Uploaded December 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
As a child, Paul Yamashita grew up on a sugarcane plantation in Hakalau, Hawai'i, just north of Hilo. After high school, he moved to Honolulu and worked as a carpenter for the U.S. Engineering Department. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, he decided he would volunteer for the Army in hopes that Japanese Americans would be better accepted as Americans. In this Hanashi Oral History interview clip, Paul talks about his experience in the segregated south while training at Camp Shelby in Mississippi, and he discusses one person in particular who brightened his Christmas Eve.
Excerpt from the September 2003 interview conducted as part of Go For Broke National Education Center's Hanashi Oral History Collection
As a child, Paul Yamashita grew up on a sugarcane plantation in Hakalau, Hawai'i, just north of Hilo. After high school, he moved to Honolulu and worked as a carpenter for the U.S. Engineering Department. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, he decided he would volunteer for the Army in hopes that Japanese Americans would be better accepted as Americans. In this Hanashi Oral History interview clip, Paul talks about his experience in the segregated south while training at Camp Shelby in Mississippi, and he discusses one person in particular who brightened his Christmas Eve.
Excerpt from the September 2003 interview conducted as part of Go For Broke National Education Center's Hanashi Oral History Collection
