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gky: How, exactly what did you do with the Occupation after the war?

HA: I was with, again, another special group which is called the Allied Prisoner of War Recovery Team. And they had -- each country is represented by an officer, and I was supposed to be the guide. So I went in to Japan with the 11th Airborne Division when they first went in by plane into Atsugi airstrip, and we proceed to process any prisoners in Japan, American prisoners or allied prisoners in Japan back to Okinawa so that they can, in other words, be rehabilitated and so forth. That was my duty, to be the guide. And I think we spent a month or so doing that. And I ended up in Sendai and I came back and I was assigned to this Supreme Command Allied Powers Economic Scientific Division, and I was in the rationing and price control. So I was the language officer for that section for so many months, and then I came home. So I didn't do too much, but I noticed that the rationing price control had enough influence where, you know, it could make it easier for the Japanese public. As you become an interpreter, rather than an interrogator, an interpreter, you try to get each side to talk to each other and there is some influence that you could place. And I guess as a Nisei, you always kind of try to help the Japanese look a little better. Their viewpoint is a little bit, you know, more sympathetically looked at. So, we really did have a lot of sympathy for the Japanese because we'd seen how much they had suffered and how much they were suffering then.

gky: Japanese is very much a language of nuance and class, which some people, some non-speaking Japanese, or non-speak -- people who don't speak Japanese might not understand. You know, like men talk differently than women...

HA: Yeah, yeah.

gky: ...and lower class talks different, you know, there's polite Japanese, there's not so polite, so...

HA: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

gky: So, it was those nuances that you were trying to get across?

HA: No -- well, when you, like an attorney does. He always makes his client look better than the opposition, right? So what you do is you kind of have certain influences in how it's being presented. And I really believe that the Niseis did a lot of that, which the Japanese public probably don't know about. I think it wasn't for personal gain, it was trying to help somebody else who was less fortunate. So, I don't feel bad about doing that, yeah.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2000 Bridge Media and Densho. All Rights Reserved.