<Begin Segment 6>

gky: The first time you went to Hiroshima was in December of 1945. What was it like?

SY: What prompted me to go to Hiroshima was I was picked out to go to Kure with the IG section to go interpret an inspection trip, and while I was there I thought that I could go see Hiroshima, and so the commanding officer ordered the driver of the jeep to drive me to Hiroshima. What was quite... it was a very eerie feeling is as far as you can see, the Hiroshima city was just barren and a burnt city, and hardly any people were in the streets at all. And, like I say, it was sort of an eerie feeling. But I had a aunt in Hiroshima. This I knew because when I visited Japan in 1939, I visited by aunt in Hiroshima, and they said that most of the people that were in the city proper, on the banks of the Ota River and established a rough shelter on the banks of the Ota River. So I got my driver to drive along the banks of the Ota River, and it's amazing that as I was driving by I thought I saw my aunt on the banks of the river in a helter-skelter house -- not the house, but the shelter that they had put up. And she recognized me and I found out that a family of ten, only one perished because of the atom bomb, but all the others were safe and living. What I want to say is it's amazing that people were living after the city was just in a total destruction. And it's a half year later. But in August of the following year, I happened to go to Hiroshima, and the Japanese were very industrious. They had come back to the city and put up shops and so forth. Of course, it wasn't a permanent building, as such, made of plywood and other galvanized iron and all that. But people were back in the city establishing their livelihood. And so within a year's time to see, sort of a, to see a city come up with energy was very inspiring to me.

gky: How'd you feel about that? I mean, how did you feel knowing that you were from the same cultural background?

SY: I -- as far as the atom bomb, the feeling about the atom bomb was concerned, I thought it was very cruel. But that was dropped because of the wartime condition, and in wartime you just can't have feeling about how warfare is fought. The idea is to win. So I felt badly about the people, but I had no misgivings insofar as the action by the Americans, so to speak. So, from Kyoto, I was in the 6th Army and the 6th Army was one of the units that was in New Guinea from the start. And so, in January of that year, '46, there was the first units to come back to the States. But I wanted to see the home country a little bit more and so I volunteered to, I asked them to have me reassigned, and when I found out that I was reassigned to Tokyo, I thought this was a chance for me to see more of my ancestral country. And I was assigned to the Lido section of the International Military Tribunal on the prosecution staff. So when I reported back, reported to the tribunal, my first job was to indict the last major war criminal who had not been indicted. Twenty-five others, including Tojo, were already in Sugamo Prison awaiting trial, but Admiral Nagano had not been indicted, not been brought in. So my first job was to go down to Takamatsu, Shikoku -- that's where he was at -- to bring him back. So I was assigned a legal officer so that everything would be legal, and a military police captain to come with me to apprehend him and bring him back to Tokyo.

So I went to Takamatsu, Shikoku, and the first couple days what I did was have the RCIC unit down there, sort of see what the situation was, if Admiral Nagano was still there and, if he's there, where he was. And so they found out that he was in, temporarily in a Japanese ryokan with his family. And so, after I found that out, we thought better go and indict him, and to do that I had to take him by surprise because the people back in Tokyo, the tribunal, wanted to bring him back alive. They didn't want him to commit suicide. So in the early evenings, in the early evening, there were three of us stormed up the -- he was on the second floor of the ryokan, and so we stormed up. We took the innkeeper by surprise because he would have stormed up the stairs shoes and all and, of course, you don't do that in Japan. But we stormed up and got into the second floor and through where Admiral Nagano was, and he was spending a quiet evening with the family, he and his wife and two sons. And the two sons were still not quite teenagers yet, but anyhow, he was there sitting, the family was sitting at the kotatsu, and when we got there, of course he was surprised. And so I told him what I was there for, and I read him the indictment in Japanese. And after, Admiral Nagano said, "Why didn't you tell me you wanted, the American MacArthur and the tribunal wanted me back in Tokyo as a war criminal? I would have come myself without being indicted, as are being done right at the moment." So, after that, he didn't put up any fuss at all. He agreed very kindly. So that evening we got him to a Japanese koban, police station and had him put in a cell in this police station.

And the following morning, we got on the train trip back to Tokyo. So, on the train -- every train in Japan had a special, what is it, train I guess, or passenger train that was solely for the occupation use only, and had a white stripe across, occupation troops, or whatever. I forgotten exactly what it said. But, anyhow we got on the occupation train and just the three of us heading for Nagano. And as the train from Shikoku on to Tokyo, every time we stopped at the station, people on the platform could see inside that Admiral Nagano was there. So you could read the lips of the Japanese on the platform saying, "There's Admiral Nagano." Of course, they didn't know what he was there for or where he was going. But I became quite friendly with Admiral Nagano in the three days up, and so when he passed away during the trials -- he contracted tuberculosis, and he died while his trial was still on -- so, I thought, "Well, it's better than for him to be hung or being tried by trial court or any other punishment." This way, to find that Nagano died on his own, what is it, strength? I thought was befitting.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2000 Bridge Media and Densho. All Rights Reserved.