Voices of Hawai`i • Oral History Project

GOODSILL: Will you tell me how your family got to Hawai`i?

MATSUDA: My parents came from Japan, both from Yamaguchi Prefecture, which is out in the boondocks (chuckles). They came separately and met in Hawai`i after they put in their mandatory three years. That was the contract.

GOODSILL: Tell me about that contract.

MATSUDA: It's a long story, which goes back to King Kalakaua. A representative of the sugar industry recruited the Japanese to come to work in Hawai`i. Roughly 150 people came and they were called gannenmono. ¹ It was the year 1868 when the Meiji was installed as the Emperor. It was also the year when the old Tokugawa samurai rule ended and modern Japan began. The gannenmono experience in Hawai` I was not good. Out of the 150 who came, 1/3 went back to Japan, 1/3 went on to the mainland, and 1/3 remained in Hawai`i.

Because they had such a bad experience in Hawai`i, no other Japanese immigrants came to Hawai`i until King Kalakaua went to Japan on his around the world trip in 1881. During his stay he was the guest of the new Emperor. Apparently, they hit it off. There is the famous story about Kalakaua suggesting that the son of the emperor marry his niece the Hawaiian princess, Kaiulani. He had in mind forming an alliance with Japan and other countries. He went to Europe and met people there. King Kalakaua was an amazing person.

GOODSILL: A man ahead of his time.

MATSUDA: Yes! The indigenous Hawaiian people were warriors and very limited in their view of the world. But by the time of Kamehameha the First they had an understanding of the Western world.

GOODSILL: Looking at Iolani Palace you can see what kind of understanding they had of the Western world, including architecture and technology. It's all so modern! Electric lights, ice cream, hidden water in the attic and hidden electric lines. Amazing!

MATSUDA: Yes! And that's Kalakaua. That palace was the best west of the Rockies. He had introduced electricity for the palace and that was the first, west of the Rockies.

When Kalakaua went to Japan and he and the Emperor discussed Hawai`i's need for sugar workers. Also native Hawaiians had been exposed to Western diseases and their number went from over 500,000 to a few 10s of thousands so Kalakaua wanted to repopulate his country. And he said that the Hawaiians and the Japanese had the same values and philosophy about the importance of the land. The Emperor liked what he heard and Kalakaua told him, "We don't just want workers. We want workers who will become citizens of Hawai`I and help build Hawai`i." They reached a formal agreement and that agreement is called "kanyaku" which means "agreement between a king and an emperor." Whereas the first effort brought 150 Japanese to Hawai`i, this agreement brought 94,000. Eventually the number ballooned up to 500,000 if I recall correctly. And the program was terminated when the federal government passed the Asian Exclusion Law prohibiting any immigrants from Asia to come to the U. S. ²

My parents came under the kanyaku agreement. They didn't come just to work, make some money and go back home. They came with the idea that they would settle in Hawai`i, their children would be born in Hawai`i and be U. S. citizens.

My mother, Shimo, came the Big Island in 1898 and eventually moved to Oahu where she was a maid. My father, Yoshio, came to Hawai`i in 1907, and worked on Kauai until he was kicked out during a strike against the plantation. Then he worked at the Japanese language newspaper but didn't make much money and eventually worked in auto repair. He did quite well at that because he was ambidextrous, which is good if you are a mechanic. They got married in October, 1919 or 1920. My father continued to work on the automotive industry until they got married and then they opened their own restaurant.

Janet is my eldest sister, then Betty, born in 1923 and I was the third, born in 1924. [Editor’s note: In 1940 the U.S. census report shows Shimo was 49, Yoshio was 43, Midori 18; Hideyo 16; Fujio 15, and Ritsue 13.]

GOODSILL: (Speaking to Mr. Matsuda’s wife, Amy.) How did your parents get to Hawai`i?

AMY: My dad went to San Francisco before he came to Hawai`i. From San Francisco, he went back to Japan to get my mother. They came in the early 1900s. My dad owned a service station when he was here, early on. But he went bankrupt during the Depression because he accepted credit. He was a very artistic person so he went into his own business doing bamboo furniture. It did not turn out to be a success because he was a very poor businessperson and my mother died when I was five years old.

GOODSILL: Oh, how sad! What was the name of your family’s restaurant, Fujio?

MATSUDA: In those days they didn't have names! It was in Kaka'ako in what was then called "Magoon block". It was mauka of Queen Street. They had a very successful small business until the financial catastrophe of the Great Depression. ³ The Japanese style of bookkeeping was that customers would run a tab and at the end of the year, they would pay it off. Many of them were neighbors and friends. When everyone lost their money, they couldn't pay. Some of the customers would pay as they went along. That was Japanese style and it resulted in them losing their business. To them, it was a large debt. And they didn't know about declaring bankruptcy so they borrowed the money from their landlord in Kaka'ako. It took them 20-30 years to pay that all back.

MATSUDA: At the very end, they were able to buy a home on 16th Avenue in Kaimuki, except that they were aliens so my sisters bought it, as they were citizens, having been born here. For much of that time I was on the mainland.

The property they bought had several cottages that were rented out so that helped to pay for it. Eventually, they knocked all of them down and built a nice Japanese-style home for my parents. Later they built a large home for my two sisters who remain unmarried. My parents ran Matsuda Saimin in Kaka'ako. They had moved from Magoon block to Cooke Street. It was very popular, and they had all kinds of customers, not just Japanese. Everybody loved their saimin. In fact, people would come from far places to eat Matsuda saimin. Basically, my mother ran it. My father helped but he was sort of in the background. His job was to make the noodles during the day. My sisters, after they graduated from high school, went to secretarial school and then they went to work. During the day they would work but when they came home, they would help at the saimin stand. All the pay went into the family treasury. ⁴

GOODSILL: By this time they are doing "fee for service" - you eat, you pay!

MATSUDA: Yes. (chuckles) No tabs. That business was very successful and they paid off their debts and bought their home in Kaimuki. I designed a home for my sisters because my parents lived in the first house that we built for them, Japanese-style. All one floor with shoji doors and tatami mats and a Japanese garden in the front. They loved that. They ended up being very pleased with their circumstances. And for my sisters, I designed a two-story building with a huge kitchen. Every New Year and other Japanese holidays, they would have parties there. The first floor was basically for parties. My sisters lived on the second floor.

I was a senior in high school on the morning of December 7th, 1941. I was at Mother Waldron's Park, which is still there. I was just fooling around, shooting baskets with my friends. We didn't see any airplanes because they came from the other way. But we could see the smoke. My sister came to get me. She was working at the Honolulu Advertiser. It was a Sunday morning, but she had to work that day. She came to tell me I had to come home because Hawai`i was being attacked by the Japanese. Mr. Know-it-all said to her, "That can't be right! There are Japanese envoys in Washington trying to negotiate to lift the embargo." My sister said that she was working at the Advertiser and a bomb fell across the street. It turned out that that wasn't Japanese bombs but anti-aircraft. But they didn't know that then. They thought they were under attack. Webley Edwards was on the radio saying that this is the real thing and to take cover. So I went home. Martial law was declared right away.

My first thought was not about myself because I thought of myself as an American citizen. But my parents - what will happen to them? I knew right away that they were in potential danger because my parents and their generation were still Japanese citizens.

GOODSILL: That must have been very scary for a high school boy to worry about what will happen to your parents.

MATSUDA: Oh yes. I was concerned about how our non-Japanese neighbors in Kaka'ako would treat them. I was immediately concerned about that. I did not know why the Japanese had bombed Hawai`i. Why would they do this? What for? I had it in my mind that they were trying to negotiate something with the US. When martial law was declared, everything was shut down. School was cancelled for a couple of months as I recall. During that time I volunteered to do hard labor to help; dig dirt, or trenches, or whatever needed doing. Some of it was in town and some up in the mountains, to get soil needed to build bunkers.

GOODSILL: Did you feel any prejudice against you?

MATSUDA: No. I was a student at McKinley and we had friends of different races. I had no feelings of discrimination or hostility from my friends who were Chinese, Korean, Filipino. Only in Hawai`i. The Japanese on the mainland were immediately discriminated against.

I thought my parents might be arrested but the local authorities were very discriminating in whom they wanted to put away. Of course, all Japanese leaders, Japanese language schools and some Japanese businesses, and Japanese fishermen who could go out long distances with radio equipment, were rounded up. In some cases, they were confined on the mainland.

GOODSILL: But nobody was interested in an auto repairman and saimin owner, so they were okay?

MATSUDA: Yes. And their customers were okay with Mama-san. She was very warm-hearted.

GOODSILL: Were your parents, as Japanese citizens who were living as aliens in Hawai`i, feeling some conflict of interest? From tradition, didn't they have to be loyal to the Emperor?

MATSUDA: I never got that feeling. Hawai`i was their home for nearly 40 years. That's where their kids were. And my father used to say, "Lucky come Hawai`i." They didn't suffer any personal insults or harassment. I think that's because of Hawaiian culture being multi-racial.

GOODSILL: Did the course of your life change because of World War II?

MATSUDA: It didn't change very much until the 442nd Regimental Combat Team was formed. I decided to join because of their recruiters on the University of Hawai`i campus. Several of us signed up. I didn't consult my parents and when I came home and told them I had signed up, my father was not too communicative, which was typical of Japanese fathers. He said, in Japanese, "Do your best." And my mother said, in Japanese, "Take care of health.” They understood my reason for joining. I was 18 years and a few months, just old enough to join. You had to be 18.

GOODSILL: Tell us something about the 442nd.

MATSUDA: A call went out to Japanese-Americans in Hawaii and on the mainland. In Hawaii, they were over-subscribed. More people signed up to join than they needed. But on the mainland, they couldn't raise as many people. By then many Japanese were in the relocation camps and being treated as enemies. Many of them said, "Why should we join? They have violated our civil rights." But some of them wanted to prove their loyalty and did join.

I joined the 442nd and went to Camp Shelby for basic training. I was assigned to the all Japanese-American unit the 232nd Combat Engineers Company. Toward the end of basic training, I was ordered to go to the army specialized training program. I had no idea what that was, but I assumed that in my role as a member of the 232nd I would be taught some additional skills and then come back to the 232nd. But it turned out that it was an educational program to train engineering officers in a very compressed manner; a four-year program in three years or something like that. After about half a year of that they announced that that program was going to be discontinued, at least for those of us who had just started. Those who were close to finishing were allowed to finish. When I was told that, I said, "I want to go back to the 232nd." They said I could not because while I was gone, they had gone through live ammunition maneuvers and without that training you couldn’t go overseas. So I was assigned to a new outfit that was just formed, called the 291st First Field Artillery Observation Battalion. It was a pick-up team, basically young soldiers from all over the country. I was the only Asian.

GOODSILL: (laughing) How did that work?

MATSUDA: Just fine. We would swap stories of course, and I was a curiosity to them. They had never met anyone like me. Because I'm from Hawai`i, they thought I was Hawaiian. (laughter)

GOODSILL: I hear that story all over the place! People are subject to being racially discriminated against, and then they somehow say, "Hawai`i" and the response is, "Oh, okay then!"

MATSUDA: The 442nd and the 100th Battalion went first to North Africa, then to Italy and France. The 291st went to the north instead of the south. (bringing out a map) This is the combat route. (Map dated January 1, 1945 to May 9, 1945 citing Monschau, Lammersdorf, Aachen, Sittard, over the Elbe River to Stendal.)

We landed at Normandy about six months after the D-Day landing. The beach was secure but littered with wreckage of vehicles and armament. It was perfectly safe to land there then. I think we were one of the first units deployed to Belgium. We were an observation battalion directing the corps artillery big guns where to aim. They would tell us what the target is on the map and we tell them where they needed to aim and the distance. They figured out the actual settings calculating for wind or whatever corrections they needed to make. You have to know precisely where the guns and the targets are located.

That operation is safe because the corps artillery is not at the front lines when the guns go off. We had to go the front lines to see where the shot actually landed. We guided the guns where to shoot and then said if they were short or on target. During post-op observation, we were subject to enemy fire on the frontline, and not safe.

GOODSILL: So it looks like you go from Belgium all the way through Germany. Where did you end up in this five-month period?

AMY: I got this picture out so you can see he's the only Asian there.

MATSUDA: This was the specialist training program. (looking at photo)

AMY: And he received this Bronze Star.

GOODSILL: (Reading Bronze Star papers) “Under the provisions of the 600-45 you are hereby awarded the Bronze Star Medal for the accompanying citation. Field Artillery, Observation Battalion, for meritorious service in connection with military operations against the enemy from January 1945 to May 1945 in Germany. Staff Sergeant Matsuda displayed exemplary courage and outstanding devotion to duty as chief of the survey section. His unfailing tact and fairness kept the morale of his men at a high level and his technical skill and ingenuity contributed largely to the success of his accurate surveys. His meritorious service is in accordance with the highest military traditions. Entered the military service from Hawai`i.” Signed, Joseph A. Nichols, Colonel, General Staff Corps, Chief of Staff.

MATSUDA: We were sitting on the Elbe River, waiting for the Russians to join us. The river was the line of demarcation. To the east was Russian territory and west was British-American territory. The Germans were trying to escape from the Russians to surrender to us. Some of them were just young boys. We were not allowed to help them, and they were desperate. They made makeshift rafts to cross the river but the river was flowing too fast and none of them made it. That was difficult to watch. Our unit ended the war there.

GOODSILL: How do you get back?

MATSUDA: The rule in the Army is that for overseas duty you get two points per month. The Army, in its wisdom said, "From Hawai`i, Hattiesburg Mississippi is overseas." So we got two points per month for basic training! And of course, when you go to Europe you get two points. At the end of the war, you count the points and the people with the most points get released first. I left but some of my buddies had to stay several more months until everybody came home.

We were calibrating some of the big guns, getting ready to ship them to the Asian Theater. Those were our corps artillery guns. We assumed we would go there. But the war ended when the second A-bomb was dropped.

GOODSILL: Do you remember where you were when Hiroshima was bombed?

MATSUDA: I was in Germany when I heard about it. I had no idea we had the A-bomb. My first thought was, "That's a game changer. Warfare from now on is going to be different." And when they dropped the second bomb, the war ended. I heard what these bombs could do and thought they would change warfare forever.

My buddies in the 291st became friends for life. One of them, my very good friend, was an accountant with Peat Marwick in Boston. There was another guy from Moscow, Idaho. One from Philadelphia. A couple of rednecks from down South (chuckles). But we all got along. In fact, I ended up as a squad leader with about 15 guys under my command. And I was the youngest!

GOODSILL: That's pretty amazing. The Japanese guy gets to be the squad leader in a war against the Japanese. (laughter)

MATSUDA: My platoon lieutenant was a lawyer from Indiana and he took a liking to me. It turned out that after the war he went back to his law practice and was instrumental in finding the university that I ended up going to under the G. I. Bill, in Indiana. He later became a congressman. When my father came over for my graduation, I took him down to Washington to meet Bailey. The House was not in session on that day so Bailey showed my father where the Speaker sat and my father sat in the Speaker's chair! (laughs) Anyway, Bailey became not only my commanding officer but also a very good personal friend. My first son is named Bailey. All the kids knew Uncle Bailey.

The G. I. Bill covered all my college expenses. That changed my life. Before then, my idea was to go back to the university, graduate, and go to work. But because of the war, I could go to the mainland to study. At that time, U of H was not so great. And especially one professor! Of all things, he was a professor of highway engineering and I couldn't stand the guy. I would fall asleep in his class! (laughter) I think I got a C in that class.

Rose Polytechnic was the school I went to. It was a small school but excellent. My advisor, Professor McLean, suggested that I go to graduate school, which the G.I. bill would also pay for. I asked him where he recommended and he said, "Yale and M.I.T." I applied to both and was accepted by both. I decided I would go to M.I.T. and signed up for the master's program. Then I looked at the requirements: I would have to write a senior thesis for the master's program but also for the doctoral program. If I'm going to have to write a thesis for both programs, I might as well write it only once and go for the doctorate! I talked to my advisor who also became a very good friend and asked, "Can I switch to a doctoral program?" He said, "It's up to you." So I switched.

I should tell you that for many years now Rose Poly has been one of the top-rated school that does not offer a doctoral program. The annual survey by U.S. News & World Report has rated it at the top. Tony Hulman is from Terre-Haute and he's our benefactor. He gave a huge chunk of money and stock to Rose Poly which was renamed Rose-Hulman. His company owns the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

A man named Chuck Norris was my advisor and got me into doing research. I had planned to be a working engineer. It was part of a program because the U. S. was involved in testing bombs in the Nevada Proving Grounds outside of Las Vegas. Full-scale testing was out in Bikini Atoll. My research involved what happens to buildings when they are exposed to atomic bombs, this was in 1950. From the weapons point of view, no data on the effects of the A-bomb existed because the A-bomb itself was experimental.

This research involved a totally different approach, compared to the traditional way this kind of research was was done by civil engineers or structural engineers. At that time, M.I.T. had an experimental computer that occupied a whole building and I needed to use that to do dynamic analysis. When I asked for time on the computer, they said, "The only time you can have is just before we close it down. You can have one hour." And that was like Sunday morning. Of course, I said I would take it. I had to learn machine language for programming. I had to figure out each step of the way what I needed to do. I didn't have any convenient programs for coding. I was using M.I.T.'s computer to learn digital programming.

When I was a graduate student, I was told to go to Enewetak down in the Marshall Islands. Amy had just had our first child, Bailey, who was born in 1951. She could not tell anybody where I went. Everybody thought I had deserted her!

AMY: I didn't even know where he was going! It was Top Secret. He left when Bailey was two weeks old. We lived in barracks-type student housing for veterans in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We were a really close-knit community, so everyone was very conscious of his being gone. Later on, they told me they couldn't ask me about it but they felt so sorry for me.

GOODSILL: Were there any worries about nuclear fall-out, going to that location?

MATSUDA: Yes. Both in Nevada and Enewetak. After the bomb was set off, we had to go to the site and assess the damage, and we were exposed to radiation at that point. We were closely monitored to be sure that we did not exceed the allowable exposure. Because the people who were involved in setting the limits were not fully aware of some of the consequences, some of the researchers had physical problems. In my case, I didn't have any permanent effects except that I developed a cancer, which was excised and taken care of. It was a skin cancer.

AMY: It was a cyst behind his ear that they would remove, and it would come back. Finally, they tested it and it was cancerous and then was removed.

MATSUDA: After I graduated from M.I.T. I continued working there for a couple of years. Then I went to the University of Illinois, which had a similar program. When I left Illinois to come back to the University of Hawai`i, I was asked to serve as a consultant on the effects of bombs, which I did for a couple more years.

GOODSILL: Did I hear you say you went out to Bikini?

MATSUDA: Yes. For H-bomb testing. That was interesting. They didn't tell us but when the bomb went off, usually there is a flash. Then after a few seconds, there is a blast wave that hits you. That flash travels at the speed of light but the blast wave follows afterwards. Of course, we take shelter so that we don't get physically hurt. You worry about glasses and even then, we were supposed to close our eyes because the light is so bright. Brighter than many suns. In the Bikini case, after the initial burst of light, we were told it was okay to take off the glasses. I saw this mushroom cloud WAY up high. It was glowing. It was like something was burning instead of blasting. I thought that was strange. I had never seen anything like that. But I learned later that they were testing the H-bomb.

GOODSILL: Tell me what your grandchildren would like to know about the job you did at the University of Hawai`i when you were president.

MATSUDA: I believe education to be the most important thing for the future of Hawai`i. I went to some of the best universities in the country and people sort of talk-stink about the University of Hawai`i. But I really saw that the University had excellent potential. Unlike M.I.T., which is good in everything, UH could not be good in everything so we had to choose. We had to be as good as we could be in everything, but we had to be exceptional in a few chosen fields. The fields where I thought we had the opportunity and the ability to excel were the ocean sciences, tropical agriculture, East Asian studies, and astronomy.

I think those were the areas where we had the opportunity to be the best in the country. But we could not get there unless we made some internal changes. As the President, I had to review all of the recommendations for promotion and tenure of the faculty. Of course, just because I'm President doesn't mean that I'm qualified to judge! So I relied upon the peer review that they, the candidates for promotion and tenure, would go through. And some of the peer reviews were "You scratch my back, I'll scratch your back." And others were rigorous. They would ask peers even outside the University to comment on their qualifications. And one of those early ones irritated me. The reviewer said, "Well, that should be good enough for the University of Hawai`i." I took offense at that. I said, "We could be compared to a national equivalent in education if our guys are good enough." Many of the faculty members came from the best universities but they had to have drive.

I considered faculty as part of management. In fact, they are the key part of management. So I opposed the unionization of the faculty. "You guys are part of management; you determine the programs, you determine the content, and you pass on the capabilities to the students. If you don't do your job, we've got nothing."

I spoke against the union and unionization, but I didn't get anywhere. At the Manoa Campus, the people understood it but we also had the community colleges, which had apprenticeship training, hairdressing, and jobs that were more tied to unionization. Too bad they were in the same union. But that's what we had to live with.

GOODSILL: We can't cover your whole life and people can read other interviews you've given, but I would like for you to talk about the time you were with Department of Transportation.

MATSUDA: Governor Burns' office called and said, "The Governor would like to meet with you." I said, "Oh, okay. Where?" "Like Like Drive In". (laughter) I said, "Say again?" "The Like Like Drive In. Do you know where it is?" I said, "Yes, I know where it is." I was surprised. I thought I was going to go to the capitol. When I got there, he was there already and said he would like me to serve as Director of Transportation I said, "Governor, you should know that I don't have any experience working with legislators. I could get you into a lot of trouble!" (laughter) And this is what he told me, "I am the politician. Leave politics to me. You do the best job you can." So I said, "Okay."

At that point I was the head of a civil engineering department at the University, which was a small department. When he said Department of Transportation, I thought, "Hmmm. I know how to design and build things." So I thought that was what the job was and I was totally wrong. We had expert engineers in the organization that knew more about how to do that than I did. I was an academic doing research. What the job needed was more understanding of how transportation fits into the relationship between highways and the development of city. Not just the technical things but also an understanding of the vision. What are the highways for? What kind of city, what kind of an island, do you want? And I didn't understand that.

What I had in mind was that I would serve as the director for two years, taking a leave of absence from the University. And at the end of the two years, go back to the University of Hawai`i. There was a precedent for that as my predecessor had done that, so I thought I would do the same. Well, as I said, I misunderstood what my responsibilities were and at the end of two years, I had a tiger by the tail that I couldn't let go! So I asked for a one-year extension as an exception and they said, "Okay." Before the year was up, I knew there was no way I could leave the job. So I resigned from the University, gave up my tenured job and cut my ties completely. That didn't bother me at all. There was no way I was going to leave the job unfinished. So my two-year enlistment ended up being ten years.

It was on-the-job training! The Governor was VERY patient. I enjoyed it and learned from it. I had 6,000 employees in the Department whereas at the university I had had a department with about 15 faculty members!

GOODSILL: Thank you Fujio. Amy, will you tell me the names of all your children, and the order they were born. And your parent’s names.

AMY: Bailey, Thomas in 1953, Sherry in 1954, Joan in 1958, Ann in 1961, and Richard in 1963. I was born in 1925 and married in 1949. Three of the children were born on the mainland and three were born here. My father was Suekichi Saiki and my mother was Kimiye Miyahara.

GOODSILL: We have been talking a long time. Thank you both so much for your time and energy.

Interview ends

¹ Gannenmono means “first year people” according to Google

² Plainshumanities.unl.edu: As a result of restrictive immigration legislation, the Chinese population in the Great Plains declined after 1890, while Japanese migration to the region increased, especially to Colorado and Nebraska in the United States. Both nations, however, soon extended the exclusion laws to effectively bar immigration from Japan and persons of Asian ancestry from any nation.

³ The great depression began in 1929.

⁴ Article on their business [https://matsudasaimin.wordpress.com/2012/07/19/saiminlegacy/]