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MM: You were discharged from the army in December 1946, and I assume you returned home to Hawaii at that point. What were you thinking, what did you want to do at that point?

RK: Oh, I said now I've got to get on and get through with my university education. And here at the University of Hawaii, I met some excellent professors and... I can name them: Allan Saunders, Ed Vinacke, Charles Engard, Harold McCarthy, Tom Murphy, great professors. And later on when I joined the faculty, they said to me, it was a great time for them because, "You veterans were so serious, we enjoyed teaching." And so anyway... but one of the great things was I knew I would go back and finish my education. But before I went into the army, I remember talking to our then -- I don't know whether he was called vice president, Paul Bachman. He would later became president of the University of Hawaii, but Paul Bachman said to me, "Dick, if you come back alive, you might have the government subsidize your education." I said, "What do you mean?" He said well, some -- and what he described was the GI Bill, which at that time wasn't enacted, I think. But lo and behold, thank God we had the GI Bill and that helped so many of us. I think I heard Dan Inouye say that he thinks -- I wish we could document this -- that more of us of Japanese ancestry, veterans, took advantage of the GI Bill than any other group. Here again, because of our great emphasis on education. I wish we could document this.

MM: That's an interesting question.

RK: But my friend, who was my surrogate older brother in the neighborhood, Hisashi Komori, after high school, he never thought he'd go to college. He got drafted into the army. Came December 7, he got shipped to Camp McCoy as part of the 100th. Luckily he came home and immediately decided, "Now I can afford it, I'm going to university." So he did go on to the university. And of course I was able to use the GI Bill, since I had spent about three years in the army. I was able to spend, the GI bill helped me through my bachelor's, my master's and my PhD.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2004 Japanese American National Museum. All Rights Reserved.