Densho Digital Repository - Kenji Tomita Interview (Densho ID: ddr-ajah-1-3)

<Begin Segment 12>

MT: Well, first of all, you finished your language school. You graduated from the language school, didn't you? Or you finished it, anyway.

KT: The language school we were studying, and studying real hard. But then the war in Japan and... and so I was in one of the hard language classes, and they were in the other classes, the class that I was in was one of the advanced classes. But then in language school, they permitted you to take a leave, and so I went back to camp to help my folks move out of camp.

JT: Okay. Timing again. So were you ever able to use the skills that you learned in the MIS?

MT: Yeah, he was sent to Japan.

KT: It turned out that the war ended in Japan, and so they wanted occupation troops. And when I left, I think it was about the end of November, we left Portland, Oregon, and sailed to Japan, and that was, got there almost around Christmas, and went to camp Zama, which is a military receiving camp.

JT: Oh, okay.

KT: And then you were then assigned to wherever...

JT: Your station. And what was your job? What were your...

KT: Well, my job turned out to be very weird. I was sent to Tokyo, and they wanted me to take care of a Russian war document library. And we were in Tokyo, I was the NYK Building. We were starting to collect anything in the Japanese, any documents.

JT: Communications? Okay. From Russia?

KT: On Russia.

JT: About Russian, oh boy.

KT: And so I'm not a librarian, but what I could do was when these documents come in, I would stack them up so that if somebody wants to see --

JT: File them, I see.

KT: And that's while I was in Tokyo. My brother was in Tokyo earlier.

JT: In the MIS?

KT: Yeah.

JT: Oh, for heaven's sake.

KT: Well, he went to the Philippines and then to Japan.

JT: Did you get together?

KT: Yeah, we did. And then he had, but when got there, he went to see my uncle, our uncle.

JT: Your dad's brother?

KT: Brother, right. He had a last name that was different from Tomita. In Japan, people don't have children that...

JT: Boys. They take on the name of...

KT: They go with that name, yeah.

JT: Youshi, they call it, or something like that. Oh, so that uncle was not a Tomita? Not named Tomita?

KT: Right. And so my brother, when he got there, he tried to find my uncle. And he found him, and he was in a part of Tokyo that, just a little island of homes that were not...

JT: Had not been...

KT: Bombed. And so my uncle was very fortunate that way, too.

JT: I'll say.

KT: And so when my brother first went out there, went to his house, the boys, they had four sons, oh, about my age or younger.

JT: Would be your cousins.

KT: Uh-huh. Except they (asked my brother, "Are you Chinese?") "Shinajin gaki?"

JT: They thought you were Chinese?

KT: Yeah.

JT: You heard that?

KT: Yeah. But then he explained to them, "No, I'm not Chinese."

JT: Right. You remember that. So you had a nice reunion, kind of, with them, where you got to know them?

KT: And so when I got there, then I went to meet these relatives. And then they said, "Oh, if you have spare time, come visit us." So I did visit them quite often.

JT: Oh, okay, while you were there?

KT: Well, my brother was leaving already to come back to the States. And so I was in contact, and I'd bring all the rations and stuff like that to them.

JT: Sure, because they were suffering.

KT: Well, they really weren't.

JT: Oh, because their homes weren't destroyed. And they had the means to buy things.

KT: Uh-huh.

JT: When you say rationing, what kind of things did you bring? What did they want?

KT: Beer.

JT: Oh, gee, really important things.

KT: Cigarettes. [Laughs]

JT: Oh, my gosh. Yeah, they were happy to see you.

MT: Nothing nutritious.

KT: Candy.

JT: Oh my gosh, sounds like a party.