<Begin Segment 3>

LD: What was the best part and what were the worst parts about being in Japan for you? You were there about five years right?

KY: Well, staying in Japan, for me, for five years was... the primary objective was, of course, to go to school. I remember at one time I had an intention of remaining in Japan. So it meant my living in Japan was merely only temporary, just to get an education and come back.

LD: During the same time that you were there, you saw a lot of political changes in Japan, like the February 26th incident, invasion of Manchuria, Nazi pact with Japan, Axis pact. What did you think of all those changes? Did you notice all those kinds of changes happening, or did you feel... they were happening around you, but sometimes people don't notice these things. Did you notice them and did you realize what they meant? Say, "At that time, when I was there," you can tell me what you saw when you were there, when you were in Japan for those five years as a student, what you saw.

KY: The five years that I was a student in Japan, we can't but help seeing all, feeling all these things, because the country was on a, at a total war effort. See, because the military were grooming, in fact, the entire country was just groomed for expansion and the policy was expansionism and the military, and school educational systems were geared to that. And in fact, even the slogans were, "Raise a large family," so they have more sons in the army kind of idea. And we actually were directly involved, not only in school, but the newspapers, the movies, even downtown Tokyo, you can see slogans and mass demonstrations and everything all geared to an effort to expand the country in East Asia. And that was the military's whole idea.

LD: What did you think of that? At that time, what did you see? At that time you were like twenty, you were nineteen, twenty years old, you were twenty-one, twenty-two, what did you think at that time?

KY: Well, see, in 1935, my father and my sisters came with a tour group in Japan. And he went on a tour of Manchuria, which was already under Japanese control, and he took me along, we went as far north as Harbin. And the things the military did and also the Japanese government did with Manchuria is amazing. Really got everything planned, and they built the South Manchurian Railroad, they built beautiful fast trains, the cities, the master plan, zoned for the next fifty, hundred years. Then they're very efficient a country, very efficient a country. They just had planned... because at that time it wasn't quite one hundred million people, but if you look on the island as being only the size of the state of California, one hundred million people, and the area left for the farmers to farm and for industry to go into manufacturing just wasn't enough. So they just had to expand to feed the growing population.

LD: So what do you like better? The Japanese military was efficient, and you were not particularly uneasy about what Japan was doing with expanding and doing with its military at that time, you didn't particularly know, didn't think about it, your father didn't talk about it?

KY: Well, by 1935 I was still just out of high school. But what was done in Manchuria was a great improvement to what it was because under the Chinese, they had a lot of... oh, they had decades of war with the lords, various lords had, carried on war against each other, the country was in a turmoil. So with all the stability given, it seemed like the idea was right. But he was just as the military, in the aggression, I think, was much too extreme.

LD: You could see war was coming in the United States. Could you see that at that time? Did you see it was coming?

KY: Well, when the war with China started, why, because of the market in China, was a direct conflict with United States, and that fight for the sphere of influence at that time, I mean, as far as I was concerned, I knew more of the political implication already, that it wasn't going to get better, it was going to get worse, and the military wasn't bent on expanding.

LD: How did you happen to return to the United States at the time that you did? When did you return and how was that decision made?

KY: Well, my father was pretty aged already, so he... when I actually graduated college, why, he wanted me to come back. I believe the oil embargo was already placed on Japan at that time, and that was really, I think, was almost the real cause of the fight, I think, with the United States on any kind of political matters, you know. That was, I think, our policy, that put Japan's back against the wall, and they had to just fight. And so being that it was, I thought I'd better get out of there before war, what actually started was getting pretty bad already.

LD: You're saying that you were conscious, as war was beginning to become more likely between Japan and the United States, you were becoming more aware of the fact that you're really, you're not a Japanese citizen, is that what you're saying? You felt that it was time to go back to the United States.

KY: Yeah. I mean, I've accomplished my mission as getting my education and learning the Japanese language, meeting people, culture, customs and so forth. And I thought that would be more than sufficient for my purposes in having business in Hawaii, so I thought I'd better come back.

LD: You caught one of the last boats out, didn't you?

KY: Yeah, I caught the second to the last, the Tatsuta-maru, the second to the last ship that came to the United States.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 1985 The Center for Educational Telecommunications and Densho. All Rights Reserved.