Birthday Parties For Pvts. Charles Saiki and Yuichi Tamura

June 3, 1943 passed uneventfully for Pvt. Charles Saiki of the Japanese American Combat Team. It was his birthday and he wasn’t up to par for he thought his mother and girlfriend Agnes Kurisu had forgotten him. But it wasn’t so. Way out there in Hawaii, the two made plans to send Pvt. Saiki a huge birthday cake. But letters have a way of getting lost, and Regimental Chaplain John T. Barrett wasn’t notified of the birthday until July. And so late yet appropriate a gaily-decorated cake was presented to Pvt. Saiki and duly enjoyed by his friends of the Service Company.

With the cooperation of the Hattiesburg USO, Chaplain John T. Barrett presented Pvt. Yuichi Tamura with a birthday cake on his twenty-fourth birthday, July 7. Tamura cut the cake into small pieces so that all of his friends could have some.