<Begin Segment 21>

SY: So then after you worked in Hokkaido, did you end up in Tokyo?

FO: No. After I finished my duty in Hokkaido, we went to the replacement depot and then we came home. The funny part about all this is that when we got to Japan and our boys, our team, we had a team of ten language people, and we split up to go to various outfits, well, those people that stayed in with the center of the group with the officers, they had it easy because they're the ones that set up the rest camps and stuff in Japan. Now, I didn't know what an onsen was. These guys had set up this hotel for a rest camp that had that Japanese bath. So when I got there, every Friday, we asked our division people to give us meat. So we'd take that up every weekend and have sukiyaki. Them were the good old days.

SY: So on the whole, though, it was probably more difficult than it was...

FO: Yeah. I got into more damn trouble. This team leader that went through all the battles with the 77th Division, before he left he says, "Frank" -- before he went home -- he says, "Frank, I'm going to send you a letter. Please forward it." So I told him, "Okay." So sure enough, after he got the letter, I mean, after he went home, he talked to his folks and I received a letter asking me to forward this letter to a town in Honshu someplace. Well, MacArthur put out an order, there's no communication between the Japanese and the U.S. occupying troops. So I sent the letter. I sent it through a Japanese guy. Well, this guy that got the letter, he wrote back and said, "Thank you." So the CIC picked it up. You know, what's a Japanese guy writing to Omatsu about? So some of these guys at the CIC, they called me and they said, "Hey, you're in trouble." I said, "For what?" "Did you send any letters to someplace?" I said, "Yeah. I didn't send it personally, I gave it to a Japanese to send it." "Well, that's it, the guy answered and you're in trouble because he mentions your name." Oh, crap, so I thought I was going to get court martialed.

SY: But nothing happened, huh?

FO: No, the thing is, I got called in and I went in front of the commanding general of our division, me and my officer. So I explained everything. Then he says, "You know, Frank, you're lucky." I said, "Why, sir?" He says, "We're getting ready to go home." The division was going to go home, so, "We're gonna leave the punishment to your officer, the MIS officer. So let him do what punishment he thinks is fair." "What are we gonna do?" Says, "Oh, we're gonna go for a ride. The heck with it." [Laughs] That was my punishment, to drive them around.

SY: That was lucky. That sounded like it was pretty serious then.

FO: Yeah, evidently.

SY: Even though it was an innocent thing, it was very serious.

FO: Yeah, it was the CIC boys that picked up this stuff. You know when I was in Tokyo, I took a temporary leave and went to Tokyo for a week to see if I can find any of my relatives. And I saw this, these guys all lined up, civilian and everything, they're all lined up. And they were waiting for somebody to go into this building, so I see a limousine pull up, and it's General MacArthur. So everybody was all by his staff, but I was trained to salute an officer, so I saluted him. He saluted back and everybody looked at me.

SY: Were you in uniform?

FO: Yeah, I was in uniform. I had a tie on. MacArthur never wore a tie. His people were open, we always had to wear a tie. So I said, "Good morning, Sir," and he replied, "Good morning," and he walked away. So everybody looks at me. "You know the guy?" "You know the guy?" "Yeah, he's my uncle's friend." [Laughs]

SY: But in visiting Tokyo, and even in Hokkaido, what was the, what was it like in Tokyo after the war?

FO: Everything was a mess in Tokyo. But the Japanese, they cleaned up everything. In the Philippines, it was a mess. They left everything there, and they would say, "Look what the Japanese did." But in Japan, they cleaned everything up, even in Hiroshima, they cleaned up so the cars can go back and forth and stuff like that.

SY: But was it very, there was a lot of poverty, though, in terms of the Japanese people?

FO: Yeah, Japanese and in the Philippines.

SY: And how did your mother's relatives do?

FO: I never did get to know them. I got to know my dad's older brother in Hokkaido.

SY: Oh, he was in Hokkaido?

FO: Yeah, he was farming in Hokkaido, and my dad wrote me a letter saying that he's in Hokkaido in such and such a town, so I asked for a leave. And I got onto this train. Transportation was crowded. You don't know how crowded crowded is. They pulled twenty people off the train for me to sit down, so that I can sit down, the trainmaster.

SY: Because you were in the army.

FO: Yeah, I was in the army. And you could hear some of these guys that got kicked off grumbling. I paid no attention to them. And we went, I went along to this town, then I had to transfer, the guy at the railroad station said, "You have to transfer, and then you have to go to the end of the line. And that's the town that you're uncle's at," he tells me. I said, "Okay." So a bunch of guys were on there and they were disgruntled because only one guy got on, and all these guys got kicked out. So I saw this old lady, grandma type. I called her over and I told her to sit down. I gave her cigarettes and candy and we talked. Everybody else was all ears. So we went to the end of the line, but as I transferred, I got out onto this branch line. You know, in Japan, when a soldier dies, his ashes are carried by another soldier back home. So he has that square. I got on this train, and at the next stop, all these guys with the ashes got on. Gee, I didn't know what to do.

SY: There were a whole bunch of them?

FO: Oh, there were several of them, and they all stand like this, and everybody's bowing and everything. So I just walked out to the outside of the car. Then I met my, I went to the station, and I sent a telegram to my uncle saying that I'm coming. Well, I beat the telegram there. So the stationmaster called one of his guys, and he knew my uncle so he told him to take me there. So, god, I never walked so much in my life, because it snowed and we had about two or three feet with snow. And, you know, I wasn't ready for that kind of exercise.

SY: Hokkaido was cold. And how was your uncle, what was his reaction when he saw you?

FO: Well, he was, he looked at me and he says, and I looked at him and I said, "My dad looks like you," I told him. And he said, "Yeah, you're an Omatsu. You have certain trait that your father had." So he greeted me warmly. But he had three daughters and a wife, and they lived in this one hatch. And then you sleep on the first floor and then you step down to the kitchen, which is dirt.

SY: But they lived like that before the war as well, so it was very farm...

FO: Yeah, they're used to it, you know.

SY: Right. And this was, how many siblings did your father have, do you know?

FO: No, I just knew the uncle, then he had ten kids or something like that.

SY: Wow. So you did get to meet some of them, that's nice.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.