<Begin Segment 18>

SF: How did you hear about the atomic bombs?

JM: What do you mean?

SF: When they bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, how did you hear about that?

JM: In the, in the military we heard about that. But we didn't know, atomic bomb, a lot of people died, but exactly what kind of harm they did, we didn't know about that. 'Cause the second bomb was supposed to drop where our parents were, but it was cloudy that day, so instead of dropping where my parents was, on the way back to China they dropped her off at Nagasaki. They said, "We got to drop this bomb. We can't go back to China unless we do it," so they dropped it at Nagasaki.

TI: And that was a secondary site?

JM: Yeah, secondary site.

TI: But so, so you weren't really clear about the power of the atomic bomb --

JM: No.

TI: -- so when you heard that Japan was surrendering, what was the reaction of the people around you?

JM: Oh, everybody, they start crying. I mean, they had their heads to the ground and, I don't know what to say, but in my case I was kind of happy because the war was over, but the Japanese people, no, they were, they felt sorry for Japan, especially for the emperor because everybody was looking, the emperor was the number one person.

TI: And that, I'm guessing that some of the military people probably couldn't understand why they were surrendering. If they didn't really understand the power of the bomb, they're saying, why don't we keep fighting?

JM: Well that's it, yeah. I think that's why they tried, they had that second bomb, which they didn't drop off at Kokura, but in Nagasaki. Yeah. I guess, me too, I heard about that, too, but I didn't know how powerful it was. But afterwards I heard that everybody's going to the canal drinking water and thing like that because they get thirsty and everything. It was after that, the war was over, then I really found out how strong the atom bomb was.

TI: And then right after the war was over, you were telling you me earlier about the general, the one in charge of sending all the pilots.

JM: Yeah.

TI: Tell me what happened to him.

JM: To him, the second day he made an announcement in Japanese saying that he couldn't face the families of the, kamikaze pilots' family because he was the one that trained them and, "Never come back. You got to hit the target and that's it." So he said, "I can never face those people," so he says, "Instead of doing that, that I would die in their place," and then he did the hara kiri, but he didn't die right away. He suffered and died. He says that was the only way to apologize the family of the, the kamikaze people family.

TI: So when he committed suicide he did it in such a way that it would, he would suffer?

JM: Yeah, he would suffer and do it.

TI: So he would, it would take hours for him to die.

JM: Hours, yeah. He says, "I feel sorry for those pilots, so," he says, "it's not just a suicide thing," he says. "I want to suffer, too, because I can't face the families if I ever went back to Japan." And there was another general, too, he was in Nagasaki, I think. He caught the plane and flew to Taiwan, but I think he got court martialed and they hung him.

TI: So very different reaction, this other general.

JM: Yeah. Yeah, different.

SF: So in this one general's suicide, isn't it the tradition that you ask your close friend to, after a certain period of time to, to behead you with the sword?

JM: You're supposed to, but no, he didn't want to do that. He didn't want to do that. He said just hara kiri and that's it. That way he suffered, so to apologize for all the pilots and the family that are living.

SF: Now, was this something that you knew when it happened, or is this much later on that you heard about this, this story?

JM: Well, he did it the second day the war was over, but no, I found that out later on, that... first I heard about that, but I couldn't believe it, but when it came out in the paper, then I believed, yeah, he must've been really, just like the, what you call, the other general that got killed in the jungle, he too, died, too.

TI: And so how does that make you feel, or what, what do you think when you hear about this general that, in some ways, was your commander, but at the end he did this? What do you think about that?

JM: Well, he did this, I thought that, gee, it's a foolish thing to do, but since it was a war, that he's gonna get punished anyway, so it was better off that he would commit suicide by himself instead of going to court and everything. Because look at Tojo, he committed suicide and he couldn't kill himself and then finally they court martialed him and he got hung and died. He didn't want to do that. So that's why they call that the real yamato damashii, you know, Japanese spirit.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.