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MN: You know, I know we're going to be... by asking this question, I'm gonna be jumping a bit. But you know, you're a dual citizen. And I know that later on you volunteered for the 442. Did that dual citizenship ever pose a problem?

KM: You know, it's funny. There was so much, so much question being raised and fuss being made in '38 and '39 about us being dual citizens, you know. But when you think about it, even now, when I think about it, in 1941, December 7th, when the war started, I don't recall, not one bit of question being raised about our dual citizenship status. Because at nine o'clock that morning, we were all University of Hawaii ROTC students were requested to report to the gym, which was now the administration building, there was an old gymnasium there, which was kitty corner from Atherton House where I was staying. And walking over there, into the gymnasium,  until a month and a half later, when we were preemptively, without notice, discharged, honorably discharged, not one question was raised about our loyalty, the fact that we were dual citizens. It did not stop any of us from becoming members of the Hawaiian Territorial Guard. And going out that December 7th evening, going out to the waterfront to guard the waterfront station, nobody raised any questions about our loyalty. And we were left alone. That first time, the university, in my case, we were dumped off in the waterfront Iwilei area where we were, at the time it was very barren, a few oil tanks and whatnot. But our group of University of Hawaii students were dropped off as guards over an area, in the dark, on four hour shifts. And for two or three nights in a row we were serving as, I don't know what we would have done because we were given a loaded rifle, we were given a loaded rifle with five rounds of ammunition. We didn't even know how to fire the gun, but we were given this rifle, we were told, "You load it this way and this is the way you lock it in case anything happens." To this day, I wondered, what was "if anything happens," what they were referring to? Not that nothing happened, but what if anything had happened? What were we supposed to do, because we were not given any kind of orders. And we were dropped off individually in an area maybe 50 yards apart from each other. And we spent three nights doing that. And I don't know for what, but nobody questioned our loyalty.

And as your history revealed, a month and a half later, early in the morning, we got called up and said, hey, we got to report down to the Lanakila intermediate school. We woke up at about two o'clock in the morning, they woke us up at two o'clock. And then finally about five-thirty, a truck came by to pick us up. We were all fully packed and everything, they dropped us off at Lanakila, we wondered what was going on. We found out the whole battalion was assembled at Lanakila. And then Major Frazier, who was the adjutant, commander of the battalion, came up and told us point blank, right straight in our faces, "The reason why you are here this morning is because all you Americans of Japanese ancestry" -- I'm pretty sure he referred to Americans of Japanese ancestry" -- "because of your ethnic background, you are being discharged herein, right off the bat, right as of now you are being discharged from the Hawaiian Territorial." Only the AJAs. We were completely in a state of shock, but there's nothing we could do. It was it was just a pronouncement.

MN: You know, like you said, you folks were in a state of shock. What were your thoughts then when you folks were discharged?

KM: Well, basically, why, why? Then rumors went that, and this is the explanation given. I don't know how you get this, but this information I remember is that the security of Oahu was under a new command, a new commanding officer in charge of security of Oahu. And so his first task or duty that he did was to check on the security which required checking the electrical stations, the water pump stations and the waterfront area and this and that. And at that point already, this month and a half, we were assigned to various stationary locations. Like in my case, I was assigned, my squad was assigned to guard the electrical power plant or Liliha right next to the Catholic church. It was a small electrical distributor, it was a crucial electrical plant on Liliha Street, and there were twelve of us. And we stood 24-hour guard in front of School Street because there was heavy traffic. School Street was one of the main streets, and that was our duty. And so from there, we were just called in to report to Lanakila. But we had very little notice, or there was no notice given at all, whatsoever.

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