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AC: You said you had two other brothers who already were in the army?

MH: I had two brothers already, yeah. But my other brother who was 4-C wasn't drafted until we came home to Hood River. He went and my younger brother went, so we had four in the service.

AC: What happened, what were your two older brothers, where were they stationed?

MH: Where were they stationed?

AC: In the war. Where were they stationed in the war?

MH: Okay. My older brother, they sent the MIS people nine months of concentrated Japanese. They started in Presidio Monterey, went to Camp Savage and Fort Snelling in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and he was, during the war, he was in the different islands and questioned the Japanese they captured, the captured Japanese. My younger brother was in the, not younger brother, brother above me was in the army, so he went to Philippines, come home okay. But then when he came home, he went to school and was in the accident and died. After we went back, my older brother, my younger brother was drafted, so we had four in the service, and I need to mention this. But when you have fellows or people in the service, you're very proud to put a flag with stars on it, had four stars. This is after we went home. Big rock came through the window right by the flag. We had, even after we went home, we were, our family is one of the, what would you call pioneers to go home after camp because my older brother had gone home before the family had got out of camp, and so we met a lot of discrimination. We had to, Hood River was a, I don't know what happened to the American Legion, but you probably heard that the American Legion on the side of the courthouse, they had all the names of people who were in the service, and there were seventeen Japanese Americans in the service, and they tore off all the names there on boards. They took them all off. American Legion headquarters heard about that, and they said, "No, that is not right." So they had to tack them back on, and so you could see they were standing out. It was bad. I don't know why the American Legion, the leader was, they didn't want to have us back evidently. So can I talk about after we went home?

AC: Sure.

MH: Okay. Because my brother was one of the three fellows that went home to kind of survey everything, and so our family went out of camp and came home. I was in Salt Lake going to school, and so I went home. Well then, my brother was drafted and my younger brother was drafted, so I was the oldest in the family then, and my younger brother was still going to high school. My dad wouldn't drive the tractor or the car anymore, and so my brother and I had to learn how to drive and drive the tractor. And we were getting gasoline from Chevron, Standard Oil at the time, and after about a month, they said, "We can't give you anymore gas because we're going to lose our franchises in town." Well, they had a War Relocation Authority, WRA, in Portland where we could call and tell them our problems, so I had to call Mr. Borse and tell him Standard Oil is refusing to give us gas. Well, it took about a month before they worked with the headquarters in California, and then they were forced to deliver us gas. But we met a lot of discrimination when we first went home, and I feel like our family was probably one of the earlier ones that went home that kind of paved the way.

AC: So this was coming from headquarters of Standard Gas saying you will not give gas to --

MH: No. This was the local.

AC: The local franchise?

MH: Okay. Then when I checked with the WRA, they worked with the headquarters in California, and they said, "That's not right," so we got gas back. I don't know who, why people were so against us. I think it's economic. I think they didn't want us back because of money. It wasn't racial or anything. I think it was more money because we did lose a lot of money while we were in camp, you know. So when I talk about redress now, when I give my talk and talk about redress, this happened after the third generation worked hard at Washington and got us redress. And I said, "Whatever you do, whether you speed or whatever you do, it's money." Okay, they put us in camp, so then Reagan was the one who signed it, gave us redress. And by that time, a lot of our parents and the older folks had gone, so they didn't get it, but we who were still alive, children who were born in the internment camps received that money. And it seems like a lot of money, but we could have made much more if we would have stayed at home.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.