Densho Digital Archive - George Hara Interview (denshovh-hgeorge

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GH: An interesting thing about the MIS was it was the first time that the Niseis from the mainland were together with Niseis from Hawaii, and there was a whole difference of cultural upbringing. They didn't have to go through, you know, relocation and all that, and they were the majority where they were living, but they were more Japanese in their cultural background and most of them that weren't, you know, had gone to college, they spoke a different language, pidgin English. That took a while before we can understand them. They sort of thought we were little different too, you know. So they called us kotonks. I don't know what that meant, but we were kotonks, and they were the pineapples. But as a unit, we got along, and so our stay here included my getting to know more people from the California and from Hawaii and some of them later on, I'm glad to say the ones I got to know good did well. One ran for district attorney in Hawaii and won the election. Then after that tenure, he became a judge. He was nominated by governor of Hawaii, a Nisei, to be a judge and later on when we visited him, he showed us his courtroom, and he had done well, and we played golf with him. His name was Kase, K-A-S-E, but they called him Casey, the hanging judge, I guess. Anyway, Kase Higa and his origin was from Okinawa, and that's first time we met someone from Okinawa there, Nisei. But in Hawaii, there are a lot of people from Okinawa background, and the other Hawaiian was Asahina, Ralph, and he finished his engineering. And when we met him, he was one of the chief engineers, structural engineers for Ala Moana Shopping Center, and he took us out to dinner. We met his family, and by then, I was, you know, a practicing physician. So all of us, you know, came out pretty well.

And the other good friend I made was from Oakland, and he and I got along especially well because one of the vices we picked up during our tenure at Fort Snelling was weekend leaves, just to learn how, and it didn't take long to learn how to drink beer and enjoy yourself. That was a good form of relaxation, and we never, you know, got to the point we're laying out on the streets. Sometimes close but somehow, we got back in time to meet the Monday call. But Navi and I got along especially well, and he had gone to Denver before going in the army. He learned how to play sax and even played sax, you know, with a can in front so people could put money in. He had an interesting background, and he was sort a different outgoing individualistic guy. He had gone to, started, he had ambitions of being an architect. But anyway, Navi and I were partners in crap games, 21 games, and shared the loot and the losses, and we became very close. We continued our friendship afterwards.

But that was the story, and also we met a lot of Nisei girl that were there going to school or working as housegirl or working at some job because the climate there was very hospitable towards the Niseis, and they had, I guess, what you call the weekend parties for the servicepeople. Anyway, the Nisei girls, you know, took part in that, and they had record dances and met nice looking Nisei gals, but god, here we're going to ship over and me especially I go to these and enjoy, make friends and said, "I thought you were going to ship out," you know, and I said, "This week for sure," you know. And then we were there a month, over a month and a half. Pretty soon, they didn't believe me. [Laughs] Anyway, I made some good friends there in Minneapolis.