Densho Digital Archive - Ben Kuroki - Shige Kuroki Interview (denshovh-kben

<Begin Segment 4>

FA: Shige, tell me about your relationship with Mike Masaoka. How long have you known him?

[Interruption]

SK: He goes back to my teenage years. He was, he and Bill, my brother-in-law Bill Yamauchi had been roommates at University of Utah. And Mike at that time was very active in the Japanese American Citizens League and forming chapters throughout the tri-county, there in Tri-cities, I guess it was, in the southeastern part of Idaho. So we saw him frequently come through and he would often stop to see Bill and that's when I had first met him, was way back then when I was still in high school.

FA: What kind of guy was Mike Masaoka?

SK: Brilliant. Funny, humorous, witty, always active. Whatever he did to us was he was... when we met him, of course, our standards -- we had, you know the Japanese, the Nisei didn't have a picture of a Japanese male as being very articulate and here we see Mike who was in command of a language that we never even knew of. He could speak on anything at the drop of a hat. But not very good at manual things. I remember when he came with Bill one time, he had side-swiped a car and we had to go -- that was one of my first experiences. We had gone down to make sure that he got some transportation. But that's the man I remember from the early years. If we're talking about later, I met him, we had seen him over the years for, for the next, I guess the next eight years that I remember seeing him, he had been active still in, but then it had become, it was more intensified after, as the war began.

FA: Tell me again, go back to, tell me again about what kind of guy Mike was. I need you to say Mike Masaoka, his name.

SK: Oh, Mike Masaoka?

FA: Yeah, yeah.

SK: Yes.

FA: So just go back and tell me about this person and what he was like.

SK: Well, Mike Masaoka was unlike any Nisei that I knew. Our first impression was a man who, he was, he was known for his skills, oratory skills. He had been on the University of Utah debate team. And they had done very, very well, as I remember. And Bill had always talked about him so when we had started seeing him, when he started coming through, he was able to arouse a lot of interest you can see, as you can see, in the JACL. And at that point we were very much impressed with him, he was a young man -- I think my mother said he was cocky. And he did a lot of things that the young girls got a charge out of, however, I remember he did something at one of the meetings that we had in Idaho Falls, I guess it was, when he was busy there getting the cities to, I think at that point we were trying to get delegates to a convention or something, but anyway, I remember he was there at this meeting and instead of standing behind a podium and speaking he had sat leaning off a table. And I remember everybody saying, "Oh my," you know, that was something we hadn't done in our day. But you can see we go back a long ways. I think I can talk about Mike in the days when, when even the way he stood at a podium was something that was criticized by the Issei or at least made, they noticed. But he really was a man that we could see would be... we would hear much about because he did have a lot of foresight. At that point it wasn't an easy job, either, that he was doing.

[Interruption]

FA: Something you said, he did a lot of things that girls got a lot of charge out of?

SK: Yes. He was, he was witty. He told off-color jokes, things that we didn't hear in Mormon country very often. [Laughs] They were, they were just slightly, he, then of course when I knew him later, after he was married to Etsu, there's a lot more humor, of course, that he had brought back from when he had been to war, but nevertheless, yes, he was a man, a type of person I always enjoyed. He was an intellectual, he was verbal, he was, he could express himself in such beautiful phrases. Whatever he said -- I like, I like words, and that man could express them. I guess that's the best expression I can, description of him.