Yoroku Ito oral history interview, part 1 of 3, June 29, 2007
Yoroku Ito is born on January 31, 1922, in Puunene, an island of Maui. Yoroku and his family live in camp five on a sugar plantation. The house is comfortable for five children and two adults. Yoroku explains the camps are segregated and sectioned by ethnic groups.
Growing up, Yoroku says all the kids, Japanese, Filipino and Portuguese played together. As a child, Yokoru enjoys watching movies and going to the Honganji for social gatherings. He is also part of the Boy Scouts.
Yoroku attends Puunene Grammer School and Japanese Language School. After Puunene Grammar School, he goes to Maui High School. In High School, he participates in seasonal sports.
In the summers, Yoroku works at the pineapple farm to earn money for his Boy Scout fee. After Yoroku graduates High School in 1940, he moves to O'ahu to work as a carpenter. He recalls seeing the Japan airplanes on December 7 and the following events after. Yoroku's loyalty to his family and country are the reasons for him to volunteer for the Army.
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Ito%2C+Yoroku%3A+narrator">Ito, Yoroku: narrator</a>
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2007OH0782_01_Ito
Charles Saiki oral history interview, part 2 of 5, March 19, 2005
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Saiki discusses more about his childhood years, including festivals where the local children would be able to try sumo wrestling and win prizes. He would attend Kauai High School and talks about his whereabouts during the Pearl Harbor attacks. His local church would be taken over by the military and the rice farm would be affected. Soon after, he would volunteer for the Army and get inducted at Hanapepe. They would be shipped from Kauai to Honolulu to report to Schofield Barracks, then be shipped to the mainland on the SS Lurline and trained down in Mississippi. At Camp Shelby, he would be assigned to service company and then motor pool to be a truck driver with A company, which would later merge with the 100th Infantry Battalion. He talks about the furloughs he took and the training that he received.
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video/m4v
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2005OH0547_02_Saiki