<Begin Segment 3>

gky: Why did you decide not to make the army a career?

KA: Well, I really was gung ho when I went into the service, you know. And once the war was over and things changed, I mean, I didn't like the idea that, the discipline like saluting and stuff like that. So I decided that wasn't the career for me. I wanted to go into something else, so I decided to come home.

gky: What did you finally go into?

KA: Well, it's a funny thing. I went back to business school, you know. Of course, I did about four and a half years with the civil service in Japan after I got discharged, but I ended up in what they call property management with Hughes Aircraft later.

gky: Did you, were you in the same kind of job in Japan that you would have been had you been military? Some people tell me that they got out of the army in Japan and the next day they reported in to work, sat at the same desk, did exactly the same thing, only they got paid differently and they weren't wearing a uniform. Were you in that situation, too?

KA: No, at the time I was being... leaving for the States, there was no offer for linguists at the time. This was December of 19, early December of 1945. So if they were offering a civilian job at that time, I think I would have stayed because I knew that my parents needed help. But I couldn't see myself being a GI and being able to help them, you know, so I came home. But after I got back and Harry got back and Harry wanted to go back to school, I thought it was about time that I did my share. So I decided -- around that time there was a notification saying that they were seeking linguists for Occupation forces, so that's when I applied and I did return to Japan in September of 1945. And I didn't know what kind of job it was going to be, but I ended up in translation. And I wasn't a strong linguist, you know. I understood Japanese but my English portion was very weak because, as you know, I went back to Japan when I was ten; I came back when I was fifteen. That was in 1938. The war began in 1941 so there was only three-year, less than a three-year period that I went back to school trying to learn English. And I completely forgot most of my English, so everything... I started back in the eighth grade. I mean, I left at ten years old, and you know how much English you have up until that time. And I missed a tremendous amount of period where I spoke no English at all. And, besides, like the construction of the English language, for instance, I didn't know what a verb was, a noun, or anything else, and here suddenly I get dumped into the eighth grade and I don't understand anything that's going along. They're talking about Constitution and stuff like that, you know, which is entirely foreign to me. The only thing I did have an advantage is I had a good math background, you know, when I came back. So anyway, when the military came along and I volunteered, I think I learned more during my service, three-year service, because I was attached to an organization called the Office of War Information [OWI], which was basically a propaganda type of operation at that time. So, I had some pretty strong... in fact, the fellow that I really admire, Clark Kawakami, he was an English major out of Harvard Who's Who. His father was Who's Who of Japan, and he was very strong in English. He was a Phi Beta [Kappa] out of Harvard, too, so I learned quite a bit from him, you know.

gky: You were attached to the OWI in Burma?

KA: Yes.

gky: What exactly did you do in Burma?

KA: Well, my job was to interrogate prisoners. After the first line troop had interrogated the prisoners, we were, our job basically was trying to convince the Japanese that the war that we were fighting was useless, that the cause they were fighting for was not right, and we were trying to convince them that they were really out there fighting a losing war, and hoping that they would surrender, you know. But, as Harry was saying, the Japanese were very well indoctrinated, no giving up type of attitude and stuff like that, and they believed in their cause because they were educated all along as to why they were fighting the wars for. They started out with China and they were in a pretty bad state, but yet they went on fighting and even fought the U.S. government. So their mind was set that they were, if you want to call that a holy war, they were fighting a holy war, you know, to preserve or to save their country. So our job was to try to, I guess, plead to their intellect saying that the war they were fighting is not really for the country, but to the wish of the zaibatsu, they call it, the people with the money, the people who had the power to manufacture and stuff like that, and also the military, the greed of the military. And so we were trying to talk to them in a sensible fashion to make them understand, hoping that the indoctrination they had all during their youth and adulthood were leading them rather than, you know, and misleading them so that they were really fighting a cause they shouldn't be very proud of. So it was a hard thing. We knew it was a very, very difficult task, but we had to try.

gky: How successful do you think you were?

KA: [Laughs] Well, I would say we might have touched some people. To give you an example -- I don't know if I told you this story -- I was interrogating all these prisoners. In fact, there was about three hundred of them and I was, you know, there was two of us doing most of the interrogation. And one of the questions we would ask says, "Have you ever seen our leaflet?" And several said, "Yes, we saw it, but we didn't believe it." You know, that was it. And I ran across a guy that seemed quite interested, and he had a leaflet in his possession. So in conversing with him, I said, "Have you seen the leaflet that we've been dropping?" And he said, "Yes." And so I said, "Well, what do you think about it? Did you believe anything that we were trying to say?" And he said, "No." So you know, here I thought, "Wow, this guy's going to tell me something nice, you know." And pretty soon I said, "By the way, I see you carrying the leaflets." In fact, he had not only the normal one, but he had one that said "Surrender." And so I said, "Wow, maybe this guy was willing to surrender." And I said, "I see that you have the leaflet in your possession. How come you're carrying it if you don't believe in it?" He said, "Oh, yes, but it makes good toilet paper." [Laughs] And boy, there went my ego, you know, just burst. I couldn't help but start laughing, you know. Because, here I thought, boy, I was waiting for a chance to use this thing, you know, but I never had the opportunity. But he didn't say that. He just said it made good toilet paper.

gky: When you went on to China, what did you do?

KA: Well, basically, when, if you understand the war in the Burma Theatre, the Allied forces there, especially the American forces, was there to open up the Burma Road because to resupply Chiang Kai-shek by airplane was, I mean, by plane is almost impossible. And so, what we wanted to do is open up the Burma Road, which is a land route into China, so that we could haul, you know, munitions, plane parts, and everything else into China. And that was basically the task of the American forces. Now the British was naturally interested in recovering Burma and all the other territory. And somewhat, the Chinese force was also there to help open up the Ledo Road. Once the Ledo Road was open, basically our task was over. Although propaganda-wise I think we could have stayed there, but don't tell me why the Office of War Information moved to China, but that's where we moved. And I don't know who did the propaganda after that, because the propaganda by the Office of War Information was not only the Japanese language, but we were dropping leaflets and doing broadcasts in various language telling the people in that area not to cooperate or help the Japanese. That was probably, you know, our task. So it would seem that the OWI would have stayed there to the very end, but they didn't. The operation moved into China. And my task was basically to continue interrogating the Japanese prisoners there, but I got sort of delayed for some reason. I was the youngest member, and we had four Japanese prisoner of war that was willing to, that were willing to help us in our propaganda phase. Because it was very important that we get their view as to how we should do the propaganda, and since they were willing to help us and they were convinced that the war that they were fighting was indeed wrong, you know, they were sold on the idea that what we were trying to tell them, that Japan was doing war that was not justified, you know. And they wanted to speed up the end of the war, so they were willing to help us. And they were educated people. One was a school teacher, one was a lieutenant, he was an engineer. Another one was very fluent in Chinese, but he was a college-educated guy. The third one was an average John Doe. We needed that, too, because in order to communicate to the regular John Doe, we felt that we needed an average person to look over these things. But since they were willing to help us, the organization decided to transport them into China. So, my task was to watch over them until there was transportation for us to fly over to China, and that's what I did. In fact, I took them to China when the war ended. I brought them back and turned them over to the British because any prisoners of war caught in that particular theater was turned over to the British.

gky: What years were you in the army?

KA: I was in from December '42 to December '45.

gky: Exactly three years.

KA: Three years, almost to the day.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2000 Bridge Media and Densho. All Rights Reserved.