<Begin Segment 18>

MN: Now, in that situation, how did you feel when you first heard that Japan had lost the war, that Japan was surrendering? How did you feel about that?

JD: Well, the story that we all gathered around the radio when the Emperor made announcement that, he didn't really say, "We surrender." He said, like apology from him that we have, there'll be no more continuation of this activity from the government, and it never mentioned the word surrender, but people knew what he meant. We were, before the end of the war we were being trained and stigmatized that we will not, Japan is a country that we don't, we don't think about prisoners. We don't think about surrender. We're gonna fight to the death, and we were trained to bamboo attack, the village people, against the machine gun, and that's how we were, mentality was, so when you heard this emperor speak that we won't continue this war it was a relief for sure, but then, people who had lost a son and father at war really grieved of this. I mean, I understand some of the officers committed suicide then, that they couldn't take the agony that we surrendered or came to this point. Such a, such a stigma in their minds of Japan's a country that never surrenders, so that was throughout the air in the atmosphere of Japan. And of course, a lot of people tried to get back on their feet in any way they can, and the food was scarce anyways, so they start to kind of, from the city or whatever, whatever they had, they'd go spread out the city to find food from the farmer, barter for food from the clothes they had, whatever valuables they had, give to the farmers to exchange for food, rice, vegetables, whatever they could. So it was a really, atmosphere of really a strange atmosphere, situation. Sad situation, for sure.

MN: Having lived through something like this, did you have nightmares?

JD: I'm frequently asked, but I, maybe we try to shut it out of our mind. Fortunately for me, we lived in the country, we were farmers, so we had no starvation problem. It's the city folks that really suffered. And our, both of our uncles, my aunt's husband came home and then my uncle came home eventually from, and came home without injury. He said he was in the South Pacific also, and battalion, Hiroshima Battalion, he was a (flag bearer), and came home and start to, and then married. He married his cousin, and it was a typical thing to do, I guess, in Japan. And so she was a schoolteacher and he used to work for the Kirin beer company, so he was rehired by, so for him it was okay to get, get back on his feet, and he'd commute on a bicycle, just outside, this side of Hiroshima city. So, and living in the same house we did, there was a room above the barn, so to speak, so he lived there, made a home for himself there and gave birth to a couple children there after they married. So I was in the, in the role of babysitting after the baby was born. [Laughs] I had a baby on my back and studying or cooking rice, so that was a mode of such a Japanese style of living.

MN: Now, you're still very young. You're still in, you're about fourteen at this time.

JD: Yeah, when the war ended.

MN: And your father was working for the occupational forces.

JD: Yes.

MN: Did you have any contact, did you work with the U.S. occupational forces?

JD: You mean through United States?

MN: When you were in Japan, since you spoke English.

JD: Oh, yeah, I was able to work kind of a minor translator, and I didn't get paid. I'd just, just go there and help out because I could translate and it was very helpful for them when they were making the rounds, doing search, research, security type thing. I mentioned about my uncle who was teaching English, and my father wanted to hire him, so when he'd write he'd, just beautiful English, grammar, grammatically correct. When he started to speak he couldn't speak it, speak the language. [Laughs] 'Cause it doesn't connect from the sound of, what the daily sounds sound like to what his writing, so we couldn't hire him, so very disappointing that. But he remained a teacher until he retired.

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