1 100 7 https://ndajams.omeka.net/files/original/701105b3d80a0343b3b6c427cebc1e9d.pdf ed2a9b8c1abe6e7a8bd1f489bcd1e222 PDF Text Text Go For Broke National Education Center Oral History Project Oral History Interview with Samuel Sasai, October 22, 2005 623-Sasai-Sam-1 INTERVIEWER: [00:00] Today is October 22, and today we’re interviewing Samuel Yutaka Sasai. The interviewer is Don Yamagami, video is Keith Kuramoto, audio is Phil Miyamoto. Can you please state your full name? SASAI: Samuel Yutaka Sasai. INTERVIEWER: And what is your current address? SASAI: 1434 Punahou Street, apartment 1006, Honolulu. INTERVIEWER: What’s your place of birth? SASAI: Haleiwa, Oahu. That’s this island, territory of Hawaii. INTERVIEWER: Can you tell me your wife’s name? SASAI: Her name is Michie, M-I-C-H-I-E. Her maiden name is Maehara, M-A-E-H-A-R-A, and well, she’s married to me, so she’s Michie Sasai. INTERVIEWER: Can you tell me how your parents came to Hawaii? SASAI: My parents---my father came from Okayama Prefecture in Japan. My mother was born in Hakodate, Hokkaido, Japan, and lived for a while in Tokyo before she and her father came to Hawaii. INTERVIEWER: Can you please state your dad’s name? SASAI: My father’s name is Tamaki Sasai. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 1 of 53 �INTERVIEWER: What [02:00] brought your father over to Hawaii? SASAI: He was the third son of a rice farmer in Okayama Prefecture, Japan, and when he graduated from, I guess it’s grammar school, his father told him that there is no sense in you hanging around here, I can’t give you any land because I’m going to give it to your two older brothers, and if you hang around here, you will only be a burden on your two brothers. So he says, Why don’t you leave home and make your own way in life? So my dad left his home and apprenticed himself to an electrician in Kobe, Japan. And Kobe being a port town, he heard rumors about this golden place called Hawaii, where if you signed a three-year contract and worked on the sugar plantation, you’d earn enough to come home and buy your parents out and this kind of thing. So he decided to come to Hawaii, but he did not come on a sugar contract, he came on his own. He had saved up enough money to come on his own. INTERVIEWER: How old was your dad when he came to Hawaii? SASAI: How old was he? INTERVIEWER: Yeah. SASAI: He was probably around 19 or 20. INTERVIEWER: So you said he finished grade school. [04:00] Is there like a grammar school? I mean, how is the--SASAI: I think he---all he had was about a sixth-grade education, and then he apprenticed himself to an electrician in Kobe and worked---you know, as an apprentice, you do work around the house, the master’s house, and when you have time he’ll teach you a few things about electricity. So that’s how he lived, and I guess he was there for a few years. INTERVIEWER: Did he---so once he left his house, he pretty much stayed with the electrician? SASAI: Yes, he lived there. He was an apprentice and lived in the electrician’s house and did work around the house, and when there was spare time, the electrician taught him electrical work. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 2 of 53 �INTERVIEWER: And was he getting paid to do that type of work? SASAI: Well, I’m sure he had enough for spending money, which he saved, because his food and clothing came from the master. INTERVIEWER: Did he also have to give money to your folks or send, give--SASAI: Apparently, he did not send money home to his parents. In effect, his father said, “You go out and earn your own living and never mind the rest of the family.” INTERVIEWER: So how old was he? SASAI: Well, he must have been in his young teens when he was apprenticed to this electrician. INTERVIEWER: How did he [06:00] get to Hawaii? SASAI: Well, when he heard these rumors about the golden islands of Hawaii, there were lots of recruiters in Japan, and he must have talked to some of them and arranged to pay for passage to Hawaii, and he just came here as an immigrant. INTERVIEWER: What sort of things---or did you say how long it took for him to come to Hawaii? SASAI: I’ve never learned that portion of it, as to exact age when he arrived or under what circumstances he came, but he must have had enough money to come on his own, because he was not under contract to a sugar plantation. INTERVIEWER: Is this a situation where he could pretty much up and leave after his apprenticeship, or is there a length of time--SASAI: Well, I’m sure that he could just tell his master, “I’m going to leave,” and that’s it. INTERVIEWER: How about your mom? How--This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 3 of 53 �SASAI: That’s a long, long story. Let’s see, how should I begin? My mother’s father, my grandfather, was a second son of a buke. Do you know the word buke? INTERVIEWER: No, I don’t. SASAI: Buke---bushi is a samurai, and a kei is a family, so he came from a samurai family. And when the [08:00] Tokugawa era ended and the government of Japan reverted back to the emperor---this was the time of Emperor Meiji---all the samurai were going to starve because they weren’t going to get any stipends from their masters anymore, so they all had to go out and find work. And so my grandfather’s older brother became a---he was employed by the Ministry of Education of the new Meiji government and lived in Tokyo, and so my grandfather left his ancestral home in the island of Shikoku and came to Tokyo and lived with his older brother. But apparently, he was quite a playboy and wasn’t studying and was going out and fooling around, so his older brother kicked him out of the house. And he needed a place to live, so he found a job as a houseboy in the city of Yokohama, and he was a houseboy to a American Methodist minister. Now that’s surprising, but after Emperor Meiji’s government took over, of course this was when Perry and his black ships were coming to Japan and trying to open up trade for America, and what happened was that some midwestern Methodists wanted to [10:00] come to Japan and proselytize Christianity, and so they asked the new Meiji government for permission to enter the country. The Meiji government was quite worried about what would happen if they allowed these Americans to come in, so I think what they did was told this group of missionaries, “You can go to the northern island of Hokkaido and proselytize the faith there.” And of course, at that time, Hokkaido was a real barren, way up in the boondocks. And they established a mission school for girls, a Methodist mission school. It’s called EIIAI, and it’s still in existence, this Methodist mission school. And they allowed one person of that missionary group to represent the group in Tokyo, and this was the Methodist minister who lived in Yokohama, close to Tokyo, and who needed a houseboy and hired the person who was going to become my grandfather. And apparently, the minister was a good enough missionary that he converted my grandfather to Christianity. What happened was that my grandfather then settled down and went to school and graduated, what’s I guess an equivalent of a university now. And when he did so, this Methodist missionary asked him whether he would become the Japanese school principal of this mission school in Hakodate, Hokkaido. And my grandfather [12:00] agreed and went to Hakodate and became the Japanese school principal, because they had many English-speaking Methodist missionaries who taught English, but none could teach Japanese. So my grandfather became the first Japanese teacher there. INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 4 of 53 �And what’s your grandfather’s name again? SASAI: His name was Uno, U-N-O. And he met and married a woman teacher there, and the two of them taught at this EII girls school, and of course they had three daughters. And somewhere along the line after my grandfather had been teaching for about 25 years at this mission school, he decided to retire and came to Tokyo and started a---do you know what a jyuku is? INTERVIEWER: No. SASAI: J-Y-U-K-U. It’s a prep school. They have jyukus in current-day Japan, where you go after school and get tutored so that you can pass the exams to enter a good high school, and you go to more jyukus---prep schools---and prepare for exams so you can enter a good university, and this is the way it works in Japan. And so, even in those days, my grandfather started this prep school, private tutoring, but he was starving. Not enough students, you know? And because he was not doing so well economically, he could not marry off his three daughters, who were of marriageable age, because you needed a dowry [14:00] to marry off your daughters. And it just happened that, in Hawaii, the Methodists were already here as missionaries, and there was a Japaneseborn Methodist missionary here in Hawaii, and his church was on the way to work for my father, and every evening he would, on his way home, stop at the church and take English lessons. The minister gave English lessons in order to increase his flock, you know. And one year, this missionary received sabbatical leave and went back to Japan on vacation, and while he was in Tokyo, he was looking for Christians. There are very few of them. And he found that there was not only a Christian but a Methodist running this jyuku, this prep school. And so he looked up my grandfather, and in the conversation, my grandfather is complaining about not being able to marry off his daughters because he doesn’t have a dowry, and this minister tells him, “I have a solution.” And he says, “You immigrate to Hawaii, bring your three daughters, and we’ll find you a job teaching school in Hawaii, and I guarantee you that I’ll marry off your daughters in no time at all,” because there were so many single males in Hawaii. And sure enough, when I looked up my mother’s old records when she arrived in Hawaii, her immigration [16:00] records, three days after she arrived, my grandfather married her off to my father. She had never seen the man before. Their marriage must have lasted about 78 years or so. INTERVIEWER: How old were they when they got married? SASAI: How old were they? This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 5 of 53 �INTERVIEWER: Yeah. SASAI: I guess they were just---my mother must have been about 18, 19, and my father must have been somewhere 21, 22 by that time. INTERVIEWER: Now, when you were---when you started off school, where did you go? What elementary school? SASAI: Well, let’s see, how shall I begin? I went to elementary school, which is known as Lincoln Grammar School. It’s here in Honolulu. I went to junior and senior high school at a place called Roosevelt High School here in Honolulu. Those were my undergraduate kind of time in school. INTERVIEWER: What type of sports did you---or were there any sports that you got involved with when-SASAI: Oh yeah, there are all kinds. Regular American sports, baseball, football, track, whatever you want. INTERVIEWER: What was your favorite sport? SASAI: None. I never did like sports. INTERVIEWER: What type of things did you do to, I guess, keep yourself occupied? SASAI: Well, you know that prewar Hawaii, we went to what we would call English schools, [18:00] American schools, in the morning and we’d end up about 2:30 in the afternoon, and we’d race across town and go to a Japanese school after that. And I would start about 3:30 until about 4:30. INTERVIEWER: What school was that? Do you remember the name? SASAI: Japanese school? This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 6 of 53 �INTERVIEWER: Yeah. SASAI: Hawaii Chuo Gakuen, chuo meaning central, gakuen meaning academy or something like that. INTERVIEWER: What type of subjects did they teach? SASAI: Oh, they taught reading and writing, Japanese. That’s about it. INTERVIEWER: There is no speaking of the emperor or any type of situation like that? SASAI: I don’t recall any pushing of Japan’s agenda while I was going to language school. The concentration was on reading and writing and speaking, and of course the textbooks may have had some mention of emperor, but mostly it was moral stories about the examples of honesty, examples of hard work, this type of thing, which we would read as a story and learn the kanji, the Chinese characters, learn how to speak. That’s about it. INTERVIEWER: I guess I want to go back a little bit to your dad. What type of work did he do once he settled in [20:00] Hawaii? SASAI: Well, initially he was a yard man. But as I mentioned, he went to this English school at the church, and apparently he had learned enough English so that he could interpret an insurance contract, an English contract. And what he did was, he worked for an insurance agency and sold fire insurance and property insurance, automobile insurance, to those within the Japanese community. Then he was offered a job as a manager of a branch bank, of a local bank in the town of Haleiwa on the north shore of this island. That bank is now First Hawaiian Bank and is, I guess, either the largest or the second largest bank in Hawaii. And he became one of the few Asian branch managers, although it was a very small branch, of a bank here. And I was born out in Haleiwa, and of course I told you that my mother was a very strong woman, very well educated for her time, and as my two older sisters grew up, she insisted that they be given [22:00] high school education in a town high school, not the country high school way out in the boonies of the north shore of Oahu. INTERVIEWER: And who are your sisters? SASAI: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 7 of 53 �Pardon me? INTERVIEWER: Who are your sisters? SASAI: I have an older sister, who is Louise Yoshi Sasai, married to a Mayahara, so she’s Louise Mayahara. I have a second sister, whose name is Nobu. She was Nobu Sasai and married a Katagiri, so she is Nobu Katagiri now. My eldest sister, Louise, lives in Philadelphia. My second sister, Nobu, lives in San Francisco. And I’m a third child, youngest in the family, living in Honolulu. INTERVIEWER: What was the age difference between your sisters and yourself? SASAI: My eldest sister is about 10 years older than I, my second sister is about 5 years older than I. INTERVIEWER: Were you close to the youngest of your sisters, or was--SASAI: No, not very close, because, you know, the age difference is about four or five years’ age difference, so they went their way, and I went my way. INTERVIEWER: Did you have a lot of friends in school, then, that you played with? SASAI: Oh yeah, lots of them. You have to understand that in prewar Hawaii, the public school system had two sets of [24:00] schools. This may sound strange, but we had regular public schools and we also had what was known as an English standard school. There were, in the city of Honolulu, there were four elementary schools which were English standard and one junior and senior high school which was English standard. Now that seems strange when I talk about English standard schools, but in prewar Hawaii, the white population had a great deal of economic power and political power, and they apparently did not want their children to go to the same elementary schools that these immigrant kids were attending. So they pressured the legislature and the Department of Education to create schools known as English standard, where in order to enroll in that school, you must be able to speak standard English, to speak standard English. Not how smart you were, but you had to speak standard English. And for those of us who were born of Asian parents, English is not our cradle language, it’s a learned language. Whereas the white kids, English is their cradle language, and obviously they speak standard English. And so [26:00] if you had to pass an oral English exam before you enrolled, you’re going to end up with only white kids, you know. That’s what it comes to. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 8 of 53 �And what happens is that you have a taxpayer-funded public school, which in fact is a white-only school. That’s the way it was. And we used to call these English standard schools the poor man’s Punahou, because Punahou is a private school that was in existence then, and it’s in existence now, but it was where all the richer managementtype whites sent their kids. It’s a private school, they paid the tuition. But there was another group of whites who were craftsmen, not the managerial level but the next level, who couldn’t quite afford to send their kids to Punahou. So therefore they clamored to have their kids educated in the public school system, but apart from the Asians. And that created this thing called an English standard school. END OF AUDIO FILE 1 BEGINNING OF TAPE TWO 623-Sasai-Sam-2 INTERVIEWER: [00:00] So in order for you to get into the school, how did it work for you? SASAI: You were tested on your ability to speak standard English, and if you passed that examination, you were allowed to enroll in the school. But you have to recognize that, for many of us, we spoke Japanese at home. We spoke pidgin English with our neighborhood kids, and the only time we spoke regular English was when we went to school, so it was very difficult for Asian kids to get into these English standard schools, and so we were very much a minority group. INTERVIEWER: How many, or how big were---how many Asian kids would have been in a typical class, then? SASAI: I’ve never tried to figure that, you know, number out, but I would say perhaps 20 or 25 percent of the student body was of Asian descent. INTERVIEWER: Was it like that as well in the grammar school aspect of it as well? SASAI: Yes, there were, as I said, four or five English standard grammar schools, and from there you went to an English standard junior and senior high school. There was only one on the island of Oahu. INTERVIEWER: How far did you have to go or commute to that school? SASAI: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 9 of 53 �Well, it wasn’t very far for me, because I lived in the neighborhood, but for others it was a long commute. Our classmates included many, many military [02:00] dependents. They came from the Pearl Harbor Navy yard, and they came from Fort Shafter, they came from Schofield, various military bases. And again, this was another group of whites who were pressing for schools which did not have that many Asians. INTERVIEWER: How did the kids get along? SASAI: Not too well but, you know, kids get along. But the Asian kids stayed by themselves, and the white kids stayed by themselves. INTERVIEWER: Were there any fights or type of things because of that? SASAI: Not too many, but there were some. INTERVIEWER: What about---how were the grades set up? Does it go, a normal, like kindergarten to --how exactly was the--SASAI: Well, the English standard school started in the first grade, grade one, and went all the way up to grade 12. So if you stayed in the English standard school system, you could go all the way through public schools. INTERVIEWER: Were the schools separated, like you have one set for grammar school and then another one for high school, or is it at one place, one through 12? SASAI: Well, as I indicated, there were about five elementary schools, English standard, in the city of Honolulu, and then these five fed their graduates to this one junior-senior high school in the city. INTERVIEWER: How did you get to school? SASAI: How did I? Just walked to school, about half an hour walk from my home. [04:00] INTERVIEWER: Did you have any favorite subjects? This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 10 of 53 �SASAI: Not particularly. I didn’t do---I wasn’t that smart a kid in school. INTERVIEWER: What classes appealed to you, that you--SASAI: Oh, I suppose like history, that type of thing, appealed to me. Social studies. That sort of thing appealed to me. But as I look back on those years, the teachers at those English standard schools were mostly white women. They were 98 percent very, very excellent teachers, and I think that the reason I can write up a sentence or a paragraph or speak today is because these teachers, over the years, pounded English into our heads. And I guess I owe it to them, as I think of it now, that my ability to write or speak is really because of them. So I owe them a lot, in spite of the fact that I thought they were picking on me. INTERVIEWER: What teacher did you like? Did you have any favorite teachers? SASAI: Oh, a number of them were---at that time, I thought I hated them because I thought they were picking on me. But I’m sure from their point of view, they were doing their best to make me or others like me proficient [06:00] in English. And in order to get people like me who spoke Japanese at home and pidgin English with my friends and only proper English when I was in school, they really had to work on us to get us to speak properly and write properly, this type of thing. INTERVIEWER: Were there any Caucasian kids that spoke pidgin that you socialized with in your school years? SASAI: Well, most of the kids, whether they’re---whatever their ethnic background, who were born and raised in Hawaii, can speak pidgin because that’s a lingua franca, you know, that’s how you can get along with anyone. He might be---parents come from the Philippines or parents came from China or parents came from Puerto Rico, but if you speak pidgin, you’re going to communicate. INTERVIEWER: Did you have any close friends that you guys, that you would socialize with? SASAI: Yeah, most of them were Asian kids like me, and although we generally got along with all of our classmates, schoolmates, whether they were whites or native Hawaiians or Asian, you generally socialized with your own groupings, ethnic groupings. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 11 of 53 �INTERVIEWER: Your parents, since they both came from Japan, did they keep in touch with family? SASAI: Yes, quite a bit. Quite a bit. INTERVIEWER: How? SASAI: By letter. And, you know, they would read letters from their relatives in Japan, and so we’d listen. [08:00] INTERVIEWER: Did your folks visit Japan? SASAI: Several times during my lifetime, I know that they went back to Japan for like a monthlong visit and this type of thing. But my mother was a---she liked tea ceremony, and she was a teacher of tea ceremony, and she would go to Kyoto quite often to the home school of this tea ceremony, and she would stay there for several months at a time taking lessons, and then she’d come home and teach other kids here tea ceremony. INTERVIEWER: When, I guess high school, how---what type of things fascinated you in high school? Is there anything in particular? SASAI: No, I guess I was just a real high school kid. What they say in Hawaiian is kolohe, K-OL-O-H-E. Kolohe means mischievous, you know, full of trouble. INTERVIEWER: What type of things did you do for fun? SASAI: Oh, we did a lot of running around. Someone has a car, we’d go out with them and go body surfing or swimming or this type of thing. INTERVIEWER: Did the boys and the girls have social type things? SASAI: Social type things? INTERVIEWER: Yeah, dances--This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 12 of 53 �SASAI: Well, in school they had the usual school dances and socials, and we would go. [10:00] But within the Japanese community, there weren’t that many social gatherings for the kids. You’d get taken to social gatherings of grownups as part of the family, but there were very few dance parties or socials in someone’s home, that type of thing, where only the kids were involved. Very little of that. INTERVIEWER: Did you come into town as well, I mean do things in the downtown area for fun? SASAI: Not for fun. Shopping, yeah, or passing through if you’re going to school or something, you’d catch the bus and pass through school---through town to go to school. INTERVIEWER: Did you participate in any sports when you got involved in, when you were in high school? SASAI: Mostly intramural sports rather than varsity sports. I was never much of an athlete, so I just played around with the guys, whether softball or touch football or whatever. INTERVIEWER: When Pearl Harbor was bombed, where---what were you doing at that time, or do you remember what? SASAI: Well, I remember it quite vividly, because Pearl Harbor day is December 7, 1941, it was a Sunday. I had gone out to a movie with my friends, and when I got home that night, my dad says, “I’m going to get you up early in the morning. You’re going to help me repair a leaky roof.” [12:00] So he got me up early Sunday morning, we were up on the roof and, well, I don’t know whether you’re familiar with the city of Honolulu, but do you know where the Ala Moana shopping center is? INTERVIEWER: Yes. SASAI: Our family home was fairly close there. We were up on the roof, and we looked toward the airport, which is, compass direction is west from our house. In Hawaiian, that direction is ewa, E-W-A, because the town of Ewa is in the western side of the island. And we looked ewa, and we could see lots of black smoke. And after a while, we could see puffs in the air, and we knew---I knew it had to be anti-aircraft fire. And if you had lived on Oahu 1940, 1941, you’d have become really accustomed to the Army, constant maneuvers. There’d be trucks, convoys going through town. If you went to the beaches, This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 13 of 53 �they’d be defending the beaches, various things like that. And so both my father and I, as we saw the smoke, said, “Wow, it’s really realistic today,” you know. And my---the sister right above me had come down and was in our kitchen preparing Sunday breakfast for us. She turned on the radio---in those days, no TV---and this male voice kept saying, “Pearl [14:00] Harbor is under attack. Take cover. Take cover. This is the real McCoy. This is no drill. Take cover.” Over and over again, same message. And you could tell just by his voice that he was really, really serious, this man who was the announcer. I don’t know whether you’ve ever heard of a radio broadcast called Hawaii Calls. INTERVIEWER: Yeah. SASAI: It was a real famous radio broadcast that used to be sent to the mainland US, and this man was the announcer for that program. His name was Webley Edwards, and he apparently had the duty that day at the radio station, and he was getting the news that Pearl Harbor was under attack, and he was getting that message out, and my dad and I came off that roof in a big hurry. It was really a frightening experience for both my parents, because the radio announcer, Webley Edwards, was saying that the attacking planes have the “red meatball” of Japan. And both my parents looked at each other---I can remember their faces---and they used the Japanese word masaka. Masaka means it can’t be, it can’t possibly be. And they kept saying masaka. So we’re trying to translate what’s being said on the radio to them in Japanese, saying the planes that are attacking Pearl Harbor have the hinomaru, which is the [16:00] rising sun insignia, and the announcer is saying, “meatball.” And my parents are saying “Masaka. It can’t be,” you know. So that was December 7 for me. INTERVIEWER: Were there any hints prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor that they had in the newspapers? SASAI: Not that I know of. Not that I know of. Because it came, at least in my family, as a complete surprise. We just couldn’t believe it. INTERVIEWER: Did you listen to the radio like people today watch TV during that time? SASAI: Well, yeah. The radio was the only piece of communication other than a newspaper, you know. So we had to listen to all the announcements. INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 14 of 53 �What about news-wise? I mean, prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, was there any kind of hint that the Japanese would be bombing or there would be war between Japan-SASAI: Well, there was a great deal of negotiations going back and forth between Japan and America. None of us, however, felt that it was going to end up being a war, and so it was a real surprise to us. INTERVIEWER: Once your folks got settled down, realizing that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, what worries did they have? SASAI: They really didn’t know what to think. And here they were, Japanese citizens [18:00] in America, and their country is attacking America. They don’t know what’s going to happen to them, you know. And of course you’re aware that, at that time, Japanese immigrants could not become citizens. You could not become naturalized. It was not until, I think, the middle 1950s that Congress passed an act allowing Japanese immigrants to become naturalized US citizens. That particular act, I am pretty sure, was bought with the blood of Nisei soldiers. INTERVIEWER: What about homes, then? Were you able to buy, own your own home? SASAI: Well, I don’t know how it was done, but apparently my father owned the fee simple title to his home. How it was in Hawaii as different from California, I don’t know. INTERVIEWER: When, or how were you inducted into the service? SASAI: I volunteered. The conditions were not good for Japanese, just as it was on the west coast, and we were under a tremendous amount of suspicion as to what our loyalties were, this type of thing. And there were things like, I was 1-A in the draft and all of a sudden [20:00] I got a notice from my draft board saying you are now 4-C. And when you inquire what 4-C meant, they tell you it means you are an enemy alien. And you know, it’s pretty traumatic if you’re a native-born American, and you consider yourself an American, to be told by your draft board that you are an enemy alien. That’s pretty---I tell you, it’s 60-plus years since that happened, but I still burn when I think about Americans, my native-born American compatriots, saying I’m now an enemy alien. You know, that’s really humiliating. And treating you like feces, you know. And to this day, I burn when I think about that particular action. INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 15 of 53 �What was it like amongst your hakujin friends? SASAI: Many of them didn’t know what to do with us, their friends, because they didn’t know how to take us. Were we enemy, were we Americans, or what? They weren’t sure. The main thing is, you look like the enemy, okay? It’s not that you broke any laws or you did any sabotage or were disloyal. You just look like the enemy, and as a result you were being discriminated against and suspected of maybe you’re doing something, [22:00] how can we trust you, kind of a thing. INTERVIEWER: Once the bombing of Pearl Harbor had kind of, not so much wound down, but effectwise, did your folks have---were they worried about their businesses or their life? SASAI: Very much so. Very much so, because throughout---on the mainland, like 120,000 Japanese were uprooted and sent to relocation camps, concentration camps. Here in Hawaii, maybe there were cooler heads. Maybe it’s because what were they going to do for labor if they took a third of the population and imprisoned them? So there was a great deal of suspicion, discrimination, if you want to call it that. It was a very difficult time for us to live here in Hawaii under suspicion all the time, and as a result---you need to know, let’s see. Prior to World War II and even today, the various states, individual states, including the territory of Hawaii then---we were still not a state---had National Guard units. [24:00] They were approved constitutionally, and they are militia, state militia, under the control of the governor of the state. But somewhere around 1940 or 1941, because war clouds were really coming heavy to the US, the United States government decided to federalize all the National Guard units, and by federalizing I mean they were brought into the United States Army, and they went under federal control rather than state control. And in Hawaii we had two National Guard regiments, and they became part of the US Army. And there were---obviously in Hawaii you have a mixed ethnic group, so within the Hawaiian National Guard, you had all kinds of mixtures. Japanese, Chinese, Hawaiian, you know, all kinds. And when the war started, all these guys are now in the US Army, they’re sent out to the beaches of Oahu, on neighbor islands, to defend the beaches from the invasion of the Japs. But then, somewhere, somebody along the line must have gotten all bent out of shape, saying, “If we have an invasion, these Jap soldiers are going to let them walk right in.” They didn’t know whether the Japanese American GIs, how they would react, and so [26:00] they were all relieved of their duty on the defense lines, on the beaches, sent to Schofield Barracks, and they were there, sitting. Their weapons were turned in. And it is out of there that, in June of 1942, the Battle of Midway was just developing. And if the United States Navy had lost the Battle of Midway, Hawaii and the west coast of the United States would have been wide open for invasion. The only defensive force the US had was the Pacific fleet. Fortunately, the Pacific fleet won. But in Hawaii, the military knew that this battle was rapidly developing, and they had a problem. What were they going to do with all these Jap soldiers? So they found a freighter and loaded them all in This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 16 of 53 �and sent them to the US mainland, and eventually to Camp McCoy, Wisconsin. And this is the 100th Infantry Battalion. The 100th Infantry Battalion is the first Nisei unit to go into battle in Italy. INTERVIEWER: Were you going to college at the time that Pearl Harbor--SASAI: Yes, I was a freshman at the University of Hawaii. And after the Battle of Midway and after the guys who left [28:00] to go to Camp McCoy, Wisconsin, and became the 100 th Battalion, they did very well in training, so well that the Army decided, and I guess cooler heads prevailed, and they said, “Well, let’s create another unit of volunteers into a combat unit,” and this is the unit that became the 442nd. END OF AUDIO FILE 2 BEGINNING OF TAPE THREE 623-Sasai-Sam-3 INTERVIEWER: [00:00] Did anything happen to your folks when---to the business that they had? SASAI: No, nothing happened to them, but there were many leaders of the community, like people who had been presidents of the Japanese Chamber of Commerce, or if they were Japanese language school teachers, or if they were Buddhist or Shinto priests, anyone that could be considered a leader of the community got picked up by the FBI and sent to the mainland to be imprisoned. INTERVIEWER: Did you know of any persons that did go---I mean, did you personally know anyone--SASAI: Well, you know, I was an 18-year-old kid, so some of the fathers of people I knew got picked up. They just disappeared. Nobody knew where the hell they went. INTERVIEWER: What---did they take the entire family or just the parents? SASAI: It depends on the family. If the family was composed of husband, wife, and young kids, the whole family got taken. But if the family was composed of independent kids, those, you know, like over 21 or were working and could support themselves without the father being present, then only the father got taken, and the family stayed in Hawaii. INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 17 of 53 �Like yourself. Were [02:00] you working at the time that you were going in high school and college? SASAI: No, not working. I was a freshman at the University of Hawaii, and in the second semester of my freshman year, that would be January or February of 1943, the news came about that the United States of America was recruiting a all-volunteer combat unit of Japanese Americans. And of course this was the forerunner of the 442 nd. And it was then that I volunteered to enter the service. So I was about 18 and a half when I entered the service. INTERVIEWER: Did you hear of any news of the 100th when they went over to Europe? I mean, was there any talk about the 100th before the 4-4-2 was formed? SASAI: Well, let’s see. Timing-wise, the 100th---the guys in the National Guard were sent to Camp McCoy and they started training. They did so well that in March of 1943, the Army decided, or the country decided, they would create this additional unit. And at that time, we went to Camp Shelby in Mississippi. The 100th Battalion was almost finished with their training, and they were now combat ready, and so they left to go overseas. We were not yet ready. The 442nd was not yet ready, and so we began training, [04:00] and the 100th then began fighting in Italy. And of course they were losing men, you know, being killed and wounded. And in order to fight, you needed a full-strength battalion, and the only place in the entire world where there were partially trained Japanese Americans was at Camp Shelby in Mississippi, where the 442 nd was training. So at that time they began drawing men from the 442 nd to go as replacements to the 100th Battalion, who was already in combat in Italy. And so eventually we lost 500 or 600 men from the 442nd who became replacements to the 100th Battalion. INTERVIEWER: You mentioned that you volunteered? SASAI: Yes. INTERVIEWER: Did you re-volunteer again? You mentioned that you were classified as a 4-C, so how--SASAI: Well, the 4-C classification was draft, and at that time no Japanese American was being drafted, okay, so we volunteered. And it was subsequent to the volunteering, and I believe subsequent to our entry into combat, that the United States reverted Japanese Americans to whatever the draft status was that they deserved to be. You may have been classified 4-C or 4-F because you were not in good health, or you could have This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 18 of 53 �been classified 1-A if you were eligible, but you were then in the same category as [06:00] any other American, and this whole idea of being an enemy alien was dropped. INTERVIEWER: Did you and a group of people go, or any of your close friends, go down to the draft board? SASAI: To volunteer? INTERVIEWER: Yeah. SASAI: Yeah. INTERVIEWER: And do you remember the names of the people that you went with? SASAI: Oh yeah, most of them were my classmates up at the university, you know, we were freshmen at the university, and most of us decided we would volunteer. INTERVIEWER: Did you and---did a bunch of you guys go, or did you and a close friend--SASAI: Well, I think I went by myself. But, you know, we’d talk about it, and we decided, yeah, we’d better volunteer, so we did. INTERVIEWER: Where were you inducted at? SASAI: At Schofield Barracks in Honolulu. INTERVIEWER: Did you train over there? SASAI: No. We must have spent maybe two or three weeks at the very outset at Schofield. We were sworn in, we got uniforms, you know, they got us ready. And then they put us on a ship and sent us to Camp Shelby, Mississippi. INTERVIEWER: Do you remember the name of the ship? This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 19 of 53 �SASAI: The SS Lurline, L-U-R-L-I-N-E. INTERVIEWER: Was there a special type of parade that you had going onto the ship? SASAI: Well, prior to the day of our departure, we were up in Schofield, which is, you know, 25, 30 miles away from the city of Honolulu, and we were ordered down to the---do you know where [08:00] Iolani Palace is? INTERVIEWER: Yes. SASAI: The center of town? And the entire volunteer group was marched into the grounds of Iolani Palace, and a whole bunch of prominent citizens wished us goodbye and good luck and all of that type of thing. Several days later, we boarded the Lurline and took off to mainland US. INTERVIEWER: How long did it take to cross the sea, I mean from California to---from Hawaii to California? SASAI: About five days. High speed, solo, no convoy, just us. One ship going as fast as it could. INTERVIEWER: Were there---were you worried about your--SASAI: Oh yeah. You know, you’re worried about being torpedoed and this type of thing. But one of the, I guess, the biggest memories I have is when we landed in Oakland. We landed at the Oakland Army pier, and we debarked, and there was a troop train right on the dock, and we loaded up on the troop train. And when the troop train left, we had to go through the city of Oakland, and on the back end of any city, the train tracks are running through industrial areas of town. And it was stop and go, stop and go, stop and go. And one time the train stopped, and I looked out the window of the car I was riding in, and I saw a truck, a rubbish truck, municipal rubbish department, and there were [10:00] a group of men dumping rubbish into the truck. And by that---by itself, there is nothing amazing about that but for me, an 18-year-old kid from Hawaii, what was amazing was every single one of the guys dumping rubbish was a white man. When I grew up, no white man ever did manual labor in Hawaii. They were always the bosses. The guys who did manual labor was the native Hawaiians and the Asians. And so that one look, to see a bunch of white guys dumping rubbish, remained in my mind all my This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 20 of 53 �life. And it gave me tremendous amounts of confidence that my station in life was not way down there, it could be anything I wanted, you know, depending on what I knew and what I could do. And so that one thing was---it stays right bright in my mind to this day, that one scene. INTERVIEWER: Were they also looking back into the train or looking through the--SASAI: No, they were working. INTERVIEWER: Oh, they were. SASAI: You know, they were just working, and the train just happened to stop there so I could look at them, you know. INTERVIEWER: When you were stopping at each station along the way, were you picking up soldiers? SASAI: No. No, it was just our group, and we were going across country and ended up in Mississippi. INTERVIEWER: Were the blinds of the train open? SASAI: As I recall, when we were running into a stop at [12:00] any kind of a station, we were asked to draw the blinds. But the rest of the time, when you were running, you could keep the blinds open. INTERVIEWER: They took on additional passengers while--SASAI: It was just our group. INTERVIEWER: Do you recall how long that trip was? SASAI: I don’t know. I think it was two or three days. INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 21 of 53 �What was running through your mind when you were going across? SASAI: Well, you know, it’s---you see things that you’ve never seen before, you know. You were born and raised on an island, surrounded by an ocean. Just think if you were in Iowa or Nebraska and the train is running, running, running, and you see corn fields right out to the horizon, or wheat fields out to the horizon. If you’re raised on an island and all you can see is water around you, it’s really an experience that was just absolutely amazing for us, you know, we’re young kids. INTERVIEWER: Was there any state that you were impressed with as you were going through? Or did they announce--SASAI: Well, we knew from the stations and the map where we were, you know, and the conductor was a black guy, and he was very nice, and he would tell us where we were, this type of thing. INTERVIEWER: What kind of rapport did you have with him besides---I mean, did you have just other chitchat rapport with the conductor? SASAI: Yeah, yeah. Some of the guys were white, some of them were black. [14:00] INTERVIEWER: What was their reaction to you being on the train? SASAI: Well, you know, they probably had never seen a bunch of Asians before, you know. And here we’re a bunch of guys playing ukuleles and singing, and must have been a real strange experience for them, too. INTERVIEWER: What kind of dialogue did you have between them? SASAI: Oh, not too much because, you know, they’re working, and we didn’t bother them that much. You know, if you ask them a question, they’ll answer, that’s about it. INTERVIEWER: What type of food did they feed you on the train? SASAI: GI food. Nothing much. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 22 of 53 �INTERVIEWER: Along on that journey, were you able to get off the train at all? SASAI: No. They just kept going, and when it stopped, we were kept on the train. INTERVIEWER: Where did you---what station did you stop, your final destination, do you recall the station? SASAI: Well, we didn’t know where we were going. Maybe the people who were in charge knew, but the men who were all privates, we didn’t know where we were going. And we, you know, went through---from Oakland we went through Utah by the Great Salt Lake, up into Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, then down following the Mississippi River, down south, Tennessee, and finally we stopped, and they tell us this is Camp Shelby in Mississippi. That’s where we were. [16:00] We get off the train. INTERVIEWER: What was your reaction when you got off the train? SASAI: Well, you know, it’s pretty hard to say, you know. Here we are, pine trees around there, you know. Strange place. Just that’s what we asked for, so you’ve got to make the best of it. INTERVIEWER: Did you meet---have any close friends on that train when, I mean along the way? When you got to Camp Shelby, did you end up being placed in the same barracks? SASAI: Well, you know, there were about, I would say, 2,500 of us from Hawaii. That was pretty big train load. When the train stopped at the siting in Camp Shelby, you know, we got off and they directed us to barracks, got us bedded down. And then over the next few days, the personnel department started to winnow us out and said, you go this company, you go to that company. And eventually I ended up in this headquarters company of the 3rd Battalion. INTERVIEWER: In the personnel department, was it also a Japanese--SASAI: Yeah, it was part of the regiment, you know, the regimental headquarters people looked at our personnel records, our what they call AGCT, Army General Classification Test. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 23 of 53 �It’s like a IQ test, and it shows you what your basic IQ is and what your---what things you were good at, you know, [18:00] whether you were mechanical or whatever. INTERVIEWER: What did you score best in, in that? SASAI: Oh, I don’t know. I was never privy to what my score was. All I knew was they said, “You report to that company,” so I reported to that company. INTERVIEWER: What was your basic training like, then, once you settled in? SASAI: Well, basic training in the Army is the same wherever you go. Basic training is basic. They teach you to march, they teach you to do various things, and it’s only after you finish basic training that you start doing specialized training in your particular specialty. If you’re a machine gunner, you learn the machine gun. If you’re a mortar man, you learn how to use the mortar. I was a gunner of an anti-tank gun, and it’s after basic training that you start doing your specialized training in your particular field. INTERVIEWER: What was it like being part of that gunner team? SASAI: Oh boy. It’s not something that I enjoyed, but it’s something I had volunteered for, so you had to make the best of it, and you try your best to get along. INTERVIEWER: How long was that training? SASAI: All together, one year. We went from basic training to what is known as small unit training, and then into battalion training, and then into regimental and combat team training. And this was---at the end of one year, you’re doing combat team training and organized unit movements. [20:00] And somewhere along the way, the chief of staff of the Army came all the way down from Washington and watched us doing battalion in attack, battalion in defense, and this type of thing. And then he pronounced us combat ready, and that was about one year after we got to Camp Shelby. And that meant that, you know, we had to get ready to go overseas. INTERVIEWER: What was your specific duty on that anti-tank company? SASAI: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 24 of 53 �Well, we had one platoon of three guns. Each gun was serviced by a squad of 10 men, and each gun had various people, with three gunners who fired the gun. And that was my job, to fire the gun. INTERVIEWER: How accurate was that anti-tank gun? SASAI: Very accurate up to about 500 yards. Very accurate. INTERVIEWER: What did you shoot at during training, then? SASAI: During training? INTERVIEWER: Yeah. SASAI: During training, we would simulate---they would have a firing range, and they would have something moving 500 or 600 yards out, and you’d fire at that moving target. It simulated a tank. That’s what it--INTERVIEWER: Did you do anything for fun once---I mean on leave? Did you have time to--SASAI: Oh yeah, we did a good deal of traveling around over weekends when you had weekend leave. Go down to New Orleans, or [22:00] the nearest town from camp was a place called Hattiesburg. Go down there and have a few beers or eat at a restaurant or something like that. INTERVIEWER: How did the locals take to you? SASAI: Very difficult to measure that. We tended to stay by ourselves, although there were a good many brawls in town as well as in camp of guys who would call you names. For us, I think most of us, all of us, were determined we were going to take no crap from no white man. And so there were a lot of brawls, I tell you. INTERVIEWER: Is there anything that you recall that you personally experienced in one of those brawls? SASAI: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 25 of 53 �Oh yeah, you know, usually when you went out on pass, you’d go out with three or four guys from your company or your squad, people you know. And, you know, you’re in town, you have a few beers, or you’re in a restaurant, you’re eating, and someone calls somebody a name, “You f***ing Jap,” or whatever. And the guy stands up and rams the guy, and the riot starts. And you want to help your buddy, so it ends up with being a real riot, you know. INTERVIEWER: Were there other ethnic groups? I guess that’s the wrong statement. When you were in town, were there African Americans that [24:00] looked at you the same way, or how did they react to you? SASAI: They didn’t know how to take us. They had never seen us before, you know. And of course, Mississippi was the heart of Jim Crow country, and all the black GIs had to stay in the black part of town. They couldn’t come into the white part of town. Whereas we were ordered to patronize white restaurants, we were ordered to sit on the ground floor of a movie theater. Don’t go up on the balcony because that’s nigger heaven. That was the Jim Crow South. If you rode on the bus, you had to sit in front of the white line on the bus. All the black guys had to sit in the back. INTERVIEWER: Did you ever, I mean, did you have any kind of an opportunity to speak to them? SASAI: Rarely, rarely. Because they were completely separate, and we were ordered that you will act like a white man. That’s the way it was. INTERVIEWER: How did that affect you? I mean, when they said that to you--SASAI: Well, I think the---let me jump way forward. INTERVIEWER: Okay. SASAI: In the 1950s in Hawaii, many of us veterans had gone to school under the GI Bill of Rights, and we came home to Hawaii as engineers, doctors, dentists, lawyers, accountants, bankers like me, [26:00] at least with a bachelor’s degree from well-known mainland universities. I got a MBA out of the University of Pennsylvania, which is---their Wharton School of Finance and Commerce is one of the best-known schools of business in the country, and I come home with an MBA. Many of us like that. And so, at that time, a whole group of us, I guess most of us, felt that somehow we had to change Hawaii to the better, and it’s not going to be only white man in politics and economics This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 26 of 53 �and in social life. And in the middle 1950s, many of the veterans, Japanese American veterans, helped the Democratic Party of Hawaii to take over the government of Hawaii from the Republicans which represented the white group. And so all of this, I think, started with this looking at these black guys in Mississippi and seeing how they were discriminated against and how similar it was for us in Hawaii. We had to do all the manual labor, and if you became a clerk in a bank, 30 years later you retired as a clerk in the bank. We figured we had to change that. And in my own case, I got an MBA, not only a bachelor’s degree but an MBA, out of the best school of business in the country, and I came home with a ticket. And when I joined the bank, [28:00] here’s my ticket, and you’re not going to make me a clerk, you know. I’m going to do something that is more fitting to what I know and not because what I look like. That’s the way Hawaii changed, and it’s the---I think the Nisei veterans who triggered the Democratic Party’s push into control of Hawaii’s legislature. END OF AUDIO FILE 3 BEGINNING OF TAPE FOUR 623-Sasai-Sam-4 INTERVIEWER: [00:00] When you were in camp training, did you have a---did you go visit any of the relocation camps? SASAI: Yes, I did. As you know, there were two relocation camps in the state of Arkansas, and the state of Mississippi is next door to Arkansas. So, although it took a bus ride of, oh, 8 to 10 hours from Camp Shelby, I did have a chance to visit with people in both Rohwer Camp and Jerome Camp. In fact, I have a female cousin who lives in Los Angeles, whose father was the editor---an editor of the Rafu Shimpo, and as a result he was picked up on December 7 and imprisoned, leaving my cousin and her mother in Los Angeles. Fortunately, my cousin was old enough to have a job, and so they were together until the relocation camp experience started, and they were shipped to Rohwer Camp in Arkansas. And so we visited them out of Camp Shelby in Mississippi, and I visited my cousin in Rohwer. So that’s my experience. INTERVIEWER: What was your reaction to what you saw? SASAI: Well, I guess that’s one of the other things that really motivated us that---when I say that when we came home after the war and decided [02:00] we had to change Hawaii, this was one of the motivating factors among many of us who had experienced what had happened to our kind of people in these camps. I guess that’s one of the best things that ever happened, from my point of view, in my development as a human, to know what kind of treatment they were getting there, you know, barbed wire, guard towers, This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 27 of 53 �searchlights, armed guards, this type of thing. It was just unbelievable for me that America would treat other Americans that way. INTERVIEWER: Did you go there with a good friend or did you--SASAI: To the camp? INTERVIEWER: Yeah. SASAI: Well, let me---it’s a long story again, but I have---my eldest sister married a man named Maehara. He was a schoolteacher, but when he was going to the University of Hawaii, he was an ROTC person and he was a reserve lieutenant. And so when we volunteered to form up the 442nd, he got called up to active duty and he accompanied us to Camp Shelby. And he knew of my aunt and my cousin who were in this Rohwer Camp, so he told me one day---and remember, he’s a lieutenant, I’m a private---he got a hold of me, and he says, “I think what you’d better do is to go visit your aunt and your cousin to give them reassurance that members of the family know about them, that we’re behind them,” and this type of thing. So he, as a lieutenant, [04:00] got me a pass over the weekend, and he and I went to this Rohwer Camp to visit my aunt and cousin. So we were able to spend one night there, and I had some money with me, so I gave some money to my aunt and I said, “You know, in this kind of situation, money talks, so you hang onto this money and someday you may need it.” And she just cried, and she took the money. And I remember, years later in Los Angeles, after the war was over, she showed me the money. She said, “I kept it in my purse all these years.” And one other thing that I need to tell you is that when we, my brother-in-law and I, arrived at Rohwer Camp, he and I---the bus let us off, and it was about 100-, 200-yard distance between the highway and the gate of the camp. And so my brother-in-law and I, we walk in toward the camp, and there was an MP guarding the gate. And, you know, military courtesy, you must walk on the left of a superior officer, one pace behind, and so my brother-in-law is ahead, and I’m one pace behind and to his left, walking toward the gate. And this MP, a white guy, he is seeing these two uniforms approaching. And then, as we get closer, he sees that one of the uniforms has the bars of a lieutenant, and the poor guy---and I feel sorry for him---he really doesn’t know what to do, you know. [06:00] These two guys look like the same Japs that he’s guarding inside the camp, and here they are approaching, and one of them is an officer, you know. I could see the expression on his face, he was---he really didn’t know what to do. But at the very last minute, his training came to the fore. He came to attention and saluted. How about that? Boy, it made me feel good, though. INTERVIEWER: Was there any interaction between you two and the MP? This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 28 of 53 �SASAI: No, nothing. He just looked at us, and he directed us to the office. And, you know, you register that you are visiting, and they let you in there. INTERVIEWER: If the office---or I guess there were Caucasian officers, military people, when you check in? SASAI: There must have been, but we didn’t see them. You know, the MP detachment guarding the prison must have their officer groups, the sergeants and officers, and they were living right outside the camp in their own quarters, but we had no contact with them. INTERVIEWER: So how did you find your relatives? SASAI: Well, you know, they were not being mistreated or anything, it’s the whole idea that you’re being confined, you know. Of course, if you are accustomed to living in your own home, living in a camp behind barbed wire and being guarded and having to use communal toilets and eating in a mess hall, not the best thing, [08:00] you know. And whole families living in one room. That’s not the best situation, but it’s better than living in a tent, you know, at least there’s a roof over your head, hot water. You have to go to the communal bathroom, but--INTERVIEWER: Did your relatives do anything special for you when you--SASAI: No, they couldn’t. There’s nothing they could do, you know. They took us to the mess hall and we ate together, and that’s about it. INTERVIEWER: What was your reaction to the people that were there around you? SASAI: Well, we didn’t know them, but they were happy to see us because we were, you know, relations of someone they knew living there. That’s about it. INTERVIEWER: When you left, was it---when you stayed overnight, what was it like then, I mean, in terms of did you have a bed to sleep on, was it a typical bed? SASAI: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 29 of 53 �Yeah, it’s GI beds, you know, single GI beds. Comfortable enough, but still, you know, it’s not like what you have in your own home. INTERVIEWER: What---do you take like a public bus back? SASAI: Yes, like a Greyhound bus. INTERVIEWER: And on that bus, were there Caucasians? SASAI: Yeah. Of course this is deep south, so there was that white line, and we had to sit in the front of the bus, and all the black people had to [10:00] cram into the back end of the bus. INTERVIEWER: Did you have a---were there white officers that were on that bus as, I mean--SASAI: No, not that I remember. There were white civilians but, you know, we just looked at each other, never said anything to each other. One of the great experiences I had on that particular first trip to Rohwer Camp was the bus, like a Greyhound bus---we’re traveling, and in the middle of the night we end up in a small, little town in Arkansas across the Mississippi River, and the bus pulls up to the bus station. The bus station is black, you know, not a single light on. And he says, “You two soldiers get off here and wait for the bus that’ll take you to Rohwer.” So we says, “Jesus, you know, we can’t even go inside,” and the guy says, “Well, they went home to sleep. So you just wait outside and the bus will come.” And it did come. But my brother-in-law and I, we get off and stand around for a while. God, we’d like to have something to eat or---and we see a light way down the main street of this town, and so we say, Let’s go take a look. And we walk, and this one light that we could see on the street is a narrow storefront, glass windows, and it’s a town bar, and the window says “Corn Whiskey, 25 cents.” Can you imagine that? Corn whiskey, 25 cents. And we figured maybe we can get a cup of coffee. So we open the door and we walk in, [12:00] and there’s a long counter and a whole bunch of white guys sitting there, all drinking corn whiskey. And, you know, they’re sitting on stools, and every single one of them had a pistol sticking out of the back pocket, you know, Saturday night specials? You never heard of that? INTERVIEWER: Yeah. SASAI: Saturday night specials. Every single one of them, you could see pistol sticking out of their back pocket, and there was dead silence in that bar. And so my brother-in-law and This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 30 of 53 �I, we walk all the way to the back where there were empty seats, and the bartender comes up to us and says, “What can I do for you?” So we said, “Can we get a cup of coffee?” He says, “Okay,” and he poured us a cup of coffee. We drank it, we paid the money, and my brother-in-law gives me the elbow, let’s get the hell out of here, you know. So we stand up, we walk out. The place is dead quiet, and the last guy sitting on the bar by the door---my brother-in-law is ahead of me, and I’m in back of him---he grabbed me by the arm, hard, you know. I’m in uniform. And he says, “What are you?” He’d probably never seen a Japanese before, you know. He says, “What are you?” Hey, I’m not stupid, so I tell him, “My mother is Chinese, my father is Hawaiian,” and I walked out of the place. I wasn’t about to say I was Japanese and get in a fight with 20 guys in there, all with pistols, you know. And so we just prayed for the bus to come and get the hell out of there. INTERVIEWER: So there was---and once you got out, they didn’t follow you or harass you? SASAI: No, they didn’t follow me. [14:00] INTERVIEWER: How many trips did you make to the camps? SASAI: I think I went to Rohwer Camp twice, and one time I went to Jerome Camp. That’s about it. INTERVIEWER: And was there someone that you knew at Jerome? SASAI: No, we just went because we were invited. There was a lady by the name of Mary Nakahara, her married name is---I forget. But Mary was the organizer of the USO in, I think, Jerome, and she did a wonderful job of organizing the young ladies to have a dance on Saturday nights, stuff like that. So we had a good time in Jerome. INTERVIEWER: How long was the trip? SASAI: Oh, just about as long. Eight, 10 hours. You know, the Greyhound buses, they stop, stop, stop at all the little towns along the way, so it takes a lot of time. INTERVIEWER: While you were training at Camp Shelby, did you have any conflict with the Nisei---the mainland soldiers that were training there? This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 31 of 53 �SASAI: Well, you know, we were together in the same unit. I think initially what we were led to understand was that when we arrived in Camp Shelby, our---do you know the word cadre? C-A-D-R-E. We were under the impression that our training cadre, the guys who were going to train us, were out of the 100th Battalion. [16:00] You know, these are the guys who were National Guardsmen and who were in the Army and who got shipped out just before the Battle of Midway. We were under the impression that they were going to be our cadre, but when we got to Camp Shelby, we find that there was a whole bunch of mainland guys who were in various units because they had been drafted. But after Pearl Harbor, they got segregated out because they weren’t trusted, and they had become quartermasters or camp quartermasters or hospital orderlies and this type of thing, to keep them far away. And when the whole idea of the 442nd began, they were ordered to Camp Shelby because they were experienced soldiers and had been through basic training, and they were trained again to train us. And so the relationship wasn’t good because they were our teachers, and we were expecting someone else to be our teachers, you know. And of course one of the really hard things for guys from Hawaii was that the mainland guys could speak English a hell of a lot better than we could, because we were so used to speaking in pidgin, you know. And we would say to them, “Hey, what are you guys? Haole or what?” You know, are you a white man or what, you know. And these kind of differences occurred, a lot of differences occurred. But I think that, over the months, and especially for those of us who made the trips into [18:00] relocation camps, our thinking changed because they were doing a hell of a lot more suffering than our families in Hawaii, you know. So I think our feelings changed along the way as we trained together and of course, once you go into combat, it’s a real different story. It’s who has the courage to fight, and it doesn’t mean that a guy living or born in Los Angeles has more courage than a guy born in Honolulu. And you know, all of that becomes equal after a while. INTERVIEWER: Well, you were talking about, you went to the English--SASAI: Standard schools. INTERVIEWER: ---standard schools, and that your---you had to speak regular English. SASAI: Right. INTERVIEWER: So by going to Camp Shelby, wasn’t there--SASAI: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 32 of 53 �Well, you’re going to have to understand that during the years I went to English standard school in Honolulu, most of my playmates were in a regular public school, not English standard school. So they, my neighborhood playmates, they would say, “Eh, haole,” Hey, white man, you know, because the English I spoke is different from their English. You know, they’re speaking---I can speak pidgin, too, but they knew that I was in an English standard school, so they said, “Hey, you haole or what?” you know. So when we went to Camp Shelby also, although my buddies from Hawaii knew that I came from Hawaii, they---I was sort of in between the mainland cadre men and the Hawaii people [20:00] because I, you know, I ended up speaking differently from my Hawaii buddies. So it was difficult. INTERVIEWER: Did it come very quickly to you to fall into a speech pattern for the mainland Japanese? SASAI: Well, yeah, because it’s the same kind of English that I had in English standard school, you know. But I have the advantage of being able to go from one to the other. If I need to speak standard English, I can, and if I need to speak pidgin, I can, you know. INTERVIEWER: How long were you in training at Camp Shelby? SASAI: One year. INTERVIEWER: One year. When did you ship out of Camp Shelby? SASAI: About May of 1944. It took us like 28 days to zigzag across the Atlantic in a huge convoy and into the Mediterranean. And we were in Naples, Italy, about the end of May. And you’ll recall that the Normandy invasion was June 6, 1944, and so we were in Naples only a few days before that invasion was going to take place, although we didn’t know it was going to take place. Several days later, we were on landing craft from Naples into the Anzio beachhead. That was June the 6th, the same day that Normandy invasion was taking place up north, we were on landing craft going into the Anzio beachhead. [22:00] And there was no fighting at the Anzio beachhead because the American forces, including the 100th Battalion, had broken out of Anzio and they were now north of Rome, and we came through the Anzio beachhead and chased them up north of Rome, and we joined up with the 100th. And from then on, the 100th became one of the battalions of the 442nd. INTERVIEWER: Did you know anyone in the 100th or was it just---how’d that work for you? SASAI: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 33 of 53 �Well, my brother-in-law, this lieutenant, had been picked as one of the replacements out of Camp Shelby to join the 100th Battalion in Anzio, because at the Battle of Cassino, the 100th Battalion took such a beating that they were short of men, and so they picked men out of the 442nd in Mississippi and sent them to fill up the empty ranks of the 100 th Battalion, and my brother-in-law was one of them, as a lieutenant. And so we joined up with the 100th Battalion north of Rome. INTERVIEWER: What was your first site of battle? SASAI: We went---June? Probably in the middle of June, we were fighting in Italy in the--Grosetto is the area. It’s on the Ligurian Sea side of Italy, the left side of Italy, and south of Florence, the big city of Florence. [24:00] So that’s when we first went into battle. INTERVIEWER: Where was your platoon positioned? SASAI: Well, fortunately for us, the big tank battles like that took place on the Russian plains where the German Panzer divisions really were put out to use, or like on the flatlands of France or Holland, the Netherlands, the tanks were used extensively in those areas. But in Italy, Italy is a very mountainous country, and it’s very difficult to utilize tanks in the mountains. And we’re most of the time fighting in the mountains, so fortunately for the anti-tank platoon, we never really had to fight tanks, and so we would position ourselves to guard against any breakthroughs, but we were never involved in an actual tank attack. And so many times, the battalion commander, knowing that we were sitting on our butts in a gun position, and when he needed stretcher bearers because the infantry was being wounded, he would tell us that for the next few days you will be a litter bearer, and we had to store our weapons, put on a Red Cross armband, and go out and carry stretchers out on the battlefield. INTERVIEWER: What was that like? SASAI: Well, I tell you, it’s [26:00] ---there’s nothing as scary as being in a combat zone without a weapon. And all you’ve got is a Red Cross armband, and you have to pray that the enemy, the Germans, will respect the Red Cross. You don’t know that they will. And even if they are not aiming at you, if they fire a burst of machine guns 10, 20 yards away from you, one of those bullets may come your way. Or if they fire a mortar barrage or an artillery barrage in your general area, they may not be aiming at your Red Cross, but you’re going to be one of the guys within that barrage. And if you don’t have a weapon, there’s---you just feel naked, you know, you have no way of fighting back, and so all you can do is dig a hole and stay in the hole as long as you can. But then as soon as someone gets hit, the word comes, “Medics, medics, medics!” And then pretty soon, the This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 34 of 53 �aid man is bandaging the guy up, he’s yelling, “Litter bearers, litter bearers!” and that’s our call. So we’re running to pick that man up, and you don’t know when the burst of machine gun is going to come. And you pick the man up and take him back to get medical help. INTERVIEWER: When they’re shooting machine guns, were they just shooting at a specific area, or were they trying to shoot the medics? SASAI: Well, you know, you’re within the area of a rifle company, let’s say. And the enemy is going to shoot at the riflemen because they’re the people who are attacking them. And if you’re a litter bearer, you’re picking up your own wounded guys in that general area, so you’re within the [28:00] range of the machine gun. And if they fire a mortar barrage, they’re putting a mortar barrage into the infantry guys, but you’re right there with them. END OF AUDIO FILE 4 BEGINNING OF TAPE FIVE 623-Sasai-Sam-5 INTERVIEWER: [00:00] Can we talk about what, about firing the cannon? SASAI: Oh yeah, the 57-millimeter anti-tank guns would never really have penetrated the armor of the Panzer Tiger tanks, at least in my opinion. And fortunately for us in the battalion anti-tank platoons, we never had to fire the guns in anger. We fired them against the enemy pillboxes, things like that, but never against an actual tank attack. Those shells, the projectiles, would have bounced off of the armor, and I know that when we were firing in practice, training---we trained with the guns all the time---and I was the gunner, and the traversing bar was under my armpit, and you move your body, and that traversed the gun. There was a elevating wheel with my left hand, and that would elevate or depress the gun, and my right hand pulled the trigger. And every time I fired that gun, there was no way that you could protect your ear, no way. INTERVIEWER: Yeah, because--SASAI: Yeah, you---and the barrel, the gun barrel is right here, okay? You pull the trigger and go boom! And you couldn’t even do this, you know. And that’s why I wear a hearing aid now, because every time I fired that gun, my ear would ring for a week, yeah. And you’re asking why didn’t they give us a bigger gun? Well, [02:00] the question why didn’t they give us earmuffs or something? But in those days, you were a he-man, you know, iron man. You were able to fight a Tiger tank with only a 57-millimeter gun, and your ear This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 35 of 53 �was supposed to be strong enough to withstand explosions right next to your ear, but that’s the way it was. INTERVIEWER: So no one wore any, or put anything in their ear to protect them? SASAI: There was nothing. Well, you could put cotton but, you know, it doesn’t do any good. What you needed was real earmuffs like that, you know. INTERVIEWER: Was there any area on the tank that is vulnerable, then? SASAI: Well, yeah. If you were able to get to the rear and fire into their engine compartment in the rear of the tank, yes, you would be---but when a tank is attacking you, they’re coming head-on. Or you have a flank chance, but rarely would you have a chance where you’re firing into their rear. INTERVIEWER: What about the personnel carriers? How effective were they against the German personnel carriers? SASAI: Well, you know, a half-track personnel carrier, we could penetrate that easily, but not the Panzers. INTERVIEWER: Did you come across very many personnel carriers? SASAI: No. Rarely, rarely. Because infantry, when you’re fighting against infantry, they’re already dismounted, you know, they’re on the ground, and you would rarely see a truck or personnel carrier moving around. INTERVIEWER: [04:00] How were you positioned when you were prepared for battle, then? SASAI: Well, the battalion commander would order you to set up a gun position at a certain place, because he figures that possibly a German counterattack would come your way, and they would use tanks to lead the attack. And so he would tell you, on a map, where to set up a gun, and we would set up a gun position. But as I say, fortunately we were never in a place where they actually did counterattack with tanks, so--INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 36 of 53 �Can we talk---let’s talk a little bit about “Breyers.” How---where were you positioned in that particular campaign? SASAI: Which one? INTERVIEWER: “Brayers”? SASAI: Bruyères? INTERVIEWER: Bruyères. SASAI: Bruyères? This was a small town in northeastern France, and although there was no anti-tank work for us to do, we were either assigned as litter bearers or sent out on patrols. And that’s about all we did. INTERVIEWER: Were there any close calls on those patrols? SASAI: Oh yeah, because when you’re out on patrol, you’re looking for a fight. And the battalion commander’s sending a small group out to get fired upon so that we can determine where the enemy is. That’s what a patrol is all about, you know. And so you’d get fired on, and you’d fire back, and you pull back, and then report to the battalion commander we got fired on about here. And so he’d know how to position his attacking forces. [06:00] INTERVIEWER: The anti-tank gun itself, then, were they used in any of those instances once they were positioned in Bruyères? SASAI: Not the anti-tank guns, no. Most of the time when we were in northeastern France, we were utilized as litter bearers to pick up wounded men. INTERVIEWER: What role did the anti-tank gun platoon play in the Lost Battalion campaign? SASAI: We were not used at all as a gun squad. It was so mountainous and so heavily forested that there were no tanks there. And so we were used as litter bearers because the infantry, the riflemen, were taking such a beating in the forests, and especially like in the This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 37 of 53 �Lost Battalion push right outside of Bruyères and near a town called Biffontaine, we took a tremendous shellacking in wounded men, and so we did a lot of work carrying them back. INTERVIEWER: When they were hit, how deep into the battle did you have to go into, or how was it assigned? SASAI: Well, you know, infantrymen are at the very front, and so if they get wounded or killed, they’re way at the very front. And the aid man, the guy who does the first aid, he has to go up in the face of that [08:00] fire to take care of the wounded men, and then he’ll turn around and say, “Litter bearers, forward,” and so the litter bearers now move up, open the litter, put the wounded man on, and start to carry him back. And this is where, like I said before, you don’t know where the bullets are coming from, you know. Maybe they’re not aimed at you, but they’re---a lot of it is being fired in the general area. INTERVIEWER: Are the litter bearers---where are they positioned? Are they at the back? SASAI: We were always at the rifle company headquarters, where the company commander of the rifle company is located, and we just followed him wherever he went. And because he was always in the middle of his company’s battle, and if a man went down, we would go from there to get the wounded man. Sometimes it’s 100 yards, sometimes 50 yards. INTERVIEWER: Where would---in what particular battle did the anti-tank company really benefit? SASAI: I don’t think there was any time in our deployment overseas that we really fired that gun in anger. We fired it a lot in practice, to practice, and there were times when we used to fire at pillboxes, but never against a tank. INTERVIEWER: How about the Po Valley? I understand that [10:00] the soldiers had to climb up a mountain to get to where the enemy was. Where were you? SASAI: Well, we were in France, and we got reinforcements and filled up our regiment after the Lost Battalion fight. And we were then ordered back to Italy, and what happened was that the main effort was supposed to be in the center of the line near the city of Bologna, but we were---the 442nd was asked to make a diversionary attack on the extreme left flank of the line, near the ocean. And in order to do that, there was a mountain range, the north Apennine mountain range, and I guess our regimental commander felt that the only way we could possibly do this job was to have one battalion, which was the 100 th This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 38 of 53 �Battalion, make a frontal assault up the hill, and my battalion, the 3 rd Battalion, was ordered out into no-man’s-land and made a flanking assault up the mountain. And that was about a 3,000-foot mountain, and if you consider that you had never seen that mountain range before in your life and you had to do it in pitch black, full load, you can imagine how difficult it was. We climbed all night, [12:00] grabbing bushes, whatever we could, and climbed up that mountain. And we had to be in position at the top of the mountain by about 5:00 in the morning, when the attack was going to start. The 100 th was going to start their attack, and we had to be in position. So we were there, and then they put a huge artillery barrage on the top of the mountain, and when the barrage lifted, we had to go. And that---it was terrible in the sense that the mountain was so steep that when a man got wounded up there, as a litter bearer, we had to tie the man down on the litter because he would slide off. And we’re coming down like this, and you can’t walk, you have to hand the litter down to a buddy down there, and then you ran down, and he would hand the litter over to you, and this is how we negotiated the really steep places. INTERVIEWER: How wide was the path? SASAI: There was really no path. There was really no path. INTERVIEWER: From the bottom to the top? SASAI: All the way up to the top. There was no road, no trail, no nothing. INTERVIEWER: Throughout that particular battle, were you a litter bearer then? SASAI: Yes. It was really hard on the wounded men, because it took hours to get him down. It was really bad. INTERVIEWER: How many litter bearers were assigned to--SASAI: Well, we would have---from the anti-tank platoon of the battalion, [14:00] we had like four or five squads of litters. But, you know, when men started to drop, it’s not four or five guys, it’s a lot more. And that means that a wounded man would have to wait until we could get back to him and, you know, in those days there were no helicopters. It was done on the backs of men. And it’d take hours to get a wounded man down. INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 39 of 53 �Basically, were the cannon company crews, I mean, did they use all of the crews to be litter bearers, or were there--SASAI: Well, anyone who was not actively fighting would be picked up either to carry rations or ammunition or water or wounded men. Anyone who didn’t have a direct role in the fight were gathered together and said, “Put on a Red Cross armband. You be litter bearer today,” or “We got to get some ammunition up to the men up on the top,” so they’d strap a pack on you with a box of ammunition, and you’d have to climb up the mountain and deliver it to the riflemen. INTERVIEWER: Did they just go ahead and just call up each cannon? SASAI: Anti-tank guys, or even cooks, bakers, anyone who was---didn’t---was not involved in the fight would get called up and said, you do this. INTERVIEWER: There was no, I guess, take turns situations where you drew straws? SASAI: Try again? INTERVIEWER: [16:00] When you were picked, I mean, were you physically picked? There was no--SASAI: Well, the battalion commander would just telephone back and say, “I want any man not actively doing anything,” and they’d get sent up, report in, put on an armband, pick up a litter, go get some men, bring them down. “We need ammunition, we need water, we need food. Go up and deliver it.” INTERVIEWER: Okay. Did you receive any, or did you have any good luck charms with you? SASAI: No, no. No good luck charms. Some of the men had a sending buddy, but I didn’t have one. INTERVIEWER: What awards did you receive? SASAI: Well, I have Bronze Star with an oak leaf cluster, that’s equivalent to two. And I have a Purple Heart with an oak leaf cluster, which is equivalent to two wounds received in This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 40 of 53 �action. The wounds I received were really, well, scratches, really. As long as you bleed, they give you a Purple Heart. INTERVIEWER: What kind of wounds did you receive? SASAI: Huh? INTERVIEWER: What kind of wounds were they? SASAI: Mortar fragments, you know. One on my hand, and it just bled, bled, bled, you know, just a tear, and so the aid man just bandaged it up and sent me back to work carrying litters, you know. INTERVIEWER: And you said you had two wounds? SASAI: Yeah. Same type. The thing was that, because as a litter bearer you know how terrible these men are wounded, and very heavy wounds, you’re not going to apply for a [18:00] Purple Heart. But the aid man does his job, and he fills out a report saying that he treated this man on this date at this hour, and I bandaged him, I did this, and he has to turn in that report when he gets back. And so I applied for my Purple Hearts only after the war was over, the actual fighting was over. And the reason I did that was because for every medal you got, you got an extra five points, and the order in which you came home from overseas depended on how many points you had. And for every month of service, you got one point, and for every month of combat duty, you got one point, and for every medal, you got five points. So if I got two Purple Hearts, that meant 10 points, and that added up to your point total, and you could get home faster, you see. So I said, gee, I got scratched twice, I wonder if they have a record. And I went to the aid station, and sure enough, the record was there, that the aid man had treated me. INTERVIEWER: Were there instances where, in previous battles, where you saw the same soldier twice getting wounds, then--SASAI: The same soldier? INTERVIEWER: Yeah. Or did you come across soldiers that you had brought down or carried? SASAI: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 41 of 53 �Well, I don’t remember that. It could have been possible but, you know, you don’t remember the faces that well because you’re in a position where you’re trying to get that man out, and you want to get the hell out of there yourself, and so you’re not really looking at faces. INTERVIEWER: Where were you when the---or when the war ended? [20:00] SASAI: Well, let’s see. After we had climbed that mountain that I talked about, the German defenses cracked wide open, and we began chasing them because they were retreating, retreating, retreating, and eventually we were north, near Milan, the city of Milan, near a city called Alessandria. And we were in a long convoy chasing the Germans, and anytime they resisted, we’d get off the trucks and begin a fight, and they would give up and retreat again. And on one of these convoys that we were on---do you know what a Piper Cub is? It’s a light plane. They used Piper Cubs in World War II as spotter planes, and they would fly above us to fire artillery, and they would call the shots, and they say you’re long, you’re short, left, right, and they were high enough so they could see well. Well, as we traveled on this convoy going north in Italy, this Piper Cub came down, right over our convoy, and as he passed the head of the convoy, it would wag its wings and then it would zoom off. And he did that three times, come ahead of us, wag his wings, and zoom off. And we were wondering, what is this guy trying to do? And then he came right over the convoy, and about 200 or 300 yards ahead of the lead vehicle, a huge bundle came out with a long streamer on it, and it banged up on the road. And so one of the Jeeps went up and picked up the thing, and [22:00] we could see the driver and the men on the Jeep. They turned around and went all the way back to the end of the convoy, and they came up alongside each truck as we moved, and they handed over the Stars and Stripes, the Army newspaper, and the headline says, “Germany Surrenders.” That’s the best day of my life. [Laughs] There we were, you know, we didn’t know when we would have to fight again, and the Stars and Stripes tells us that Germany surrenders. And so there was no whoopee or anything, we were just so, so relieved, you know, we made it. We survived. We figured we’re gonna go home. That was a wonderful day. INTERVIEWER: What happened after that, once you found out that the war was over? SASAI: Well, we ended up, several days later, we had orders to go over to a town called Brescia in northern Italy. There was an airfield there, and we set up a bivouac, a camp, there. And all the German armies in northern Italy were directed to pass into this town, into this airfield, and we had drawn lanes in the airfield and our regiment searched all the German prisoners as they surrendered, for weapons, whatever, and then sent them back to the prisoner-of-war cages, you know, the prisons? And that was our job for about a week. And then after that, we just waited for our turn to come home. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 42 of 53 �INTERVIEWER: Were you able to get any souvenirs during that search? [24:00] SASAI: Yeah, some of the guys got souvenirs, but I really wasn’t interested in souvenirs. INTERVIEWER: What sort of things did you do for, I guess, on liberty? Did you have any time to--SASAI: Well, after the war was over and we were just waiting around, you know, we just had to do normal kind of garrison duty, police up the area, all that kind of thing. Everyone just hanging around, waiting for transportation home. INTERVIEWER: During your---when you were stationed in Europe, did you have any time to see local sights or talk to local people? SASAI: Well, we would talk to local people like farmers. When we were attacking a certain area, we’d pass a farm, and the question is, Have you seen any Germans? Have you seen any of the enemy? And you’d be talking to them, and sometimes you would have time to just chat, but, you know, they had never seen Asians before, you know, and they’re saying, How come you’re Japanese, you’re fighting on the wrong side, and all that kind of thing. INTERVIEWER: Did you have a chance to drink wine or, you know, get social with the townspeople within a--SASAI: Rarely, rarely. Sometimes you’d get out on pass and, you know, you’d buy wine and drink, but association with the civilians was very [26:00] limited. Very, very limited. INTERVIEWER: How was your schedule, then, compared to the other companies? Was it no different? SASAI: No different. We had a normal GI kind of policing up the area or going on KP, doing drill, you know, this kind of thing. Just waiting, marking time. INTERVIEWER: Did it---did you ever travel to different parts, or did you have the opportunity to--SASAI: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 43 of 53 �Very little, but some of us had opportunities to travel. After the war was over, especially, we got a chance to go to Switzerland, up to, for example, Rome, or when we were in France, some of us had a chance to go to Paris, but very few of us. INTERVIEWER: Did you personally take any of those trips? SASAI: I went to Paris one time and Rome several times. INTERVIEWER: How’d you like Paris? SASAI: Well, it was pretty miserable, you know, it’s wartime, they’re short of everything, they’re starving. GIs eating GI food, probably the best-fed people in the whole country, you know. And so it wasn’t much to look at, but we did see the Eiffel Tower, the arch of triumph, and that type of thing. Right in the middle of the war, it wasn’t very much to see. INTERVIEWER: How about Rome? SASAI: Well, Rome is just about as bad. It’s---you know, they’re starving and short of food and all this type of thing, so. [28:00] INTERVIEWER: When did you have your orders to go back home? SASAI: Well, let’s see, about---it took us about five months after the war ended for many of us, including me, because I had some high points because of medals and things. But I finally---it took about six or seven months to eventually get home, because we had to wait for shipping to cross the Atlantic again, go across country to California, wait for shipping to Hawaii, and eventually I came home in December of 1945. END OF AUDIO FILE 5 BEGINNING OF TAPE SIX 623-Sasai-Sam-6 INTERVIEWER: [00:00] You left---when you left Europe, where was your---where’d you land first? SASAI: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 44 of 53 �Try that question again. INTERVIEWER: When you embarked home, where did you disembark at? SASAI: Oh, at Camp Patrick Henry in Virginia. And then we traveled across country to Camp Beale outside of Sacramento. And then we got shipping out of Los Angeles and came home to Hawaii. INTERVIEWER: Who was the first to meet you when you got off the boat? SASAI: We were---this is another funny story, but there were a whole bunch of us, maybe several hundred of us, at Camp Beale waiting for transportation home. And we got orders for 30 of us to go down to Los Angeles and embark on a ship, and so we got on a bus and got down to Wilmington Harbor, and there was this Army transport at the dock, no one on board, I mean except the crew. And 30 of us get on board, and they give us first-class cabins on the ship. Never had we gotten that kind of treatment before, and the ship was empty. And then the captain of the ship told us that beginning the next day, they were expecting trainloads of, as he says, trainloads of Japs who were Hawaii people who had been interned at various relocation camps in the US mainland, and all of these people were being sent home to Hawaii. And they were all coming the next day, all the trains from [02:00] various areas were being timed to come in on that one day. And they were going to load all these people on the ship and go home to Hawaii. The problem was that this was not a Navy ship, but a civilian chartered ship by the US Army, and the crew was mostly Filipino males, the crewmen. And the passengers were going to be mostly women and children and older men, Japanese. And the War Relocation Authority was very concerned. What if---once the ship left the mainland and was on the high seas, what would the Filipino crewmen do to these Japanese civilians, because they were not very happy with Japanese because of how they were treated in the Philippines. And so they said, see, we need people to guard. And then someone came up with a brilliant idea. There’s maybe 500 or 600 combat veterans waiting for shipment home up at Camp Beale, why don’t we get 30 of them to come down. And so that’s how we got ordered onto that ship, and we stood sentry duty on that ship. Twentyfour hours a day, we stood sentry duty on our ride home. So that was quite an experience. INTERVIEWER: That’s great. Did anything flare up? SASAI: Nothing happened. But, you know, we were armed, we carried rifles. I was armed with a .45 pistol and, you know, we---24 hours a day, we patrolled the ship. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 45 of 53 �INTERVIEWER: How did the Filipino crewmen--- [04:00] SASAI: Behave? INTERVIEWER: Yeah. SASAI: No, no problem. But the question was, if we weren’t there, what might have happened? Because there were a whole bunch of women and children on board, old men. So I guess we were there for a reason. INTERVIEWER: There was no communication between you and the crewmen, then? SASAI: No. They just did their work, we did our work. INTERVIEWER: The captain of the ship, was he American? SASAI: Yeah, American, a civilian. INTERVIEWER: I guess what I forgot to ask you, on your trip over, did---were you---did you get seasick? Did you get seasick when you first came over--SASAI: No. I didn’t feel good the first day, but otherwise I’m pretty good sailor. INTERVIEWER: And then your trip back to Hawaii from California? SASAI: About the same. No---you know, the first day, you’re a little bit queasy, but other than that, you get used to it. INTERVIEWER: Whatever became of your brother-in-law? SASAI: The one that went to the Rohwer Camp with me? This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 46 of 53 �INTERVIEWER: Yeah. SASAI: Well, I told you that on the last battle in Italy, the 100th Battalion made a frontal assault. INTERVIEWER: Yeah. SASAI: Well, he was a lieutenant in the 100th Battalion. He got killed on that first day of that last battle. So if he had survived another 30 days, he would have made it. But infantry lieutenants are a dime a dozen. INTERVIEWER: When did you hear about it? SASAI: The next day. A guy came up the mountain where I was with a huge load of ammunition, and a whole line of guys carrying stuff [06:00] stopped for rest. And this one guy plopped down near me and I asked him, “What outfit you from?” And he says, “Charlie Company, 100th.” And I said, “Hey, you know, my brother-in-law is in that company,” and he said, “Who is he?” So I said Lieutenant Mayahara. And he looked at me and he says, “He got killed yesterday,” you know. Whew, that was a shocker. INTERVIEWER: Yeah. When you got to Honolulu on your return trip back, was your whole family there to receive--SASAI: No. The only person that was there was my father. Both of my sisters were on the mainland. INTERVIEWER: Did they---were they in the relocation camps? SASAI: No. My eldest sister, the wife of Lieutenant Mayahara, had joined him at Camp Shelby with their daughter, baby daughter, and when he went overseas, she went up to New York to wait for him. And I had---my second sister---no, my second sister was here in Hawaii, working. And however they had heard, not directly, but that I may be on this ship that’s coming in on a certain day, so my dad went down to the pier and waited. And sure enough, I came off the boat, so. INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 47 of 53 �What was his reaction when he saw you come down? SASAI: Well, he’s a pretty stoic guy, you know, and he just said, “Welcome home.” Just like my mother, you know. It’s a real kind of emotional thing, but you say “Tadaema kaerimashita,” which is the usual greeting, “I’m home,” [08:00] and she gives you a formal greeting, “Okaeri nasai,” “Welcome home.” And that was it. INTERVIEWER: Did you guys have a big celebration once you--SASAI: Oh yeah. Once we got home, the drinking started, you know. All the guys would get together here, there, and everywhere else to drink, but that sort of petered out after several weeks. INTERVIEWER: What type of foods did your mother have for your return home? SASAI: Well, after I got back, she would cook Japanese, because that’s---you miss that so much. INTERVIEWER: Do you recall anything that she made? SASAI: Oh, like---something like sukiyaki, that type of thing. INTERVIEWER: Is that something that you---your favorite? SASAI: Yeah, something that I was used to and I liked. INTERVIEWER: How---once everything had cleared up, the two weeks have passed, when---how soon did you go back to school? SASAI: Let’s see, I got discharged in December of ’45, and the second semester at the university started in January, so I went right back to school, in about a month. INTERVIEWER: And then you mentioned that you went to--- This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 48 of 53 �SASAI: Penn? Yeah, I stayed at the University of Hawaii for one year, just getting used to being a civilian and student again. And in the meantime, I cast around, because under the GI Bill I could go to any university that would accept me. I figured, no sense of staying in Hawaii. INTERVIEWER: Yeah. [10:00] SASAI: And so I looked around for the best school I could find, and fortunately for me, even an Ivy League college like the University of Pennsylvania---even then, they were looking for diversity in the racial background of their students, the geographical background of their students, and so I had three things going for me. I was Japanese, I was a veteran, and I came from Hawaii. So I had a good chance at being accepted there. INTERVIEWER: How did the school---not so much the school, but your fellow students treat you once you settled in? SASAI: Well, most of them were like three or four years younger than I was, you know. Because I’m a veteran, I was out of school for three and a half years. Many of them didn’t know how to take me. Maybe they had seen a Chinese laundryman on the corner of their neighborhood, but they had never associated with an Asian before. And, you know, in an Ivy League university, many of them come from the best prep schools on the eastern seaboard, and they come from pretty wealthy families. So many of them really didn’t know how to take me. But by that time, you know, you are a war veteran, you have been through a lot, and you don’t take any crap from anybody. So if someone starts to get a little bit discriminatory, just tell them where to jump. And so I got along. INTERVIEWER: Did you have any good friends at Penn State? SASAI: At college? No, after I got home, I got married right away. [12:00] And because I was married, I needed to get out of school as soon as I could, start working. So I was going to school continuously, fall, spring, summer, fall, spring, summer. And I was in school 10 hours a day. I’d leave the house about 7:30 and didn’t come home until about 6:30. If I wasn’t in class, I was in the library studying, you know. So that was the grind that you went through trying to finish. So I didn’t really make friends among my classmates. INTERVIEWER: You were able to just go to school without having to go out and find a part-time job? SASAI: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 49 of 53 �Part-time job. Well, let me tell you, I’m a pretty good crapshooter, and every payday, you know, in the Army, you shoot crap. And I was smart enough to save the winnings, send it home. And so I had a few dollars by the time I got discharged. And of course I had a father who said he was willing to help me if I needed it, so I was pretty brave about going away to school. And I needed money, so I enrolled in advanced ROTC at Pennsylvania, because in advanced ROTC you get paid, and that helped me. INTERVIEWER: In that case, when you went into ROTC, do you get some sort of rank---I mean because of your experience--SASAI: Yeah, well, ROTC is a four-year course. If you’re a veteran, you’re excused from the first two years and you go into advanced two years, final two years, and you come out [14:00] a second lieutenant. And the thing was, when I was in graduate school, Korea started, and all of a sudden I get a letter from the War Department saying they’re going to call me up to active duty. So I was told to report for a physical exam, and I went to the Philadelphia Navy yard, where they had a dispensary and a doctor, and this doctor was a white guy, young white guy, he probably had never spoken to an Asian before. And he wondered how come this Asian is a second lieutenant in the US Army. And so we had a long conversation about Hawaii and 442nd and Italy and France, etc. GI Bill. And the fact that the reason I was in the ROTC was I needed money, and so finally he says, “Well, let’s get through with the physical,” and he tapped me and checked me out. At the very end, he called me to his office, and you know that eye chart? INTERVIEWER: Yeah. SASAI: He tells me, “Lieutenant, read that eye chart,” and he says, “You can’t read it, can you?” And I couldn’t understand why he said that. And then finally it came to me, what he wanted an answer from me was that I could not see it. And so I said, “No, doctor, I can’t.” And so he said, “Take two paces forward. Can you read that? You can’t read it, can you?” he says. So I says, “No, I can’t.” And he looked at me and says, “Lieutenant, I can’t pass you because your eyes are too bad,” and he flunked me out. And that’s why I’m alive today, because I didn’t have to go to Korea as an infantry lieutenant. INTERVIEWER: Were you still a commissioned [16:00] officer then? After you left, or graduated from--SASAI: Well, yeah. You had to go take training, otherwise they would discharge you. And so, with that experience, I never went to one training session. And if---a couple of years later, they said, “Look, we’re going to discharge you,” so I said, “Thank you very much. I’ll take the discharge.” This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 50 of 53 �INTERVIEWER: What is your wife’s name, again, please? Your wife’s name? SASAI: Michie, M-I-C-H-I-E. INTERVIEWER: And what did she do for a living? SASAI: For a living? She worked for Pan American World Airways in the reservations area, and eventually she became the director of passenger services at the Honolulu Airport. She retired from Pan Am. INTERVIEWER: And can you tell us a little bit about your two daughters, their names? SASAI: I have two sons. INTERVIEWER: I’m sorry. SASAI: I have two sons. One is Alan, second son is Alan. He lives in Honolulu and works up at the University of Hawaii. The first son, his name is David, and he lives in Guam. Why he went there, I don’t know, but he lives there. INTERVIEWER: Is there anything that you’d like to say---is there anything [18:00] that you would like to say--CREW MEMBER: Is there anything that you’d like to say in conclusion to sum up, you know, your experience? SASAI: I guess I’ve said this before, but I felt---I feel that if the younger generations consider things like liberty, freedom from tyranny, this kind of thing, which is part of America, if our children and our grandchildren and the generations to come consider these gifts to them sufficiently precious and they work diligently toward their preservation, then I think that all the bleeding and dying and the suffering we went through will be worth it. That’s what I feel. INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 51 of 53 �We’d like to thank you for taking this interview. We appreciate your time and effort to come to us and tell us your story. SASAI: You’re very welcome. CREW MEMBER: I have one question for you. You mentioned that your grandfather was a missionary? SASAI: No, he was not. INTERVIEWER: Oh, I’m sorry. Your uncle was a mission---someone was a missionary? SASAI: No. When my father came to Hawaii---or let’s start this way. My grandfather was a houseboy for a missionary, Methodist [20:00] missionary in Japan, and he was converted by that missionary into Christianity. And that’s how his connection with the Methodist Church started. CREW MEMBER: Okay, and your mother attended that school, Christian school. SASAI: Yes, yes. CREW MEMBER: Okay. So what role did Christianity play in your life? SASAI: A great deal, I think, because our parents used to go to church and would take us with them. Although, as we grew up, you make your own decisions about whether you want to be strong in the church or not, and I chose not to, but I guess my background is in the Methodist Church. CREW MEMBER: Throughout the interview, you said you prayed for this and you prayed for that. Was that a part of your life on the battlefield and--SASAI: Oh yes, yes. You know, you are praying to say, Give me the courage to do what I’m supposed to do, and please protect me. Those are, you know, the two things that are so precious in a soldier’s mind, hoping that you have the courage to do your duty, and at the same time you’re thinking, please, you know, I want to survive this thing. Those two, they’re conflicting, but you’re praying for both. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 52 of 53 �END OF AUDIO FILE 6 This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 53 of 53 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Samuel Sasai oral history interview, October 22, 2005 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Samuel Sasai oral history interview transcript [full interview], October 22, 2005 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sasai, Samuel: narrator Yamagami, Don: interviewer Go For Broke National Education Center: publisher Type The nature or genre of the resource Transcriptions Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Extent The size or duration of the resource. 53 pages, typescript Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005-10-22 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Go For Broke National Education Center Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2005OH0623_T_Sasai https://ndajams.omeka.net/files/original/649fb6ea9988680d5cdce5ea470e2c05.xml 1c1c51655a73bdc299e116dfb94672a9 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Samuel Sasai oral history interview, October 22, 2005 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. URL http://www.goforbroke.org/oral_histories/mp4/623-Sasai-Sam-6.m4v Date of Birth [YYYY-MM-DD] 1924 Sep 03 Location of Birth Haleiwa (Oahu), Hawaii War or Conflict World War, 1939-1945 Branch of Service Army Entrance into Service Drafted or Volunteered Volunteered Nickname Sam Location of Basic Training Camp Shelby, Mississippi Unit of Service 442nd Regimental Combat Team Campaigns/Battles Rome-Arno Campaign Rhineland Campaign-Maritime Alps Vosges Bruyeres, Belmont, Biffontaine Rescue of the Lost Battalion Northern Apennines and Po Valley Campaigns Index indicates an oral history item with an XML file indexed in OHMS. Yes Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Samuel Sasai oral history interview, part 6 of 6, October 22, 2005 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sasai, Samuel: narrator Yamagami, Don: interviewer Go For Broke National Education Center: publisher Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Go For Broke National Education Center Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2005OH0623_06_Sasai Description An account of the resource Sasai talks about traveling back to the United States, and discusses his experiences as a sentry duty while traveling back to Hawaii. He then talks about his brother-in-law who was killed in action in Italy, discusses seeing his family for the first time post-war, and discusses going back to college. Next, Sasai discusses his involvement with ROTC and his experiences regarding the possibility of reporting for active duty for the Korean War. Lastly, Sasai talks about getting discharged, getting married, provides a message to future generations, and discusses religion. Subject The topic of the resource Education Japanese Americans--Post-World War II Identity and values--Family Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral Histories Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/m4v Extent The size or duration of the resource. 0:21:33 Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 October 22 family future generations G.I. Bill Killed in Action (KIA) marriage post-war life religion travels back to US https://ndajams.omeka.net/files/original/47519871a58699d7737100a0edf3c381.xml e57383b0ba9337d5cc5f882976ba8b10 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Samuel Sasai oral history interview, October 22, 2005 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. URL http://www.goforbroke.org/oral_histories/mp4/623-Sasai-Sam-5.m4v Date of Birth [YYYY-MM-DD] 1924 Sep 03 Location of Birth Haleiwa (Oahu), Hawaii War or Conflict World War, 1939-1945 Branch of Service Army Entrance into Service Drafted or Volunteered Volunteered Nickname Sam Location of Basic Training Camp Shelby, Mississippi Unit of Service 442nd Regimental Combat Team Campaigns/Battles Rome-Arno Campaign Rhineland Campaign-Maritime Alps Vosges Bruyeres, Belmont, Biffontaine Rescue of the Lost Battalion Northern Apennines and Po Valley Campaigns Index indicates an oral history item with an XML file indexed in OHMS. Yes Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Samuel Sasai oral history interview, part 5 of 6, October 22, 2005 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sasai, Samuel: narrator Yamagami, Don: interviewer Go For Broke National Education Center: publisher Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Go For Broke National Education Center Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2005OH0623_05_Sasai Description An account of the resource Sasai talks about his experiences as an anti-tank gunner including describing what it was like to fire weapons and fire against German tanks. He then talks about his experiences while on patrol duty in Bruyeres, his litter bearer duties in France, and combat experiences in Po Valley. Next, Sasai discusses receiving awards such as the Bronze Star and Purple Heart; discusses getting wounded; and talks about the Army point system. Lastly, Sasai discusses his whereabouts during the end of the war in Europe; discusses encounters with civilians while overseas; and talks about returning to the United States. Subject The topic of the resource World War II--European Theater World War II--Military service--442nd Regimental Combat Team World War II--European Theater--Po Valley Campaign Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral Histories Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/m4v Extent The size or duration of the resource. 0:28:45 Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 October 22 Anti-Tank Company awards and medals Bruyeres-Biffontaine civilians combat experiences German soldiers point system https://ndajams.omeka.net/files/original/df0cd92238e2a21041a8bebda6fde733.xml 0ad470ba48e81d8faf50b4b7ee256672 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Samuel Sasai oral history interview, October 22, 2005 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. URL http://www.goforbroke.org/oral_histories/mp4/623-Sasai-Sam-4.m4v Date of Birth [YYYY-MM-DD] 1924 Sep 03 Location of Birth Haleiwa (Oahu), Hawaii War or Conflict World War, 1939-1945 Branch of Service Army Entrance into Service Drafted or Volunteered Volunteered Nickname Sam Location of Basic Training Camp Shelby, Mississippi Unit of Service 442nd Regimental Combat Team Campaigns/Battles Rome-Arno Campaign Rhineland Campaign-Maritime Alps Vosges Bruyeres, Belmont, Biffontaine Rescue of the Lost Battalion Northern Apennines and Po Valley Campaigns Index indicates an oral history item with an XML file indexed in OHMS. Yes Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Samuel Sasai oral history interview, part 4 of 6, October 22, 2005 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sasai, Samuel: narrator Yamagami, Don: interviewer Go For Broke National Education Center: publisher Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Go For Broke National Education Center Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2005OH0623_04_Sasai Description An account of the resource Sasai discusses about visiting Rohwer and Jerome Concentration Camps. He details about the relationship between Hawaiian and Mainland soldiers. Sasai also going overseas and first combat experiences. Subject The topic of the resource World War II--American Concentration Camps--Jerome World War II--American Concentration Camps--Rohwer World War II--Military service--442nd Regimental Combat Team World War II--European Theater Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral Histories Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/m4v Extent The size or duration of the resource. 0:28:12 Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 October 22 442nd Regimental Combat Team European Theater Hawaiian soldiers Jerome Concentration Camp Mainland soldiers Rohwer Concentration Camp https://ndajams.omeka.net/files/original/e5dd85b9d44b39a59a2f5fdc339bd8d9.xml bac8551c0a18a97b09ebb721221c74b7 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Samuel Sasai oral history interview, October 22, 2005 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. URL http://www.goforbroke.org/oral_histories/mp4/623-Sasai-Sam-3.m4v Date of Birth [YYYY-MM-DD] 1924 Sep 03 Location of Birth Haleiwa (Oahu), Hawaii War or Conflict World War, 1939-1945 Branch of Service Army Entrance into Service Drafted or Volunteered Volunteered Nickname Sam Location of Basic Training Camp Shelby, Mississippi Unit of Service 442nd Regimental Combat Team Campaigns/Battles Rome-Arno Campaign Rhineland Campaign-Maritime Alps Vosges Bruyeres, Belmont, Biffontaine Rescue of the Lost Battalion Northern Apennines and Po Valley Campaigns Physical Media Notes The condition of the physical media 00:23:32- offensive language; F-word. 00:24:43- offensive language; N-word Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Samuel Sasai oral history interview, part 3 of 6, October 22, 2005 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sasai, Samuel: narrator Yamagami, Don: interviewer Go For Broke National Education Center: publisher Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Go For Broke National Education Center Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2005OH0623_03_Sasai Description An account of the resource Sasai discusses the aftermath of Pearl Harbor and talks about Japanese community leaders getting picked up by the FBI. He then talks about volunteering for service; discusses the 100th Infantry Battalion and replacement soldiers; talks about training at Schofield Barracks; and discusses his experiences traveling to Camp Shelby by train. Next, Sasai talks about basic training as well as specialized training as a machine gunner; his anti-tank duties; and discusses his experiences with segregation. Lastly, Sasai talks about the G.I. Bill and provides some thoughts regarding the history of discrimination in Hawaii. Subject The topic of the resource Hawaii-- Pearl Harbor and aftermath World War II--Military service--Basic training--Camp Shelby World War II--Military service--Travel Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral Histories Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/m4v Extent The size or duration of the resource. 0:28:37 Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 October 22 basic training discrimination G.I. Bill Hawaii Japanese community machine gunner Pearl Harbor and aftermath segregation https://ndajams.omeka.net/files/original/bf4f8a543a0f87d8e27c91e8e3016406.xml c19a6e95a40bef4cebae5345fb95ffcd Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Samuel Sasai oral history interview, October 22, 2005 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. URL http://www.goforbroke.org/oral_histories/mp4/623-Sasai-Sam-2.m4v Date of Birth [YYYY-MM-DD] 1924 Sep 03 Location of Birth Haleiwa (Oahu), Hawaii War or Conflict World War, 1939-1945 Branch of Service Army Entrance into Service Drafted or Volunteered Volunteered Nickname Sam Location of Basic Training Camp Shelby, Mississippi Unit of Service 442nd Regimental Combat Team Campaigns/Battles Rome-Arno Campaign Rhineland Campaign-Maritime Alps Vosges Bruyeres, Belmont, Biffontaine Rescue of the Lost Battalion Northern Apennines and Po Valley Campaigns Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Samuel Sasai oral history interview, part 2 of 6, October 22, 2005 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sasai, Samuel: narrator Yamagami, Don: interviewer Go For Broke National Education Center: publisher Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Go For Broke National Education Center Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2005OH0623_02_Sasai Description An account of the resource Sasai discusses his experiences in English standard school including talking about his classmates and teachers. He then talks about speaking Pidgin English, friendships, and his mother's travels to Japan. Next, Sasai, talks about childhood activities including attending school dances, discusses the attack on Pearl Harbor, and talks about volunteering for the Army. Lastly, Sasai provides some thoughts regarding his classification as "enemy alien"; and discusses what life was like after Pearl Harbor including talking about the National Guard presence in Hawaii, the treatment of Japanese American soldiers, and the formation of the 100th Infantry Battalion. Subject The topic of the resource Hawaii-- Pearl Harbor and aftermath Education World War II--Military service Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral Histories Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/m4v Extent The size or duration of the resource. 0:28:27 Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 October 22 100th Infantry Battalion childhood activities enemy alien Japan Nisei soldiers Pearl Harbor Pidgin English school https://ndajams.omeka.net/files/original/7a4bbc62908b7cfa149aae441d138ae3.xml 755249a57e99f8610c276e18e58c0c9b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Samuel Sasai oral history interview, October 22, 2005 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. URL http://www.goforbroke.org/oral_histories/mp4/623-Sasai-Sam-1.m4v Date of Birth [YYYY-MM-DD] 1924 Sep 03 Location of Birth Haleiwa (Oahu), Hawaii War or Conflict World War, 1939-1945 Branch of Service Army Entrance into Service Drafted or Volunteered Volunteered Nickname Sam Location of Basic Training Camp Shelby, Mississippi Unit of Service 442nd Regimental Combat Team Campaigns/Battles Rome-Arno Campaign Rhineland Campaign-Maritime Alps Vosges Bruyeres, Belmont, Biffontaine Rescue of the Lost Battalion Northern Apennines and Po Valley Campaigns Index indicates an oral history item with an XML file indexed in OHMS. Yes Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Samuel Sasai oral history interview, part 1 of 6, October 22, 2005 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sasai, Samuel: narrator Yamagami, Don: interviewer Go For Broke National Education Center: publisher Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Go For Broke National Education Center Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2005OH0623_01_Sasai Description An account of the resource Sasai discusses his parents including retelling the story about how and why they immigrated to Hawaii. He also talks about his father's childhood, and discusses his grandfather on his mother's side. Next, Sasai talks about attending school; playing sports; attending Japanese Language school; and his father's employment as both an insurance agent and bank manager. Lastly, Sasai talks about his sisters, and discusses the public school system in Hawaii prior to World War Two. Subject The topic of the resource Identity and values--Family Child rearing Education Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral Histories Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/m4v Extent The size or duration of the resource. 0:27:25 Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 October 22 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Honolulu, Hawaii childhood activities education employment grandfather immigration Japan Japanese language school sisters