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MN: You know, with all that your family endured, your father being incarcerated, your older brother being killed in an accident while in service, the treatments that you and your brother experienced not being able to go to your brother's funeral. What were your feelings towards the government at that time, if any?

KM: I did not fault the government. I did not fault anybody, now that I think about it. Even at that time, I don't recall faulting anybody. If anything, it made me more hard-nosed to individually serve better. This is my recollection of my experience in the army. And to an extent when I became buck private, there was a tremendous load off my shoulders. I didn't feel the responsibility of having men taking my orders. So in that respect, it was a relief. But from my personal point of view, I was more hard-nosed in trying to be in line, so to speak.

MN: And then with all this happening, and your mother back in Hawaii, I guess by that time, she had moved in with Katsuro?

KM: Yeah. She had sold the hotel within a year after I left, I think, and moved in with my brother Katsuro. So there was very little worry back home, as far as that was concerned, Katsuro was... he was supposed to get married middle, latter part of December... no, no, latter part of December just before Christmas, I think. But because the war started, they got married one week after the war started. And they didn't even notify me of the wedding because they didn't know where I was, basically, where I was stationed. And so one Sunday I came home from, came home to Atherton House to visit, still my brother Katsuaki. He had just come back from, just across, said, "Hey, where you been?" He's all dressed up. He said, "Aw shucks, when did you come back?" I said, "Oh, I just came in." "You just missed the wedding." I said, "Whose wedding?" "Katsuro's wedding." They had gotten married. But even then, there was a limit of the number of Niseis that could gather at any place after December 7th, not more than twenty-five, I think. There was a strict limit on the number of Niseis who could gather in one place. They couldn't have, well, they could have, but there was a strict limitation.

MN: So looking at your family during wartime, everybody was really barabara, yeah? You have Katsuro and mother in Honolulu, you have Paul in the Mainland in Chicago.

KM: Fumiye in Japan.

MN: Fumiye and Tsukie in Japan.

KM: We were scattered all over the place.

MN: How did your mother, what do you know about how your mother was dealing with this with her children all over the place at a time of war?

KM: You know, well, one of the things that I recall... back in Maui when we were running the hotel, our next door neighbor was a Chinese family, Ah Fook grocery store. And the mother of that, matron of that family was around the same age as my mother. Both of them hardly spoke any English. But one of the sights that I enjoyed so much was I would come back from work, defense work, and then Mrs. Ah Fook, she would invariably be visiting my mother by the kitchen or by the living room that we had. And just listening to both of them trying to carry on a conversation, and I think this was hilarious. I mean, it was really something that was such a joy to observe. This first-generation Chinese lady and a first-generation Japanese lady who hardly spoke any English trying to carry on an intelligent conversation between the two of them, but they did almost every night. That was a wonderful relationship. In fact, the general manager of the grocery store was Mochizuki. Yeah, Charlie Mochizuki. Not Charlie, Charlie was the brother. I forget what the oldest brother's name, but he was the general manager for a long time.

MN: So it seemed like your mom maybe had a friend and an...

KM: Oh, yeah, both of them kept each other company. I think Mrs. Ah Fook went out of her way to keep her mother company. After the work was done for the evening, and she would just walk over back, and then keep her mother company.

MN: Now, getting back to the war, you know, by the time you folks were at Camp Shelby, for folks who were there for a long time, the 100th had already gone overseas. And what had you heard about the 100th?

KM: You know, the 100th had come and gone in a matter of, I don't know, I don't recall having had the chance to meet with any of my older brothers of the 100th Infantry, when they were in Camp Shelby. Maybe I may have met one. But we had very little, the artillery had very little interaction with the 100th Infantry. They were in a different part of the camp. They were there just a month or so I think, and we were just getting ready to prepare to start basic training when they left.

MN: And then later on when, you know, you come up to spring 1944, you folks are about to leave for Europe. What were your feelings when you folks knew that, okay, pretty soon we're gonna, we're gonna ship out?

KM: We were very eager. There was gonna be a change in finally going to do something about our training that we had, that we had prepared for one year. So we were eager and anxious to go overseas.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.