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AD: Why don't, so let's go back to enlisting in the 442nd. Talk about your thoughts on those who volunteered from the camps.

FS: You know, when I finally got down to Camp Shelby, the unit was already formed and we were, I was placed in a training company and we, the unit had already been training for several months and so the new people had to be trained separately. And so I was, I fell into the company of a bunch of guys who had volunteered from the, from the camps. And just talking with them, I thought to myself, "Boy, Fred, would you have volunteered from one of those camps?" It's one of those questions that I never, I couldn't answer, and I suspect that it would have been really hard for me if my mother and father were stuck in a tarpaper shack and we all lived together in, in one room, that I could have volunteered. And I guess I really admired those guys who said, "Well, what else could we do? We had to, we had to do something." And the shame of it all was that their, he, they and their families were sorely abused by a lot of those people in camps. Their homes, their shacks were vandalized, some of these guys were physically beat up and stuff. So that's a tough one. I'm not sure what I would have done under those circumstances.

AD: Talk more about why it would have been difficult to volunteer from that circumstance.

FS: Well, first of all, if you've seen pictures of those camps, they were just a whole series of tarpaper shacks. The living conditions were just, just, in the wintertime, were just terrible, and in the summertime it was hot and dusty. They were out in the, out in an area, these camps were in places where people don't live ordinarily. And to have, to have my mother and father living in, under those conditions, it would really have been a wrenching experience for me to volunteer. So I don't know. It depends on what kind of crowd I fell in with, I surmise.

AD: Talk about, what's your perspective on those who chose not to volunteer, the resisters?

FS: Yeah, the resisters. They had a point, and, and when they talk about taking the high ground on that, they say, "Well, you've incarcerated me, you've taken away my, taken away my family's property, and you ask me to volunteer and fight for this country when we have absolutely no civil liberties. You have guard towers, have machine guns that are pointed inwards, you're not protecting us from anybody." I can understand that. I, and under those circumstances, I think I could have, I could have taken that position. But being a dumb kid, you know, I might not. Depending on who said, "Hey, let's go volunteer," I'd have gone and volunteered. But in talking to the people who really felt strongly about this, and who led the pack, Gordon Hirabayashi and those others, I really admire them for taking that position. You know, in talking with my friends from the service, they say, "You know, that's fine, that these guys, these guys resisted. But what if we, what if we had all resisted? What if, what if ninety percent of the Japanese American men refused to go in the service? Do you know what would have happened to us? We'd have ended up on some garbage heap somewhere. They might have put us on a boat and shipped us back to Japan." So when you look at the best of the best of what has happened, it's been finally they upgraded the Japanese community and we gradually, things have gotten, things got better after the war. So it's, it's a tough one. The one thing that I keep saying about the resisters is that, "Hey, how many of those guys started resisting when they heard the casualty figures from the 442nd?" Maybe that's unfair. They're, my friends and I in the 442nd always bring that up.

AD: Tell me more about that.

FS: Well, you know, this all, this all takes place, you know, in the last twenty-five years when we, when I get to, we get together for our reunions, and the subject of the resisters comes up. And the leaders of that group were very, the real leaders, the guys who went, whose case went to the Supreme Court were real leaders. But there was a, there was an element of those resisters who were nothing but hooligans, who intimidated families and who intimidated guys who volunteered into the service, and actually agreed to, to be drafted. And that's, I guess, that's the element that I'm talking about. They didn't do anybody any service at that point.

AD: Talk about the sacrifice of the 442nd. What was, what was sacrificed there on behalf of the Japanese American community?

FS: Well, I guess the casualty figures and the heroics are all on the records. But I think the reality, what really has happened is that the 442nd, they had to form the 442nd. If, if we were just put in regular units, as just mixed in with the other, with other people, with the Caucasians, they couldn't see that we were, we were fighting the war as hard as we could. As a segregated unit, we, we were given an opportunity to say, well, okay, we're a segregated unit, we've got to show our stuff. And I'm sure this is part of, part of what happened in the 442nd. Why we didn't have our own PR people, the media did take up on the things we did after a while. The one, I guess -- people always ask me, "Well, how come they, how come you were such a crackerjack unit? How come?" But the Japanese American community was really small. 120,000 people on the mainland, and probably that same number in Hawaii. If you, if a guy screwed up, not only did the guys immediately around him, but the families knew and the family's friends knew. It was just a matter of pride that these guys did not, we did not fail. I always felt that was part of it. But it was, there was... and the Hawaii kids, particularly, were, were friends. They all came in as a bunch, they knew each other. God, if you screwed up, then that, this word got back to Hawaii, your family would have ended up being a pariah. That's part of it. But I think, I think somewhere along the line we realized that we had something to prove. That the families back in camp, all this business about being disloyal, preyed on everybody's mind. I, actually, I thought about stuff like that, finally, when the bullets started flying.

[Interruption]

AD: -- what legacy, or maybe use that word if you could.

FS: Yeah. Well, let's see. When we talk about, about what the 442nd did and its legacy, it, I think it's, when you say "coming of age," I'm not sure that's correct. But we were able, I think, as a result of the 442nd and its sacrifices, the Japanese American community came to the fore as a result. Well, first of all, there was, they could not question the loyalty of the Japanese American community. There, we ended up with a very, finally realizing that we had to be politically active. And the political action began in Hawaii where they, where the bulk of the veterans of the 442nd returned, they went home to Hawaii. One of, the saga of this thing is that they, they organized unions to start with and got more pay for working on the sugar cane field. Of course, that ended up being the demise of the sugar business in Hawaii because the, because of the financial demands. But not only that, but they became politically active and they started electing representatives to their, to their regional, territorial legislature. As part of that organization, they started to go after statehood for Hawaii, and that's one of the big things, I think, that came out of the 442nd, is that they had all of these Japanese American veterans united in this effort to validate their, their war record. And so it was, there was a push to, to grant statehood to Alaska and Hawaii. And the logical sequence would have been Hawaii because it had greater population and had greater economic importance to the States. But there was substantial opposition in the legislature. And so Alaska went first, and they became a state in 1957. And then, statehood for Hawaii came up to the legislature, and there was substantial opposition. And there was a legend that, that the then Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn was adamantly opposed to it, and was heard to say that, "Hey, I'm better than the little brown folks who live on the island," and he was very summarily reminded that it was those little guys who saved that battalion of Texans in the hills, in the mountains of northern France. And so he, he became one of the supporters and that's how -- legend has it -- is that Hawaii became a state.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.