Densho Digital Archive
National Japanese American Historical Society Collection
Title: Harvey Watanabe Interview
Narrator: Harvey Watanabe
Interviewers: Marvin Uratsu (primary), Gary Otake (secondary)
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: December 12, 1997
Densho ID: denshovh-wharvey-02-0019

<Begin Segment 19>

MU: Okay, now... well, getting back to your translation work, anything else that might be interesting that remains in your mind?

HW: Well, yes. There was a prisoner brought in and he was supposed to know something about tanks. So they asked me -- and also, he was, supposedly had beheaded a captured American soldier. He was ordered to behead one. And so I was asked to interview him and question him. And I did. But I didn't get much out of him. He was kind of stoic. Nice enough guy, young fellow. I felt kinda bad for the guy, you know. Either way, if it was real or if it was not real it's a bad situation for him to be in. Did have a chance to interrogate a fellow like that. Also, amongst the duties with doing the, heading the team, I also had one other duty and that was, for a long time, for over a year, was to open the box so that -- of documents that were delivered and screen them all. And then outline areas to be translated and pass them on by taking them before the board and explaining what's to be translated.

MU: What board was this?

HW: Oh, there was a little board there to process things so that one person won't make a decision. The interesting thing about that -- when I think about it after being trailed by CIC agents and so forth, watching what we were doing -- was that I don't know how many documents that I put into the incinerator, but I did. Because they were duplicates or something that couldn't be used strategically, or not even worth sending to Washington, D.C., Maryland, or to Hawaii. And nobody ever questioned what I was burning -- [laughs] -- in that incinerator. But, maybe they knew. I don't know. Those are the things that -- when you know that eyes are on you, and yet, you could do these things, well, I figured that they must have had a lot of trust in what I was doing. [Laughs] 'Cause I burned a lot of documents, you know, captured documents. They could be diaries or something like that, that was inconsequential.

MU: At any time did you feel being discriminated against, for not being commissioned an officer, at that time?

HW: Well, if you accept the system that exists and do the best you can, you don't think about those things. You just forget about those things.

MU: It's a given?

HW: Yeah, you just do the work and hope the war gets over with.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.