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gky: This is tape three with Ted Tsukiyama, January 5th, the year 2000 in Honolulu. 2001, sorry. Okay. In October you got shipped to, or sometime in that fall, you got shipped to India. What did you do while you were in India?

TT: Well, it took us fifty-nine days by boat to get to India from Wilmington, California. We went under Australia and into the Indian Ocean over to Bombay. And then from Bombay we took an overland train. It took four or five days to reach the east side of, Calcutta side of India. Then I think we took a train up to Assam, which is the eastern border of India bordering the Burma frontier. In Assam, we set up and started to, our intercept operations from India. And then they flew us into Myitkynia, Burma, which by then had been recaptured by the Americans. We operated in Myitkynia for maybe a month or so, and then trucked down to Bhamo where we set up operations which lasted until the end of the war.

gky: How big was the unit and how big, how many Nisei were attached to it?

TT: Gee, my recollection would be about fifteen or so. I can check by the pictures.

gky: Okay, so, roughly a quarter of your, the unit was Nisei?

TT: Of this intercept group. Well, when you include all the technicians and all that who took care of the radios and so forth, yeah, we were a minority part of it, but we were the ears, you know, the listening arm of this intercept operation.

gky: And how long were you with the intercept operation?

TT: Yeah, we were assigned to what was called the 6th AF Radio Squadron Mobile, attached to the 10th Air Force in India/Burma. So we wore the air force patch. And I think you know that the air force didn't accept Niseis in, except maybe Ben Kuroki and a few exceptions, but, otherwise, we were only assigned, I guess, to the air force. So we got over to India around late October of '44, and then maybe the beginning of 1945 into Burma where we spent up to the end of the war which was September, August, September of 1945 in Burma.

gky: Do you remember what you felt when you heard that the war was over; Japan had surrendered?

TT: Oh, yeah. That was great feeling. Yes, finally. There was no riotous celebrations or anything. As I recall, there was just one immense feeling of relief that it's finally over, because we knew the Japanese would fight to the death, and we were anticipating a long, long war. Then to have it suddenly end, it was a happy surprise, but one of relief. And I think the war historians will all attest that if it wasn't for the bomb dropped, Japan would have resisted a homeland invasion and they would send children and old ladies with spears to go defend the invasion. I mean, you know, they were going to defend until the death.

gky: And yet you said at the same time, Japan thought of human life as cheap.

TT: Yeah, because honor, you know. The country is more important than the individual. I mean, that's the psyche in which the militarist regime of Japan had indoctrinated into the people and they were prepared, as they demonstrated in Okinawa, to fight to the last man. And because they fought so bitterly in Okinawa, the U.S. military realized that hey, this is going to, this is a forerunner of what we're going to encounter when we invade Japan. And that contributed largely to the decision to drop the bomb.

gky: Could you talk a little bit about the value of Japanese life? You know, you said it was worth just the money it took to mail a postcard.

TT: Oh, I picked that up as part of the research piece that I was writing on the Battle of Okinawa. The question in my mind was what made the Japanese soldier such a fanatic, so, you know, taking life so cheaply that -- and the concept of there was great dishonor in surrendering. You got to take your life as a more honorable way, which, of course, is a cheap regard for self and for life. This is instilled in the military training of the Japanese soldier. The draftee, in the Japanese army, was regarded very cheaply. As I read that they were referred to as issen gorin, which means a penny and a half, which is the price of a postcard to send to the guy that's being drafted. That's all he was worth, so to speak. They said the cavalry horse costs more, had greater value than the individual private, and that's how the Japanese army system has just built on this expendability of the human makeup of their army.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2001 Bridge Media and Densho. All Rights Reserved.