<Begin Segment 22>

MU: Well, let's move on and... where were you when the atom bombs were dropped?

HW: Oh, yeah. We were in Manila at a -- I think it's Santa Ana racetracks where our tents were. And we felt, you might say we sensed because of some conversation going on, and this and that, that bomb was gonna be dropped and it was dropped.

MU: Oh, you had information?

HW: Yeah, we had a strong feeling that something like that was to going to happen. And it did happen. And when we got the report of the bomb being dropped on Hiroshima, we -- I guess we all headed for the clubhouse. The stuff that we put in our footlockers and brought from Australia to Manila, we drank it all up. [Laughs]

MU: Really celebrated?

HW: We celebrated, yeah. But soberly, I think. The war is over. When that thing drops, the war is gonna be over. We knew that. Being in military intelligence, I think we've talked about the atom bomb now and again.

MU: Did you have any idea how destructive that bomb was?

HW: Not -- no, no, not at all.

MU: I guess at that time nobody really knew how devastating it was.

HW: That's right. Well, I think they had an idea but they could never try one out over population, you know. It would be out in the deserts of Nevada with a smaller unit or something like that.

MU: Were any relatives hurt in the bombs?

HW: No, no.

MU: Your relatives were in Kanagawa-ken?

HW: Kanagawa, yeah, near Tokyo.

MU: Did you get a chance to visit Hiroshima while you were in Japan?

HW: No, no. I've been to Japan and to northern Japan, from, say, from Kanagawa up through north and to Hokkaido. And I've been in Kyushu but I haven't been... I've been in Nagasaki. There is a big, big memorial there for the Nagasaki bomb memorial. It should be completed about now. I didn't get to Hiroshima.

MU: When you saw, say, Nagasaki and the effects of the bomb, what thoughts came through your mind?

HW: Well, it's a terrible thing to do -- to drop it on the civilian population to supposedly end the war.

MU: Was there a lot of controversy on whether Japan was ready to surrender or not?

HW: I had the feeling that Japan was ready to cave in, basically because my thinking was that there was no more natural, no more raw resources to wage a war with. The, as we discovered when we got to Japan, that all the operating vehicles were operating with charcoal burners in the back. Not using any fuel, or gasoline or petrol type of fuel.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.