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PW: Okay. So your father is graduating almost the same time that camps are starting to close and things are definitely shifting. Did he meet up with his parents in Chicago?

PY: Yeah, I think he was able to see his brother John, and I don't know he ever, he saw his brother Pete, but he definitely saw the folks. And then after my parents were married, she ended up spending, leaving New York and spending time both in Cincinnati and Chicago with the Yamazakis.

PW: So by '44, he's just getting out and he's in Wisconsin. His parents are coming to Chicago, Aki is in New York. How did that eventually come together?

PY: Well, the family story is that my dad gets this graduation present, a portable traveling clock, and it had a New York mailing address. And so he made the assumption -- maybe this was wishful thinking on his part -- that, "Aki sent me this graduation present. How sweet." And that's not the story he tells in Densho. [Laughs]

PW: Has your mother corroborated the story?

PY: She said she was really surprised when he showed up at her doorstep. "What are you doing here?" Because she didn't know him that well. So he made the assumption, well, she must really like me because she sent this gift.

PW: But it kindled that relationship?

PY: Yeah. So this all happens in a very short period of time. So he's on leave, he's already in the army, assigned to a division, and is preparing to, the division was preparing to eventually be shipped overseas to Europe. And so she, couple different army bases as they're making their final preparations, and so all this stuff happens within, I think, the actual courtship is less than a week.

PW: Well, I also missed the part where your dad gets enlisted. So he's graduated, and then where does that happen?

PY: So he's already, they were enlisted before the war.

PW: Okay, you did say that.

PY: So he gets assigned to this new division. It's, just by coincidence, also the same division that Kurt Vonnegut, the writer, was in. So if people want to know about his experience during the Battle of the Bulge, read the first fifty or sixty pages of Slaughterhouse-Five.

PW: And it was brutal. We know that your father had a really trying experience in Europe.

PY: Very trying. And he never really spoke in full detail about that as much as I did research and talked to him about that. But for years, he resisted... or resisted is not the word, but he never took advantage of his veterans benefits. So it wasn't until the '70s or '80s that he finally registered with the VA. And that was because of, like, he started, he was doing research for his own book, Children of the Atom Bomb. Then he started going to reunions of his division, his military unit. And they all kind of said, "You're out of your mind."

PW: And your father was unusual because he also didn't join the 442/100th. It was a different division that he was put into.

PY: Yeah, the 106th. So it was one of those wartime divisions, slammed together, just a bunch of draftees and recruits, officers like my dad with no military training. Just slap a bar on your shoulders and salute.

PW: And he was doing medical work, though?

PY: Yeah, he was a battalion medical officer.

PW: And meanwhile, he had already proposed to your mother, right?

PY: Yeah. So before she left, and they had gotten married before they left. And so she spends several months with a near stranger going from military base to military base in mid-America, just away from family and friends and any sense of familiarity.

PW: And did they get married in New York?

PY: They got married in New York. So probably Teri and her husband were... and a couple friends from the American Service...

PW: And was there any family present at the wedding, either her family or his family?

PY: Outside of Teri and Min? No.

PW: And I meant to ask this question going back to Aki Hirashiki. Even though she was not incarcerated, or was there a very short time, what happened to her family? They were also incarcerated, you said, right?

PY: Yes. So the father, her father's in Texas, and rejoins the family after a year, just at Manzanar. And so they are one of the families that were in there for the duration. They didn't want to go, or I don't even know if it was offered to them, just because of his background, that he would get a release like a lot of families did.

PW: And what about mother and siblings? Again, you said that they went into the camp.

PY: Yeah. So Jimmy was in the camp, and so then so sometime in '45, he enlisted. And so I assume at that time he leaves.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.