<Begin Segment 8>

HM: Okay, how do you, how do you feel about what happened to you and your family during World War II?

KO: Well, in my view, it was totally unnecessary, all the expense that the government went to, to hold us up in concentration camps.

HM: How do you feel about this memorial that we're working on?

KO: Love it.

Off Camera: You have to say more than that. You can't just say that, 'cause we won't know what you're referring to.

KO: Well, the incident should be, should be remembered. Not only for me but for anybody else that might, that might come across that... 'cause I had the best time in the world.

Off Camera: What's the importance of building the memorial? Why should, why should it be built?

KO: So that we remember. And a lot of this, as you can tell from my hemming and hawing, it's not, it's not right there. I have to search for that memory. And having lived it, it shouldn't be that deep.

HM: What would you like to say to the visitors who come to the memorial to come to... what do you want to have them to get out of their experience going to the memorial?

KO: It should never have happened. I'd have loved to have been here during the war. And whether it'd be raising strawberries or any other vegetables in the cause. I'd have glad to have done that.

HM: That's very good. That was very good. Thank you.

Off Camera: Is that good enough, Hisa?

HM: Yes, I think so. Do you have any other things you would like to add or talk about?

KO: Well, we didn't, we didn't cover Bill much. He is a war... yeah, actually Bill, Nibs and Bill were... because Ebe was in Pullman and that was the last stable address that any of us brothers ever had. We used that as a rallying point. And everybody out of the service ended up in Pullman, one time or another. So being in a college town, Nibs, I think, was the first out of the service. And he had ideas of becoming a vet. And that is, that is an agricultural college or at least it was at one time. So he was thinking very seriously of trying to become a vet. He took a few college courses, initially. By the time I ended there, both he and Bill, having got out of service ahead of me, they were both attending. I looked into it and the GI Bill covered the whole gamut, from top to bottom. Four years, in my case it was five years, of schooling. Nibs somehow had a problem with being accepted by the vet school. I think after taking a few odd courses just to tide, just to kill time waitin' for his acceptance or not being accepted, he finally gave it up and went back to his automotive endeavors.

Now Bill, on the other hand, he was in pre-dent, or thinking pre-dent. Took all the right courses and after a couple years he gave that up. But he came back to it. And it wasn't pre-dent this time, it was bacteriology, microbacteriology. Apparently he loved the subject matter more so than dentistry and he stayed on. He graduated and he got his masters and he stuck with it a bit longer and he got his doctorate. Applied after that, after a point in time, he applied University of... no, it was Michigan State University. They have a large USDA facility there and they do some fine research work and he was accepted to a program in there, after he got his doctorate at Wazzu. And he spent his entire career out there. I think some disease in the poultry area is where he nailed something down. He wrote a paper and it was published and he finally got a little bit of a reputation. He went to Japan shortly thereafter under the auspices of the Japanese government that, that was interested in some of his work.

And in the meantime there's me. I'm struggling with some college courses. And I really wasn't prepared for college. In high school, you know, I didn't take the algebras and the geometries and the trigonometry or anything like that. I was content with Mr. Marley's class in the shop. But Ms. Biggs, in her wisdom, I guess, somehow rammed some, some little bit of algebra in there, somewhere in my brain. Through all, through all of my college courses, just that one rudiment of algebraic thinking, of proportions, chemistry, physics, it was all that same proportion thing that I was able to dig back out of my thick skull, and used to solve some of these problems. Satira Biggs, I remember that lady.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.