Densho Digital Archive - Isao Kikuchi Interview (denshovh-kisao-01-0017)

<Begin Segment 17>

RP: And the Kibeis in fact, this group or gang that you just described were also not directly involved with the riot, but they were part of the crowd that went down to the police station, weren't they?

IK: The, the riot was to do with the, a cook of one of the kitchens was charged with selling sugar to the, I think it was either Independence or Lone Pine, I don't know where, but he was supposed to have been dealing sugar. And that just quite did not make any sense 'cause -- and this is what I think roused the crowd is that, hey, we're confined and it wasn't all that long that we had been confined and he's gonna all, he gonna, he's supposed to go trade with the whoever, the Caucasians? That doesn't make sense, so as I'm walking across the camp to see who all the commotion like the rest of 'em, the story was common now. It was that this cook was charged with selling sugar to the white, Caucasians, so we all started walking down toward the administration where the action was, and the whole camp is talking. And so we stood on, across the... let's see, one side of the room was a, the road was a white area, and the administration or some building, I've forgotten which... but they, the soldiers were lined up along that road and we were lined on the other side of the road, what, fifteen feet or whatever it is. And everybody's yelling, and mostly Kibeis were yelling because I didn't hear much of what they said, or understand what they said. And the GIs just, they were white, not, no blacks, and they were gettin' a little edgy. You could, well, there's a bunch of people on that one side of the street and we could've really easily run over them, but we were on one side, and I think one little kid threw a rock and bang, off went the shots. Everybody scattered. I jumped into a pickup truck nearby, on top of another guy, and I figured well, there's not enough room for me, so I got out and jumped onto the ground near a barrack and the guy got hit, was in the pickup, this truck, so he went to the hospital after all, went out, got over. And the, that dispersed the crowd when real bullets came by.

RP: The person in the truck, do you know if he was just wounded, or did he die?

IK: I think he was the one that died. I figured, well, that was kinda lucky. I could've been the one that died.

RP: Right, the bullet could've had your name on it.

IK: Yeah, I was, I would've been on top.

RP: Where were you in this crowd? Were you right up at the front?

IK: It, well, it's, the front was... we were all on the front 'cause it was only maybe... a big crowd for there, but it was, like, two or three deep. But it was strung out in a line, so that made it a big, big crowd.

RP: I know it's tough to estimate how many people were actually in that crowd, but can you give us and idea?

IK: The big mouths were, I would say, ten to twenty, like the Kibeis.

RP: And they were mostly, they were talking in all Japanese?

IK: Yes. What I heard was Japanese, so I just thought it was my guys making the same noise 'cause I don't, I just didn't know, really I didn't count 'em. Wasn't any time for counting.

RP: Any sense that, that something was gonna happen?

IK: No, it was just bang and then... there was no, only the soldiers knew, or only that one soldier knew, 'cause there was no reason to shoot unless out of fear, but nobody was moving across that road. And they were, they wanted justice, and for... you couldn't believe that a Japanese guy could go out there and trade with the Caucasians this time of the, time in, we've been in the camp.