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MN: And at this time, when you were in training at Shelby, how much communication did you have with your family back home?

KM: Well, you know about my father, my father was interned December 6th, 7th. And early in our training, in the first two months, I think, my older brother, Katsuaki who was in the medics, one day, one night came by my hut. And said, "Hey, I just came back from a weekend visit with Dad." I said, "What are you talking about?" He said, "Yeah, I just visited Dad." And he told me that somehow he and a group of friends found out there was a group of Hawaii internees in Camp Livingston, Louisiana. And so he and his friends made arrangements to go all the way to Alexandria, Louisiana, by bus and it required all of three days to go and come back. And he told me how to do it and how he did, and so, couple of weekends thereafter, I took the same route. And then I got to the bus station at Hattiesburg. And I found out that there were three or four other 442 boys sitting in the bus, said, "Where are you guys going?" Said, "Oh, we're going to go to Louisiana." I said, "What for?" "Oh, our fathers are there." I wish to this day who they were, but the they were the same boat as I was. And so we all got together, we got on the same bus. And the way how it was that it was a long bus ride to Alexandria. And when we got to Alexandria, it was about one o'clock or two o'clock in the morning. And so we had to call in to Camp Livingston, call for the officer of the day that we have a group of soldiers, GIs, who want to visit their fathers in camp. The officer there was astounded, "What do you mean, you're American GIs?" "Yeah, we're American GIs."

And so from Alexandria to camp Livingston, we had to go by taxi, there was no transportation, two or three o'clock in the morning. And so we made arrangements for a taxi and the officer of the day in charge got our parents, got them up early, informing them that they're going to have visitors. And so by, from Alexandria to Livingston, we got there about five o'clock or five-thirty in the morning. And we were escorted into this Quonset hut, which turned out to be the visiting quarters. And the Quonset hut was divided up for visitors and inmates, but when the officer of the day came up, we introduced ourselves to him, and he looked at us and says, he called the parents in. And there were two guards assigned to the visiting quarters. And so he told the two guards, "You can leave now and leave these boys alone." And so we had the freedom of visiting with our parents for about two hours, I think, because we had to catch a bus to come back to Hattiesburg again. So after a two-hour visitation, and the captain gave us the complete freedom during the two hours because all the signs in the buildings were, ""Speak English only," you know. And evidently, they were Germans and Italian inmates also because this was a prisoner of war camp. This group of Hawaii internees were in camp Livingston, which, on my last visit, when I went back four or five years ago, had been already torn down and there's no trace of Camp Livingston in Fort Polk anymore.

But then, the next visit with my father was one day when I was out bivouacking, going out into the fields, doing field maneuvers. I got word to report back to camp, reported back to camp and thought, gee, funny, the chaplain was there, our artillery chaplain. He wanted to see me. I said, "Well, what's up?" "Well, son" -- real southern gentleman, Caucasian chaplain, Chaplain West, I think -- "Well, son, I got some bad news to tell you." "Why, what happened?" "We just got word that your brother got killed in an automobile accident in Dolton, Alabama." I said, "Why Dolton, Alabama?" Well, I had known that, my brother had told me that his application for ASTP program was approved and that he would be going to Tulane shortly to register for medical school.

And so at the same time, the 442, one regiment, couple of companies were assigned to guard Afrika Korps German prisoners, who were helping the farmers in Dolton, Alabama, harvest peanuts. And so the 442 was sent out there to guard these German Afrika Korps prisoners who were harvesting peanuts. And they were just shipped out there and this was the second week, actually, the first or second weekend after they got to Alabama. And my brother was assigned to E Company, and the captain had told him, "Go there and spend a couple of weeks with E Company as a medic," because from there to Tulane is just a hop, step, jump, Louisiana, Alabama, to New Orleans. So you he was to spend two weeks at Dolton, and then before the end of September -- and this was September 16th that the accident happened -- one week later I think he was supposed to go to Dolton, I mean, to Tulane to attend school when the accident happened. And so I was given emergency leave to go to Alabama to make arrangements for the funeral. And just around that time, so this was September 16, 1943, when basic training was over, and everybody was receiving their furloughs. But in my case, I was given emergency furlough so that I'm going to arrange for the funeral. My brother Paul was at Yale, he came down to attend the funeral. And both of us then took the urn of my brother Katsuaki with us, and we went all the way to Fort Missoula in Montana, where my dad had been transferred from Louisiana at that point in September. And so we went by, via Chicago, from Mississippi, no, from Alabama, all the way up to Missoula, Montana. And we turned over the urn to my father, who then had private funeral services behind barbed wire. And I couldn't attend it because I was not allowed to go inside the enclosure where my dad and his internees were located. So they had their own private funeral. And then, the following day, my brother Paul, who was with me, got the urn and then we came back to Chicago where he had some friends at that point. He had already graduated from Yale, and he was doing some YMCA work in Chicago.

And I asked for additional time so that I could get some furlough. But they gave me five extra days, I think, from my fifteen, original fifteen days, I think. And so with the five days, I spent three days in New York, and then I ended up back in Mississippi. Later on, I asked for regular furlough, and I got turned down. They said, "You already had your furlough." But that was my experience with my major, who was the executive officer of the field artillery. I thought we just, you know, it wasn't proper not to give me, but what could I say? You already had you feel your furlough, but he was an emergency furlough. But that was a very bad, very bad experience.

Recently I discovered my old diary that I kept for a little while. Because after basic training, you have to, in preparation for going overseas, word came down that we were not allowed, or supposed to keep diaries. Although a lot of boys kept it, continued to keep diary, but I didn't. But I discovered the death of my brother was very traumatic reading through the short notes, but reflected that I was having -- at the time I was a gunner corporal and I never got along with my sergeant because we felt our gun crew, we felt that he was bucking too much for higher ranking. And so maybe we were wrong, but we were thinking that a lot of things that he ordered us to do through me -- and I had to give the, he gave me the order and I had to implement the order with the boys, with my gun crew, with ten boys. And I was having a very difficult time with my sergeant and with my gun crew.

Since after my brother's death, it seems as if I became very hardened. You know, the trauma lingered on until, it must have been quite long because I had to stop the diaries because they said, "Well, we're going overseas and you can't keep diaries anymore, and at that point I stopped. But to the extent that... I never really got along with my sergeant. My first sergeant, Mizuno, was given a field commission in Italy. When we went to France, the other staff sergeant, Toru Hirano, who was very likeable, I really liked him. He became the first sergeant. And when he was given a few commissions in France, the man next in line was my sergeant. So when he became first sergeant, I was a gunner corporal. And supposedly, I would have been in line to become a buck sergeant. But what I did was that, when my sergeant became first sergeant, I went up to the battery executive officer who was a good friend, was a nice, likable lieutenant, Brew. He was well-liked by our boys. And I went to the lieutenant, "I'm going to turn in my corporal stripes." "What for?" "No, no, Sam's going to be the first sergeant and I don't want to be in a position where he's going to give me orders." And so I turned in my corporal stripes and I became a buck sergeant again -- I mean, buck private again. Of course, automatically, buck privates get to become PFCs after so many months, so I did upgrade myself to private first class after maybe about six months thereafter. But I continued to be the gunner corporal, position. It was just that I didn't have the ranking. Unfortunately, I had a sad experience in the army in that respect. I became hard-nosed. I couldn't stand an attitude, a lackadaisical attitude and non-caring kind of an attitude. Many of our boys were happy-go-lucky. I felt that our duties were such that we could not relax or be inattentive at any given time.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.