<Begin Segment 16>

JA: Tell me about your experience when you were shot.

HT: Well, yeah. You know, these are, my experience of being shot...

JA: What were you doing that day?

HT: You know, until I met Alisa, I never spoke to my kids about my experience of being shot. And that's a very, it's just... it hurts. It hurts. And I guess they say you can't run away from a problem, but I guess this is one of my problems because I was trying to run away, and I never even spoke about it. It was a very bad experience. Here again, why? And it leaves a big no reason and because of the happening, I started doubting, thinking about what Mrs. McDougall used to tell us. You know, to start off with, you know, it's a, it's a, like I said before, our barracks, apartment, whatever you want to call it, we had nothing to sit on except for the cot. That is what I used to grieve at that point. I believed that my mom deserved better. I started thinking, the least that she can do is to have something to sit on. This is what drove me and wanted to go out and see if I can, here again, become a scavenger for loose lumber and maybe I can make a chair or a stool for Mom. And that is what made me go out looking for lumber scraps. We went over there, the barracks, some of the barracks were still being made, in progress, so there were a lot of scrap.

And on that morning when I went out looking for scrap woods, I spotted a pile of lumber, scrap lumber. So I started walking towards that huge pile of scrap wood. And I came across, as I walked towards the scrap pile, there was an MP walking there. So I hailed him, and I said, "Can I go over there and get some of that scrap wood?" He said, "Sure." Now, there were no fence. If there was a fence there, I knew that would be the boundary. And in the mess hall, that's where all the various announcements used to be made, and we used to have a bulletin board there with any information regarding to rules or regulation or whatever. It was announced. It was never announced that we cannot go on that side. There was no fence. Now, I came across this MP, and he said sure, I can go across. So I started heading towards the lumber pile, and the MP went this way and I went that way, and I was picking up some of the lumber. So how long would it take for me to look for -- the piles were no more than 2 feet, most of 'em. So I was picking up the lumber. So how long would that take me? Started looking. Two, at the most five minutes, I had it in my arm. Then I heard this MP, he was going like this, "Come on back." So from the pile, I started heading back. Now, the MP was on my right-hand -- left-hand side as I was approaching him, and all of a sudden, he levels his rifle. I thought, "What the devil is he doing? He's leveling off at me." Then all of a sudden, the shot rings out. That's when I had my leather jacket on, and I picked myself up realizing that I had been shot, and I was bloodied all over, and I started running towards camp. You know, to this very day, I cannot remember which block it was that I had gone to. But anyway, I started telling myself, well, I got to get aid, and I started running and then I came across these couple that was walking by. And they stopped the truck, threw me on the truck, and they took me to the hospital. And made one shot. Now, from what I understand, the MPs carry shotguns, and I used to do a little hunting myself, so I more or less can understand how pellets travel. Well, I was shot one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, seven pellets were in me. That's what they took out. And I must have been pretty lucky that he didn't hit me in vital spots.

JA: What do you think he thought he was doing?

HT: What did I think?

JA: Yeah.

HT: I don't know. There's no reason. He told me to come back, and I came back. I had no weapon with me other than the lumber that I'd just picked up. I was not running away nor was I running towards him. I was just walking. What was he trying to prove?

JA: Was he ever brought to account for that?

HT: Beg your pardon?

JA: Was he ever brought to account for that by his superiors?

HT: As far as I know, no. As a matter of fact, after I'd gotten out of the hospital and months later, one day all of a sudden the MP jeep pulls up in front of our, our barrack, and I'm hauled off to the administration building over there, and I'm being interrogated. There again, I see these MPs coming after me with submachine guns and fixed bayonets. I get in the room, and there's this major, one guard out in front of the office and one inside guarding the door, and the major, and he started interrogating me. And he was asking me all kinds of various, various questions. And towards the end, what bothered me was that he was trying to treat me like a third grader. I'm no Einstein, but I do know what one yard is. And it ticked me off so bad, I told the man, I said, "I don't know why you are asking me these questions, but as far as I know, in Europe, it's the metric system, but here in America it's not. So I will answer it in inches and foot." And in third grade, we learned 12 inches to a foot, 36 for a yard. He was trying to treat me like, as though if I was, if I was a moron. He wanted to know which is my left, which is my right. How do I know that he, it was he that had leveled the gun, when there was only one MP standing there. [Pauses] You know, sometimes I wonder, it's a... if he wanted to warn me, all he had to do was just shoot it in the air, that's all. That's my opinion, but I don't know how the other people think. If there had been a sign, a warning sign or anything stating that we cannot go from here to there or a fence there, I would have never gone there.

JA: Another why.

HT: Yes, another why.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2002 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.