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MN: While you were at Fort Snelling VJ Day is declared, but your service term isn't over and you have, you're going, you're scheduled to go over to Japan with a stop over in Hawaii, but you never made it with your unit. What happened?

BK: Well, when we left Fort Snelling, we had been stationed at, we had been ordered to go to Japan, so the whole troop went to Seattle and we went to the port quarters where we had to wait 'til the ship got in, and when we went there and reported I contracted an illness, and I got the mumps. So they sent me to the hospital. And it's an infectious disease, so they took me right away and put me in a hospital and had me in restrictive quarters. Nobody else could come in the area. It's contagious. I don't know what it was all about, and they says, "You can't leave your bed." They said, "You're restricted right here." I says, "But I have to go." Said, "You do it in bed." I said, "I can't do it in bed." He says, "You have to do it in bed." [Laughs] So that was quite an experience. Once you do it, that, that's it. You became a seasoned performer. So after I got over my, my mumps I was taken back to a port of embarkation again and waited for the next ship, and finally wound up going to Japan.

MN: But you weren't in Japan very long. You were shipped out to the Philippines. You worked with the 795th Military Police unit at Lupow Prison Camp. Now, why did the MIS have to have Filipino escorts?

BK: When we were shipped out to go to Japan I was supposed to be stationed in Tokyo with the housing for civilians that were coming over to help in trying to get the Japanese government going again, but at the last minute, I came home one night and there were orders on my bed saying I was ordered to go to the Philippines to the war crimes, and so I had to wake up my buddy to have him take care of all the things that I had to ship home and so that I could report in the morning to go to the airport, to go to the Philippines for the war crimes tribunal. (...) The army is not, not very helpful in terms of giving you much time to go from one place to another. It was overnight. I came home, orders (were) on the bed to report in the morning to ship out to the Philippines. That's it. So you have how many hours to take care of everything you had to do. Anyway, my buddy from Boyle Heights, Glen Arai, was in the same quarters with me and he took care of everything, so I really owe him a lot.

MN: Now, why did you guys have to have Filipino escorts once you got to the Philippines?

BK: Well, we looked like the enemy. There's no guarantee that Filipino civilians would not attack us. Even if we had U.S. uniforms on, the Filipino people really suffered and were maltreated by the Japanese soldiers, so they, they were really mad at the Japanese and there's no guarantee that anybody would, would take care of us, other than ourselves. A Filipino could attack us at any time. So we were in another compound. Our quarters were behind barbed wires again, and we were protected by the Filipino soldiers from the Filipino (army). So there I was again, behind barbed wires, and all during the time we were in the Philippines, we were, all the Niseis were in one unit working for the war crimes (...). I just saw another friend of mine had passed away. Because most of my (aging) classmates, a number of them have already passed away. I guess I'm one of the holdovers. We're a passing group, MIS group and the 100th/442nd. I mean, just old age, it's taking (a toll).

MN: Tell me why you folks made getas.

BK: Made what?

MN: Geta.

BK: Oh, it rained so, so often in the Philippines. Our tents were on raised floors. It wasn't on the ground, had to raise it because it rained so often in the Philippines you can't have anything on the ground. You'd be soaked. So we were on a raised platform and it was all canvas (tents), and we also were sleeping in hammocks, rope on one end and rope on the other end, in hammocks, and they had, that hammock was covered by mosquito netting. Mosquito netting because the Philippines had a lot of mosquitoes, and when we go to bed you have to be, we use these, I forgot what we used to call them, these balms, and we sprayed this (tiger) balm on us so we wouldn't get bitten by mosquitoes, and even then we, we'd get bitten. But it, it was terrible. I mean, conditions in the Philippines were horrible. That and we had my clothes washed and cleaned by local Filipino girls that wanted to get money, get paid to do the work. They would do so, but our clothes would come back and they would clean them in the, the rivers and the rivers were dirty. They would come back with a strong smell, but they were washed in the water they had. It was not very good.

MN: You were also having trouble with the local children. What were they doing?

BK: Well, the children had no homes. In the whole of Manila there were few buildings that were standing. The old city hall was bombed out; everything was bombed out. Very few homes standing. People were homeless and family didn't exist. All the kids were wild. They were roamin' around and wanted to find food, so the kids would come under the barbed wire at night and steal everything they could find from us. We had to post guard every night. We'd catch the kids and take them to police. They would register them and they had no place to put them. They'd come back the next night. So we had to post guard every night. We got to know the kids and we tried to help them, but there was no, no way to fully take care of them, so the police knew them well and we knew them well and we did what we could, but we couldn't, we couldn't keep (them fed and clothed).

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.