Courtesy of the Kupferberg Center for the Arts, Queens College
Midori Yamamura interviewed Eugenia Sumiye Okoshi and George Mukai for the "In Their Shoes" project in 1998. "In Their Shoes" was a multi-media performance project choreographed by Kristin Jackson with a score by Keiko Fujiie at the Colden Center for the Performing Arts at Queens College. Jackson and Fujiie incorporated excerpts from an accompanying oral history project directed by Luis Francia into a performance inspired by war experiences in the Philippines, Japan, and the United States.
Eugenia Sumiye Okoshi
Q. Tell us the story of your husband's participation in the war.
A. With his third draft notice, he finally joined. The men drafted for the army all gathered in Kumamoto. At the commander's house in Kumamoto, there was a farewell party for the soldiers. Since I was staying alone at the inn, a regiment commander asked my husband to accompany his wife. When we arrived at the party, all the conscripts were sitting, conducting a farewell ritual, you know, wakare-no-sakazuki (ritual farewell cup of sake); when someone leaves for the army, we often do it in Japan, where everyone drinks from the same cup.
The regiment commander was sitting there with his sword lying at his back. He said, everyone who leaves now, please take care. Then he said to me, you please take care of yourself.
They were sent to Moji from there. I rode in the second-class car, which was located at the front. In the rear carrier, all the soldiers were riding. Then the arrival at Moji, after which I traveled back to Tokyo via the Tokai line. The soldiers were sent to unknown places by ship. Later I found out that they were sent to the Philippines.
Q. You had said in an earlier conversation that your husband was sick at the end of the war.
A. At the very end of the war, my husband's regiment was hidden in Leyte, in the island of Luzon. They were hidden in Leyte when the war ended and Japan lost against America. They came out as prisoners of war. American ships brought them to Nagasaki; by that time he was already sick. From Nagasaki, he was sent to a medical treatment center in Ohmura (a city in Nagasaki Prefecture). I went to meet him there. His employer back then, the Asahi Newspaper, asked me to go and meet him. My husband lived maybe six years after that time.
Since Japan had lost the war, at the medical center all the soldiers were lying on the floor in their gehtorus (a kind of legging) wrapped around . They lay in their uniforms. I heard them calling "Mother, mother," probably because seeing me, they mistook me as their own mother. "My husband is not anywhere," I told a nurse. She said, "Captain Okoshi is in the private section." So I walked towards the individual cells, but it was too dark so I couldn't see who is who. I guess all the captains and other ranked soldiers were kept in a better location. There were no lights. At night maybe -- but probably they shut it off during daytime.
Then what do you think were they eating? At mealtimes, they ate something that looked like porridge with some sweet potatoes inside. With that, they had something like a salad. But there really was nothing you could eat. Even the rice tasted poor. I had carried a sack of rice on my back all the way from Tokyo (back then, a trip from Tokyo to Nagasaki took probably more than two days). I had this rice, because my mother sent it to me. There was even no charcoal. I dug about this size hole in the ground, gathered various inflammable materials from all over the places, then by using a mess tin cooked rice and fed him. Well, we went through these times.
Q. Give us an idea of your meeting with your husband.
A. My first reunion with my husband: The first time I went to his cell, someone called me, "Oi, Oi.? I heard "Oi, Oi," but I couldn't see who is saying "Oi, Oi." Then a voice said, "You've forgotten me." (Laughs) He scolded me. I fed him, he regained his energy and finally I was able to bring him back to Tokyo. After returning to Tokyo, he stayed in a hospital for a while, then was moved to a sanatorium in Kiyose. Well, for a while he was alive.
Then he returned to his work for the Asahi Newspapers briefly. Then he said, "I really want to have my house. I am going to build my own house." He made a loan from Asahi, and combined this with all the savings I had set aside in his absence. While he was away, his job and the Japanese military paid me monthly, all of which I was able to save in his absence.
Putting all the money together, we were able to build a house in Suginami-Ku, Tokyo. When the house was done, he was so happy. Then three days later, I had to send out his body from there. He had died. All of a sudden, he started shaking, then he died. I think he had a mixture of tuberculosis and pneumonia.
Q. On the way to meet your husband you had passed through Hiroshima. What was that like?
A. I passed through Hiroshima right after the atomic bomb disaster. When I passed Hiroshima Japanese military police officers were calling "Close the door, Close the window." In Japanese, "shado-wo, oroshite kudasai" [pull down the shade]. You know that wooden shade, in the old days that we used. As we passed Hiroshima, we all pulled down the shades. However, I wanted to see what existed out there, so I opened the shade like this, and peeped. There was really nothing left.
Later in New York, I met a woman who had experienced the atomic bomb. She really experienced the atomic bomb. She saw a strong light in the sky, and at that instant hid next to the stone wall, and was able to save herself. Then after that she looked for her house and her parents. However, she found nothing left. No house, nothing. She said, "I was all by myself." I met her in New York. I wonder if she is still here. I think the atomic bomb really shouldn't happen in the future again. I believe some countries are still manufacturing them, atomic bombs -- so I hope that these will be abolished in the future.
Q. What lessons can we learn from the war?
A. What lessons should we learn from the war? I don't know exactly what lessons I learned through my experiences of the war. We had to live frantically just to lead a normal life. Thinking about it now, I recall many memories and I think of putting them together in the form of a book.
The war -- Everyone had to get over hardships. Losing their houses -- my mother also lost her house during the Tokyo air raids. So all of us moved to our ancestral land of Nagano, where the latest Olympics were held. We took the Chuo-Line to the station called Chino. During all that time, the train was fully packed. Everyone was packed in the train. All of them had lost their houses during the air raid. They didn't have anywhere to go. I saw some people even sitting outside of the car. That's how we traveled. It was really a terrible war. The war should not occur again. Now in Nagano, there are Olympic games going on, as a symbol of peace. Olympics are always welcome! However, Nagano is such a beautiful place that some people protested against hosting the Olympic games there. Because we had to destroy nature, mountains needed to be destroyed.
Q. How did you get medicine for your husband?
A. How did we obtain medicine for my husband during his illness? At the time there were medicines such as penicillin and streptomycin, I guess invented in America. My father bought them for my husband. There was a famous medical doctor. Since my husband was a journalist, they wanted to cure him quickly. So they employed advanced procedures for him. He also had plastic surgery. It was early plastic surgery. Dr. Miyamoto cut out part of his body and took out his bone. That's how they cured his tuberculosis. He had plastic surgery in Kiyose, then he returned to Tokyo, built a house. The doctor said he was cured, therefore he can return to his work. Three days after he returned to his work, he died. He was such an unfortunate person.
Q. Thank you for your stories.
George Mukai
Q. Could you tell us how it was when the war broke out?
A. I tell you, the day the war broke out, was one of the worst days of my life. We were just coming home from the church in the car. We turned the radio on and hear that we were now at a state of war between Japan and America. And then Roosevelt came out with his statement and so on. We couldn't believe that the war was actually started between Japan and America. And that was one of the worst days. We were in business; we didn't pick anything, we just let everything go to rot. And that's when it was. I don't know I don't remember what we did. We just, we were just like in a stupor.
We were living in San Diego at that time, and we were farmers, you see, we had to pick fruits and produce and take it to the market. But we didn't know that whether the people would buy the thing. We didn't know if the market would receive these things. I remember it was chaos.
Q. You were in the army after the war broke out. Could you tell us about that experience?
A. That's right. The US government promised, as I remember, that they wouldn't induct anybody during the month of December. To allow the young men to enjoy Christmas dinner at home. And then they would start recruiting these boys as soon this Christmas vacation was over. And so come January second, we were all 1A and we all had to meet in our own selective service boards, and then the bus came out and picked us up -- and we were in the US army. I had to go to Fort MacArthur, Louisiana, and from there, I was inducted and given an army serial number. I was later assigned to San Luis Obispo, where I was going to take my training.
Q. Could you tell us you military experience?
A. I was in a unit where we trained with bunch of fellows from Indiana, Minnesota, Texas, Wisconsin and places like that. These boys they never met Japanese-Americans before. But I would say that I got along wonderfully with these fellows. And gee, I don't know maybe they weren't certain whether I was of Japanese or Chinese descent, you know. But anyway, I never had one instance of discrimination. I tell you most of those boys, a lot of those boys, I would say came off of farms, some of them worked in the cattle butchering business, I guess were what you?d call it, the slaughterhouses and so on. They were husky fellows and you had a feeling that they were going to make very good soldiers. They still believed in the USA, they were patriotic and so on. And one thing though, I would say that even though I was Japanese-American, nobody called me a "Jap" or anything like that, and to me it seems very strange that I came across no discrimination while I was in the army. I never had a tough time; and I never had a tough time with the civilians when I was in Little Rock, Arkansas. I was later transferred to Camp Robinson in Arkansas. And I used to go to the local church on Sunday.
My biggest problem was how to refuse the two or three people who would ask me out for lunch or something, you know, Sunday after service. My goodness, I tell you, I used to wonder if these were really Southerners that were noted for discriminating against the Black people and so on. Because actually I get pretty dark when I?m out in the sun and basically I didn't know whether I was supposed to, for instance on the train, I was supposed to sit in the Jim Crow section, or was I supposed to sit in the white section. I remember hesitating that one white man grabbed me and he says, "Young man, you belong in the white section." And I, that was a confirmation that I belonged in you know, white section. That was about the size of it.
Q. Could you tell us a little about what happened to you finally after the war broke out?
A. Well, after the war broke out, I was already in army by the second of January. But after that, there were rumors that we would have to all leave home and be put in the camps, or we would have the option of going into the interior part of the United States, going into Arizona or Nevada or some place like that and relocating you know.
I remember, my father and my oldest brother and they went looking around for a place to farm with the group of people from San Diego. They were looking around to see if there was a place where a large group of Japanese could go into an inner part of America to farm or something. And then meanwhile they decided that to do it on their own would be too complicated, too legally involved and everything else like that. And I think they finally resolved that they would wait until the government told them to move. And I think that was finally what they decided to do.
And then the family in San Diego, the families had to do this: at first, you see, the government had to move masses of people at one time, so there had to be a big place where a mass of people can stay. And set a kitchen and everything like that; set up a hospital and so on. And so they decided the best place would be something like race tracks which has a big expanse of space. They used stables that they kept horses in, as living quarters and so on. That's why the place still smelled of manure and urine and so on. But the people were moved to these assembly centers.
First, they were told that they had to sell their inventory and get rid of their farming equipment and everything else like that, settle the real estate affairs, everything, and then evacuate with one suitcase per person. They got onto those trains and buses and so on, and on the certain day, they went to these race tracks. San Diego and Los Angeles, and a bunch went to Santa Anita race track. People up there in San Francisco went to Tanforan and I don't know what the people in Washington and Oregon did, but any way, they call these things assembly centers. They stayed in the assembly centers waiting for relocation centers to be built. And these relocation centers had barracks like living quarters and they were not too different from, I tell you, when I was in Camp Robinson, Arkansas, that?s in Little Rock, I stayed in barracks that looked just exactly like these barracks that they had in Poston, made out of one wall of big one-by-twelves or something up and down and then they had these slats in between and then they had black paper over the roof and the walls. And I stayed in barracks that were the same sort of thing in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Q. I heard that your father was located at the internment camp.
A. Yes, that's right, my father was in the internment camp, and that's different from relocation camps, you know. The relocation camp was under the responsibility of the War Department, whereas the internment camp was run by the Immigration Department. That comes under the international law for prisoners of foreign countries and so on. And so all the people that had something to do with the Nihonjin-Kai, Nikkeijin-Kai, and things like that. People who taught at Japanese school and so on got taken right away, sent to internment camp. Lots of Nisei men in San Diego -- a lot were fishermen, you know they had these radios on the boat, and so on, they were under suspicion for they all got taken to these internment camps and they went to Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Q. When was your father separated from the rest of your family?
A. When my father went off, my oldest brother, he was about twenty-six or something like that. My mother stayed home, and so we had to arrange things best we could. Evidently I was already in army. I didn't know what went on in San Diego. But the people that stayed home, they had to make arrangements, what to do with their farm and so on, it was just lucky that our property was in the name of the oldest children in our family. We wanted to retain our farm, so we found a Mexican tenant farmer, who was good farmer we thought, and so we rented it out to him for very little money. That was 50-acre farm which we rented out for seventy five dollars a month and he had an access to three bedroom house with living room and dining room and parlor and so on and barn and three horses and also the truck and the tractor and everything -- and at seventy-five dollars a month.
Q. Did you visit your parents in camp?
A. I visited my father who was in the Santa Fe, internment camp while I was stationed as a soldier in Camp Robinson Arkansas. And the thing was you couldn't as yet, they wouldn't allow me to go and visit my folks in Poston, Arizona, in the relocation center. But I could go and visit my father in Santa Fe, New Mexico. So I went there to see him a couple of times before I was able to go to Poston, Arizona to visit the family. And I was never able to go and see the farm in California until just about a few weeks before I was supposed to go overseas. Because until then, they wouldn't let anybody, even he was a soldier, of Japanese ancestry to go as far west as California, you know. And I remember, when I went to see my father at Santa Fe, and here I was an American soldier, but I had to interview my father in front of an officer, an American officer. He was there listening to the conversation. And I remember, my father always had a stomach trouble, so he asked me to bring some Tums with me. And some grapefruit juice. So, I remember taking a great big box of Tums like that. I don't know how many were in there. But the officer says what do you got in that package? And I said, my father has stomach trouble, so I brought him a box full of Tums. And he says, I have stomach trouble myself, can I have a package? I remember, sharing the thing with him. I tell you, there were several other Japanese men in Santa Fe internment camp from San Diego at that time, but they wouldn't let me see anybody except my father, and that was an interview in front of an army officer.
Q. Later on, you were sent to 442nd regimental combat unit. Could you tell us what it was like, what was the process for you to go to Europe?
A. Yes, well, you want me to talk about the 442nd a little bit ah? Yeah, well, I tell you, we Japanese American soldiers in the US army, they didn't know what to do. The army didn?t officially know what to do with us people, for about two or three years. Until the Hawaiian National Guardsmen -- there were a lot of Hawaiian National Guardsmen, I hear, who were very anxious to prove that we were just as loyal as anybody else to the USA. And they finally sent a request to President Roosevelt. And Roosevelt, decided to take a chance on forming a Japanese American Battalion of these men, and let them prove what they wanted to prove.
So they finally got shipped over there to Wisconsin and took training there. I think they went to down to Florida and took further training and so on. And finally the first bunch went over there and joined the US army while they were fighting in northern Africa. From there on they went through Sicily and from there they went to Italy and they did really their first fighting in Italy. And they proved to be very good fighters.
These were only Japanese Americans and they were largely from Hawaii. And I think some volunteers from the army camp, from relocation center. Also joined them later, or maybe some were in the original group. I don't know for sure. But anyway, this Japanese American combat team proved to be very valiant fighters and General Mark Clark said he can use as many as you can send over. They're fine soldiers.
So about the casualty rate, it was very high among them, since when they were told to go forward, come hell or high water, they went forward. The esprit de corps was high. Everybody knew they could trust each other. And so they made a very good fighting outfit. And then later on, the US Army decided that they could use a bigger unit. Actually, they started an idea that, let's make a regiment of these fellows. And so, they asked for volunteers in these relocation centers and the national JACL [Japanese American Citizens League] was very instrumental in asking for volunteers and so on.
You can imagine that relocation center, where we were all incarcerated without due process of the law, held in detention just as though we were in the prison -- to go over there to ask the boys to please volunteer for the US army was a very unsavory sort of a thing to a lot of Nisei boys. But it's amazing, there were about five thousand Nisei that volunteered and later on they were actually conscripted from the relocation center and they were asked go into the army. So by the time, the 442nd regimental combat team was formed, Nisei boys were getting conscripted out of relocation centers.
And I tell you it proved to be a very good fighting outfit. They called themselves a combat team, because the 442nd didn't consist of just 442nd. There was a 522 what you call it, artillery company. And there was a service company, and a supply company and the unit was a team that could be transferred from one regiment to, from one division to another, and so and so. They called themselves a combat team because it was an independent unit and they had everything.
Q. What was it like when you came back from Europe to America?
A. When the war in Europe was over and when I finally got back to California, I tell you, I found things were pretty much like it was when we left. Except that I hear that before we came back to California, well, my mother, and my father, they were already back on the farm by the time I got discharged from the army. And so they were already reestablished over there. They were doing farming on a partnership basis with the tenant Mexican farmers. And so we farmed together with them for a year and they bought their farm and we continued farming on our own. I heard that before we came back to Spring Valley -- that's where we lived ? I heard that some of the neighbors went around taking a petition. The petition said that they did not want the Japanese back in Spring Valley. And I heard that quite few people signed that thing. And also right after that, there was another schoolteacher and we didn't know him from Adam. We didn?t know him before the war either. He went around with a petition saying that, counter to the first petition, saying that there was no reason why we should keep out the Japanese neighbors that were here before the war. And he went out around with the petition saying that they wanted to welcome them back. And we heard about this after the war. I don't know what exactly the petition contained, but anyway, that was the rumor I heard.
Now when we got back there, I remember going back to the high school where I went, met old civic teacher, the speech teacher and so on and art teachers. And things hadn't changed too much. I mean some neighbors were cool toward us. Some people who were really warm before the war were now kind of distant. But otherwise we didn't see a whole big lot of change. Most of the Japanese, who were farming before, some went back to the farm but most of them gave up the idea of farming and they found jobs and so on. And I think that one thing that relocation did, it spread the Japanese all over the US. People didn't all come back to where they lived before the war. I think the most of the Japanese people in San Diego relocated elsewhere.
Q. Please tell us your opinion about the war. What lessons can we learn from it?
A. Well, I think as you think about the war: World War I was real bad and World War II was real bad also. And I think more people died in WWI than they did in WWII. But I think war is hell and I used to think if I go back to the USA and anybody talks about wanting to start another war, you just felt like you would like to shoot him or something. I?m less violent in my thoughts these days. But I always felt like if anybody wants to start a war it is better to shoot him.
Because war is, I tell you, you have this thing hanging over your head that maybe tomorrow it might be your chance to die, you know. It's a very big cloud on top of your head and it's very oppressive and very, I tell you, it is a terrible feeling and I think if there is something like a Third World War, it will be so terribly destructive and this Third World War, the soldiers are going to have it easier than the person at home. I think people at home are going to be blasted all to pieces. I think that war is going to be a nightmare if it?s something like a Third World War. I mean, you are going to try to destroy industry, and destroy morale and everything else like that. And the soldier, he is going to be second on the list. Civilians, they are the one that's going to be first on the list of the things to destroy, I think.
Q. Thank you.