<Begin Segment 24>

TI: Going back to your brother, when, what, what type of service did your brother have during the war with, what did he do?

HM: Well he was in Counter Intelligence Corps, and that later became a part of the reason why I got into Counter Intelligence Corps, because of my brother's reputation and his experience that caused the review officer that I had, to accept me into the CIC.

TI: So when you say counterintelligence, is that the same as Military Intelligence Service, the MIS? Or is this different?

HM: No, it's a little bit different. You're going after... military intelligence is to gather information and analyze it and so forth. Counter Intelligence is to go catch, catch guys...

TI: Okay.

HM: ...that are doing intelligence work.

TI: And where, where did he serve, was it in the Pacific?

HM: Yeah. And he ended up in the 441st in Tokyo in, MacArthur's (GHQ) area. And he served in the war crimes commission trials. But his Japanese was not so great, and he had no legal background so they... he started off in Hideki Tojo's defense team and because his Japanese wasn't good enough, his legal expertise was zilch, they kept on bouncing him down. And they used to try to, in those war crime trials I guess they used to try to get the prosecution that has the best background and the best linguistic capabilities. And the guys that are not so good, they put on the defense side. So he ended up with a guy named General Nomura, and he was the guy that helped do the R and D for the balloon bombs that they sent up. And you know some of them landed in Oregon and on the West Coast of the United States. And some of them went up as high as Canada I guess. And ironically he... this guy happens to become a director for TDK, the magnetic tape outfit.

TI: Nomura did, the General?

HM: Yes.

TI: Okay.

HM: And he was an engineer by trade and he was, he was an electrical engineer and his specialty was magnetics. And therefore, after he got through with the military criminal type sentencing, he became part of TDK. And then TDK's board was part of the organization that happened to control part of this ultrasonic company that I finally ended up with in Tokyo. It's just a matter of just a rare coincidence. And this guy was a member of the board which helped negotiate the process with this company and X-Onics Corporation of San Diego. We did a technical tie up. But that was years to come, it was just by coincidence.

TI: Well what was his reaction when he found out who you were that his... your brother...

HM: Well, first of all, this was in 1961, when after the board meeting when we discussed this negotiation for a technical tie up. He asked me if I had a relative named George Kazuo. I says, "How'd you know that?" And he says, "Well he happened to be a member of my defense team." I guess my brother provided such poor defense for him that they had to settle for a two-year [Laughs] sentencing structure for him. You know, to be a R and D person for a weapons development process and be deemed a war criminal, that's pretty sad. But anyway that's what he ended up with.

TI: Well that's...

HM: Well he was very thankful that he only had to serve two years.

TI: That's an interesting story.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.