<Begin Segment 41>

TI: So, Frank, I want to actually touch upon something you had just started earlier in the interview. When you mentioned how some members of the JACL came to Japan. Can you tell that story?

FS: Yeah, I think there was about seven or eight of 'em. They went directly to -- the way I heard, from kind of a secondhand knowledge, not first, but second, was they went directly to GHQ. They had some kind of letter or commendation, something to get in there, now. So they went into GHQ, was MacArthur headquarters, and they stated that there were a lot of repats in Japan working or the occupation, and they were bad people. They were disloyal people and this and that, they painted a very bad picture. So MacArthur's headquarters said, "Fire them." So they sent a memorandum from GHQ headquarters service command, went to Eighth Army, Eighth Army to this command, that command, and finally into the whole military government section, then it came down to our place. And then the colonel called me and said, when I was military, he said, "Frank, come here. Read this." So I read it, and he said, "What does this mean?" I said, "Well, you gotta fire me, 'cause I'm one of 'em." He said, "I know that, but what about all the other people? How many people working here that same category?" I said about thirty or forty. At least forty women. So he said, "What happens if I fire them?" I said, "They'd be out of work." "What kind of hardship?" Said, "Well, most of them are sole provider of a family for money for food and all that." So in other words, the colonel says, "If I fire them, the family can't eat." "Yeah. Me and my wife and my fifteen kids, we're gonna be the first to be affected." The colonel said, "Oh, shut up, Frank." [Laughs] And then he says, "That bad, huh?" I said, "Well, it could be easy. All you have to do is just ignore this, I mean, fill this letter out and follow that letter, and you're not at fault. MacArthur's fault." "No, I can't do that. Frank, here." He gave me the memo, "You take care of it." So when he said that, I had to rip it up and flush it down the toilet. So people in military government, they got -- I asked this one Michiko Dohi, she worked there in military government, and she said she heard about that. I said, "Did you lose your job?" She said, "No." But I didn't ask her, "Why you didn't lose your job?" See, the colonel never told anybody about that memo. You're not supposed to destroy a memorandum, that's a big, big no-no, GHQ. That's just like slapping MacArthur in the face. And you're supposed to keep that memorandum in file as they go. First things first.

TI: But then in other parts of Japan, probably people were getting fired.

FS: Oh, yeah, yeah. Tad Yamakido got fired, Shinto Sakamoto, Hitoshi Naito, Jimmy Kai, those are the people I know personally, and I asked them, they got fired. And then they got reinstated on a job later, about four or five months later. You know, when, kind of, things died down.

TI: What did you feel when you saw that letter? When you saw that memo --

FS: Well, I wanted to go after those eight guys and then dump 'em in the ocean, and hope they can't swim. That's not, that's one of the worst things you can do. Come all the way to Japan just to get what? Get even with repats? They thought we were having it good? We didn't have it good. How many people that worked for the occupation had it like me where I was getting good title, good pay, and food? And I was even getting cigarette ration in a lot of places. Nobody get that. And I was a repat. And I didn't tell nobody because I couldn't spoil a good thing. A lot of them think I had it bare because I didn't want to tell some -- "Oh, you're lying. You don't get all that." They won't believe you. So that was the hardest part. So when they say they, when they come out, a memorandum, it's already said and done, fired. You can't argue. MacArthur say you're fired, you're fired. You shot, you're shot. General Yamashita, remember? Yamashita, he said, "I want the quickest trial," Yamashita. So Yamashita had a couple of day trial. It was lesser officer, low ranking officer condemned General Yamashita to death. That was kind of dirty of MacArthur. That's the only thing I hold against him. That was dirty. Because Yamashita never did nothing bad to MacArthur, only defeated him.

TI: But what you're saying is MacArthur was like a dictator in some ways.

FS: Dictator, and he was an evil person in a lot of respects. And yet, when he was fired by Truman, the time he left the embassy, all the way to Haneda Airport, that highway and street was crowded with Japanese. If you have a curb here and a building here, it was through the building. GIs, Japanese people. Crowd all the way to the airport. So a lot of people liked him, and a lot of people hated him. I hated him because he used to tie up the traffic. You know, I want to go across the street and the military police and Japanese police, they're holding the traffic. So I get off the, I was one of the first one in line there, so I got off the car and I said, GI, military police, said, "Hey, soldier, what's going on here." He said, "The old man's coming through." I said, "Oh, no." You had to wait until MacArthur came across, drove across, and then they let the people go through. That's what I hate about that son of a bitch. He was God.

<End Segment 41> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.