Interviews

1. Basic Training

2. A visit to Jerome after OCS

3. Resisting transfer from Jerome

4. Appearance vs. Combat Effectiveness

5. Fully aware of discrimination in America

6. They had to succeed

7. Do it for all Asians

8. People with talent in the 100th infantry battalion

9. “Agreement of silence”

10. Horrible pictures of war

11. Near-death experience

12. General Ryder’s faith in the 100th infantry battalion

13. 442nd’s contribution to redress

14. Comfortable in combat

15. “Equal as a human being”

16. Commitments for a better life

Kim,Young O.

(1919 - 2006) World War II and Korean War veteran

Near-death experience

That’s when I was wounded in my right hand and I didn’t get back to an aid station for three days and one day got off the bandages…why I think I started to go into shock. And ice cold feeling came in my toes and came up my body and I think reached just past my navel and started at my fingertips and came up past my shoulders and I thought at that moment I was going to die. I just knew that if it kept creeping I was…I was dead.

And I don’t think I was the only one cause Chaplin Youse was there praying and crying and asking me to fight and Doc. Komotani was there crying and also begging me, you know, to somehow pull out of it, but I think they all realized that I was going into shock and that I was just moments away from death. And then all of a sudden for some unknown reason- the creeping was very, very slow, but very, very steady- it suddenly stopped. And then started to recede, that’s the only time I felt that, that this is it.

100th Infantry Battalion 442nd Regimental Combat Team armed forces military United States Army war World War II

Date: August 28, 1995

Location: California, US

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

Interviewee Bio

Colonel Young Oak Kim (U.S. Army Ret.) was a decorated combat veteran as a member of the 100th Infantry Battalion/442nd Regimental Combat Team during World War II and a respected community leader. He was born in 1919 in Los Angeles, CA to Korean immigrants.

Following the outbreak of war, he was assigned to the “all-Nisei” 100th as a young officer, but was given a chance for reassignment because the common belief was that Koreans and Japanese did not get along. He rejected the offer stating that they were all Americans. A natural leader with keen instincts in the field, Colonel Kim’s battlefield exploits are near legendary.

Colonel Kim continued to serve his country in the Korean War where he became the first minority to command an Army combat battalion. He retired from the Army in 1972. He was awarded 19 medals, including the Distinguished Service Cross, a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, three Purple Hearts, and the French Croix de Guerre.

Later in life, Colonel Kim served the Asian American community by helping to found the Go For Broke Educational Foundation, the Japanese American National Museum, the Korean Health, Education, Information and Research Center and the Korean American Coalition among others. He died from cancer on December 29, 2005 at the age of 86. (August 8, 2008)