<Begin Segment 27>

TI: Okay, so today is February 2, 2006, and we're now starting our fourth session, our fourth day. And I'm Tom Ikeda, I'm the interviewer, on camera is Dana Hoshide, and this afternoon we have Mr. Hideo Hoshide to do the interview. So at the end of the third session, last session, we had just finished talking about you doing the atomic bomb survey in Hiroshima. And so I'm going to sort of pick it up from there. But actually, I'm going to backtrack a little bit. I wanted to go back to when you were with the OSS group, and you mentioned in our conversations how sometimes you guys would just sort of meet as a group and talk about different issues. And one of the issues that you talked about was after the war's over, how should the emperor be treated, whether or not he should be tried as a war criminal or not. And I just wanted to have you sort of recall the discussion you had with the rest of the members of the group.

HH: Yes, this is when we were still at Collingwood in Maryland where we were billeted, our crew, and then we had a meeting every day, and the whole group of us would meet together. And at that time, we did not have any -- at the beginning -- we didn't have any leaders or anything like that, and nothing was discussed about that. And eventually, he just, at these groups, group meetings, Joe Koide kind of took over, or he was automatically made... because he was most familiar with everything else I guess in Japan and everything else, because he had come from Japan. Anyway, we would discuss different things. At that time -- this is kind of getting later after the Pacific war was still on, but this is about the time that the war in Europe, European Theater was over. Anyway, the conversation or discussion turned to the fact about the war criminals, just like Hitler and such, and they were having conferences, the three powers, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, at various places. And this happened after some of those meetings, conferences or group leaders left some of the other meetings, but this one, I think, refers to the Tehran conference where the three leaders met. By that time there were some discussions about the war criminals in Japan, including General Tojo and various leaders. Then the subject about what they should do to the emperor, should he be considered a war criminal also, it was in the newspapers and such. So naturally we, I guess some of the men kind of brought up the fact that what would be the best, because the U.S. was, I think, thinking in terms of getting more democratic type, and not continue the emperor's system or what, I don't know, but whatever it was, it was after the war in the future, what's good for the Japanese government. So the group, our group there, felt that possibly, after hearing various opinions of various people, that the emperor should not be considered a war criminal.

TI: So why did people think that? What were the things that they considered to decide that he should not be a war criminal?

HH: Well, for one thing, the emperor was considered by the Japanese people as a country that the emperor system was more or less descended from long time ago and mythologically or whatever, the emperor has got, that line of emperors had something to do with the goddess, sun goddess Amaterasu Omikami. Anyway, that the descendants or has kind of a connotation about the emperor being more or less revered by the Japanese people. And by treating him as a criminal, I think -- and we kind of thought so, too -- that maybe whether it's the truth or whatever, we can't tell now, but it is pretty hard to visualize Japan with... because they didn't have a democracy. And I think some of those people that we were working with had come from Japan and was with our group, the OSS, that they were more liberal or anti-militarists and whatever. And the military is the one that kind of took over, and also it just didn't seem like it was really the emperor's idea or whatever. Various reasons came out, but in order to make a democratic-type freedom of speech and all this, everything, that it was more or less unanimous by the time we got through that we should not consider the emperor, the system should be done away with.

TI: Okay, so the group consensus was pretty much that it was more the military was really the one to blame, and so that if anything, they should be the war criminals. And that the emperor, who was, who the Japanese still felt, or some still believe is the descendant of a goddess or god, that would be a hard thing for people to accept. So it would be better not to have him tried as a war criminal. So this was your discussion, so the group talked about this and you guys had a consensus. How was that, or was this ever communicated to other people in terms of your thoughts?

HH: Well, we didn't have any contact with others, we didn't even think of anything like that, but just as part of the discussion and everything. But we didn't know that several people had immediately made some efforts to, I think I learned later, that night, overnight, Joe Koide, who as I say, he was a brilliant man, he and Jin Konomi and another person, they all had been from Japan, that had sent a little memo to the headquarters, our OSS headquarters, that maybe this might have some influence on the OSS, possibly. Anyway, the memo was sent to the main office in Washington, D.C., Georgetown area. And so when we heard the radio broadcast shortly after that at the Yalta Conference, they said something about the emperor, and I think that's when they said that maybe the emperor's situation about the war and everything...

TI: Where they said at Yalta that the emperor would not be treated as a war criminal. And so do you think that -- so these three men, after your discussion, wrote this memo, sent it to the OSS headquarters, do you think it went any farther than that? Do you think that was actually used to help make this decision?

HH: Well, this I wouldn't know too much about where they got, maybe it might have been one of the things, so I felt that at least I had something to do with discussing about this with the group and everything. So not to get the credit or anything like that, but I didn't know until I learned later, in an article, that this Jin Konomi, he's from El Cerrito, near San Francisco, where I later met him. And he told me he had a copy of Joe Koide's published book, his autobiography, and then also, before that, there was an article written by Jin Konomi telling us about the newspaper, which appeared in the Pacific Citizen about this thing that we talked about and that Joe Koide had sent a memo.

TI: Okay. That's a good story.

<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.