<Begin Segment 6>

TI: Okay, so let's now go back to the OSS, and you were just starting to talk how, where you were stationed with the OSS was at a former teahouse of General Washington?

HH: Yes.

TI: So why don't you describe the facilities and who was there at the OSS.

HH: Well, the place was very, like a mansion, with four columns, white, like the White House, but smaller scale. It was part of George Washington's, President Washington's estate. And this is right on the Potomac River, and the way I understand it, in those days, they had to go travel by horse and wagon or cart or whatever, or horseback, that the teahouse was one of the places they could stay on the way to Washington, D.C. It's not that close, you see.

TI: So General Washington, his main mansion was at Mount Vernon, and this teahouse was sort of like in between Washington, D.C. and Mount Vernon.

HH: And Alexandria.

TI: So tell me, so who else was there? I mean, how many people were at this facility?

HH: Well, the facility, they had a little detachment of soldiers that took care of the security and everything. It was not enclosed with barbed wires or anything like that, it was just like a teahouse. And anybody can come and go in that area, and then the cooks were the military personnel. And the rest of us were so-called civilians or in the OSS, it was not only like us, Japanese Americans or nationals, but there were also, from Japan, some were anti-militarists or considered radicals in Japan. And then also we learned later that one of the men was, I think, schooled in Moscow, so he was more or less considered as a Communist. But otherwise, the OSS, I found out, at that time, was a very hush-hush organization, although it was organized under the War Department. But the organization was not a military organization, but they do have a military portion of it.

TI: Okay, so let me make sure I have this. So the unit that you were in was a mixture of a variety of people. You had Japanese Americans, you had...

HH: Japanese nationals.

TI: Japanese nationals. Did you also have Caucasians in there, too, or just...

HH: No, no.

TI: Okay, so Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans. And the Japanese nationals were ones who tended to be anti-military, or in one case, a Communist, a Moscow-trained Communist. So these were Japanese nationals who opposed what Japan was currently doing, so they were working for the U.S. government.

HH: Yes. And some were recruited in China, I think, known to be, so they had gone into China, and eventually probably came to the United States or something like that. But I don't know where they were recruited, but those were the known anti-militarists. They weren't in Japan anymore, and this one fellow I'm talking about, the Communist, was Joe Koide, that eventually became more or less like the leader of our group, because he's the one that seems to know more about Japan. See, most of us were from the, were Nisei or Kibei. And everything was spoken in Japanese, regular Japanese. So I think that's one of the reasons why I probably was... I wouldn't say I was very good in Japanese language, but because I had pretty good credentials, I guess, at the University of Washington when I changed into political science and I had to brush up more of my Japanese language and everything. But it was more of a, everything would be done in Japanese, because we were in the section of OSS that... and also, we were subject to censorship. All our letters out went through APO Washington, we weren't able to mail any letters out. And also we were not to say we're the Office of Strategic Services, but we would always, when we would meet somebody in Washington, D.C. or wherever, we would always say "Oh So Sweet," OSS.

TI: So this group was a top-secret group, it was sort of kept under wraps. And so I'm curious, this is, you're the first person I've talked to that was kind of in a group like this. How large was the group?

HH: I can't remember really the number of people, but I would say that it wasn't that large a group. I think they had, not all were in the same kind of category. We were probably, I thought maybe I was translator or something like that in Japanese, but there were technicians or something like that, because I presume it was for maybe writing fliers or whatever it is, pamphlets or something like that.

TI: Sort of propaganda.

HH: Propaganda type, yeah. It was more for, I figured, propaganda.

TI: So here there were these different groups, so one was you were saying, were more, you called it technicians, who were kind of writing these fliers. What was your group supposed to do?

HH: Our group, well, one of the things, I say this because we were just like what we're doing here, we were supposed to read certain things in Japanese to test our voice and our delivery and all this, one of the things that we had. And then also if we could, not too much about if we can read Japanese characters or whatever.

TI: So it was more in terms of Japanese translation, interpretation?

HH: Well, this is what I thought, because of the nature of it. Because we knew it was intelligence type, but I didn't know this at the time when I was recruited. It's only after I went to, actually to this Collingwood and I met the other people and started to get training or something like, that I found out that they were not all for that type of work, propaganda work. But they had pressmen, leaflets and things like that, probably would have to be printed in Japanese characters and whatever. So they had printers and pressmen along with us.

TI: So let me go back to the question I asked earlier, too. So roughly how many people? Not the exact number, but just roughly how large were the groups?

HH: I think, I don't think it was any more than about twelve or so, yes. Because when we finally, after a while, when we received further training while we were still in the United States -- we didn't, I didn't even know that we were going to be going overseas.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.