Sadie Doi | Interview 1 | August 7, 2014

FUKUMOTO: It’s August 7, 2014. We’re in Hanapepe, Kauai, with Miss Sadie Doi. We’re just going to start from the beginning, if you could tell us your full name, when and where you were born, and what your childhood was like.

DOI: My full name is Sadie Kabazawa Doi. I was born in Waimea, Kauai, Hawaii, May 16, 1929. So I am eighty-five years old.

DUNHAM: Going strong.

FUKUMOTO: So what was your childhood like? What do you remember of your childhood?

DOI: Okay. We were dirt poor. I remember my family had a kitchen that had a dirt floor. The stove was made of concrete, I think. I don’t know how it was made, but my mom used to cook the rice in the big pot and stuff. What I remember very clearly, when I was in the fifth grade, I think, my sister—I wanted to have curly hair. So she put that iron rod in there, and she curled my hair. I looked like something out of nowhere. So I remember crying all night long, trying to get that perm out of my hair. That’s all I remember. Everyone there that I went to school with said they had outhouses. But we never did. We had [a] flush toilet. Ours was right between the kitchen. There was a little bath outside. Inside we had just a toilet and then the sink, and then our main house. My neighbor had theirs outside. We had two bathhouses. In between was a toilet, and that was theirs. So we grew up like that. There were only about five families living at the dairy, because that’s where I was born.

DUNHAM: How did your family come to be there? What was their—?

DOI: My father came—well, he was dissatisfied at home, and so he left, and he came to Hawaii because many of his friends were coming to Hawaii to seek work.

DUNHAM: Where was he from?

DOI: He was from Niigata, Japan. He landed, I guess, in Hilo, on the Big Island. He didn’t see or hear about anyone from Niigata, but he heard that there were lots in Kekaha, Kauai. So he got on the ship and then he came to Kauai. He had no job, but I guess the people there, he knew some of them that were living in Kekaha. He went to look for a job at the dairy. I think the dairy, at that time, was owned by Mr. Alan Faye. The Big Five, one of the Fayes. He was not one of the Big Five, not as a laborer but seeking work. He was hired as a handyman there. So we grew up right there. My mother was the laundry woman, and she was maid to the Fayes and so forth to earn money. There were nine of us. Well, seven children and my parents. I somehow remember the houses with lots of steps. So I don’t know why I have this tendency to put those geta and the slippers—my father’s, my mother, my oldest sister—all like that, in line, until today. My kids tell me, “You’re still doing that?” Because whenever I go to their home, I straighten up the shoes or whatever.

DUNHAM: In order of seniority? Yeah. But that’s something, too, because you showed us the photo; you had shoes, which a lot of folks didn’t. Right?

DOI: Uh-huh. But see, we could only wear the shoes to church and to school. We could never wear it—. But I think it was a hand-me-down from one of the plantation worker’s children. Because the rest of them—you saw the girl without shoes standing on the side. But all of us had shoes on.

DUNHAM: But they put you in the front row.

DOI: Mm-hm. We didn’t own a car till I think when I graduated. We didn’t have a car. So we never passed the Waimea Bridge. If we did go to Port Allen—Port Allen was a busy place during the war; yeah, over here, Hanapepe—we could wear our shoes to go to see Port Allen, to see the boat and stuff like that. But maybe we weren’t the only ones in my childhood days, yeah? We could go to Kress Store in Lihue. I remember going there once as a child, but we went with one of the people who owned a car there.

DUNHAM: What was the ethnic makeup of your five families?

DOI: Four Japanese and one Portuguese. One Japanese guy was married to a Portuguese.

DUNHAM: Was that pretty unusual at that time?

DOI: I think so, but I don’t know; we just grew up together. One was a Spanish family. So they were one, two, three, four, five, about six, six homes there.

DUNHAM: Do you know where the Spanish family was from?

DOI: No, I don’t. But the girls were beautiful. Yeah. Somehow, we used to just love to go to their home, because the mom would make Portuguese bread. The home was like, for us, we said it looks like a movie star home. It had curtains and frilly things, whereas ours was just plantation-type home. They loved to eat pork and beans, and my family always had sardines. Not that sardine that they used to eat, the one with the tomato, but ours was the other one, the oiled sardine. We would have maybe egg and—what’s that sausage, that little sausage?

FUKUMOTO: Oh, Vienna sausage.

DOI: Vienna sausage. They liked our food and we liked theirs, so we would trade.

FUKUMOTO: Oh, smart, yeah.

DOI: That’s how we grew up.

DUNHAM: A little variety. How did your mom and dad meet?

DOI: They were friends when they were, I guess, in Japan. So he sent for her. I don’t know where they got married, whether they got married here or there or wherever. I don’t remember when they came. I should, because my sister made a history. She and my brother and my sister-in-law, they all went to Japan; but they couldn’t get too many of their background, because the war had destroyed many of the cemeteries and stuff like that. So they don’t have much of the background of my parents. But they know more than I do. As I told you, my brother, during the war, my mom said, “Do not speak Japanese,” because they were so afraid. So I hardly was able to speak the language. So when I did go back to Japan in 1972, when my husband took the baseball team from Waimea High School, we tried to converse with his relatives. We didn’t go to Niigata; we went to Hiroshima, where his parents came from. We would speak in hand languages and our poor Japanese. My husband, although he looked Japanese—because one of the tour guides 00:09:0000:08:00told our group, “That man looks so Japanese, but can’t understand one little thing of Japanese.” He couldn’t. We had only one Caucasian with us, the principal. So my husband and the principal would be together all the time. Principal thought that my husband knew much, but he didn’t. But that was fun.

DUNHAM: What was life like for your parents when you were growing up? What were they doing here? Your mom was raising—

DOI: Yeah. She was a maid and washwoman, the laundry lady for Dr. Brennecke, and also Mr. Faye, the owner of the plantation. Then we had a huge garden, and we raised all our vegetables.

DUNHAM: Yeah, what all did you garden? What vegetables did you grow?

DOI: Oh. String beans, onions. What else? I can’t remember. String beans. I love string beans. Then we had the chicken coop. My brothers were supposed to clean it. Sometimes when my mom would be away working, they would tell me that, “You have to clean the chicken coop or we’re going to beat you up.” So I had to go and clean the— (xxx crap). They were all older, one year older than I was.

DUNHAM: Were you the youngest of all?

DOI: No, there was another one.

DUNHAM: Where did you fall? You were second to youngest? Yeah, okay.

DOI: And we raised ducks, too. I remember my kid sister had a little duckling, and she named him. The duckling bit my toe, so I kicked it with my geta and it flipped and it died. Of course, who got the scolding? Me. My kid sister got away with lots of things. She’s the one that married the white man, too, and got away with it. Yeah. I can’t remember that day, December 7. I think it was such a traumatic moment that it’s wiped out from my memory. But I can remember the days after.

DUNHAM: Yeah. Well, tell us about that.

DOI: This Portuguese guy, this boy, came into the dairy to search the homes. I was too afraid, so I ran to my girlfriend’s house. He came in there and he said he had to look through the house. We just stood there shivering and watching. He went with his gun, and that bayonet in the front, and ripped open the saimin boxes that I told you and the Kotex boxes, and ripped it all over the place, thinking that they were—I don’t know what they were looking for. But that I can clearly remember.

DUNHAM: Did that happen again after—? This is soon after the war; would that happen repeatedly?

DOI: No, no, no, only that one time and that was all. Then we had to blacken the windows. So I told you my father was a block warden, and he was an alien. The alien watching the Americans. But anyway.

DUNHAM: Did anyone give him a hard time, or did he get along fine doing that?

DOI: No. No, no, no. Nobody gave us hard times. Of course, as I say, the Spanish girls, pretty girls—they’re in here, too; they’re still our good friends—they did not call us Japs or anything. But they had a lot of good things to eat. I heard Mrs. Jane Kurakowa saying that she got turkey and all that, because they were friends of the service people. So these girls, the families were friends of the service men, so they would bring food for the family. Whereas we were too afraid to even speak to them. My brothers were very, oh, I think—I guess that’s the reason why. He may have been called a Jap and everything. So when I did go to Texas to go to school, before I left he said, “Don’t you ever marry a white man.” It’s one of those things that I guess—because he had maybe ill feelings toward them, yeah?

DUNHAM: Sure. Back to the story of the saimin and the Kotex were destroyed by this guy, how did your parents and the rest of your family react to that?

DOI: The thing is, they didn’t do that at my place.

DUNHAM: Oh, this was your—

FUKUMOTO: Friend’s.

DUNHAM: Oh, I’m sorry.

DOI: My friend’s. So when I went home, I told them what had happened. I said, “Did they take anything or did they break anything?” No. The Portuguese man that came in, I guess he was not a police officer, actually, but they made him a temporary police officer, one of those, yeah, during the war. He was a good friend of my brother’s. So I guess that’s the reason why he didn’t do anything to our house. But my mom told us to bury all the Japanese song records and the books. I remember we were digging underneath the house and burying them. But they were all not good after all the years.

DUNHAM: They all got ruined by that?

DOI: In fact, I think we even buried the phonograph.

DUNHAM: The player?

DOI: Yeah. But we had a Philco radio. Nobody in our community there owned a radio, so they would come to our house to listen to Joe Louis, the boxing matches and all that stuff.

DUNHAM: Were there things you especially liked to listen to on the radio?

DOI: Oh, The Green Hornet, and what is it, Henry Aldrich, all those.

DUNHAM: Lone Ranger?

DOI: “The Lone Ranger rides again.” We would wait for it. So our neighbors would come to my house to listen at night, and it’s all hot because we had to close everything.

DUNHAM: Did you use the radio to follow news of the war then, during the war, or your family?

DOI: No. I guess my brothers did, but we hardly—we were too busy working outside, taking care of the garden. We had no time to be doing those kinds of things. Then if we did play, we had lots of games to play.

DUNHAM: Like what?

DOI: Getting the empty cream cans and put the sticky bean glue on it and stick it underneath our feet. We would walk, we would race with that. And my brother would make stilts, with pieces of wood and that. I remember he made a little canoe like contraption, with galvanized iron. He used to take us to the ditch. I couldn’t swim, but you would ride in it. Then, when it came a little shallow, he would say, “Okay, get out,” and my sister and I had to go and chase the dojo. You know what the dojo is?

FUKUMOTO: No, what is that?

DOI: The little snake-like fish. Like a little eel.

DUNHAM: I was going to say eel.

DOI: Well, I don’t know what they call it, but we used to call it dojo. I don’t know what that is. But they used to go fishing with it as bait. We were supposed to go in the dirty old ditch and shoo it, and they would hold a net in one hand. But that’s the kind of stuff we did. As I say, during the summer, we would pick up the beans, the kiawe bean, and sell it to the dairy. It’s too hot, so we would go down to the beach, and we have to cross the pasture. That’s when we didn’t have any slipper or geta to wear, so everybody would be standing here, we’d say, okay; we would look for dry cow dung. Then we would say, “Well, there’s one.” We would run there, and then we’d spot another one, we would run and go there, and the other ones would follow until we would reach the beach. Then you have to crawl through the barbed wire fence, because they had strung barbed wire all over the place.

FUKUMOTO: You ever got in trouble doing that?

DOI: No. Nobody bothered.

DUNHAM: The soldiers didn’t enforce or—?

DOI: No. In fact, they weren’t around. They were across the street, in the pasture on the other side, on the highway. So when we’d go to school, I remember we had to use our gas mask. We would walk all in a straight row, and not look on that side, because they were there. They would say hello, and we wouldn’t say anything; we just look straight. We were so afraid.

But then—that when I was in eighth grade, I think, or seventh grade—we had to work in the cane fields, yeah? I said, “Why do we have to go?” They said, well, they were told that they needed people to work in there. The Filipinos were the lunas, the supervisors. So my girlfriends [and I], we would clean the ditch and go straight by the highway. Then the big truckloads of soldiers would pass, and we would all stand there and say, “V for victory! V for Victory,” trying to be very American and good citizens.

FUKUMOTO: Did the soldiers respond? Did they honk?

DOI: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they waved and—. But we never talked to them. At least we were far away, just saying—. I remember going to school on the mainland. When I came back, one of my friends, the girls that I met and visited and they took care of me when the dorm was closed—. He was a sailor and was stationed in Pearl Harbor. So I said, “Okay, let’s go to a movie.” My kid sister and I went, and he brought a friend. We were walking on the sidewalk, and I know the local boys would not give us way. They would walk on the sidewalk in Honolulu and we have to go off. As we passed, they would say, “Jerks.” They used to call, I guess, the boys, yeah? Call us, “You stupid—.” I don’t know. So I used to tell our sailor friends, “Don’t bother with them. They’re just ignorant.” But I felt so sorry for them, because they were so nice to me, when I was in Texas. But I guess it was because it was still fresh. Then I kind of forgave those people, because I think if I were—. Well, I’m Japanese, but if I were haole, I wou 00:22:0000:21:00ld consider maybe the Japanese as my enemy. But I remember my husband saying that when the war broke out—his home was right across the street, right over here—and he said he and his mother were working in the yard, in the garden, and was all done. So he said, “Okay, you can go,” because they get up early in the morning. When he went up to Port Allen to play with his friends someone from the camp said, “You boys better go home, because there’s war on. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.” So he ran home and he told his grandmother. His grandmother told him, “Baka.” Said, “Japan wouldn’t do that.” But after the war, when they said, oh, Japan surrendered,” she again said, “Baka. The Japanese would never surrender,” she goes. Because I guess she was still loyal with her native Japan.

DUNHAM: How did your parents handle that, being first generation and having family in Japan? How was it for them?

DOI: See, my father died in 1943.

DUNHAM: Oh, I’m sorry.

DOI: He was way older than my mom. But my mom, as the years went by, she loved America. When there were uprisings in the universities, she would tell us, “Why would they do that, when only in America, you can do things, you can work and just get to do something, without being told?” Even aliens like her can live here and raise families. She said, “Why do people do that?” She was so happy to be here. She never really wanted to go back, but she wanted to go back to visit. When she did, she took a lot of pencils and tablets and stuff like that, and took it to her hometown. They knew she was coming, so the mayor of the town had a microphone, and they said—here she was coming, at the school that she attended, they were all lined up in front of the school, and they greeted her. She took all the supplies because she knew the children didn’t have that many things. Each one of them wrote and drew pictures and gave it to her and thanked here. She brought it home. I don’t know what happened to it. As I say, my brother 00:25:00just, I guess, hated anything about Japan and Japanese. I guess he was so upset that he didn’t want to hear anything about what my mother would say. So I’m kind of sad. But you see, I respected my brother so much that I never talked back to him. He was the one that really raised the family and he sent me through school. So the respect is there, so I never answered back or anything like that, yeah.

DUNHAM: So that was after your father passed, the oldest brother sort of assumed the—

DOI: Yeah. That’s why he was rejected.

FUKUMOTO: From the military?

DOI: Yeah, military. Because he was able but he was the sole provider for our family.

DUNHAM: Since your father had passed, they—

DOI: But my brother is a good storyteller. All the little kids, my kids, as years went by, he would tell stories to them. How he was an American up there fighting the Germans, and he went up—and the kids were all—. He never even left Hawaii. [they laugh] But my two other brothers were drafted during the Korean War. One got hurt. My husband’s brother joined the—

DUNHAM: 442nd?

DOI: Yes, the 442. But before that they had this corps of men going out. CCC or something.

FUKUMOTO: Well, the Kauai—

DUNHAM: Yeah, there were a couple different—the Kauai Kiawe Corps?

DOI: Yeah. Well, he was at the University of Hawaii, so they all joined.

DUNHAM: Oh, the VVV.

DOI: VVV, yeah. And then they joined, yeah? Then he lost his leg in Italy and returned. But the parents were very proud of him. The second one was in the war. But not during the war, he was during Korean War. But never left the islands.

DUNHAM: The one who was in the VVV, had you heard anything about his experiences there? Or he was in the Hawaiian Territorial Guard at first? Because for the first—

DOI: Yes.

DUNHAM: Right after, I guess, the Japanese were able to—

DOI: Yeah, they went to build all the barbed wire fences and all that. Then they went to Camp Shelby and all that. When he came back, he stayed in the hospital in Utah. He met a katonk, Japanese girl from there, and married here. Then his children all married to local girls there. But he died in the arms of his son. He was teaching the boy football and he collapsed. He was only forty-two years old.

FUKUMOTO: Wow. Only forty-two. Oh my goodness.

DUNHAM: Back during the war years, I know you mentioned the gas mask. Can you tell us about the tests that were done, when you had to do—?

DOI: Yeah. We had to put it on our shoulder and walk to school. But we felt so proud to have a gas mask. Then we had a drill. They line us up and you have to go into this room. So naturally, all of us would line up and go in there. So if you’re first, you’re way in the back of the room, right? Then they’re going to release the tear bomb, just to see how you’re going to put it on. That’s right, we go in without the gas masks. That’s right. Then when they blow that, you’re supposed to put the gas mask on. But many times, it’s leaking or whatever and we’re all crying or something.

DUNHAM: So it was actual tear gas.

DOI: Tear gas, yeah.

FUKUMOTO: Wow. That sounds really spooky, to do [that].

DOI: Well, that was only once we did. But we thought it was just one of the drills.

FUKUMOTO: [laughs] I don’t know.

DOI: We weren’t beaten up or anything.

FUKUMOTO: I know, but real tear gas?

DUNHAM: What other kinds of drills were you doing at the time?

DOI: Oh, they said if the air raid goes on—you always have to be in line there. You cannot go running. You have to walk very orderly and go to the foreign church graveyard. It’s right next to our school. We have to all crouch along the stone wall. In my mind, I’m saying, oh, if the Japs come and shoot all of us, we’re going to be right there. They’re going to just dig a hole and dump us in the grave, and that’s it. But we never had to do—they never attacked Kauai. But that was one of the scariest things I can remember.

FUKUMOTO: Did you think that the Japanese would come back ever and attack, after Pearl Harbor?

DOI: No, we never thought of those things. I guess I was too young to really think about it. Maybe if you were in high school and stuff like that, yeah. But we were still kids, I guess. Even when the siren sounded, if it’s nighttime, my mother could not wake us up. So we just stayed in bed. She said, “Oh, we had a siren last night.” “How come you didn’t let us know? We were supposed to go into the shelter.” She said she tried to wake us up. So actually, I don’t think we ever went in that shelter.

DUNHAM: Never? Never?

DOI: Just to look and play in it, but my mom would always say, “Don’t go in there, because it might collapse.”

DUNHAM: Who made the shelter?

DOI: My brothers, I guess. Everybody has to make their own shelter.

DUNHAM: But she was worried it might collapse.

DOI: Yeah. Because we’re going to play, yeah. We’re going to dig things and maybe—

FUKUMOTO: Oh, yeah, make it worse. She wanted to preserve it.

DOI: But then I had to go in a shelter when I went to Texas, when they had a sandstorm. My gosh!

DUNHAM: Let’s talk about Texas a little later. I do want to talk to you about that period, but I wanted to ask you a little bit more about the war years. So did you hear about the executive order and what happened with Japanese on the mainland on the West Coast, with the incarceration camps?

DOI: Yes, we heard about it.

DUNHAM: How did you hear about it?

DOI: Then we decided, oh, that’s where Reiko went.

DUNHAM: Tell us about Reiko.

DOI: Never heard from her. I often wondered, where is she?

DUNHAM: She was a classmate of yours?

DOI: Yeah.

DUNHAM: Because I don’t think that we’ve recorded this, why was her family—?

DOI: Her father was the minister for Higashi Hongwanji church, and that’s where my parents used to take us, because it was walking distance. We didn’t own a car, so everything—we had to walk. We had to walk to school, almost a mile away, barefooted.

DUNHAM: If it was hot, did you look for cow dung, or how did you walk?

DOI: No, no, not on the highway.

FUKUMOTO: It’s hot all the time, though, right?

DUNHAM: Yeah, wasn’t it always hot?

FUKUMOTO: Your feet just got used to it, walking barefoot on the—?

DOI: No, there’s grass on the side, on the side of the road.

DUNHAM: Yeah. So the minister—so they were taken away. You didn’t know—

DOI: They were taken. We did not know where they had gone. We often wondered, maybe she’s in Honolulu. But we never heard from her.

DUNHAM: Then the temple was just closed?

DOI: The temple was closed, because no minister. Nobody wants to see us going into the Japanese temple at that time. Everything was, “Oh, you have to be Americanized.”

DUNHAM: Did you go to another church then?

DOI: No.

DUNHAM: Did you ever go to Christian churches or know folks who did?

DOI: No. No. Because we never thought of those things, until I went to school. No.

FUKUMOTO: But that was like overnight, yeah, that the family just left?

DOI: Yeah, just left.

FUKUMOTO: Maybe even in the middle of the night; you wouldn’t even know.

DOI: Well, I don’t—yeah. But we only knew that we cannot go to church. It was closed. There were other people that were taken, but I don’t know who they were. My classmates would say, “You were living in a desert.” The students from Kekaha, we used to see them on the truck going to school, when in high school already. Later on, I would tell them, “Yeah, but we never rode one of those horse-driven trucks. The trucks had to haul the animals, and you guys are in that stinking truck.” They used to see us walking as we were going to high school. But up until I graduated, we walked to school. My goodness. I can’t even think about it.

DUNHAM: Were there USO dances or other dances, do you remember?

DOI: We never. My parents never wanted us to even think about it.

DUNHAM: So even your older sisters, that was not—

DOI: No. I don’t know if they did, but I don’t think so.

DUNHAM: Did you know of anyone else who dated soldiers or anything or went to the dances?

DOI: No, no, no, no.

FUKUMOTO: Was that kind of a no-no, in a way?

DOI: For us, for our family. Then most of the children in our group over there were youngsters. So I never went to a dance, even my senior year. I never was invited. I didn’t want to be a wallflower. So I didn’t care. I said boys were—I never went to football games, too. We had football games during the afternoon.

DUNHAM: What did you do for fun?

DOI: That’s what I’m telling you, to go and pick choke plum and swam. No, we didn’t swim, because I can’t swim; but we used to wade.

DUNHAM: Where did you wade? Where would you go?

DOI: In the ocean.

DUNHAM: Yeah, where? Whereabouts, what beaches?

DOI: Behind the dairy. That’s why we had to go jump on one—

FUKUMOTO: Cow dung to another, to get to the beach.

DOI: One dung to another dung.

DUNHAM: Oh, to get there, right.

DOI: Yeah. And then we played hopscotch, jacks. But we didn’t need—

DUNHAM: Is this mostly family, or with the five groups?

DOI: Just a group of us, yeah.

DUNHAM: Did relations with the one Portuguese family change at all during the war years?

DOI: No, no, we were all good friends.

FUKUMOTO: Were you listening to music at that time, in the forties?

DOI: The only music I used to enjoy, my family used to enjoy, were Western. Now, this next year, the seniors here are having a Valentine’s dance party.

FUKUMOTO: Oh, how fun.

DOI: Every year, we have. This year, they said the theme is the fifties. I said, “What were you doing [in the] fifties? I can’t remember what I was wearing.” Oh, then I remembered wearing these crinoline skirts. There were jukeboxes and stuff like that. But as I say, I never went to dances, so I didn’t know how to dance. So the girls tell me, “Oh, we used to follow Mr. Kaneyama’s band and go to all the dances.” I said, “I never went.” My mother never wanted us to.

FUKUMOTO: Oh, wow. So she was pretty strict, yeah?

DUNHAM: Conservative, strict?

DOI: Yeah.

FUKUMOTO: I guess because she was on her own, too, so she probably felt—

DOI: And my neighbor was Baptist, so they didn’t believe in dances, so we didn’t go.

DUNHAM: Can you tell us a little more about working in the field? So it was during the war that on Fridays, you had to work in the fields?

DOI: Mm-hm.

DUNHAM: So what exactly were you doing?

DOI: We were hoeing the weeds, weeding between the canes, the rows of cane. So you have to wear long sleeves and long pants.

FUKUMOTO: Well, you had to wear shoes at that time, right?

DOI: You had to wear shoes. But at that time, we had shoes. And we had to wear something like a scarf and a hat. But we never really hoed the weeds in between, we just pretended. We’d say, “Okay, let’s go,” and we’d run out there and stay there and then wait for about—then the luna, he comes. “Get back, girls! Get to work!” So we’d go back. Slowly going back. Now, when you go back, it’s in the cane fields. So we said, “Okay, we’re finished,” go to the next row. We’d go to the next, and we’d go straight on down and then do our sign for Victory again.

DUNHAM: So it was all girls doing the weeding?

DOI: Well, for us. I don’t remember the—as I say, I never bothered to look at guys, so we girls stuck together, my girlfriends and I, from this small little camp.

DUNHAM: Did you get any newspapers during the war, do you recall?

DOI: Japanese newspaper. Honpa Hongwanji. What was it?

DUNHAM: There’s one that changed to the Hawaii Times during the war, but it had Japanese and English, I believe.

DOI: Yeah.

FUKUMOTO: Was it the Nippu Jiji?

DUNHAM: Nippu Jiji, I think.

FUKUMOTO: Something like that? But then it changed to Hawaii Times.

DOI: Oh, I don’t know, because I couldn’t read the Japanese, because we went to school and they closed.

DUNHAM: Yeah, how many years of Japanese school did you have before it closed? Just a couple?

DOI: Maybe I went up to the third grade. But didn’t learn much, but knew the alphabet. But it was too strict.

FUKUMOTO: Did your parents get the newspaper, though?

DOI: My parents, yeah. Actually, yeah, they were the ones that read the paper.

DUNHAM: Do you remember about the war bonds drive?

DOI: Mm!

DUNHAM: What do you remember about that?

DOI: We had to bring a nickel, a dime. I know we didn’t have too much money, so we weren’t that—. Our school I don’t think was really strict on that. But my girlfriend said that they didn’t have any money so she never brought any money, and the teacher said, “Why don’t you go back to Japan?” She said she was so devastated. She remembered that.

DUNHAM: Were the teachers mostly haole?

DOI: Yeah.

DUNHAM: Had they been before the war, too?

DOI: No, my third grade teacher was Japanese, and my fourth grade teacher was Portuguese, Mrs. Fernandez. My first grade teacher was Mrs. Robinson, and she was Hawaiian. She became my principal when I started teaching.

DUNHAM: Okay. Were those teachers all still teaching during the war? Did you recall?

DOI: Yes. Mrs. Gay, Mr. Goto, they were all there. Then after the war, white ladies came from the mainland, I know. There was a Miss Bobalco and—

DUNHAM: Aside from the pressure around the war bonds, to bring money, was there a lot of patriotism going on at the school—singing or other things?

DOI: Yeah. Well, schools at that time always started by saying the pledge, yeah? It continued, because when I taught, we said the pledge, too. But some Christians don’t say the pledge, yeah? But I would let them sit, but I would always tell them to be respectful. You don’t have to say it, but—I’d explain what it is, but they don’t know anything about it.

DUNHAM: Did you ever hear of the Mothers-Girl Forum, from the Women’s Auxiliary? This happened for a little bit during the war years. No?

DOI: No.

DUNHAM: Or English classes that were, I guess, for adults, first and second generation, that came about during the war?

DOI: Yes, but I guess my mom did not go, my mom and dad. As I say, there were only seven families, so we were, as I say, isolated, not right in the town area.

DUNHAM: Is there anything else about the war years you’d like to share with us, looking back? Do you remember the end of the war, V-E Day and V-J Day?

DOI: Well, I was teaching in the—oh, no, no, no. No, I wasn’t teaching. The end of the war, I was still—

DUNHAM: 1945.

DOI: Yeah. No. Still in high school. I don’t remember. I only remember that the war was over and it was all on the radio. So that’s it. But for us, the war years weren’t like the people who lived in California, those that were relocated. So when I think about it, we lived quite well. Although we didn’t have beautiful things to wear and stuff like that, but those were not important to us at that time.

DUNHAM: Did people go into Oahu for jobs, civil defense jobs, or the mainland?

DOI: No.

DUNHAM: Did you ever hear of the Rosie the Riveter image of women working in the shipyards, that kind of thing?

DOI: Oh, only in the comic books.

DUNHAM: At the time?

DOI: Yeah. I never cared to watch the comic books because they would portray us as slant-eyed with buck teeth. So I thought, “Oh my goodness.”

DUNHAM: Very dehumanizing, the war images, yeah.

DOI: Yeah. So I never cared to read comics.

DUNHAM: Was that at the movies, too? Did you go to the movies?

DOI: I hardly went to movies. The only movie I remember is Shirley Temple. That’s the only one. Then my brother, he liked to watch movies at home. He had a little movie thing. But this was way later. He had the Three Stooges and that kind of movie, and the kids would watch; but I never cared to watch movies.

DUNHAM: So what happened for you after the war, going through the rest of high school? What was life like then?

DOI: Well, I decided that I was going to school and I’m going to Texas. “If I don’t go to Texas, I am not going to do anything. I’m going to stay home and rot,” I told my mom.

DUNHAM: Was she not in favor of your going to Texas?

DOI: No.

DUNHAM: She was okay with it?

DOI: Yeah. Because she was going—oh, she did take English lessons at the church. So there was a missionary.

DUNHAM: What kind, a Christian church, at that time?

DOI: Christian church.

DUNHAM: After the war.

DOI: Yeah. She told the woman that I was graduating, and she said, “She’s not going to school because she wants to go to Texas.” So this missionary came from Texas. So she wrote to the school, and she got me a place to go to a school there in Texas. So I called my—you know Mrs. Nonaka? Her sister-in-law and I went. She was my classmate. And both of us went there. I stayed there for three years.

DUNHAM: So what year is this that you go?

DOI: 1950. ’49 I graduated, and January in ’50, I went. I thought we were never going to come back, because we could not land in LA because of the smog. We saw all the plane, and I told my girlfriend, “We’re not going back. We’re going to be dead. I hate this plane ride.” Finally we landed, and now we were to go to the train station. I don’t know how we got there, but there were so many trains going back and forth and everything. This is the first time we’d been gone. I had on high heels, which I never wore before. So I’m trying to walk, and she’s going one way, and the conductor told me, “Come this side, to go on this train.” My girlfriend is going the other way. I’m yelling at her and—. Then we went on the train and I told my sister—she said, “It’s going to be a streamlined train.” But no, it was one of those that just rocks you all the way. Rock, rock. I was so sick. Then they said, “Oh, you may go and have food. Go to the dining room.” We had to pass through a car that had only blacks. Ooh, we were so sca 00:50:0000:49:00red, because the only black person we saw was during the war. We said, “Oh, look at the chocolate soldiers.” But they were nice. So we were so afraid to pass. And they’re looking at us, with the big eyes and the white teeth. I said, “Oh, I don’t think I want to go and eat.” She said, “No, let’s go.” So we went. Then we’re going, I said, “Oh, I need to go to the bathroom,” because I was feeling so bad. Then we go out, and which door should we go in? There’s whites only and blacks only.

FUKUMOTO: Ooh. Yeah, that’s hard.

DOI: I said, “There’s no yellow.” So the conductor comes and said, “You’re white. Go to the white.” I said, “We’re haoles.” [they laugh] What a cultural shock! Then I guess we didn’t learn too much geography; I wasn’t too aware, I think. So I’m going, I saw the sign, Texaco. “We reached Texas!” [they laugh] I didn’t know that was the name of the gas station. But I said, “Look, there’s another Texaco.”

DUNHAM: You didn’t get off, at least.

DOI: No, no, no. I said, “I don’t want to go up there to sleep.” You know, upper berth and lower berth. I said, “You go up there.” And I’m trying to push her up. That was really—then when we reached there, the cab driver came. He looked at us, and I guess we looked foreigners. We don’t talk and we just nodded. So he took us there, and he ran out of the cab and went running up to the dorm, and then comes running down. He’s telling the two Korean girls, yeah, “No speak English. No speak English.” So the Korean girls are talking to us in Korean. Can’t understand anything. I said, “We speak English.” Ho, the girls took off and the taxi driver took off. So we were two left stranded, right on the foot of the step, because they just left us there.

FUKUMOTO: Oh, wow.

DUNHAM: Was that not your dorm?

DOI: That’s the dorm.

DUNHAM: Had you startled them when you spoke English?

DOI: Yeah, they looked at us—.

FUKUMOTO: Couldn’t figure it out?

DOI: And the girls never bothered to come to us, the Korean girls. They left, anyway.

FUKUMOTO: So what part of Texas?

DOI: It’s a small, little town in Brownwood, Texas. It’s sort of centrally located.

DUNHAM: What school was it?

DOI: It’s a Baptist school. It’s now Howard Payne University, but at that time it was—. That was the best for me because I think I blossomed there. Because here, you were just in your little group, yeah? And if you come from the dairy, probably you’re stuck-up, yeah? We call the city girls in Waimea, and we were the country hicks, yeah. Over there, they didn’t care. They just treated us so well. To me, that’s one of my favorite states. I’ve never returned, but I’ve had my friends come and stay with me, from Texas.

FUKUMOTO: Oh, nice. Oh, so you’ve kept a lot of good friendships from there?

DOI: Yeah. One of them, the one that was my roommate, she passed away last year. But she and her husband came when—her brother was a doctor for the Army. So I saw him. I saw him when he was a young boy. He used to chase me with a horned toad. Horned toad and a horned lizard or whatever, the toad with the horn. He would say, “Let’s go swimming.” They would swim in the—. They make a—

DUNHAM: Swimming hole or something?

DOI: Yeah, swimming hole. They make it, because there’s no water, so they collect it from the rain. They put, I guess, fish in there. He said, “Let’s go fishing.” And the cows are going in the pond, and he’s swimming in the pond!

FUKUMOTO: What did you study?

DOI: I went into elementary ed, because remember, when I was a third grader, someone stole the ball that I was supposed to be in charge of. I said, “I’m going to be a teacher and I’m going to take care of all the kids that are looked down upon and ridiculed and stuff.” So that was my goal.

FUKUMOTO: And you accomplished that, yeah?

DOI: Mm-hm. My girlfriend, the other one, she wanted to be a nurse and she did become a nurse. She wanted me to be a nurse, too, but I said, “No, I can’t stand blood.” So the best I stay where I decided to go. Yeah.

DUNHAM: What was the food like and the rest of the socializing and kind of meeting Texans?

DOI: I loved the food. Every Sunday, we had chicken. When I was invited to my friends, they would have chicken and dumplings and peach cobbler. That’s where I was introduced. Because in Hawaii, at that time, when we were growing up, we didn’t have dessert, yeah? We never had dessert. But in college, or anyplace you go, there’s dessert. I enjoyed the food. I love food. My middle name is food. That’s no problem for me.

DUNHAM: And did you date there?

DOI: Oh, yes, I did. I dated. Yeah.

DUNHAM: Was that your first time dating—

FUKUMOTO: All kinds?

DUNHAM: —or had you dated back here?

DOI: No, I never dated over here. I don’t want to say anything because I don’t want—.

DUNHAM: But anyway, you had your freedom there.

DOI: Yes. Although my brother said, “Don’t you marry a white man.”

FUKUMOTO: He didn’t say “Don’t date.”

DOI: They would vote you in to be Miss something and all that. I had to have an escort. So the boys would say, “Can you ask me to be your escort?” So I had no problem. All these football guys. I was a waitress at the end, because my brother wrote and said, “You must come back, because I want to buy a property and I can’t send you any money.” So when I told the dean, they said, “Why don’t you write to your brother, and we’ll pay your tuition and everything and a place to stay. Only the books, let him pay.” So my sister-in-law told him to let me remain, so I remained there. I worked for my room and board as a dining room waitress.

FUKUMOTO: Oh, that’s wonderful, yeah.

DOI: Yeah.

DUNHAM: You stayed there all through summer and holiday break?

DOI: Yeah.

DUNHAM: What did you do during the holidays and summers?

DOI: So many people wanted to invite me. I went everyplace. That’s how I got to New Mexico with my good friend’s family. My girlfriend went to Mexico, but I didn’t want to go with them because I didn’t have money. So I just stayed in Texas.

DUNHAM: Ever any challenges with somebody saying something rude to you around race?

DOI: No, that’s the funny part. They didn’t think I was Japanese. Even when I went to Japan in 1972. The waitress came, and we’re all seated around this nightclub. Because the principal didn’t go; he didn’t want to go to drink and stuff. So one of the ladies said in Japanese, to the waitress, “Can you tell what nationalities we are?” In Japanese, because she knew Japanese. She went, she said, “Nihonjin.” That means Japanese. Nihonjin. And the Chinese guy, “Nihonjin.” They cannot tell the difference. Came to me, “Americanjin.” I was the only American there, so I said, “See? You fools better behave.” Because at that time, at one—I don’t know what city—they had, “Go home Yanks. Yankee go home.” So I told them, “See? Aren’t you glad you guys are with me? Now we can go home, because they want us to go home. But you folks can stay.” But that was the only—but in general, in college, no. They were so nice.

DUNHAM: And you really kind of came out of your shell, as you said.

DOI: Yes, I think so.

DUNHAM: It gave you the opportunity to go for it.

DOI: Because the first month, the Kiwanis invited some of the foreigners, and they called me a foreigner. So there was a guy from India, a doctor. He became a doctor, a missionary doctor in India. Had a Brazilian, had a Mexican from Mexico, and myself. They consider Hawaiian as foreigner. Because I was the only woman, I was to go first. I saw the microphone. Just standing, with just a mic. They told me to, “State your name, where you came from, and why did you come to school here?” I looked at the microphone. Nothing came out. I was shocked. I was stage-struck. Then tears came rolling down my face.

FUKUMOTO: Oh, no.