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gky: When you look at, look back over your career, more in the very beginning, and you think of the things that you've done and now, as you said, we see Janet Reno and we see Norm Mineta in Congress being a member of the Cabinet. We see General Shinseki being a four star general. In some small way you had your role to play in that.

SK: Well, my life as an individual, a Japanese American individual, starting with my parents, immigrants to the United States in the twentieth century, it's been almost like a storybook experience. Totally uneducated, or untrained to do the things that we were asked to do, all the changes that have occurred in my life in the twentieth century, it's almost incredible. My father was a Hawaiian pineapple, I mean, a sugar plantation contract officer, excuse me, employee. He worked for about nine dollars a month in the sugar plantations of Maui. Then he came to the United States and I was born, and World War I started, and went to school and then was employed there. And my parents were interned in American concentration camps. Then after the war the veterans came back from the wars in Europe and in Asia and started their educations, start life all over again. I, fortunately, had a job, just continued on. But along the way the second generation slowly began to rebuild their lives, but they didn't want to talk about the relocation. To them the experience was an experience of having been raped, and who wants to talk about having been raped? It was the third generation, lawyers like Dale Minami and other activist type Sansei lawyers, who started the movement in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and they worked to have the Korematsu, Hirabayashi, Yasui, and the Endo cases revoked. These are Supreme Court decisions. They were declared null and void, and the crimes that they were charged and sentenced, convicted and sentenced to, were revoked.

Then in 1977 I was approached to help Joe Harrington write an MIS story, so I helped Joe from 1977 'til '79 get interviews with MIS veterans in the continent, on Hawaii, all over the place, and he published his book, Yankee Samurai, in 1980, I believe. Then this impelled the 442 people in the Bay Area to organize, so Tom Kaguchi and Chet Tanaka organized the Japanese, National Japanese American Historical Society in San Francisco. And through the efforts of an individual by the name of Eric Saul, who was curator at the San Francisco Museum, and General William Peters, who had commanded OSS Detachment 101 in Burma, had personally used fourteen Japanese American MIS men in the Burma Campaign, he was an influential individual in the Bay Area and he wrote to the department of the army in Washington and he asked that the San Francisco Museum authorize the creation of a Go For Broke museum exhibit. At that time the chief of military history was General Collins, for whom I had worked in 1960, and General Collins approved, as chief of military history, the creation of a Go For Broke museum exhibit at the Presidio of San Francisco Museum, and it was a huge success. And then following that, a Yankee Samurai exhibit was set up. Then the Los Angeles County Museum asked for the exhibit to be shown there, and so the exhibit was brought to the Los Angeles County Museum and it had a very, very successful one year showing. And the Smithsonian people, Dr. Kennedy came down from Washington to look at the Yankee Samurai, Go For Broke internment exhibit in Los Angeles, and he said, "I want this for the Smithsonian," said, "I want it in 1984." But then he went back to Washington, talked it over with his staff, and he said, "I want this exhibit for the bicentennial celebration of the United States Constitution in 1987." And when the news got out there was an uproar from Congress that funds the museum, from the media in Washington, and individuals, especially from veterans, the American Legion and the VFW, the idea was, how can you put on an exhibit that tells about the mistakes of the United States government to celebrate the bicentennial of the Constitution? But Dr. Kennedy persisted. I was put on a special committee for this, this exhibit and I traveled to Washington a number of times. I had participated in the exhibits of the museums in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, where the reception was very good. I brought it to Nimitz Museum in Texas for half a year, successful, and at the MacArthur Museum in Norfolk, Virginia, where it was very well received. And I reported to Dr. Kennedy that the American people will welcome these exhibits. They find out a lot about the history of the United States, the history of World War II, and they will not violently oppose these showings in the cities, so I said in Washington the public will welcome the exhibit, in Washington at the Smithsonian. And so on October the 1st of 1987 the Smithsonian exhibit titled "For a More Perfect Union" opened with the internment section of it, the 442 section of it, and the MIS section of it, and it was a huge success. It was opened in October the 1st, 1987, in twelve years more than fifty million people have viewed it, including all members of the Congress. And Representative Matsui wrote articles, encouraged the people from Congress to go visit it, and I feel that the museum exhibit, which was publicized in a National Geographic magazine at one time, 1980 I believe, had a lot to do with pushing forward the investigation by Congress of the relocation, and President Carter in 1980, I believe it was, organized, or put in charge a congressional committee called the Commission to Investigate the Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, and they traveled from Washington to Los Angeles, San Francisco and up on to Washington, and they produced a report, personal justice...

gky: No, I've seen that report, but can we get back to your days at Camp Savage and Fort Snelling and here at the Presidio, the very first, with the very first class here? Are there any last thoughts you have about your feelings about having worked there or having been part of the whole effort?

SK: Well, as I explained, I was totally unqualified for the job, but because the army was desperate and thanks to a letter of reference sent by Professor Wong to Colonel Weckerling, I got this job, and I learned fast. Had to learn, had to study hard every night 'til one or two o'clock to be able to do the job, but somehow or the other I managed to do the job. The, working for the army, the civil service, from 1941 'til I retired in 1974 has been just a wonderful career for me. The commanders I've had, the friendships I've made with individual students, hundreds of thousands of people, were totally unanticipated, but a most rewarding career, and I wouldn't change it for anything. And even today I keep up my contacts with DLI, help writers write books. I'm helping Jim McNaughton write his MIS history. I'm working with Dr. Swift in Hawaii, who's writing another book. I've worked with Japanese authors. The foremost female writer in Japan, her name is Toyoko Yamazaki, she wrote a Japanese language novel on the MIS experience and the evacuation experience and it sold three million copies in Japan.

gky: Is that Two Motherlands?

SK: Pardon me?

gky: Is that Two Motherlands?

SK: Two Motherlands, Futatsu no Sokoku. Then NHK, the Japanese broadcasting company, developed a one year drama series based on that. Then, as late as 1994, NHK, the Japanese broadcasting company, contacted me to work on a Japanese language documentary on the work of Japanese American CIC activities in Japan. And postwar Japan, the possibility of Communists infiltrating Japanese people and Japanese government was very strong, and one of the most important work of the Japanese American linguist was to work as plainclothes CIC personnel to infiltrate the Communist Party itself, infiltrate the labor unions, and report back to MacArthur to prevent demonstrations and riots and strikes. And in 1994 NHK produced a film that was shown in Japan on a national basis, and it openly said that the Japanese American CIC prevented the Communization of Japan. So all these activities are a result of my having worked with MIS and continuously, even to this day, so the opportunities I get, the chances I get to speak up on the injustice of the evacuation, the work of the MIS in winning the war and in winning the peace of Japan, the work of the 442, has been an ongoing work of dedication for me. Perhaps that's what keeps me alive.

gky: [Laughs] Well, thank you very much.

SK: You're welcome.

gky: You gave us a lot to think about.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2000 Bridge Media and Densho. All Rights Reserved.