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gky: Weren't there about twenty-five people involved when you first went over to the Dixie Mission?

SN: The original group was about twenty-five, yeah.

gky: And who were the four other Niseis?

SN: I mentioned George Nakamura, then in about October or November of '44, Koji Ariyoshi came up with Under Secretary John Emerson to Yenan, came to our Dixie Mission to work with the [Sanzo] Nozaka, that's the top Japanese communist in exile, and pick his brain about the best way to write and direct propaganda. So that's three of us, George Nakamura, and then just before the war ended, about a month before, which would make about July or August, a couple of Niseis from the Chungking headquarters came up to Yenan. So when the war ended, there was just three of us in Yenan: Tosh, Wes Sato, and Jack Ishii.

gky: And these people stayed as long as you did?

SN: I think the three of us went back to Chungking together, at the end of the war. Because Tosh and I was, like I say, were later reassigned to the Advisory Group to Tainan, and Jack Ishii just remained in Shanghai until he came home. I don't know when it was that he came home.

gky: Was Jack Ishii a cartoonist?

SN: That's his older brother. His older brother is Chris Ishii. He was one of the OWI team. He did a lot of cartoon drawings for the propaganda leaflets. He was a -- he came out of a relocation center the same time I did, to Camp Savage. So I knew of him in Camp Savage just as well.

gky: When you were in China, you were operated on for an appendectomy. How'd that come about?

SN: Like I say, I got this attack when I was up there at Yenan, and the doctor, our doctor, says, "Well, we have two choices. Do you want us to wire the hospital, or the headquarters in Chungking and have them send up a plane for you and take you back and be operated in the American hospital, you know, in Chungking?" And I said, "Well, what's the other opportunity?" "Well, you could have the local doctor operate on you." And one of the doctors was American that, before the war, around about 1939, '40, after he's finished medical school in Switzerland, he says, "Well, I crossed the Atlantic to get to Switzerland to go to school, now I think I'll take the long way home. Go to India, or Singapore, Shanghai, and back home." And when he got to Shanghai, there was a big communist movement going on and he got enamored by it. So he stayed in Shanghai. And he's a famous, became a famous doctor in communist China with the name of Dr. Ma Hai Dah. I don't know whether you've ever heard of him or not. But his original name was George Hadam. He's of Lebanese descent, like I say, he went there. And when he got to Yenan after Mao and all those had finished the Long March, so he stayed with them all that time, all through the war and everything, and so when we got there, we were surprised to see an American there acting as a liaison officer for Mao. So he was the liaison man between Mao's headquarters and the Dixie Mission, plus a couple other very capable native Chinese who spoke excellent English.

gky: So he's on the communist Chinese side?

SN: Yeah, uh-huh. And so, to get back to the operation, I said "Well, what about Doc Ma Hai Dah doing the operation?" He said, "Well, if you want to, if you feel you can trust him." I said, "Why not?" So he came.

gky: Was it a matter of time?

SN: Pardon?

gky: You know, was it a matter of time, like if you'd waited the week it may have taken you to get to the hospital, your appendix would have burst and that would have been it?

SN: Yeah. That had some influence of my decision, too. Who knows what would happen before they could get the plane up there. I said, "If we go now, it would be over." He said, "Yeah, that's true." So that's what happened.

gky: Boy.

SN: And one thing about , I might add about the operation is originally that hospital was organized and created by a Canadian doctor, Dr. Bethune, and he set everything up. And during the war, the Longshoremen's Union collected a lot of medical supplies and stuff to be donated to the Chinese with a stipulation that some of it, longshoremen being the type of unit, you know, left-wing unit that it was, with the stipulation that some of those supplies be shared by the Chinese communist. So the Chinese, through Madame Sun Yat-sen, who is very liberal in comparison to her sister, Madame Chiang Kai-shek. She is very liberal and she insisted that this medicine be, that the Longshoremen's Union donated to the Chinese be shared with the Chinese communists. So part of that stuff, medicine, wound up with the Chinese communists.

gky: Did you feel that you were helping anybody, that you were helping America?

SN: I don't think I had any noble thoughts on that, not really. I think what I enjoyed the most was just seeing these people working the way they did, and the spirit that they worked with, you know, with the so-called Chinese masses to get their confidence, the people's confidence, and they in turn felt that they were being treated fairly, and that sort of thing. So it was a good thing to could see, and I really appreciated to be able to be in there to see all that sort of thing. Because, I know -- one time, this was in the summer of -- I got a week's furlough to go to Chungking, and I got to know a nationalist major from the time I first arrived in Chunking. So when I came back on my furlough, he, this Major Yung said, "Hey, Nomura," says. "Let's go out to lunch," or some darn thing. And so we went downtown to eat, and where we were going there was group of young boys all strapped together with straw ropes and they were being dragged down the street. I said, "What's happening here? Did they do something wrong?" And Major Yung said, "No they're being taken into the army." I said, You have to do it that way?" And he says, "Well, if we don't, we won't get any recruits." So they're actually roped together and forced in the army that way. Young kids, fourteen, fifteen, twelve, thirteen, I don't know. I thought, "My God, there ought to be a better way." So I think that type of thing that happened in nationalist China really was to their detriment, you know. The people didn't want to fight a war for them.

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