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MN: And then I'm going to move you up to where we sort of left off. In November '45, the 522 finally gets to go home. You know, you folks had more than enough points and folks were allowed to come home, and folks traveled across the U.S. You went from Europe to New York, Camp Kilmer, Camp Beale, Camp Hanna, you went to all those different places before you crossed the Pacific. What do you remember about the time you spent on the Mainland as you made your way home?

KM: Well, we came back on... I forgot the name of that Swedish liner. But we were probably about six thousand troops on the ship. And it was a pleasant trip back from Marseilles. We got on board ship in Marseilles and uneventful. And then reached Camp Kilmer, New York. And one of the first persons we see in Camp Kilmer is Ted Tsukiyama. Ted had left us in the middle of basic training to go to MIS. We never saw him after that, we never heard about him except that he went off to some parts in Minnesota intelligence school. And then we get to Camp Kilmer and here's this whole bunch of Military Intelligence boys. Basically these were from the China-India-Burma area. And so we had a very unexpected reunion with Ted in Camp Kilmer. And we flew over from Camp Kilmer to California by air. And it was kind of scary, because before our return, the infantry boys had been ahead of us, they had come in. There was even available, welcome home when they came in. But that happened, I don't know how many months, but I heard about it. And so, but we had heard that one of the planes that the boys were in crashed. We were in these DC-3s, the common transport planes for the army. But we had heard about this plane accident. And so we, "Hey, we'd rather go by train even though it takes four or five days." Yeah, but we had no choice. After that, fortunately there were no accidents. I think that the plane accident, there was one life lost, one of the boys, 442 boys. But we came, we landed, must have been Fairfield in California because it was up north. Camp Beale was up north. And when we got there, we got to meet a whole bunch of new recruits, Hawaiian boys, mixture of Niseis, Hawaiians, who were stationed in Camp Beale. And these boys were having a bad time with the regular rest of the GIs in Camp Beale, they were Hawaii boys, not Niseis now, these are the regular Hawaii boys who were having a bad time by these Caucasian soldiers in Camp Beale. And we had heard that when the 442 boys came in and heard about this, there were some fights again in Camp Beale. I mean, this is what we heard but I don't know if it actually happened. But from the best of what I know, it did happen because the Hawaii boys were being mistreated by these. And so one of the situations was that the 100th and the 442 boys were going to be required to do KP duty in Camp Beale. And that was a big issue, and it almost ended up in fights. But the people in charge of Camp Beale recognized the situation and the refusal of 442 boys to do anymore KP duties. And so they were relieved from doing KP duty. And by the time we got there, the word was out that we didn't have to do any KP duties also. And so after a few, couple of days that we were in Camp Beale, we were shipped back to down south to Camp Haan, which was in Los Angeles. And Camp Haan is where we were there for quite some time. The excuse given was that there were no ships going to Hawaii. And so we spent Christmas and New Year's in Los Angeles. But remember this Christmas and New Year's was the first Christmas and New Year's after the war. And so we happened to be on the streets. And I think I was out both New Year's and Christmas. But the New Year's revelry in the streets of Los Angeles was, from what I understand, it was when the war ended. Everybody was celebrating in the streets, and we were part of the celebration. It'd be something that if we didn't have it back in May of '45, we experienced in New Year's and Christmas.

And ultimately, and this was while we were in Camp Haan, that one day there was a notice that anyone who wanted to go to see a television show can sign up. And we didn't know what was television. But we had nothing to do, so about a hundred, more than a hundred of us volunteered. When the night came, we get onto these two buses or three buses, I think. Probably two and a half buses because clearly there was about a hundred of us. We got on this bus, had no idea where we were going to go. Few minutes and we got into this big parking lot. We parked there and then the outside wasn't that well lit. But they say, "Okay, all of you, stand in line and stay close to the person in front of you, and follow the one ahead of you." And so we found out, we realized that we were entering a building. The building was dimly lit. We got in and before we knew it, we were in something like a theater. And we were marching into this theater, and after we had all gotten into this theater, and we were going to see a show so we knew we were in some kind of theater. Then the lights went on, and we found out that we were in this, later on it turned out to be CBS, I think studio. Right in the middle of the studio, whole bunch of us. Then a familiar voice comes out over the loudspeaker and it comes out, here comes Frank Sinatra. Frank Sinatra announces that tonight his special guests were members of the 442 and he performed and we had, got recognized by the audience. But Frank Sinatra's leadoff, you know, these stars, they all have somebody else to perform before they come out. And so there was, at that time, totally unknown female singer who happened to be Peggy Lee. She was completely unknown at that time, but Frank Sinatra was at his height of his popularity, it was 1946. And the only paper that I had was this ration ticket to go to the PX and buy things. And so, to this day, I have the signature of Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee right below it. And I think that's quite a souvenir, because Peggy Lee became one of the more popular singers after that. And we have her picture to prove it, it's in a book, Fire for Effect, that picture, which somehow I ordered and I got. We were asked if you want one, and I said I want one, and followed up and I received it later on.

And then we got on board this ship, New Mexico, and it took us, it took us how many day from Los Angeles to... the normal trip was five days, I think, but it took us double than, I think five days. But rather uneventful except when we got off Diamond Head it was two or three o'clock in the morning and nobody slept. Everybody was up, we were all on the railing until we saw the skyline of Honolulu. But that was a very, very heartwarming return. And basically it was the 522, but as I said, there was this group of intelligence servicepeople who had come in and joined us from Camp Kilmer.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.