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gky: This is tape two with Steve Yamamoto in L.A. on the 13th of December, the year 2000. Steve, were there any other anecdotes that you remember about any of the interrogations you did, or any of the other times you were, your time overseas?

SY: During most of the interrogations in New Guinea or in the Philippines, I found that the Japanese prisoners were very cooperative that confront me the first... various prisoners that would confront me for the first time would look at me in disbelief, or look at me oddly wondering what nationality I was. I imagine they knew, but they had a little bit of doubts as far as who I was. So I'd tell them I'm a Japanese American, and they thought that this was quite remarkable, because here I'm Japanese American doing intelligence work interrogating my own kind, and they thought possibly only in the American army things like this could happen. But most of them were very cooperative after I'd tell them who I was and what I was there for, and I attribute the cooperativeness to the fact that we treated the Japanese prisoners very well in accordance with the Geneva Convention. If they were injured or wounded, or if they were sick we'd give them medication, and they were treated; they were not maltreated in any respect. So I think they -- most of the prisoners felt that they were going to be maltreated because the test in the Japanese military, you get all sorts of things, [inaudible] and things like that, and so many of them, I think, were sort of overwhelmed and very appreciative of the fact that they were treated very well, and so I think this caused them to be very cooperative. I had very little trouble insofar as not being responsive to my questioning. I think there were a few, but those that were not cooperative, I would just don't bother with them because we had so many prisoners that I could talk to without spending my, wasting my time with uncooperative prisoners. Very few. But anyhow, many of them would be very cooperative and many of them would tell me, after they finish talking to me, "Will you take your .45 and shoot me?" And so, I said, "Why do you say that?" And said, "Well, I'm a prisoner of war and as a prisoner in Japanese it's a dishonor, and I will never be able to go back to my homeland and face my neighbors, my friends, my parents, my folks, as a prisoner." And so I thought, "So that kind of questioning." I thought the answer would be to tell them that well, Japan's going to lose anyhow. "Look at the status now, we're winning the war and eventually Japan's going to lose, and when Japan loses then you if leave the country, you have to go back to your homeland to a defeated nation, so you don't have any need to feel that you're dishonored because you're, if Japan had won the war and you go back probably you'd feel ashamed. But your countrymen are all in the same category." So I guess that sort of reasoning that I would tell them after they asked me to shoot them sort of calmed their ideas, I suppose. They heard me and they didn't argue back at all. But this is how most of the prisoners that tell me to shoot them, this is what I told them.

And, insofar as the war front is concerned, we went to the Philippines, and of course we -- in landing in the Philippines, our ship was bombed and Kent Hirata and Spaday Koyama, two of my people in the interrogation section, were hurt, fortunately they lived. But we faced great opposition in the Philippines landing on Leyte, and this was where our ship was bombed. Eventually we landed in Manila, and eventually the war ended and we went into Japan. And when we went into Japan, we landed at Wakanoura Beach in Wakayama. And see Japanese people at the eki, at the station, Wakanoura Station, to get back to Kyoto where our headquarters supposed to be established. They would look at the occupation forces coming in, and particularly us Niseis, and they, you could see that they were kind of surprised to see us Japanese Americans coming in American uniforms. But we were treated no differently from any other occupation soldiers. As a matter of fact, they felt this was quite odd, quite, what is it, good to see these Niseis coming in. And so, we, as far as sentiments of the Japanese is concerned, we didn't feel any bad feelings at all.

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