Interview outtakes from THE WAR:
"The men from the mainland were of fairer skin. We were darker, from the tropics. They spoke better English. We spoke pidgin English. We were larger in number. That's why they, maybe, called us a wolfpack. And often times while we were chatting among ourselves, we would be using this garbled up pidgin and it sounds funny. And somebody would smile and next thing you know, he’s getting punched. And that’s when somebody had the great idea to choreograph a situation where some of us who were from Hawaii were invited to go to one of the camps in Arkansas. Up until that point, I had no idea that these men had come from these camps. And when we got to the camp, it was evident. High barbed wire fence and machine gun outposts and bayoneted rifles. But on our way back from there, something haunted me and it’s haunted me forever. Would I have volunteered if I were in that camp? And here are a group of men who look like us and their families and their little sisters and brothers, all in the barracks. You know, I can’t answer that question. I don’t know if I would have volunteered. But when we got back to the camp, immediately, they became our brothers. You know, these guys were special, that they would, even under those extreme conditions, volunteer. They were better than us." |
