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MN: When you think back on all of your life experiences, what do you want your children and grandchildren to remember and learn from your life experiences? If you had to choose a few things, what do you want them to remember and learn?

KM: I think I would want them to remember that, like my high school teacher has impressed upon me, that you should not devote yourself only to one aspect of your life, say, earning a living. Beyond that, you should become an active member of your community and be involved with community activities, without saying what community activities, but community activities of your choice. You should not be restricted to only one aspect of your life, but you should get involved with the general activities of your community. Unfortunately, from my upbringing in the island of Maui where we did have a sort of a community. Today's modern life is a different aspect. All the more, I think it requires one to get involved with... you don't have a small community like when you have a place like Manoa, and we live in Manoa Valley, but the Manoa Valley is just the place where you live unless you participate in other matters beyond Manoa and in Honolulu as a whole. So you have a broader view of community today than when I was brought up in the small little town of Kahului, Maui, where most of the activities involved the Japanese community per se. When you talk about community now, the community is the entire island of Oahu. It's a big city and you're not limited to a small settlement. You have Kakaako, you have McCully, you have Waikiki. All these different satellites. But you shouldn't limit yourself only to whatever in Manoa because it is no longer the type of community that I grew up in. And so there is some adjustment that needs to be done, but hopefully my kids would learn that it is not very limited, restricted, or limit themselves to only making a living and raising a family. But I hope that they would realize that besides making a living and raising a family, there's a lot more involved as a community of Honolulu or of Hawaii.

MN: I have one last question. It's a real broad question. How did the World War II years affect your outlook on life and how you've lived your life in the postwar years?

KM: One of my impressions which I continued to learn throughout my journey is that when I went to Mississippi and got exposed to the Southern culture, I found that people were people. Although they looked different, they spoke differently, then when we went to overseas, the few civilians that we met in Italy, and the few French people that we met in France, and before the war ended in Germany, there were all of these various people that I met. The values of life were all the same. What was important to them basically was important to every Italian person or French person or to the German people. Primarily there seemed to be rules on how you lived, how you got along with your neighbors. The only thing that... in fact, I did get into, I remember getting into a conversation with some Germans, people that, "How come, how come Germany and Americans are fighting when we were friends from before?" And, "Why are you allowing the Russians to move so far west into Germany when, you know, you Americans are going to fight the Russians eventually? You're not friends with the Russians." And this is the Germans telling me before the end of the war. And then when the war ended and we decided to know them personally, and basically the family life, what was important to them was what would be important to me and my family. I saw very little difference in humanity; French, Italian, Germans, we're human beings, first of all. This is my strongest impression. That people... and many times I remember telling, "It's not the people who want the war." The people don't want, no German, no Italian wanted war, it's only the upper ruling people that wanted, for one reason or another, get engaged in war. And this conversation, I recall, having had this type of conversation with Italians, French and German people.

MN: Good place to end, we made it.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.