Densho Digital Archive - Kay Uno Kaneko - Hana Shepard - Mae MatsuzakiInterview (denshovh-kkay

<Begin Segment 6>

LD: Well, it happened to quite a few fellows that they would meet a brother who... in one case it was... one case, one fellow was the interpreter for the American side and met his brother who was interpreter for the other side. It just happened that way, the brothers got split up, they were both Kibei, one got sent back to the United States and one stayed on. And those are the "winds of war" as they say, which side ended up having to work with. Hana, you came back from Japan, the FBI interrogated you?

HS: Uh-huh.

LD: They thought you were an agent and influenced by your father and Buddy.

HS: Yeah.

LD: Why did they do that and what did you think?

HS: After all, I worked for the Japanese government, so I guess it's natural for them to think that I might have some connections or something. But I was just a lowly typist, you know. There wasn't any reason for me to do anything, know anything.

LD: What did you think about that? Here you've just come back to Japan, you've been there two years, right?

HS: Uh-huh.

LD: Can you tell us about that? "I just came back from Japan..."

HS: Well, I came back from Japan, and on the boat there was this American who had been in the Orient for a while. I think he was a writer of some sort, and he knew my brother Buddy. And so he contacted me and said he was writing a book, would I do some typing? So I said okay, I wasn't doing anything on board ship anyway. So I did some typing for him, and he started getting fresh with me. So I got really, you know, scared and also mad at him, and I wouldn't have anything more to do with him. And he said something about he was going to pay me, but he never did. And then he said he would look me up after I got back. And when I, after I had landed and I was at home, I think he tried calling at one time, but I refused to see him. And I think he did finally write a book, supposed to be called Star Over Asia or something like that, I don't know. But the FBI, when they interrogated me, asked me a whole bunch of questions about him, because they suspected that he might have been a Japanese agent, I don't know. And they wanted to know where he was, what my connection with him was and all that. And then they also wanted to know about my father and what I felt my father was doing. The FBI really made me mad because they implied my father was an agent of the Japanese government and that he was getting paid for collecting information, sending it to my brother. Where actually, my father, who was very fluent in English, and could type better than I could, would, he would read the newspapers, he was an avid newspaper reader, and he'd send things like Drew Pearson's columns. He would send things like that to my brother in Japan and tell my brother what the Americans were thinking, what the American press was doing. And so when they picked Dad up, they felt that surely Dad was being paid by the Japanese government to send all the so-called information to my brother in Japan. Anybody can read a newspaper, anybody could send newspapers to Japan or anywhere else, but the FBI thought that my dad was an agent being paid by the Japanese government. I got so mad, and said, "If my dad was really a Japanese agent, and if he was getting paid by the government, do you think we'd be having such a hard time meeting the rent and making payments, this, that and the other thing? And I really got mad because they insisted that Dad was an agent of the Japanese government, and they made me sign a statement, read a statement and sign it. And I looked at it and I thought, "What are they trying to do to me?"