<Begin Segment 8>

LD: There was also, when you were at Camp McCoy, one of your buddies found out his father was locked up there.

EM: Oh, yeah. Well, at Camp McCoy, all of a sudden one day, during lunch break, one of the fellows came barging in, throwing his gun down and throwing his hat down and yelling and saying, "Get me some beer," and all that. So a fellow that I knew very well, so I went to him and I said, "What the hell is wrong with you?" He says, "Eddie," he says, "goddamn..." well, of course, we knew each other real well, so we call each other by first names. "Eddie," he says, "goddamn it, look, I have an American uniform on. I've been drilling, we've been training out there. And today, what do you think I saw?" he says. "Across the fence," he says, "I saw my father, I saw my dad." Says, "What the hell, they've got my dad as a prisoner over there, I'm over here as a U.S. soldier in a uniform, and getting ready to go out and fight for my country here, U.S." Says, "Goddamn it, I can't understand it." And he says, "What the hell can I do?" and that's why he was yelling around and kind of losing his head and everything. So I told him, "Look, let's go have some beer." I don't drink, but got him out, out of the way, and got some beer for him and sort of calmed him down and told the captain, "We've got to calm this man down here."

So I talked to him and everything and he says... and his father used to be the principal of a Japanese language school in Honolulu at that time. And just because his father was a Japanese language teacher and everything, they thought maybe he was dangerous, so he was one of those that they gathered, collected in Hawaii and took over to a special camp for, well, for confinement anyway, so that they wouldn't be able to get out or do any damage as they thought they might do. All kind of suspicions and everything. And so this fellow was really all lost, he was emotional, and there was no way you can blame him for even crying. "What the hell," he says, "goddamn it, what the hell can I do now?" So I told him, "You have to more or less get yourself down, your father's out there, yes, and you're over here. But the only way you can help is get out there and show yourself, that's what we're supposed to do, prove ourselves and all that." He was swearing away this and that, said, "Goddamn son of a bitches," this and that. But then he finally settled down, and, "Yes," he says, "I'm going to prove myself and get my dad out of there, get my father out of that place when the war ends." And he sort of really cooled himself and became a very serious soldier. And to this day, now, I haven't met him since the war ended and everything, I don't know whether he's back in Hawaii or whether he... he went to the 100th Infantry to Europe, and I don't know whether he's still living or not. But as I say, it's one of the most striking incidents that affected practically the whole battalion. Because everybody heard about it, said, "Gee, man," it was an uproar.

But the funny thing, or the strange thing is that there wasn't a single guy that said, "I give up, I don't want to fight anymore." And, in fact, they were much, they were even, they were ready to show that they can fight with another division, a Texas division that was in the same camp with us, that was 2nd Division. And, of course, every time we went into town, every time the 2nd Division people went into town, we got into fights. But when 2nd Division left before us, the general came over and told us that the boys were, had a lot of respect for the Hawaiian unit here. They had a lot of fight with the Hawaiian boys, but they respected them for their, what do you call, fighting ability. At least they weren't afraid to fight, that's the thing. So they wished us good, well, and we wished them well, too. Because at one time, in fact, things went so bad between the fellows in the 2nd Division and us, they almost had a battle there. We had our guns and everything ready, too. And their answer was that they're gonna come down and "kick the shit out of us." But things got settled down, and we got to be good friends.

LD: Where you fighting about?

EM: Oh, just going drinking out there, and sometimes, of course, some racial slurs or something like that. But never got to a point where it became a wide open thing, I mean, as far as the racial slurs was concerned.

LD: The 100th got into a fight with somebody.

EM: Yeah, when they thought that, well, they call... "What the hell are these Japs doing here?" or something like that. But get into a fight and then nobody knows what the fight was all about. The 2nd Division guys would get in fights with us, they'll give us something and we'll pass on drinks to them, too, and all that. But things did happen, no question about that. And happened in Camp McCoy, too, when we're training to be soldiers to fight with the U.S. Army. But nobody really got hurt or anything, we wished them well when they left before us, and as I say, they came over and saw our commanding officer and told our commanding officer that they wished us well, they respected the unit, and aloha and all that.

LD: There were other fellows in the 100th who also had problems there, right? More than one guy.

EM: Yeah, more than one guy. Those things started coming out, see, later on.

LD: At that time, how many guys, do you think? They must have said it to the other fellows. You said the whole unit was in uproar.

EM: Yeah, well, just the fact that, well, we're all so close together. Well, that's the thing about Hawaii, see. It's a small place, people are, feel much closer to each other than I would say a place like Texas where the fellows were scattered here and there. But in our case, it was a small place, you're bound to know somebody who knows your friends. Or you're bound to know almost anybody, for that matter, at that time. The place wasn't that big at that time, and Japanese population was, I'll call it the... you know, the population wasn't too big. So we would know most of the families and know each other. But even if you didn't know the person personally, you would know the name and you would know where he came from and things like that. So there were others whose parents were in there, but I don't recall about how many of them, probably maybe half a dozen, maybe more, I don't know. I forgot now. But this person just so happened that he was with our unit, our company, and happened to be with our platoon.

LD: He didn't get to see his father?

EM: No, he didn't get to see his father.

LD: That's what bothered him?

EM: No, that didn't bother him. He'd rather not see his father, because it would make it harder for him, make it worse. So he never, I don't think he ever asked for special permission to see him like that. He went across the thing. He went and, as I say, I don't know exactly what happened after that, because I didn't go with the 100th over to the European side.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 1986 The Center for Educational Telecommunications and Densho. All Rights Reserved.