Densho Digital Archive - Susumu Ito Interview (denshovh-isusumu-01-0021)

<Begin Segment 21>

SF: Well, you were talking about when you were in combat, this idea of: got a job to do and you going to get the job done and take the risks necessary. If you saw another 522 guy in trouble, you'd probably have, at that time anyways, just gone out and done whatever you could to help this guy.

SI: I think so.

SF: Without regard as to whether you --

SI: I think so. Yes, I think so. And I think most of the fellows I was with would do this, if not all.

SF: Well, what if you were with white guys that you didn't care so much about, and you hadn't built up this sort of common bond. Do you think you would have done that anyway because you were a soldier?

SI: I don't think I would have made a distinction even if I didn't agree with them or he was...

SF: A jerk, maybe.

SI: Yes, yes. I don't think that it would have made any difference. No, I really don't. I don't like -- well, it's not that I don't like to think, but I don't think I hold any ingrained animosity to someone who disagrees with me. I think that's his perfect right, or that has not impressed or converted me to his personal views or outlook on evaluating any situation or people. I'm not very religious, but I think I have a reverence for life, human life, and I think one of the feelings is, I think reflects on my basic feeling, is that in spite of this fact that there's a lot of evidence and justice for capital punishment, I really can't stomach taking another life of an individual no matter what his actions were to cause this. It just for some reason... I could never watch an execution, in other words. It would be completely... I don't think anyone could force me to watch an execution. It would be totally against my feelings and respect for human life.

SF: What gives war the legitimacy then because it's a state, it's a state -- one state against the other. Why is it that war has this, gives us legitimacy to take human life then?

SI: War between one state than other or one country against another, one ethnic group against another. Well, my simple rationalization for this is is that as long as we have humans on this earth and societies, that regardless of how idealistic we are, that we're going to want to end wars, that we someday we'll live in a utopia of peace, prosperity and brotherhood, no matter how much we would like to see and how nice it would be -- that this will never come to be. That as long as you have two groups of more than a few people, or even if one group gets large enough, you'll have some groups of people who are going to object to the others and have conflict and on a larger scale it would be different communities, difficult background, different religions.

SF: Different departments.

SI: Different departments. [Laughs] So perhaps you young fellows will live to see the day, but I certainly don't expect to see the day when we all live in harmless unity and uniformity. So I explain individual relationships to state relationships or to empire relationships between each other in the same basic way that, like kotonks and the Buddhaheads had it as a group or the families have it within themselves. It's bound to happen. And I don't know, I'm not here to try to change this nor can I, and I think this is a real good opportunity because you're giving me questions that I've obviously thought of, but not have tried to express or package together in the way of who the hell am I, how do I feel, or why do I behave like I do. And I think it's a great benefit to me and I feel that it's really a good experience for me.