Brothers
harry and bindo
old friends
That's Bindo Grasso and Harry Masatani in front of the American Legion Hall in Guadalupe last week. Kam and I had already had the pleasure of meeting Harry, but it was very special to have some time with these two good friends together. Bindo, who retired from the concrete business four years ago when he turned 90, freely shared his opinons about the state of the economy, the decline of morality, the evidence for evolution, and anything else his lively mind has pondered.
Harry and Bindo first crossed paths in 1941. Harry had been taken to Santa Anita, California to be shipped off to an internment camp, and Bindo was one of the soldiers at that very place charged with guarding the new Japanese-American prisoners. It didn't make sense to Bindo even then.
"My parents were born in Italy," says Harry. "They didn't put me in a camp."Today Harry and Bindo refer to themselves as brothers, and the bond of respect and affection between them is palpable. (And Harry points out that Masatani can double as an Italian name.)
There's a photograph in the American Legion Hall of General Eisenhower greeting the troops, and Bindo is one of the soldiers in the picture. He served his country with honor but doesn't make a big deal of it.
“I didn’t do anything special," he says. "I just did what I was supposed to do." By this, he means that on the day before D-Day he parachuted in, landing behind enemy lines to help set up beacons and secure important targets for the troops that would follow. No big deal. People should just do what they're supposed to do.
You wanna talk about a sense of duty? Take Harry over here, you know what he did, even after having been imprisoned as an enemy alien? Harry joined the service.
We stood on the steps chatting for 45 minutes or so, and I assumed these two old guys were going home to nap right after we talked, but no, they were heading out in Bindo's car to visit another friend of theirs, who's 99. "Sometimes we get in the car to go for a ride," Bindo said, "and we end up driving two or three hundred miles." (I believe it.)Kam and I think a "Harry and Bindo" television series could be a hit.