Densho Digital Archive - George H. Morishita Interview (denshovh-mgeorge

<Begin Segment 38>

KL: Was it the year the visitors center opened at Manzanar, the 2004 pilgrimage?

GM: Yeah, that was the second time I went, so I went '03 and '04. And I saw the newspaper gal that gave me the instruction, and she was talking to a guy, a little older guy, he was one of the "no-no" guys I found out. I just got there when he went to, he went to the bad prison, what is that federal penitentiary?

KL: There was Santa Fe and Missoula.

GM: No, this was a...

Off camera: Leavenworth?

GM: Leavenworth. He was one of the guys that went to Leavenworth. And I got there just in time to say that four or five guys jumped him. But he said, "I knew judo or something like that," he said, "they never got me on the ground, I was almost naked," and all that. You know, he was an older guy. And he said, "Then they put me in the hole," and not the other guys that jumped him. So I remember I just went there just when he finished saying that. So I said, "I'd like to shake your hand," and I remember shaking his hand. I told my daughter, "Here's one of the guys that," I said, "I didn't know about them when I was a kid. I read that in the Pacific Citizen and I got real angry. I didn't write to the Pacific Citizen, but they were... when I found out that they were calling these guys traitors and all that kind of stuff during the war. Because JACL was doing everything to prove our loyalty, so they found these guys... but I was telling my friend in Tucson, this non-Japanese guy, I said, "Hey, I've always been proud of the 442nd, but now that I hear about these guys, I'm just as proud of them." I mean, come on.

KL: When did you start hearing about that "no-no" position? Was it around 2004?

GM: No, it was way before that. I was in Tucson, and the Pacific Citizen, it came out at that time, there were some people in the JACL that were trying to get the committee to reconcile with these guys. I guess they never "forgave them." And the first Heart Mountain reunion I came to with my ex-wife, my second wife, her oldest brother was one of those guys that went to, not the bad prison, but he went to Washington, he said. And while we were sitting down before the thing started, at least three guys separately would walk in, and they stopped, and Kay would get up and they'd talk, I couldn't hear what they were saying. And then as the other guy kept walking back to where he was going, Kay would say, "He was one of us guys." But about two or three guys came by that evening, and they never talked loud, and Kay didn't introduce me, but after they walked away, he said he was one of those guys.

KL: One of the resisters to the draft?

GM: Yeah, and they ended up in the prison in Washington or Leavenworth. But Kay was not, he said the group leaders and the real bad guys, I guess, they went to Leavenworth.

KL: Who was Kay?

GM: Kay was my brother-in-law, my second wife. And he was, I guess, old enough to get drafted at that time, he'd be eighteen or something, and he was one of the resisters that ended up in prison. But when I first read about them some years earlier, it made me angry that, gee, the JACL, you mean they're saying... because when I was in the army, I remember that court, I was just a clerk, but there was a regimental artist, regimental writer, you know, and the writer would send letters to towns in the U.S. about how the son is doing, whatever town from the Midwest, wherever. Well, these guys are casual kind of guys in Korea. And one day a master sergeant came in to our office, and I could see right away that he didn't like what he saw, guys with their legs up and all that. And he saw my nametag, Japanese. I found out that he knew some of the 442nd guys, and then he tells me, "Oh, when did you get your PFC stripe?" "Last month." He goes, oh, three months you'll come up to corporal?" I said, "No, no, my sergeant won't put me up," because I was in the security platoon. And now that I'm working here, he said in all fairness -- because he had a roster that the name goes up as you become and old timer, and then when you're the top you're up for a promotion. And he would put my name underneath. I said, "That's okay." So he said, "Would you like to be a corporal?" I said, "Well, yeah." So I get a corporal stripe, I come in and he tells me to straighten these guys out. And like a dummy I said, "Sergeant, I'm just a soldier. But these guys are artists, creators, you can't do that to creative people." And he got real mad and he threw that 442nd at me, that he knew some of the guys, and I was still a kid, and I just cussed him out. I said, look, I'm real proud of my... I said older brothers, I didn't say brothers. I said, "I'm real proud of my older brothers, but don't you ever pull that crap on me." I said, "I'm never gonna ask you to prove that you're an American, don't ever ask me to prove that same to you." My name was mud. [Laughs]

KL: Did Kay talk to you ever about his reasons for resisting, or how he came to that decision?

GM: No, I didn't go into that so much. I just... I hate to say the word assume, but I'm always trying to put myself, and at that time, he's eighteen or whatever they were, and when I was thirteen, like I said, my friend said, "You know, we're American." I said, "Yeah, I know." Then I come out of camp and I see that ration cards and I got hurt that I couldn't participate. Here's this guy, you're in the camp and then... because I was telling some people in Tucson who didn't quite understand that history, I said I think the JACL got our government to give it a try, to let the Japanese prove their loyalty, so they said they're gonna allow 1,500 for the mainland and 1,500 from Hawaii. And they had no trouble getting 1,500 from Hawaii, but here, I said, "Look, they're behind barbed wires." And then when the Japanese guys were going for broke, I understand the higher ups said, "Damn, they're good fighters," so they started drafting. I said, these guys were not asked to volunteer, they were being drafted. That's why they went to prison, because they resisted. They didn't resist volunteering. Because I know I role played one time in Tucson, I met this guy Bob, he was my age, about thirty-seven, he had two kids, he never met a Japanese guy. And he said, "Hey George, how did you feel when you got into camp?" I said, "Hey, Bob, I was just a kid, but let's role play." And I started talking about how he belonged to a certain group from Europe, and there was maybe a couple hundred thousand of you guys on the East Coast and all that. And when I got to the point about... so then we announced these guys were going to go to camp. And he just cussed me out. So I said, "Okay, maybe if you had somebody who was our age then, he might have answered like you, if he's American like you, and we're born and raised here, you have a certain thought. You don't think like a European, you think like here." You know what I mean? You're kind of cocky, oh, I hate to use the word cocky, but... but then I said, "But you asked me, I was only ten to fourteen." But that was kind of, I remember that, that was back in the early '70s or late '60s, we just, we're just role playing.

KL: So your second wife's family was at Heart Mountain?

GM: Yeah, they were in Heart Mountain.

KL: What was her name?

GM: Midori, M-I-D-O-R-I, last name was Yoshida, Y-O-S-H-I, D like David, A. She had two older brothers, and the oldest one was the one that resisted going into service. I think he was eighteen at that time.