<Begin Segment 32>

TY: We finally arrived in Japan. A high-ranking American officer said, "We need your help here. Your bilingual ability is indispensable for rebuilding Japan after the war." He said to us, "Please work with us." I said, "I hear what you are saying, but we renounced our American citizenship and came back to Japan as Japanese. We will not immediately start to work for the U.S. government. We have no desire for that." Then he asked me, "What would convince you to work with us?" I replied, "If the Japanese government asks us, I will work with you." I told him that I had come back to Japan with my own will, and I couldn't just start working with him as he requested. I said, "It has to be requested by the Japanese government." A Japanese government official happened to be standing near us, and he told us, "What this American officer just told you is very true. We are desperately in need of bilingual staff. Please work with us." There was no reason to object, right? We needed a job to support ourselves in Japan, and we decided to work with them. I requested one thing, "All of us want to go back to our hometown once before we start working for you. I suggested they schedule the time and date to meet for further discussion. I told them we were not disagreeing to work with them. An MP escorted ambassador Oshima and other diplomats somewhere else. We were told to go to the Kurihama Center for the repatriates and get ready for the return trip to our home. They told us that the occupation army is arranging the train to send us home. We didn't have to arrange our own transportation. When we arrived at the facility, we saw repatriates from the Philippines. Bodies of dead children were left everywhere on the ground. They were all yellow. What was that yellow thing?

I1: Jaundice?

TY: Was that jaundice? Children were dead with their bellies swelled up. They were naked.

I1: Malnutrition.

TY: The bodies were everywhere. I asked the officer there, "Why are you leaving them there? If somebody dies, you should at least take the body out of the sight and bury it." He told me that he didn't have enough staff members to take care of that. I said, "This facility is full of parents and children. There are many people." I suggested the youth group members to take care of it by ourselves. We gathered the bodies in one place for burial or for cremation. We didn't know which. Finally, the official came and told us, "We will take care of them." In two to three hours, all the bodies were taken away. We figured we did not want to stay there for a long time. We wanted to go home. The occupation army soldiers came and told us the train was ready for us. He asked us to walk to the Yokosuka Station. So we walked to Yokosuka from Kurihama.

I2: That is a long way.

TY: Yes. We were all on board the occupation army's trains, one to go north and the other to go south. We decided to meet at the Daiichi Seimei building one month later and took off.

I1: So they weren't the trains for demobilized soldiers. It wasn't overcrowded or had people hanging onto the train.

TY: We had coffee and cola on the train. It was nice. Most of us got a job and got paid in a month and ended up working for the occupation army for four or five years.

I1: Do you remember how much your salary was? Monthly...

TY: It was 400 yen at that time.

I1: I don't know how much it was worth.

TY: 400 yen.

I1: Was it enough to live a decent life in Japan?

TY: Yes.

I1: Was it a little better than average? Middle? Or not much?

TY: Maybe average. We were hired as Japanese employees. I was granted the highest salary but don't remember how much I got paid. I completely forgot. Anyway, we had some spending money and were able to send money to the parents.

I1: So, that was decent pay.

TY: That must have been pretty good. We probably were making more than other Japanese people working somewhere else.

<End Segment 32> - Copyright (c) 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.