<Begin Segment 19>

TI: I want to ask a question, this is kind of switching gears now. I'm thinking that before the war and after the war, you had some contact with Japanese Americans in the United States, and I was wondering if what happened in, during the war, and being a prisoner of Japanese soldiers, if that changed or influenced how you, you perceive Japanese Americans?

BB: Well, we had a definite dislike for the guards because of the way they treated us. The guards could get away with murder, and in our strictest discipline in the army, we ever, we weren't accustomed to treating people that way. And so we, it was the first time we ran across anybody that was really taking advantage of the fact that they had the gun and you didn't. And we had a particular dislike for some of the guards. Now, some of 'em became very good friends, others didn't. 'Course, when the war ended, they all wanted to be buddy-buddy with us, of course, and because, you know, at the end of the war, close to the end, the Japanese themselves were starving. Maybe you didn't know that; they didn't have any food. And they had... theirs is a step society anyhow, was at the time. If you were a samurai, you were king of the hill. If you were a soldier, you were next to a samurai. If you were a farmer, you were at the bottom of the heap. And they had no... in the old Japan, no like for women. Even the wealthy women didn't get along with, unless you had something they wanted. If you were wealthy enough to where you had food or had something the Japanese soldier wanted, you were his hero. And in, being a prisoner in Japan, I suddenly found that out, that if you were a woman and were married to a samurai, you couldn't do anything wrong.

And one of the jobs I had was going on a charcoal-making detail. We went into a wooded area, cut down bamboo, mostly bamboos, and piled 'em in mud huts, closed the hut over, and made charcoal. Japanese were pretty good at that, they knew how to make charcoal, and we used the charcoal to heat our barracks and to cook with. In this, right next where we made charcoal was a lady, a Japanese lady, who apparently was very wealthy, really had expensive kimonos and jewelry and whatnot. She came out, talked to the guard, and gave each one of us a treat of food. And we had, first time we had some kind of fish, had fruit, she brought a lot of fruit out. Japan had, China had mandarin oranges, she gave each one of us three or four of these oranges, but she made sure that the guard had anything he wanted. So, and there was one guard, which we, we called him "Peg-leg," he had only one leg. Peg-leg didn't like me. [Laughs]

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2005 Densho. All Rights Reserved.