<Begin Segment 3>

BF: So they knew right -- well, I guess you're in uniform.

WM: Facially, you know, I'm identical to everybody else in Japan, since both my parents are Japanese. But once they see a person in an American uniform speaking Japanese, for some reason they were very surprised.

BF: Hmm. So they didn't think of you as Japanese when you were in the uniform.

WM: They did not, except, I confronted racism in Japan, in the sense that I tried to go to the British headquarters in Tokyo. I don't know why I was headed there, I had something to do there. And I tried to get in, but the guards would block me, the British soldiers had bayonets that blocked my way. I was in military uniform, by the way, U.S. army. I happened to be a second lieutenant at that time. And they would not permit me to go in. And I asked why and they said, "Well, our orders are to keep all Orientals out." So he saw me as an Oriental, not as an American soldier.

BF: So your uniform wasn't persuasive.

WM: Yeah, that's right. And I, the thought that went through my mind at that time was, "My God, where do I find freedom, complete absence of racism?" I endured it all my life in the United States, my country, and yet I come now to the homeland of my ancestors and I run into the same. For being Japanese, I'm not allowed into a building. Can't figure that one out.

BF: Did you have family in Japan that you knew?

WM: Uh-huh. My sister was living in Hiroshima, actually Kure, which is just on the edge of Hiroshima. Her husband, I think, was a naval architect. She was raised in -- she was born in the United States but raised in Japan, because my mother thought that a good Japanese girl was not going to get a proper education in the United States, so she had to go to Japan and learn the koto and the flower arrangement and tea ceremony. Then she married a Japanese guy and had two children. He was killed in the August bombing, the atomic bomb. And the two children suffered, one suffered head injuries, burning, and the girl suffered injuries to her face by flying glass.

BF: What was that like, having such a close relative who suffered terribly during the war?

WM: Well, there was nothing I could do about it, I mean, war is hell, as they say, and this is part of it. I mean, you know, no use agonizing over it.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.