<Begin Segment 19>

SF: Can we go back a little bit, and right before the war ended, how was the Japanese population looking and preparing for the, what they must've thought was the Americans invading Japan, right?

JM: Well, lot of people were afraid of Americans, because the rumor is the girls, the young girls, the Americans come up, they're gonna kill you and they'll take you as this and that, so that never come out from the shelter or anything like that, but it was complete different story from what Japanese people said and American people.

TI: And what happened after...

JM: Yeah.

SF: So do you think that most people were willing to fight to the death with... you hear stories of people, like women preparing --

JM: Oh yeah, bamboo? Yeah. They were trained for that, too. In fact, in my wife's age, too, they were training for that, too, 'cause if the Americans come that they don't have any weapon, but get that bamboo and kill them. That was more common. At the schools, too, they were trained like that.

SF: So people would have really done that?

JM: Well, I'm pretty sure they would've, because look at Okinawa where the school kids, they jumped off the cliff and did all the suicide and everything. They were told, too, that if the Americans come, that you people get killed, raped and killed and that's it. So, but it was complete different story all the way around.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.