<Begin Segment 21>

TI: And during this time, did the war come to an end or was it still going on?

KY: It came to an end. Well, the war ended in August, so that's all, I recall staying in Harvard until the end of the war. And I guess, at that point, the administrators of the school said, "Okay, now it's time to pack your bags and go to Japan, gonna be an occupying force."

TI: Did that include you? I know students they all had to, they were sent to Japan.

KY: Oh, yeah.

TI: How about you? What did you do?

KY: None of, as far as I know, none of us teacher types, employees ever went. I'm not sure, though. I'm not sure. As far as I know, I don't know.

TI: Okay, so the students pack up, they go to Japan, and then the... what did you do next?

KY: Well, my choices were kind of limited 'cause what I did was I started out for Harvard from New York and I had kind of a, quotes, "base" in New York City, so I went back to New York City. And then I said, "Well, here I have no job, and I'll continue my studying and possibly get an M.A. degree at Columbia. So I started school at Columbia, and I was there for a year. And then during that time, I said, well, I didn't get my master's, but this is in '46, so by that time and during that time, I learned about my... I shouldn't say I learned much, but I thought about my mother and sisters in Japan. My father had died during the war. And my sister Harue died during the war, so I had two sisters, one married sister, Shizuko, in Japan, and my mother still living. And this is in postwar Japan, and the country is in economic shambles because of all the bombing that we did, burned out cities. But my folks, my mother that is, and her daughters were living in the inaka, in the rural area, so they didn't suffer from the bombs and so on. But still, times were rough because of the economy and medicine and so on was very limited because the military had taken all of that. And they were in dire straits and suffering, so I said, "Hey, I'm quite sure," well, mentally, more or less, I should go there to Japan and see how I could help them out. Now, in that year, particular year, and in those early years, there were hardly any civilian communication exchanges, passengers and so on. In other words, it's, occupied Japan and the country was in dire straits, and the economy's struggling, everybody's struggling, trying to rebuild. Because most of the cities were all bombed out. And everybody was suffering, particularly those in urban areas. But my mother and her kids were in the inaka, so they weren't really on the point of starvation or anything, but still they were suffering.

So I said, I better get to Japan and see what I can do. And the only way that I can see was if I can get a, there was no civilian jobs to be had or at least I didn't have the necessary technical skills for rebuilding Japan in the technical sense, how to help out with construction or urbanization. So I said, "Hey, I got to look for a job, and the only way is through the government." And, yeah, they were looking for U.S. types to serve in the occupation forces, to help out the military. And they needed a bunch of linguists to help out. So I was one of those civilian types that joined the U.S. government effort to occupy and rebuild Japan. So I got a job with the Army. Army, what they called the Civil Censorship Detachment.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright (c) 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.