<Begin Segment 5>

gky: When you went back to the United States, when you were in school, you said that people assumed that you were in the 442nd.

KA: Yeah.

gky: Can you talk a little bit about that and sort of keeping quiet that you were in the MIS, that your weapon wasn't -- your weapon was language?

KA: Yeah. Well, you know, when you get praises like that, you know, you're not going to knock it. [Laughs] Because the 442 had a tremendous reputation and when you're in school and if anybody showed any inkling of being prejudiced to the Nisei, these people stood up and say, "Hey, these guys are great fighters in Europe," and stuff like that. So you sort of take advantage of it and just say, because we were -- it's a funny thing about the MIS. We were told that we were not to be known as to what we did, you know. So even though the war was over, I think all of us stayed quiet, I mean, we never said anything about what we did, you know.I think it's a nice trait on the part of the Niseis, you know. We can really say that if we're told to keep our mouth shut, we kept our mouth shut. Even though it was way over, and I know that we were permitted to talk afterward, but even then I think that's why it made it so difficult for us to talk. And like Harry was explaining, most of the Niseis that served in the MIS had some exciting experience, but they don't like to brag about it so they just keep quiet, you know. And they're satisfied that they did a good job and that's it. So I know a lot of people say, "Why don't you guys talk about it?" But I think most of us are satisfied that we did our job. If they want to recognize us, so be it. If not, we can carry it and forget about it.

But the more you think about it, it's not so much a fact that I'm satisfied, but I think about the young people, you know. And that's why I'm so involved with the monument [Go For Broke Monument in Los Angeles]. I want the young people to know that if they're ever challenged about the loyalty of the Japanese Americans here, all they have to do is say, "Look at the monument. That tells you what we did." But then, on the other hand, I think we have to let them know what we did do too, because it's one thing to look at the monument, but it's also another thing to leave some sort of a writing or evidence of what we have done. Because I know when we were youngsters, I didn't know that there was Isseithat served in the service before that time, you know. If there were, there were very few. So, you kind of feel embarrassed if somebody say, "What the hell did your ancestor ever do to, for this country?" We really didn't have too much to show except to say that our parents were hard working.

[Interruption]

KA: They never said, gripe about anything, even though the condition they worked under, the way they were robbed and everything else, they gaman and then went on to do their job. But that wasn't the kind of thing that you could be proud of, you know. Even today though, I feel real proud that they did that, but at the time when I was a youngster, you know, I didn't feel that way.

[Interruption]

KA: You know, we were told that we weren't to divulge anything that we were doing. But this is real funny, because I went over with a team of ten men, and among us was one Hungarian. How he landed with the MIS, I don't know. But when he was assigned to our team, we went overseas together, you know, sailing out of the ship here, from Wilmington. But his English was, well, better than mine probably was, but he spoke fluent German. But anyway, this guy memorized Hitler's speeches, he memorized [Joseph] Goebbels' speeches and, of course, I didn't know he really spoke the same way, but he had that expression and everything else. And he used to entertain us on the shipboard communication, because one of our tasks of going overseas, there was twenty GIs on the ship, and he would be on the gun watch and he would be giving these speeches just to keep us entertained. Well, anyway, when we landed in Calcutta, India, he -- and when we reported to New Delhi, India, I mean, New Delhi headquarters, he asked to be relieved of his duty as a linguist. And he became a writer for the theater paper called CBI Roundup [China-Burma-India]. And, it was -- what year was it? I think it was in 1944. I think I have a copy of this article. But he told about our team. He mentioned my name, Kenji Yasui's name, he called, the article was called something about Nisei Sergeant York [Sergeant Alfred York was the most decorated American soldier of World War II]. So right away when we saw it, I said, "How could they announce this? We're supposed to be not known anyplace. What if the Japanese or what if we had spies among our people, they would notify the Japanese right away and immediately our job would become ineffective." And so that came out and we hoped that it would die right away. So, anyway, this fellow here, his name was Edgar Latham, he told me as we were going overseas that he was an Hungarian-born person, he was in Australia, he wrote quite a few articles about MacArthur in Australia and it appeared in the Reader's Digest. He also had written a couple Japanese, I mean, books about the Japanese military. He was very favorable about the military training in Japan, and he had two of those things.

But anyway, what I was trying to say was that this fellow here, the moment the -- I think it was shortly after the Ledo Road was opened, there was an article that appeared in the Yank magazine [Yank, a U.S. Army weekly, was published during World War II], and it said something about operating behind the enemy lines. And there was a Sergeant Richardson of the Yank magazine that wrote an article about his adventure behind the enemy line, and this guy said, "That was my idea. I should be the one that's writing this article." So, anyway, he convinces the editor of the CBI Roundup to do the same kind of thing. So he happens to come by to where we were stationed. He was going to make this trip with the Kachin Rangers [Allied guerrillas in World War II in Burma]. So he comes by, and so Clark Kawakami and I went down to see him. Even though we knew that he wrote an article about our operation, we said, "Edgar, you have gone through the language training, and you have a certain amount of information that the enemy knows nothing about, supposedly." And so we said, "It is very important that you never get captured, because if you ever get captured, all our operation is going to be known to the enemy." And he says, he told Clark and I, said, "Don't worry about it. I have these two books that I wrote about the Japanese military training, very favorable." Japanese thought he was great and everything else. He said, "If I ever get captured, I will show this and that would be it." But I said, "You know, you could be tortured and everything else. But he said, "No, don't worry about it. So he said, "Never get captured. Just remember that." And, so he said, "Don't worry." So that was the last time we saw him.

And shortly after -- I don't know, about a week or ten days later -- we get a report saying that this guy is lost. And so in interrogating these people who were with him, they told us that they came into, they ran across a Japanese patrol and they hid for a second and they decided to retreat because it's too dangerous. So they go across the river and then suddenly, this guy Edgar, says, "Oh I forgot a very important document. I'm going to have to go after it." And this, the Kachin officer, or whoever it was leading the patrol, said, "No, no, no. It's too dangerous for you to go. We will go after the material." But Edgar said, "No, you would never find where I put it." So reluctantly, I guess, they let him go. And he went, and that was the last we heard. So right away, we were on alert. We wanted to make sure -- we didn't know what had happened to this guy, so immediately when we were interrogating prisoner, we'd say, "Hey, have you ever seen a guy, a Caucasian fellow, being a captive?" And we asked lots of people. And, finally, one guy, one day we ran across this guy says, "Yeah, there was a Caucasian fellow that was living among the officers." And so we further interrogated and I asked him what did he look like, you know. And fortunately we had a picture of the guy, so -- in a group -- so we presented it to the guy. He said "Yeah, it's this guy." And so we wanted to know what was going on. "So he said, "Well, what'd you find out?" He says, "Oh, this guy said he was a German spy waiting for an opportunity to come to the, their enemy side, and he was living among the Japanese officers." Now what kind of information he divulged at that time, we don't know, but this prisoner said definitely this guy was living with the officers. So right away, you know, we were put on alert. I think that information must have gone topside, but we never found out how far it got into the Japanese command. Because I'm sure if the Japanese command were smart enough and if they got that information that he went through the language school and he found out that the Niseis were doing all this work in the linguists' area, I'm sure that the Japanese would have started encoding all their message. But for some reason, I guess it never got beyond that particular area. Whether it was not important enough or not, I don't know. But there was an occasion like that. But it was a funny thing. We were in China after the war, and it showed, you know, a newsreel and they were panning prisoners of war rescued in Bangkok. And I know somebody said to me, "Edgar was there. He was waving." And I wished the heck we could have somehow, you know, have tracked that down to see if it was indeed him, you know. But nobody followed through.

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