Patrick Aki oral history interview, part 4 of 5, February 25, 2011

Aki continues to talk about his experiences as a prisoner of war while in Japan. Towards the end of the war, he noticed that a lot of weird things were happening with the Japanese Army guards and that the POWs were taken out of work. He overheard that Japan had surrendered and that there would be an airlift available in Kagoshima. He would escape the camp and make his way to Kagoshima, taking trains that were packed and noticing that Japanese civilians seemed scared of them, and seeing the devastation of Japan from the bombings. Once he made it there, he would have a spoon of ice cream and a Coca-Cola and get ready for his journey back to the United States. They would stop first in Okinawa, getting repatriated and then getting on another boat headed for San Francisco before finally making it back to Hawaii. Once returned to Kauai, he would begin working at a police station as a clerk typist. He would be forced to enter the draft and would end up joining the Air Force. In order to avoid being in the Korean War, he would end up going to occupied Japan.

video/m4v

0:53:52

2011OH1032_04_Aki

http://www.goforbroke.org/oral_histories/mp4/1032-Aki-Patrick-4.m4v

1924 Feb 20

Yes