<Begin Segment 3>

gky: And what happened when you first went out, got sent overseas by MIS? Where did you go?

RK: When I was sent overseas? Well, I was sent -- I was in with a large group. I went by boat to Australia. We landed in Australia; we arrived in Australia about sometime in the afternoon, say late afternoon. I think there was about fifty of us in the group, and it was just one, oh, Matson liner. I don't remember how many days it took us to get to Brisbane, Australia, but it took a long time because, from what I understand, the ship, our ship, was traveling alone without a convoy so it was zigzagging to avoid, what, possibly mines or whatever, or detection. We got there about 3:30 or 4:00 in the afternoon. By the time we -- there's thousands of fellows; we were not the only ones on the boat, so by the time the thousands of fellows debarked, it was about five, getting dark. It was about five in the evening.

gky: You were assigned first to an Australian unit, but you didn't want to be assigned to an Australian unit.

RK: No.

gky: Why not?

RK: Well, I wanted to be with Americans. Not only that, I wanted to be with a friend of mine. I was hoping to be with a friend of mine with whom I was acquainted before the war. We played football together and so forth, you know. And just about the time when I was considering asking to be shipped to a unit that, to any unit that he would be shipped to, I was suddenly already ordered to report to this Australian outfit.

gky: So you had no choice.

RK: I had no choice. It was too late.

gky: What did you do with the Australian outfit?

RK: I interrogated prisoners and scanned documents. I was in Bougainville seven months with them, but immediately upon arriving in Bougainville, I was sent to the front, to the front lines, to battalion headquarters. And from battalion, I would go to the companies occasionally, and so I was in the front area for six months out of the seven months. And after the six months with the battalions and companies, division headquarters, Australian division headquarters intelligence chief asked me if I would be willing to come back to division headquarters for one month, because in a month I'd be returning to Australia and that would give Joe [Kimura is referring to himself] a chance to experience a front, life at the front, that is, for one month. I guess Joe wanted to be able to say that he served in the front lines, at least for a little while. So I came back to division headquarters and looked into the, how the POWs that I had already interrogated, how they were doing and whether there was anything that I could do for them, you know, like comfort items and things, cigarettes, fruitcake. Fruitcake was plentiful at the time, supplied by the Red Cross. Then, after a month, my last month there, I flew back to Australia.

gky: When you were at Bougainville, can you tell me your experience with Captain Timson?

RK: Well, see, the thing is, my, I would say, my conduct -- I don't want to blame everything on Timson, but my conduct was such that it didn't really enamor me to the Australians either, because we had mimeograph orders reporting from Australia to -- Brisbane, Australia, headquarters to an Australian outfit. I'm not the only one; a lot of Niseis were assigned to Australian outfits. We all, each of us got a travel orders, you know, who to report to, what unit you're going to report to, and all the names of those Niseis that are going to report in the same group. It was a terrific order, because I asked others, but they don't remember receiving that type of order. But Joe, the other Nisei that was with me with Australians, there were only two of us, he remembers. In fact, we used to -- at first, we'd go over the orders together in Bougainville, and we were amazed at the -- and grinning to ourselves because of the power of that order, because it was signed by General [Douglas] MacArthur, Lt. General (Richard) K. Sutherland, and Major General [Charles] Willoughby. (Ricahrd) K. Sutherland was right next to MacArthur, MacArthur's next right-hand man. He was head of the entire staff, and signed by the three. And the order had listed what the commanding officer, any officer that we report to, these are the conditions that that officer must meet, they're required to do that for us.

gky: So, what did they say?

RK: You mean the people that received...

gky: No, what...

RK: Oh, what did it say? Well, I don't remember everything. There must have been at least ten things in there, but one of them says make sure that Niseis are not captured, because -- it didn't explain why. Because they would suffer inhumane treatment, or whatever, and so forth. And then another one was when an interrogator is at division headquarters, that's the rear echelon, he has to have one bodyguard. He goes to regiment, he must have two bodyguards. If he goes to battalion, it's three bodyguards. Every, succeedingly closer to the front. If he goes to the company, he has four bodyguards. But the interrogator may refuse to go to the company. But all those bodyguards is conditioned on whether the interrogator wants the bodyguards or not. In other words, if I insisted, he, this order says you got to give me four bodyguards. If I'm going up front, they have to give me the four bodyguards, because General MacArthur is the supreme commander of all the forces, Australians, or anybody else.

gky: Were you guys that went to foreign outfits, were you better protected than the ones that went to the American outfits? I mean, would those orders apply to someone who was going to an American...

RK: Gee, I don't know whether it applied to those who went to American outfits. I imagine it would. But I asked Ace Fukai and he went to Australia, and he doesn't remember the orders. I wish I had kept one as a souvenir, you know.

gky: That is a pretty powerful order.

RK: There's a whole line of things. Oh, another one was when the interrogator is interrogating, nobody can enter that tent without his permission. That means even a lieutenant general can't come into the tent.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2000 Bridge Media and Densho. All Rights Reserved.