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Oral history interview with Tana Basa

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1990.481.5 | RG Number: RG-50.062.0005

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    Oral history interview with Tana Basa
    Transcript
    OK the first picture--
    My name is Tana Hecht Basa.
    The first picture is of my father and mother
    in Berlin in 1940.
    And those are pictures, various pictures, of my mother
    up until 1940.
    OK.
    Can you slide the whole thing over towards you?
    Yeah.
    What do you mean?
    Just bring it towards you more, the whole photo.
    Slide it, yeah.
    Mhm.
    Keep going.
    Yeah.
    OK?
    OK.
    Again, the other pictures are your mother?
    Up until 1940.
    OK, hold on, natural light.
    Are you using--
    OK.
    And what is this?
    This is eine Geburtsurkunde, which
    means it's a birth certificate.
    OK.
    OK.
    Do you want me to say what they are?
    OK.
    These are baby pictures.
    The one in the middle is my--
    Do the one closest to you on the top.
    OK.
    Well, this is just a baby picture.
    Mhm.
    OK.
    And this is my mother and the governess that we had.
    Again, a baby picture.
    Hold on for a second.
    OK.
    This is my oldest sister, Ruth, holding me.
    This is my aunt.
    Her name was Recha, R-E-C-H-A, funny name.
    Hold on.
    And this is, again, the governess.
    And so are these two.
    Well, let me just get a couple of shots.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    Oops.
    This one?
    Oh, it's the same one.
    I see.
    Mhm.
    OK.
    Good.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    OK.
    First picture?
    This is my mother.
    The second picture is of my father in his cantorial uniform
    or cantorial robes.
    OK, give me one second here.
    [BACKGROUND CHATTER]
    One second.
    [BACKGROUND CHATTER]
    Beautiful.
    [BACKGROUND CHATTER]
    OK.
    This is my sister Eva.
    She was born in 1922.
    In the upper right one--
    Upper right is a picture of my dad returning
    from the First World War.
    Hold that shot a little bit longer.
    This is him.
    Oh, OK.
    I didn't even have that.
    Which one's him?
    Right here, upper left-hand corner.
    It's after--
    The First World War.
    It was a troop transport.
    Oh, OK.
    Returning from the war.
    Zoom in.
    The bottom picture is when I was two years old.
    Can you hold it still?
    The bottom picture is you when you were--
    About two, just prior to the concentration camp.
    Hold it still.
    OK.
    [BACKGROUND CHATTER]
    OK.
    Can't get it [INAUDIBLE].
    OK.
    This is a family portrait taken in 1940,
    approximately May or June of 1940.
    There's Ruth, my father, my sister Erica, my mother
    holding me, and my sister Eva.
    OK.
    That's--
    Verfugung?
    Verfugung.
    Verfugung.
    OK.
    Why don't you go ahead and explain what this is?
    What this basically means or says
    is that I have no rights to any possessions.
    Anything that I owe or will owe belongs to the Third Reich
    and to the fuhrer.
    You have a new job.
    Learn Japanese, he said.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    And what's that stamp, Im Auftrage, or whatever.
    Where?
    Auftrage?
    Auftrage.
    What is that?
    Is that someone's signature?
    Im--
    Yeah, it's a signature of the, like, a notary or something.
    And he has the German stamp.
    --name is.
    What does that say, above your name?
    It says all of my possessions all the possessions of--
    it goes according to the rules that were established
    in October of 1939, and so on.
    OK.
    This is a document for identification
    that was always worn.
    It's made out of a cloth.
    And it was always worn by, in this case, myself.
    And it identified me as a Jew because of the J
    that was printed on here.
    It had all the official stamps there.
    And OK?
    OK.
    The one on the left is a pass, a food pass that gave us
    a means to get some foods.
    The other two papers there are the money
    that was printed to be used in the concentration camp.
    It was specific.
    [INAUDIBLE]?
    [INAUDIBLE]
    So what is Quithung uber Zehn Kronen?
    It was specific.
    Zehn Kronen, Kronen is the name of the money,
    like cents or whatever.
    And this was 10.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    Is der alteste der Juden means Jew.
    So--
    Where is that?
    In the bottom right-hand side in the bottom one.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    It can be only used by the Jews in the camp.
    Only used by the Jews.
    Yeah.
    Because it wasn't worth anything outside the camp.
    OK.
    Pretty sophisticated.
    Huh?
    Print their own money.
    Yeah.
    I think it would be more like Monopoly money or something.
    Really.
    OK.
    That's good.
    Let's see if this--
    let me know when to start.
    OK.
    OK.
    Since we were in a Czechoslovakian camp,
    this is the Czechoslovakian repatriation office.
    And this was worn by us after the war to identify us.
    And it states on there, it has the family name, the date
    and place and country of birth.
    Occupation, I really didn't have any, since I was only a child.
    Desired destination, since we were from Berlin,
    we wanted to go back to Berlin.
    My father signed it for me since I was only five years old.
    And every one was like a tag, like a identification tag
    which helped the Allies to process the people.
    Yeah.
    It's like an emergency.
    You have all these tags that tells you.
    Good.
    OK.
    And that's it.
    This is a certificate that says that I, Tana Hecht,
    was a prisoner in the concentration
    camp of Terezin or Theresienstadt
    since March 18, 1943.
    The military and civilian authorities
    are asked to assist in any way.
    Again, this was used for relocation and identification.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    And it's signed on August 10, 1945.
    Hold on a second.
    One more time.
    OK?
    [INAUDIBLE]
    OK.
    OK.
    I'm Judy Weightman.
    And I'm here today on June 21, 1989, talking with Tana Basa.
    And Tana, we'll go over a few of the chronological questions
    that we need to know and your historical questions
    and your family.
    And I wanted to know, first of all,
    what your present address is.
    And what was your date of birth and your place of birth.
    I was born April 18, 1940 in Berlin, Germany.
    OK.
    And are you married?
    I am.
    And how many children do you have?
    I have two girls.
    And were you married-- you weren't, of course,
    married before the outbreak of the war.
    You were a child at that time.
    OK.
    And could you tell me a little bit
    about your parents, the full name of your father
    and if you remember his date of birth and place of birth
    and the same with your mother.
    OK.
    My father's name was Paul Israel Hecht.
    And he was born November 25, 1897 in Posen, East Prussia.
    My mother's was Carolina.
    Her maiden name was Blond, B-L-O-N-D.
    And she was born also in Posen on November 20, 1896.
    So do you know how long your family was in Prussia,
    how many generations?
    That, I have no idea.
    I never got to meet my grandparents.
    And we're in the process of trying to trace things down.
    But it's a little bit hard because the records
    weren't kept up well.
    And do you know how they got to Posen, where they came from?
    I know my parents were born there.
    And I don't really know whether my grandparents were born there
    or emigrated from somewhere else.
    OK.
    And do you have any brothers or sisters?
    I had three sisters, Ruth, who was born in 1920,
    Eva, who was born in 1922, and Erica, who was born in 1930.
    OK.
    And you were in Germany in the early years.
    And can you remember anything about the first few years
    of your life in Berlin?
    None whatsoever.
    Well, I was born there and then I really
    don't have much of a recollection
    until I was about four years old or so.
    And where were you then, when you were four years old?
    We were in a camp called Theresienstadt, or Terezin,
    in English.
    We were transported there from Berlin
    and lived there until the end of the war.
    The Terezin was considered by the Nazis a model camp.
    It was more of a camp for political prisoners.
    A lot of children went through there.
    I believe they said something, like, about 150,000 children
    went through the camp.
    Of those children, 100 of us were left alive after the war.
    OK.
    And go ahead.
    OK.
    Tana, we're getting back after the lawnmowers.
    We'll try to keep talking now.
    I was asking you about Theresienstadt.
    And what do you first remember about your stay
    in Theresienstadt?
    I remember the place where we lived.
    It was one large room.
    And what still strikes me was the fact
    that it had a tile floor.
    And the tile was like a checkerboard, black and white,
    huge tiles, really big pieces of tile.
    And we all lived in that one room, just my father,
    my mother, and I.
    What happened to your three sisters that--
    They all lived in the camp, but they
    were put in other barracks.
    They had lots and lots of barracks
    where they housed people.
    And they didn't leave us together.
    That was their policy.
    Were the three girls together, your three sisters?
    No, they also lived--
    my two sisters, Ruth and Erica, were together.
    But my sister Eva was not in the same barracks.
    Were they able to spend any time together?
    Not that I know of.
    Did you see them when you were in camp?
    Not till after the war, not at all.
    Can you remember getting to Theresienstadt?
    No.
    You were too young.
    My first recollections are of that room and playing outside.
    I had long blond hair.
    And I remember playing.
    I was, what, about three years old, maybe close to four.
    And I remember this Nazi officer coming up to me
    while I was playing.
    And he asked me to go home with him.
    And I told him off.
    And my aunt told me afterwards, after the war,
    she said they were so scared that he was just
    going to take out his gun and shoot me.
    And what had happened is, because I looked so Aryan,
    and they were after Aryan children, he,
    I guess felt that I was a good recruit for their Aryan
    population or whatever because I was so blond and fit their--
    Did he know you were Jewish, do you think?
    I'm sure he must have because I was in the camp.
    I was just playing.
    When you were playing, were you playing outside by yourself?
    Right, by myself, on the dirt, or whatever.
    And then he just walked away when I told him no.
    You know, I told him, no, you're just going to kill me.
    And then he walked away.
    And they thought for sure he was just going to take out his gun
    and shoot me.
    What made you think that he would kill you?
    How did you even know to think about that?
    I guess you know, knowing that the Germans were
    who they were over there.
    I don't know whether someone told me about it.
    Or yeah, I was pretty little.
    Did your parents talk to you about any rules or regulations
    when you were in the camp?
    Did you know there were things you were allowed to do
    or not allowed to do?
    No, not really.
    But I do know that afterwards, my hair was cut off totally.
    And they made me bald.
    And according to my aunt, she said at first
    it was because of lice.
    But then she told me that they were just scared.
    So they decided to make me look like any of the other prisoners
    rather than just leave my hair nice
    and long and blonde and curly.
    Who was scared?
    I guess my family, my mother and father.
    So they just cut it.
    I remember being hungry a lot.
    And I remember having a cast on.
    And that I slipped.
    I had a walking cast.
    It was like a piece of metal on the bottom.
    And I just slipped and fell and broke my leg, again.
    So they had to put me in traction.
    And I remember that part in camp.
    Did your mother or your father talk to you
    about what they were doing during the day in camp?
    No.
    Well, my mother was mostly at home with me.
    She was there with you?
    Yeah.
    Was there anyone else there with you?
    No.
    Not that I remember anyone.
    And what did your father do during the period in the camp?
    I think he was busy with, I don't know,
    administrative stuff, or I don't know.
    I'm not sure.
    And he never talked about it at all.
    What did your father do before he was taken to Theresienstadt?
    He was a cantor.
    He was the head cantor of Berlin.
    And he was very good in administrative things.
    Because I remember after the war he did that also.
    And what else do you remember or did your parents talk to you
    about?
    Well, I remember being kind of naughty.
    In what way?
    See the camp, Theresienstadt, was a garrison,
    a Czechoslovakian garrison.
    And I remember at the end of our road,
    there was a fence, a brown fence.
    And there was a hole in the fence.
    And I was able to crawl through and go to the other side
    and be with the Czechoslovakian soldiers.
    And they would take me on their knee
    and they would feed me candy and things to eat.
    And I would always try to disappear.
    And my mother would have a fit.
    And then you would just crawl back in?
    And I'd crawl back under the fence and crawl back in.
    And I was just a terror.
    She would be so upset, you know?
    And I remember that part.
    And then the only other recollection
    I have of her dying in that room.
    What happened?
    I remember she got very--
    like, she got a headache.
    She got very, very ill.
    And then I remember my dad came.
    And he picked her up.
    And she just died.
    She died in seconds.
    What happened is she had a cerebral hemorrhage,
    I found out afterwards.
    And I remember staying in, like, a crib
    and watching the whole scene.
    And then they came with this cart, horse drawn cart,
    and just took her away.
    And we didn't get any ashes or anything after that.
    I remember my dad trying to tell me,
    or I found out afterwards that the ashes were just thrown.
    They cremated everybody and just threw them away.
    Even though he wanted the ashes, they wouldn't give it to him.
    And then what happened to you and your father?
    Then afterwards, because my mother had died,
    I guess the Germans felt that I really
    was a hindrance to my dad because he
    had to take care of me.
    And my sisters were gone by that time.
    How did you know they were gone?
    Well, my dad told me.
    I mean, they were not with us.
    But my dad knew that the two went to Auschwitz.
    And then my other sister Eva had gone someplace else.
    Who went to Bergen-Belsen?
    I think it was my sister Eva.
    Eva.
    Went to Bergen-Belsen, yeah.
    I know they told us that she was transported
    to several different camps.
    And then because the Germans felt
    that I was a hindrance to my dad,
    they tried to take me away.
    And I guess kill me.
    But what happened was he hid me.
    We had one of these tubs with the feet.
    And he hid me underneath the tub.
    And I remember them coming and he
    was trying to tell them-- he was being interrogated.
    And they wanted to know where I was.
    And he wouldn't tell them.
    So they knocked out all his teeth.
    They started beating him.
    And then I don't remember too much after that.
    You stayed under the bathtub?
    For a while, yeah.
    And then my dad, he knew one of the doctors
    in this place where they kept, I guess people with TB.
    And he put me in there until the end of the war.
    And the Germans never knew that you were there?
    No.
    He was able to keep it a secret that he
    had hid me in that place.
    And I'm not quite sure, but I don't understand quite
    why they kept a TB-like sanitarium around.
    Were there Jewish people in the sanitarium?
    Yes, I imagine so.
    Because the doctor was Jewish.
    Yeah.
    And so he kept me in there until the end of the war,
    until the liberation, till the Russians came.
    Did you see your father after you were put in there at all
    until the liberation?
    Not that I remember, no.
    I remember then after the war, after the liberation,
    we were still in the camp.
    Right.
    We still stayed there.
    And I remember my two sisters coming back.
    And my dad trying to give me a bath.
    And he put me in this pan, like.
    And I was so naughty, I just kept tossing,
    throwing all the water out.
    And he was just so angry, you know.
    I mean, he was typically German.
    He never was involved in child care.
    And then suddenly, he was left with a four-year-old.
    He just didn't know what to do with me, you know?
    What happened when you were staying at the TB sanatorium?
    Do you remember anything of being there at all?
    I just stayed there.
    I guess they considered me as part of the patients.
    Can you remember anything, any day there.
    Can you see yourself there at all?
    No recollection, whatsoever.
    I just have-- certain things stick very clearly in my mind,
    like our room, and the place where we lived,
    and then a few incidences.
    Other things is just what my family told me
    because I was so young.
    Another thing is they had a little pond
    on the other side of the fence.
    And I would sneak away.
    And one day I almost drowned.
    And then this man came and he just sort of picked me up
    and he put me on his shoulders.
    And he said, well, you don't know how to swim.
    I'll swim with you.
    And he did that for a while.
    And then I would go back the next day.
    And here he was, again.
    And he was German because I talked to him in German.
    And then he'd put me on his shoulders again
    and he'd swim with me.
    And then I'd sneak back under the fence
    again and go back home.
    And one day I told him, I said, I have a sister at home.
    Because this was directly after the war,
    my two sisters came back.
    And I said, well, I have a sister.
    Why don't you come and meet her?
    So he did.
    And they've been married 47 years.
    I think they got married in '46.
    Oh, for heaven's sake.
    This man turned out to be my brother-in-law.
    Was he Jewish or German?
    Yeah.
    He was Jewish?
    He was Jewish.
    And he was just there, too, because he had been a prisoner,
    you know, and then was brought back.
    Where was he?
    He was in Terezin.
    Oh, I see.
    OK.
    So you don't remember anything of the years,
    actually, until you were over five years old?
    About 5, 4, like that.
    And when you were in the sanatorium.
    Can you remember the first time you
    saw your father after the war?
    Or what was the first memory you have after that?
    My main memory was of the Russians coming in.
    What do you remember about that?
    And how kind they were.
    What happened?
    They gave us food.
    And it was my first taste of home fries, or fried potatoes.
    And to this day, that's my favorite.
    It's got to be my favorite food, you know?
    I seem to never be able to have enough of that.
    You were saying that you were always hungry in the camp.
    We just never had enough food.
    What was your usual food for the day in the camp?
    I don't remember.
    Your only feeling is just of being--
    Just always hungry.
    I guess, especially towards the end,
    they didn't have very much.
    And I remember the smells, the smell of--
    see, they built crematoriums right
    outside the camp [AUDIO OUT]
    OK.
    So you were talking about building crematoriums.
    Yeah, they had built crematoriums there.
    And I do have a recollection of an aunt and an uncle.
    And my aunt was holding a baby.
    And they were standing in line.
    And I remember they were crying.
    And my uncle, he had reddish hair.
    And then walking in this line towards the showers.
    And that's all I ever saw them.
    And they must have died, too, because they
    were not there after the war.
    Did your father talk to you about the extermination
    camps at all, or what would happen
    outside of Theresienstadt?
    No, no, no, not at all.
    Because And most of the information,
    I really didn't get from him.
    It was more my aunts who helped fill me in.
    Because I did have three aunts who
    were left alive after the war.
    And they're my mother's side.
    And one was also in the camp.
    And she returned.
    And she sort of took over the care of--
    Which camp was she in?
    She was in Theresienstadt also.
    And did you see her while you were in the camp, do you know?
    I only remember her afterwards.
    So you really don't have too much memory
    of being in the TB sanatorium.
    But when the Russians came, could you
    tell us a little bit about what happened there?
    Well, like I said, they were very, very kind to us
    and just gave us food.
    And I guess started the process of trying to get us
    back to where we needed to go.
    Do you remember who was taking care of you
    when you were in the sanatorium?
    Do you remember any person that you were with?
    No one in particular, no.
    Do you remember what you did during the day?
    Just played.
    I don't know what, whatever a four-year-old does.
    We just played.
    And like I said, most of my recollections
    are kind of spotty.
    Yeah, that's usually what happens at those ages.
    And then after the Russians came, do you
    remember whether they came into the building to get you,
    or how you knew who they were, or did you go out?
    I just remember them marching in, seeing a lot of soldiers,
    that they didn't speak German.
    Did you know that they weren't German,
    that they were there to help you?
    Yeah.
    Because they were kind.
    They were totally different than the German soldiers were.
    I was, I guess, pretty much afraid of them.
    You were afraid?
    How do you remember being afraid of the German soldiers?
    Well, for one, I was being told don't go near them.
    And then I don't know whether they warned me or my folks
    warned me, or what.
    It's just, I guess, part of the feeling in the camp.
    And when the Russians soldiers came in, where
    were the Germans at that time?
    Do you remember seeing German soldiers around, too?
    No.
    I didn't remember seeing them.
    They were just gone and then the Russians were there.
    You don't remember a time in between when they weren't?
    No.
    And I was told that, of course, there
    were lots of atrocities that occurred.
    And how the Russians treated the German soldiers.
    But I didn't witness any of that.
    And what about your father?
    Did you see your father first or your aunt first?
    Or who did you see after?
    Well, I went back to live with my dad, back into that room.
    Into the same room?
    After the liberation.
    Because we stayed there for a while.
    OK.
    So your father came to get you, probably.
    Mhm.
    And then my aunt came.
    And then my sisters came back.
    And I remember someone coming, this girl coming to the door
    and saying that she had seen my sister Eva on a train.
    And that everyone was sort of exterminated on that train.
    So Eva--
    So my dad said in the paper that my sister died in Auschwitz.
    But we really don't have any proof of that.
    But she never came back?
    She never came back.
    And your other two sisters?
    They just came back.
    Did they ever see her at Auschwitz?
    Did they see her anywhere?
    They never said anything about it.
    And did your sisters talk about their experiences in Auschwitz?
    My oldest sister has refused to talk, totally.
    She won't even talk to her children about it or anything.
    My other sister has talked about it.
    She was 12 at the time.
    And she talked about her experience.
    The two of them were healthy and stayed together.
    And they were put in a work camp in Auschwitz.
    There's Elisa.
    And that's why they stayed alive.
    And they actually were sent to Auschwitz just towards the end,
    because that was part of the final solution to get--
    I see.
    --they knew the war was ending, was going badly,
    so they were trying to eliminate as many people as they could.
    And how did your sisters get back from Auschwitz, your two
    sisters?
    Did they come back together?
    Came back to Theresienstadt together.
    They stayed in Auschwitz together.
    And how did they know to get back to Theresienstadt?
    Because they had lived there before with us.
    So did they tell you why they went back?
    Well, because they knew we were there.
    We were either there or no longer alive.
    So that was the place to come back to.
    And then what happened when they came back?
    Do you remember that?
    We went back to Berlin.
    How long?
    You said you had stayed in Theresienstadt--
    Until we were able to--
    I guess, transportation or whatever to get back to Berlin.
    Was there a displaced person status there?
    I don't know.
    What do you mean by displaced?
    Did they turn it into a displaced persons camp?
    Right, right.
    Because a lot of people were coming back,
    and whoever was alive still in the camp,
    and from the surrounding areas, people were coming back.
    And I think my dad got kind of busy with that
    and trying to find people, get their homes back, find
    their relatives, and so on.
    Because after we came back to Berlin,
    that was his primary duties, working with the Red Cross
    to get people back with their families
    and back to their homes, and so on.
    Do you remember about how long you stayed in Theresienstadt
    after your sisters came back?
    It was, I think, quite a while.
    Months?
    A couple of months, like that, two or three months.
    And what did you do during that period of time there?
    I just played.
    You still played.
    Yes.
    [LAUGHTER]
    I just played and found my brother-in-law.
    And then do you remember any decision or discussion
    about going back to Berlin?
    There was never-- not with me.
    And I'm sure since we were from Berlin
    and this is where my dad felt he had his home,
    or thought if there was anything left of it,
    he wanted to get back.
    Yeah.
    Do you remember having any sort of a religious life at all?
    Since your father was a cantor, was the Cantor of Berlin?
    Not in the camp, no.
    But afterwards, definitely.
    Do you want to talk a little bit about what happened
    when you went back to Berlin?
    OK.
    I remember the three of us-- four of us--
    well, no, it wasn't even the four of us.
    Because my sister got married soon afterwards.
    And my brother-in-law had a visa to come to the United States.
    So they went.
    They left in '46.
    And then it was just my sister, my father,
    and I, my sister Erica.
    We lived in Berlin.
    And then my dad worked, I remember, in this big building.
    The top was totally bombed out.
    And he just worked there, trying to get people back together
    again.
    And did you live with your father at that time?
    I lived with my father at that time.
    And then he met this lady and they got married.
    And she had a daughter by a previous marriage.
    She was a widow.
    And then things got kind of bad.
    Why is that?
    Really bad.
    [LAUGHS]
    Well, you've heard of Hansel and Gretel?
    She was the original Wicked Witch of the West.
    Things were kind of tight after the war,
    as far as food and everything.
    And she felt that only her daughter counted.
    And so my sister and I ended up in an orphanage.
    Was this a Jewish person?
    Yeah.
    And we lived there for quite a long time, quite a few years.
    My dad would come to visit.
    And he was also a Hebrew teacher.
    And he would teach there.
    And I would see him periodically.
    But we had to live there.
    And sometimes on weekends, I would go home.
    How old were you when you went into the orphanage?
    About six.
    And you went to school there?
    I went to school there.
    And I just lived there with a whole bunch of kids.
    It was a Jewish orphanage.
    And there were children not just from Germany?
    Or they were all--
    It was mostly all Germans.
    All German-Jewish children.
    And then do you know what happened after that?
    Can you remember some of the--
    Well, like I said, I stayed there.
    And on weekends, I sometimes went home.
    But it was kind of a really bad experience at home
    because my stepmother really didn't like us.
    And then after a while, my sister Erica just
    refused to come home there.
    She stayed away totally.
    Did you have any relations with any of the German people
    there at the time?
    Like which ones?
    Did you know any of the German people
    in the community in Berlin?
    No, because I stayed mostly in the orphanage.
    I went to a public school and all that.
    Were there German children there with you?
    Uh huh.
    Did you have any problems?
    Or what kind of an existence was that there?
    No, it was just regular school.
    And afterwards, we'd have to come back
    to the orphanage and study.
    We'd have both religious study and our regular, more secular
    studies.
    And we had someone that would oversee
    that we spend so many hours doing our homework
    and all that.
    And that was about it.
    So you didn't feel any different being Jewish when you were back
    in school in those days?
    No.
    Not that I remember.
    I just know it was kind of rough, because we
    had to spend so much time.
    We couldn't play.
    And if we did have some free time,
    it was help with the gardening.
    And we had chickens there.
    And we had to clean the chicken coops and all that kind
    of stuff, so no free time.
    And so what happened when you left the orphanage?
    Or what brought about the leaving from the orphanage?
    Well, they were kind of odd circumstances.
    My dad and his wife didn't get along that well.
    And then my stepsister one time did something.
    My dad got kind of angry.
    So he slapped her.
    And my stepmother got so upset that he
    had slapped her daughter, she took a beer glass.
    So I remember I was home that weekend.
    She took a beer glass, and she smashed it across his head,
    cut his jugular.
    And I remember him bleeding and all the towels--
    Oh, no.
    --just full of blood.
    And there was a couple of policemen
    that lived in the building we were in.
    And so I remember them rushing him to the hospital.
    So afterwards, they got a divorce.
    Had your stepmother been in a camp also?
    I don't think so.
    I really don't think so, even though she was Jewish.
    I don't know.
    I really don't know.
    But then a strange thing happened.
    When we got ready to come to the United States,
    he remarried her.
    And we came to the United States.
    And he divorced her again.
    I don't know.
    Well, how did you leave the orphanage?
    What happened at that period of time?
    Well, after he got hurt and divorced,
    then he took me back out of the orphanage.
    And I went to live with him.
    About how old were you at that time?
    Maybe about nine.
    So you had been in the orphanage about three years, then?
    Right, about that.
    Yeah.
    And do you remember-- oh, go ahead.
    No, go ahead.
    You left to go to the United States when you were 11.
    Do you remember what happened in those two
    years between the years you were 9 to 11?
    Well, I stayed with him.
    And we lived together in this apartment.
    And it was a really good time for me
    because I continued my religious studies.
    Because he was always after us to learn.
    And I remember he had this huge, huge Bible which
    was too big to put on a table or anything.
    We had it on the floor, on the carpet.
    And it was a beautiful Bible.
    And every day, he would read to me.
    And we would go through the pictures.
    And it was just a really nice time to spend with him.
    And it was that way until we came to the United States.
    And do you remember how you got to the United States?
    Well, we took a boat.
    I mean, before that?
    It was kind of interesting.
    OK.
    Unlike today, where you hop a plane as an immigrant
    and come over, we had a time, once we found out
    we were coming, we had our visa, we had an orientation time.
    It was spent in another camp.
    And we stayed in Bremen.
    And we lived there for a while.
    I think it was a couple of months or so, during which time
    we learned about the US-American culture.
    And we got indoctrinated with American food
    and American music, lots of Ella Fitzgerald
    and lots of Louis Armstrong and country and Western music,
    and lots of hot dogs and hamburgers.
    And we were told things, like, don't
    put your hand under your seat because there's gum.
    Americans chew a lot of gum and they always
    put their gum underneath the seats, and things like that.
    So we stayed there for two months,
    approximately two months, where they checked us
    as far as our health and I guess tried to teach
    us a little English, unsuccessful where I
    was concerned, and my dad, too.
    And then we came to the United States.
    We had a ship.
    We were on this horrible, horrible troop transport ship.
    It was all rusty.
    And we were segregated, all the women in one part
    and all the men in another part.
    And we got together for meals, but that's it.
    And I remember everybody was so sick all the time.
    We had such terrible weather.
    And everybody stayed-- my stepmother and her daughter,
    they stayed in the bunk.
    And they were constantly sick and throwing up.
    And not me, I wouldn't stay down there.
    It smelled bad and everything.
    So I was always up top side and almost got
    washed away by the waves.
    But I remember once, I don't know who it was,
    but somebody scared me a little bit.
    He said, well, this ship is so old.
    It had been sunk during the world war.
    And we have brought it back up again.
    That's why it's such a rusty old tub.
    And during the trip, they were constantly
    scraping and cleaning.
    And it was so rough that I remember
    even the captain was sick.
    Wow, the captain.
    I've never heard of that.
    Wll, unless he was just one of the officers or something.
    But well, I remember seeing him lying over the side
    and being sick.
    It was just awful.
    And your sister Erica was with you, too.
    No, no, no.
    She went earlier.
    She came in November of 1950.
    And where did she go?
    She also went to Boston.
    Because she stayed with my sister.
    OK.
    And then when you arrived in--
    New York.
    Then what happened?
    We took a train, I remember.
    And then my sister and her husband met us in Boston.
    So what about Ellis Island?
    There was no Ellis Island.
    No.
    What happened?
    And I talked to my sisters just recently.
    And they said they were not at Ellis Island also.
    So they must have closed it down.
    Because no one that I know of arrived and landed there.
    What's your first memory of New York?
    Tall buildings, enormous buildings, and we
    didn't stay there long.
    It was just a few hours.
    And then we went on to Boston.
    And I remember my brother-in-law and my sister
    meeting us in this black old, old Buick.
    I think it was about a 1936 car or something.
    It was kind of neat, with a running board.
    And it was an interesting car.
    And we lived with them.
    We stayed with them.
    How did you feel about leaving Berlin, when you left?
    I was a little bit afraid to come.
    Because I didn't know the language, even though they
    tried to teach it to us.
    And everything was so strange.
    But on the other hand, I knew my sisters
    were in the United States, so I really wanted to come.
    And did you find that you could learn
    English when you got here?
    Was there a problem?
    I'm not that easy in learning languages,
    at least as I seem to get older, I seem to have a harder time.
    And it took me about a year to learn English well.
    That's not too bad, I would say.
    But I remember-- well, they put me back in school.
    I was, like, 11 years old and here they
    put me back into second grade.
    And how long did you stay there?
    I stayed there-- let's see.
    I came in May, just a couple of months.
    That's what I would have thought, yeah.
    Yeah.
    And then I went on to third grade, stayed a half a year.
    In fourth grade, half a year, fifth grade, half a year,
    and sixth grade, half a year.
    Because I had been going to school in Germany.
    I went up to the fourth grade, which
    was way higher in equivalent as far
    as the languages and math and stuff.
    I was way ahead.
    And what did you think of the American schools?
    It was good to play.
    I was never much of interested in studies.
    I mean, it was just because I knew most of the things.
    And I was too busy just having a good time, playing.
    What did your father do when he got to Boston?
    OK, at first, it was kind of sad.
    They tried to place us.
    They had immigration societies that really helped you
    out and taught you, again, try to teach you the culture
    and teach you how to live in the United States.
    And they placed my father who, mind you,
    was a cantor and very, very extremely proud man,
    and they placed him in a shoe factory.
    And so he was so upset, he threatened to go back.
    What was he doing in the shoe factory?
    I guess working, making shoes.
    And he just couldn't handle it.
    And so he was ready to go back.
    And then, luckily--
    --staring.
    OK.
    Uh-huh.
    Go ahead.
    OK.
    Tana, I wanted to just get back.
    You were talking about your father
    being placed by-- was that the Joint Distribution Committee?
    Mm-hmm.
    They placed him into a totally inappropriate job
    by putting him into a shoe factory to make shoes.
    And so he said, well, he just felt that he
    couldn't live like that.
    And so he was ready to go back to Germany,
    even though there was nothing there for him.
    And luckily, he, I guess, answered some ads,
    and he found a position in Cambridge, Massachusetts
    as a cantor.
    And then he was happy.
    From then on, life was good for him.
    And that was at a synagogue.
    At a synagogue in Cambridge.
    Was he Orthodox or Reform or Conservative?
    No, Conservative.
    Conservative.
    Yeah.
    And you were raised Conservative?
    I was raised Conservative.
    I went-- I lived with my sister.
    My sister raised me.
    And I went to Hebrew school.
    I remember every day, after school, public school,
    go to Hebrew school.
    I think I-- I did that all through high school.
    And I was bas mitzvahed when I was 12.
    And it was just-- that was just part of my life.
    It was just regular school and Hebrew school.
    And was your stepmother there with you then too?
    Oh, no.
    My dad had gotten divorced again right away after we came here.
    And I never saw them again, thank God,
    because she was really terrible.
    I remember her-- see, I guess after the war
    I still wet my bed and I sucked my thumb,
    and it would just really infuriate her.
    And I remember all the beatings she
    would give me because I was sucking my thumb
    and wetting the bed.
    And she'd stand me up in the middle of the room,
    even though it was cold, and open up all the windows,
    and just take off all my clothes,
    and just beat me until--
    because I wet the bed.
    But this was, I guess, part of, oh, the things
    that happened in camp.
    I don't know.
    But it took me a long time.
    I didn't stop sucking my thumb till I was 14.
    But no matter what they tried, that it was just--
    I guess that was my security blanket.
    Yes.
    But he-- it was kind of a really bad time to be with them.
    And she even made me, Friday nights,
    if I would go there, part of the ritual, of course,
    was the Sabbath, and to observe the Sabbath.
    And we'd have fish and we'd have chicken soup.
    And she would make me eat fish even though I didn't like it.
    And then I remember one time it was-- the fish was very bitter.
    It was terribly bitter.
    And I tried to tell her, and she forced me to eat it.
    And I got very, very sick.
    And to this day I absolutely hate fish.
    I can't-- it's horrible stuff.
    And another time--
    I don't know.
    She was just very, very mean person.
    So when you were in the United States,
    how long-- did she go to Boston with you?
    I think she lived in Boston, mm-hmm.
    But I just totally, I just don't remember her,
    and after that anymore.
    And then did your father live with your sister as well?
    No, no.
    He moved out.
    He was in his own apartment.
    And he just did his own thing.
    And he--
    So--
    And he remarried again and again.
    [LAUGHS]
    And you stay with your sister and her husband.
    I stayed with my sister until I finished high school,
    and then went off to nursing school, and so on.
    I see.
    Yeah.
    And your father stayed in the Boston area?
    Right, until he retired.
    And then he moved to Florida.
    OK.
    Is there anything else you can think
    of that your sister had shared with you,
    or your father had shared with you?
    My sisters, my younger sister--
    I mean, not younger, but the one that's just above me,
    my sister Erika, I've asked her several times
    how it was to be in Auschwitz and things.
    And she said that they worked.
    She and my sister Ruth worked in a munitions factory.
    And she said that one time, one of the machines
    chewed up her finger.
    She still has quite a scar.
    And she said they couldn't even-- she couldn't even
    make a sound because if she did anything
    to show that she was no longer able to work,
    it would have meant death.
    It was a death sentence.
    So they kept it quiet and just didn't do anything.
    So--
    And I guess she was lucky she didn't lose her finger,
    or that it didn't fester and become infected or whatever.
    But my older sister refuses to talk about it, her experience.
    Even to you.
    Oh, yeah, even to me.
    Even to her husband.
    Her husband has-- my brother-in-law talked to me
    about his experience.
    Which camp was he in?
    Do you--
    He was in Auschwitz, after--
    see, he was in hiding for quite a while.
    And then someone turned him in.
    And he ended up in Auschwitz.
    And he was telling me how he used to have to stack bodies.
    He'd be down in a pit, and they'd throw the bodies down,
    and he'd have to stack them.
    And then he said one time he saw the commander of the camp come
    to the edge, and he looked over, and he asked him his name.
    And his name was Henry, Heinz.
    And he said, my name is Heinz.
    And he said, Heinz, I see a arm sticking out
    of the stack of bodies.
    The stack is not straight.
    And he took out his gun, and he said,
    you will straighten this stack, or I will kill you.
    So my brother-in-law broke off the arm in order
    to make it straight.
    He told me that.
    And then he was put--
    prior to that, he was in a prison.
    They put him into a prison.
    And everybody there got dysentery--
    typhoid or something.
    And he said, he just thought he'd die
    because he was so dehydrated.
    He was delirious.
    And with all the diarrhea, and no food, and all that.
    So he talks about his experiences, but not my sister.
    And yet, a couple of years ago she had a stroke,
    and she reverted back to German.
    She couldn't talk English.
    She only spoke German.
    And she-- it was my brother-in-law told me,
    it's just like she relived her experiences in the camp.
    But again, she will not talk about it.
    She has three children.
    And my two nephews and my niece refuse--
    they don't know anything.
    They don't know anything about their parents.
    Have they asked?
    I'm sure they've asked.
    I know my youngest nephew, Steven, I'm sure he's asked.
    And nothing.
    Now have you talked to your children
    about your experiences?
    Oh, definitely.
    Definitely.
    Why do you feel the need to do that?
    Because I don't want it forgotten ever.
    [BACKGROUND NOISE]
    No problem.
    Keep going.
    OK.
    I think it should be remembered.
    And there are a lot of people around that say it's an--
    it was imaginary, it's propaganda put out by the Jews.
    It's ridiculous.
    It's stupid to say that, because it happened.
    And I just don't want it forgotten.
    OK.
    Thank you very much.
    I wanted to ask just a few more questions, Tana.
    I noticed that there was a sheet prepared of the names of all
    your relatives.
    And could you just tell me what this sheet is, if you would
    hold that up, please, and--
    OK, this is a list--
    If you could show it to the camera.
    OK.
    My father had prepared this, a list
    of relatives which he lost during the Holocaust
    from 1941 to '45.
    And it gave-- it starts out with my mother, who
    died in Theresienstadt, and my sister Eva, that died in a gas
    chamber in Auschwitz.
    Then he lists the rest of his sisters, brothers,
    brother-in-laws, nieces and nephews
    who died also in Auschwitz, which was a total of 14 people.
    And then he goes on.
    My grandfather, Wilhelm Wolf Hecht, my grandmother,
    Dorothea Hecht.
    A brother, Martin, sister-in-law, Regina,
    their baby, another brother Eli, another sister-in-law.
    Brother-in-laws, childrens, uncles,
    aunts and so forth that he lost in the ghetto at Warsaw--
    Warsaw.
    I don't know how to pronounce it.
    Warsaw?
    Where was that?
    Poland.
    Warsaw.
    In Warsaw.
    Warsaw.
    The Warsaw Ghetto.
    They were all in the Warsaw Ghetto.
    They were there.
    And he lost a total of 20 people there.
    Then another uncle, Isador Hecht, and his aunt,
    Emily Hecht he lost in the Riga forest, which a lot of people
    were just shot there.
    OK.
    So he lost a total of 37 people.
    His total-- his whole family was wiped out.
    There was no one left alive.
    He was the only--
    He was the only one.
    On my mother's side, there was my Aunt Risha, my Aunt Cilla,
    and my Aunt Paula.
    Who survived.
    Who survived.
    And the others?
    No one.
    And my mother also came from a large family of eight children.
    And what happened to the other children?
    They were-- all died in camps, various camps.
    My Aunt Risha survived the camp.
    My other two aunts were never in camp.
    One was because she married a German,
    and that always sort of rankled my dad because she remained
    in Germany, and her husband became a Nazi,
    and her son became a Nazi.
    And he would never have anything to do with them afterwards.
    Did they talk to their mother and wife--
    your aunt?
    I mean, how did she live married to two--
    married to a Nazi.
    Well, I guess they didn't find out that she was Jewish.
    Oh.
    I mean, I guess my uncle kept it a secret.
    But he, of course, knew that his wife was Jewish, right.
    But they kept it a secret.
    And they were able to survive the war.
    And from what I remember, my dad told me
    that when things got bad, like some of our possessions,
    he gave into trust to my aunt.
    And they sold it and things.
    We never got anything back.
    So after the war, he refused to talk to her, just as though she
    never existed.
    Now her husband and son got killed.
    During the war.
    During the war.
    How was that?
    I don't know.
    What?
    Put down the paper.
    Can I put it down?
    Thank goodness.
    OK.
    Thank you.
    Yeah, I didn't want to--
    I don't under what circumstances they got killed.
    But I did spend some time with her after the war.
    Did she talk about her experiences or--
    No.
    I just remember being with her, and her
    trying to fatten me up, because I guess
    I was really undernourished.
    OK.
    And is there any--
    have you talked to your-- anyone about your experiences here?
    No, only to my children and my husband like that.
    Any other non-Jewish people?
    Not offhand.
    I just don't feel I really want to talk about that to them,
    because a lot of times they just don't understand.
    I think a lot of people don't understand.
    OK.
    We're just about at the end.
    Is there anything else you would like to say before we close?
    No, I don't know if there's anything else.
    My dad did write some poetry which were representative
    of how he felt about the camp, and the Jews,
    and the things that happened to us there.
    And they're kind of nice, kind of neat poems.
    OK.
    Thank you so very much, Tana.
    I really appreciate your being here.
    Thank you.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Tana Basa (née Hecht), born April 18, 1940 in Berlin, Germany, shows pictures of her family from before the war. She discusses her father’s role as a cantor during WWI; how her first memory was of Theresienstadt; staying in the camp until the end of the war in a single room; having all her hair cut; being hungry a lot; having her leg in traction; her mother’s death; how two of her sisters went to Auschwitz and one sister went to Bergen-Belsen; how her father hid her under the tub when the guards came for her; how her father got a Jewish doctor to take her to a tuberculosis sanatorium, where she stayed until they were liberated; how she reunited with her two sisters, who went to Bergen-Belsen; the death of her aunt and uncle; being in a displaced persons camp; how her father remarried and she and one of her sisters were put in a German Jewish orphanage, where she stayed for five years until her father took her back; and immigrating to the United States with her father when she was 11 years old.
    Interviewee
    Tana Basa
    Interviewer
    Judy Weightman
    Date
    interview:  1989 June 21
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, acquired from the Hawaii Holocaust Project

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    2 videocassette (U-Matic) : sound, color ; 3/4 in..

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
    Conditions on Use
    Restrictions on use. See collections release form for details regarding restrictions.

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Basa, Tana, 1940-

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    Judy Weightman, of the Hawaii Holocaust Project, conducted the interview with Tana Basa on June 21, 1989, as part of a project to interview Holocaust survivors and concentration camp liberators currently living in Hawaii. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum received a copy of the interview in March 1990.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:10:09
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn511082

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    Oral history interview with Walter Chotzen

    Oral History

    Walter Chotzen, born May 17, 1911 in Ziegenhalt, Germany (Glucholazy, Poland), describes the small town where he was born; attending the University of Berlin and quitting after a few semesters; working for a manufacturing business, where he was fired once Hitler came to power; working for his father; being socially shunned for being Jewish; being called up by the draft board; smuggling money past the border into Czechoslovakia and being questioned by the Gestapo about this activity; how his father sold his factory in 1938; going to Holland; how his parents hid in Berlin for a year then fled to Sweden; how he lived in Seattle during this time; his family history; his education in Germany; the antisemitism before the war; his experiences in Berlin between 1933 and 1935; going to a Nazi Party parade on Unter der Linden; the fate of his extended family; how he became socialist as Hitler became stronger; his thoughts on the internment camps in the U.S. for Japanese Americans; and his thoughts on the liberation of Dachau by Japanese-American troops.

    Crystal Night oral history interview

    Crystal Night oral history interview

    Oral History

    Five individuals who lived in Germany and Austria before, during, or after Kristallnacht discuss their experiences. The interviewees describe the Nazi Party in Austria; growing up in Berlin, Germany and being persecuted for being Jewish; life in Frankfurt, Germany, where there were boycotts against Jewish stores; a parade of storm troopers (Sturmabteilung); a torchlight parade in 1933 on Under Der Linden in Berlin where 100,000 storm troopers marched singing; how the Nazis took most of their possessions; seeing a synagogue burning in Austria during Kristallnacht; how they all left Europe; and their thoughts on preventing the Holocaust from happening again.

    Oral history interview with Anne Flagg

    Oral history interview with Anne Flagg

    Oral History

    Anne Flagg (née Flagenheimer), born September 17, 1910 in Germany, describes how Hitler invaded the Rhineland when her children were infants; her father’s factory; how Jews were forbidden from going to concerts or to the opera; how the synagogue was burned during Kristallnacht; how the Nazis destroyed their house and the French governess saved her husband; the first pogrom in 1934; how some of her relatives got out of Germany; how she went to their summer home in February 1938; how she went to Stuttgart to get visas and how they did not have passports; finally getting passports; how the train she was on to Holland, the Netherlands was searched by the Gestapo and they stole her watch; meeting her husband in Holland; taking a ship to the United States; how her parents got out soon after; how the maid saved their silver and the bookkeeper took accounts receivable and buried it and collected for her parents for later; how her friend rescued many Jews by posing as a Nazi; visiting Germany in 1952; life after WWI; how the Nazis stole their possessions; the fates of her aunts and uncles; and how she believes the Holocaust could happen again.

    Oral history interview with Royce Higa

    Oral history interview with Royce Higa

    Oral History

    Royce Higa, born in 1920 in Honolulu, Hawaii, describes leaving school early to work; working as a dishwasher in Okinawa, Japan; being Japanese and the difference between Akin and Japanese; organizing a labor movement at age 16; graduating from the University of Michigan; becoming the director of a tuberculosis organization; joining the army in 1945; his brother’s death in Italy; training at Camp Shelby; getting the measles and suffering depression; going to Germany where he was a forward observer; crossing the Rhine River and not meeting any resistance; seeing a death march from Dachau and how they did not know at the time that they were Jewish prisoners; going to Augsburg, Germany; meeting a Lithuanian Jew and helping him find his family; getting his master’s degree in public health after the war; his life in politics; seeing the attack on Pearl Harbor, which were close to his home; and the Japanese who were loaded on to ships and taken to the mainland.

    Oral history interview with Fred Hirayama

    Oral history interview with Fred Hirayama

    Oral History

    Fred Hirayama, born in Hawaii, describes living on a plantation; volunteering for the army; the discrimination his brother experienced as a Japanese American; how his parents were proud of him for serving; how no one in his family was sent to a relocation center; going to Camp Shelby and never experiencing any discrimination; serving in the 522nd in France and Germany; his experiences with the concentration camps; going to Dachau where he saw the atrocities, gas chambers, and the inmates; returning to Germany in 1984; his memories of the Pearl Harbor attack; and some pictures he has of the state of Texas honoring the 442nd regiment.

    Oral history interview with Hazel Ishii

    Oral history interview with Hazel Ishii

    Oral History

    Hazel Ishii, born December 15, 1917, describes her Japanese parents and how she identifies as American; being in Maui, Hawaii during the attack on Pear Harbor; not having experienced any prejudice; how conditions changed for Japanese Americans after the war; a friend’s experience in a Japanese American internment camp; her daughter’s pursuit of archeology and Hebrew studies; and her family’s efforts to remember the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Susumu Ishii

    Oral history interview with Susumu Ishii

    Oral History

    Susumu Ishii, born on January 2, 1918 in Hawaii, describes being a second generation Japanese American; being 24 years old when the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred; being drafted a few months before the Pearl Harbor attack; how the commander told the Japanese Americans that they could not be trusted; how he identified as an American; attending a Japanese school; training at Camp Shelby and in Wisconsin; visiting a friend at a Japanese American relocation camp and his view on the camps; not experiencing any discrimination when he was in Mississippi but witnessing discrimination against black Americans; attending annual Holocaust memorial services; his daughter’s pursuit of Hebrew studies; and his view that those who were relocated to camps in the U.S. should be compensated.

    Oral history interview with Stanley Kaneshiro

    Oral history interview with Stanley Kaneshiro

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Richard Kuba

    Oral history interview with Richard Kuba

    Oral History

    Richard Kuba, born in March 1921 in Kailua, Hawaii, describes being a first generation Japanese American; living in Kailua when Pearl Harbor was attacked; volunteering to serve in March 1943; his non-Japanese friends and their views of the Japanese; how he heard nothing against Americans in the Japanese community; being stationed at Fort Shelby (probably Camp Shelby) in the infantry; being a radio operator when he went overseas; being in combat; feeling like his battalion was treated differently because they were Japanese Americans; his views on Hitler; how he did not know anything about the concentration camps other than what he read in the papers; and his first contact with the liberated prisoners.

    Oral history interview with Borys Kusne

    Oral history interview with Borys Kusne

    Oral History

    Borys Kusne, born in Vilna (Vilnius), Lithuania on August 17, 1918, describes growing up in a middle class Jewish family; the antisemitism in Vilnius; being the only Jew at his college in 1938; being inducted into the Polish army in 1939; how both the Russians and Germans were taking Polish prisoners of war; walking back home; the Nazi invasion in 1941; the new rules established for Jews; working at the railroad then moving to the ghetto and working in a hospital; being in the ghetto until 1942, when he was deported to Estonia to a liquidation camp; never seeing his mother again; conditions in the camp; and marching all night and leaving the group for the forest.

    Oral history interview with Hedy Marmorstein

    Oral history interview with Hedy Marmorstein

    Oral History

    Hedy Marmorstein, born in Vienna, Austria November 18, 1921, describes her parents; going to school until she was 16; finishing high school in New York; leaving Vienna in December 1938; her Jewish education; how they accepted antisemitism as a part of life; experiencing antisemitism in school and protesting; her non-Jewish friends; being sponsored by her father’s nephew to come to the United States; corresponding with her parents until the attack on Pearl Harbor; learning later that her parents were deported to Riga, Latvia (Kaiserwald concentration camp); how when she arrived in the U.S., Americans did not realize how sinister Hitler was; her experiences during Kristallnacht; antisemitism in the U.S.; how her experiences have affected her life; living in Hawaii versus New York; her views on the internment of Japanese Americans; how when she left Austria some of her possessions were destroyed and strip-searched in France; returning to Austria in 1959; and being in an Austrian club.

    Oral history interview with Katsugo Miho

    Oral history interview with Katsugo Miho

    Oral History

    Katsugo Miho, born in Maui, Hawaii, describes his Japanese parents; graduating high school in 1940 and beginning his university studies in 1941; being a member of the ROTC; volunteering for the army on December 7, 1941; being part of the Hawaiian Territorial Guard; how they were gathered in a school one morning and told that all Japanese Americans would be discharged because an American officer did not like the idea of Japanese Americans serving for the U.S. Army; working as a carpenter’s helper at the airfield; volunteering for the army in 1943 with his brother; going to Schofield and Camp Shelby; being in the artillery while his brother was in the medical section; how his father was picked up as an enemy alien in 1941, taken to a prison, then shipped to Sand Island, Honolulu, and sent to a prisoner of war camp in Alabama; the death of his brother in a bus accident when he visited their father; training until April 1944; visiting camps (possibly Japanese American internment camps); going to France and losing many men while trying to rescue a lost battalion from Texas; joining with the 7th Army and the 3rd Army; fighting battles in the German cities of Mannheim, Frankfurt, and Heidelberg; seeing civilians with yellow stars on their clothes in Aachen, Germany; and witnessing a death march from Dachau and not knowing at the time that they were Jewish prisoners.

    Oral history interview with Yuzuru Morita

    Oral history interview with Yuzuru Morita

    Oral History

    Yuzuru Morita, born in Hawaii on May 8, 1917, describes his Japanese American parents; being age 24 and in the army when Pearl Harbor was attacked; working on a sugar plantation and factory, where there were Japanese, Filipino, Portuguese, Korean, and Chinese men working together; being assigned to the 395th Battalion at Diamond Head; handling all the outgoing military goods for the army; being at home during the attack on Pearl Harbor and having to get back to the base; his response to seeing Japanese flags on the attacking airplanes; staying in the army throughout the war and becoming a sergeant; how both of his brothers entered the army when the 442nd was formed; going to Camp Shelby; not encountering any racial prejudice, but how Japanese-American soldiers had their allegiance continually doubted; his daily duties in the camp; becoming part of the 527th Artillery; how his brothers also fought and survived the war; how his parents were proud of them for fighting; going to Germany and Italy; how German soldiers surrendered to them; seeing Jewish prisoners for the first time at Dachau and how he did not even know it was called Dachau until 1988 because no one ever talked about it; going to Bavaria, Germany after the war, where they remained as occupational troops; how his service in the army was appreciated by people when he returned to the U.S. and how he did not experience any racial prejudice; and his outlook on life.

    Oral history interview with Neil Nagareda

    Oral history interview with Neil Nagareda

    Oral History

    Neil Nagareda, born May 2, 1924 on Hawaii Island, Hawaii, describes living on a plantation with a mixture of Filipino, Portuguese, Japanese, and Spanish families; how there were no anti-Japanese feelings; hearing that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor; how his parents were from Hiroshima , Japan; joining the army in 1943; being trained at Camp Shelby; how he was supposed to go to Camp Jerome but missed going; how his unit went to Europe; having no idea about the concentration camps when they came across Dachau; the conditions of the Jewish inmates; meeting up with the 522nd; how there were no orders as to what they should do at the camp nor with the prisoners; being a communications unit; leaving Germany in December 1945; the racism he experienced in Camp Shelby, Hattiesburg, MS, and New York; not talking very much about his war experiences; and his advice to his children.

    Oral history interview with Barton Nagata

    Oral history interview with Barton Nagata

    Oral History

    Barton Nagata, born in Maui, Hawaii, describes his family; going to Grinnell College in Iowa; being drafted in 1942 and sent to Arkansas for basic training; asking to be transferred to the 442nd Battalion; being sent to Camp Shelby attached to the headquarters battery as a clerk; working in radio and in the foreign observatory team; seeing some action in Italy with the infantry; being Colonel Harrington's radio operator; his education at Grinnell College, where he did not experience any discrimination; being on guard duty when he was not needed as a radio operator on the Riviera in France; being detached from his unit and made a MP, guarding German prisoners and AWOL American prisoners near Nice, France; liberating French prisoners in Germany; seeing a death march near Munich, Germany, not realizing the prisoners were Jews, and giving them some food; going to Dachau; speaking about his experiences when he was a high school history teacher; the importance of education to prevent racism; being an active protestant; going to a British university; and telling his children about his experiences.

    Oral history interview with Armin Nagel

    Oral history interview with Armin Nagel

    Oral History

    Armin Nagel, born June 1920 in Breznov (possibly Brașov), Romania, describes his early life; learning Hungarian and attending Hebrew school; moving near the border of Romania; moving to Bucharest, Romania with his siblings; finishing high school in 1938; working as a photographer; working as a dentist’s assistant until 1940; how the Romanian Nazis became active in 1939; how his brother, who was a printer, secretly printed material against the Nazis; being mistaken as his brother and taken to a train to go to a concentration camp; going with 2,000 other Jews and non-Jews to Terazu, a work camp; conditions in the camp and making teeth out of bones to aid eating; how in 1942 all the Jews in the camp were taken to Varnecka (possibly Varnikai, Lithuania); learning later that experiments were being conducted at the camp, where prisoners were given poison in the food; how, as a dental assistant, he was able to smuggle medicines to the prisoners; being able to survive because he ate with the dentist; being in the camp from May 1941 to August 1944; being taken to another camp in Groslovo (Velyka Mykhaĭlivka, Ukraine), where he worked as a dental assistant for one year; walking 80 miles towards Romania and ending up in Tagena; how his brothers survived and went to Israel; joining his mother in Bucharest, where he worked and went to school for engineering; immigrating eventually to the United States and settling in Honolulu, Hawaii; and the number of Jewish Romanians who left for Israel.

    Oral history interview with Hideo Nakamine

    Oral history interview with Hideo Nakamine

    Oral History

    Hideo Nakamine, born in Paauilo, Hawaii and raised in Honokaa, HI, describes being in Honolulu, HI with his brother when Pearl Harbor was attacked; enlisting and joining the 442nd; going to Camp Shelby for training; being put into the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion; fighting in Italy and France and going into Germany at the end of the war; how the first camp he saw was in Bad Tölz, Germany; seeing approximately 5,000 prisoners being marched away from Dachau and how the German soldiers scattered when they saw the U.S. troops; how some of the soldiers gave food to the prisoners and how they had been ordered not to give food to anyone because they needed their rations; going through other German death camp areas in Horgau, Augsburg, and Munich; visiting the museum at Dachau during the 40th reunion; going to a gathering of Holocaust survivors in Philadelphia, PA in 1985; how his parents had been driven off the plantation where they worked for being of Japanese descent; and his views on freedom and prejudice.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Obayashi

    Oral history interview with Joseph Obayashi

    Oral History

    Joseph Obayashi, born on April 18, 1924 in Maui, Hawaii, describes growing up in a community called Whalo; how his father grew pineapples; how he felt that Japanese Americans were not discriminated against even after the attack on Pearl Harbor; enlisting into the 442nd; how he trusted the U.S. government when they relocated Japanese Americans to camps; training at Camp Shelby; being in the 3rd and 5th Divisions during the war; being shot down when he was in the 3rd Division; the captain of the 442nd, Captain Fiberman, and his squadron commander, James Harrison; landing in Italy in 1944; how his job was to carry a radio on his back to help with the intelligence of the 1st Division; how the 442nd and 100th (rifle company) never drew back; going through France then Germany; hearing rumors about the concentration camps; seeing a concentration camp and prisoners eating a dead horse; meeting former inmates in Germany in 1984; encountering inmates in other areas of Germany in 1945; and his outlook on life.

    Oral history interview with Otto Orenstein

    Oral history interview with Otto Orenstein

    Oral History

    Otto Orenstein, born in Vienna, Austria on July 16, 1921, describes his parents and their ancestry; his education in Vienna; not experiencing any antisemitism when he was young; how his family observed some holidays but was not very religious; leaving Vienna on December 28, 1938 for Cologne, Germany; making it across the Belgian border; how some Belgian farmers smuggled them to Brussels, Belgium and gave them money for railroad tickets; arriving in Antwerp, Belgium, where a relative lived; getting a visa to the United States, and arriving in the U.S. in April 1940; how the rest of his immediate family arrived in the following few months; how in July 1927 there had been riots at the Ministry Building in Vienna; his memories of political events and backlashes in 1932, 1934, and 1938; being a member of the Austrian boy scouts and being kicked out for being Jewish; his memories of the Anschluss and seeing Himmler and Goering; conditions during the Nazi occupation; getting kicked out of the apartment where his family had lived for 30 years and going to live with his grandmother; how his uncle committed suicide; getting rounded up with other Jews on November 11, 1938 and taken to an SS barracks; seeing a Portuguese temple burning; how he was let go because he was only 17 years old; his journey to Antwerp and his difficulty crossing the border; going to a detention camp in Belgium September 1939 until his visa came in March 1940; how his parents left from Norway; going to Honolulu with his family in July 1940 and how his parents had brought artifacts from Norway and were featured on the front page of the Honolulu Advertiser on July 16, 1940; how when he first arrived in New York he stayed at Stephen Weiss’s house, which was a temporary shelter for refugees; how his family was interned on Sand Island, HI as enemy aliens; how his mother ended up being the leader of the women’s side of the camp; the things he brought with him (birth certificate, train ticket from Brussels to Antwerp, student card, and passport); how he has talked to his family about his experiences; not experiencing any antisemitism in Honolulu; and some of his memories from 1938. The interviewee also shows a picture of his birth certificate and his student card.

    Oral history interview with members of the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion

    Oral history interview with members of the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion

    Oral History

    Members of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion discuss their experiences as Japanese Americans when Pearl Harbor was attacked; deciding to join the army; the anti-Japanese sentiment in the press and the reactions of their peers; being evacuated from the west coast and waiting for Japanese American detainment camps to be built; people they knew whom were detained; the experiences of their families before the war; how many of their possessions were taken by the federal government; training at Camp Shelby; the status of family members as enemy aliens; Holocaust denial and Holocaust education; going to the military camp in Arkansas (possibly Camp Jerome); the confiscation of their diaries; their views on reparations for the Americans who were detained during WWII; their activities on the Western Front, including the detachment of the 522nd, how the artillery was often ahead of the infantry, and going through many towns; arriving at Dachau; seeing the prisoners and Reverend Martin Niemöller; not staying long at the camp; being ordered not to feed the camp survivors because they could not eat the food; passing a camp outside of Munich, Germany while they were scouting; seeing two dead horses and later seeing a group of prisoners gathered around eating them; feeding the survivors at their camp and speaking to some of them; seeing the gas chambers, crematoriums, and shooting sites at the camp; going to the displaced person camps and attending a wedding at one of them; going to a survivors' meeting in Philadelphia, PA; the irony of being a persecuted minority in America then helping a minority during the war; and the presence of prejudice organizations in the U.S.

    Panel discussion with Holocaust survivors and members of the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion

    Panel discussion with Holocaust survivors and members of the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion

    Oral History

    Holocaust survivors and members of the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion discuss the internment of enemy aliens in the United States after the Pearl Harbor attack; learning about the concentration camps in Europe; the experience of being a Japanese American after the bombing of Pearl Harbor; the experiences of Sarah Rozenberg, who lived in the Warsaw ghetto, was sent to the Majdanek concentration camp on April 23, 1943, worked in the ammunition factory, and was liberated by the Russian Army on January 15, 1945; Rozenberg’s experiences with the Germans and the brutality of the Jewish police as well as the underground activities in the Warsaw ghetto; and Holocaust education.

    Jewish/552nd Panel

    Jewish/552nd Panel

    Oral History

    Punchbowl Memorial

    Punchbowl Memorial

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sarah Rozenberg

    Oral history interview with Sarah Rozenberg

    Oral History

    Yom HaShoah

    Yom HaShoah

    Oral History

    The recording includes a service for Yom HaShoah during which Mayor Frank Fasi of Honolulu, HI; Chuck Freedman, director of communications in the office of the Hawaiian governor; Jacob Liebermann of the Jewish Federation of Honolulu; Gerald Clay, president of the Jewish Federation of Honolulu; and Judy Weightman honor the millions of Jews who died in the Holocaust and thank those who helped save Jews and work to fight present-day Holocaust denial. The recording also includes a musical performance.

    Oral history interview with Gerda Samuel

    Oral history interview with Gerda Samuel

    Oral History

    Gerda Samuel, born in Hamburg, Germany in 1921, describes her father, who was a printer; attending a Jewish school for girls in 1931; how her father was taken by the SS in 1934 and she never saw him again; being sent to the ghetto; conditions in the ghetto; being sent to England in 1938; being adopted by a Jewish family in Belfast, Northern Ireland; never seeing her mother or aunt again; being raped by the son of her adopted family; joining the British Army in 1941; not hearing about the concentration camps until after the war; going to London, England to work as a waitress after she left the army; moving to Singapore in 1948; immigrating to the United States in 1952; her conversion to Catholicism; antisemitism in Hawaii; and her memories of the Depression.

    Oral history interview with John Sato

    Oral history interview with John Sato

    Oral History

    John Sato, born in the state of Washington in 1921, describes experiencing some discrimination as Japanese American when he went to a university in 1939; how his family was evacuated from their farm; living in the Minidoka Relocation Center in Idaho; conditions in the camp; volunteering for the army; going to Camp Shelby; being in the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion; joining the air force intelligence; visiting his family in the camp; being transferred to the Hawaii Air Force Base for nine months; being sent to Guam; going on a bomb trip to Japan with scientists; and his life after the war.

    Oral history interview with Rudolf Schmerl

    Oral history interview with Rudolf Schmerl

    Oral History

    Rudolf Schmerl, born in August 1930 outside of Berlin, Germany, describes his family; moving to Berlin in 1935; his family history; experiencing antisemitism as a child from his peers; his view of Germans; wanting to leave Germany and having difficulty; how Germany defined his family as stateless; how his father went to the United States in1938 to work as a doctor; going with his mother and grandmother on a train illegally to Czechoslovakia; being beaten at his new school; going to Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic) on August 31, 1938; getting measles on the ship heading to the United States; being detained on Ellis Island; living in Harlem, NY; how his grandmother never became a U.S. citizen; leaving New York in 1941 for Louisiana; seeing racism in New Orleans; moving to Toledo, OH, and seeing the segregation; the fates of his relatives in Germany; and the lessons of the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Jedidah Shashai

    Oral history interview with Jedidah Shashai

    Oral History

    Jedidah Shashai, born in Vienna, Austria on May 19, 1924, describes growing up in poverty in Vienna; having no Jewish school education; experiencing antisemitism; her father’s death when she was 12 years old; how the Nazis took many of their possessions; the uniforms of the women Nazis; how she had no connection with Judaism; wanting to be part of the mainstream and not being accepted; how the Nazis took her family’s business; how she went to Belgium and her sister and mother went to England; antisemitism in newspapers; wanting to go to Hawaii; getting out in a transport of children and feeling guilty because she was not a child; going to Belgium first then England; staying with different families in Belgium; being placed in a small village in England in 1939 by the Rotary and experiencing antisemitism; not experiencing antisemitism in Hawaii; and her approach to life.

    Oral history interview with Don Shimazu

    Oral history interview with Don Shimazu

    Oral History

    Don Shimazu, born in Punei, Maui, Hawaii, describes his role as a staff sergeant in charge of the 522nd Battalion survey section, with the responsibility for accurately locating targets; growing up on a plantation on Maui, where there was a subtle discrimination against all minorities; beginning ROTC at the university in September 1941; his memories of the attack on Pearl Harbor; experiencing some animosity for being Japanese immediately after the attack; how he had been schooled in the Japanese samurai tradition, which taught him to have loyalty to his country (the U.S.) first and how this tradition led to the success of the 442nd and 522nd; enlisting and the disbanding of his first unit; becoming a carpenter’s apprentice; learning about the Japanese internment camps; volunteering for the army on March 24, 1943; going to Camp Shelby; being made second in command of his cadre; how his division was known for being the most accurate artillery division; his combat experiences in Italy in the towns of Grosseto, Livorno, Castellano, Pisa, and Florence; going to Marseille, France; joining the 7th Army and traveling through the French Riviera, Dijon, and Lyon; crossing a minefield without realizing it; saving the lost battalion (131st Field Artillery, 2nd Battalion); staying in Southern France until March 1945; serving with various battalions, including the 63rd, 45th, 44th, and the 101st to assist in the Allied crossing of the Rhine; travelling through Mannheim, Germany and the Siegfried Line; entering Dachau; being told not to feed the camp survivors as they would be unable to cope with the soldier’s food; going to Munich, Germany; returning to Dachau in 1984; the similarities and differences between the German and American internment camps; his memories of the concentration camps in Germany; and ways to prevent the Holocaust from happening again.

    Oral history interview with Ignace Speiser

    Oral history interview with Ignace Speiser

    Oral History

    Ignace (né Yitzhak) Speiser, born January 5, 1908 in Warsaw, Poland, describes his second wife; studying in Paris, France after WWI; learning to play the mandolin and the violin; going to the consortium in Warsaw; being age 21 when he attended the Ecole de Musique in Paris; officially leaving Warsaw in 1931; his siblings and his parents; trying to leave France for the United States in 1939 but being prevented by the beginning of the war; being taken by the Germans from Toulouse, France in 1943; being sent to a concentration camp in Danzig (Gdańsk), Poland; being asked to play his violin; how the inmates dug a tunnel, which was discovered; how all the imamates were deported to Auschwitz; being on the train with his friend, a cantor, who sang one symphony the whole ride; how people jumped off the train; how his wife was still in Toulouse; being separated from the others at Auschwitz because he was a musician; playing Ernest Bloch’s Baal Sham; going to Fürstengrube to work in a coal mine, but being separated as a musician with his opera singer friend; being beaten once; being in Birkenau for a few weeks; how a dentist would bring him food and ask him to play Mozart; having a birthday party in 1945; how he had been in Auschwitz for two years and Fürstengrube for one year; giving concerts once or twice a week in Fürstengrube; how after awhile he was not afraid of dying; selection processes; being removed from Auschwitz in January 1945 at which point they were walking and on the train; going to a place near Lübeck, Germany and being taken by the Red Cross to Sweden; the conditions on the train and the deaths during the journey; and his tattoo.

    Oral history interview with Louise Spitzer

    Oral history interview with Louise Spitzer

    Oral History

    Louise Spitzer, born December 6, 1916, in Vienna, Austria, describes her parents and childhood; going to Brussels, Belgium to perfect her French and graduating from hotel management school in 1938; life in Vienna and the intermingling of Jews and the Christians; how she had no antisemitic experiences in her childhood; wearing a three arrows patch to present herself as socialist in protest of Nazism; the death of her father; having boarders in their home beginning in 1938; being picked up by the Nazis to clean the synagogue; how the Nazis took all their linens and silverware, she went to the Nazi headquarters to demand it back, and they gave it back; going to work as a servant and later a nanny for a family in London, England; leaving on November 10, 1938; the deportation of her uncle to Dachau and the death of her mother in 1939; being beaten at the German border; staying with the English family’s children in Wales when the war broke out; returning to London to work in a secret factory until the end of the war; volunteering to help the Americans because she spoke German and being stationed in Germany in the censorship division; visiting her aunt and uncle in Vienna after they were released from Dachau; her interactions with the Russians upon her return to Germany; applying to go to the United States after she received British citizenship; leaving the army in 1948 and immigrating to the U.S.; working for American Express and Sabena; receiving some money from the Austrian government for confiscated belongings; and her views on antisemitism and Holocaust denial.

    Oral history interview with Richard Strauss

    Oral history interview with Richard Strauss

    Oral History

    Richard Strauss, born in Mainz, Germany in 1924, describes growing up in Germany and Italy; working for most of his life in the hotel food industry; attending a German public school; hearing antisemitism on occasion from his classmates; how his father was active in the Social Democratic party and was warned to leave on the night of the 1933 election, which he did; the camps near his town where dissidents were taken; how laws preventing Jews from attending high school began in 1935; his uncle’s wine exporting business, which he was allowed to continue operating despite the limits on Jewish businesses; his parents’ divorce; being socially shunned by non-Jewish friends in 1935; being sent to Besel, Switzerland to his father when their business was being reviewed; being placed in a boarding school in Italy from 1935 to 1938; returning to his mother in August 1938 when Mussolini enacted antisemitic laws; how his father went to Cuba and then Australia in 1940; how his mother’s attitude about remaining in Germany changed after Kristallnacht; how shop keepers would allow them to purchase items even though they had signs up banning Jewish customers; being hidden by a family friend who was a member of the Nazi Party, in a park the night of Kristallnacht; seeing the destruction of the city the next morning; how the thugs who committed the atrocities were brought in from another city; taking in homeless families because their home was intact; being on the English Rotary Club’s transport that got children out of Germany; going to Portsmouth, England and working as a window dresser’s apprentice; how his mother left Germany in November 1941 and went from Portugal to the United States; being interned on the Isle of Mann; being sent to Glasgow, Scotland and then transported to Australia; the conditions on the ship and the maltreatment of the refugees; being placed in an internment camp in Australia; sending a postcard to family friends in Australia, where his father also happened to be; being given the choice to return to England or join the Australian Army, and choosing the latter; joining in 1942 and becoming an interpreter at the rank of sergeant; guarding prisoners of war captured in North Africa that were interned in Australia; getting out of the army in 1947 and immigrating to the U.S. in December 1947; getting an apprenticeship at the Biltmore Hotel; going to California, Utah, Hawaii, and New York; his experiences guarding Italian and German prisoners and not telling them he was Jewish; witnessing some antisemitism in the U.S.; and his reflections on the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Billy Taylor

    Oral history interview with Billy Taylor

    Oral History

    Billy Taylor, born October 15, 1912 in Oklahoma, describes growing up on a farm in a suburb of Oklahoma City; attending the University of Oklahoma and studying petroleum engineering; joining the ROTC, working with the horse-drawn artillery; receiving his lieutenant's commission in 1935; working for the conservation corps in Oregon; getting married in 1938 and going to Texas; joining the armed forces in March 1941; going to Fort Sill to be an instructor; going to the 155 Howitzer Battalion; briefly being the captain of an Arkansas unit of the National Guard; being selected for secret duty at Camp Shelby, training Japanese American soldiers; how the men were loyal and they wanted to prove it; going to Italy; forming units at the University of Naples; going to combat north of Rome; his duties as well as the technical and logistical details of their campaign; going to Florence; how the unit was sent to Marseille, France but he got sick and was sent to the hospital; hitching a ride to Marseille a month later; experiencing their worst fighting in the Vosges Mountains; being assigned to rescue a battalion (131st Field Artillery, 2nd Battalion) in October 1944; emptying a brothel of women, who had been collaborating with the Germans; details about the rescue of the lost battalion and sustaining great casualties; the split of the 442nd and the 522nd; crossing the Rhine River at Worms, Germany; taking Mannheim, Germany; coming across a training camp for German youth and a compound of imported food; being northwest of Munich and Dachau and supporting the 101 Airborne; going to the Dachau concentration camp, which had been emptied of many prisoners; going to a meeting of units to discuss what they should do with the corpses; not staying at the camp for very long; the smell of the camp; heading south and finding a group of former Dachau prisoners in a village where they had been abandoned by the SS; seeing the survivors eating dead horses; the physical condition of the prisoners and their orders to not feed them; forming a camp for these people and sending many back to Poland; how the Russians were rough with the refugees; going north of Munich to search for SS troops; remaining in the reserve until 1954; receiving the Croix de Guerre from the French; working for the Bureau of Indian Affairs; how he is part Cherokee; how he never questioned the loyalty of his men in WWII but that at the beginning there was censoring of individual mail and some men were taken out of the unit; and his feelings about Dachau.

    Oral history interview with Ted Tsukiyama

    Oral history interview with Ted Tsukiyama

    Oral History

    Ted Tsukiyama describes the shock of the Pearl Harbor attacks, especially by Japanese Americans; being in the first ROTC unit to enter the war; being assigned to St. Louis to find paratroopers; becoming part of the territorial guard; never having a problem being Japanese American; being honorably discharged because of his Japanese heritage; going back to school; volunteering in a labor battalion, building defenses and serving for 11 months; how a few months later Japanese Americans were allowed in the armed forces; how his wife grew up in California and was put into a camp; being given intelligence training in Minnesota; being sent to Northern Burma Jungle as an intelligence translator for the Air Force; spending over a year, until end of war, in Northern Burma; going back to Hawaii; how he feels that the war experience countered prejudice towards Japanese Americans; and becoming a lawyer in labor relations.

    Oral history interview with Harold Ueoka

    Oral history interview with Harold Ueoka

    Oral History

    Harold Ueoka, born in Lawai, Hawaii in 1919, describes his Japanese parents; serving with the 526th Artillery Battalion; working in Honolulu before the Pearl Harbor attacks; how there was no real discrimination before war, except for his summer job working for a plantation; volunteering for the army when the war started; his memories of the Pearl Harbor attack; being head of the baseball team and how four of his teammates decided to join the army; how he felt that if he did not volunteer he would shame the people in Hawaii; how when his unit was in Europe, his destination was Hitler's home; seeing the crematoriums at Dachau and the places where people were shot; and how during the war he heard from other soldiers what was going on in the camps.

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