Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Tokio Yamane Interview
Narrator: Tokio Yamane
Interviewers: Sachiko Takita-Ishii, Yoko Murakawa, Noriko Kawakami
Location: Japan
Date: May 23, 2004
Densho ID: denshovh-ytokio-01-0013

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[Translated from Japanese]

I1: The administration was still operated by WRA. The military was taking over the security section under the agreement with the WRA. So, it was not under martial law. Martial law was not declared. The administration did a lot of cover-ups to hide issues like the torture.

TY: Unarmed people were pushed into a coal mine and tear-gassed.

I1: And it would be a big problem if it is not under martial law.

TY: It sure would be. They had many issues they didn't want the public to find out.

I2: When was the correspondence made to discuss that martial law was not declared?

I1: I am thinking about the same timeframe. So, it was in 1944. They must have been a discussion. Are we under martial law or not?

TY: Why were we handed over to the military?

I1: That's right.

TY: The military had nothing to do with us. It was not under martial law.

I1: All the books I have read mentioned that it was under martial law. I never questioned it and kept writing, "Martial law was declared, and the military stepped in." However, now I am surprised to see this conversation among MPs, "Are we under martial law?" "No, we are not," "We are not?" I mainly referred to the resources from the Department of Justice this time and didn't do much research on the military documents. I looked at them at the end and thought "wow." I missed to see that in the past. This is a document Roger Daniels and others often refer to. He must have read the document but hasn't seen this part. So, even he writes, "under martial law."

I2: It seems hard to miss.

I1: It seems so. I assume he has seen the documents, but maybe he didn't pay enough attention to them. He might not have been interested in this area. I just wanted to find out what kind of agreement they had. What was the agreement between WRA and the military? That's how I started to dig deeper...

<End Segment 13> - Copyright (c) 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.