just told me, and you think about, we didn't get into your family, your kids, but future generations, if you had grandkids or great grandkids, what would you want them to know about you and your life? Because you've lived... I mean, it's just a very powerful story. We didn't even get into your business career, which I think is really interesting, too, but what thoughts do you have if you wanted to share something with a future generation?

HY: Yeah, I believe that God has a plan for your life. And sometimes when you think there's these huge disappointments that maybe it's there and something better will come out of that, so don't be discouraged when things don't go the way you think you should go. Because I think there is a plan. That's the main thing.

TI: Well, Hu, thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview. This was... it was, for whatever reason, I'm very moved by this interview, so thank you so much.

HY: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about things.

<End Segment 31> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.