<Begin Segment 14>

TI: So let's go back to Ceylon, and did you ever have a mission where you had to go behind the lines and do something like you were trained for?

HH: No. We continued to kind of produce whatever part of our training in case we were able to get, say, a Japanese letter that the soldiers might have left. So our type of leaflet was, for some reason, they said it's not a "white propaganda," but it's a "black propaganda." The difference is that we had a broadcast, OWI, Office of War Information, that was beaming propaganda things to Japan anyway. But OSS one is not going to be that way. Ours is going to be a leaflet, and it's going to be kind of a copy of Japanese letters that the families sent to the soldiers. And we just change it to say, at home, "We're having a hard time," and all that, just for morale type thing, for the soldiers that are in the jungles and away from home in the Southeast Asia area.

TI: So it's kind of like psychological warfare. You would sort of create these letters that could then be leafleted to the soldiers in the jungles?

HH: Yes, so that they would pick up these leaflets, and find out that, oh, here's a letter somebody sent, and it must be authentic deal. This was our mission, not to say that this is a propaganda-type thing, produced, so it had to be a very real kind of thing that soldiers... this was primarily for the soldiers, not home.

TI: So your job was to create these letters so that they looked really authentic, so when the soldiers did pick it up they thought that it wasn't coming from the U.S. Army, but it was really coming from, dropped from, like, a Japanese soldier, so that they would...

HH: Yes, so even letters and things like that, we had to kind of simulate whatever that looks more Japanese, original, not a copy or anything like that.

TI: And so imagine that's why the Japanese nationals were so valuable, because they were, because of their language, their nuances, their understanding of the culture, they could really help create those.

HH: Yes, because, you see, language is kind of an unusual kind of thing. The people who were already moved to, like our Issei, and Kibei and such, see, they were so far away that a lot of terms and things like that is different, especially during the wartime. We didn't know what kind of conditions, which I found out later, that there were lots of new kind of words that they were using at the time. So it would be a dead giveaway if you use the wrong Japanese term, word for it. And so we had to make it very, very authentic.

TI: So what was your role during all of this?

HH: Well, this is the type of thing, my role was to go into the -- and I was the only one that was going to go in, because I had the uniform on and everything else. Not these people. They were to produce it, and I was the one to go into Java, our mission, that went down to Ceylon area, or Sri Lanka. And I continued to take my training, rubber raft and everything else, because that place called Trincomalee is where, closest to Java on the Indian Ocean, and I was supposed to pick up the submarine there with my rubber raft.

TI: So it sounds like you had the dangerous job, then.

HH: Yes, it would be, yes. [Laughs]

TI: The others were going to just, like, stay --

HH: They were going to just stay.

TI: -- in the compound and work on these letters, and you were the one being trained to go behind the lines.

HH: To pick up the...

TI: Pick up things and maybe drop things off.

HH: Yes, yes.

TI: So how did that make you feel?

HH: Well, I didn't let on, but it was a big worry on my part when it's going to happen. But I was very lucky in the sense that the war ended in Japan.

TI: Because you were lucky, because you got there sort of in July, and within a month, the atomic bomb was dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So you didn't really have the opportunity to do all the things that you were being trained to.

HH: Yes.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.