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MU: We were talking about war crimes, George. There were A, B, C, class criminals and you were concerned with the B class. Could you tell me again what B class involved?

GK: B class involved the trial of Japanese suspects who visited cruelty upon the United States or Allied forces personnel captured by Japanese and placed in Japanese prisoner of war camps. And these camps (were) not only (...) in Japan, but in Korea, Philippines, and southern parts, too. And then even in Java, there were quite a few Allied forces personnel captured by the Japanese and placed in camps, and there were Japanese guards who are accused of perpetrating cruelty upon those people.

MU: In other words, you had a whole group of B criminals, suspects...

GK: Yes. Not only in Japan, but in all those other places, too, (but) I dealt only with those who were tried in Yokohama.

MU: Oh, this was in Yokohama. Did they have other trials elsewhere?

GK: Yes. In Hong Kong, Philippines, Java, Singapore, and altogether I think about 1,200 Japanese were tried.

MU: How many?

GK: 1,200 tried as B class suspects.

MU: Now, you were involved with quite a few of them, weren't you?

GK: Yes. There were, we had a prosecution section and a defense section and I was assigned to the defense section. And we had about twenty American attorneys in the defense section to defend the Japanese suspects, and there were additional thirty or so Nisei linguists to serve as court interpreters, or interpreters for the attorneys to interview Japanese suspects, and, of course, there were quite a few Nisei secretaries. At that time they had to have special permission to go to Japan. And there were quite a few Nisei girls that came over to serve with the occupation forces.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.