<Begin Segment 4>

TI: Now, let's go back to your story now, and you're -- so you're training for counterintelligence. Let's go on from there. So what happened next?

SK: So from there I was finally assigned to Japan -- to Tokyo. And, one day I, I was driving right by the Japanese Army Demobilization Bureau, and recalled the fact that I had promised a prisoner in New Guinea, in 1944, who asked for my name and address because he wanted to thank me after the war for what he claimed to be kindnesses that I had given him and other prisoners.

TI: Right. You told that story in the first interview, how...

SK: Yeah.

TI: ...and then how later on, we did the reunion. So we...

SK: Right.

TI: ...went ahead and told that story. So let's keep going -- or a question I have is, when you went back to Japan, did you look up your siblings?

SK: Yes. I found that, that my younger brother was a sergeant in the Japanese Army. And since he knew how to drive a truck, I suppose -- he and I used to drive the truck on the farm together near Spokane -- he was teaching novices how to drive a Japanese one-man tank, and had never left Japan, fortunately for him. The closest call he had was the day before what they refer to as the flash bomb -- pika-don -- flash bomb dropped, in reference to a, the A-bomb, he had gone through the city of Hiroshima on a train. And that was the closest call he had to being obliterated, I guess. So he survived. And because of his smattering knowledge of English, I suppose, he was the liaison officer from the Japanese side, supervising Japanese mechanics and coordinating with a American Air Force platoon assigned to this air field in Osaka, repairing damaged helicopters and planes from Vietnam, during the Vietnam War.

TI: This was Viet -- so is that -- is that, and that's when you got in touch with him?

SK: And I saw him twice while I was there in Vietnam.

TI: But when you first went to Japan, did you see him then?

SK: Oh, yes, because I found where he was.

TI: Well, explain to me how it felt seeing your brother, because this was one of the things your mother really wanted you to do...

SK: Yes.

TI: ...was to go to Japan and find --

SK: And through him I found, where my younger sister and my older sister was located. And of course, I conveyed all that back to my mother. And I'm sure she was fully satisfied that all her sib -- kids were alive and doing well. And none of them wanted to come back to the States because they all had taken out roots and had married and had families of their own. And none of their kids spoke English, of course.

TI: What were their lives like after the war? I mean, now that you meet them, and I've heard that life was difficult in Japan...

SK: It was.

TI: ...after the war.

SK: But I think the fact that I was in service was a source of pride for them, especially my younger brother, because the first time I saw him from Vietnam -- I visited him at his work site at the airport. And he said, "I want to show you something." So I thought he was (going to) show me a damaged plane or a helicopter. Instead, he took me in and led me to the American platoon that was assigned to the airfield, to introduce me and brag that this is my, my brother from Vietnam.

TI: The colonel that...

SK: [Laughs] Yeah. Right -- right.

TI: So his platoon would all have to salute you? [Laughs]

SK: Yeah. Very impressed. [Laughs] I guess they got a pretty good lesson in, in our kind of relationship.

TI: Uh-huh.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.