FEATURED VETERAN
Ted Tsukiyama
The Military Governor wasted no time converting the ROTC group of almost 80% Nisei to the Hawaii Territorial Guard (HTG). Armed with 30-caliber bolt action rifles, they spent the first six weeks of the war guarding vital government buildings, utilities, and port locations around Oahu. "There was just full, loyal, efficient performance of the guarding duties," Tsukiyama remembered.
Ted Tsukiyama is surrounded by Hanashi Oral History Program volunteer Richard Hawkins and Hawaii Regional Director Pam Funai.
"Up to then we're in uniform," Tsukiyama said. "We're armed, we're guarding and defending our country against possible attack. And we feel real proud, we feel like we belong." Though considered an honorable discharge, to Tsukiyama there was no honor. "That is the first overt act where we learned that suddenly we're not accepted as Americans, or 100 percent Americans," he said.
Growing up, Tsukiyama never considered himself anything but American. He studied American history and the American Constitution. He memorized the Gettsyburg address "and all that stuff" just like everybody else. He remembered being in a school play about the pilgrims. "And me, I'm John Alden. My ancestors came over with the Mayflower." What he hadn't learned was that when most people looked at Japanese Americans, they didn't see the American part. Yet he insisted, "I'm not a Japanese living in America. I'm an American who happened to be of Japanese ancestry."
Dejected and embittered, Tsukiyama and the outcast HTG Niseis returned to their former campus, which is where trusted adviser Hung Wai Ching, a YMCA secretary, found them commiserating. Ching prodded the group, "OK, if they don't trust you with guns, maybe they'll trust you with picks and shovels." When someone scoffed at the idea of manual labor, Ching shot back, "You gonna just sit there and feel sorry for yourself the rest of the war?" Challenged, the group petitioned for a civilian labor corps assignment and got one with the 34th Construction Engineer Regiment. Their new title: Varsity Victory Volunteers (VVV).
For 11 months Tsukiyama and the VVV dug ammunition pits, repaired bridges, and did whatever was needed to build up Oahu's defenses. They were hard at work the day Hung Wai Ching brought Asst. Secretary of War John J. McCloy to Kolekole Pass where VVV members were doggedly cracking and hauling rock in the stone quarry. Tsukiyama said, "Hung Wai told the Secretary, you know, these guys are all university kids, but they gave up their education and volunteered doing this kind of crappy work because that's the only way they can show their loyalty."
Within a month of McCloy's visit the formation of the all-Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team was announced. The VVV needed no prodding. Most, including Tsukiyama, volunteered and were accepted.
Finally, Tsukiyama had the chance to "show his stuff" and demonstrate to detractors his loyalty as an American. But during basic training, to his dismay, he was called for Military Intelligence Service testing. "I wanted to stay with the military and go over and get in a real shooting war," Tsukiyama said. He tried to fail the interview, which did not take an Oscar performance given his poor Japanese language skills. But a few days later, during a firing exercise where he served as a gunner, he got a tap on the shoulder and an order to pack his bags—he was going to Camp Savage for MIS training. Upset by this news, he miscalibrated his next shot so badly that observers on the hill radioed to ask where it had gone.
But Tsukiyama dutifully completed his MIS training and served the last year of the war intercepting Japanese communications with the 6th Army Air Force radio squadron mobile in Burma. He considered his work routine and "un-heroic," but also feels that for many Niseis the real test of their loyalties lay in their willingness to serve in the Pacific. "What better way can you show your country where you stand than show that you're willing to go fight your own kind?" he said.
Despite feeling distrusted and even rejected by his own country, Tsukiyama never surrendered his conviction that he was an American. "They say the 100th/442nd never retreated backward," Tsukiyama said. "They only knew how to go forward." Tsukiyama was no different. "Inside, what other country do we have?" he asks. "America's the only country we know and have. And when that status is doubted and challenged, what you gonna do? Well, you gotta show where you stand."
Tsukiyama did just that, and never retreated backward.
