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gky: What do you think is the legacy with what you did with the MIS will leave?

KA: Well, it's only a hope, but I hope, like Harry said, I mean, I did contribute something towards the early termination of the war, because that's what we were shooting for. I know that our task was very hard. I knew after talking to the Japanese that what we were doing was, in fact -- a lot of time we thought it was a waste of time, but we were hoping that even after they were captured, maybe we could at least educate them on democracy, somehow to convince them to go back to Japan and make a better Japan for themselves, you know. And because we knew... we weren't trying to really brainwash them or anything like that. By action, things like the daily activities we had, the easy going-ness, the way we tried to help them. We were hoping that they would be able to take that back to Japan. And, again, from our point of view, we wanted the Japanese to know that Niseis, even though we did fight for the U.S., we were really thinking about their welfare as well. It's not only the fact that we're American, but we're hoping that because Nisei in general, I think, even when I was there, they were sort of looked down on. So we were hoping that maybe they would go back and say, you know, if it wasn't for the Niseis it would have been, it might have been pretty hard for them, you know. But again, though, as I look back, I don't think it was wishful thinking on my part to think that the Japanese will say anything about us, you know, during the war. Saying that we did help them out or anything else, because they were pretty close, you know, tight lipped about everything like that, so...

gky: So, you really as a Nisei, as a Japanese American, you made a difference.

KA: I, myself, may not have, but I think there was a lot of -- the majority of the Niseis did, I think. Because without them, I don't they would have shortened the war. Because there's an example that I think of how some of the hakujins looked at the Niseis, you know, after the war. But, I was in a hospital with a kidney problem in Burma, Burma-India Theatre, and I was laid up and the medical team wouldn't even look at me, you know, thinking that they probably were thinking that I was a POW or something. And I was laying there and I was, it's a kidney infection. I was having a hard time. And a guy next to me was a Caucasian officer -- I mean, not an officer, he was an enlisted man -- and we started to talk to each other and pretty soon he calls the doctor and the nurse over and say, "Hey, you better take care of this guy." He said, "These guys are valuable." And I found out he was a member of the Merrill's Marauder. And there was fourteen Niseis in the Merrill's Marauder. And he said that, "Boy, you know, what those guys did really saved our butts on many occasions." So here was a guy that was telling these people to take care of me, and I think if the other Niseis didn't do what they did, they probably would have -- this guy would have just ignored me and I would have just stayed there and maybe -- I don't know what would have happened because I had high fever and everything else.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2000 Bridge Media and Densho. All Rights Reserved.