<Begin Segment 15>

TI: Jimmie, earlier you told a story of your mother telling you, essentially, "Don't come back alive." And she mentioned the, the Yasukuni Shrine.

JM: Shrine, that's where all the military people, the ashes go there.

TI: Have you ever visited, did you ever visit that, the shrine?

JM: That's one place I have never visited, and I didn't care afterwards.

TI: Oh, so did you intentionally never want to go there, or weren't you ever curious just to go...

JM: Well, I wanted to see the place, but just that I didn't even...

TI: Okay. But then after you start training, did you ever go back and visit your parents at all? Did you ever talk to them during training?

JM: Yeah, during training I'd come back on the weekend or something like that, 'cause the place where I was at, it was a place called Fukuoka and it's close to where my parents are living. But my real training was up in North, at the real place where they have the military, it's strictly a military base and nobody could go in or out or anything like that, too.

TI: But during the time you visit your parents during training, did you ever have any more conversations with them about your training and what you're doing?

JM: No, the first thing my mother would ask is, "Did you understand all these Japanese and everything? 'Cause," she says," 'cause if not, don't hesitate, just tell 'em that you don't know." But she sent me a Japanese dictionary right away, so I carried that around quite a bit, too.

SF: Did your dad have any reaction to... I mean, your mom was giving you all these instructions of, what did your dad think?

JM: Well, he thought it was normal, since we were gonna be in Japan for a while and everything, but as soon as the war broke out my dad just changed his mind, says, "The Japanese are bakatare." That's the first thing he said.

TI: Did he ever feel bad that his son was in fighting? I mean, if he thinks the war was kind of stupid, to have his oldest son training to be a kamikaze pilot, did he ever talk to you about that?

JM: He was proud that somebody in the family is going as a kamikaze pilot, so he was, no, he was proud. He didn't mention himself, but he was very proud. That's why, in front of our house too, in Japan, when you get drafted and everything they have all these flags, navy flags and everything, and we had, the whole house around us was all that.

TI: Did the family get any kind of special treatment because you were training to be a kamikaze?

JM : No, no.

TI: Okay. Did you ever find out, so you told the story that, how your unit was going to go down to Kagoshima...

JM: Kagoshima.

TI: Kagoshima, and then take the boat to Okinawa.

JM: Yeah.

TI: Did you ever find out what happened to your unit, the men you trained with?

JM: The men I trained with, when they left, that was the last I ever seen. They caught the, they boarded the train and that was the last, 'cause I stayed in the camp. So I haven't heard from them at all, so it could be that when they were going they could've been, you know, hit by the American plane, 'cause the planes were comin' in real fast everywhere or if they caught the boat they'd be sunk anyway, instead of reaching Okinawa, they'll be sunk before they even went to Okinawa. Because the carrier in the Philippines, I mean, that was, that was the main thing we had to do was sink that carrier.

SF: What did you think about who was gonna win the war at that point?

JM: I thought about, no, Japan, I mean America's gonna win the war. I figured that myself. I didn't say it to everybody, but you can realize Japan and America and then, like Japan, you got all the oil and everything, materials and everything, so to me, I thought that Japan was kind of stupid, but what could I say, living over there?

TI: During your training, was there any kind of training or discussions about preparing you for death?

JM: No. That, that... no. Uh-uh.

TI: So it's just expected of you, you would just carry out your...

JM: Yeah, if you flew, if you got on that plane, that you won't think about nothing, all you got to do just smile to everybody, salute and take off, and that take off thing would never, the plane would never come back. Because I have a, the, what you call it, the military kamikaze pilot thing, I got the DVD. I got that and when you see that, too, it's just same way as we were trained, and they would never come back. Except three people came back. It was on the way going that they, the plane had engine problems so they had to land somewhere, or either run out of gas and thing like, I think three people's the only person that came back that time.

SF: So did, was the, did people talk about being, if you go to Yasukuni, that your spirit will live on for the emperor?

JM: Yeah.

SF: How did that go?

JM: Well, that's, that's why my mother says, "Never come back alive," because, and so she, she, too, says if I was living, got hurt and living, says, "You're not gonna be at the shrine, you know. The ashes won't be at the shrine if you're half," saying, "So never give up on anything. Be sure that when you do your duties, do what you're supposed to do. I don't want you to come back." Boy, that was really a shock to me, though. But during the war, I guess, any country, the parents would say something like that.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.