1 100 1 https://ndajams.omeka.net/files/original/c5a936a62c17b20a99e672df550870c0.pdf 65849b76e31c2778a3995346376c34d5 PDF Text Text Go For Broke National Education Center Oral History Project Oral History Interview with Norman Saburo Ikari, June 27, 1999, Arlington, Virginia CREW MEMBER: We're rolling. INTERVIEWER: This is June 27th, 2 p.m., and today's Sunday and we are in Arlington, Virginia, interviewing Norman Saburo Ikari. I, Ian Kawata, am conducting the interview. We have Craig Yahata on camera and Joy Iwata doing sound and cataloguing. Norman, can you tell me your full name, where you were born and when you were born? IKARI: Norman S. Ikari, the "S" middle initial standing for the Japanese name of Saburo, and I was born in Seattle, Washington, February the 17th, 1919. INTERVIEWER: What was it like during that time growing up in Seattle? IKARI: Well, it was---I thought it was a very normal boyhood. I had Caucasian neighbor boys to play with and also Japanese boys. The fact that we were Japanese, I never gave it much of a thought; we were all involved in just growing up. And being in Seattle, why, we were able to hitchhike down to the Puget Sound and go fishing, and then hitchhike over in the other direction to Lake Washington and go fishing, and so we had a very, very good normal time. INTERVIEWER: What type of fishing did you do---conduct? IKARI: The type of fishing we did as little boys is a piece of string, probably no more than about 4 feet long, a regular fishing hook and whole can of worms that we dug out of the garden, and that was it. And the fish that we caught were little tiny things we call as shiners. Now, whether we ever ate any of them or not, I don’t know. We certainly brought them back to mother. Whether she wanted to cook 'em or not, I can’t remember. INTERVIEWER: And what age were---(02:00) was this when you were growing up in Seattle? IKARI: Oh, from the time, you know, from my birth until age eight, nine, when we left Seattle. INTERVIEWER: What was Seattle like during that time? IKARI: Well, Seattle, of course is, you know, the Rome of the Northwest, built on seven hills, and so it was hard to find a flat piece of ground where we grew up. It was a fairly cosmopolitan mixed neighborhood. And This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 1 of 28 �like I say, it was not really very cold, you know, for being a northern city. Because there are many Christmases when it didn’t snow and we were very disappointed on Christmas morning when we looked out the window and there's no snow. INTERVIEWER: In elementary school, what were some your favorite activities besides fishing? IKARI: I went to a little elementary school just about four or five blocks away from the house. It’s called Central School, Central Grammar School, and I don’t recall too much of the school except it was a big old building near Collins Playfield. And like I said we had a cosmopolitan bunch of pupils. I had a very close Chinese friend by the name of Herman Foy who was a Boy Scout at the time, and I envied very much his uniform, and we played sandlot football. We went to hardball games and then we would come back and emulate all the baseball players on the street with a hardball, knock each other out, you know. So (04:00) it was a very normal upbringing, I thought. INTERVIEWER: Who are some of your favorite baseball players at that time? IKARI: My father used to take me to the Pacific Coast League games, the---for the professional games. But even at that time they had visiting teams from Japan, and I remember the Waseda Japanese team coming to Seattle, and of course the entire Japanese population of Seattle turned up for those games. And so it was a very interesting time. INTERVIEWER: At home, oh, sorry. IKARI: I'm sorry. I should mention that I had two older brothers who were Japan-born. INTERVIEWER: And what are their names? IKARI: My oldest brother was Willy or Shintaro, and my second oldest brother was Jiro or George, and they were somewhat older than us, but---and they came here to the United States as teenagers and grew up, and so my recollection of them was that they loved motorcycles. So they would tear around the streets of Seattle in Harley-Davidsons and Indian motorcycles which we envied very much. INTERVIEWER: What part of Japan is your family from? IKARI: My parents are from the northern part of Japan. My father is from Iwata-ken and my mother is from Miyagi-ken, or that may be just the other way around, but I think both are in the northern part of Japan. INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 2 of 28 �And what did your parents do while you were growing up? IKARI: My father ran a dry cleaning shop and my mother was just a housewife. INTERVIEWER: And you said that at the age of nine you moved out of Seattle to Los Angeles? IKARI: Yes. Now that was the time of the stock market crash (06:00) in 1929, and of course that was the depths of the Depression, and all families were having a very difficult time making a living. So one of my older brothers went to Southern California and found that it might possibly be a better place to try to make a little better living, and so the decision was made to move the entire family from Seattle down to the Southern Cal area, which we did. INTERVIEWER: How was that, being at that age and then having to move away from your friends? IKARI: Well, it was a little bit disturbing. I think I probably missed Herman Foy the most, my Chinese friend. But other than that, it was not a real traumatic departure. The trip was traumatic because we all piled into an old sedan. I believe it was a Durant, if you’ve ever heard of a Durant. The entire family of, well, six, seven plus a dog, and it took us a week and a half to get to Los Angeles. INTERVIEWER: Do you remember that journey down? IKARI: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. It was very hot, and the dog was a Spitz and it constantly shed, so we had white hairs all over the car. But somehow we have finally made it. INTERVIEWER: How many places did you have to stop along the way? IKARI: I don’t recall all the stops. The one stop I remember was, I believe, it was Yosemite, where we drove all the way into the Yosemite National Park and was turned away because we had this dog. And so that was very, well, it was tiring, exhausting. We had to turn around (08:00) and bring the dog back out to---I don’t know how many miles it was---farm the dog out in the kennel someplace, and then come back. I remember that one stop. INTERVIEWER: And did you guys camp in Yosemite? IKARI: You know, I really don’t whether we---I don’t think it was camping in the sense that we were under a tent or anything. I think probably in something like a, you know, cabin or something like that. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 3 of 28 �INTERVIEWER: When you reached Los Angeles, what part of L.A. was that? IKARI: We went to a place called Rosemead first, this is East Los Angeles, and camped out there temporarily with some friends who had sort of taken care of my older brother who’d gone down there. So we stayed with the Suzuki family in Rosemead for a while and then we were in San Gabriel for a while and then we finally found a house in Montebello, and that was where I got one of my first boyhood shocks, you might say, of discrimination. INTERVIEWER: Can you tell me about that? IKARI: Yes. We finally found this house in Montebello to move into. We arrived at this house in a truck with the entire family piled on the truck, and the landlady of the house, this Caucasian woman, came out in tears and told us that we could not move into this house because the neighbors had complained they didn’t want a Japanese family in the neighborhood. And I believe that was the first time I saw my mother cry bitterly. So we had to find another house, someplace to live in. And strangely enough we found it (10:00) on the other side of Montebello Park, directly on the other side. I guess that must have been the Boyle Heights of Montebello. So we were able to live in that house for many years, all through my grammar school years and all through my high school years. INTERVIEWER: What did that---was that a major shock to you, coming out of Washington? IKARI: Well, yes, and not just the fact that we came out of Washington, but simply the rather overt discrimination that was shown to my entire family. Because what was disturbing was that we eventually found out that there were other Japanese families in the outskirts of Montebello because they ran nurseries and truck gardens. But perhaps that was because they didn’t want a family, the white neighborhood didn’t want a family right in town. INTERVIEWER: What was . . . [Interview stops, then resumes.} What was it like---what were the differences between Washington and Montebello that you noticed at that age? IKARI: The differences I felt were mostly, you know, physical ones. I was so homesick for Seattle, you know, Seattle was so cool and green. I had moved to Southern California and everything is so hot and dry. Of course, that was the big glaring difference. But of course, you know, when you’re kids, you adjust fairly rapidly. We found the kids pretty much, in Montebello, pretty much the same as they were in Seattle. INTERVIEWER: Did you go to Japanese school at that age? IKARI: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 4 of 28 �I went to (12:00) Japanese school when I was in Seattle. And I hated every minute of it for a couple of reasons. One reason was that we would have to go to Japanese school every school day after regular school, which meant that from about 3, 4 o’clock on, we had to go to Japanese school. So the Japanese school was called Kokugo Gakko, but we call it tip school for some reason or other, I don’t know why, it was on the tip of a hill. And like I said, I hated every minute of it, so I didn’t do very well. I got in one of my first big fights there at tip school and got sent to the principal, you know, for disciplining, this kind of business. I do remember these occasions when Japanese battleships will come into the Puget Sound on visitations, and this was supposed to be one of the big deals where the admiral, you know, the Japanese officer in charge of the battleship will come out to the tip school and be presented to the students. And we all dutifully bowed and we’re given the great honor of shaking hands with this officer. INTERVIEWER: What was it about Japanese school besides having to go to school after already going to school that was--that you really disliked? IKARI: I think that was probably the only sort of a narrow-minded reason for disliking Japanese school. I was not particularly enchanted with, you know, with the Japanese language, really; it was tough enough learning English. But I did have some reasonably good roommates. (14:00) And I also loved the hill that ran alongside tip school. It was a wonderful hill, wonderful sledding street, so that had nothing at all to do with Japanese education, but I loved that sledding hill alongside tip school. INTERVIEWER: What language did your family speak at home? IKARI: We spoke a mixture of Japanese and English. Of course, we had to speak Japanese to our parents. But it was all mixed in with, you know, English slang and so forth. My parents never became even reasonably proficient in English, especially my mother. And I believe that was typical of most first generation Issei parents and their children. INTERVIEWER: Would you say your parents were very traditional in the upbringing of you and your brothers? IKARI: Oh, yes. Yes, very much. My father was a very taciturn, rather nonverbal person, somewhat authoritarian but not physically. I have a feeling sometimes that the raising of his family was rather remote, and so that the nitty-gritty of raising the kids fell to my mother. And of course, you know, we---I guess we really didn’t appreciate that until we’re much, much older. You know, what remarkable patience and stamina it took, you know, to raise five kids. INTERVIEWER: When you got to L.A., what did your parents do then? IKARI: My father opened up another dry cleaning shop. (16:00) He was helped out by my two older brothers, and my mother stayed a housewife. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 5 of 28 �INTERVIEWER: Did you help out at the dry cleaning shop? IKARI: No, I did not. I was still a kid in school. INTERVIEWER: And do you remember what school you attended when you first got to Montebello? IKARI: You know, I've forgotten the name of that school, every bit of it. INTERVIEWER: Do you remember . . . IKARI: I finished, I guess, sixth and seventh grade there, yes. INTERVIEWER: Do you remember what type of activities you enjoyed there? IKARI: Well, the usual playground activities. I played softball, volleyball, but I believe the–--and I didn’t get into any fights, thank goodness. I think the California kids may have been tougher than Seattle kids. But the highlight of---at grammar school was that I won a spelling bee, the school spelling bee. And I was awarded a school cap and a pin. I still remember it was---that was a big deal, particularly in those days, to have a little Japanese boy become the champion speller of the school. And so that was quite a deal. And I still remember the words that---the last two words of that spelling bee, which if the girl who lost out to me had to give her word to me, I couldn’t have spelled it. INTERVIEWER: What were those? IKARI: I had the word sirloin, no big deal. She had the word fuchsia. I didn’t even know what it meant. (18:00) Of course, she couldn’t spell it. I wouldn’t have been able to spell it. INTERVIEWER: And so then after that, then you moved on to high school? IKARI: Yes. Yes. I went high school. I believe it was a pretty normal four years of high school, the 9th through the 12th. I played some basketball, ran track, handball. I suppose I was a pretty average student. We had a few Japanese kids in the school. Not too many, most of them were kids of farmers and nurserymen in Montebello. And we got along quite well; we had a little Japanese club for social activities. And all in all, it was a nice, fairly uneventful four years of high school. INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 6 of 28 �So who did you socialize with most while going to high school? IKARI: I believe most of my play kids were the neighborhood white boys. It was very difficult to have Japanese kids to play around because they were always working on the farms, and they were somewhat out on the outskirts, so it was difficult to get to them. So I wound up joining the Boy Scouts, a Caucasian troop, and I had a good time there until we formed a so-called Japanese troop and brought in the farm boys, and that was fun. That was fun. INTERVIEWER: So did you switch troops then? IKARI: Yes, I switched troops from Troop 70 Montebello to, I forgot what this other troop was. Our scout master was a, he was a very fine Caucasian gentleman (20:00) who was interested in Japanese, and he was our scoutmaster. And I rose to, I forgot what they call it now, Junior Assistant Scoutmaster. I was a senior in high school by that time. So I had some pretty good times in scouting. INTERVIEWER: Did you attend any of the high school dances? IKARI: No, I didn't. That was a difficult social activity in those days for some reason, so I didn't attend any. Not that we had any. Maybe the white kids did, but we didn't. INTERVIEWER: What year did you graduate high school? IKARI: 1936. INTERVIEWER: And in '36, did you---were you following anything about the war in Europe or the war in the Pacific? IKARI: Yes, we had enough reflections of the world situation that there were difficulties in the Pacific with Japan. This is emphasized by the fact that across the street was the Japanese Congregational Church, and the minister who was the---who was---do I date mention names here? His name was Reverend Joseph Fukushima, and he would spend a lot of his sermon time apologizing for the Japanese actions in Manchuria and so forth. We found it very boring, but we knew that there were problems in the Pacific. INTERVIEWER: So when---in '36 you graduated, what happens after you graduate high school? (22:00) IKARI: I had visions of going to college, which in this day and age would be normal. But in those days it was a problem because of the finances, mostly. Our family was strapped for finances, and so just the desire of wanting to go to college doesn't necessarily reflect the fact that you can go; it's not that easy. So I This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 7 of 28 �wound up working. And in those days, young Japanese fellows could only work either out in the farms or in the fruit stands around Los Angeles which I did for almost three years. INTERVIEWER: You worked in the farms or in the fruit stand? IKARI: Both. But mostly out in the fruit and vegetable markets. In those days the salary for fruit and vegetable workers is about $15 to $20 a week, ten hours a day. INTERVIEWER: And what were some of your activities and duties? IKARI: Oh, this was working in these markets for---the fruit and vegetable portion was always run by Japanese, and so we worked in those places. INTERVIEWER: And what were some of the duties you had to do working in the fruit stands? IKARI: Oh, we unloaded the trucks which came in from the wholesale markets, the produce and the fruit and so forth. We always had a wet room in the back to clean up, clean these vegetables and so forth before we displayed them. And then we were cashiers, salespeople. That was about the time that I realized that some of my workmates were college graduates, and I was astounded. (24:00) And I look back on it now and I realize that they were working in the fruit stands because they were not able to get jobs on the outside. And, of course, this is very discouraging, you know, for somebody who just left high school, probably wanted to get an education to---for a better paying job of some kind. And to have these college graduates, these Nisei college graduates, working alongside you for $15, $20 a week was discouraging, it was disheartening. INTERVIEWER: So even at that age you were pretty conscious of the type of discrimination that was going on? IKARI: Yes, I'm afraid so. Afraid so. INTERVIEWER: How did that make you feel as far as your identity between American and Japanese or Japanese American? IKARI: Well, from the standpoint of personal friendships, you know, I had hakujin friends, Japanese friends. So the consideration of being out and out discrimination when you didn't enter is just the way things were, you know, if you were Japanese you just had a tougher time. But working in fruit and vegetable markets and working on farms, you know, it was just not my idea of a future or anybody's idea of a future for that matter. I even went up to pick grapes up in San Joaquin Valley, Delano, California. Picked grapes up there and packed grapes for 25 cents an hour, and fight off the black widow spiders. And that was This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 8 of 28 �really, I think, my downfall from the standpoint of any more manual labor. I decided I had to do something. And I eventually did find something. (26:00) INTERVIEWER: In the years that you were picking grapes, what year is that? IKARI: That was probably about 1938 or 9. INTERVIEWER: Now, at this point, are you really aware of how the tensions are mounting between Japan and the United States? IKARI: Yes, just a little more, a little more. But just making a living, of course, was, you know, paramount, and this is where new activity came into being. There was this activity called chick sexing. They established what they call the Southern California Chick Sexing Association School, and the word got around that the people who went into the association got trained to go out and make a lot of money. And that was indeed the case. This is an activity where there is a manual hand-eye technique which can take a newly hatched baby chick and tell whether it's a male or female. What does that mean? It just means from the standpoint of the poultry industry that if a farmer normally buys a hundred baby chicks from a hatchery, you know half of them are gonna be males and half are females, and he would want the females to be egg-laying hens and he wouldn't want the males. But if he can buy a hundred female chicks, which we call pullets, and know that within 99% or so they're all gonna be egg layings---egg layers when they grow up, why, that's a huge advantage. So if you multiply that situation, (28:00) you know, thousands of times over from the standpoint of the poultry industry, you can see what an advantage this could be for a hatchery that has somebody that can segregate his newly hatched chickies. And to make a longer story short, we got into---I got into this business. And I was duly licensed and the association sent me to Ohio where I formed my own route of hatcheries that would engage my services. So this took up the next three seasons. INTERVIEWER: We're gonna stop right there and change tapes. IKARI: All right. BEGINNING OF TAPE TWO INTERVIEWER: Going back to this chick sexing job that you did, how were you trained of doing that? IKARI: The association set up a little room in one of the hotels in downtown Los Angeles in the Little Tokyo area. In fact, it’s on North San Pedro Street. And the association will buy several hundred baby chicks from a hatchery and they would set up these flood lamps and we’d sit on benches and we'd practice. It was a kind of a nasty thing because you had to squirt, squirt, squirt them out first, you know, before you can invert. [Laughs.] So various names have been ascribed to that, too, other than just chick sexing. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 9 of 28 �INTERVIEWER: And could you describe for me again exactly what the technique is? IKARI: Yes. These are, of course, newly hatched baby chicks; probably not more than a day or two or so out of the egg, out of the eggshell. And the baby chick is held in one hand a certain way and the hind end of the chick is sort of cupped with a couple of fingers and you squirt 'em out to clean out the hind end. And then the other hand, with the thumb and forefinger, you would invert gently and invert the lower part of this open rear end, and the male chick has a little, you know, primordial sex organ. In Japanese, I think it's called tokki. And basically, the female does not have any kind of protrusion like that. Now, it’s not all that simple, there are sometimes variations, depending on breed of chickens, interestingly enough. (02:00) And so it’s a matter of the chick sexer being able to do this very quickly, and eventually we would be able to go through a box of a hundred chicks in just few minutes. INTERVIEWER: And how much did you make doing this? IKARI: You know, I can’t pin down any money amount, because we kind of splurged it pretty much. I was sent to northwestern Ohio. Of course, the association that sort of sent out solicitation letters to hatcheries and so forth, all over the country. And so after we became proficient in this, and we’re licensed, we were sent out to various parts of the United States. And I wound up going to the northwestern part of Ohio with another fellow. We got some rather nasty letters back from some of the hatcheries. For example, one hatchery in Florida says, “You send any of your Jap kids out here and we’re gonna sex them.” You know, this kind of thing, so we stayed away from Florida. But the season for us lasted from midwinter, around January or so, until about early part of May; this is the so-called hatching season. This is so that the farmers in the Midwest, for example, would have the summer, spring and summer, to raise their baby chicks. So the hatching season itself was the early part of the year. And it was kind of exhausting, because we would have to drive between these hatcheries and this would have to be done, you know, within a day or two or three, (04:00) because the baby chick survives on this yolk from which, you know, he was born with a yolk, and this sustains the baby chick until he’s large enough to feed, which is just within a few days. So the sexing had to be done just within a few days or less, so the hatchery could have a chance to pack it up and ship it out. So it was a time-sensitive situation, and so it made it very tiring for us. We would go sometimes a couple, two days and two nights without sleep, traveling in between hatcheries and so forth. But the money was good for those days. And of course, this is another thing where I’m sure we didn’t want to be chick sexers for the rest of our lives either. And then, of course, the winter of 1941 came around. And we were getting ready to go out to Ohio for the sexing season of ‘41, ’42, and of course you know what happened December 7, ’41. And that was the end of our chicken days. INTERVIEWER: Do you remember where you were on December 7th? IKARI: Yes. By that time, I was in my second semester at Los Angeles City College, and I was living at home in East Los Angeles. And I will never forget that Sunday morning when over the radio came these announcements in almost a hysterical voice, "Japanese planes have bombed Pearl Harbor. This is no This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 10 of 28 �kidding, this is real." (06:00) And I remember sitting there in my house, just stunned with the realization that, did this fantastic crazy thing happen, and I guess it happened. And I had tremendously confused feelings about this. Also, the realization that I had to go to class the following day, on Monday, December the 8th, I was still in school, our semester was almost finished. And so I did go back to class on that Monday morning, and that was the Monday morning where President Roosevelt for joint session of Congress declared war on Japan. But I went back to school to face the mundane business of getting an education, and I had one of my white classmates lean over to me and say, “Where were you yesterday?” you know, this kind of business. I also had a Chinese-American friend, good friend of mine, who came in to my laboratory section with this big button on his shirt, you know, Chinese-American, with the crossed flags of China and the United States. I don’t blame him, you know, I wouldn't wanna take a chance of getting beaten up on the streets of Los Angeles at that time. And so things were rapidly developed from then on. INTERVIEWER: Did you run into any incidences on the 8th when you were going to class? IKARI: We had many reports of some violence. Most of them were reports of Japanese Americans being taken into custody for (08:00) having a short-wave radio or being too close to an airfield, this kind of thing. I recall the evening of the following day, I lived across the street from Hiroshi Suzuki. And Mr. Suzuki was the Japanese ed---Japanese section editor of the Rafu Shimpo, and he had been taken into custody almost immediately. And his daughter came over to my house with his coat, asking if I would go with her down to the police station to give him this coat, because Mr. Suzuki came---had come out to the front door in shirt-sleeves and they had nabbed him and whisked him away, so he had no coat or anything, so Mr. Suzuki’s daughter asked if I would go down to the police station to take this coat. And I went down to police station and, of course, I was turned away. He says, "He’s going to be taken care of." So I remember that incident immediately following Pearl Harbor. But in the days that followed, while I was going to class, you know, my classmates were just dropping out of sight, right and left. They were enlisting, volunteering, the draft was picking them up, and I believe that was---that’s the beginnings of my military history. INTERVIEWER: I want to step back just a little bit . . . IKARI: Yes. INTERVIEWER: . . . before we move in to your war time. When you were making all this cash, doing this chick sexing, where did---what did you do? What are some of the luxuries that you were afforded? IKARI: Well, of course, I did send some home. Of course, like I said, we (10:00) bought a new car every year. That was only about three years. INTERVIEWER: Do you remember what car you bought? This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 11 of 28 �IKARI: Oh, yes. I was partial to Fords. So I had a brand new '37 Ford, then a '38 Ford, then a '39. My partner was a GM person, so he didn’t show up at Ford agencies with me at any time, so he went into Plymouths and Buicks. I also had some friends who were chick sexers in the eastern part of Ohio, and they were banging around kind of guys from Los Angeles, so they went in for convertibles. Of course, I guess they’re pretty much the talk of Ohio because they went in for red convertibles. And of course, we had a very busy social life. But I went back to Los Angeles, of course, you know, as a matter of saving some of my earnings. Of course, by the time Pearl Harbor came I don’t know where my earnings were. I think--I’m sure some of it went to my parents, my family. INTERVIEWER: You must have been pretty popular during that time rolling around in that car. IKARI: Oh, yes. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Because in between, I had decided to go back to school and, of course, I had all these cars, and so life was very comfortable. It eased the way for dates and things like that. INTERVIEWER: Now, going back to the bombing, (12:00) did you yourself experience any hostilities towards you? IKARI: Well, not out and out hostilities, no. Of course, these incidents of hostilities were constantly in the paper, and accusations of sabotage, contaminating the food and so forth, because a lot of us were fruit and vegetable market workers. But I didn’t experience anything, any kind of hostility overtly in my neighborhood because my neighborhood was East Los Angeles. We had a very large Japanese population then, and also a very large Mexican population. INTERVIEWER: Do you remember what your parents or what your brothers felt, and what they might have said during this time, right after the bombing? IKARI: No, I’m afraid I don’t recall anything that was said, if there was indeed anything said. I’m sure there was something said. INTERVIEWER: What religion were you and your family at that time? IKARI: We were Protestant. When we were in Seattle we went to the Methodist Episcopal church, and when we were in Montebello, we went to the Baptist church down the street, a Japanese Baptist church. And so we were fairly decent churchgoers. I don’t think that we, you know, went out of the way to be real, really involved in church activities except my youngest sister who became very interested in the church. But the boys did not. We as boys did not. INTERVIEWER: (14:00) So what is it – what’s the next most memorable incident after the bombing that you remember? This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 12 of 28 �IKARI: Well, I guess the most memorable incident was getting this letter from the draft board, which said, you know, at the top of the page, ”Greetings from the President of the United States. You’re now in the army,” and I was drafted. And this was on the 20th of January, 1942, 40 days after Pearl Harbor. INTERVIEWER: And what did your parents say to that? IKARI: Well, I don’t recall any specific conversation in regard to that. In fact, the only piece of conversation I recall was when my kid brother drove me up to the draft board in Alhambra, and I waited, and I said, “Well, I’ll see you pretty soon.” And I didn’t see him for four years. INTERVIEWER: What was that day like when you reported to the draft board? IKARI: We were sent down to the reception center at Fort MacArthur in San Pedro, and there we went through the processing of---that all draftees go through, got into Army ODs, learned how to stand, and this kind of business. There were, in my group there were several Japanese-American fellows, Nisei fellows, and we had a pretty good contingent of Mexicans also in our group, of course. (16:00) But it was the initiation in the Army, the shots, the physicals, the getting into uniforms, very basic things of standing in formation, and I don’t know whether we had any drill or not, I don’t think we did. I don’t think we had time for that. It was mostly paperwork and waiting to be shipped out from the reception center. INTERVIEWER: How long were you at the reception center? IKARI: I don’t believe I was---we were there for more than, probably three days, two or three days. And then we were duly shipped out by train. We didn't know where we were going but it looked like we were heading east. And we did wind up finally in---at least our group wound up finally in Camp Grant, Illinois, which is just, I believe, just southwest of Chicago, about 90 miles. And Camp Grant was a medical replacement training center. There wasn't a gun in the camp, except for the side arms and so forth that the MP detachment carried. It was medics, and that’s where we started our basic training. INTERVIEWER: Did you get to say goodbye to your family before you shipped out? IKARI: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. INTERVIEWER: Did your parents tell you anything before you left? IKARI: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 13 of 28 �I really don’t recall. I don’t recall. I don’t think there were any patriotic words or anything exchanged. I think there’s a---from the standpoint of Japanese parents, they---it was probably, I was probably wished a fond (18:00) goodbye, and that’s about it. INTERVIEWER: Arriving at Camp Grant, what was that like? IKARI: Well, we were fitted into the training battalions, and then we went through all the actions of making raw recruits into soldiers, the marching and the drills, and the physical training. And then we were initiated into some of the medical training that we were supposed to get later on, some of the fundamentals, which was terribly boring, you know, things like anatomy and things like that. Our field work was really pretty elemental; I don’t think I even carried a stretcher all that time in field work, even though we were supposed to have been medics. [Laughs.] INTERVIEWER: Let’s see, let’s pause one second. [Interview stops, then resumes.] How long did you stay at Camp Grant? IKARI: Basic training was probably---my estimate is probably two to three months. Of course, that took place in the early, you know, early part of the year, so it was wintertime in Illinois, it was cold. But there’s a lot of marching, drilling, field work, setting up your tents and so forth, and sitting in lectures of anatomy, and Army discipline, and regulations and so forth, and (20:00) sitting through movies on VD and, you know, all this kind of thing. We learned how to salute all the officers all the time. And incidentally, our company did have a Nisei officer who was a physician in the Reserves, and so he was called back in. And this was Lieutenant Nishikawa from San Jose, one of our training officers. Interestingly enough, the training battalion across the way, the entire battalion was commanded by a Nisei officer who was a major. And he was also a physician from San Francisco, his name was Kan Ueyama. And so we thought this was a pretty big deal, you know, particularly in those times, to have a Nisei major, you know, in command of an entire training battalion. But like I said, our basic training finished in about two, three months. And then it was the gossip of what were they gonna do with us. That’s the beginning of another story. INTERVIEWER: What---what is---how did you take to basic training and Army life? IKARI: Oh, I think pretty well. The challenges in basic training for recruits, you know, in the medics, I think, is different from, let’s say, an infantry. I don’t think we had the same physical challenges that infantry recruits go through. And I know about that because I did take infantry basic later on. So we (22:00) adapted to it pretty well. Of course, we toughened up because we lived a regular life, and we were fed a lot of calories, and regular hours and so forth. It was all Army discipline, daily, nightly. I recall the amusing situation early on where---when we went to eat in the mess halls. We would try to avoid sitting next to the Mexican guys. Because a lot of those Mexican fellows came from very poor families, they had never been fed so well in their lives. So if you sat next to a Mexican group, you know, the food plates could be exhausted before it got to you. So if we had to sit next to our Mexican fellows, you This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 14 of 28 �know, we made damn sure that we sat over by the serving area. So that was a real big kick. We used to kid them about it. INTERVIEWER: And after you completed your training at Grant, what happened next? IKARI: So the question rose among---particularly among us Japanese fellows is, what are they gonna do with us? Where are they gonna send us? Well, shipping date came around and we shouldered our barracks bag and we walked across the street. And that was as far as we got shipped, to the---we got shipped to the---there were---first of all, there were about, oh, 15 or 20 of us at that time, out of my training battalion. So we got shipped across the street to the medical detachment of the station hospital at Camp Grant. So these are the medics who service this hospital, post hospital. And we got farmed (24:00) out to various jobs in the hospital. And since I had told them that I was a premed, they put me in the laboratory. And so I spent my next year and a half or so in the hospital laboratory. The rest of the Nisei guys got farmed out to jobs like ward boys and supply. Some got into the OR emergency room, and a lot of 'em got just simply farmed out as yard birds, that is, taking care of the grounds. And so eventually they became quite a large contingent of Nisei in the medical detachment at Camp Grant. But we all did our jobs well and, of course, promotions inevitably came because we were hard workers, pretty much. But this created some adverse publicity in some of the neighboring papers, particularly in some of the Chicago papers. And at that time, I didn’t know about it. I only saw these clippings after the war, where there were accusations of Jap soldiers, you know, being promoted over white soldiers, and all this kind of thing. What kind of treatment are wounded veterans from the Pacific gonna get when they come back here and find out they have to be, you know, taken care of by Jap ward boys, you know, this kind of thing, and it was really---some pretty nasty press came out. But even then we were not aware of it because we were doing our jobs. And we had a commanding officer of the medical detachment who was very understanding to us, about us. Made sure that all promotions came on time. (26:00) And so by the time I left Camp Grant, we had a fair number of Nisei fellows who were noncoms. INTERVIEWER: And what rank were you? IKARI: I went from private to corporal, that is, T5 corporal. I skipped the Pfc business for some reason or other. Not that I was that good or anything, I think it was just an administrator thing. And then from T5 corporal, I went to T4 or technician 4th grade sergeant. By that time, I had started off in the laboratory just as a laboratory clerk, then I asked to be put back into the technical section. And so, I rotated around the hospital laboratory, doing the usual diagnostic things that all laboratories in any hospital do. You know, the blood counting and the bacteriology and the chemistry and so forth. So I was involved in all those areas. And then, of course, we would get daily briefings on the progress of the war from the chaplain. Just to make sure that he realized---that we realized that there’s more going on, you know. And then word came about that this combat team was going to be formed of Japanese-American volunteers. And I didn't think too much about it at the time, until I heard my kid brother had volunteered for this team from Colorado. And then it just suddenly dawned on me that this is a rather comfortable but boring Army life, you know, to be rattling test tubes in the hospital (28:00) laboratory. Not that I was that adventurous, but I would like to have something more going in my Army life. INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 15 of 28 �We're gonna pause there, change tapes, and let . . . [Interview stops and then resumes.] BEGINNING OF TAPE THREE INTERVIEWER: You were in the---so you were at Camp Grant for two months or so, at what time was the Executive Order 9066 signed and where were you during that time? IKARI: 9066 was signed, I don’t know my relocation history because I never got relocated to camp, but it was in the early spring of ’42, obviously, because I didn’t hear about it until after way---well into the end of my basic training which by that time I guess it was around March, April of ’42. And then I didn’t know where all of my family was. I didn’t know my older brothers were in other camps. I didn’t know that for a long time. INTERVIEWER: And can you tell us where your family was sent? IKARI: My oldest brother was sent to the camp in Arkansas, Rohwer. I had another older brother who was sent to, eventually, to the Manzanar camp, I guess Eastern California. And then my mother and the rest of the family wound up in Poston, Arizona. INTERVIEWER: And do you know why they were sent to different camps . . . IKARI: Yeah. INTERVIEWER: . . . and how that came about? IKARI: Just simply because they lived in different places in California. Not that there’s any intention of splitting up the families or anything like that. But if I was to have tried to visit them, in the Army I mean, that would have been very difficult. But I was able to visit my mother in Poston. After I finished my basic training, I was given a pass to (02:00) Poston, Arizona. INTERVIEWER: And can you tell us what that was like, the journey out there? IKARI: It was a difficult trip. Of course, all transportation in the early part of the war was difficult. But I recall finally getting to Parker, Arizona from Chicago. And Parker is the closest small town to the Poston camp. Of course, there's no scheduled, well, first of all, there were very few scheduled trains to Parker from, I believe it was Phoenix or Tucson, I forgot which of the big cities in Arizona I was in. So from there to Parker, I finally had a ride of a freight train, a caboose, you know the end train on a freight train, and that was a hot, dusty trip. So when I got to Parker, I went to a lunch counter in this little town and sat This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 16 of 28 �down at the lunch counter, and I noticed a bunch of other Japanese people standing around the walls behind me. I was the only one sitting at the counter. Of course, I was in my uniform and I was waiting to get served. And I recall beckoning to the waitress, I was hot and thirsty, I wanted a Coke or something, but I was not served. And I was wondering, you know, this is a very lackadaisical place. I was about to call a couple more times for service and this didn’t happen. By that time, somebody stuck their head in the door and said that the bus to the camp had arrived. So the Japanese people behind me left and I left the counter (04:00) and make the bus. Got on the bus and an MP stuck his head in the door of the bus and asked, “All you Japs got passes?” And I was shocked. I said, “Do these people need passes or do I need a pass to go see my mother?" first of all. I was flabbergasted and I was about to reply when the MP turned around and walked off. And then we drove to camp and the camp of course was a very, somewhat depressing place, you know, out there in the middle of the desert, it was hot. I saw barbed wire only in a corner of the camp because, you know, you’re out in the middle of the desert, where you gonna go? I mean . . . [Laughs.] But, nevertheless, it was depressing. It was a barracks community, the common mess hall and the common latrine and all this kind of business. And although it was good to see my mother and my kid sister was there and one of my younger brothers was there. So it was a fairly good visit. My younger brother’s girlfriend wanted to have some kind of a celebration for me and there was another Nisei fellow who's also on pass from a different camp. So she wanted to have a little celebration for us and we volunteered to go into Parker and get a case of beer, which we did. We went to Parker, went into the saloon and immediately the bouncer came out from the back and the bartender yelled at us to, “Get out! (06:00) No Japs!” Well, we didn’t go in there to drink, we just wanted to go in there to buy a case of beer, and we were, you know, verbally thrown out of the place. It was very interesting because, as we left the saloon, there was an Indian GI---an Indian---American-Indian GI from the 45th Division who had also fought in Italy, and he saw us come out there and he shook his head and he says, “Yeah, that’s the way things are with us, you know, with all of us kind of people." He said, "You gotta be white.” So we learned a lesson there. INTERVIEWER: Were you in uniform at this time? IKARI: Oh yeah. Oh yes. Yes. INTERVIEWER: How did you feel wearing an American uniform and going into this place? IKARI: Going through all these business of, well, it’s kind of upsetting. It’s upsetting enough to have to go to relocation camp to see your family, to see your mother under those conditions. Then to have these insults, you know, from this MP and then this very hostile attitude in Parker; it was not comfortable. So it was with mixed feelings that I finally left this first visit. INTERVIEWER: What were the conditions of your family’s barrack? How was that? IKARI: They, well, I don’t know whether you’ve seen a relocation camp barracks community, but that’s what they are. They’re just barracks, partitioned off into family units. My mother had an end unit, it was terribly hot, dusty. And it was typical (08:00) barracks life: ate in the common mess hall, the food was This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 17 of 28 �just passable. And the washing situation, you know, there's no washrooms or anything out there in the barracks, it's just a common washroom and a common latrine room. So it was sort of a almost the bare necessities of living. INTERVIEWER: How long did you stay? IKARI: I think I stayed maybe a couple of days. INTERVIEWER: What happened when you guys came back and didn’t have any beer for the party? IKARI: I forgot what we did. I think we probably had to settle for soft drinks or something. We had heard by that time that some of the older Nisei were able to brew sake, but we’re not able to locate some of these old codgers, and I don’t know whether they would have let go of any of their supply or not, just for us to celebrate. So it was a very sober, nonalcoholic visit. INTERVIEWER: Was your mother happy. . . How was it to see your father in this situation? IKARI: My father was not in this camp. When the relocation orders came out, my father was somewhat separated from my mother, so he asked to be repatriated back to Japan. And it’s at that time where one could ask to be repatriated back to Japan even though it was in the middle of the war, and so my father’s (10:00) request was granted and he went back to Japan on the Gripsholm, that neutral Swedish vessel. And so he served out his life in Japan by himself. INTERVIEWER: Did you have any contact with him through letters or anything? IKARI: No, no. Only later on when my kid brother who was in the MIS was sent to Japan occupation. He was the only one of the family that made contact with my father during the war years or right after the war years. INTERVIEWER: Was your mother happy to see you when you came to visit? IKARI: I believe so. I believe so. INTERVIEWER: After your visit, where did you go? IKARI: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 18 of 28 �Went back to camp, to Camp Grant. And, oh, that’s where we were finally shipped across the street. So my visit happened before our permanent assignment to the medical detachment. INTERVIEWER: And then how long was your assignment to the hospital? IKARI: So I was in the medical detachment for over a year and a half, almost two years, and I had been promoted T4 sergeant. Heard about this combat team that was being formed, and in November of 1943, I asked for transfer to Camp Shelby and that transfer was granted. I was busted, (12:00) my stripes were taken away and I was sent down to Camp Shelby as a private to be retrained in the infantry. INTERVIEWER: Why did they take your rank away? IKARI: I don’t know. That’s a puzzle. That’s really a puzzle. Because when I was being retrained in that recruit detachment at Camp Shelby, I recall another group of about eight or ten Nisei soldiers who were transferred from Fort Sheridan in Chic---near Chicago, transferred from Fort Sheridan to Camp Shelby. And every one of those fellows was a noncom, there was nobody less than corporal. They were all sergeants and they weren’t busted, they retained their rank. I still remember some of those fellows. INTERVIEWER: Did you ask anyone? IKARI: Well, who can you ask, you know, when you’re in the Army? And it’s very possible, I'm just trying to think of any conversation that I had with my medical detachment commanding officer when he okayed my transfer as to whether I was going to take a bust or not, and I just can’t recall that. All I can recall was that when I got to Shelby I was a private and I was cutting off my stripes. So whether it was a technical kind of thing where one is transferred from a medical service command, you know, to infantry, whether that’s a factor, whether the medical detachment want to, you know, hold on to that rank for something, for some other guy or, I have no idea. But later on I found out that (14:00) Spud Munemori . . . [Interview stops, then resumes.] INTERVIEWER: Okay. So no one ever told you that when you left Camp Grant, that when you arrive at Shelby you’re not gonna have your rank? IKARI: That’s right. You know, I don’t recall that. I was just too excited or interested in getting transferred out [and] going to the combat team. But later on I found out that I was not the only one that---the situation seemed to differ between groups. And it seems that when Spud Munemori, who was the only Congressional Medal of Honor winner, that when he transferred from Fort Snelling or was it Camp Savage to Shelby that he was also demoted from sergeant to private. So, I don’t know what factors enter in here. But---so you have a situation where some guys got busted and other guys did not. INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 19 of 28 �How long did you train at Camp Shelby? IKARI: When I got there in November of 1943, the combat team was well past their basic training; they were into their unit training. In fact, they were just about ready for what they call, oh, they were in the middle of D-series maneuvers, which is final maneuvers with large units. So therefore, when I came in as a raw infantry recruit, you might say, I was put into this separate unit called a recruit detachment to be retrained right from the beginning. So, you know, so I could find out which end of an M1 rifle was the danger end, you know, [laughs] this kind (16:00) business, having been a medic all these years. Other fellows filtered in from other camps into this recruit detachment, and they would have rotating training sergeants from the other---from the infantry companies to come and help train us. And I'm not sure how long I was in the recruit detachment before they finally decided I could be transferred to a company, but that probably took place at midwinter, say, about January or so, or perhaps even February. And that’s when I got assigned to Company E in the 2nd Battalion. INTERVIEWER: Now, didn’t the 4-4-2 think that maybe they could use you as a medic within the 4-4-2? IKARI: When I first came to Shelby, you know, with a barracks bag on my back to report into regimental headquarters and I got sent down to Service Company, and that’s when they were processing my papers, and I had the first sergeant come in and ask me whether I wanted to be in the medics or going into a line company, and I recall saying then that I just left the medics. He says, “Well, then you want to be in the line company?” I says, “Well, there's no other choice.” So I wound up in an infantry company and I got trained that way. So the fact that I went from medics to infantry was of my own doing, my own choice, pretty much. INTERVIEWER: (18:00) What was Mississippi like and what were the differences between Camp Shelby and Camp Grant that you remember? IKARI: Well, physically there’s a pretty large difference. Camp Grant was a very established community camp almost, and of course being a medics unit, you know, it was reasonably civilized. Also being near Chicago and being near Rockford, Illinois which was a nice small city. But down there in the Camp Shelby which was out in the swamps of Mississippi and the camp surroundings were nowhere near, you know, as nice as in Camp Grant. You probably wouldn’t expect it to be, you know, being an infantry training center. So there are, you know, pretty large physical differences between where I was at Camp Grant and where I wound up in Camp Shelby. And then the closest town to Camp Shelby of course was Hattiesburg, it’s a little Southern community. And I recall taking on just very few passes there, and it was just like another Army town. And of course the impact of 35 to 104,000 Japanese faces come--being dumped into the middle of Mississippi, it was quite an impact, I'm sure, at the beginning. INTERVIEWER: When you were at Camp Grant, did you just train with Niseis or did you train with . . .? IKARI: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 20 of 28 �Well, my group had a few Niseis but we were a mixed group. Like I said, we had a fair number of Mexican-American fellows, but it was a mixed group. It’s a mixed group. (20:00) INTERVIEWER: So then when you get to Camp Shelby, it’s kind of a drastic difference? IKARI: Oh, boy. Yeah, the faces are all Asian but the languages were different, as we found out very shortly, because, you know, we had a mixture of Hawaiian boys and mainland boys. and I suppose you know that there was this huge friction that developed between the two groups. One could go on and talk about that for some time but it was not very pleasant on many occasions. In fact, my first initiation to this difference was when I was taking the bus from Hattiesburg to Camp Shelby to the 4-4-2 area, I was on this bus with my barracks bag and here are these two Asian fellows sitting in front of me, and I couldn’t understand what they were saying. They’re a couple of Hawaiian boys, you know, of course they were talking in this pidgin English, and I was a little bit puzzled. Then I realized, well, you know, half of it must be Hawaiian. And I found out soon enough when I got established into Camp Shelby. INTERVIEWER: Was that your first experience to people from Hawaii? IKARI: Pretty much. Pretty much. At least in those numbers. And I found out that we not only had some communications language difficulties, they had difficulties basically in attitudes also. And when one considers that, you know, a lot of these Hawaiian boys have not (22:00) experienced the kind of prejudice that mainland boys have had, you know, this results in a different attitude toward other people. This makes the Hawaiian boys much more extrovertive, much more outgoing, much less inhibited than we were. And so therefore a lot of the Hawaiian boys could not understand us, you know. Not only language wise---couldn't understand our slang. And the other factor was that the mainland boys---can I talk about this for a bit? A lot of the mainland boys who volunteered from the camps, you know, came into Shelby broke. They had no money. But the Hawaiian boys, you know, they had been working in defense establishments, and when they left Hawaii, their parents just loaded them up with funds. And I never saw so much money among the Hawaiian boys. And of course they were very free spenders, and they spent it freely among all of us; whereas the mainland boys are just kinda strapped. We would go out for one bottle of beer; the Hawaiian boys would go out and they'd come back with a case. So it was not a matter of, you know, not wanting, it's just a matter of the finances which created some interpretational problems, I think. INTERVIEWER: So what did your---what were your first impressions then getting to know the Hawaii boys? IKARI: Well, there---it was mixed. I found them to be fun guys, but I found some of them to be very, I don't know, (24:00) very somewhat antagonistic. It took awhile for me to understand their pidgin English, they had so many expressions. And of course if you didn't understand their expressions, you know, they'd get mad as hell. But there were some very unfortunate, bad incidents between Hawaiian boys and mainland boys. While I was there, I recall Colonel Pence, the commanding officer of the 442nd, calling out the entire group, and he expressed his alarm at the friction between the Hawaiian boys and the mainland boys. And what he brought it down to was that "If you boys can't get along here together, This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 21 of 28 �here in Mississippi, you know, how the hell you gonna fight together when you get out in combat?" And so he put it right to us. whether that had any effect or not, I don't know. We have---we also had a very--of course this is only just in my company---but we also had a rather traumatic thing happen in our company where one of our company mainland boys got beat up badly; he was hospitalized. And the culprits, evidently, came from another---over in 3rd Battalion, and couple of those boys were rounded up. And Colonel Hanley paraded those boys through the ranks of the 2nd Battalion as sort of a punishment for having instigated this beating, and it was kind of awful, (26:00) it was kind of terrible. And then we wound up---he wound up establishing guard duty just around our own company area. Can you imagine setting up guard duty around E Company so guys wouldn't come in to beat up other guys in E Company? It was kind of awful. So, you know, we did have our rather unfortunate frictions. INTERVIEWER: Had you been witness to any of them? IKARI: Yeah. Yeah. INTERVIEWER: Can you tell us about that? IKARI: Well, we had some---another couple of fights in the PX one time. I don't know what precipitated the fights, but Lord knows what. I think there was an occasion in the motor pool one time that I was witness to, and it was obviously between Hawaiian guys and mainland guys. But, I don't know, you know, in any Army outfit, you know, you're gonna have some friction, you're gonna have fights. But we used to think that it didn't take much to set off the Hawaiian guys, you know. That they were much more volatile than we were. And when I say "we" I mean the mainland boys. INTERVIEWER: Do you remember when tensions started to change between the two? IKARI: Well, I suppose the occasion that Dan Inouye likes to refer to is that they sent a contingent of mostly Hawaiian boys to the Roh---to the relocation camps in Arkansas to visit, have a dance, you know, with the girls down there and so forth. And the Hawaiian boys got off the bus there at the camp and looked around and saw this barbed wire (28:00) around this camp, saw all these Japanese people inside the barbed wire, and I think they were just shocked. They had---Dan likes to say that, you know, for the first time the Hawaiian boys realized, you know, what---under what circumstances, you know, the thousand or so volunteers from the camps were in, and to volunteer from those camps. And so, I think Dan and some of the guys like to say that this sort of turned the tables from the standpoint of attitudes between the two groups. And I'm sure that there was, you know, some of this happened, but, you know, even after the war, even after I came home from overseas we still had some pretty---some bad incidents. INTERVIEWER: Okay, we're going to switch tapes . . . BEGINNING OF TAPE FOUR This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 22 of 28 �INTERVIEWER: Okay. Why don’t we go ahead and continue. So you did see some of the tension subside? IKARI: Yeah, I think so. Either that or I got used to it. What way to get used to it is to be as Hawaiian as possible, pick up some of their language, which is of course unavoidable. But it did not turn the other way around, you know, I mean, you’re not gonna have any Hawaiian boys talking like us, I mean. But I would like to mention another situation when I finally left the recruit detachment to be assigned to E Company. When I got assigned to E Company, most of the company was gone on maneuvers. So there are a few, very few guys left, just a couple of the officers, and I was assigned to the supply sergeant, Kiyo Yamate. So I wound up helping him, just to have something to do. And then eventually the company came back from maneuvers, and I was never given any assignment into any of the platoons or squad, and later on I found out it was because the company was overstrength, and how they gonna fit an odd guy into a squad or a platoon. But this created some difficulties for me because in the morning fallout, you know, where you got up in the morning, stand on formation, I didn’t know where to stand. So I just stood wherever there’s an empty space, and this was the situation that was constant. I was not a particularly organ---I was not an organizational fit into any platoon (02:00) or squad because they had been trained together, you know. So I just kind of fitted it in where I could. So, of course, after the company came back from maneuvers and the whole 4-4-2 came back from maneuvers, and then we had this big inspection by the Army’s General George C. Marshall, you know, Chief of Staff, and a few days after that we got our POM, our orders for Prior for Overseas Movement and so forth, and then we had a big job of getting ready to go overseas. In the meantime, some training continued, and so May the 1st, we were all ready to go over. And so I went over with the original group. We left Camp Shelby [and] went to Camp Pickett, I believe it was, and then to the Newport News area or Hampton Roads area for shipping out. INTERVIEWER: And what is that journey like? IKARI: Well, we were---got loaded on to these Liberty ships, more commonly called banana boats. We were in a huge convoy, and it took us 28 days to go across the Atlantic, to the Straits of Gibraltar to Italy. There was some speculation as to where we exactly we were going to go, but I think the best guess was that we would probably go to Italy because the 100th was there. And sure enough, that was the case. So after 28 days of (04:00) seasickness and bouncing around in the Atlantic, we finally arrived at the bombed out harbor in Naples. And I recall one incident there as we were unloading from the ships. There’s a caravan of white troops, they’re going by in trucks, and these white guys would---saw us and they would lean out from the back of the trucks. “One puka puka!” which really meant that our reputation had been made ahead of time by the 100th. You know, in Hawaiian, you know, puka is hole or circle, and they were the 1-0-0 boys, and they had made a reputation for themselves in the seven months that they were there before we even got there. So this was a very interesting welcome we got in Naples. INTERVIEWER: Had you heard the stories of the 100th while you were at Camp Shelby? IKARI: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 23 of 28 �No, not much. We knew that there was a lot of activity going on. We did hear a roundabout that, you know, they were taking a punishing, because while we were still there in training, three different replacement groups were taken out from the 1st Battalion of the 442nd to be sent over to Italy. The three replacement groups had totaled almost 600 men, officers and men. In fact, I believe the last replacement group joined the 100th at Anzio. So this means, of course, that when we shipped out, we shipped out as a regiment minus one battalion because we had no more (06:00) 1st Battalion left. They were all sent over as a replace---most of them were sent over as replacements for 100th. And those that were remaining out of the 1st Battalion were fitted into the other 2nd and 3rd Battalions, and some, I believe, were kept behind as training cadre for future replacements. INTERVIEWER: So before you ship out and you take---you get on the Liberty ship, were you assigned any position now to any platoon or squad? IKARI: Oh, organizationally? No, I was still not. I just kind of fitted in wherever there was an opening or space. The guys came to know me, some of 'em. So there was, I suppose, a tacit understanding that I was part of the company, and I did make acquaintance with a number of the Easy Company group. But I don’t believe I ever got a firm assignment into a platoon for whatever reason. It’s very possible that, you know, platoon sergeants and squad leaders don’t want a add-on guy coming in, you know, and upsetting their unit’s balance. But whatever, I did go over with the original group. INTERVIEWER: And what did you do to pass the time on those 28 days? IKARI: Oh, well, there’s really not much to do. Of course, the guys that gambled, gambled all 28 days. The guys that played cards played cards for 28 days. But in between we had some entertainment. A lot of the Hawaiian guys were pretty good singers. They got together in groups and somebody (08:00) always had, you know, ukeleles and small guitars, and so they had good musical entertainment. And we also had some of the black boys from the ship’s crew come give us some entertainment; they sang and they danced. And of course we had calisthenics everyday. And there was really not much more than that. Of course, for the boys who were seasick, I don’t think it mattered what they had, but there were some poor guys that were seasick for 28 days. That was just terrible. So I was lucky because, well, I could brag about and say I was a former fisherman and so I’m used to it. But anyway, we were all glad that the 28 days finally went by. We knew that we were approaching Italy, because, you know, we had gone through the Straits of Gibraltar, we had gone by Sicily, or Sicilian fishermen had come out to the boat to meet us, and then we finally landed at that bombed out harbor at Naples, then we knew where we were. INTERVIEWER: What’s that like for a mainland boy at your age traveling on this ship, across the ocean, never part---had you been on a big ship, anything like that, prior to this? IKARI: On a big ship? Oh, no, no. INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 24 of 28 �So what goes through your mind? IKARI: Well, it was a new experience, of course, but then we were all in it together, and we were jammed into this transport, small transport ship, bunks five high, and it was a very cramped situation. (10:00) We were blacked out, the ship was blacked out during the night, of course, no lights. I don’t believe there is that much danger from sub attacks that time. I think by that time sub---German submarine attack was pretty well under control. But even then, you know, we had a huge, almost a 100-ship convoy. And we had destroyers just, you know, buzzing around the convoy all the time, keeping us in order and keeping us protected. So it was an interesting voyage, in a way, but also it was very boring because there just is not that much to do. INTERVIEWER: And then when you reach Naples, what do you think, and what was your observations when you reached Naples? IKARI: Well, we realized for the first time, you know, what a torn up place looks like from war, and of course, the harbor at Naples had been bombed. But we realized that we were indeed in a war zone, pretty much, but not in the combat zone yet. But other than the so-called greetings from the haole boys on the trucks, it was a matter of unloading. And then we were shipped out to the outskirts of Naples to a little place called Bagnoli. And there we pitched tents and waited out the next movement. There was some separation of the combat team on the trip over. A lot of the 2nd Battalion, my battalion, didn’t arrive in Naples, they got sent to Oran in North Africa. (12:00) And of course there were a lot of rumors about that, but we found out later on that these ships with the rest of the 2nd Battalion had gone to Oran in order to unload supplies from the ship. So, a few of us in E Company, we had to wait for the rest of the 2nd Battalion to catch up to us. And eventually, they did. So we all came together in Bagnoli. And then we had another trip from there, up into the combat zone. By the time we were just about to . . . [Interview breaks, then resumes.] By the time we were at the end of the voyage to land in Naples, that was just about early part of June. So therefore, as you know, June 6 was D-Day in Normandy. So the invasion of Normandy was taking place about the time we were landing, really. Also, the other thing that happened while we were on the voyage was that Rome had been declared an open city by a mutual agreement between the Germans and the Allies. This meant that the Germans were not gonna defend Rome, that they were gonna pull out of Rome and then they established their defensive lines above Rome. So of course this was a blessing in many ways. First of all, Rome did not have to be bombarded or shelled. It didn’t have to be fought for. And this was a blessing for, certainly, the city of Rome and also for us. I suppose for the Germans, too; they didn’t have to fight for the city. So then it was a matter of us catching up to the new defensive German line above Rome. So, after we all got together at Bagnoli, we loaded back on to LSTs, Landing Ship Tank, (14:00) and to LCIs, which stands for Landing Craft Infantry. These are smaller Navy vessels. And up the coast we went to an area, er, to a town called Civitavecchia, which is northwest of Rome. And we landed there and unloaded and then went inland. And we waited there in that area for a while, and that’s where the 100th caught up to us, and we joined together. INTERVIEWER: What happens next? IKARI: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 25 of 28 �After the 100th hooked up with us, of course they got fitted in to the 442nd as the 442nd's 1st Battalion. But they maintained their designation as the 100th. But now we were a complete regimental combat team of three infantry battalions. And the German line was being pushed back all this time by the Fifth Army on the left, by the British 8th Army on the right; they’re pushing the Germans up the boot. So at the end of June, or I believe it was June the 26th when orders came in for the 442nd to go into the line, this means to go to combat. And so, this happened. By that time, again, we were still north of Rome, and our first action was a town called Belvedere, which was inland from the coast a little bit, but north of Rome. (16:00) And that’s where the 442nd got initiated. This is an interesting initiation into combat because, in order to take this town of Belvedere, there was a German force, of course, in the town above it. And in the first hours, the 4-4-2 was kind of stuck. The 2nd and 3rd Battalions were stuck a little bit. And the 100th had been held in reserve, so the 100th was called up and they performed a very interesting flanking action around Belvedere, took the town, established roadblocks. And by that time, you know, the 100th was just about overwhelming this German force which turned out to be an entire armored battalion, and eventually the pressure from our 2nd and 3rd Battalion and the 100th who had just really blasted the German force there in one afternoon. And this was written up in Yank Magazine, in a later issue called "The Battle of Belvedere." It was our initiation into it but it was not a glorious initiation. It was a situation where the 100th had really shown their experience and their combat readiness. And the first Presidential Unit Citation went to the 100th for this particular action. So that was our initiation into the line. INTERVIEWER: What was that like for you in your experience? IKARI: Well, I’m talking in terms of the unit. But to backtrack, (18:00) when we landed at Civitavecchia, north of Rome, which is where we joined up with the 100th, I was taken out of the company. I was put into a little group called the SPs or the Special Police. And they gave us helmets with the white SP on it. And we wondered, “What are we going to do with this?” We found out that we were going to be road guides and prisoner escorts. Again, this probably is an expression of the fact that I had not been a clean fit into E Company. But this was rather nonsense duty, where you stood at a 90-degree angle road, and you pointed to the 442nd to go that way, because that was the only way they can go, which is pretty stupid. And then the prisoner escort part was not much more challenging either. We wound up escorting German prisoners who had been captured, who had been sent down, at least down toward to Battalion, and we would have to escort these prisoners either to Regimental Headquarters or to the MP holding station. And that was the extent of my duties together with the other SPs for about a week. And I finally told the lieutenant in charge of this duty that, “You know, I really want to get back up to my company.” And so he made arrangements to get me out of this, but I had to find my way up to the company. And I think it took me about a couple of days to (20:00) finally find my company. And I don't know whether they were in reserve or whether they were in the line, but they were all dug in on a hillside. And I recall walking up to my company and seeing some of the guys that I was familiar with, and I was met by Terry Hara who was the 1st Platoon platoon sergeant. His first words to me were, “You better get yourself an M1.” Because I had been carrying a little carbine, you know, for this guard duty business. And I thought to myself, “Where am I gonna get an M1?” But a few minutes later, one of Terry’s boys came up to me with an M1 and we exchanged weapons. By that time, of course, you know, I told you it had taken me two days to get up there and I was exhausted. And at nightfall, [clears throat] excuse me, I had fallen asleep. Some of the guys were dug in, I don’t know whether they were getting shelled or not. I just kind of fell asleep on a hillside. Woke up in the middle of the night and my This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 26 of 28 �company was gone. And I thought, boy, this is a hell of a thing, I mean, I joined my company, all of a sudden they disappear, and I didn’t know whether I was in front, you know, really, up in the line or back in reserve. So I got up on the---it was pitch black and I decided that, certainly, the safest way to go is not over the hill because that would be in the wrong direction toward the enemy line, I was just going to skirt this hill. And I stumbled my way across this hillside for some time. Finally, caught up with my company who were dug in in a new position. So that was a rather inauspicious joining with my guys in my company. But from there on, (22:00) we had the, you know, the usual activities of the front line. INTERVIEWER: Do you remember your first firefight? IKARI: Yes. I recall moving up on a hillside toward a house that was on top of the hill. And of course, anytime you see a house on the top of a hill, and if you're in the line, you know, you have to assume that it's gonna be defended. But fortunately, in this case, it had not been defended. But there was movement in the woods behind it, and so there was a flanking movement, and we sprayed the, you know, woods just to drive 'em out, and have other squads and platoons come in from the sides. And I believe that was about the only time I really pulled the trigger on the M1. There are other times when it came close but . . . And so, combat from day to day, you know, was pretty much like this. And the worse part, of course, is the shelling from the German 88s. I recall the first time I ever heard those things come in, and that you hear this sort of instantaneous scream of the shells, high whistling scream, and then within a fraction of a second it explodes. And all your hope is that it doesn’t explode near you. But these are the famous German 88s that you probably heard of, heard about, and to be caught in an 88 barrage is a fearful, frightening thing. (24:00) I saw some pretty close hits of my company, and of course, the farther down you’re dug in the better you are. Of course, this won't protect you, you know, if you get a direct hit, because guys had been killed, a lot of---without any shrapnel wounds or anything like that, just got killed from the close concussion of the explosion of the 88 shell near their foxhole. So, this is the way it went for front line men from day to day. The few times you got pulled back into reserve--sometimes when you got pulled back into reserve, all you did was just go one hill back. Other times, if it was a battalion reserve, then you’re able to get a little farther back and get a shower set up by the engineers, and a change of clothes. By that time, we didn’t care what kind of clothes we got as long as they were clean. But we were a terrible-looking group of guys after we got out of that kind a rest stop, because nothing fit. And I’ve seen guys cut off their sleeves, you know, they have sleeves come out to here. But we welcomed those breaks. There we would get back our bedrolls, which is almost a luxury because in our bed rolls, you know, we had all our personal belongings, and able to write letters and so forth. And when you’re in the line, of course, you only have a strip pack. You just have the essentials, bare essentials, you know, helmet, rifle, ammo, first aid pack and so forth. (26:00) So to get called in the reserve where you can get to your bedroll is a real blessing. And we had a variety of things that happened just in a very short time that I was in the line. Because within two and a half weeks, I was taken out of action. INTERVIEWER: Can you describe that for us? IKARI: It was the 17th of July 1944, it’s late in the afternoon, and we had moved up this hillside, and I believe there was a house up on top of the hill. And I believe also in that particular incident we didn’t get any fire from the house, so it was not a matter of trying to clear the house. So we got up to the hilltop, and This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 27 of 28 �Lieutenant Brown, the platoon leader, said that we were gonna keep going. And I believe he asked my [indiscernible] squad leader to set up two guys for the point. Now, the point are two men: Number 1 and Number 2 in the point, and we move ahead. We move ahead. In this case it was moving down the hill, and I was Number 2 in the point. We got down from the top of the hill, probably no more than 40, 50 yards, and then there’s a burst of gunfire and I was hit. (28:00) The Number 1 man ran back up the hill, yelling that Ikari got hit. I felt like I had been whacked on both legs with a steel pipe or a baseball bat, and I couldn’t move. And of course, you know, I yell for the medics, and I was on an exposed slope. And I was in, I think, I was in shock from the pain. I realized . . . INTERVIEWER: Oh, I’m sorry. I’m going to pause right there. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 28 of 28 � 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 Norman Ikari oral history interview, June 26, 1999 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 Norman Ikari oral history interview transcript [full interview], June 27, 1999 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ikari, Norman: narrator Kawata, Ian: interviewer Go For Broke National Education Center: publisher US Army Center of Military History: sponsor 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. 28 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 1999-06-27 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Arlington, Virginia 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 1999OH0068_T_Ikari