<Begin Segment 16>

TI: Going back to Japan after the war, and you were stationed there, did you see very much in terms of the, just the Japanese population? Because I've read and talked to people, and they say it was really hard for a lot of Japanese. After the war, they were still rebuilding, and I remember some Japanese American families, we'd send, like, care packages to Japan.

HY: Those things, you know, Tom, they may have needed it, but remember, I'm almost ten years after World War II, so that makes it... when I was there, there was very little resentment against the United States.

TI: Well, just how about the economy and things like that?

HY: Oh, it wasn't booming, but it was not bad. It was not bad. They were building, they were rebuilding Hiroshima, but like I say, Hiroshima was still pretty devastated.

TI: How about their reaction to you as a Japanese American? Was there ever any surprise when...

HY: Well, you know, I think the funniest -- not funny -- to me, it's kind of amusing that we had a couple of housemaids and they were so deferential to me, it was almost like I was a god there. And I'd never been treated like a god before. Although they were very, very highly respectful, and the Japanese in general were highly respectful of me. I think maybe because I was a U.S. Naval officer, I'd go out, and if I was recognized, because usually I'd go in civilian clothing. But every now and then I'm in uniform, they'd see me. And one of the chief managers of the hospital, he was a retired Japanese army colonel, and he was so respectful of me. Here I'm maybe twenty years his younger. And of course, I was the only Japanese American officer there on the base, so maybe that made a difference I don't know.

BY: That's interesting.

HY: But I was unusual, I think, on that base.

TI: Or how about on the other side, the American side? Because of your Japanese ancestry, were you ever treated differently?

HY: Oh, yeah. I remember going out in the streets in Iwakuni, window shopping and all that. I was looking at something in a display window and a young hakujin boy, nineteen, twenty years old, he said, "Hey, boy-san, what is that?" [Laughs] And here I was probably twenty, thirty years older than him, he called me a "boy-san."

TI: And you're also a navy officer.

HY: He didn't know that, though, because I was in civilian clothes. So that's the only thing that I remember, when he called me "boy-san." I didn't let him know, "Hey, I'm a naval officer," never told him that.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.