<Begin Segment 12>

CO: Well, we're very interested in the registration situation. Because all things point to it as being a great watershed in the life of the community. You know, the decisions that people had to make. So give us your recollections of that period.

HY: Well, I know it caused a lot of soul-searching and all that but I was just thinking of getting out, so I answered "yes-yes" like most of my friends. But among young men who probably would have been the ones called up if they answered "yes-yes," it occasioned... a lot of, well, a lot of 'em answered "no-no," because they didn't feel that under the circumstances they could serve in the armed forces, you know. And maybe if I was a guy I would have done the same thing. I hope so.

EO: Do you recall how it got introduced? And did your newspaper have anything to do with that?

HY: I don't think so. There was no... I don't think there was any advice given through the newspaper.

EO: There was no editorializing about it?

HY: I don't recall.

CO: How was it handled? I mean, like, I see copies of it now where it's typewritten in but I'm assuming that most people didn't have typewriters.

HY: No, uh-uh. No, of course not.

CO: So did you go someplace to fill it out?

HY: I don't even remember that, unless they were handed out by the block manager or something and we took it back to him and he sent 'em in. I don't remember.

EO: What about in your family? Did everyone answer "yes-yes"?

HY: Well, let's see. I don't know if the kids had to.

EO: Seventeen, huh?

HY: Yeah. So that would have meant just Johnny and me and my father. The other two were too young.

EO: Did you have any family discussions?

HY: Not that I recall. And my brother was the type that volunteered anyway, you know.

CO: Well, tell us more about Johnny.

[Interruption]

HY: Johnny was supposed to graduate from Oceanside Carlsbad High School and so was Wakako and all the other Japanese kids who were seniors. But with the evacuation orders, they were given their diplomas early because we were leaving in May, and they didn't get to graduate with the rest of the class. What else did you want to know about? Johnny?

CO: What kind of a person was he?

HY: Oh, he was a hard worker, he helped out in the fields, and he was athletic, he was interested in sports. And he had a friend, a white friend that he admired a lot and he would talk about him all the time. And what this fellow wrote in his annual broke my heart because it said something like -- I can't remember the exact wording -- but how Johnny, for being a Japanese, was a pretty good kid, you know. And that would have really rankled if somebody said that to me. But he just took it in the spirit it was given, I guess, whatever spirit that was. And he didn't take offense at it. But I, it gets me mad to this day thinking that, thinking about such a... such a friend, I guess.

CO: Do you know how he came to volunteer for the 442nd?

HY: Well, he was in, he had gone out to top sugar beets with a bunch of other young men because I guess the U.S. manpower commission put as many young people in the war-related industries, and a lot of men had gone off to war. So they were recruiting in the camps for people that could go up to places like Colorado and top sugar beets. Because sugar was rationed then and I guess sugar beets were a valuable crop. And after the, that season was over, he went to Denver with a bunch of other fellows. And I guess jobs weren't that easy to come by, either, in Denver. So first he was working as a dishwasher in a Catholic seminary for boys. And then he was handling eggs. And then that's about the time he wrote us and told us he had volunteered for the 442nd. And I didn't like the idea at all, but you know, I can't lead his life for him. And so I don't think he was in basic training very long and then they sent him overseas, and that's when he got killed, very early in the Italian campaign. And he was nineteen.

[Interruption]

HY: Well, people were gradually leaving, so... and then my friends, Wakako left, and Jeannie left, they both went to Chicago, I believe. So I went to the leave office and I decided I would get the most out of the government that I possibly could. Also I liked New England from reading American literature, so it had a lot of connotations for me. So I talked my brothers into going to Massachusetts. And generally was okay as far as Chicago because quite a few people he knew were with us. But when we got, had to transfer to the New England train, most of the people stayed in Chicago or in the middle west. And we were going on to Massachusetts. He wasn't very happy. But we arrived in Boston, I think the relocation office was in the post office building. And I finally got to see an ocean again from one of the windows -- the Atlantic Ocean -- and I really missed the ocean. Because Oceanside, you had it there every day. And they took us to Springfield, Massachusetts, where I was a cook for this woman who inherited the Absorbine Junior factory. And Yuk got to go to a youth camp, so he had a lot of fun. And we had been there only about a month and a half when we got the news that Johnny had died in Italy. So we all went back to camp because my father asked us to come back. I guess he felt the family shriveling and he wanted us all right there with him. So we went back and went back to California as soon as California opened up.

CO: But what about the loss of your brother and how did it affect you?

HY: I don't know. Numb, I guess. I mean, it was really a bad time. It was something that I haven't gotten over yet. Because about 1990, I guess, we were able to go and visit him, his burying place in Italy, you know, at the U.S. military cemetery. I can't go on. [Laughs] Like they say on Saturday Night Live, "Talk amongst yourselves." Well, anyway, it was just like it just happened, you know.

CO: Your father heard about this when he was in camp?

HY: Huh?

CO: Your father heard about it when he was in camp?

HY: Well, he got the telegram, yeah.

CO: It must have been very devastating to him.

HY: Uh-huh.

[Interruption]

CO: So, tell me how you feel about the 442nd.

HY: Well, we are repeatedly told that if it weren't for the sacrifices of the 442nd that we wouldn't have been allowed to go back to California as soon as we were. But I don't... since what was done to us was wrong in the first place, I don't see that they should have had to do that to prove anything. I don't know how many of 'em feel that they did it to prove a point.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 1994, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.