<Begin Segment 3>

LD: How had you learned your Japanese? What is your background, how did you learn Japanese?

HF: Well, I was born and raised in a Japanese family, that is, our parents came directly to Hawaii from Hiroshima. And being the child of that type of background, I was expected, and in fact I was required, to attend a language school run by a Buddhist church on the Big Island. So I completed twelve years of language school training on the island of Hawaii.

LD: As a kid, how did you feel about going to Japanese language school every day after school for twelve years?

HF: Well, you know, back in those days, the children of the Isseis really were obedient and did whatever the parents required them to do. And so we took this as a natural responsibility and we did not complain about it.

LD: How did you feel about it? How did you feel as a kid?

HF: As a kid, I thought that I might have at times utilized the time in a better fashion for me since playing basketball. But thought that was not the case, and I did go ahead and finish the required course.

LD: Your folks were working pretty hard?

HF: Yes. They were, of course, a farmers class and merchant class, and my mother happens to be from the merchants class in Japan. And, of course, when they came to the Hawaiian islands as contract laborers on the sugar plantation, they were very poor. And I had, although we were not wanting for anything in particular, I can still remember that every day was a struggle.

LD: Every day was a struggle.

HF: In terms of earning enough to keep the family fed and clothed, and, of course, to send the kids to school.

LD: What do you remember?

HF: As a kid, of course, all of us within the family had to contribute to the family income. My father happened to be, at the time, a sugar planter when I was growing up as a child. And even as young as I was, five, six years old, I can still vividly recall that our responsibility to the family was to help in whatever capacity we could. And so I used to work in the sugar cane field along with the rest of the family all though the years in public school through high school.

LD: What do you remember about working in the sugar cane field? I've never been in a sugar cane field, I can only imagine. Can you describe that to me?

HF: Work on the sugar plantation and in the sugar cane fields was not mechanized.

LD: How old were you when you were working in the sugar cane fields?

HF: I started working in the sugar cane field, as I recall, when I was about six years old.

[Interruption]

HF: All we could do was maybe weed by hand, perhaps, and be the water boy. But as I grew older, then, of course, we became physically more competent. And my chores on that sugar field ranged anywhere from hoe hana, I don't know whether you understand that term, but hoe hana to holehole, and there's a famous song about holehole bushi, and to fertilizing, to plowing behind the mule, and to harvesting cane, and hauling cane to the flumes or the conveyors which carried the sugar cane to the mill.

LD: What does hana hana and...

HF: Hoe hana means to work with a hoe for weeding purpose, and holehole, again, back in those days, the planters believed that stripping the dead leaves off the sugar cane promoted the growth. They don't do that these days because they just burn off the sugar cane, not the dead leaves now.

LD: But you remember that as that's the kind of life you led, a hard life.

HF: That's right, a hard life.

LD: So you say you were obedient.

HF: And that is really, in reflecting on my past, perhaps that is the reason why even to this day, I'm not afraid of hard work, physical work, or sheer endurance for that matter, productivity.

LD: Do you think that that is...

HF: No doubt that had an influence on my later life.

LD: And when you were serving in Merrill's?

HF: That too, yes.

LD: How do you see that background as affecting you when you were in the Merrill's?

HF: Well, when we were with the Merrill's Marauders, we had something to prove. And the background of being a Nisei in a kind of environment of hardship, I think, stood us in good stead when the chips were down in the mountains of Burma.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 1985 The Center for Educational Telecommunications and Densho. All Rights Reserved.