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KM: The other clubhouse, as I recall, that had the slot machines for a while, was the clubhouse located at Judge and Liliha. There was a well-known clubhouse over there, and I remember it was Camp Alumni High School building. As I recall, they were the only other civilian club or, they had only one slot machine. But the first few years that we were in existence, the income from the slot machines were adequate to take care of all our expenses. But then we wanted to get a building so we had our first carnival, I think it was 1947, at the old stadium, Honolulu Stadium where we had a carnival, five-day carnival. And one of the minor acts... what was his name? It was a big-mouth comedienne, movie actress. She was the star of the show. Aw shucks.

WN: Ethel Merman?

KM: No, no. But anyway, she was this... but supporting act was the, what brothers now? Three brothers' act. And later on, this, one of the performers became famous as Sammy Davis. He was one of the acts that at that time was totally unknown performer. But for years thereafter, Sammy Davis always had an open heart for the 442 boys. Whenever he'd come to Honolulu he would try to get in touch with somebody from the 442 club. He always inquired about the 442, he never forgot the 442. But Sammy was one of the performers that, more interesting than that is that in 1947, '46 when we put on the carnival, after World War II, many of the so-called nonprofit organizations were putting on money-making projects. And their favorite, the game to be played and to make money was bingo, out-and-out bingo. And so by that time, Ralph Yempuku was our co-sponsor. He was one of the promoters to help us out. And so Ralph, and then he got into partnership with Earl Finch. And they were to supply us with all the prizes for the bingo games. And Fred Matsuo was the general chairman. And the artillery, because we were such a big group, we were assigned the bingo games as our concession, and we had three bingo game sites because it was going to be the biggest money-maker. And so we had this scheduled carnival. And about two or three weeks before the opening, we got word from the police, Captain Tarbell, hard to forget him. But Captain Tarbell came and told us, you know, "Up to now, all of the nonprofits have been playing bingo. But we're going to get strict. You cannot play bingo as is played now. The game of bingo as played now is a game of chance." And the authorities were clamping down on gambling and games of chance that was going on. At that time, they had this game called, it was [inaudible] in Waikiki which was very popular. And that was, later on, ended up in the courts as to whether it was a game of chance or a game of skill. But Tarbell kept it, Tarbell informed us that the department was going to start the policy of no bingo games as played at that time, which was, for their interpretation, a game of chance. But when we got that notice, we started to figure... and the merchandise had already been bought, committed to us, basically. And so we thought, well, what are we going to do? Are we going to turn it into a game of skill? So up until the opening, we thought that it would be a game of skill if we put balloons on a board with all the numbers and then one person from the audience, a player would get a dart and then throw it at the balloon. And then whatever balloons he hit, that number would be the one that's called. Now, bingo got to be played in five, ten minutes a game. You don't make money unless it's done and over with in ten, fifteen minutes. But playing that dart even, sometimes they would miss, and then you got to turn it over to another guy, another person. I remember the first night, we tried this dart throwing and it took forever and a day. So the next night, we tried variations of making it into a game of skill, picking numbers, throwing the dart, couple other devices that we thought about. But we tried that the second night, still didn't work. And we were already on the second night of three more days.

And so we had a meeting of the committee and said, "What are we going to do?" So one-arm bandit Dan Inouye was the first vice president of the club at that time, and I was the chairman of the bingo games. So at the meeting we said, "You know, I think we're going to take a chance. It's too much of a loss to, for the next three days we're going to try the same thing, and we hardly made any money the first two nights." So he said, "Okay, we're going to play regular bingo, see what the police department will do." But then we had to choose who was going to be subject to be arrested. So Dan Inouye and myself, as the bingo concession chairman and Danny being the second vice-president of the club. The reason why Dan was to be the volunteer was because our president was Chaplain Yamada. So we didn't want him to go to jail. So Dan and I were going to be the volunteer to be arrested. And the third night we opened up the carnival and played regular bingo, no arrest. Three nights we played regular bingo and we recovered a little bit. The first two nights was a total loss but the last three nights we made some money. But the rest of the story is in Kakaako, right where Hamada Store is located, used to have a small little church in a small little confined block, not block, lot at the corner of Queen and... I forgot what the street was, Kamani Street, I think it was, was a Portuguese Catholic church. And there, had a little carnival every year. One game that they put on was bingo. They had theirs scheduled one week after us, I think. They got arrested. They were stopped from putting on the bingo games, and it was at that point in Honolulu, wide-open bingo was closed. It was no longer, as play, it was stopped. And this is back in 1946, '47.

WN: So why do you think you folks never got stopped?

KM: Then we reflected, we said, hey, I think we must have a little bit of political pull. [Laughs] And I believe that was the initial beginning that the boys felt that they could flex their muscles a little bit. But this is 1946 now, '47, before any of our boys were in office. But that was one of the incentives for our boys, our members to become involved in politics.

WN: Wow. [Laughs]

KM: But that was very early in our club activities. But we continued... thereafter, we had to put on money-making projects to meet our expenses. We had a fully paid executive secretary. I think our first executive secretary was Flash Fujiki, I think. Wait, was it Flash or was it somebody else? With Flash, he was a longtime employee for Japan Airlines. I forgot who the first executive, but we had these expenses so we had to put on... oh, the reason why was because they also stopped confiscating our slot machines, both clubs, the [inaudible] and the 442, very quietly. Up until then we were in operation, and I don't know how we got rid of it. We had to turn it in to the so-called federal authorities who stopped the... it was a very serious matter as far as the federal was concerned. But until then, it was open. So now it became necessary for us to put on moneymaking projects, and so where the Ala Moana shopping center is located, it was, at that time it was a vacant lot. It was where Hawaiian Dredging Company had this swampland over there. They leased it out to the army during the war and they used it for all kinds of storage area. So a good portion of where the center is now located, especially where Macy's is located, was the solid covered area, big enough for us to put on circuses. So with Ralph Yempuku as our corporate motor sponsor, I became the project committee chairman for the club after our first carnival at the stadium. Because Fred Matsuo had left Hawaii and had basically gone to Japan to do all this promotional work with the entertainment industry. So I became the project chairman from that time on, on all of our money-making projects which included the circuses at the present site of the Ala Moana shopping center. And we put on several circuses.

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