<Begin Segment 17>

TI: Is there anything you want to mention on the trip from, to go to Hiroshima, or to Japan, Tokyo? Is there anything else you want to talk about, or can we go all the way to Tokyo right now? I'm curious if there's anything else you want to talk about.

HH: Oh, well, just going into Tokyo from San Francisco, that's where we, I had to go. They sent me over to there and to catch a plane. I was with another group, I don't know who the other people were, but I was with a crew. Not my crew, we were on a morale section. Not to investigate anything, but structural kind of damage or something like that, more, had to do with the morale.

TI: So let's talk about this. So when you say you were there to look at the morale, how large a group was that?

HH: Well, I was the only one that could speak Japanese, except for there was a navy officer on the way up from Tokyo, first leg of it. But otherwise, I was the only one that could speak. And we only had, I think, only two or three, a captain and an enlisted man, a truck driver, and myself going up from Tokyo to Sendai, the first leg.

TI: Here's something I want to ask you. It strikes me as I think about this, even when you were with that initial group, the OSS, even though they weren't given official officer status, they were paid as officers. Because the army or the War Department recognized that the language abilities were really important and key to the war effort. And then this other group, you're talking about these other people, the ones with Japanese language skills, they're officers. And here you are, you were never given officer status. All the way when you were in India, you were, you said, a buck private. And then I think you were eventually promoted to, like, a corporal.

HH: No, that's after I... it was funny in a way, because I was under British commanders in India with the OSS. Then when I got assigned to the air force, I think they probably felt that they couldn't get me a commissioned officer, I guess, status. Anyway, I was busy replacing my stripes from private first-class to corporal, and then sergeant, and then eventually I got the rank up to staff sergeant. Really busy just sewing on the new stripes every about three months or so.

TI: So they would keep promoting you, but even though they gave you those promotions, your peers were really officers.

HH: Yes. Well, when we had to go and my job at the time was to set up this survey type, morale, so I had to go meet the mayor or governor, Japanese governors, or chief of police or something like that to get the kind of information that I need to conduct this survey of the Japanese nationals. But the officers that the OSS had were mostly lawyers, because President Roosevelt and the head of the OSS was also a general, Donovan, that headed the OSS.

TI: Right, so they were all made officers.

HH: Yes.

TI: And so what did you think? Did you think about that, that you weren't an officer? That didn't bother you or anything?

HH: No, it didn't. But what bothered me was that these officers that were supposedly to be, they were trained as naval officers, that they had in California or somewhere. But they were the ones that I was assigned to, and I thought that they were supposed to be trained as being able to read and speak. But I found out that they didn't, which is another story about what I thought about these officers.

TI: Because they were, quote, "trained" that they were given officer status, but you're saying that they weren't really very good in the language.

HH: Well, I thought that at least conversational things, they'll know what I'm, I had to translate for him, even though he was with me. And so I had to speak in Japanese and get the information that I need, and then I had to translate into English for him. And found out that by that time, I could say anything I want in Japanese and get the answer, and then I didn't have to, I could speak freely without letting him know what they had said.

TI: Interesting. So you were there to check the morale, so in Hiroshima you were talking to, you said, the police chief, the mayor... what I want to ask you is when you first got to Hiroshima, you were there not too long after the bomb was dropped. I'm curious, what did you see? What was it like when you got to Hiroshima?

HH: Well, when I went to Japan, it was, I think, I was assigned for six months' duty in Japan. So naturally we had a permit, had to get permission from MacArthur's headquarters in Tokyo. The same general who wouldn't accept the OSS group, but now we were with the air force and everything. But we still had to get permission from headquarters to operate in Japan. And so sometimes we had to know the off-limits area and everything else, certain areas. But that's about the only incident that I saw in Tokyo, but we were housed right in the center near the Tokyo Station. And the military intelligence, MIS people, MacArthur's intelligence deal, they were housed in a Japanese shipping quarters, right near us. So I thought I was able to at least talk to them if I saw them on the streets.

TI: You mentioned how you were under the air force. Now, was the bomb study, was that an air force study or was that an OSS study?

HH: No, now I was assigned to the air force because the United States Bombing Survey was a survey that they conducted in Italy, in the southern part of the bombing. There's a strategic bombing kind of a study, and that was more strategic type of bombing, bombing at will, like oil fields and things like that. But in Japan, they widened the scope, at least find out something about the morale, and that was a new organization, I mean, group that they formed, and I was assigned to that.

TI: But this was under the air force, an air force study?

HH: Yes.

TI: And the air force requested help from OSS, and that's how you got assigned?

HH: I think so, yeah, because after the war, I was asked to leave the group and get back to Washington, D.C, as soon as possible, I guess.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.