Oral History Videos

Keyo Takabayashi
Interview Length: 2:21

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT:
So, as the days went on, I thought, gee, me and my father, we're never going to make any, we're not going to make it farming. So I thought, I kept on thinking, in the meantime, there was a hospital.  They built a new hospital.  It was for all amputees from the war.  And there was a bunch of 100th Battalion guys already in there.  And I used to talk to them uptown sometimes.  They told me, "don't you think about volunteering, don't go."  They tell me, they told me that over and over. But then I got to thinking, gee, if this, the way me and my father are going, we are never going to make anything.

So I thought, I'm going to volunteer, and if I don't come back, and there was a real good chance I knew it, that I wouldn't come back.  My father would get $10,000 insurance money. So I told him, this farm that we are on right here, you buy this, if I don't come back.  You buy this farm.  And I made sure he understood what I was talking about.

Because they had talked, to the 100th, from the 100th Battalion.  They were at this Bushnell Hospital.  They were telling everybody how bad the war was.  I guess maybe they were put in to the thick of the battles, you know, the 100th.  And they lost a lot of guys, so that's one reason they said, "don't volunteer, your chances of coming back are very slim."  But I had to take the chance.  Because if I don't come back, my father could buy this farm here.  The white guy wanted to sell it real bad.  So, I told him that I'm going to go, and if I don't come back, my dad will get my insurance, and he'll buy this farm.  So that's why I went, I volunteered.