<Begin Segment 19>

TI: And what were your general impressions of Shanghai and China when you think back to those days? Like the food, did you like the food?

MH: Oh, yes, yes. I prefer simpler Chinese food, but, and I was, I was very careful about, if I didn't like anything, I didn't eat it. And of course there was also, "Gan bei," all the time, drinking of the rice wine, which is, all these toasts, "Bottom's up." Of course, they were very small, but they accumulated. And the other thing was to learn to say, "Sui bien," all the time, which meant that, "No more, thank you," or, "Just a little," or something like that.

TI: And in general, were there very many other women at these events?

MH: Yes, there were. In fact, I know when I went to Beijing, there was this woman interpreter, Chinese woman interpreter who, this was a banquet where I think there were four or five round tables. I don't know how many sat at a round table, maybe ten, I would think. And she "gan bei'd" with everybody in the room. She had amazing capacity.

TI: Either that, or she was drinking water or something else. Wow. Earlier you mentioned the demonstrations, thousands. I mean, what kind of impression or what kind of thoughts did you have when you saw all these people going, sort of, protesting against Chiang Kai-shek?

MH: Yes, yes.

TI: Did that kind of raise any...

MH: Well, I must say, I wasn't going right along with my father's thinking on the whole Nationalist movement. Although, but I knew so little at that time. I mean, I was a complete innocent as far as world affairs were concerned.

TI: But your thoughts were all these people are against Chiang Kai-shek, so something must be wrong with what Chiang Kai-shek...

MH: That's correct. And then seeing those kits for sale in the, you know, in the department store.

TI: Yeah, interesting. Okay, so from Shanghai, then you went to go see...

MH: Then we flew up to Tsingtao where Dad's base was, and we lived there. And what had been -- Tsingtao had been developed by the Germans, I believe, and the Germans, of course, during this war, took it over completely. And so the head, the house of the chief Nazi, German, was the house that we took over to live in, with Dad as Commandant.

TI: That's interesting. So during World War II, the Germans had a strong presence in China?

MH: Yes.

TI: I didn't realize that. So, but after the war, the Germans had lost, so they were gone, and so the Americans took over?

MH: Most of them had been deported back to Germany, most of them, yes.

TI: So you got to live in the house of the...

MH: Number one Nazi. And in the dining room, the chandelier was, was a... you know, a swastika.

TI: Okay, in the shape of a swastika.

MH: Yeah, in the shape of a swastika. And then the carpets going up the stairs had swastikas on either side. And my mother said, "Oh, well, you know, they're Indian swastikas." You know, they go the opposite way from the... but, "Oh no, they're Indian swastikas," my mother said. So they remained.

TI: Interesting. Anything else about the architecture of the building that struck you as interesting?

MH: Well, that was mostly, it was built up by the foreigners at Tsingtao, so there were many European structures there. It wasn't Chinese, not like Beijing.

TI: Well, so you're there, and this may be a little different for you, but this, China was at war. It was a civil war at this point.

MH: Yes.

TI: Was there, were you, ever felt like you were in danger when you were in China?

MH: I didn't, no. I know that we heard this firing there, but that wasn't frequent. We went to the beaches and we were safe there in Tsingtao. They were not on, they were not there near, that near to Tsingtao, even though we could hear the firing. We traveled, my mother and I went up to Beijing -- no, excuse me, went with Dad and Charlie, Mother and Dad and Charlie and I went to Beijing, and that was more or less an official visit there. And then my mother and I actually flew up to Mukden, which is in Manchuria, which is a very industrial area, and had been stripped of all of its machines, I think, by the Russians. It was a dreary city. And then we went, traveled also to Nanking to visit the Generalissimo, and then later we went up to his summer headquarters in the hills to the south of Nanking, an area called, city called -- not city, but a place called Kuling.

TI: So describe the role that the United States or the military was playing. Because the war was over, and they were, I mean, World War II was over, and your dad is the Commander of the Seventh Fleet, and now he's traveling, meeting Chiang Kai-shek. What role...

MH: He was in strong support of the Nationalists and was doing everything he could to help them in every way. And the Generalissimo appreciated that.

TI: But when you say that, you didn't have necessarily Americans fighting for the Nationalists.

MH: No, no.

TI: But they were advising...

MH: Advising, yes, exactly.

TI: Supplies, perhaps, and things like that?

MH: Yes, yes.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.