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AL: Today is the 22nd of July, 2014. This is an oral history interview with George Kiyo Wakatsuki at the Main Street Station Hotel in Las Vegas. The interviewer is Alisa Lynch, videographer Mark Hachtmann, note taker Larisa Proulx and Bernadette Johnson is also present. So, first off, Kiyo, I'd like to thank you for being willing to sit down with us and also get your permission to record this interview and to use it for education and historic purposes.

GW: No problem.

AL: And we always start by asking when and where you were born and what your full name is.

GW: Well, I was born in a little town near Santa Maria, California, called Guadalupe, on December the 10th, 1931. This little town in California still exists, but it's right on the coast, and I really haven't been back there, but it still exists, real small rural town, farm town. And it's near Vandenberg Air Force Base. But I haven't been back.

AL: What's your full name?

GW: My full name is George Kiyoshi Wakatsuki, and I've been known as George, Kiyoshi, Kiyo, Junior, Tsuki, Wacky, all versions of my name. [Laughs] But I'm predominately known by my family as Kiyo. When I was young, they called me Junior.

AL: And what are your parents' names?

GW: My father is George Ko Wakatsuki, my mother's name is Riku, her maiden name is Sugai, Wakatsuki. I don't know what their age were when they died or when they were born, really.

AL: So what part of Japan did your father's family come from?

GW: My father came from Hiroshima, and he came over when he was around sixteen years old to, I think it was up in Washington, Spokane, Washington. That's where he met my mom.

AL: Do you know why he came over?

GW: I think he came over, the story goes is that his family wanted him to go into the military, become an officer in the army, and he didn't want that, so he came over. I don't know how he came over, if he got on a freighter or what, but he came over, settled in Spokane. And he got a job working for, I guess, sort of like a governor at that time. He may not have been the governor, but he worked as a houseboy and cook, chauffer, did all that kind of stuff before he met my mother and then they moved from Spokane down to another part of Washington, I'm not sure. But they started migrating down south, and my sisters were born... well, my brother was born, and I don't know if it was in Oregon or... that's where it's so far back I don't remember what the story was. Anyway, they ended up in Watsonville, California, that's where my sister was born. One of my sisters, maybe more than one of my sisters, but he had a strawberry farm in Watsonville. And then during the Depression, they moved further down, they lost the ranch and they moved further down to Guadalupe, and that's where I was born. And from Guadalupe down to Inglewood, California, that's where my sister Jeanne was born, the last.

AL: The baby?

GW: The baby. And then from Inglewood, our family moved to Santa Monica, and that's where he started to fish. He started with a rowboat, caught fish and sold it on the pier, and he made enough money to buy a bigger boat, a 30-foot boat. And then around 1939, he got his biggest boat and they went out and started fishing for mackerel. And he was one of the fishermen that went after mackerel because when they caught the mackerel, they sold it to canneries to make dog food. So that was, mackerel was being fished, and my father was one of the beginners. And then they moved the boat down to Terminal Island, and that's where, in 1941, the war started, and they confiscated the boat, confiscated my father, we didn't see him after that until maybe a couple a years.

AL: So we're definitely going to cover... I want to get to Pearl Harbor, I'm going to ask you a few more things about earlier life for your folks. Because I know you're trying to race, you said you don't talk more than a half hour. [Laughs] Just going back a little bit, you said your dad was a houseboy. And a lot of people say, "Oh, my dad, my grandfather was a houseboy." Could you describe, for someone who doesn't know what that means, what a houseboy... what is a houseboy?

GW: A houseboy is, to me, at that time it was like a valet. He'll take care of the cooking, he'll cook, and in fact, he was even taking care of the car, he was acting like a chauffeur. He would act as a mechanic to fix cars, and that's where I found out that how did my dad know how to... when we had a car, he'd go in and fix up the engine and all that stuff. And I said, "How did you learn that?" From experience taking the car apart and putting it back together when he was a kid, or working as this houseboy.

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