Densho Digital Archive - Harry Akune and Kenjiro Akune Interview (denshovh-aharry

<Begin Segment 3>

gky: Did you guys say that you had brothers that were in the Japanese navy during the war?

HA: Yeah. Ken?

KA: I had no idea, although there's some inkling that talking to some of the younger Japanese POW, you know, there is a possibility towards the end of the war they might, but I had no idea.

gky: And then, when you found out that they were -- and that was after the war, right?

KA: Right.

gky: When you found out that they were, and one was a kamikaze. Wasn't one a kamikaze?

KA: Yeah, the third son.

gky: Yeah. Well, how did that make you feel, I mean, knowing that you could have been fighting some place where your brothers were?

KA: I think this kind of story did come out with the Uno brothers, you know. But, you know, I always felt if I ran across -- I mean, this did occur -- I mean, I thought about it as we were interrogating prisoners, because in our theater there were quite a few from the northern part of Kyushu, and there was a possibility that I might run across my kid brother. And, I think we've talked about it with some of the other guys in the service; what would you do? And the story was, well, what would you do? I mean, if the guy points a gun, what can you do? But, you'd think, well, if you had a chance, you would try to talk to them, you know. But, that's about -- you know, what can you do? I mean, knowing the Japanese at that time, I don't know if you could have talked anybody out of anything. But, it was just a fleeting type of a thought, you know. Not really thinking about it that you'd get a ulcer out of it.

gky: So, in other words, it's something you knew about, but you kind of didn't want to think about.

HA: Yeah. The other part was that mercifully, I was thinking that I would not recognize them, because there had been quite a few years since I last saw them. And, when I first met them, I knew that I would never have recognized them, when I did meet them after the war. So, that's the part that would have been a little easier for the individual, I think. If they were to be recognized and then face each other, then it would be a pretty, pretty dramatic and traumatic thing, I think. I really don't know exactly what you would do at that point, then, you know.