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KM: And so some bright, brilliant idea was, as reported in many various ways, let the boys visit the relocation camps. So Rohwer and Jerome, Arkansas, was right nearby. And so we... two or three visitations was done, busloads of infantry boys, and we got to Jerome or Rohwer, Arkansas, and saw the conditions under which the Mainland boys volunteered, and our fights stopped.

MN: Did you go on one of the visits?

KM: I went to both Jerome and Rohwer. I met my Japanese school teacher, now that I recall. I think it was in Jerome, he was interned earlier, but then he was released to go to Jerome. And I met him, he and his family. He was my Japanese language school teacher. But as Dan Inouye wrote in his book, all fights stopped thereafter.

MN: And then what do you remember, besides seeing your old Japanese language school teacher, what stays in your mind about the camps, those two visits?

KM: First of all, when we got to the camp, we were in buses in uniform. And our first visit, the bus stopped at the entrance. And then outside the bus was a couple of guards with rifles. And one of the boys, one or two of them came into the bus and they frisked all of us. We were in uniform, they frisked us, patted us down. And then when we got into the camp, the four corners of the camp, as far as you could see, had machine gun posts. And I vividly remember that they had this, like a stockade, you have this at the corner of the camp, and they had this 10-foot-tall barbed wire fence bordering the encampment, and in the corner, and the machine gun was pointed inside. There was manned machine guns with the guns pointed inside the enclosure, which shocked us because we were uniform.

And then my recollection, vivid recollection of those, as we entered into the camp, then we got exposed to their style of living, communal living, the cafeteria. And then we started to hear about what they were doing to make a living there, the doctors, teachers. In camp you had to have schools, you had to have doctors. So the story that was told to us was that there was a minimum pay that regardless of what you did, if you did some work, everybody was paid the same rate, I think, and I forgot the exact amount. But it was such an unreasonable, atrocious wages that we couldn't believe it. But when you, even then, when everything was provided for them, it wasn't... well, something was better than nothing, so to speak. And the reception we got from the people in camp was simply astounding, putting up a cheerful front to us. I don't remember any of them crying to us, or giving us a sad story. All of them were going out of their way to encourage us. When you reflect on it, it should have been the other way around. We should have been encouraging them.

MN: When you folks went, did any of the Mainland boys go with you?

KM: On these? Yeah, whoever had family or friends at Rohwer or Jerome came with us because they... but Jerome had a whole bunch of Hawaii people, I think it was Jerome, a whole bunch of Hawaii people.

MN: And to what extent could you mingle with them and talk story with them?

KM: Hard, that was hard. That was hard because the vague recollection of how we did the visitation, I know I visited, in both sides I visited a specific family. I don't know whether we were assigned the host family or what, but we got exposed to every facet of their living conditions. And the frisking of the GIs, I remember the second visit there was no more frisking. I think the machine guns were down because we complained right off the bat. First visit we had, we complained vigorously, and the machine guns were taken off the post and we weren't frisked although there were some armed guards at the gate.

MN: And then after you folks came back, relations changed?

KM: Oh, completely changed. Although in artillery we never had these fights. In my battery, my first sergeant was so outstanding in ability and capacity, and such a stern first sergeant. Although later on, after the war, he was [inaudible]. After we found out his true nature, it was completely different. [Laughs] But we all respected our first sergeant. He was a produce company manager before the war and even after the war, one of the big produce companies in Los Angeles. But we all respected him.

MN: What was his name?

KM: Jim Mizuno.

MN: And he survived the war?

KM: Oh, yeah. He came to a couple of our reunions. And then he was in charge of the reunion we were going to have in Reno. And unfortunately, in working out all of the arrangements and whatnot, he had a heart attack. So before the Reno reunion, he passed away. But we got along real well.

MN: He was well-respected.

KM: Oh, yeah.

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