<Begin Segment 17>

MN: When did you first start seeing the U.S. occupational forces coming in?

JD: The occupation force in Hiroshima came about the third, fourth week in Japan. Kaita area, which is, our area Higashi-Kaita-mura, there's a station Nakano-mura Kaita Eki, and then Mukainada, so the Kaita area became one, one camp for the occupation force. So my father who wanted to work, as I mentioned, became interpreter. He applied for a job there and took the exam, passed it, and became interpreter for the Armed Forces, and because of his expertise and knowledge of the people around there he became supervisor to hire workers to assemble at the camp, to make barracks for the soldiers, and then that became the main work for him, so he was hiring people from Japan, citizens to work. So we, and in that way my father did very well, in getting acquainted with the, the armed forces, and I remember inviting the soldiers to our home at night for dinner.

MN: So there was no hostility towards the United States that dropped this bomb on Hiroshima?

JD: At the beginning there's no thought process of that. Everyone was just trying to recover from the war damage. They're trying to get their lives together. As I mentioned, soldiers coming back from the war zone. There was one case I heard, one of my relatives in Echigo area, there's, near the airport, Narita Airport area, they said they got the news during the war that their son passed away in the war, died in the war, so they gave up, they had a funeral for him and so forth. And then after the war there was a knocking on the front door and there was this disheveled man standing and said, "I'm your son and just got back from war." The mother went to open the door, screamed and ran back, said she saw a ghost there. So the father came back and started talking to him, and indeed he was their son, they just, somehow the message got crossed, so there was that type of story. But he came back so... body was so broken up in the war and starvation and all that he didn't live too long after he got home. But there's stories like that, just, people just trying to get back into their homes. Probably a lot of people, soldiers came back and their home was just diminished, family scattered, they don't know where they were. And orphan living on the street, a lot of shoe shine boys came out and they were trying to make a living. It was really a horrible scene to see, a country lost the war, all the, the poor sight of the injured people, injured people, the soldiers that came back. Hospitalization was poor, money was not there. So devastated.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.