Oral History Videos

Christopher Keegan
Interview Length: 1:36

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT:
The Hawaiians, when they came in, they didn't know what was going on.  They didn't know much about the internment camps either.  The Hawaiians didn't.  And they were shocked.  First, well, they were shocked on two things.  The first thing they were shocked on, they thought they were going to come in there and all be the sergeants and non coms to start with.  See, they didn’t know we already had that all set.  That really was shocking.  And the officers that came with them, like Burt Nishimura and the rest of them, they all thought they were going to be company commanders.  But that didn't happen, we were already set up.  The unit was already organized cadre-wise.  The skeleton force was already there, all we had to do was fit the pieces in.  And that was the Hawaiians.  These people, there was a certain amount of animosity for a while.  Until they learned about the internment camp.  And when they visited the internment camp up in, like for example, Senator Dan Inouye, he was one of the first ones that went up there and visited.  And he was shocked.  He'd never seen anything like this before.  Then, what happened is, the cadre and the Hawaiians and everything meshed together.  The esprit de corps completely changed.  Instead of being animosity among them, it was complete friendship.  The team was being built.  The team that really became famous was being built because of that.  And that's what happened with the 442.