You shared a little bit with me about the hundredth and something about PUCA and how the hundredth and the 442nd were combined later, but how did that come to be?

Right.

Well, actually right after Pearl Harbor in 1941, the hundredth infant, there was a big response because of course they hit their home territory of all these people that volunteered.

And some of them were already in the reserves.

They were a little bit older.

than the Japanese Americans that volunteered from the internment camps, whichever euphemism you want to use for that, but concentration camps, internment camps.

But so actually they were the first, before the 442, they were eight or nine months already in battle in Europe and did a lot of substantial things before the 100th, which were all mainly volunteers out of the camps.

Uh,

That would be interesting.

Yeah, I was introduced to, to the Japanese community almost from the time I was born, because I grew up in Gardena, California, with a very large Japanese American population.

Um, the majority of people, pardon me, on my block growing up were Japanese Americans.

And actually, um, I didn't know about the camps or, um, any of the, the 442 members until I was about 20 years old.

I went down to the corner gas station, um, uh, on 153rd Street by Spot Market in Gardena, to Harry Komatsu's Texaco station, and, and I said, "Harry, I haven't seen you for a while.

Where you been?" And he said, "Well, I was in France." I go, "What was happening there?" He said, "Well, they had a parade and a celebration for us." I said, "For what?" He said, "They, we liberated their town from the Nazis." I just was like, "Oh my God." I, I knew nothing about it.

They never talked about it.

Wow