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TI: Okay, so we're still kind of in Kure, so pretty soon the bombs come, so you can't make any parts or something. So what happens next? Where do you go next?

PY: At that bomb, at that raid, the Kure Navy Base, I don't know, I don't know why they didn't, they dropped quite a bit of bomb on the navy yard, but wasn't too much damage.

TI: Oh, so you were still able to keep working.

PY: Yeah, yeah, so we went back over there and worked. But, of course, where I was living, that house was burned down. So I went back to Atatashima for a while, and then I came back to work again.

TI: Okay. And just in terms of timeline, my notes say that it was about the end of 1944 is about when that bombing happened, or beginning of '45?

PY: I guess beginning of '45, because the atomic, the war ended August, right?

TI: Right.

PY: Yeah, so yeah, so the beginning of '45.

TI: So you just mentioned that you, because your house, the house that you lived in burned down, you went back to Atatashima. What did you see when you went back home? Was it anything different or was it the same? What did you see?

PY: Well, we were still, they told us that we were going to win the war, and we believed that. Although we were kind of losing, hiding or this and that, but we felt that we would win.

TI: How about your parents? Did you, when you went back to Atatashima, did you talk to your parents about what was happening?

PY: Yeah, I did, I did. But they just told us, told us to do whatever you're doing for the country.

TI: 'Cause I was wondering, because they had spent some time in the United States, and so they saw how large the United States was and whether or not they, I guess, would have more information about how the war would probably end. Because they were thinking, because most Japanese had never been to the United States and they didn't know what was over here. But your parents had seen maybe Pearl Harbor and all the different places. And so did they ever talk about that, whether Japan really was going to win the war or had a chance?

PY: Yeah, I think, I think they knew that they were living in America, so how big America is, and we shouldn't fight against America. But once the military said the war started, then everybody, everybody have to, even in the losing cause, you have to fight for Japan. So that's what, I think my parents felt that way, too.

TI: Okay. So you go back now to Kure after spending a little time with your parents, and then what happened? What do you do next there?

PY: You mean after I went from Atatashima?

TI: Yes.

PY: Yeah, I went back to the factory and worked, yeah. In the shelter, though.

TI: And again, still making parts in the shelter?

PY: Yeah, yeah, and supplying the parts to the, to make the little submarine.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.