I was talking to Tom Moffatt recently, and he told me about Earl Finch, the man from Mississippi who befriended the young men of the 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team at Camp Shelby.
It would be an interesting story, Moffat suggested. What I found was both touching and emotional for me.
Everyone needs a friend, but when 1,000 young Japanese-Americans volunteered for the Army, there wasn’t much Southern hospitality extended to them in Mississippi.
Instead, they were greeted with insults and abuse. The USO canteen blocked their entrance. Stores and restaurants kept them out. Churches did not invite them to dances and socials.
In June 1943 Earl Finch, then 28 and owner of a cattle ranch and clothing store in Hattiesburg, saw two soldiers looking in a drugstore window.
“They looked like the loneliest human beings in the world,” Finch recalled. He went up and chatted with them, then on an impulse invited the two Hawaii boys to Sunday dinner. They wouldn’t be the first GIs invited to his home, but they were the first Americans of Japanese ancestry, or AJAs.
The next day, the two had returned to his home with dozens of roses for his mother. They filled every vase in the house.
When he found they were not allowed in the USO Canteen, Finch rented a vacant space and organized the first Japanese-American USO canteen and organized a dance. He rented every Greyhound bus in the county, and more than 150 nisei girls were brought in from Camp Rohwer, a Japanese internment camp in Arkansas, 320 miles away.
He became a sort of godfather to the boys and devoted nearly all of his time to them. He arranged Christmas and New Year’s parties, rodeos and feasts, and took the boys sightseeing to New Orleans, Washington, D.C., Chicago and New York.
The New York World-Telegram called him a “One-Man USO.” The Saturday Evening Post said he was the “Patron Saint of the Japanese-American G.I.” The nisei of the 100th and the 442nd called him simply “Uncle Finch.”
MANY SOUTHERNERS took exception to his friendliness. Hundreds sent him threatening letters. Relatives and friends shunned him. His fiance broke off their engagement.
“When those boys came to my home state, they were in a strange land surrounded by an almost hostile people,” Finch said. “They were homesick. They wanted to prove their loyalty.
“I happened to be one Southerner who treated them like human beings and took them into my home.”
When they were shipped off to fight oversees, Finch wrote them long letters and handled personal problems for them back home. More than 1,500 of the boys named him as executor of their wills.
When some of them were killed in combat, Finch paid a visit to their families, often in internment camps hundreds of miles away. The War Department made him an unofficial consultant to help with problems facing the AJAs, said Maurice Zolotow in the Christian Science Monitor.
Zolotow met Finch at an AJA excursion to New York in 1945. “Mr. Finch had rented a ballroom (at the Astor Hotel); he had hired a Hawaiian band and singer and hula dancer.”
When asked why he did so much for the nisei soldiers, Finch said that “they, more than American, English or French servicemen, know what they are fighting for.”
The Saturday Evening Post said he befriended 10,000 lonely Japanese-Americans “with no more reason than affection for an unjustly accused and misunderstood minority.”
After the war Finch continued to fight for AJA rights. He helped veterans get jobs and lent money to many to go into business for themselves. Hundreds of men married, settled down, raised a family and named their first boy Earl.
THE GIs RAISED the money to bring Finch to Hawaii in March 1946. The day of his arrival was declared a holiday. Hundreds came to the airport to greet him. A 100-car motorcade took him to a hero’s welcome at Iolani Palace and City Hall, where he was given a key to the city.
He was the guest of honor at many celebrations and was showered with gifts over 25 days. A year later he moved to Hawaii and opened several businesses.
In 1957 Finch teamed with Ralph Yempuku and Tom Moffatt to produce 34 “Show of Stars” rock ’n’ roll concerts at the Civic Auditorium that sold more than 680,000 tickets. They brought in many great acts, including Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, Paul Anka, Chuck Berry, the Coasters, Shirelles, Righteous Brothers, Drifters and many more.
“In 1957 I was a radio station disc jockey at KHVH,” Moffatt recalls. “Ralph and Earl called me to help promote a concert. If it makes money, they told me, you’ll make money. If it loses money, you WON’T lose any.
“I learned the concert business from the two of them,” the “Showman of the Pacific” says.
When he died suddenly of a heart attack at age 49 in 1965, Gov. John Burns said “after the war, Earl adopted Hawaii as his home, and Hawaii adopted him as one of its own.
“Earl was a shining example of the true spirit of aloha. We shall surely miss him.”
Sen. Daniel Inouye remembered the first time he saw Finch at Camp Shelby when he was 17. “Ringing in the men’s ears were epithets they had heard along the way — ‘dirty Jap.’ Many were still suffering from the barbs of discrimination and war hysteria.
“In the back of the crowd at the station was a white man. Everyone saw him. He was standing and waving his hat and shouting, ‘Welcome, welcome.’
“Here was a man who started his one-man civil rights movement 22 years ago, without fanfare, without demonstrations, without violence.
“And I think in many ways he was successful. We thank God that Earl Finch was there to greet us in Mississippi.”
Bob Sigall, author of the “Companies We Keep” books, looks through his collection of old photos to tell stories each Friday of Hawaii people, places and companies. Email him at Sigall@Yahoo.com.
