January 27, 2020 • 39 mins
Think success in farming has nothing to do with sacrifice on the front line?
At the start of World War II, Japanese American farmers controlled 40% of California farm production, dominating crops like tomatoes, celery, and snap beans made newly available nationwide with the success of refrigerated railway cars. 45% of Japanese Americans held agricultural jobs on the west coast as a result.
In this episode, we follow Japanese American veteran Lawson Ichiro Sakai’s Service story, from his family farm in Montebello, California through the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the internment of Japanese immigrants, and the segregated 442nd Regimental Combat Team’s sacrifice as they proved their patriotism in the European theatre.
Find photos from this episode of Service, an episode transcription, and more at www.ServicePodcast.org, where you can also share your Service stories and leave messages for all of the veterans you hear on Service.
And we’re always sharing extra audio and nerdy food history on social media - we’re @servicepodcast on Instagram and Facebook.
Thank you to the Japanese American Veterans Association for connecting us with Lawson for this episode.
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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode re enacts scenes of war. You'll hear gunfire
and descriptions of violence. Listener discretion advised. You're tuning into service, Johnny,
the strict private first class that are in stories of
hunger and war. They joined the service. Remember Pearl Harbor.
(00:21):
Remember Pearl Harbor A production from My Heart Radio. We
used to just give these people the food from our
miss kits. You ain't what you could get, and be
thankful for what you will getting. I'm your host, Jacqueline Repose.
Oh ah. Every farmer in the land must realize fully
(00:44):
that his production is part of war progutor and that
he is regarded by the nation as a central to victory.
The American people have spect him to keep his production up.
The lives of one hundred and twenty three million Americans
changed drastically in nine one. On top of the sixteen
(01:05):
million men and three hundred and fifty thousand women who
would join the armed forces, six million workers would leave
farm life for the military or to find heftier paychecks
in war production industries. As we heard in our episode
with Air Corps veteran Herald, but long I got on
high school, we had no way Semity College work the farm.
(01:26):
We have the farm so dead. You want to work
on daylight the dark, seven days a week. You don't
know if you're going to have enough to pay the bills.
Not for me, So I worked on Salwis, worked on
P fourties until I was drafted. The field's emptier food
shortages followed. Then victory gardens, so named via optimistic government
propaganda like that ninety two fireside chat of President Roosevelt's
(01:50):
We just repeated from Bud's episode, but there was something
in that chat we withheld. Perhaps the most difficult phase
of the Manpa problem is the scarcity of farm labor
in many places. I have seen evidences of the fact, however,
that the people are trying to meet it as well
(02:11):
as possible. In one community that I have visited, a
perishable crop was harvested by turning out the whole of
the high school for three or four days. And in
another community of fruit growers, the usual Japanese labor was
not available, but when the fruit ripened, the usual Japanese
(02:37):
labor at dr drops in. There are the one hundred
and seventeen thousand persons of Japanese ancestry the government interred
in concentration camps seventy thousand who were first generation American
born citizens nis as they're called in Japanese. Today, we
spend time with laws in Ichirosa Kai, one of the
(02:58):
NISS who would joined the Army's four hundred and forty
second Regimental Combat Team in ninety three. Because Lawson saw
the most combat of our veterans thus far, and because
he has such rich food stories throughout, this episode is
a touch longer than our others, and we're going to
spread supporting information out piecemeal. What's helpful to know at
(03:19):
the top is the landscape upon which Japanese Americans moved
in the United States before the bombing of Pearl Harbor
on December seven. Now, two pre war government funded studies
showed Japanese immigrants post zero threat to United States citizens. Still,
anti Japanese sentiment had been steadily rising since around the
(03:39):
turn of the century, as we'll hear in an audio
clip from a Navy training video. Politically, this was because
Washington and the Empire of Japan had been competing for
economic gain in China. Locally, Japanese farmers had control of
forty of California farm production by the start of World
War Two, dominating in areas like snap being, celery, and tomatoes,
(04:01):
and despite alien land laws enacted first in nineteen prohibiting
Japanese immigrants or their American born children from buying or
long term leasing agricultural land, and having farmed small plots
back in Japan, they were really good at producing a
lot of food on their acreage. At that time, the
(04:22):
average American farm was valued at thirty eight dollars an acre.
A Japanese American run farm was worth two hundred and eighty.
Let's take just this with us as we slow and
sit and travel back in time to California with Lawson,
I Uo Sakai. My name is Lawson. I'm an American
(04:53):
of a Japanese ancestry. I was born October in Montevello, California,
who were surrounded by open land and a few orchards.
My uncle and aunt emmigrated from Japan in eight worked hard,
saved money, and they bought this five acres in Montebello
(05:16):
before the alien land law was passed. My father came
about nineteen five. He went back to Japan brought back
his wife. Were a five acre, not a greenhouse. It's
a laphouse with space between last so the sun can
filter in. We grew what they called asparagus Clebosa's fern,
(05:36):
and that was something that the florists the Jews or decorating.
We also had a thirteen acre ranch. My father spent
a lot of his time they're taking care of the ranch.
My parents were Seventh Day Adventures, which is very unusual
for Japanese or mostly Buddhists. We very rarely ate meat,
(05:58):
no pork dark or fish without scales. We had chickens,
so my job was to bring in the eggs every
day and on Friday my aunt would pick out a
chicken for me to kill. She always had this court
yard of chicken sock and the refrigerator, and we had
a lot of vegetimals. My older sister was doing most
(06:21):
of the cooking, and she didn't do Japanese cooking. She
did American cooking, so we ate a lot of spaghetti,
non meat food that Seventh Day Adventus would eat. When
I was aged five, my older sisters held me off
to their school. We were very limited in this little
(06:42):
church school. By high school, I wanted to play football
and baseball and they didn't have that, so I went
to the public high school and I played football, baseball,
team sports. I have graduated nine so in September I
went to Compton Junior College and I was playing for
a ball and enjoying everything. My parents were always on edge.
(07:07):
They didn't know what would happen if Japan and America
went to war, which they could since in the years
before nine they could not become US citizens at that time.
The Japanese not easy to know. I've lived among them
ten years and I can testify it that they are
(07:28):
as different from ourselves as any people on this planet.
On December seven, eighteen one, I was doing homework in
my room, listening to the radio, and that's when the
(07:51):
announceder broke in and said that Pearl Harbor had been bombed.
It will be without it. That's the distance of the
way from Japan makes it opiate. But the attack was
deliberately clapped many days or even weeks ago. During the
(08:16):
intervening time, the Companie government as deliberately saught to deceive
the United States by false statement and expressions of hope. Continued.
My parents, who are out working, when they came in
(08:37):
a loon for lunch, I told them your country bombed
my country. By three o'clock that afternoon, the FBI came
to our house looking for my uncle. He was ahead
(08:58):
of UFA and I the Farmers Association, the largest produce
market in Los Angeles. The FBI picked up a number
of business leaders, farmers, doctors, lawyers, men of standing in
the Japanese community. They took them all away. My father
in law had fifteen hundred acres of garlic. Five acres
(09:23):
would have been a huge garlic farm. My father in
law was sent to Bismarck, North Dakota. Most of the
people didn't know where their father went to. Monday, December eight,
I told my father, three of my classmates and myself,
(09:44):
we're going to Long Beach List. He says, that's good.
You're an American. You should go with your friends. My
classmates that I've been playing football with for three or
four years, they're all Caucasians. They were taken in right away.
And then when they got to me and they said,
you're a job we don't want jap in the Navy.
Get the hell out of here. My classmates said, the
(10:07):
hell with the Navy. If they don't want you, we're
not going either. We all left. We continued to be
on football and to baseball. February nine, Executive Order nine
zero six six meant that the US government could move
all of the Americans of Japanese ancestry from the West
(10:28):
coast to President Roosevelt called them my concentration camps. The
west coast had to be evacuated. The eastern half was
called a safe zone. So my parents decided we'll go
to the safe zone. The thirteen acre ranch, they just
(10:48):
left it like most people did. What could they do
with the forum? The five acre laughhouts. They left in
charge of another flower girl and told them we'll be
back in a month or so. I just take care
of it while we're gone and keep the profits. And
that was one of the main reasons for the evacuation.
The Japanese farmers had hundreds and thousands of acres already producing.
(11:12):
People growing five or ten acres were saying, these guys
are going to run us out of business. Those are
the people who just walk in and took over. We
drove up the coast to Portville, some thirteen miles up
in the hills was a hot springs owned by a
(11:33):
Seventh Day head venice man. He opened the place up
to nine or ten Japanese families. I worked helping a
man that lived there, chopping trees for firewood and turned.
He would milk his cow and give me quarts of milk,
which is really good. I wasn't much of a milk
breaker until then. But heading lumber felling trees, oh, it
(11:54):
was heavy work. Eighteen years old, I figured I could
handle anything. I guess I was in semi shock. I
didn't tell the school administration that was avy. I just
picked up in the left. Some of the students were saying,
but what happened to a third baseman? All of a sudden,
there's no Japanese boys. It's hard to believe. Here's all
(12:19):
these people dressed up in their finest clothes, standing on
a curb with their suitcase, waiting for the bus. They've
lost everything. You think they'd be up in arms or weeping.
They have a term in Japanese god night. It can't
be helped. Our first generation people said, we came to
(12:42):
this country and if that's what they want to do,
we have to obey. And they had a very strict
rule that we their children and Nissa American citizens obey authority.
The older Nissa had to be either in shock or
I will be very ang a Greek. But what the
authorities say, we will obey. So we all just went along.
(13:07):
I knew I hated to leave school, you hate to
just leave. A couple of months goes by the federal
government said the whole state of California has to be
evacuated now. So again there was a big blow that
we had to leave. Executive Order nine zero six six
(13:37):
only removed the Japanese from what we're considered military zones,
crudely mapped areas that eventually made up most of the
West Coast. There was little social protest, but some civilians
in safe states took in refugees, and this is how
Lawson and his family were able to move to Delta, Colorado.
A Seventh day Adventist church there had volunteered to host
(13:58):
a Japanese family, and his was randomly selected. Of what
was left behind, two hundred and fifty eight thousand acres
of farmland were turned over to the Farm Security Administration.
When we return, we'll hear about what shifted so that
Lawson could finally down a uniform stay with us. Welcome
(14:41):
back to service. Veteran stories of hunger and War from
I Heart Radio, I'm Jacqueline Proposo. While Lawson was moving
from place to place, the president of the Japanese American
Citizens League, Mike Massoka, was challenging Congress to let the
Japanese American boys fight because resistance was so strong, he
(15:02):
made an extreme offer the NISS would make up a
suicide squad to prove their patriotism. It was controversial, but
not an empty threat. Five sons of the Massaca family volunteered.
The army activated the All Japanese American one hundredth Infantry
Battalion in the fall of n made primarily of NISS
(15:23):
from the Hawaiian National Guard, who faced less resistance to
fighting than the interred NISSA on the continent, some enlistees,
of whom were beaten by older Nissa or rejected by
their families for wanting to fight for the country that
imprisoned them. That one hundred proved their metal through Africa
and up int Italy, facing heavy combat to clear the
(15:43):
pathway to Rome, only to be shoved asides that other
troops could pass them by and take the glory, lingering
ten kilometers out until order to move northwest, where they
made up the four hundred and forty second Regimental Combat
Team with two newly arrived battalions. Lawson was in second
Italian Company waiting for them. He had enlisted as soon
(16:05):
as he was able, becoming one of the first to
slowly make their way from settlements around the country to
Camp Shelby, Mississippi. Let's head there now and follow as
he spends a year in training before deploying to Italy himself. Boys,
(16:29):
it coming to Camp Shelby one by one. Now, food
you had to get used to it. Of course. If
you're a truck driver, they made you a cook. If
you're a cook, they made you a medic. That's how
the military work. So their food does really lovely at
the beginnings, till these guys learned how to cook. All
the ratings if they were getting like mutton, that's awful,
(16:53):
old sheep meat, full of fat, and oh taste terrible.
I never want to eat mutton again. And we eat
off of a alunum mesket as a cover, you flip
it over. So they put sunfood here and some and
they covered. If you have something here like jello cook
it just as level the poor. The gravy right on
the jello because they know the plate to put it.
(17:15):
When you go out on maneuvers for lunch, usually it's
two pieces of dry bread, what mustard, and a piece
of salami or ham. Sunday, the kitchen is clothed. They
have cold cuffs, but sometimes they have a whole bit
full of frights. Van that would never eat it before,
but when they're hungry, like crazy boy, you eat everything
(17:37):
you can. Our regiment boardered a number of liberty ships.
On May one, we were part of a very huge
convoy zigzagging because the German submarines were threat We didn't
lose any ships, but it took us a whole month.
(18:00):
I was fortunate I was able to draw a guard
duty with the Navy. It was really good because even
though I'm up on deck, drawing up and down, getting
soaking wet, at least we got to eat with the
navy had really good food prepared to what we had.
We talked on May thirty into Naples, Italy. The first
(18:24):
thing we noticed as we approached the harbor, these Italian
robots with them in paddling while they're standing, would come
near the boat and they waved their hand and then
they had bags of oranges, and they started throwing the
oranges up to us. They're saying, singenet, singenette. There we're
throwing packs of cigarettes down to them and throw throwing
(18:46):
oranges up to us. They were blood oranges, and we'd
never seen blood oranges before. We didn't find out till
after we're on land that one cigarette would have been
blooded for the oranges. What did we know. We enjoyed
the blood oranges anyway. The war had moved north toward Rome.
(19:09):
That's where we formed. The four forty second Regiment with
three battalions was the first and we the second and
third battalions, were going into combat for the first time
that very first day. We were heading pretty much in
the flat area with hills on the side, and it
(19:29):
was all quiet and they were just kind of moving
along slowly. All of a sudden, the Germans started farming
from the left side of the right side and shot
mortars where we were in the middle. Immediately, our company
commanded was too. I could remember seeing specs of just
(19:51):
spying in the dirt coming toward me and wondering, that's funny,
I see specs, I don't see any bullets. All of
a sudden, I osa far right over my head that
the German burp gun. Our submachine guns goes tut tut,
tut tut the German burp gun. We've never seen a
burp gun before. Hundreds of runs are going luckily for me.
(20:15):
The barrels took the little right over me and you
can hear the bullets to top up. Lieutenant Zukowski pad
us in the wrong position, and now he got killed.
Sergeant Morita took over and we moved behind a little ridge.
The battellion commander could see what was happening, and he
ordered the hundred batchell and come over and the hundreds
(20:38):
up behind the Germans. I don't the hominy. They killed
to three hundred. We captured a number of vehicles, over
fifty German prisoners, So even though we had a huge
loss in manpower, the battle itself was a very successful one.
But that's how we started combat. Within that roughly two
(21:05):
months time, we're on the front line maybe three or
four times, and of course off the front line just
as often. You can't go more than a week. Do
you never change clothes, you never eat hot food. You're
eating caned sea ration or package k ration, and you're
hoping to get water. If they can't bring water up
(21:26):
to you every night, you feel your canteen with the
dirty water if there's a stream or something. They used
to give us tablets and we had to use stagnant water.
You just need liquid, even at night to sleep. Maybe
an hour you're being shot at. We do it to them.
Don't want them to sleep either. That's when the reserves
(21:49):
bring of food, ammunition, and water and they can carry
the wounded bad. But sometimes you can't be done. You're
pinned down. Maybe oh you can do is go forward
with whatever you have. Before we get into combat, we're
not really worried about what's gonna happen. But once we
(22:13):
actually can see people getting wounded and the horrors of
what's happening when people are killing each other, your mindset changes.
You're more protective of each other, your squad, your platoon,
your company. Outside of that, very seldom you meet somebody
really know, but you know that they are there to
(22:35):
protect you, and you're there to protect them. We're charging,
running when over into your position and co rank whoever's
in front shooting to make sure that we keep the
Germans from spotting. Are men that are going forward. They're retreating,
so they've had time to dig foxholds. They can always
(22:56):
occupy the higher location shooting down. We're successful most of
the time, but last where our casualties were so high.
You can't advance if you're sitting still. We did manage
to move all the way up past the Orno River
(23:18):
through Florence over to the coast where the four SECO
was sent to join the thirty six Division to begin
the invasion of southern France. The battle in Normandy was
taking such a huge toll that we didn't have very
much resistance, so we landed in France. We're only about
forty five miles from the German border. Main city in
(23:41):
that area was called brew Yere. That was our objective
take the city of Bruyere northern Italy. It was summertime.
We're in open territory in France, a completely different situation.
This is most to the middle of October. Most of
the homes of down the bottom and there were hills
(24:02):
on both sides covered with very thick forests because forestry
was one of the main industries of that area. As
we're heading in the flat area like we did in Italy,
has started to rain, just getting cold. The shots came
from the osides. We had to suddenly climb them out
(24:24):
and into the forest. There was a completely different type
of fighting for having to kill a tree to tree
to root out the Germans. We had to look for
the uniform with the helmet. Looked like he never knew
who was out there, Roman or the enemy. Not only
that the Germans didn't have air force because the Americans
(24:47):
had pretty much wiped them out, but they had the
anti aircraft gun capable of shooting down airplanes. The Germans
were used in that weapon on the infantry. Everything is
coming down like an umbrella. The explosion cuts tree limbs,
branches ragnous besides the shrapno and there's no way to hide.
(25:10):
Men get crushed by a tree limb three or four
hundred pounds coming straight down on top of them. Really
a horrible experience. At night, the cooks, the band members,
whoever was available, would have to carry the five gallon
can of water by foot. That is really heavy. Ammunition
(25:31):
and water, food, the secondary and medical supplies to all
par medics that are on the front line. As they
come up slip sliding, if it's muddy and wet, your
break two or three men off the line, replace them,
bring them back, even if it's for half an hour
or fifteen minutes, and maybe they can get some food,
(25:53):
water for their canteen, maybe ammunition, and then they're ready
to circulate back to the front. And they keep rotating
the men. More than half of our men were lost
fighting for the forest to take over the city or
brew Yere and the rail line that went through there.
(26:17):
Securing the railway was a huge wind. It cut a
main support line for the German front and allowed the
Allies to then move troops, food and supplies. But in
the eight days it took to capture brew Yeer and
neighboring the Fontaine Veterans, remember the desperate Germans firing at
their wounded men as medics removed them from the field.
(26:38):
It would end as one of the costliest battles of
World War Two. When we return, we hear how the
four or forty second fueled up after this long fight.
Stay with us, you're listening to service that are in
(27:19):
stories of hunger and war from My Heart Radio. I'm
Jaqueline Proposo. In our episode with Air Corps veteran Harold
bud Long, we heard how General Patton wanted to be
the first to have his troops crossed the line into Germany,
a line Hitler was holding at all costs. Lawson's General Dahlquist,
(27:39):
had the same goal. Let's go back with Lawson to
that front line in late autumn of We came off
the line on October. Grammy, Yeah, never shower for a
week or two. They had shower trucks, and they could
(28:02):
heat the water, and they had a big bar of
Lye soap. They would probably wipe the paint right off
your car. So you get cleaned up and you get
a new set of clothing. They have the mess set
up open, of course, but hot stoves, hot food, the
first hot food you've had for it or ten days.
(28:24):
The next day we were ordered to gear up to
go back again. Wait a minute, We just came off
the front line. The first bit challeon of the onety
one Regiment had been surrounded by Germans. The thirty six
Division had been unable to reach them. We had just
(28:47):
finished eight days of huge battle and orders an order,
so we obeyed. On October we start up again. Say
in place that we came out of its raining miserable.
Here we go the trap by Chalon is about five
(29:07):
mile farther up. October twenty one birthday, and I was
feeling pretty good about that. We were making an attack.
All of a sudden, the Germans popped up and shot
me point blank, but he missed. I just went tut
to tut hit him on the head when his helmet
(29:29):
came off. There was a fourteen or fifteen year old boy.
He must have been more scared than I was. We're
all scared. You never know when the next bullet or
the next shrapnell was going to hit you. The next morning,
at daybreak, we approaching where the trapped men are. They're
(29:50):
running out of the food and the nish that we
have to get to them. The Germans must have suspected something.
They started cella tree births all around us. Nobody could move.
They tried to hide as much as you could behind
a tree or rock. That's when a large piece of
(30:13):
shrek they'll hit me in the back, and that red
out piece of meadow went sideways right into my ribs.
It stayed there. It just hurt so much, burning, painful,
and you can't breathe your body. Girls up into a ball,
and I don't remember anything. I don't know. When the
medic got to me, he must have determined that he
(30:33):
could save my life, that he shot me full of morphine.
It took five days for the four or forty seconds
to go through the five miles of forests, pushed the
Germans back and finally reached the trapped men. They had
no medical supplies, no food, no water. They had so
(30:53):
little ammunition. They formed a circle. No matter which direction
the Germans are coming from, they were going to make
a last stand. There were two hundred and eleven men left.
Two hundred of our men were killed. To that rescue.
(31:14):
General don't retorted to the four forty second, but don't
stop keep chasing the German. They didn't know that was
a four forty second had rescued them. When the military
press it made the statement the loss that Chalian has
been rescued, they've never mentioned the four forty segment. None
(31:36):
of us really thought anyone with the home alife. Most
of our families were prisoners of war, guarded by American
soldiers with the machine guns pointed in at them. So
what do we do to remove that situation. We needed
to let the government know that we may look like
(31:57):
the enemy, but we were true a mayor Arikans that
we wanted to fight to this country. When I woke up,
I was on a hospital train going to the American
hospital in Dijon for surgery. It took about two months
(32:20):
of recovery and I was able to go back and
join my company. At the border between Italy and France.
For four days, Accosts sent back down to control that area. Well,
we were inside this concrete four at the talk. We're
very steep and the jeeps couldn't get up there. Some
of the surviives had to be brought in by donkey,
(32:41):
water k rations and sea rations. Sometimes they could bring
at foodo, but not very often. If you were down
in the city these cans, you were probably staying in
a hotel eating hot food three times a day. Just
our luck to be up there. After the war was over,
(33:03):
we could get passes into town. Occasionally you would run
into a Chinese restaurant. Of course, the boys really head
for that because you get rice. It was very hard
to get enough rice farm man, because everybody wanted rice.
Then the ration, they mostly potatoes. In the U. S. Army.
Wherever the cooks could, they would trade our potatoes for
(33:25):
other groups. Rice. Naturally, we didn't have much Japanese style food.
Our most popular food might have been fried shrimp, or
maybe hamburgers and hot dogs. We did a few of
those in the army mess. It wasn't too bad. My parents,
(33:49):
we never corresponded during the war. I didn't see them
for almost four years. They didn't write English, so they
never wrote a letter to me. And when I did
write a letter, it was to my sister, who was
in all other concentration camps. My sister had married a
doctor from Hawaii and she was pregnant with her first child.
(34:13):
Her husband were sent to the concentration camp in Post
in Arizona. The doctors and nurses said, we'll hide her.
They kept her hidden in the hospital for two months
before she gave birth. Of course, the birth is recorded.
A week after the trial was born. The authorities found
(34:33):
out she was sent to join her husband. The war
ended in May and around July, I was designed to
go to Rome and become a second lieutenant at the
Army Training School, and I told Captain Burns, the war
(34:55):
is over and I want to go home. Do everything
you can to get me out of here. July August September. October,
finally I got a call that I should get ready
to go. I finally arrived back in Newport News, Virginia
the third week of November. They put me on a
(35:18):
train and I had a duffel bag, and eventually I
finally got to Fort MacArthur and Los Angeles. I don't
remember how I got home. I knew where my home was.
I assumed my parents were living there. I went to
the front door, rang the bell, and sure enough, my
(35:40):
aunt answered the door. I was home and they were home.
That was finally discharged on December eleven, and that's when
they said take off your uniform. There were a civilian
now stood out of there, completing seven major campaigns. The
(36:05):
four or forty second casualties totalled nine thousand, four hundred
and eighty six. That's fifty of those total who would
serve under the four forty two from nineteen forty three
through ninety six, and they're often called the Purple Heart
Battalion for their sacrifice. To this day, the food is
also the most decorated unit in military history. Upon their
(36:29):
return home, President Truman remarked the NISSE fought not only
the enemy but prejudice, Yet their fight continued. The interred
Japanese had been paid one quarter of what other farm
hands were paid, and not nearly what they had taken
in as farm owners at the tool Lake Camp. Those
who had refused to work were fined at Manzanar. Botanists
(36:51):
and chemists who had made scientific advancements for the Allied
cause would not receive public recognition. It's been estimated their
incarceration lost the Japanese Americans up to four billion dollars
by today's values. By nineteen sixty, Japanese American farmers would
number only a quarter of what they had pre war,
and it wasn't until ninety eight that President Reagan signed
(37:14):
legislation offering each survivor and apology and twenty thousand dollars
in compensation and Lawson's family. His parents had to evict
the flower grower they had left using their property because
he refused to give it back. Upon their return, his
uncle requested repatriation and returned to Japan. Lawson went to
(37:35):
Pepperdine University and worked in farming and the shipping of
agriculture before he opened a travel agency, which he sold
after twenty years so to retire in he lives in
northern California to this day. You can hear more of
his story, like how Lawson became his legal lane and
how combat experience led to PTSD in our episode Dad
(37:56):
I Can't talk about it, and in clips on our
social media We're at Service Podcast on Instagram and Facebook.
Thank you to the Japanese American Veterans Association for connecting
us with Lawson for this episode. I highly urge you
to check out Lawson's page at Service podcast dot org
to learn more about the Japanese American contribution to farming
and the front lines. In our next episode, we head
(38:19):
back to the Pacific with Navy Lieutenant Robert Hansen exploring
how income affected how we lived, served, and eight during
this time. Service is a production of I Heart Radio.
This episode was produced and edited by me Jack a
Little Proposo, Kolbe McDonald and Andrew Stessler engineered our interviews
with Lawson. Gabrielle Collins is our supervising producer. Christopher hasiotis
(38:41):
our executive producer. Thank you for listening, and thank you
to those serving and those who have served.
This episode re enacts scenes of war. You'll hear gunfire
and descriptions of violence. Listener discretion advised. You're tuning into service, Johnny,
the strict private first class that are in stories of
hunger and war. They joined the service. Remember Pearl Harbor.
(00:21):
Remember Pearl Harbor A production from My Heart Radio. We
used to just give these people the food from our
miss kits. You ain't what you could get, and be
thankful for what you will getting. I'm your host, Jacqueline Repose.
Oh ah. Every farmer in the land must realize fully
(00:44):
that his production is part of war progutor and that
he is regarded by the nation as a central to victory.
The American people have spect him to keep his production up.
The lives of one hundred and twenty three million Americans
changed drastically in nine one. On top of the sixteen
(01:05):
million men and three hundred and fifty thousand women who
would join the armed forces, six million workers would leave
farm life for the military or to find heftier paychecks
in war production industries. As we heard in our episode
with Air Corps veteran Herald, but long I got on
high school, we had no way Semity College work the farm.
(01:26):
We have the farm so dead. You want to work
on daylight the dark, seven days a week. You don't
know if you're going to have enough to pay the bills.
Not for me, So I worked on Salwis, worked on
P fourties until I was drafted. The field's emptier food
shortages followed. Then victory gardens, so named via optimistic government
propaganda like that ninety two fireside chat of President Roosevelt's
(01:50):
We just repeated from Bud's episode, but there was something
in that chat we withheld. Perhaps the most difficult phase
of the Manpa problem is the scarcity of farm labor
in many places. I have seen evidences of the fact, however,
that the people are trying to meet it as well
(02:11):
as possible. In one community that I have visited, a
perishable crop was harvested by turning out the whole of
the high school for three or four days. And in
another community of fruit growers, the usual Japanese labor was
not available, but when the fruit ripened, the usual Japanese
(02:37):
labor at dr drops in. There are the one hundred
and seventeen thousand persons of Japanese ancestry the government interred
in concentration camps seventy thousand who were first generation American
born citizens nis as they're called in Japanese. Today, we
spend time with laws in Ichirosa Kai, one of the
(02:58):
NISS who would joined the Army's four hundred and forty
second Regimental Combat Team in ninety three. Because Lawson saw
the most combat of our veterans thus far, and because
he has such rich food stories throughout, this episode is
a touch longer than our others, and we're going to
spread supporting information out piecemeal. What's helpful to know at
(03:19):
the top is the landscape upon which Japanese Americans moved
in the United States before the bombing of Pearl Harbor
on December seven. Now, two pre war government funded studies
showed Japanese immigrants post zero threat to United States citizens. Still,
anti Japanese sentiment had been steadily rising since around the
(03:39):
turn of the century, as we'll hear in an audio
clip from a Navy training video. Politically, this was because
Washington and the Empire of Japan had been competing for
economic gain in China. Locally, Japanese farmers had control of
forty of California farm production by the start of World
War Two, dominating in areas like snap being, celery, and tomatoes,
(04:01):
and despite alien land laws enacted first in nineteen prohibiting
Japanese immigrants or their American born children from buying or
long term leasing agricultural land, and having farmed small plots
back in Japan, they were really good at producing a
lot of food on their acreage. At that time, the
(04:22):
average American farm was valued at thirty eight dollars an acre.
A Japanese American run farm was worth two hundred and eighty.
Let's take just this with us as we slow and
sit and travel back in time to California with Lawson,
I Uo Sakai. My name is Lawson. I'm an American
(04:53):
of a Japanese ancestry. I was born October in Montevello, California,
who were surrounded by open land and a few orchards.
My uncle and aunt emmigrated from Japan in eight worked hard,
saved money, and they bought this five acres in Montebello
(05:16):
before the alien land law was passed. My father came
about nineteen five. He went back to Japan brought back
his wife. Were a five acre, not a greenhouse. It's
a laphouse with space between last so the sun can
filter in. We grew what they called asparagus Clebosa's fern,
(05:36):
and that was something that the florists the Jews or decorating.
We also had a thirteen acre ranch. My father spent
a lot of his time they're taking care of the ranch.
My parents were Seventh Day Adventures, which is very unusual
for Japanese or mostly Buddhists. We very rarely ate meat,
(05:58):
no pork dark or fish without scales. We had chickens,
so my job was to bring in the eggs every
day and on Friday my aunt would pick out a
chicken for me to kill. She always had this court
yard of chicken sock and the refrigerator, and we had
a lot of vegetimals. My older sister was doing most
(06:21):
of the cooking, and she didn't do Japanese cooking. She
did American cooking, so we ate a lot of spaghetti,
non meat food that Seventh Day Adventus would eat. When
I was aged five, my older sisters held me off
to their school. We were very limited in this little
(06:42):
church school. By high school, I wanted to play football
and baseball and they didn't have that, so I went
to the public high school and I played football, baseball,
team sports. I have graduated nine so in September I
went to Compton Junior College and I was playing for
a ball and enjoying everything. My parents were always on edge.
(07:07):
They didn't know what would happen if Japan and America
went to war, which they could since in the years
before nine they could not become US citizens at that time.
The Japanese not easy to know. I've lived among them
ten years and I can testify it that they are
(07:28):
as different from ourselves as any people on this planet.
On December seven, eighteen one, I was doing homework in
my room, listening to the radio, and that's when the
(07:51):
announceder broke in and said that Pearl Harbor had been bombed.
It will be without it. That's the distance of the
way from Japan makes it opiate. But the attack was
deliberately clapped many days or even weeks ago. During the
(08:16):
intervening time, the Companie government as deliberately saught to deceive
the United States by false statement and expressions of hope. Continued.
My parents, who are out working, when they came in
(08:37):
a loon for lunch, I told them your country bombed
my country. By three o'clock that afternoon, the FBI came
to our house looking for my uncle. He was ahead
(08:58):
of UFA and I the Farmers Association, the largest produce
market in Los Angeles. The FBI picked up a number
of business leaders, farmers, doctors, lawyers, men of standing in
the Japanese community. They took them all away. My father
in law had fifteen hundred acres of garlic. Five acres
(09:23):
would have been a huge garlic farm. My father in
law was sent to Bismarck, North Dakota. Most of the
people didn't know where their father went to. Monday, December eight,
I told my father, three of my classmates and myself,
(09:44):
we're going to Long Beach List. He says, that's good.
You're an American. You should go with your friends. My
classmates that I've been playing football with for three or
four years, they're all Caucasians. They were taken in right away.
And then when they got to me and they said,
you're a job we don't want jap in the Navy.
Get the hell out of here. My classmates said, the
(10:07):
hell with the Navy. If they don't want you, we're
not going either. We all left. We continued to be
on football and to baseball. February nine, Executive Order nine
zero six six meant that the US government could move
all of the Americans of Japanese ancestry from the West
(10:28):
coast to President Roosevelt called them my concentration camps. The
west coast had to be evacuated. The eastern half was
called a safe zone. So my parents decided we'll go
to the safe zone. The thirteen acre ranch, they just
(10:48):
left it like most people did. What could they do
with the forum? The five acre laughhouts. They left in
charge of another flower girl and told them we'll be
back in a month or so. I just take care
of it while we're gone and keep the profits. And
that was one of the main reasons for the evacuation.
The Japanese farmers had hundreds and thousands of acres already producing.
(11:12):
People growing five or ten acres were saying, these guys
are going to run us out of business. Those are
the people who just walk in and took over. We
drove up the coast to Portville, some thirteen miles up
in the hills was a hot springs owned by a
(11:33):
Seventh Day head venice man. He opened the place up
to nine or ten Japanese families. I worked helping a
man that lived there, chopping trees for firewood and turned.
He would milk his cow and give me quarts of milk,
which is really good. I wasn't much of a milk
breaker until then. But heading lumber felling trees, oh, it
(11:54):
was heavy work. Eighteen years old, I figured I could
handle anything. I guess I was in semi shock. I
didn't tell the school administration that was avy. I just
picked up in the left. Some of the students were saying,
but what happened to a third baseman? All of a sudden,
there's no Japanese boys. It's hard to believe. Here's all
(12:19):
these people dressed up in their finest clothes, standing on
a curb with their suitcase, waiting for the bus. They've
lost everything. You think they'd be up in arms or weeping.
They have a term in Japanese god night. It can't
be helped. Our first generation people said, we came to
(12:42):
this country and if that's what they want to do,
we have to obey. And they had a very strict
rule that we their children and Nissa American citizens obey authority.
The older Nissa had to be either in shock or
I will be very ang a Greek. But what the
authorities say, we will obey. So we all just went along.
(13:07):
I knew I hated to leave school, you hate to
just leave. A couple of months goes by the federal
government said the whole state of California has to be
evacuated now. So again there was a big blow that
we had to leave. Executive Order nine zero six six
(13:37):
only removed the Japanese from what we're considered military zones,
crudely mapped areas that eventually made up most of the
West Coast. There was little social protest, but some civilians
in safe states took in refugees, and this is how
Lawson and his family were able to move to Delta, Colorado.
A Seventh day Adventist church there had volunteered to host
(13:58):
a Japanese family, and his was randomly selected. Of what
was left behind, two hundred and fifty eight thousand acres
of farmland were turned over to the Farm Security Administration.
When we return, we'll hear about what shifted so that
Lawson could finally down a uniform stay with us. Welcome
(14:41):
back to service. Veteran stories of hunger and War from
I Heart Radio, I'm Jacqueline Proposo. While Lawson was moving
from place to place, the president of the Japanese American
Citizens League, Mike Massoka, was challenging Congress to let the
Japanese American boys fight because resistance was so strong, he
(15:02):
made an extreme offer the NISS would make up a
suicide squad to prove their patriotism. It was controversial, but
not an empty threat. Five sons of the Massaca family volunteered.
The army activated the All Japanese American one hundredth Infantry
Battalion in the fall of n made primarily of NISS
(15:23):
from the Hawaiian National Guard, who faced less resistance to
fighting than the interred NISSA on the continent, some enlistees,
of whom were beaten by older Nissa or rejected by
their families for wanting to fight for the country that
imprisoned them. That one hundred proved their metal through Africa
and up int Italy, facing heavy combat to clear the
(15:43):
pathway to Rome, only to be shoved asides that other
troops could pass them by and take the glory, lingering
ten kilometers out until order to move northwest, where they
made up the four hundred and forty second Regimental Combat
Team with two newly arrived battalions. Lawson was in second
Italian Company waiting for them. He had enlisted as soon
(16:05):
as he was able, becoming one of the first to
slowly make their way from settlements around the country to
Camp Shelby, Mississippi. Let's head there now and follow as
he spends a year in training before deploying to Italy himself. Boys,
(16:29):
it coming to Camp Shelby one by one. Now, food
you had to get used to it. Of course. If
you're a truck driver, they made you a cook. If
you're a cook, they made you a medic. That's how
the military work. So their food does really lovely at
the beginnings, till these guys learned how to cook. All
the ratings if they were getting like mutton, that's awful,
(16:53):
old sheep meat, full of fat, and oh taste terrible.
I never want to eat mutton again. And we eat
off of a alunum mesket as a cover, you flip
it over. So they put sunfood here and some and
they covered. If you have something here like jello cook
it just as level the poor. The gravy right on
the jello because they know the plate to put it.
(17:15):
When you go out on maneuvers for lunch, usually it's
two pieces of dry bread, what mustard, and a piece
of salami or ham. Sunday, the kitchen is clothed. They
have cold cuffs, but sometimes they have a whole bit
full of frights. Van that would never eat it before,
but when they're hungry, like crazy boy, you eat everything
(17:37):
you can. Our regiment boardered a number of liberty ships.
On May one, we were part of a very huge
convoy zigzagging because the German submarines were threat We didn't
lose any ships, but it took us a whole month.
(18:00):
I was fortunate I was able to draw a guard
duty with the Navy. It was really good because even
though I'm up on deck, drawing up and down, getting
soaking wet, at least we got to eat with the
navy had really good food prepared to what we had.
We talked on May thirty into Naples, Italy. The first
(18:24):
thing we noticed as we approached the harbor, these Italian
robots with them in paddling while they're standing, would come
near the boat and they waved their hand and then
they had bags of oranges, and they started throwing the
oranges up to us. They're saying, singenet, singenette. There we're
throwing packs of cigarettes down to them and throw throwing
(18:46):
oranges up to us. They were blood oranges, and we'd
never seen blood oranges before. We didn't find out till
after we're on land that one cigarette would have been
blooded for the oranges. What did we know. We enjoyed
the blood oranges anyway. The war had moved north toward Rome.
(19:09):
That's where we formed. The four forty second Regiment with
three battalions was the first and we the second and
third battalions, were going into combat for the first time
that very first day. We were heading pretty much in
the flat area with hills on the side, and it
(19:29):
was all quiet and they were just kind of moving
along slowly. All of a sudden, the Germans started farming
from the left side of the right side and shot
mortars where we were in the middle. Immediately, our company
commanded was too. I could remember seeing specs of just
(19:51):
spying in the dirt coming toward me and wondering, that's funny,
I see specs, I don't see any bullets. All of
a sudden, I osa far right over my head that
the German burp gun. Our submachine guns goes tut tut,
tut tut the German burp gun. We've never seen a
burp gun before. Hundreds of runs are going luckily for me.
(20:15):
The barrels took the little right over me and you
can hear the bullets to top up. Lieutenant Zukowski pad
us in the wrong position, and now he got killed.
Sergeant Morita took over and we moved behind a little ridge.
The battellion commander could see what was happening, and he
ordered the hundred batchell and come over and the hundreds
(20:38):
up behind the Germans. I don't the hominy. They killed
to three hundred. We captured a number of vehicles, over
fifty German prisoners, So even though we had a huge
loss in manpower, the battle itself was a very successful one.
But that's how we started combat. Within that roughly two
(21:05):
months time, we're on the front line maybe three or
four times, and of course off the front line just
as often. You can't go more than a week. Do
you never change clothes, you never eat hot food. You're
eating caned sea ration or package k ration, and you're
hoping to get water. If they can't bring water up
(21:26):
to you every night, you feel your canteen with the
dirty water if there's a stream or something. They used
to give us tablets and we had to use stagnant water.
You just need liquid, even at night to sleep. Maybe
an hour you're being shot at. We do it to them.
Don't want them to sleep either. That's when the reserves
(21:49):
bring of food, ammunition, and water and they can carry
the wounded bad. But sometimes you can't be done. You're
pinned down. Maybe oh you can do is go forward
with whatever you have. Before we get into combat, we're
not really worried about what's gonna happen. But once we
(22:13):
actually can see people getting wounded and the horrors of
what's happening when people are killing each other, your mindset changes.
You're more protective of each other, your squad, your platoon,
your company. Outside of that, very seldom you meet somebody
really know, but you know that they are there to
(22:35):
protect you, and you're there to protect them. We're charging,
running when over into your position and co rank whoever's
in front shooting to make sure that we keep the
Germans from spotting. Are men that are going forward. They're retreating,
so they've had time to dig foxholds. They can always
(22:56):
occupy the higher location shooting down. We're successful most of
the time, but last where our casualties were so high.
You can't advance if you're sitting still. We did manage
to move all the way up past the Orno River
(23:18):
through Florence over to the coast where the four SECO
was sent to join the thirty six Division to begin
the invasion of southern France. The battle in Normandy was
taking such a huge toll that we didn't have very
much resistance, so we landed in France. We're only about
forty five miles from the German border. Main city in
(23:41):
that area was called brew Yere. That was our objective
take the city of Bruyere northern Italy. It was summertime.
We're in open territory in France, a completely different situation.
This is most to the middle of October. Most of
the homes of down the bottom and there were hills
(24:02):
on both sides covered with very thick forests because forestry
was one of the main industries of that area. As
we're heading in the flat area like we did in Italy,
has started to rain, just getting cold. The shots came
from the osides. We had to suddenly climb them out
(24:24):
and into the forest. There was a completely different type
of fighting for having to kill a tree to tree
to root out the Germans. We had to look for
the uniform with the helmet. Looked like he never knew
who was out there, Roman or the enemy. Not only
that the Germans didn't have air force because the Americans
(24:47):
had pretty much wiped them out, but they had the
anti aircraft gun capable of shooting down airplanes. The Germans
were used in that weapon on the infantry. Everything is
coming down like an umbrella. The explosion cuts tree limbs,
branches ragnous besides the shrapno and there's no way to hide.
(25:10):
Men get crushed by a tree limb three or four
hundred pounds coming straight down on top of them. Really
a horrible experience. At night, the cooks, the band members,
whoever was available, would have to carry the five gallon
can of water by foot. That is really heavy. Ammunition
(25:31):
and water, food, the secondary and medical supplies to all
par medics that are on the front line. As they
come up slip sliding, if it's muddy and wet, your
break two or three men off the line, replace them,
bring them back, even if it's for half an hour
or fifteen minutes, and maybe they can get some food,
(25:53):
water for their canteen, maybe ammunition, and then they're ready
to circulate back to the front. And they keep rotating
the men. More than half of our men were lost
fighting for the forest to take over the city or
brew Yere and the rail line that went through there.
(26:17):
Securing the railway was a huge wind. It cut a
main support line for the German front and allowed the
Allies to then move troops, food and supplies. But in
the eight days it took to capture brew Yeer and
neighboring the Fontaine Veterans, remember the desperate Germans firing at
their wounded men as medics removed them from the field.
(26:38):
It would end as one of the costliest battles of
World War Two. When we return, we hear how the
four or forty second fueled up after this long fight.
Stay with us, you're listening to service that are in
(27:19):
stories of hunger and war from My Heart Radio. I'm
Jaqueline Proposo. In our episode with Air Corps veteran Harold
bud Long, we heard how General Patton wanted to be
the first to have his troops crossed the line into Germany,
a line Hitler was holding at all costs. Lawson's General Dahlquist,
(27:39):
had the same goal. Let's go back with Lawson to
that front line in late autumn of We came off
the line on October. Grammy, Yeah, never shower for a
week or two. They had shower trucks, and they could
(28:02):
heat the water, and they had a big bar of
Lye soap. They would probably wipe the paint right off
your car. So you get cleaned up and you get
a new set of clothing. They have the mess set
up open, of course, but hot stoves, hot food, the
first hot food you've had for it or ten days.
(28:24):
The next day we were ordered to gear up to
go back again. Wait a minute, We just came off
the front line. The first bit challeon of the onety
one Regiment had been surrounded by Germans. The thirty six
Division had been unable to reach them. We had just
(28:47):
finished eight days of huge battle and orders an order,
so we obeyed. On October we start up again. Say
in place that we came out of its raining miserable.
Here we go the trap by Chalon is about five
(29:07):
mile farther up. October twenty one birthday, and I was
feeling pretty good about that. We were making an attack.
All of a sudden, the Germans popped up and shot
me point blank, but he missed. I just went tut
to tut hit him on the head when his helmet
(29:29):
came off. There was a fourteen or fifteen year old boy.
He must have been more scared than I was. We're
all scared. You never know when the next bullet or
the next shrapnell was going to hit you. The next morning,
at daybreak, we approaching where the trapped men are. They're
(29:50):
running out of the food and the nish that we
have to get to them. The Germans must have suspected something.
They started cella tree births all around us. Nobody could move.
They tried to hide as much as you could behind
a tree or rock. That's when a large piece of
(30:13):
shrek they'll hit me in the back, and that red
out piece of meadow went sideways right into my ribs.
It stayed there. It just hurt so much, burning, painful,
and you can't breathe your body. Girls up into a ball,
and I don't remember anything. I don't know. When the
medic got to me, he must have determined that he
(30:33):
could save my life, that he shot me full of morphine.
It took five days for the four or forty seconds
to go through the five miles of forests, pushed the
Germans back and finally reached the trapped men. They had
no medical supplies, no food, no water. They had so
(30:53):
little ammunition. They formed a circle. No matter which direction
the Germans are coming from, they were going to make
a last stand. There were two hundred and eleven men left.
Two hundred of our men were killed. To that rescue.
(31:14):
General don't retorted to the four forty second, but don't
stop keep chasing the German. They didn't know that was
a four forty second had rescued them. When the military
press it made the statement the loss that Chalian has
been rescued, they've never mentioned the four forty segment. None
(31:36):
of us really thought anyone with the home alife. Most
of our families were prisoners of war, guarded by American
soldiers with the machine guns pointed in at them. So
what do we do to remove that situation. We needed
to let the government know that we may look like
(31:57):
the enemy, but we were true a mayor Arikans that
we wanted to fight to this country. When I woke up,
I was on a hospital train going to the American
hospital in Dijon for surgery. It took about two months
(32:20):
of recovery and I was able to go back and
join my company. At the border between Italy and France.
For four days, Accosts sent back down to control that area. Well,
we were inside this concrete four at the talk. We're
very steep and the jeeps couldn't get up there. Some
of the surviives had to be brought in by donkey,
(32:41):
water k rations and sea rations. Sometimes they could bring
at foodo, but not very often. If you were down
in the city these cans, you were probably staying in
a hotel eating hot food three times a day. Just
our luck to be up there. After the war was over,
(33:03):
we could get passes into town. Occasionally you would run
into a Chinese restaurant. Of course, the boys really head
for that because you get rice. It was very hard
to get enough rice farm man, because everybody wanted rice.
Then the ration, they mostly potatoes. In the U. S. Army.
Wherever the cooks could, they would trade our potatoes for
(33:25):
other groups. Rice. Naturally, we didn't have much Japanese style food.
Our most popular food might have been fried shrimp, or
maybe hamburgers and hot dogs. We did a few of
those in the army mess. It wasn't too bad. My parents,
(33:49):
we never corresponded during the war. I didn't see them
for almost four years. They didn't write English, so they
never wrote a letter to me. And when I did
write a letter, it was to my sister, who was
in all other concentration camps. My sister had married a
doctor from Hawaii and she was pregnant with her first child.
(34:13):
Her husband were sent to the concentration camp in Post
in Arizona. The doctors and nurses said, we'll hide her.
They kept her hidden in the hospital for two months
before she gave birth. Of course, the birth is recorded.
A week after the trial was born. The authorities found
(34:33):
out she was sent to join her husband. The war
ended in May and around July, I was designed to
go to Rome and become a second lieutenant at the
Army Training School, and I told Captain Burns, the war
(34:55):
is over and I want to go home. Do everything
you can to get me out of here. July August September. October,
finally I got a call that I should get ready
to go. I finally arrived back in Newport News, Virginia
the third week of November. They put me on a
(35:18):
train and I had a duffel bag, and eventually I
finally got to Fort MacArthur and Los Angeles. I don't
remember how I got home. I knew where my home was.
I assumed my parents were living there. I went to
the front door, rang the bell, and sure enough, my
(35:40):
aunt answered the door. I was home and they were home.
That was finally discharged on December eleven, and that's when
they said take off your uniform. There were a civilian
now stood out of there, completing seven major campaigns. The
(36:05):
four or forty second casualties totalled nine thousand, four hundred
and eighty six. That's fifty of those total who would
serve under the four forty two from nineteen forty three
through ninety six, and they're often called the Purple Heart
Battalion for their sacrifice. To this day, the food is
also the most decorated unit in military history. Upon their
(36:29):
return home, President Truman remarked the NISSE fought not only
the enemy but prejudice, Yet their fight continued. The interred
Japanese had been paid one quarter of what other farm
hands were paid, and not nearly what they had taken
in as farm owners at the tool Lake Camp. Those
who had refused to work were fined at Manzanar. Botanists
(36:51):
and chemists who had made scientific advancements for the Allied
cause would not receive public recognition. It's been estimated their
incarceration lost the Japanese Americans up to four billion dollars
by today's values. By nineteen sixty, Japanese American farmers would
number only a quarter of what they had pre war,
and it wasn't until ninety eight that President Reagan signed
(37:14):
legislation offering each survivor and apology and twenty thousand dollars
in compensation and Lawson's family. His parents had to evict
the flower grower they had left using their property because
he refused to give it back. Upon their return, his
uncle requested repatriation and returned to Japan. Lawson went to
(37:35):
Pepperdine University and worked in farming and the shipping of
agriculture before he opened a travel agency, which he sold
after twenty years so to retire in he lives in
northern California to this day. You can hear more of
his story, like how Lawson became his legal lane and
how combat experience led to PTSD in our episode Dad
(37:56):
I Can't talk about it, and in clips on our
social media We're at Service Podcast on Instagram and Facebook.
Thank you to the Japanese American Veterans Association for connecting
us with Lawson for this episode. I highly urge you
to check out Lawson's page at Service podcast dot org
to learn more about the Japanese American contribution to farming
and the front lines. In our next episode, we head
(38:19):
back to the Pacific with Navy Lieutenant Robert Hansen exploring
how income affected how we lived, served, and eight during
this time. Service is a production of I Heart Radio.
This episode was produced and edited by me Jack a
Little Proposo, Kolbe McDonald and Andrew Stessler engineered our interviews
with Lawson. Gabrielle Collins is our supervising producer. Christopher hasiotis
(38:41):
our executive producer. Thank you for listening, and thank you
to those serving and those who have served.
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