#132: Tales from Punchbowl, Part VI

After losing a leg, two fingers, and the site in one eye, Ken Otagaki tries to return to his life before the war, hopes that his girlfriend will still be there for him, and tries to figure out how to support himself despite his severe injuries.

This week's Ghost of Pacific is Army Corporal Dr. Kenneth Kengo Otagaki, Columbarium Court 7, Row C, Neche 512.

The Ghosts of the Pacific Theme is Ukulele and Love Birds by emjaydabayou, with a few Waves of Hawaii added for ambiance.

The Ghosts of the Pacific Transition music are some Uke Chords by turkitron.

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Transcript

Welcome back to another Ghosts of the Pacific edition of Ghosts of Arlington, and thank you for joining me for Episode 132: Tales from Punchbowl, Part VI.

Last week, we began the story of Ken Otagaki, who escaped poverty and near-indentured servitude on a sugar cane plantation on the Big Island by saving up $5, moving to Oahu, and putting himself through school starting at age 14. He didn’t exactly run away from home, but he also didn’t ask his parents' permission - instead, he told them what he was doing.

After graduating high school, he put himself through the University of Hawaii, fell in love with a co-ed named Janet, and after graduating college, he took a job as the foreman of a farm owned by the President of Hawaii’s territorial senate. Because of his agricultural job he should have been exempt from the draft but the head of the local draft board had a vendetta with Senator Cooke and felt that the best way to get back at him would be to make sure his Otagaki was drafted.

As a Nisei, Otagaki ended up in the 100th Infantry Battalion and after getting to Italy he was made to change jobs from an infantry soldier to a medic… or at least a litter bearer. One night, while out collecting wounded soldiers, Otagaki was caught in a mortar barrage and severely wounded. When he last saw him, he was in an aid station, German bombers were flying over dropping their load, and a priest was giving him his last rites. The last thing he remembers thinking is that he didn’t want to die. He wasn’t ready to die.

When Otagaki woke up a few days later, he was alone in a cabin on a troop ship on its way back to the United States. He was still completely blind - he had bandages over both of his eyes - but he was able to talk with the doctors and nurses who came in to check on him. During this long lonely trip a few thoughts kept coming back to the wounded medic. First, he wanted to live. Sometimes when soldiers are severely wounded, especially when amputation is necessary, they want to give up; they think it would be better for everyone if they had died on the battlefield. Otagaki wanted to make it home and see Janet. He also began thinking about how he could support himself. He didn’t want to be anybody’s burden. He began thinking that he would like to become a teacher.

The hospital ship docked in North Carolina. Otagaki was sent to a rehabilitation hospital and one week later, his bandages were removed. He had lost a leg, two fingers, and one eye, but he could see out of his remaining eye and that made him so happy. A few days later he was sent on to Walter Reed Medical Hospital in Washington, DC. He spent eight months at Walter Reed in a ward with 31 other severely wounded service members, but they all kept to themselves. He said that they didn’t talk to one another and didn’t even get to know each other’s names. They just wanted to get well enough to go home and restart their lives.

There was one bright spot in this dull difficult time. “Everyday was the same. I would get up, eat, get rehabilitation and then wait for the day to end and start again the next day. Then one day I got a note ordering Private Otagaki to get dressed and have lunch at

the White House.

“I did as I was told. I got dressed and went down in my wheelchair and was picked up by a limousine and taken to the White House where I was met by the first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. This was very odd- it seemed like a dream. She was very tall, white haired… very gracious and very kind.

“It turned out that Mrs. Roosevelt was honoring wounded 4-H veterans who had gone to war and I was on the list. So she invited me to lunch in the private quarters. I remember it was a white bread sandwich. At one point I was alone in their quarters when Mrs. Roosevelt’s dog Fala came in and nipped at my leg. I was still not sure that this wasn’t a dream. I bent down petted him and quickly plucked a hair from the dog and put it in my pocket. If this was a dream I wanted it to be real. I actually saw Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He waved to me from a side room. What an amazing day for a young wounded veteran from Hawaii!”

During his long rehab, Otagaki continued to write to Janet and said that her letters to him were about the only thing that kept him going. In his first letter from the hospital, he explained his horrific injuries and then absolved her of staying with him. For her part, Janet figured that he wasn’t the sort to just sit around feeling sorry for himself so she told him she wasn’t going anywhere.

After that, getting back to her was all he could think about. When he was finally discharged from the hospital and put on a train from Washington, DC to San Francisco, CA, reality began to set in. Despite what her letters said, “I was wondering how things would be when [Janet] saw me. Would she still love me? Would she accept me? Would she still marry me? Those were the worries that I had as the train took me across the country… and [the] ship to Hawaii. I came back and to my great joy and relief, Janet did marry me. We were married In her sister’s house in Manoa and then for the first time in three years, I was able to relax.”

But while he had lost a leg, a stationary life was not what was in store for Otagaki. A short time after they were married, Ken and Janet left Hawaii for the Midwest so Otagaki could attend graduate school at Iowa State University. Having never been to Iowa, the couple had no idea what to expect.

As Otagaki put it, “Ames, Iowa is a small, pretty town in the middle of Iowa of mostly old fashioned red brick buildings, white painted wooden homes, and narrow streets. I arrived there in the winter of 1945. Snow and ice was on the ground and I was petrified of sliding down and falling on my stump. Several times I slipped on the ice and I had to pick myself up, try and get my books up the best I could and stand up again and walk. 

“How had I come to Iowa State University? It was purely by chance. I had been in the rehabilitation ward at Walter Reed Hospital and they had asked me what I wanted to study. I had said animal science. The next thing [I knew] they pulled a card for me, told me about a program at Iowa State, and enrolled me. I didn’t have much money. They gave me a small allowance and a stipend for housing. It was big change from the army and the hospital. Suddenly I was living in a comfortable rooming house. The landlady lived upstairs and Janet and I lived downstairs. It was two blocks from campus. As a disabled veteran, the government had bought me a brand new red Ford automobile. It had the gear changes and hand breaks on the steering wheel. 

“My colleagues at Iowa State were friendly. The people in the mid-west are liberal. The only exception was… Professor Cannon of animal science who was not friendly at all. He was openly hostile to me and would make insulting remarks to me and the only black student in the department. There was still such incredible prejudice at the time. Here I was - I had a fought a war supposedly against prejudice and this was what I encountered. It was enormously frustrating. 

“However, he was the exception. There was [the] very kindly Dean Kildare and he made up for the antagonism of Professor Canon, and I had a very kind professor, Dwight Espee, an assistant professor and very good person. So it was a very mixed group. For the most part, I didn’t socialize very much. There were not many returned soldiers there at the time and I kept mainly to myself. I had a Japanese friend in a neighboring town that we would visit occasionally, but mostly I just studied. 

“I suffered through statistics. It was incredibly difficult for me because I had not taken math courses for some time and now after the war and the time in the hospital I was forcing myself to be a student again. But on the other hand, I was able to take enormously interesting classes in animal physiology that were at a level I had never experienced at the University of Hawaii. 

“For my Masters Degree project I was assigned to sort out all the prize winning dairy cows at the Iowa State Fair by blood type. I essentially sat in a large room where there were boxes and boxes of cards signifying information on the prize winning cattle by blood type. Time passed fairly quickly. I had several friends. Janet made my life in Iowa pleasurable. She joined a women’s club and we later moved to veterans’ housing. We had our first child in Iowa.”

After graduating from Iowa State, the small family returned to Hawaii where now- Adjunct Professor Otagaki taught animal science at the University of Hawaii for two years. During that time, he realized that if he was going to support his family he needed to become a full professor. 

So the family moved back to the mainland, this time so Ken could get an Animal Science PhD from the University of California at Berkeley; after a short time, he transferred to UC Davis near Sacramento, CA because it had a larger agriculture and agricultural nutrition program. Like his time at Iowa State, Otagaki found University of California an intellectually stimulating experience. 

Otagaki returned to Hawaii with his PhD in 1954 and took an assistant professor in animal science position at the University. His boss was very generous, giving him a light teaching load so he could continue experiments with cattle and pig nutrition that he had started in California and leaving him plenty of time for his growing family. He and Janet would eventually have five children. He would later say that these were some of the happiest days of his life.

[TRANSITION MUSIC]

In 1963, newly elected Hawaii Governor John Burns appointed Otagaki to chair the state’s Board of Agriculture. One of his first orders of business was to meet with the all-powerful Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association, known in Hawaii by its initials HSPA, and convince them to radically change the future of agriculture in the state forever. 

“I was not the first choice in the new Burns Administration to be appointed to the position of Chairman of Agriculture. I doubt if I was even the third. One day, soon after Governor Burns was elected, one of my colleagues at the University of Hawaii came up to me and said ‘Congratulations’. I said congratulations for what? and then he showed me the morning newspaper in which it said an unknown assistant Professor of animal science at the University of Hawaii named Ken Otagaki was to be the new chairman of the State Department of Agriculture. I called Janet and I took a breath. I was totally surprised. I said ‘Guess what? They have just appointed me Chairman of the State Department of Agriculture. ‘ There was a pause at the end of the line and Janet said. ‘But you already have a job.’ She was not enthusiastic. 

“But I was. I was completely astonished. What had happened was that the newly elected Burns administration was looking for someone for that office and my two friends, Senator Dan Inouye and future-Senator Spark Matsunaga, recommended me to the Burns people.”

For more than 100 years, the Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association controlled most political, commercial, and social decisions, either positive or negative, in Hawaii. There were more than 40 sugar plantations in Hawaii at that time and they provided, after tourism, the largest single source of revenue for the Islands. The owners of the companies were generally related to the missionary and business families who came to Hawaii and overthrew the monarchy in the 19th century. They had been the employers of the Scottish foreman who came into my Otagaki’s home when he was a boy and forced his terribly ill father out of bed and into the fields, and he knew that only a few years before it would have been unthinkable for a Japanese-American to be invited among them. 

They had their own research scientists which they kept aloof from the University of Hawaii. The thinking was that anything that the University did was in the public domain. 

Because they were so advanced in developing new and valuable plant hybrids, it was in their interest to keep their own research laboratory where anything they developed was proprietary. 

Otagaki walked into the building on his crutches and the tall men of Hawaii’s sugar industry looked at him with a mix of curiosity and caution. Everyone was neatly dressed for the occasion. Otagaki sat down and was introduced to all present by Robert Cushing, the Director of the HSPA. They were all tall, white Anglo Saxon gentlemen. Each was over six feet (nearly two meters), in height and he was a 4 feet 11 inch (less than 150 centimeter tall) Nisei on one leg. 

There was a moment of silence and Otagaki was asked by Mr. Cushing why he believed that the Association should combine its own private research station with the efforts of the University of Hawaii. <<QUOTE>> “I told him that I had grown up on the sugar plantations when labor was cheap. Now labor was organized by the unions and was asking for fair wages. I explained that from my perspective the high costs of producing sugar cane in Hawaii would make the plantations unprofitable and would drive them out of business.  

“At that point, there was uncomfortable silence. I knew they were thinking, ‘what right does this little twerp have to tell us our business?’ I went on to say that they had many things to offer sugar plantations around the world where land and labor were cheaper. They could sell their considerable expertise in agricultural research. I asked them why they wanted to stay in production, which in the long term was likely to be a losing enterprise when they could sell their expertise and become world famous consultants instead. I said that as the new chairman of the State Department of Agriculture I could help and that we should combine all the independent sugar and pineapple industry research stations with those of the University of Hawaii. I said that the time had come for us to be flexible, to get out of these big one-crop plantations and diversify into more highly priced crops in which we would have a bigger comparative advantage. This is what the rest of the world is doing and we should do too. 

“At that point they stared at me in silence which I took to be a polite decline. I thanked them for their time and when the meeting was over I left quietly in my car. I was to be head of agriculture in Hawaii for the next eight years. Sadly, my warning went unheeded and by the time I left office, most of the sugar plantations were either on shaky ground or going out of business.”

By that time, the shrewdest of the plantation owners recognized that eventually the most valuable lands they owned would not have sugar cane on them, but housing and luxury hotels. But in the meantime, they were smart enough businessmen to know that they had to keep sugar growing in order to take advantage of the generous federal subsidies that kept their plantations profitable and paid their bills until they could get the necessary land use permits to develop their lands for tourism.. They expected to keep sugar growing as a profitable sideline while they developed their lands for tourism at maximum profit.

Otagaki said that even as they saw the writing on the wall, these powerful owners did want to give up the lifestyle that sugar represented. It was the dominance of the old style establishment that had ruled Hawaii from big, white houses for more than 100 years. There were wealthy mostly white, upper class families, now largely interrelated to one another, sitting comfortably on interrelated boards that had enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle for generations and most did not want things to change. But change was in the wind.

Otagaki didn’t just want to be in office - he wanted to do things - he wanted to make things happen. It didn’t take long for him to get his chance.

“Soon after I came into office a group of dairy farmers came to see me. They knew me because of my long time work in cattle nutrition. They were mostly Portuguese. At that time agriculture in Hawaii was largely divided by ethnicity. The whites did pineapple and sugar, The Japanese had chicken farms and vegetable farms. The Chinese did vegetable farming and had produce stores. The Okinawans raised pigs. For each group there was a recognized niche.

“They came to me with a familiar story. The milk processing industry was dominated by two large dairies, Foremost and Meadow Gold. They paid the dairy farmers as little as they could for their milk and charged consumers as much as the market would bear. Meanwhile, the farmers were paying ever increasing amounts for feed. They were being squeezed out of business.

“Over the years, the independent dairy men had been my friends and supporters and provided me with data for my research. I felt that since they helped me that I should help them and that I was now in a position where I could. What could go wrong? After I announced that the Department of Agriculture was in favor of the farmers getting more for their milk a huge public relations attack was mounted against me.”

The large dairies that had been manipulating the market to their benefit for decades accused Otagaki of interfering in the market, of threatening their livelihoods, and of putting their employees out of work! Never mind that they had been the beneficiaries of government subsidies for many years. There were hearings at the legislature and he and his family received death threats over the phone at home if he didn’t back down. 

He was surprised by how nasty a discussion on milk prices could be. He was also unprepared for how decisions he made at work would affect the lives of his family. Few wanted to risk the repercussions that came along with challenging the established economic order in the islands but once he started he refused to back down.

Fortunately for him, Governor Burns had his back. Even when the pressure from the dairies were at their worst and there were editorials supporting them in the newspaper, Burns only asked Otagaki one thing, “Is this the right thing to do?” And when Otagaki said yes, “be fair and treat everyone equally,” the governor pressed forward and supported the farmers. Eventually they were able to reach a settlement with set quotas and prices. The dairies survived, the farmers did better and everyone went back to work.

Otagaki admitted, “It was sometimes very intense, but intellectually I loved being in the political arena. It wasn’t always pleasant, but it was exciting.”

The next turned his sights on the vegetable Co-ops in Chinatown where the retailers mucked with the weights and measures to benefit themselves at the expense of their customers. His experience in that arena during high school and college helped him root out dishonest business practices and bring more legitimacy to that industry as well.

Not everything he did in office was a success though - there was a failed attempt to help a large number of workers financially when a plantation failed on the Big Island and hundreds were left unemployed with little chance of finding new work. There was also the disastrous attempt to innovate new, locally sourced cattle feed for dairy cows. Had it succeeded, it would have been a huge money saving venture for local farmers. When Otagaki realized it wasn’t going to work, he tried to get the governor to call it off but by then many felt too much had been invested.

Long story short - the new feed made from pineapple byproducts was contaminated by pesticides. This contamination got into the local milk supply and resulted in a large lawsuit that ultimately saw Otagaki fired even though he had done all he could to prevent it.

When his time in public came to an end, Otagaki was amazed when the owners of one of the big sugar plantations he met with at the beginning of his public career called him up and asked if he would like to become an international agricultural advisor for the consulting firm that they had started. By this time he and Janet were empty nesters so they jumped at the chance to travel the world together and help governments and private industries around the world find better ways to manage their agriculture production.

In 2005, Otagaki was recognized by the University of Hawaii’s College of Tropical Agriculture as an outstanding alumnus at an annual awards banquet. During his acceptance speech he said, “Today, I’m forever grateful to the people who stood by me — family, my buddies, my friends and people like the Cookes, who employed me through school. Adversity is bearable if you have determination in your heart and people like these by your side.”

When Kenneth Otagaki died on March 26, 2009, at the age of 91, his closest friends knew that in spite of his distinguished career in agriculture, what he was proudest of was his service to his country as a soldier with the 100th Infantry Battalion.

[TRANSITION MUSIC]

The night of that 2005 awards banquet, Otagaki asked writer Mike Markrich to record his life story; I have quoted from that document extensively during the last two podcasts. At the end of that 22 page document, Otagaki shares what he considers his most important life lessons with his readers and I can think of no better way to end this man’s story than to share some of those thoughts with you, dear listener. 

He begins by acknowledging that he was very lucky and then says, “You might ask how anyone who suffered the traumatic wounds that I did during the war and survived might be considered lucky. Well, the truth is that my greatest piece of luck was that Janet married me. I think that made up for everything else. 

“In life, to have somebody love you and believe in you [is] really more important than anything else. It’s certainly more important than fame or status or money. The other things all can come and go, but to have someone be your mate and friend and supporter, that is something that is really important…

“I was also very lucky in my [mentors]. I had people all along in my life who believed in me - Mrs. Nushida, Mr. Gothe in Hilo, Mr. Maneki in Honolulu, Professor Henke, Senator Cooke, Professors Morgan and Lepinsky. I was very fortunate to have these mentors in my life.

“They were people who looked out for me and were willing to help me. I think in my life I had a handful of true friendships and they made a difference. I am very fortunate in having people all along who looked at this person who was a country bumpkin, who came from a small town on the Big Island with no education, no social background, no social graces, no contacts, no important friends and were willing to invest their time in him and help him make something of himself. I am eternally grateful to everyone who was kind enough to help me. I was very lucky that somehow fate and coincidence played a role in having me meet people who believed in me or,more precisely, believed there was something inside of this raw person that was worth developing.”

But it wasn’t just luck - he recognizes the need to push oneself and to get out of one’s own comfort zone. “I took enormous risks in my life. I came to Honolulu with $5.00 in my pocket and went to work for Mr. Meneke at the Co-op not knowing at all how that would work out. I knew that the only way I could get away from the plantation was if I took the steps myself. It has been said that without risk, there is no reward. I might easily have ended up as a truck driver on the plantation if I hadn’t left. 

“I think it is important to try things even though you know they might fail. If there are no failures, there are no successes. However, I know how much failure can hurt, especially in politics when things can happen that are out of your control like the Kohala Task Force. It didn’t matter what I told the Governor - he was determined to pursue something that turned out to be a failure.

“I should have never listened to the Pineapple Research Institute about the lack of [pesticide] residue in the feed. It was my responsibility. Anything that is important, you should check, check again and double check on your own to see the information is correct. The [pesticide] lesson was harsh, but one that I never forgot.

“...if I have a big regret it is that I was selfish without knowing it. I enjoyed my career and my job so much that I worked from 8:00 in the morning until late at night and then I was out again first thing in the morning. It irked Janet that I did that, because she knew that our children were young and needed me at home. I think it’s important to have balance in your family and professional life. It is something that still bothers me. In retrospect, I think that I probably owed more time to Janet and more time for the children.

“I was very fortunate in having a career I loved doing. I loved animals. I loved managing a farm. I loved teaching. I loved the University. I loved my job as Chairman of the State Department of Agriculture. I loved traveling the world doing agricultural consulting. If people were to ask me about my life and what I learned, I would say find someone to love and do what you love. In my life, I was very fortunate in being able to have both. I think the feeling that you are making a contribution is what counts. You have to feel your presence on this earth has made a difference.”

Army Corporal Kenneth Kengo Otagaki’s remains were cremated and installed at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific’s columbarium in Court 7-C, Row 500, Niche 512. His remains rest beside his wife Janet who preceded him in death by five years.

Thank you for joining me today and allowing me to share Ken Otagaki’s story. Due to an upcoming work trip, this will likely be the last episode for next two or three weeks, but when I return, I will continue highlighting a few of the remarkable veterans of the 442nd Infantry Battalion and the Military Intelligence Service.