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HM: But, Parker was a real nice guy, and I got to know him fairly well because of these crazy stunts. In the morning, in this, this class I would have one hour of lecture and then the rest of the day was free for me, so I used to goof around a lot. Used to -- and then Parker, when he wasn't lecturing, he would tell me all his disaffection about it. I mean you recall, (he) being a first lieutenant, whereas in his civilian job, he used to run a big office of district attorney and attorney people. So, he was telling me one time about how they got the machine that was the key to cracking Code Magic. This was -- all these crypto machines at that time were based on this German invention that was patented in 1926, in Europe. And the machine was built because commercial banks and different entities wanted to crypto their information through the main teletype system. And the guy that invented that system was the same guy that made the Klineschmidt Perforator, which was the basis for the high-speed data transmission stuff. So all these things are kinda interrelated really. And so he told me the story about how they absconded this Japanese naval lieutenant and he brought this crypto machine. This was in 1940. And he was on the train from San Francisco to Washington DC and this was the, one of these non-stop trains, but for this specific event they needed that machine that he was carrying to be examined overnight. So they had this train break down all of a sudden in, in St. Louis. And he was attracted to this female person, and he put the unit that he was carrying -- he was not supposed to leave, get it out of his sight at all costs -- and he had put it in the hotel safe because this woman entranced him. During the time it was in the hotel safe they got it out, and then they took it all apart, they photographed every part of it, figured out how it was gonna work, put it all back together, put it back into the hotel safe. The next morning, unbeknownst to him, he picks it up and he goes to Washington, DC.

TI: Okay so this was before the war so he had diplomatic immunity, but they knew he had this machine.

HM: Well, this is what Parker tells me.

TI: Now Parker, was he -- he wasn't in the military? This was just a story that he had heard?

HM: Yeah. Because he had worked with a guy that was involved in this case.

TI: Okay. Got it.

HM: And so I says, "Parker, either you're giving me a line of crap here -- either that or this is something that nobody else has talked about." Because in one of the classes that we have in Counterintelligence Corps, it is about crypto analysis techniques, enigma system, the ultra system, Code Magic, that kind of stuff, how invalid some of these systems are, what the attributes are, and so forth. They don't get into the details of it, but they tell you what the stories are. So, well Parker had all kinds of other things that he told me about that I wasn't aware of. And he was just a whole repository of these spy stories. And that was the first time I ever heard of Richard Sorge, and he was a master spy in Japan for the Russians. But he had all this thing in his head. He, he was an extremely intelligent individual. He was totally disaffected by the army. He wanted to get out any way he, he could possibly get out. He wanted to get back into civilian role, because his salary was now undermining his economic security and the whole bit. And he was mad at the army. And he was a -- we got to be pretty good friends. We used to go eat together. And he introduced me to this guy that was a, the, the chief cook at the officers' mess. And he was a Hawaiian kid. And he used to make tsukemono and all this kind of stuff in the back of his kitchen operation. And every so often he'd say, "Hey, I got a new batch of tsukemono, come on back here." And Parker and I and a couple other Nihonjin guys, we'd go back to the rear end of the kitchen there, and we would eat ochazuke and some of this other stuff that he prepared.

TI: Whatever happened to Parker, career-wise?

HM: He became -- well there's a building named after him in Los Angeles. The Parker Building. It's a -- well he got way up -- he became the head of the police department at one point. He got way up in the ladder. He was a smart guy. There's nothing that can hold him back.

TI: Interesting.

HM: So, but he was a very disaffected officer at that point. But he wanted to have a little bit of fun and here, here's this Nihonjin guy willing to become a victim of ridicule. And in the classes the hakujins have never seen a Japanese being interviewed. They don't know what the manner -- mannerisms are, nothing.

TI: Well out of curiosity, because of his law degree, did you ever talk about the incarceration during World War II?

HM: Oh, yeah, yeah. He, he was -- said that's totally invalid. They should have let you guys out immediately as soon as the Supreme Court cases came up. He was well aware of some of the things that went on. And so, he was a kind of a bright light for me. He was a hakujin guy that knows all this stuff, and willing to talk, and we have some common interests of trying to get out of the service. He was a very good person to me. And during this interval, when I was in Counterintelligence assignment --

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.