<Begin Segment 15>

MN: And then at that time, you were working Civil Defense at Pu'unene, yeah?

KM: Not Civil Defense, U.S. Engineers, and later on it was Naval Construction.

MN: Civilian.

KN: When the Naval Construction took over, we got increasing pay, too, I think ten cents more than, ten cents, five cents an hour, I think it was.

MN: What kind of work did you do?

KN: Well, as I said, when I came back, went back to Maui, I was told by my friends, as long as you have a hammer, saw, square... hammer, saw, square, and ruler, you qualified to be a carpenter's apprentice. I said, well, gee, I have all the tools in my house. And sure enough, I volunteer, as soon as I went to apply for the job, not only that, it so happened that one of the so-called "straw bosses" of the construction was an old family friend. So I got a job right away, even though I didn't know how to saw, I learned on the job. One of the big jobs... carpentry work was kind of hard for me because you had to join, you had to saw straight. But the one job that was an easy job was roofing job. They needed to put in these tiles on the roof, this was a back-breaking job because you stayed out in Pu'unene, Maui, it's a hot spot, barren land, basically. Even if you go today, go out there, it's red sand, red dirt and windy area, where the airfield was being built, and what we were doing was constructing barracks on the airfield. And so they needed this shingle roofing, and that was my main job, to nail down the shingles.

MN: And among the workers there, were they all local people or were there outsiders?

KN: All of them were local as far as I know, as far as I recall. In that carpentry work, I don't think there were any Mainland workers, although there were a lot of workers brought in from the Mainland, because the defense work, there was a terrible shortage of manpower because they were trying to build the Maui, you know where the Maui airport is now, that was the beginning of the Maui, the Kahului Airport. Until then it was only the Pu'unene airport. About the time we got through with the barracks in Pu'unene, the Maui complex was being worked on, when the time I volunteered, that was when they were going to do that. So actually, the Maui airport construction, Kahului was a big, big job, and so a lot of Seabees came in at that point, into Maui. Whole bunch of Seabees, those were all from the mainland.

MN: So did you have any contact with, say, the Seabees?

KN: Yes, because my mother was taking care of the hotel all by herself because my dad wasn't there, I wasn't there. And when the Seabees came into town, there was no restaurant, because there were hardly any restaurants. So, in fact, I think my mother had to open the restaurant to feed anybody who wanted to come in and eat, the restaurants. For a while, I understand, she was forced to open an eating place. Well, not only because business was good, but she couldn't do it all by herself. And that's... when I volunteered, Andrew Sato, who was living at my place for about one year, and she stayed with... but ultimately she had to sell the place and move to Honolulu. Unfortunately, that was, the people who bought out our place really prospered. They really made a big restaurant out of the whole place. They were really lucky and fortunate to take over our place.

MN: And then just to go backwards a bit, I was wondering, you were in the HTG, and then a lot of men who were in the HTG joined the VVV or Varsity Victory Volunteers. But what happened to you?

KN: I remember signing that petition for whatever they wanted to use that. But I don't recall ever being contacted thereafter. Having signed the petition, I left right away back to Maui. But Eddie Honda, who was working with me, suddenly just disappeared, I didn't know where he went. Later I found out he left Maui to join the VVV. But that was already done. And I don't know if I would have gone, because at that point, I felt I had to stay with my mother more than anything else. But unfortunately, I don't remember being contacted, either by my brother or whatever.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.