<Begin Segment 8>

CO: Tell me about your brother.

MK: My brother? What about my brother?

CO: He was drafted?

MK: Oh, my brother was drafted, yeah. He was drafted in early 1945. He went to Military Intelligence School and went to, when the war ended, he went to the Philippines and Okinawa. And my mother wanted him to come back after he served, served, I don't know how many years. But when his time was over and my brother wanted to stay in Okinawa. This was the first time in his life he was accepted as a human being, you know, since he was an American GI and he had a little bit of authority, there, that he really loved it in Okinawa. He was really accepted by the Okinawan people. But my mother kept telling me to send him letters to have him come back and I finally convinced him to come back, and like a dutiful oldest son he came back. But I think, in my mind, that he would have been a lot happier over there.

My brother, he thought it was wrong, too, about the army drafting us out of the camp, but he says, "I don't think you're going to have a chance in court," because of all the prejudice and everything at the time. I guess he was right, but I was determined to fight it all the way, so the threat of being sent to prison didn't worry me that much. I thought that some years later that people will read about it and that they might say that I have my, I was right in fighting for my rights and that I would be vindicated. That was my hopes. But after the war ended and my prison term was over, I came back to Santa Clara valley, all these years it's been a struggle trying to get back to a normal life. And our family worked real hard, and I didn't really have much time to think about this, about being put into prison and the violation of my rights.

And another thing I was very upset of was that the Japanese leaders, Japanese American leaders of the time, during World War II, were really against the resisters and made very bad statements to hurt us. And I could never forgive wartime JACL leaders calling me a draft dodger and that I should be tried for sedition. It kind of left sort of a scar in me that I can never forget, and even though I might say, I might try to forgive them, I just can't. I thought it was very wrong for them to side against us and make such bad statements against us.

CO: You got pardoned, didn't you?

MK: Yes. In December 1947, President Truman gave all the resisters, not only from Heart Mountain, but all the resisters a blanket pardon. And that this pardon returned to us all of our citizenship rights and that President Truman's amnesty board, in their pardon, said that they fully understand, or understood what we really stood for and that their, their wording was very sympathetic to the Heart Mountain resisters.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 1992, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.