<Begin Segment 26>

MN: Now is it correct to say that you shipped overseas on March 1946?

KM: Uh-huh.

MN: Where did you ship out from?

KM: I think it went out of Seattle.

MN: So if it went out of Seattle, I guess it didn't stop in Hawaii?

KM: No. Went directly.

MN: When you landed in Yokohama in 1946, what did that area look like?

KM: Well, it was all devastated, yeah, right. And then I would say from Yokohama, after I got out, I was billeted at the finance building, which is in Tokyo. Tokyo was all devastated, too, at that time.

MN: What were your main responsibilities?

KM: Oh, it was a menial job. We were supposed to be sort of a liaison between the people that's supposed to take care of the Radio Tokyo building, so we were more or less assigned to, at the job get done by them or... were telling 'em that this had to be done.

MN: Now when you were stationed in Japan, were you able to visit your relatives in Nagano?

KM: Yes. In fact, my mother, since I was stationed in Japan, she used to send me care packages that I could go to see my relatives, so the relatives, especially my mother's side, were always looking forward to my visits to give their care packages.

MN: How were they doing? How did they survive the war?

KM: How did they survive? They just survived, yeah. Because in Nagano, in a rural area and it's isolated, it's in the mountains there. It was no sense in them, U.S. or anybody bombing that place, there's nothing there, just the farms. So they wanted, the U.S. probably bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki because of the military applications that they had there.

MN: Now, do you know what sort of items your mother was sending to your relatives?

KM: Well, probably like soap and like sweets, probably like See's candies... not See's candies, Hershey Kisses. 'Cause they were wrapped in foil. Mostly I guess she was sending stuff that's edible.

MN: Now why didn't your mother just ship it directly to them?

KM: They couldn't. I mean, it's faster to just ship to the APO address, so it would get to me faster.

MN: Now I've heard stories where packages from the U.S. were opened and things were stolen. Did that happen to any of your packages?

KM: No. Most of the packages that came from my mother to me were probably not confiscated. Maybe the others that you're talking about were directly to the people in Japan.

MN: Now, among the U.S. Army soldiers, was it common to be selling in the black market?

KM: Very prevalent. Very prevalent.

MN: Did you or your friends dabble in that?

KM: Oh, I didn't dabble in it. In fact, my source of cigarettes and stuff like that was, it was, right in my building there's a few guys that were, I don't know if they were, they used to resell it, they must have. But some buyer would be there, so I didn't have to go out to some outskirts there toting the stuff there, black market.

MN: What happened to a U.S. soldier if they got caught?

KM: I don't know. Fact, the only ones that... I can't even recall any kind of a soldier being court martialed for that kind of thing.

MN: Now other than visiting your relatives at Nagano, were you able to visit other areas like Hiroshima or Nagasaki?

KM: Yeah. I just went through Hiroshima and so that was it. And I just see the devastation, and that's, you don't want to see it anymore. Once is enough.

MN: How did you feel about seeing that?

KM: Oh, it makes you sick. Yeah, that's right.

MN: Were you able to travel anywhere else for fun?

KM: Huh?

MN: Were you able to travel anywhere else for fun?

KM: No, I didn't do any... I mean, I didn't want to travel just to see. I used to travel to, like, Hakone or something to go to the onsen spas. But the devastated areas was, I didn't care to go and look at it.

MN: How were you able to afford going to an onsen in Hakone?

KM: Oh, all you needed was any kind of ration or cigarettes or something like that, they were more valuable to the recipients than the yen that they had.

MN: You kind of bartered?

KM: Yeah, bartered.

MN: Now you were supposed to come home in October 1946 but you didn't. What happened?

KM: Oh, what happened was that I, one of my friends asked me to take a package of stuff home to his wife, and anyway, I got stopped at the, at Zama which was the port of embarkation at, was supposed to get on a plane to go, get back to U.S. Anyway, the CID came and asked me if I knew this guy, and I said, "Yeah." Well, they knew that I had a, I received a package for him, to take home for him. So I had to take the thing and they opened up all the containers, and it was nothing but jewelry, diamonds, pearls, you name it. Anyway, so I had to stick around before I could go home, because the trial of this guy was, involved. In Japan, I guess, the favorite thing is the orei, so he was working as the liaison between the U.S. Army and the Japanese government. And anyway, Mitsubishi company or whatever was giving him orei every time a big project came, and so anyway, later on he used to demand a percentage of it. So anyway, he accumulated quite a bit of money, so he was using that money to buy various items to send home. Anyway, I got caught with it. So I had to stick around, so anyway, he ended up eight years in Leavenworth. But I haven't seen him since.

MN: So how long were you delayed because of this mess?

KM: I was delayed from October to January. And then on the way home in the ship I went up to sickbay because I was urinating black, and anyway, the doctor looked at me and said, "I know you're Japanese and you're supposed be yellow, but you're not supposed to be that yellow." So anyway, I had hepatitis B or something like that, which is like yellow jaundice. But I ended up in the hospital, and then at that time, people were getting hepatitis or that, anyway, from inoculations of the influenza shots from the previous person that got a shot, I guess the syringe or something gets a little blood up in you and gives it to the next guy. So anyway, there was a whole ward of yellow jaundice or hepatitis people in Washington where I was at Madigan General Hospital.

MN: How long were you at Madigan?

KM: Madigan? So I was there from January or February of '47 'til the discharge in September of '47. So six months.

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.