<Begin Segment 10>

TI: Any other stories about Tule Lake that you can remember that stand out?

WS: Well, I was winding coil for making the Tule Lake, or the Japanese broadcasts come in and receive any kind of radio. So that people would ask me to make their radio so that you could hear the Japanese broadcasts.

TI: So you had coil that it was like an antenna that you could attach to radios, so they could get a better signal? Is that what you were doing?

WS: Yes.

TI: And so people with the coil could hear broadcasts from Japan.

WS: Yeah.

TI: And so I'm curious, I mean, at the end of the war, when Japan surrendered, there were many Japanese at Tule Lake that didn't believe that. They thought that Japan was going to win the war. So what did the broadcasts say? Were they listening to Japan and that's where they got that idea, or what were they listening to?

WS: Well, there was that emperor's broadcast which was giving out the surrender word.

TI: And so when people in Tule Lake heard that, what was the reaction?

WS: I don't know. "That's a lie."

TI: Oh, so many people thought that it was not the emperor, it was a hoax or a lie?

WS: Yeah.

TI: What did you think when you heard that?

WS: Well, I was hearing all kinds of things coming through, so I figured that whatever, it's the truth, so there wasn't anything to dispute what they were saying.

TI: Because I interviewed some people, and they talk about how their parents all the way up until they got to Japan, so they went back to Japan, and it was when they got to Japan, they realized that Japan had lost. And many of them were just so grief-stricken, they were so sad. Up to that point, they thought Japan had won the war.

WS: Yeah.

TI: Interesting. How about the administration, the U.S. government administration at Tule Lake? Didn't they announce that the war was over, and didn't people believe them?

WS: Yeah, after the war was over, so as of September the 3rd or the 5th or somewhere around there, we were free to go anywhere.

TI: How about the news of the atomic bomb?

WS: The what?

TI: The news about the atomic bomb, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

WS: Oh, yeah?

TI: How did people react to that news?

WS: Well, as far as that word was concerned, our electrical department supervisor was a Caucasian with the name of Roper. Roper, and he was the electrical department supervisor, and he was naturally listening to these broadcasts, too. And he says, "Well, after all, the atomic bomb and all that was, it's true," so what could you do?

TI: But were the Japanese sad about the atomic bomb?

WS: What?

TI: Were people sad when they heard the news, or were they happy because the war was over? Because pretty much everywhere else --

WS: It's kind of hard to say what they were thinking.

TI: So people didn't really say, they just listened.

WS: Yeah.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.