Jimmy Lee | Interview 1 | July 27, 2014

DUNHAM: Today is Sunday, July 27, 2014, and we're very honored to be here with Jimmy Lee, for our World War II Home Front oral history project. Jimmy, we usually start at the beginning. Can you tell us when and where you were born, and your full name?

LEE: Yes. My name is James Lee, and I was born and raised right here in this property a place which is no longer on the map. I grew up on a farm. Course, now it's all warehouses and others, but at that time, it was a very rural country area. I lived here all my life, up to about age fourteen or fifteen. My family were actually from Hawaii. But, my father went back to Shanghai and lived there 00:01:00for a while. Then he came back. He witnesses the attack on China, by the Japanese. So he came back home.

My mother's parents were from China. They were from Canton. But my mother was born and raised here. We had a little farm, and this was a very isolated type of a community. There were few homes. The closest home maybe was about two or three blocks away It was a very rural and real country type of a place. Anyway, being in this area here, as you can see, the water, the shores of Pearl Harbor, 00:02:00growing up as a kid, my oldest sister, about six years ago, gave me an old photo of myself. That was the first time I saw that picture. She said, "You know, you were just a rascal, full-of-mischief little kid. You were very, very anxious, very excited, and always look for problems and playful." That was six years ago, and I've never seen that photo before. That was taken in September, 1938, when I was eight years old.

As kids, we used to get out here in this fishpond, out in the waters, doing crabbing and fishing we grew up in a farm, and that was our entertainment. Now right here, this is the remnants of the old fishpond; it had been filled up. When we were kids, we were just playing out here in the pond. This was all the 00:03:00years before December 7, 1941.

DUNHAM: Can I ask, how did your family come to own the property here?

LEE: Well, my parents, I guess through grandparents, had this property on lease. They had rice paddies in this area. It was rice that they grew. And we had some vegetable farming and some pigs and some cattle and chickens. The farm was basically, for self-sustainment and for the family; it wasn't a commercial type of a thing.

DUNHAM: It wasn't a big selling business? No? Understand some folks stopped by to buy like a roadside stand.

LEE: It wasn't a big selling thing, and that's what they did. So by the time that I was living here, the rice paddies was no longer around, although they had 00:04:00the small warehouse and shed.

DUNHAM: So you were no longer growing rice?

LEE: We were no longer growing rice when I was here. They showed us the rice paddies area and sheds.

DUNHAM: What were your living quarters like?

LEE: Well, the living quarters we had, it was a wooden shack with a tin roof. Of course, unlike today, we don't have the kitchen; we had to have fire wood. No heaters, no telephone and had out houses. But real, real old-time type of a thing. When we were kids, we cut grass and feed the cattle. Then we had to milk the cattle. With the pigs, we had to bathe them and feed them. We butchered our 00:05:00own chickens and pigs for food. Let alone us going out in the water, digging clams and catching crabs, and up the river, catching little fish for our food.

DUNHAM: Was that all just for your family?

LEE: This was just for our family.

DUNHAM: How many of you were there?

LEE: I came from a family of, six living together here at that time. But being a youngster, eleven years old, we had our chores. We had to feed the pigs; we had to milk the cows. Unheard of nowadays, but that's what we did. So as far as playmates for us, other than going to school and coming back, doing your chores. But my only friends that I had was a little Japanese boy that lived right here 00:06:00by this fishpond. He was slightly older than I was. We used to play marbles and carry our slingshots so that we could shoot the birds and things like cats, and pluck the birds and eat the birds. Put them over the charcoal and eat the birds. That's what it was like, the farm. Same thing with the clams, the crabs. We used to catch those things and even eat it raw. Because we just loved that. At one time, they used to have little oysters, too, but we dare not eat that kind of stuff. We didn't like it.

DUNHAM: Can I ask, where did you go to school?

LEE: I went to school in a little school called Aiea School. It's about two miles from here. At one time, there was a railroad that used to run right in back of this area. We used to ride the railroad up to a certain point and then 00:07:00walk to school. At that time, we didn't really have shoes; we used to walk to school barefooted. I remember a couple of times, I used to ride the horse to school. But then, what do you do with the horse while you're in school? No way could I do that anymore.

DUNHAM: What was the ethnic makeup of your school?

LEE: The ethnic makeup of the school then, as far as I can remember different nationalities here in this community in Hawaii, we had different folks. I'd like to mention where we were, they had a little Filipino camp. On the other side, there was a little Puerto Rican camp. On this side, there was a little Hawaiian camp. Japanese were up there, and up the valley, they had some Chinese with 00:08:00banana fields and Japanese with watercress and a little piggery. We were not close to each other; we were kind of distant, apart. We knew each other, we were friends; but the thing is, we did not really mingle together. This is before the war situation.

Coming back to December 7. Maybe it's nice and clear now, but they had a lot of ships in the harbor. As far as I'm concerned, they were just boats. Didn't mean anything, but there were a lot of ships there. Before the war situation, they used to have maneuvers once in a while. We could see some planes flying and soldiers. We think nothing of it; it's very exciting. Well, my chores on 00:09:00December 7 was to feed the pigs. Right over here, maybe about 200 yards from here, that's where the pigpen was. Feeding the pigs that morning, and wow, all of a sudden, here comes the plane coming overhead really low. I could see the bottom of the plane. I could see it looked funny, and the roar of that plane was scary. Then at the same time, when I looked up, you could practically see the pilot. What was so fabulous was machinegun fire and cannon fire. When I looked up in the sky, gee, it seemed like there were hundreds of planes flying in the sky. Today you might be sitting in the living room, looking at a sixty-inch screen--but let me tell you, when that happened, I was so excited I ran to the 00:10:00railroad track and sat on the track--which is just maybe about 150 yards from here--sat on the track watching the show, thinking that this was a war game. But it looked really funny because there were planes flying all over the place. And I could see, way up in the mountains, up in that area, out to what is the present-day airport, planes from all over, firing, and gunfire and explosions and smoke and fire everywhere.

Of course, this was really exciting. With all the ships in front of me, they weren't attacking any of the ships; they weren't even shooting at our home. But out there in that area, wow. Big explosions, big fire that came out, as you can see, out there where that big ball is. I later found out that was the Utah that 00:11:00got hit. Then far out there, there were planes. There was a Marine air base that was being hit; but I didn't know that at the time. But there were planes and smoke all over the place.

Then back there, where you can see where the Arizona is, it was very interesting is that, wow, there were planes dropping something in the water. Later found out that it was torpedoes. After the torpedoes were dropped, you could hear explosions. You could see smoke and fire. For an eleven-year-old kid, let me tell you, it was most exciting when the planes were coming in. They were shot at and you could see them trailing smoke and flames and blowing up in the sky. When that happened, I would cheer, sitting there, "Wow, they shot down another one."

Then soon after that, wow, all the flames and the explosions going on. What is 00:12:00that? I later find, hey, that's the Arizona. That sound of that explosion was so deafening. We could not feel the vibration, but the sound traveled, and it was something (the sound) that you'll never forget. The flames at the Arizona was about a couple hundred feet high. Seeing all of those things, and again, sitting there like fools, unafraid and more curious and everything else, I sat there for about an hour. Right above, the sky, nice blue skies now, there were planes flying up above. There was so much puffs of smoke, anti-aircraft fire, shooting at those planes. The planes weren't dropping anything. But they were not shot down, either. Later we find that those were films; they were filming the attack. 00:13:00So if you saw the movie, you see the attack. Those were real films. A lot of those shells didn't explode there in the sky but fell in the city of Honolulu, and they killed quite a number of civilians. The Japanese did not, I find out later, did not bomb the city of Honolulu. That was all friendly fire; a cousin of mine that was killed.

I can tell you one of the most exciting photos is back there, they had a ship called the Nevada. I lived in this area, out to where the Arizona is, about a mile away. I saw this ship coming in. It was burning, it was smoking. They were firing the guns. It came to within a half a mile from my home. What's happening? The dive bombers coming in. I could see them drop the bombs on the ship, blowing 00:14:00up on the ship. But the ship don't sink. I could see the bombs falling in the water, all the water spouts. Boy, that was exciting. Then as soon as the bombers pulled away, here comes the planes, strafing with machine gun fire. With all of that, there was not a round that came by where I was sitting. What a show. Anyway, it was one of the most exciting things, with the sounds and fire and everything else going on. I had a screen of about ten miles, seeing all the aircraft and action. That was really something for a kid.

Almost an hour went by. All of a sudden, here comes the loud speakers, "We're being attacked. We've been attacked. This is a war. We've been the invaded." The Japanese troops have landed." That's when we panicked. It was fear. That's when 00:15:00we took off into the mountains. About a half a mile from here, hid out in the caves where we were camouflaged with the banana trees. We could see the planes, we could hear the bombing, we could hear the attack, but we couldn't see anything. Earlier, we could see everything that was going on. Then after almost an hour, it was all over.

We came home to get more supplies and clothing--because they mentioned that the troops had landed; we wanted to get more food and supplies--when we came home, there was no more planes. Smoke and fire. As you can see, where the Arizona is, they had little boats going around and around. You could see fireboats shooting 00:16:00water, you could see smoke and fire, and boats going around, picking up survivors and bodies from the water. We watched, and what a sight to see, to remember. But that's when fear--that's when our lives had changed.

That afternoon, when we came home, the troops were here, and this was martial law. Martial law was imposed on us, the soldiers just controlled everything. I must say that under martial law, we had so much restriction that little kid, that rascal used to go in the water before, we could not step foot in the water. There was nothing we could do right. Everything we did was wrong. The military way was the only way to do things. We had to obey.

I talk about the community, with Puerto Ricans and Filipinos that way. One of the things that really happened under martial law, I never saw people get together and help each other, to look after each other, to help each other. We had to dig bomb shelters. People came by to help us dig; we helped them. They made sure that we ate and that we were okay. But we had blackouts, we had curfews, we had censorship, we had so much control over us. It was really strict. As I mentioned earlier, one of my chores was to milk the cow. Even as the eleven-year-old kid, I had to do that before I go to school, and the cows demand to be milked. One morning before curfew time, I brought the cow out from 00:18:00the bushes, so I could take it to the pen so I could milk her. I was met by a soldier. A soldier with a long rifle and a long bayonet sticking at my throat. "What are you doing violating the curfew?" Boy, I tell you, an eleven-year-old kid with a bayonet. Those bayonets were long at the time, and sticking at my throat. I tell you, that was fear. But the soldier himself, I think he was more scared than I was, because he didn't know whether I was friend or foe. But I remember that as the eleven-year-old kid.

DUNHAM: Do you remember what happened? Did you say something?

LEE: Oh, yes. "Hey, I'm just trying to milk my cow."

DUNHAM: It was just because you'd gotten up before dawn?

LEE: Oh, yes. Yes, yes. That's right, my chores, because we'd always done this.

DUNHAM: So after that, were you not able to do it?

LEE: We were not able to do it, but at the same time, when they found that we're not enemies, they kind of let us go. I used to go in the water (ocean) before the attack; but once the attack come, you could not set your foot in the water. But that's the way we lived. We had to get our crabs, our fish. I got caught so many times going into the water that they would catch me and want to arrest me. But because I'm an eleven-year-old kid, they let me go. "Don't do it again." "Okay." But we were back in the water again.

DUNHAM: Once they knew you, they let you go in the water for crabbing and all that?

LEE: Yes, yes. Right next to our house, during the war period, there were 00:20:00balloons, barrage balloons, little camps here. Just like dirigibles with long cables, the whole perimeter of this harbor, you could see balloons up there with dangling cables. That's what I used to call our little balloon camp. They had detachments of soldiers that would put up these balloons right next to our house.

This is to prevent dive bombers. Almost every week, you could see, all on this whole perimeter, with balloons and dangling cables. Because of censorship-- everything was so strict--we didn't know what's happening. Almost every week, with the air raid sirens, we had to dive in our bomb shelters, because we're not 00:21:00knowing whether it's friend or foe.

DUNHAM: Were you issued the gas masks?

LEE: Yes, we were issued the gas masks by civil defense. We were living under martial law, for almost three years. You asked earlier about our home. Our home was so old that every time we had candles, a little kerosene lamp, the light would shine through the cracks on the wall. My father got arrested for violation of blackout. We had to put blankets and whatever else over the walls. It was better without light. When you put the blanket, you have no air.

DUNHAM: What happened to your father when he was arrested, do you know?

01-00:21:47

LEE: My father was arrested but never sentenced or put in jail. Yeah, because we were farmers and they kind of let us go. My friend, this fishpond, was Japanese. 00:22:00As soon as the attack was over, they were met by soldiers with machine guns. .They ordered them to go home, take all their belongings, in twenty minutes, and "don't you ever come back here."

DUNHAM: But this was their home.

LEE: This was their home, right here.

DUNHAM: So where did they go?

LEE: They went out to some relatives' house several miles away. But the Japanese--unlike up in the mainland US--they were treated a little different. They were very restricted, but they were not put in internment camps. Although some of them were. This was what it's like, and all the misery that we lived through in martial law. Let me tell you, they were strict. There was nothing you could do right. What they were afraid of was that the Japanese would be coming 00:23:00back. But fortunately, as we won more battles out in the Pacific, it was less and less a chance.

DUNHAM: Were you and your family afraid of that? Your dad, having known firsthand of the Japanese attacks in China, did he have particular feelings about it?

LEE: Yes. His early feeling was that, hey, this is just a maneuver, a war game. Because way out here, nothing like that would happen. But when that announcement came by, that was it. That's when he really started talking about what they did then, what they did there. He wanted to move up into the mountains and try to be safe and get away from our home because of the attack. In spite of the military, under martial law, we felt kind of secure. We felt like there was somebody to 00:24:00watch over us and protect us. Because during the war years, up on the hillside, where you have all housing now, there were military camps all over the place. There were so many military folks here at that time, so we felt kind of at ease; but still tense because of the martial law and all the restrictions that we had.

DUNHAM: Did the military ever ask your family to leave, during the four years?

LEE: Because we were farmers and because we're not Japanese, we were not ever asked to leave. Because we lived so close to the harbor, we were being watched, but not really restricted in anything we did. Of course, we had to have ID cards, but they never did ask nor demand -- guess we were abiding citizens.

That soldier, at that camp next door adjacent to our farm, that treated us so badly, we got to be friends after a while. Friends, in the sense that they would 00:25:00let us come in and see what they were doing. When we had rationing we had to stand in line for fish, chicken. The soldiers used to eat a lot of steaks and chicken, and we had fish and crab. I think they got a little tired of it, so we used to teach them how to eat some of these crabs and fish. I used to pick up garbage from them so we could feed our pigs. Many times, in the garbage, we had steaks and chicken, wrapped up in heavy wax paper. I don't know whether they purposely threw it away. The pigs didn't eat that; we ate it. We ate the steaks and we ate the chicken. But we taught them how to eat, yeah, fish and crab.

DUNHAM: So you said you had to get in the ration lines?

LEE: Yes.

DUNHAM: You didn't have enough food from your farm?

LEE: Yes. Yeah, even if we did, we could not give it away. It was just controlled that you might have to go like a little farmers market and stuff like that, and kind of share it with other people.

DUNHAM: You could do that at a farmers market, though?

LEE: Yeah. That's what I did under watchful eyes. We didn't have that much, but that's what we did. For fish especially, we used to go out and stand in line for fish, one fish. We had our own chickens, but these are all part of the restrictions, and that's what made it very difficult for everyone. Tight control!

We lived under this condition for a while; but then my parents felt that I was really a kid out of control. Trying to live under those conditions, it was real 00:27:00dangerous for me and the family, so they sent me to a private boys' school--in this case, Iolani School--for discipline, you see? One of the things the war did for us at that time was we were disciplined enough. We lived in fear. We had was a sense of cooperation within the community that wasn't there before. The Japanese that lived up there, many of them joined the military, because they were a little older. But for us, it was the community getting together. We all got together to help, and cared for each other, to look after us. Anyway, I went to the school, and lived in the Chinatown area. Growing up in the war years, we 00:28:00had military and many restrictions. Because we were winning the war, it was kind of more relaxed. But we had thousands of troops. Growing up in Chinatown was really exciting, with the military.

DUNHAM: So when did you move from here to Chinatown?

LEE: We didn't move, the family stayed here, but I moved with my sister and family when I went to school. But I still had to come back and help out on the farm.

DUNHAM: So who did you and your sister live with?

LEE: My sister got married in 1939. I lived with them, right in the Chinatown area. Her father-in-law was a minister, so I was able to live with them. But still, my parents expected me to come back and help with the farm.

DUNHAM: You say it was exciting living there. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

LEE: Well, it was exciting living out there because my father was also a cook with one of the famous Chinese restaurants. We had to work at the restaurant.

With all these troops, there were fights. The drunkards and troublemakers. The locals and the military got beat up. There were a lot of bars and a lot of vices going on. So kids like us, we were always watching those things.

DUNHAM: Prostitution?

LEE: Yeah. I might want to say this--of course, I don't know whether you want to print this kind of stuff, but--

DUNHAM: You can always review--

LEE: My uncle had a service station. We were about twelve, thirteen years old, and we used to watch all the time. They used to have the long lines in Chinatown. I remember when I asked a sailor, "Well, what they're doing?" He said, "Well, they're going to the hotel room." So the sailor says, "Come on." So 00:30:00I went in line. I got up there and that woman says, "Get out of here, you're too young." I didn't know what that was. Poor, innocent, nosy kid. The sailor says, "Come on up," so I was thrown out only to watch across the street.

DUNHAM: It wasn't the fish or chicken line.

LEE: It wasn't. How stupid. The troops, they were all youngsters. But we were much younger. But I remember getting kicked out of line.

There were a lot of gambling joints over there. My father was a gambler. He used to gamble quite a bit, he used to drink quite a bit. But he's one of those that--"Now," he says, "you see what I do, but don't ever do what I do." So I used to follow him all around the gambling joint. During a break time from the 00:31:00restaurant one time, he would go over there to drink and gamble, and then go back to the restaurant to work. At one time the gamblers knew my father had a few bucks, they knew he liked to drink, they knew he wanted to gamble, so they fed him more drinks. So they would take his money. I remember one day he lost all his money, and he called the guy a crook. That's when the guys held my father and this one fellow--they called him the snake, the leader--he turned his ring, raised the blade, and cut my father in the face. Here I am, a young kid. "Hey, stop it, stop." Those guys are going to beat him up--I watched that.

Then I ran out there to call the police. Then all of a sudden, those guys ran through the wall, through a trap door, and they were out in the parking lot. They cleaned up the place, drinking tea when the police came in. "What's 00:32:00happening?" "Oh, the kid doesn't know what he's talking about. Nothing happened." So you think the cops believed me? Nothing happened. But here my father's bleeding. The police says, "There's a lot of gambling?" I said, "Oh, yeah, there's quite a bit." "Now, can you show me?" I took them out to Chinatown. He says, "Don't point." I said, "Yes, up there, up there, up there, up there, all the gambling." They had one of the biggest raids in Chinatown, for all the gambling joints because of--hopefully, all those guys are dead now, they can't hear me. But that's what it was.

At one time, I delivered opium, not knowing what it was. I was doing this for a 00:33:00guy new at this. We used to deliver that to the old Chinese folks down the alley. Boy, once we were over there, they were really happy to get that. They would give me fifteen cents -- five cents for a milkshake and ten cents for a hotdog -- my favorite. I used to ask for more, until that guy got caught and they were put in jail, these undercover agents, I thought they were, because they got addicted to to that, too.

DUNHAM: Now, these undercover agents, were they Chinese?

LEE: I think they were Chinese and Korean folks. This is part of the life that we had, and the observations of young kids like me. But the good things, we had USO shows, and we met guys like Joe Louis and other boxers because of the boxing gym that we had around the area.

DUNHAM: Were you able to go to USO shows?

LEE: Oh, yes. They would let us in. About a mile away from here, they had the 00:34:00biggest shows, where I saw people like Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and the Andrews Sisters. People never heard of those guys. Shirley Temple was there, Betty Grable, and many more, and were able to go to all of those shows. They let us in.

At the same time, we were not supposed to see, like mass burial near the stadium. Before Punchbowl was developed, we used to run up there and go behind the trees and see the bagged bodies and the boxes put on the trenches. We didn't know what we were watching, then later on, to find that this was a mass grave; they had to bury some of these folks.

A lot of people ask, have you been in the military? Well, of course. When the Korean War time came about, that's when it was my time to serve. I didn't like 00:35:00the military, but then I found out later that you have no choice, so join them, rather than fight them. So I did my thing; I was drafted then. I was sent to Europe. I was with the occupational forces in Europe, occupation of Germany. Loved the military after a while. But one of the big things that this war and growing up in those years, was that it made me appreciate life, what life was like. Because I was in the military, I could understand what war was like. Not only that, but when I was in school, I hated history. But one of the things that I learned with all of these years was the value of history. So I kind of felt 00:36:00like I lost something. But one of the greatest experiences is that it made me realize that history was great.

DUNHAM: Can I ask, when you talked about being the only Asian or person from Hawaii in the military, was that hard? Were they hard on you?

LEE: Well, I say this because there were a lot of local people in the military. But I was the only one in my unit in Germany. It was hard at first not having 00:37:00anyone from your hometown but I was treated fine. Prior to that, I was in officer training school, but resigned, like a fool.

DUNHAM: Why was that?

LEE: Because I wanted to volunteer to go to Korea and go to combat with my friends, thinking--because I trained with them. I trained those people for combat, and all of a sudden they're in Korea, and here I am somewhere else. I wanted to be with them. But then, of course, hindsight, that's stupid. But when I was in Europe, they sent me to units where--many of the locals were in certain kind of units, but I happened to be on the staff and faculty of a school, to teach people. I guess because of the training that I had. So they didn't have too many locals doing this, and I was with--I wouldn't say scholars, but other people. So I was with them. But I was treated real well. I was treated real well, even though being a minority. I was treated worse when I was in the 00:38:00mainland, where you're a Chink, because of the Chinese out there in Korea. "Hey, you don't look like my coloreds, who sit in the back of the bus" type of thing. They did that to us.

DUNHAM: When you were in the military--?

LEE: When I was in the military in the mainland, in the US. That happened in the US, not in Europe. In Europe, we had no problem. And everywhere else. But that's one of the values--

DUNHAM: How did you deal with that, that prejudice?

LEE: Well, the prejudice, we'd just kind of laugh it off and say--when they told us to sit in the back of the bus, we'd say, "We ain't going to sit in no back of the bus; we're going to sit in the front." And we did. But those guys were confused, because they didn't know who the heck we were, and we sounded different. That's what they'd tell us, after a while.

DUNHAM: Did you get into any scrapes or fights over there?

LEE: No. We had some people they'd threaten us, but not to the point where we're 00:39:00going to kill you but beat you up. After a while, they just let us alone. So that was great. But in Europe, it was no problem, at least for myself, being in the military.

DUNHAM: What private school did you go to?

LEE: I went to a school called Iolani. It's a private school here.

DUNHAM: How did you come to go there?

LEE: I went there because my sister married one of the alumni, he was a professional man. I was number six in a family of ten, and they kind of took me under their wing. My parents wanted me to become a veterinarian.

DUNHAM: Did they still have the farm at the time?

LEE: Yes, they still had that farm at that time, It was more or less self-sustained and for the restaurant that he had, not commericial.

DUNHAM: Was there a veterinarian in town that they would go to?

LEE: No, at that time, there was no such thing as veterinarian for us. I learned how to castrate pigs, chicken and cattle.

DUNHAM: Well, so you say not commercial, but you had all that cattle.

LEE: It was a small ranch -- more of a feedlot. There was a slaughterhouse here too.

DUNHAM: On your property?

LEE: Yes, right here.

DUNHAM: But did your family run it?

LEE: It was some family friends that ran it.

DUNHAM: Did you ever witness that?

LEE: Oh, yes. I sometimes helped by killing the cow by gunfire or spear.

DUNHAM: Back in the war years, I was wondering, you talked about how before, when you took the train and walked to school, you had your one main friend, Japanese friend around here. So during the war years, how does that change, in terms of your friendships? Who are you palling around with then?

LEE: Well, there was an article in December 2012 about my Japanese friend. 00:42:00You'll see the story later on. We were schoolmates and playmates, a bunch of rascal kids. We used to sleep and play at his house. December 6 was the last time I saw him. December 7, when I came by searching for him, the family was gone. I never saw him and never heard from him. I tried to find him, never did. Seventy-one years later, December 7, I happened to be on TV and on a radio show, when I talked about my friend Toshi. He was a little older than I; he was the gang leader, we used to play and fish right here. He was no longer there at his house. Couldn't find him. We didn't know where they were. Rumors were that his parents were spies. They were not spies. But we didn't know. Seventy-one years went by, when they happened to hear me on the air. Toshi's son heard me and 00:43:00said, "You're talking about my father." During the war years, Toshi's father was so despondent--he lost everything--he drank himself to death. His mother died when she was thirty-seven years old. I did not know Toshi had three sisters. When Toshi's father died, Toshi, being the only son, had to care for his three sisters. That's why I never did see him.

DUNHAM: What happened to their property?

LEE: Somebody else took over. It was a Hawaiian family.

DUNHAM: Do you know if they bought it?

LEE: No, it was just a matter of lease, as caretakers.

DUNHAM: Okay. So during the war years, you're saying then you palled around more with a Puerto Rican family?

LEE: Yes. When I went to school in downtown, it was a little different among the students. But I always had to come back and help on the farm. The kids from the Puerto Rican family were around the same age as me -- had livestock too -- so we hung around most of the time.

DUNHAM: Was that hard then, to do your studies, but also do your farm--?

LEE: Oh, yes, it was very difficult, but somehow I managed. Going to an all private boys school like that, the boys came from very prominent families. It's kind of unheard of, a farm kid, the one that killed chickens and castrating 00:45:00pigs, to go to school like that. But they didn't look down on [me]; we were friends. They were very helpful and so were the teachers.

DUNHAM: Did you socialize with them?

LEE: Oh, yes, we socialized, we ran around, became good and lasting friends. Many got to be doctors and attorneys or businessmen, after a while. Now it's been sixty-five years since we've been out of school, and we get together every year.

But I do want to mention one thing. The values that we got there. In Germany, going over to Dachau and seeing where all the concentration camps and the city ruins was really something for me. One of the biggest things about this is 00:46:00trying to learn history by talking to witnesses. When I worked for the Army Corps of Engineers, I happened to be working in Hawaii as a civil servant. I was on a staff where the whole Pacific area was under my jurisdiction. Whenever I had to, I always went out in the Pacific, all of these little islands, visiting Guam, Marshall Islands, and other places talking to natives and walking through the jungles to visit some of these battlesites, as a matter of learning history, and talking to the people about the war. This witness-to-history is talking to the people, rather than reading something. When I went out there to see this, 00:47:00I've visited sites out there in Thailand, Vietnam, and I've been to Korea and Japan many times. I've been to China thirty-six times. The values that I recognized being in the military and what the war experience did for me, is something that we try to tell these kids about.

DUNHAM: Yeah. So what does that mean to you, to do that?

LEE: What does it mean to me? We try to teach the kids and try to tell them about some of the things that we saw and learned before. One of the things that I always tell them--my grandparents came from Canton, China. I take my kids to China because of the standards we got here. The first thing I got to tell him is, just realize that those people are not as fortunate. They don't have all the 00:48:00luxuries of life, as we do. When we get out there and we see the way they live, what they've got, the customs, the culture and things like that, they're happy because they haven't had any better. So that's one of the big things that I try to tell these kids, is just how lucky we are, no matter how bad we think we are. You go to so many places that are so much better, and so many places are so much worse. We're just lucky because we've got to try to get them to appreciate what it is.

DUNHAM: When you talked about the value of witnessing history, did you ever record or make notes from those conversations?

LEE: No! I've had interviews where they write some of these things. We've had some recordings, but never--the national park here has promised they wanted to do something like this, but they really haven't.

DUNHAM: No, I meant when you've gone out and met with people around the world--

LEE: Oh, no.

DUNHAM: --did you ever take notes?

LEE: No, no, I never did. If I did, it was just kind of maybe a few notes. But never writing anything I actually had a tape to record some of our conversations, and some photos -- but wish I could find them (misplaced in our moving).

DUNHAM: I wanted to ask also, during the war I know you were in school and living in Chinatown but came back here. Did you witness other incidents, like for example, the West Loch Disaster in '44? Were you aware of that?

LEE: Yes. After the attack, I'll tell you, this is a very interesting thing to say, because when we came back, of course, the Arizona was burning for a couple 00:50:00of days. The Oklahoma, you heard about that. We could see that they were trying to get bodies out of the Oklahoma, all the pounding noise, that they had. Everything looked so odd. Because of restrictions, we didn't know what's happening. The Oklahoma, when they tried to upright that ship over there, we later find that, hey, no wonder there was so much activity because there were a lot of cables on Ford Island trying to upright that ship. We didn't know, because of censorship. May, 1944, when that West Loch incident came about, that explosion was so loud, there was so much smoke. From our home, we're saying, "What's happening?" The first thing we were wondering, are we being attacked again? Because of censorship, there was no word. Nothing said about that. We 00:51:00didn't know what was going on. That was classified as top secret we understand. Three months ago was the first time I was able to go on a navy launch to see part of the remnants of one of those landing craft that is partly submerged and part of it above ground. I researched that incident, a top secret incident. They had 180-some that were killed, another 3- or 400 that was wounded. Many homes were burned.

DUNHAM: So all these years, you didn't know. You'd heard that tremendous explosion.

LEE: Yeah, we heard it; but never had any information.

DUNHAM: How did you get news during the war--of the war, of your local news? I know there was censorship, but the news you got, what were your sources?

LEE: One of the sources that we had is, a lot of times, hearsay. There was limited information that came about. There were so many things that we thought 00:52:00were rumors, but then we didn't know whether it was real or not. We had radios. They just tell you what they want to tell you. This is how we got our news bythe community, whatever they can pass around, they talk, you see. When I went to school at Iolani, the school would brief us on what's going on. When you are twelve, thirteen years old, how much can they tell you? Because they're under the same boat themselves.

DUNHAM: Yeah. I didn't ask, growing up, what language or languages did you speak in the home?

LEE: There was only English. My parents, although they were Chinese, spoke very little Chinese, except for my father, when he went to Chinatown. But it was basically English. We all spoke English, no matter who they were. Even the 00:53:00Filipinos speak English. We had no trouble with communication among the people here. We try to educate these kids, a little bit about history. Especially what it takes for youngsters like me growing up in these war years, rather than reading, is trying to give them an experience of what you actually did and what you actually saw.

DUNHAM: Yeah. Well, your voice is so valuable to have, your firsthand accounts. So before we close, is there anything else about the war years or anything that you would like to share with us that we haven't covered yet?

LEE: None of what I experienced in the war and during the war years, having been 00:54:00in the military, and what we try to tell these kids nowadays is--what we experienced before is a stage. Right now, with the present world situation that's going on, new technologically, things are different. You can expect changes. So one of the things is telling these kids now, with new technology, 00:55:00study and learn.

DUNHAM: Right. And to understand the history, too.

LEE: That's right, and history.

DUNHAM: What matters is still that face-to-face communication.

LEE: That's right.

DUNHAM: That's why we value your story.

[End of Interview]