Densho Digital Repository
Katsugo Miho Collection
Title: Katsugo Miho Interview I
Narrator: Katsugo Miho
Interviewers: Michiko Kodama Nishimoto (primary), Warren Nishimoto (secondary)
Location: Honolulu, Hawaii
Date: February 2, 2006
Densho ID: ddr-densho-1022-1

<Begin Segment 1>

MN: This is an interview with Mr. Katsugo Miho in Manoa, Oahu, Hawaii, on February 2, 2006. And the interviewers are Michiko Kodama Nishimoto and Warren Nishimoto. And for today, we're gonna focus on your early life. And we'll start with when you were born, your year.

KM: 1922, dog year.

MN: And where were you born?

KM: Kahului, Maui.

MN: Based on what you've heard, tell us about your father's family background and life in Japan up to the time they immigrated to the islands.

KM: As far as I know, my parents came from Hiroshima, Japan. And in Japan, he was a schoolteacher. And he came to Hawaii as a schoolteacher. He was married and he had three children when he decided to immigrate to Hawaii. I guess that one of the reasons that he moved to Hawaii was he was an adopted son into my mother's family. And although my grandfather was a merchant, established merchant, preparing and selling ajitsuke nori, it was this seaweed that, they put on their own sauce. And my grandfather did a lot of research into this seaweed, to the extent that he went to Korea to develop his own sauce to spread over the nori. Today, even today, my aunt, my mother's aunt, who took over the business, is still involved in what we call this ajitsuke nori business in Hiroshima, I visited them many times. But my dad was not a ajitsuke nori, so he decided to let his wife's stepsister to take over the business, and he asked his permission of my mother's father to immigrate to Hawaii. And partly, I guess, because adopted husbands in Japan normally had a bad time in Japanese culture and society, especially back the early 1900s.

So he had three children at that time, and my grandfather had allowed him, provided, on the condition that he left behind one boy and one girl, the eldest son and daughter, with him in Japan to take over the business. And the third child was my elder sister, Tsukiye. And with the, I think she was one or two years old, around 1910, they moved to Honolulu, came over to Hawaii as an immigrant teacher. And my understanding, however, is that in the beginning, he was not teaching Japanese school because around the time when California gold rush was going on, he's supposed to have gone to California to explore the possibility of going into farming in California and raising bees. But that didn't pan out because while he was there, my mother got seriously ill, I think it was smallpox, at that time, which was drastic happenings in Hawaii. But a relative's doctor, who was one of the first doctors at Kuakini Hospital here in Honolulu, who happened to be a relative of my parents, supposedly did a lot in saving the life of my mother. And his name was Katsugoro Haida, and I was supposedly named after Dr. Haida. Not only that, because I was the number five boy, they stopped at "Katsugo" instead of the old style Japanese "Katsugoro." But supposedly I'm named after the savior of my mother, Dr. Katsugoro Haida, who was the founder of Kuakini Hospital in Honolulu. And subsequently, after a few years living in what is now the Palama sector of Honolulu, they moved to Maui. And it was there, I understand, that he started teaching Japanese school out in various camps, Japanese school. Maui was a sugar plantation where people lived in all these different camps, there were a few, a large number of Japanese workers compared to other nationalities, especially on Maui. And a lot of the immigrants on Maui were from Hiroshima to begin with, so he taught in the Japanese schools in Maui until he decided to retire from teaching and became bookkeeper for Onishi grocery store where he worked for many years until they decided to own their own small little family-run hotel.

MN: If I can move you back a little bit and get a little bit more details on your father. What do you know about his own educational background and his background in teaching in Japan?

KM: Very little. Very little, except that I understand that his family side had strong connections with the military. However, I don't know for what reason, he himself was involved in the military, he became a schoolteacher. And to this day, when I first visited Japan, I visited this little primary school. I don't know if it's a middle level school, but I visited this school back in 1966, I think it was, when I first went to Japan. And the school was there, and the row of pictures of the principals of the school, with my dad being the first one. Most of the people in Hawaii came from Hiroshima, came from this district known as the Nihonmachi area, where we had, even in Honolulu, at one time we used to have sub-prefectural clubs. Within the Hiroshima group, we had this Nihonmachi group, which was made up of five different suburbs, like in Honolulu you'd compare to Kaimuki Kaka'ako. But Nihonmachi was all closely located next to each other. And a lot of people from Hawaii came from that particular area.

MN: And then going back to your mother who was Ayano, what do you know about her education and background? She's a merchant's daughter.

KM: Yeah, she was a merchant's daughter. And unlike the custom in those days, the story I heard is that it wasn't an arranged marriage. As I understand it, my dad and others that go to his school had to pass my mother's house on his way to go to school where he taught and was the principal. And every now and then she'd be out in the yard doing this and that, and pretty soon, they started to speak to each other and got to a point where he wanted to marry her. But he found out that she was the eldest daughter. There were two girls in the family, my mother and a stepsister, because my grandfather's first wife had passed away and my aunt was the daughter of the second wife.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 2>

MN: Okay, we were just talking about the circumstances of your mom and dad getting together. And if you can just kind of back up and tell us the story again, how your mother and father got together.

KM: As I understand, because no one really told me about it, especially my mother or my father. But I understand that my dad used to pass by my mother's house on his way to school, and pretty soon got interested in who she was. Maybe as neighbors they knew each other in different families. In Hiroshima, in that area, it wasn't that big a town yet. Today it's more, there's a lot of people, but the village was very small at that time. But anyway, soon they got to know each other better and talking over the fence, so to speak. Unlike the custom at that time, and period in Japan, they had a relationship which was not, with a go-between coming in and introducing one to the other before you start having a relationship. It got to a point where he wanted to get married and found out that, being the eldest girl and lowest son, the only way he could get married was to be adopted by the Miho family. His name was Imamura. He came from just in the suburbs of Hiroshima, he was there in a naval, naval town called Kure, where Yamamoto is supposed to have trained the pilots that bombed Pearl Harbor. Kure is the center of the naval establishment in Hiroshima. And I understand that my father's side's background was military. In fact, for a long time I've heard stories that a marine brigade in Hiroshima was known as the Imamura Butai, which is marine brigade, Japanese marine brigade, supposed to have had a very historical background as a marine brigade in Hiroshima. But he chose his profession as a schoolteacher and came to Hawaii provided that my grandfather ruled that he would leave behind one son and one daughter to take over the family. And with the number three daughter, Tsukie, my eldest sister, they came to Hawaii. And as I said, they first moved into Honolulu in the Palama district area. I'm not aware how many years they were in Honolulu. Ultimately they go to Maui and he started to teach Japanese, went back to teaching in Maui. Until they moved back to Honolulu, moved to Honolulu after the war, World War II.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 3>

MN: And you're saying that he was originally a teacher on Maui, and then later on he became a bookkeeper at Onishi store.

KM: Actually, by the time he moved over to being his own business in the hotel, he was the manager of Onishi store, as I understand it. So my upbringing, most of my childhood days were living in the Onishi store. But I think around the time I was starting to go to high school that we started to operate the hotel. Because the hotel was a small family-run hotel, it was about thirteen rooms or fourteen rooms. And we had so-called regular guests. And regular guests were those that... see, Honolulu wholesalers would send their salesmen out to the neighbor islands to take orders once a month. Union supply, Sumida Shoten, Fujijunichi, whole bunch of wholesalers in Honolulu. And then we'd stay one or, at the most one week in the neighbor islands, and so we had a group of wholesale salesmen coming in every month. And Japanese-style, they had three meals a day, and my mother had to cook for all the customers that would stay at the hotel.

MN: And how long would these salesmen stay at the hotel?

KM: Varied. Sometimes one week, sometimes three or four days, and different groups. But at the most, these customers were there about two or two and a half weeks, because they had to come in early and get the orders and come back to Honolulu.

MN: And when you look back, what ethnic backgrounds did these salesmen come from?

KM: Oh, these were all Japanese merchants from Honolulu, all of them. If others came, they didn't stay at our hotel, there were two hotels, not two hotels. Wailuku hotel, in Wailuku there was a hotel called Grand Hotel. That's where most of the Caucasian customers and businesspeople used to stay. And Kaului we had two hotels, our hotel and the hotel right across the street from us called, used to be Tomoeda and then was sold out to Hamada. And so we had two hotels who catered to these wholesale salesmen.

MN: And before your father and mother took over this hotel, who was operating it?

KM: I have absolutely no idea who, it was known as the Kauhuli Hotel at that time. And when we took over, it became known as the Miho Hotel.

MN: I don't know if you know the reason, but why is it that your dad left Onishi Shotai and became the operator of a hotel?

KM: I am not aware of the reason, at my age, I was the youngest in the family at that time. I don't recall any particular reason why he quit Onishi to become owner of the... you know, as I remember, and I didn't realize the significance of this at that time, but just before World War II, I graduated high school in 1940. So around that time, I knew a little bit more about the business of running the hotel and I, in fact, we had a bookkeeper who did all the tax services. But I do recall that to my, not to my surprise, but I didn't realize the significance of this. They owned the building, my parents owned the building. That's what they bought, they bought out the rights to the building from the previous owner. But they were on a month-to-month lease, and I don't know if you can realize the significance of a month-to-month lease in trying to do business at that hotel. But I can understand why a lot of things that I did growing up points to this. I remember as early as I can remember, that I had to deliver all kinds of, those days, basically, was, I think a gallon of sake was what was being delivered to Mr. William Walsh's home prior to every new year. Japanese-style, you're the big boss or whatever, you have to bring gifts, annual end-of-the-year gifts or beginning-of-the-year gifts. Everybody had to listen to whatever orders that came down from the manager of the railroad company and the stevedoring company which was Mr. Walsh.

And to give you an example, when I was working as a movie usher, our manager, Mr. Felix, of the theater, would get completely excited when he was told that Mr. and Mrs. Walsh would come in and take in a movie on a Saturday night. And he would be so uppity and he would get after us ushers, "One of you get out on the road and look down the road," because you could see the whole road where the Walshes lived. "See if they're coming out," and then by that time, we'd get completely nervous. And yet, the theater wasn't owned by Kahului Railroad, it was owned by Consolidated Theaters. But the manager was completely out of his mind when the Walshes would come in to attend a movie. Just the kind of life it was, probably like comparable to the whole plantation life in the south where the boss, the landlord was the absolute boss. Well, Mr. Walsh was the absolute boss of Kahului, and I can't understand if you were doing business, the owner of the land let you do business on a month-to-month lease, how dominant that figure was in your daily life. But that was the system.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 4>

WN: If you were to draw like a chart, where does Kahului Railroad fit in on the whole, the A&B hierarchy?

KM: Kahului Railroad Company, and I guess stevedoring was under the railroad as well as... and under the complete ownership of A&B, I think.

WN: So, for example, HCNS would be a separate...

KM: Sugar Company was completely separate.

WN: But under A&B though?

KM: I guess, different. The stevedoring business, I think, and railroading was completely a distinct operation. And that was primarily what it was until the end of World War II when they decided to sell the land to individual owners. When the Kahului was developed as what they called "Dream City," the first thing they did was to sell lands. Whole bunch of these plantation homes were destroyed and people had to buy their own homes, and Dream City was available for them to become landowners and homeowners in Maui.

MN: But, you know, going back to your mother's and father's time, when you looked at Kahului, what controlled the town economically and politically?

KM: The life was dependent on the stevedoring business completely, especially in Kahului. Of course, the railroading was part of stevedoring because sugar had to be transported from Puunene, Paia, even from Lahaina, because the Lahaina port was not big enough to unload and load sugar. So Kahului basically was the port town where the entire, and even pineapple, the railroad had to haul in the pineapple, haul in the sugar to the port. And Maui Pineapple was located right in the heart of Kahului. And from the mountains of Makawao, up there. Pineapple has to be grown three thousand feet high elevation. And so it required a lot of hauling, and the railroad existed for this hauling until just before World War II, the trucking became, into vogue. Took a lot of years before they completely took over the transportation business. But until then, the railroad was an integral part. For instance, when I started to go to... until I started to go to high school, my brothers and sisters had to commute from Kahului to Hamakuapoko, which was about 12 miles away from Kahului, by train. They commuted by train, there was no bus system at that time. And my time when I started to go to high school, the buses took over. And so until my time, people went to Hamakuapoko, especially from central Maui, Wailuku and Kahului and Puunene, we all commuted to high school by train.

MN: And you know, when you say that Kahului was a place dominated by Kahului Railroad and stevedoring, what were the people who lived in Kahului doing for a living then?

KM: Well, the merchants group, like my parents, we were both town people versus camp people. Camp people were all the stevedoring families, except there were a few independent fishermen. I remember, for a while, there was a cotton mill in Kahului, but that went out of business very early. I don't remember how long it lasted, but I remember it was a cotton milling business run by a Japanese family. But independent business in Kahului, other than the town of Kahului, where you had, I would say... if I sat down and counted, there were just a handful of businesses run by... the tailor shop, the watchmaker, the barber shop. The pharmacy was Toda Drug, grocery store was Ah Fook, and small little independent businesses run by individual families as compared to one big store was known as the Puunene Store, which was a big, at that time considered a big store. And I don't understand why it was named Puunene, except I don't remember doing any marketing over there. Because there was a big... and then there was another store known as the Kahului store, which was run by the railroad. And this was more or less like a wholesale furniture, fixtures, appliances, as I recall.

And so private businesses in Kahului, until Haleakala Dairy started a meat processing plant in Kahului, which was not railroad connected. And, of course, the Japanese school was not connected, the Shinto Buddhist churches were not connected. And we had the banks which were Bishop. Even today I think the Bishop First Hawaiian Bank is there, it was known back then as Bishop Bank. And I can't recall any independent big business. The first -- I can say this -- is the first indication of independency was a market started by Ooka. If you studied the history of Maui, Ooka. What they did, Mr. Ooka did, was a brand new idea. What he did was he built a, almost half a block, not half a block, but a complex where he would lease out subleases to different merchants within his building. I think this is the first concept that started out this, like a GEM store. But Mr. Ooka did this in Kahului. He had a fish market within his building. The picture that you may have seen earlier, a row of fish markets were in town proper. But Mr. Ooka built this building within which he had his grocery store, fish market, coffee shop, flower shop and a couple of other... of course, there were a few independent insurance salesmen. The beginning, Mr. Kagawa, L.T. Kagawa's Continental Insurance, his brother, I think, started the insurance business in Kahului. Mr. Hatanaka, but he lived in Wailuku. But in Kahului, Mr. Kagawa was an independent insurance man. But other than that, I don't recall anybody that's living in Kahului not connected with the railroad.

MN: You know, I noticed that many of the names you mentioned are Japanese names.

KM: Almost all. Kahului was predominantly, I would say, ninety percent Japanese Americans. We had a very, the entire life in Kahului as I grew up was, I would go to grammar school in Kahului, grammar school, eight o'clock until one-thirty, I think it was one-thirty. After one-thirty I would go to Japanese school. Japanese school had three periods, I think, first, second and third periods, because you couldn't take all the kids at one time. And most of the afternoon until late in the evening was at Japanese school. And activities of the school, I do recall that in those days, little pageants were popular, where the schools would sponsor play day or whatever, but our grammar school maybe had once or twice. And I can only recall in my so-called eight years that I was in grammar school, a few instances where we had productions. I remember dancing to a Filipino dance, when I was, I would say, about fourth or fifth grade. And younger than that I remember becoming a tin soldier. We did the routine of marching in step to that famous tin soldier music. And even today, we still hear it every now and then. But more than the grammar school, every other facet of social life was Japanese school.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 5>

MN: You know, with your father being a former schoolteacher, and being a business owner, how active was your family in the Japanese language school?

KM: My father continued to be a member of the Japanese school, I think they had a Japanese school board, Board of Directors or whatever. And so he had strong ties with Japanese. As a matter of fact, just last Saturday, I attended a funeral of my Japanese school teacher who taught me first grade. She lived to one hundred years old, Mrs. Takayo Kobayashi, who was my first grade teacher, and she passed away last Sunday. I attended the funeral last Sunday, and she was 101 years old. And her husband is still alive, he's also one hundred years old. Both of them who taught me for probably about eight or nine years in Kahului before they moved to Honolulu in Wahiawa. And they started a Japanese school in Wahiawa also. But they were the ones that had a great influence in my life. Because all of the so-called social functions, including sports and whatnot, involved the Japanese school very likely because as we grew up and got engaged in all these various sports, the boys especially, we did everything we could to get away from classes. So what we did was you'd practice baseball, when baseball season starts. Even now you take your child out at five o'clock. But in our days, we would schedule the practice hours during school hours. So we tell our Japanese school teacher that, oh, you know, today, we have to play or practice baseball. So can we be excused? And that would mean all the boys would get out of this class, basically boys. But then it came to basketball season and we'll do the same, football season you do the same. And these were all excuses. And so even today, I often wonder, how did I communicate with my parents? Because being the youngest, I don't remember speaking Japanese to my parents. It was "You ga, me ga." You understand what is very basic, broken, Japanese. Come to think of it, all communication, I think, at my age was through my elder sisters, my sister Fumiye and my sister Tsukie, because they spoke Japanese. That older second generation spoke Japanese pretty well. But my time, my older brother, I don't think we spoke more than two, three words of Japanese. And so I often wonder, how did I communicate with my parents strictly with the broken English, you know.

MN: How was your parents' command of English? How did they communicate with you?

KM: Very little because they could, they could get by without having the command of the English language. Life was such that Japanese, Japanese American, we were Japanese American but on all levels, yes, we spoke English, but within the parents, you could live and do business with Japanese, strictly Japanese, you know, our generation. Of course, I'm the youngest of the second generation because my older brother's, my older brother was ten years older, Tsukie was twelve years older, and they spoke Japanese very fluently. But I do remember my Japanese was picked up after the war, after World War, after I came out and got discharged and I started getting involved with high school baseball from Japan, and I started getting involved with the Ozumo. And for a period of time from 19... I think it was 1955, within ten years after the war, is when the 442 Veterans Club started to get involved with high school baseball. So we were in contact with these Japanese people, and it was from then on that my Japanese speaking ability improved.

MN: When you were a child, though, with your parents speaking Japanese, what was --

KM: I think I understood clearly what was said. Even today, the kids can hear and understand, but they cannot speak. And I think that was probably the same with me. But I do recall that... see, I took a trip to Japan when I was five or six , my pictures showed when I was five or six years old, I took a trip to Japan. And I recall that the short time that I stayed in Japan, when I came back, I have clear incident when I first went to get a haircut. I went to get a haircut and I came home bald-headed. Because when I was in Japan, that's what it was. Everybody had their, you know, five or six years old, you have bald head, you cut your hair all the way. Not shaved, but, you know. And so my recollection is that, and then I think I was able to, there was no problem communicating, growing up. Because, you know, I'm sure you understood what your parents were saying, although you couldn't respond.

MN: And, you know, because you were excused from Japanese language school often, you know, with all your sports activities, what did you get out of Japanese language school?

KM: Oh, there were there were enough. I mean, it wasn't 100% absentee, you still had all of these periods of instructional learning. Especially, you see we had, in English school you had called Social Studies. A comparable subject in Japanese curriculum, I think was shushin. Shushin was the first curriculum subject matter that MacArthur abolished in the Japanese school system. And according to him, or according to the publication, as I recall, was that shushin emphasized Emperor worship is what I understood to be the reason, one of the reasons why MacArthur ruled out the teaching of shushin. But I think it's wrong. I don't think it was emperor worship. I don't recall emperor worship being the subject matter of shushin. Shushin had more to do with, I think, with Confucianism, Chinese culture of family, importance of family, importance of ancestry, and the importance of getting along with the neighbors. And this, to me, was shushin. And I cannot go along with the idea that MacArthur's first, one of the first thing was to wipe out shushin. And to this day, I think, shushin is not taught, not one of the curriculum in Japan. And I don't know why because I guess the biggest subject matter of shushin was you had this Ninomiya, Kenjiro, and you have the stories of Nogi Taisho, you have the stories of Togo, Admiral Togo, and their virtue of loyalty to the emperor, yeah, to that. But they were individual. My understanding, it was individual concept of loyalty.

Just as much as we learned about the feudal system, a lot of these two movies... not Japanese school because we had all these years of... Japanese silent movies was very prevalent growing up. It was silent movies, we had what we call a benshi, you don't have it in American, but I'm sure in early American history you had silent movies with people on the side giving in the music and telling the story as it went along, you know, I think it was it the same concept. And growing up in places like Kahului, the movies wasn't played every day of the week, once a week or something like that, it would come around. And we'd know that it was movie day because the way how they notified everybody in camp was there would be a truck going by and they would play the drums and then they would throw out leaflets telling what movie is being played, where, what time. And normally, usually, as I remember, in Kahului, it was an open yard where they put in canvases to block off the entrance so that you can control people who are going to come in. And usually the Buddhist yard, Buddhist churchyard or the YBA yard. And us kids, we grew up, you're always sneaking, crawling under the canvases, you know. But this was, being exposed to Japanese culture just as much as Japanese school. Because it involved as far back as I can remember, I recall the style of The Forty-Seven Ronin. And playing over and over just like Tom Mix, play the same movie. You go to the English movies, you see Tom Mix and then you see Tarzan, well, you go to Japanese movie, you see Chushingura, and you see Kunisada Chuji and you see all of these. Because Japanese movie, you play the same thing over and over. But it's too bad to me that in modern Japan, that they don't have this concept of shushin because it was so important in the family life of Japan.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 6>

MN: You've told us that through the Japanese language school, you got some shushin, you also got exposed to certain values through the Japanese movies, the silent movies.

KM: Oh, certainly.

MN: What about the Buddhist temples or the Shinto temple?

KM: Buddhist temples and Shinto temples did this in a way because they had regular days of different celebration. New Year's you all, the whole, basically the whole camp went to the Shinto shrine, you know, and throughout the year, they would have various different ceremonies. And even today, when you have to, you get your child blessed, you go to the Shinto shrine, well those days, almost all of us, all the families went through the ritual of blessing of the child. The Shinto ritual in Buddhist church, well, Buddhist church is religious what-you-call, supposedly Shinto is not as religiously geared as the Buddhism. But they lived side by side. In fact, the Shinto church was right behind the Buddhist church. But they had so many different cultural functions going on that it predominated the social life of the AJA community.

WN: Did the Buddhist church have some say in the running of the Japanese school?

KM: Not in Kahului. In Kahului, the Buddhist church was Buddhist church, Hongwanji was Hongwanji. Japanese school was, had its own board of directors, non-Buddhist church, the priests had nothing, the minister had nothing to do with the Japanese school. A lot of other communities, the only teachers you had were the Buddhist priests, and they, like Hongwanji, Honolulu, you had the church, and then it developed into a Japanese school because the priest taught Japanese.

WN: Or the wife, the wife did.

KM: Yeah. I don't know whether they were fully qualified as teachers. Unlike my father, he was brought up as a school teacher, but the priests, I don't know, most of the priests, I don't think they were so-called schoolteachers, they were priests, number one.

MN: And then for your family, were they formal members of any religion, your mom and dad and your family when you were a child?

KM: I remember when I grew up going to a Buddhist church, temple, I used to go to Buddhist. Somehow, like, the process of Americanization, I think, is what happened. At a certain age, a lot of us moved over to the Christian church. And I think the English schools had a lot of influence in this regard. Because I remember, well, let's put it this way. You know how you can tell... the story that I use, how can tell the difference between Kats Miho, Paul Miho, Katsuichi Miho? What does it tell you? Katsugo Miho is either first generation or second generation, Paul Miho is either second or third generation, because when, my generation, when we started to go to school, all of us were two names, Japanese name and English name. On the way, the English school teachers greatly influenced the kids to pick up, "Oh, you should get an English name." And so a whole lot of second generation started to get the English names like my brother Paul. And thereafter from us, anybody with English name, you more or less can guarantee that they'll be third generation or fourth generation.

MN: Why is it that you don't have an English name?

KM: I never did get impressed for the need of an English name. And I guess my teachers never did try to influence me. I don't recall being, you know, asked to add on. Although, sometimes along the way, I think, you know, I was asked, or suggested you pick out an English name. But it wasn't too much of a pressure, they didn't insist on it, it was merely a suggestion.

WN: So your teachers had no problem saying "Katsugo"?

KM: I don't think they call you by our first name. I think they always me called "Miho," I think, the teachers referred them. I don't know, I don't recall. I don't recall this now.

WN: They said a lot of teachers are the ones that named the Nisei.

KM: That's right, very true. A lot of teachers, a lot of the teachers gave the names, you know, but even today, you see that most of the second generation don't have an English name. Now with the newcomers from Japan, so you have a lot of people who have only two names, but you can easily guess that, with the two names, it's invariably new immigrant or first generation.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 7>

MN: You know, we were, before we changed tapes, we were talking about Americanization through the schools. Before we leave this topic, I want to move you back a little bit to Japanese language school. And I want to know, what were your feelings about going to Japanese school?

KM: I enjoyed going to Japanese school. Number one, because that's when I got to play with my friends for a longer period of time. In English school, only one hour that you have to go out to phys ed, do you get to play. And from eight to one-thirty, you have classes, lunch hour. But in Japanese school you have only one hour Japanese class, the rest of the time is play with your friends. And we have a lot more freedom. And as I said, depending on the season, we will be involved with going out to actually practice baseball, football, softball.

MN: You know, some Nisei have talked about the teaching style or the use of discipline in the Japanese language schools. For you, what was it like?

KM: We had one very interesting Japanese school teacher. He was, he had one leg that's bad, more or less crippled, a short leg. And he was a disciplinarian. And he tried to instill in us stoicism or the ability to endure pain. And on more than one occasion, in my taking different classes from him, you see, I took classes from him maybe first grade, second grade, fourth or fifth grade. But along the way, I remember on maybe two or three different occasions, when it came to the ability to withstand pain, mind over matter, he did this in front of us. At what age, I'm not too sure, but it's a vivid... you've seen pictures of Indian, in India, when they pierce the skin, all that stuff, and nowadays you show all that. But this Japanese school teacher, Mr. Tsumura, he would show us in the course of... Japanese school, you taught different levels. But in different, the same old thing on different levels, let's put it that way. And so I don't know what, but he would get a needle, and in front of the boys and girls, and in conjunction with whatever the topic of, mind of matter, he would pierce the skin with a needle. "See? You can do it." I cannot forget this. He would pierce the needle in his forearm without flinching, to show us that it's just simply "mind over matter."

WN: What did you think when you watched that?

KM: Well, it's something which I would never try to do. [Laughs] But he was a very interesting teacher, and I think he was self-conscious about his bad leg. But I liked this teacher; he was stern, and maybe he reminded me of my father more often than not.

MN: What were your parents' expectations of you when it came to Japanese school?

KM: I don't know, I think they expected us to be there. They never pushed us. I don't recall any homework being sent out. I don't remember any homework, so to speak, or my parents trying to watch over my shoulders to tell me to do this or to do that or to do any homework, I don't recall. As a matter of fact, even in the English school, I don't recall too much homework.

WM: What about getting whacked? Did you get whacked?

KM: No, I don't recall. I don't recall any physical force being used at any time, both in English and Japanese school.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 8>

MN: Changing the subject a little bit, I noticed that sometimes you would use the term "camp." You would say, "Oh, there'd be this movie on people in the camp." Why do you use the term "camp?"

KM: We referred to the stevedoring homes, "camp," because, number one, all the sugar plantations had ethnic camps, Japanese camps with most of the workers, all of the workers were Japanese. Portuguese camp where most of the tenants were Portuguese. Filipino camp was the common usage to differentiate Puunene for where, what camp? In Makero camp, or Japanese camp. Kahului, I guess we just followed the same thing by calling those who were not merchant families as camp people. Because there were a couple of Onishi camps. Some of the workers from Onishi stores lived in Onishi store-owned housing. Kobayashi camp. Onishi camp, Kobayashi camp. What was the other camp?

WN: You mean Store camp.

KM: Yeah, Store.

WN: That's JMC.

KM: Well, JMC did not have a... it was basically Onishi...

WN: There was five of them, yeah? Ikeda.

KM: No, they didn't have an Ikeda. I guess it was only Kobayashi camp and Onishi camp, I think, to my recollection.

WN: Stevedoring camp, was that near the harbor, the ocean?

KM: The what?

WN: The stevedore, where the stevedores lived.

KM: No, no, because you had Kahului... let me give you, Puunene Avenue, from Puunene, now called, it's called Main Street, that was Wailuku, and this goes to Paia. The camp was all on this side. The residences was where you had this Maui Pineapple and the Kahului grammar school, and this was basically camp, it was just divided up like that.

WN: Sort of near where the Kahului shopping center is?

KM: Where Kahului shopping center used to be is where the town was located.

MN: And you know, you mentioned, like, Onishi camp, when your father was a manager at Onishi Shokai, was that where your family lived?

KM: No. Onishi store, Nakashima fish market, Okada fish market, across the street from the hotel, where our hotel was, had homes right behind the stores. They had homes, and we lived in the homes. All the Onishi workers lived in, there was one two-story, two two-story buildings and one side cottage for the Onishi workers, so we all lived there.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 9>

MN: And then later on, when your family became owners of the Miho Hotel...

KM: We lived in the back side.

MN: What was that like? Describe it for us, your living quarters.

KM: In the front of the hotel, we also, in the very beginning, I remember we had a hat store. We sold hats for a while. And then there was a corridor, there was an office, and then a corridor. And then the corridor and the kitchen was next to the corridor. And then we had kind of an open space where we had orchids plants and all kinds of plants, that was our, so-called agricultural spot. And then, further down, was the living quarters. Past the kitchen was the living quarters, and we had a bathhouse, a big ofuro, where in the beginning we used to burn wood. And a lot of my job was to make the water hot every day for the people to take a bath. And a shower and a big concrete... in the beginning it was wood, regular ofuro where three or four people could take a bath at one time easily. And the living quarters was in the back. And the living quarters had tatami. You had to step up into the tatami, and the tatami was probably one, two, three, four, five, maybe seven or eight tatami room, and that's where our living room was. And there was one small storeroom in the back, one small study room for my older brother Katsuro, used to have a special room for his studying over there.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 10>

But this is where, 1940, one day when I came back from working at Maui Pine, one year, 1940, after high school. And I saw that my mother was scared stiff. "What's wrong?" She tried to explain to me that there were some people in the house. And when I went back there, I saw these three, four... three, I think, Caucasian men walking around the living room in shoes. I said, "Hey, you guys, this is Japanese house, you guys don't... who are you?" "We're FBI." "Hey, my father's been investigated more than once, what do you want now?" But they wanted to find out if there was any additional stuff that should be declared. And this is 1940 that it occurred. So as I said it in my whatchacall, oral history, I was one of the few who weren't surprised December 7th happened. There were a lot of people who said they were completely surprised, I think that's a lot of malarkey. If they were AJAs, they should have known something was going on. Because in 1941, all of the gradual warnings and whatnot was happening now. You had the embargo imposed, and Manchurian war going on, I'm talking about two or three years before 1940 now. You had the embargo, you had the Manchurian Incident, and when we, the Japanese community people were asked to help the war cause in Japan now, and I remember a lot of Japanese families used to collect... cigarettes were sold in tinfoil, aluminum foil. And so the fad was to save those cigarette, make 'em into balls and send them to Japan. This happened.

More than that, there was, in November, my wife was in Japan visiting when the orders came out that any American citizen in Japan have to catch this boat November 28 or 29 if they wanted to leave Japan because thereafter, the American government would not be responsible if anything happened between Japan and U.S. And the orders came out that any Japanese people who wanted to go back to Japan, you catch a certain boat in Honolulu certain date. This happened in November, the last week or so of November.

Not only that, my brother was very closely involved with the so-called Emergency Service Committee, helping out. So he was on top of things that was going on. My brother Katsuaki lived with Hung Wai Ching when Hung Wai Ching was a member of the Emergency Service Committee, so they knew anything that was basically going on and how bad things were. Your auntie came home on the last ship from Japan. But my sisters, Fumiye went to Japan 1940 to teach at Doshisha University. And my other, Tsukiye, had been living there twenty-five years already, she had been married, she had kids. But Fumiye never thought that anything would happen. Said, "Oh, no, nothing's going to happen," so she refused to come back. But this pronouncement was made, and I remember distinctly that there was a newspaper article and headlines between Japan and the U.S., it was equivalent to the state of war. The diplomatic relationship, I think, had already been cut off.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 11>

KM: And so when December 7th happened, I don�t know how it can be said that for the AJA member of the

community in Hawaii, that it was completely a surprise. On the Mainland, I�m sure it was a complete surprise. But in Hawaii, we had all of these, we had practices of blackout, even to that extent, already. Blackout was being practiced. On Oahu, every once in a while, the Fort DeRussy cannon would be shot off just to see that it was in working order. These were happening, 1941.

MN: You know, right now you're telling us about all the things --

KM: I'm jumping, I'm leaping ahead of time.

MN: -- all the things are sort of pointing towards the fact that something was impending, and that people had some knowledge. And you mentioned that when you went home one day, these FBI men were in your household, but that was not the first time that they were there. Your father had already been investigated prior to that?

KM: We had already been asked to turn over... you see, my dad, not only was he a Japanese school teacher before becoming a merchant, he was also serving as a volunteer worker for the consul general's office in Honolulu. Remember, in 1940, there was still need to register Japanese citizens. And if families wanted to register their children into the records of their family in Japan, they had to go to the Japanese consul general. And so each island had different representatives, volunteer workers for the consul general's office, as contact men, and my father was one of them. Besides that, he came over as a Japanese school teacher. And besides that, your grandfather and my father went to Japan, I think it was 19... was it 1940? Nisen ryoppyakunen? Two thousand six hundred? And there were about two thousand Japanese Americans in Tokyo attending these big celebrations. And your father and... your grandfather and my father were two of them, and so they were on the list. They were considered as people under observation, I suppose. You remember, I picked this up some time after, I was studying all about what happened before and after. But back in 1937, I think, General Patton was stationed out in Schofield, and he was assigned the task of what to do with the AJAs in Hawaii. And his recommendation? Ship all of the AJAs into Molokai, that was done 1937, General Patton. So 1941, somebody knew what was going on.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 12>

MN: With your father being a volunteer for the consulate, being a respected member of the merchant community in Kahului, and being aware of things, to what extent... did you ever hear him talk about Japan-U.S. relations?

KM: You know, it was not a big thing to be pro-Japanese or pro-Japan before 1941. I don't recall, maybe because Maui and because of our small community, Kahului, that there was no big anti-Japanese movement or anything like that. But back in 1938, was it 1938, '39, there was a big movement to expatriate. Not instigated, but the big move on to the University of Hawaii students, AJA students. And something like my recollection, 38,000 Niseis expatriated at that time. I didn't cut off my relationship, my Japanese citizenship. I still am a dual citizen, and my rationale to my brother when we discussed this expatriation business back then was that by law, both governments believed that there was nothing wrong with being a citizen of Japan and being a citizen of the United States. And I saw no reason why, because of public sentiment one way or the other, that I should cut off something that is legal, well-established, and recognized by both countries. To this day, I'm convinced that I was correct because it never affected my serving with the 442 or my volunteering with the Hawaiian Territorial Guard when it was necessary to do so, the fact that I was a dual citizen, didn't mean anything. Unfortunately, in the case of my father, who was interned with Nanami something-or-other from Honolulu, Hawaii, first-generation Japanese. During the course of the war, there were over two hundred, close to three hundred members of the 442 and the MIS whose parents were prisoners of war. I call them prisoners of war because, to differentiate between relocation camp internees and internees like my dad and your grandfather. Because... what was I going to say about... yeah, many parents whose son was in the service, were allowed to go back to Hawaii or allowed to go to relocation camps. During the war and after the 442 was formed, and under Gayle Okawa's study, she was able to find out a whole list of people. I saw one report where my dad, that was his third hearing was... they had these hearings every so often, especially of those who had sons in the service. And so even though my brother Katsuaki had already died, they rejected my dad. It was an outright denial of, he was being discharged, I don't know, without any reason being stated. Maybe because of his response when he was interviewed, I suppose, after being interned.

MN: Going back to the expatriation issue, I know that your older brother Katsuro was a real proponent of expatriation. What were his arguments to you?

KM: No, I got into an argument with Katsuaki. We had a long discussion with Katsuaki, my one immediately above me. But Katsuaki was three years older than I was. So anyway, my argument was, I told him that I see absolutely no reason why. What is it going to prove? It's not going to prove anything one way or the other. So true enough, in spite of the thirty-something thousand AJAs, it didn't change the public sentiment at that time. We were, in spite of that we were declared "dangerous enemy aliens" in the draft board. So in the long run, my position was right. I didn't have to expatriate. I served three years in the army, how can you do that if you were under suspicion?

MN: I was wondering, when this expatriation movement was going on, what views if any did your father express about that? He's Issei, his oldest son, Katsuro --

KM: Like I said, I don't remember intelligent discussion between my father and me. The discussion was between Katsuaki and I, my older brother. He was heavily involved in the movement at the University of Hawaii. So he was one of the student activists who was pushing for expatriation.

MN: So it was Katsuo and Katsuaki?

KM: Katsuaki was a member of the... Katsuro was a member of the Emergency Service Committee, Katsuaki was a junior at the University of Hawaii, because he graduated in 1940. So it was during that period when all of this expatriation movement and whatnot happened. Very much involved, he lived on campus at the Charles Atherton House.

MN: I think I'll end it here and we'll continue next time.

KM: Okay.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.