<Begin Segment 7>

gky: What was an interrogation like?

WT: You mean overseas prisoners? Yes. I was in the work of interrogation of prisoners of war for about two and a half years. We got overseas to Australia, our team went to Brisbane, Australia, the other went to Noumea and New Caledonia. But Goda's team, we went to Brisbane, and we were in a camp of Nisei linguists in a place called Camp Chalmer, little town of Indooroopilly, Brisbane, Australia. And that's where I was assigned to the work of interrogation of prisoners. Now, with the exception of, I think, there was an early group from, you know, the first class at Fourth Army language school that went to Australia, and they were there. As I understand, two of them became warrant officers. But those of us that went overseas, we started out... well, we were, like most of us were privates or PFCs. And then when we graduated at Camp Savage we became corporals or sergeants depending on what rank we had previously. And then as a corporal, I was in Australia, I was assigned to prisoner of war work. None of the Nisei were permitted to be the interrogator, to question the prisoners. There again... they had Caucasian officers who were the interrogators. This MacArthur's headquarters, being the Allied command, we had the Australian forces, they had the British and Dutch forces, they were all combined in the Allied forces. And so the interrogating officer was from any one of those countries. And so we were assigned to be interpreters, and we would go down to the interrogation cell accompanying the interrogation officer. And we did strictly interpreting work. The officer would ask the question, we would change that into Japanese and ask the question to the prisoner in the Japanese language. And then when the prisoner responded, we'd interpret that into English.

gky: Do you feel like you were trusted, as a Nisei, that you were trusted enough to have you do more interrogation?

WT: Well, you know, during the time in Australia that we worked, they didn't trust us, I don't think, because either that or they felt that we might misinterpret or make an error in interpreting. But they head means of recording that. We had Nisei that worked in another building who recorded our interrogations, and then this report would be given to the officer that he could compare with the notes, or what he could remember from the interrogation.

gky: It really doesn't sound like they trusted you that much.

WT: Not at all.

gky: Having Nisei check up on other Nisei.

WT: So not only did the interpreters work in going down to the cells and doing the interpreting, but we Niseis also -- this is in the interrogation section of Niseis, we took turns in a separate building working twenty-four hours a day covering the prisoners' work, gathering information.

gky: Can you tell me about one interesting thing that happened in an interrogation to you? What's the most interesting thing?

WT: Well, being that I was an air corps unit personnel, I was assigned to interrogations that involved only Japanese air corps personnel, which meant air corps pilots, air crew, ground crew. They could be Japanese army or Japanese navy personnel, but they were strictly connected to the Japanese air units, both the army and navy. And so that's the interesting this, is that we questioned them about their enemy, their unit strengths, the extent of the training that they had prior to coming to the forward areas and their plane was shot down or their units were overrun. We worked on prisoners that had served time in China or even in Malaysia and the invasion of Singapore, various things that were the source of intelligence as to how well-trained or what kind of experience the unit had as far as airplanes. I worked on some interesting information regarding Japanese planes and their tail markings to identify what unit these airplanes were from, and the capacity, the capabilities of the airplanes.

gky: Tell me, how did the Japanese instruct their soldiers or train them differently than Americans in the information that they give out?

WT: Okay, first of all, discipline in the Japanese Army was very, very severe. Like in basic training, the training sergeant thought nothing of taking a recruit and hit him across the back with a two-by-four, knocking their teeth out, doing real severe things to them. In other words, so you could imagine their attitude towards prisoners, their own men in basic training, to indoctrinate them, to train them, and to put them in the state of mind where that, to them, the war was life and death. Also the fact that at the time of World War II, Japan was not a member, a signatory to the Geneva Convention. And so they didn't care about whether... they said that they would never become a prisoner regardless of the circumstances, and the prisoners time and again told me that if they... when they were captured, that that was worse than death. Even if they were unconscious and were about to drown in the water or crash landed and were wounded, severely wounded, unconscious, and thus became prisoners, regardless of the circumstances under which they were captured, still it was just a disgrace worse than death.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2000 Bridge Media and Densho. All Rights Reserved.