No Try Fool Me!
Editor’s note: This story is adapted from the forthcoming book Japanese Eyes American Heart, Volume II: Voices from the Home Front in World War II Hawaii.
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boding of the suffering in store for us Japanese. I was consumed by anger and hatred for our attackers that would last for the rest of the war.
I was roused to action by the radio announcement for university ROTC members to immediately report to campus in uniform. Once there, I was handed a Springfield rifle and five bullets, even though I had never fired a gun before! By 10 a.m., this green bunch of college kids, most of us nisei, were sent to engage the Japanese paratroopers reported to have landed on St. Louis Heights. We were scared, sweating in the hot sun and swatting at mosquitoes till mid-afternoon for the enemy that never came.
Around 4 p.m., our ROTC unit was converted into the Hawaii Territorial Guard (HTG) and sent to guard Iolani Palace, Hawaiian Electric, Board of Water Supply and the Iwilei industrial area. The night of Dec. 7 was the longest, darkest and wildest night I can recall with us bunking down in the old Armory. We were so afraid that the enemy would attack us again at any time.
Q: What was your greatest fear in the days after Pearl Harbor?
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Tsukiyama: I can say without hesitation that I faced the worst moment of my life. In January 1942, after six weeks away from home with the HTG, we were awakened at 3 a.m. and told by our tearful commander that all HTG guards of Japanese ancestry were discharged. If a bomb had exploded in our midst, it couldn’t have been more devastating. I felt the bottom had dropped out of my life, abandoned and repudiated by my country. I had been brought up as an American; that blow was actually worse than “Pearl Harbor” to be told that you’re no longer trusted because you’ve got the same face as the enemy. When we parted, our officers, our fellow guardsmen, all of us cried.
Then Hung Wai Ching, secretary of the University YMCA and a key member of the Morale Section of the military governor’s office, challenged us. “If they don’t trust you with a gun, they might with a pick and shovel. Why not volunteer for a labor battalion?” We petitioned the military governor and 169 of us, mostly Nisei ROTC boys discharged from the HTG, left college to form the Varsity Victory Volunteers. For nearly a year, we did hard labor digging ammunition pits; repairing bridges; building roads, warehouses and huts. But we were the first all-nisei volunteer unit to go into service during World War II, even before the famed 100th Battalion. When the call came for the first all-Nisei combat team, almost all of us signed up for the 442nd.
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Komeiji: We faced uncertainty, scary rumors of saboteurs, enemy invaders. When Japanese community leaders were taken into custody, I grew fearful that Mother would be taken away and even killed! Our store was regularly visited by the FBI. I was just a teenager what would happen to my siblings and me? We had no relatives on Oahu.
We adapted to martial law conditions like everyone else. As Japanese, we also had to discard our “Japanese-ness:” Mementos, books, photos were burned, thrown or hidden away. As fears of an invasion faded, we went to dances and even being evacuated from our waterfront home, we kids looked forward to living with two other families like a big sleepover! None of my family members were ever called “Jap” to our faces. Our nonJapanese friends never shunned us or suspected we were disloyal. During the war, no act of sabotage or espionage was ever committed by Hawaii’s Japanese.
Mother fortunately was never interned. About 1,440 Japanese in Hawaii less than 1 percent of the local Japanese population were actually detained or interned. There was strong pressure to intern all of us like the West Coast Japanese. Younger generations today may not know that influential people, many of them haole community leaders, like Charles Hemenway, chairman of the UH Board of Regents, spoke up for us. They courageously and publicly expressed their confidence in Hawaii’s Japanese as loyal and trustworthy.
Q: What would you like to be remembered about Dec. 7?
Tsukiyama: I think of the words of Shigeo Yoshida, an unsung hero of the Emergency Service Committee, which was the military government’s liaison with the Japanese community. “How we get along during the war will determine how we get along when the war is over.”
Komeiji: The war accelerated many changes in Hawaii, especially making us a more democratic society. Japanese and non-Japanese alike worked together after the war to give us and future generations many opportunities we take for granted. We have a legacy of aloha in Hawaii that should be remembered as part of Dec. 7.
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