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BN: So we're back with interview number two with Nick Nagatani in his home in Culver City, California. This is June 27, 2023, and I'm Brian Niiya, and I'll be doing the interviewing, and Yuka Murakami is doing the videography. So thanks again for sitting with us, and last time, we ended up essentially as you're leaving Vietnam, so I thought we'd start this interview with what you returned to. But I thought maybe the first question I wanted to ask is how were you, how did you feel you had changed? How different a person were you after having gone through that experience as you're coming back?

NN: Let's see. That would have been '69, perhaps maybe about in June, perhaps this month. When I came back, it was somewhat like a numb feeling where I was just glad to be back in what we could call, the military term was "the world." So when you're in Vietnam, we always talk about getting back to the world. So I just was glad to get back to the world, I had no expectations except that I'm home. So everything was relatively new to me, and within a period of like thirteen months that I was overseas, that it was shocking the changes that I felt and I saw. And I guess it was during the time where people of color were finding their, searching for identity, finding their identity, standing up for years, decades, centuries of oppression. There was like a hippie movement at the time, the slang, the dress, and the appearances, and mainly the attitudes were some, very counterculture. So this was like, wow, what's happening? But everything that I saw or felt and I experienced at the time when I was, I came back home, was I dug the vibe. Because when I enlisted at that time, just within my own community, it was pretty much uptight. And so I remember back then, like the '60s, actually growing up, there was always hostility between Japanese Americans from the west side, from the east side, like the Gardena kind of thing over there, and there would be a lot of, "Where are you from?" kind of bullshit. But I didn't sense any of that, which was, felt really good. Because I guess people were, some people that were, I guess, quote/unquote part of a movement that they were strongly putting out messages of unity, things of that nature. And so that's what, kind of like, I came home to, and I think I adjusted okay.

BN: What was the first thing that you did when you got back?

NN: I think I went shopping for some clothes. And what I was going to do is, I had it planned out, one of the first things I was going to do was I was going to go to Playa del Rey, and they have some fire pits over there. When I came home, I came home with all my military stuff, fatigues and boots and all this crap. And what I was going to do was I was going to go down to Playa del Rey and I was going to burn it. And I think when I got home, I have a younger brother who's like eight years younger, and him and his friends, they were all wearing fatigues, so he wanted them. Saved me a trip to the beach, so I remember that.

BN: Was that just a fashion thing with your brother's generation?

NN: Yeah. For some reason, everybody was anti-war, but it was cool to wear these fatigues kind of thing, at least for, I think he was in junior high. They call it, now it's middle school, but he was in junior high at Audubon. So I gave it to him and I think it kind of supplied the whole neighborhood of his friends.

BN: Did you keep in touch with the friends you had made while you were in the military?

NN: No. One disadvantage in the Vietnam military era is that we were kind of picked off one by one. So when we went to, overseas, we did not go as a unit. And this is the first time that the military didn't send units together, they just sent us individually. So you went by yourself and you came home by yourself, and we all were sent back when we completed our overseas tour separately. So I think previously, like all other military units, they trained together, they went overseas together, they came back home together, and actually I think it was a lot healthier, where you're orientated together and you're debriefed together at the end and you have this long history of camaraderie. And yes, you know what, I did meet people in Vietnam from all different walks of life. But I think it was somewhat different when, "I'm glad to see you're getting out of here, have a good life," kind of thing. And there was this one Asian, a Buddhahead guy, that I got tight with in Vietnam because we were in the same unit. He was from Azusa, and after we kind of broke ice and got to know each other, I wish I would have kept in contact with him. And I've kind of looked up his name a few times, but there was no hits on him.

BN: And when while you were there, how much were you aware of what was going on back home or when you came back, was it all kind of new and something you didn't know was going on?

NN: Yes, I didn't know what was going on. To be honest, when I enlisted, I didn't know what was going on either, so it was a continuation. I mean, I was just kind of going through the motions.

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