<Begin Segment 32>

RP: You just recently visited Manzanar last, actually --

IK: Which I was very impressed, incidentally. I thought it was very professionally done.

RP: Did any, did it bring up any feelings or emotions for you to be back in a place where you, you know...

IK: I don't, I don't have any real feelings about Manzanar, except that, my memory, and I don't have any stellar feelings for it all. Is it was just a happening, as far as I'm concerned, as the army was a happening, only they gave me a big, big education.

RP: And you got a pay increase, too, didn't you?

IK: I'm sorry?

RP: Did you get a pay increase, too?

IK: Yeah, I guess I did, 'cause in camp I think I made twelve dollars a month, if I'm not mistaken.

RP: As a buck private or... you would've made about twenty-one.

IK: I think you're right. I don't remember that, either, but I came out a sergeant, and I don't know what they make. But, no, Manzanar is a memory. That's all I put it as. I don't have... it was an injustice, but that doesn't bother me at all, 'cause politics and broader look at it, it was a very political move, and on who I don't know, but that's for sure a political move, and not done just by the army. Well, they carried it through, but it was carried, started at a... that's what I would like to see exposed. And I think it's President Roosevelt area. That's, that saved his neck, because he became a prominent president by doing that. That's his, whatever his memories, or memories of him are how he saved America, and that was in World War II. And that's, well... the people I met along the line had nothing to do with the camp, really. It wasn't their fault. They did what they were hired to do, and today especially, when people do things, they do it, which is a hell of a lot worse than that. And I feel happened worse than that, only I wasn't smart enough to know that then. But when it, we'd heard a lot of the starting of the war and whose fault, and I think somebody exposed quite a bit of it. Hall? No. I can't even think of his name, either, but he exposed, exposed some of it, which says, hey, there's that much more. Only he couldn't have done it. So that's what it really, is it, and maybe one day it'll all come out.

RP: I have a question. Having been in the 442nd and part of the distinguished combat history, did you have any awareness of a draft resistance movement that took place in some of the camps, particularly in Heart Mountain?

IK: No, that, none of that came to mind, because that war was so personal -- I mean, for each of us -- that all of this politics had nothing to do with anything, 'cause we were shootin' at each other. And... "What the hell, I don't care what Roosevelt does." In fact, we were told that the president died. We were on a hill, just taken the hill, and the CO says, or the lieutenant says, announced that the president died and let's allow him some silence or some damn thing. What went through my mind real quickly, here's eight guys right in front of me, dead. One of 'em is on fire, and they're tellin' us that we're gonna give some respect for somebody that died over there. It has nothing to do with me. And I just thought, "Big deal. So how many minutes do we give these people?" 'Cause they're dead people. That's all I could think. That's bullshit. Why they would even try to tell us, in combat, we'll spend a moment of silence. I just thought that was... what the hell is the matter with people? We're next to dying and we're gonna spend some time gettin' shot out and give him some silence. Come on. Get real. And somebody's head's in the moon. It's, it's just so out of, out of anything.

RP: Do you have any additional questions?

KP: No.

RP: Isao, do you have any other stories or memories you want to share about...

IK: Oh, I don't know. I have to be prompted because I, they just... suddenly somebody says a word and that'll remind me, because in the, what I left out of my writing was, as I thought of them I typed them, in the, of the army. And I think I've lost about five hundred pages while moving my offices from place to place. It get lost and... 'cause I was, I wanted to and I thought about it was I would write my squad and our squad, and stories of all of, all of, each of us. And that would've made a, one hell of a funny book. Because I felt that is more interesting as a war book than all of this heroic stuff, because your, in your frame of mind or position or whatever it is, you're in a different place and it's out of civilization. You don't think of civilization or being civilized. They're completely different rules in war and none of it is political, and it's just totally divorced, and they're, because of this particular place, wherever your mind might be, everything has changed. Your humor is totally, totally different. As I wrote one part in my thing, one of them died, real good buddy. One of the funniest things that came to me of -- this guy's name, Jim -- was wartime humor. I mean, not wartime humor, but the state of mind you're in during that period. Forget civilization. But this is this world, and I so I had always wondered before going over, what am I gonna do when I have to take a crap? What do you, they don't talk about toilets or anything, so anyway, in my mind with Jim, it was just right on the crest of, the sky was here, seen clearly. And he had dug out right at that crest that I saw, so this morning he jumps out of this hole. I see him up there and the Germans are probably... I couldn't see them at my point, but they were, I would guess about twenty-five yards or fifty yards away. They saw him, and suddenly he's, pulls his pants down, take a crap. Boom, in comes a mortar, so he's, holds his pants, scoots over here. Boom, come the next, so he scoots to another place, and then... "God damnit, he's droppin' one and their droppin' one." And that became a funny story. And he thought it was, and he was laughing, too. So anyway, this, there's a little bit more to it, but I think I tried to point it towards a stranger and it, this running around with pants down. Then he got down mad, jumped in his hole mad. And I saw this part. I didn't know what, what he was thinking. And I saw his head come out over his hole, and he was aiming. And I'm sitting there watching him, and I said, "Well, damn it, shoot." And he's aiming and he's aiming. I said, "Jeez, when are you gonna shoot." Then suddenly I, on the mountains you don't know where the shots come. They boom, boom, boom, boom, but you don't when, either. So anyway, during these things his rifle pops and he goes down. I said, "What happened?" And then they said move out for us, so we went through a bunch of shooting, then we went down there and everybody's gathered together, and I go to Jim. I says, "You get 'em, Jim?" "Ah, no." He was still mad, and he showed me his rifle, the M-1 is a rifle and the gas port just below it. German, German was aiming at him and he was aiming at the German, and the German shot first. I didn't know, this is why the shots mixed up, but he kicked back and he went down. So I says, "Hell, I thought you got it right in the head." And he says, "Oh, that's what happened." He says, "Boy I was so mad." And he laughed, but I sent this section of the story to the family after he died. They never answered me, and I thought, oh hell, I made a joke of him, just sending them that much, because that time, that was a very -- and he told the whole damn squad. And he, "That damn rifle," he had to take it apart and he loaded the chamber again and sat there all that time before going, with just one lousy bullet in his gun. I said, "That took courage. And you're still with us." And that just didn't go by with the family. He was an asshole, he was a joke in that writing, so I decided, boy, enough of, no more, none of that. Because the attitude, or the, life's borders are so, totally somewhere else. And it's hard to explain.

RP: Thank you, Isao, for sharing all this.

IK: It was fun. I enjoyed being able to tell somebody.

RP: On behalf of Kirk and myself and the National Park Service, thank you for your great contribution to our knowledge of Manzanar and beyond.

IK: I appreciate it.

<End Segment 32> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.