Densho Digital Archive
Japanese American Museum of San Jose Collection
Title: Iwao Peter Sano Interview
Narrator: Iwao Peter Sano
Interviewers: Tom Ikeda, Steve Fugita
Location: San Jose, California
Date: November 30, 2010
Densho ID: denshovh-siwao-01-0012

<Begin Segment 12>

TI: So let's move on to entering the military. So at this point you're still, you're still thought of as American citizen, aren't you? Don't you have, at this point, dual citizenship?

IS: I had dual citizenship, yes. I didn't do anything about my American citizenship. When I was, before I was adopted, I took out Japanese. I was registered and became a Japanese citizen, but I didn't do anything with my, I didn't renounce it or anything.

TI: So I'm curious, did the military ever question, or were they concerned about your American citizenship in terms of bringing you into the military? Because many of the men they drafted at that time, they had to fight against the Americans, so I'm wondering if that ever came up.

IS: No, it didn't. The only time that I can definitely remember, very clearly remember, is that first day I arrived in Manchuria. That night I was the last one to be interviewed, and this guy said that, "You have to prove yourself because of your background, that you would have to work double hard to be a Japanese soldier."

TI: And how did you feel about that when you heard that?

IS: Well, if anything, I guess I told them... I guess I just felt that he's telling me something I know. I didn't question it or I didn't say, "Oh, that's the first time I ever heard of that."

SF: When you were assigned to Manchuria, did all the Niseis get assigned someplace away from the Americans who were fighting?

IS: No. And I think you asked me about the number, but this book, like I was reading it before, and this guy comes up with the figure of three thousand, that there were three thousand Japanese, Niseis in the Japanese military at that time. And it tells how he comes up with that figure, and it sort of makes sense. Number of Niseis, how many of those are male, and because of their age, he comes down to, he says, he figures something like three thousand were in the Japanese military between 1941 and '45.

SF: So you could just as well have ended up fighting in American... wherever. There was no official policy like the Americans had in World War II, sending them to Europe or something.

IS: No, no, they weren't. That's right. That's a good point. No, they didn't. There was this guy that used to live, he went to Hawaii, but there was this colonel here in San Jose, he had a, he went to Hiroshima, and he came back to the United States little before the war. He had --

SF: Harry Fukuhara?

IS: Yeah, I think he had a brother in the service in Japan, then he had another brother that was sent to the Pacific, I think.

TI: Did you ever, at this time, think about the possibility of fighting Americans, and how did you feel about that?

IS: I guess now, I don't know if it's now or then, but now I feel like, I must have felt lucky if I thought about that, that I landed in Manchuria rather than in the Pacific. And because there was always the possibility of fighting, though. Because either with the Russians or the Allies in the Pacific, and I guess I felt like it would be easier fighting the Russians, not because of where they were militarily or anything, just the fact that I would not be fighting American. I might have thought something along that line. I can't say very -- oh, I was definitely real happy that I was, landed here.

SF: Did the war, well, you were at the tail end of the war, when you were in Japan during the war, what was your sense of how the war was going to play out, who was going to win, and that, and...

IS: I really didn't think Japan was losing, yeah. Once, when I was in Tokyo, I still remember, had somebody from Brawley, he was a bit older than me, but he used to work for the general headquarters, to listen to the U.S. broadcasts. And I remember we had a common friend, and he would visit this family in Tokyo, and I would, not that often, but sometimes I visited them. And I remember hearing from the missus that Oliver used to say, "I don't know who's winning the war, because during the day I read the Japanese paper, listen to the Japanese radio, and at nighttime I listen to the Allied broadcast, and both sides are winning, depending on what you're listening to. So you don't know who's winning." But I never heard the other side. Even when Saipan fell, I thought, "Gee, what a typical Japanese thing, men and women and children were jumping off the cliff rather than being captured by the Americans." That's all I heard. And the Alaskan, Attu and Kiska, those islands, all the naval battles from Midway on, you read about it now, and that's when Japan was losing already. Yeah, even when the Philippines or Guadalcanal and all that was being lost, I never heard anything.

TI: So you just never heard reports of the fall of these places.

IS: Yeah.

TI: But this one gentleman -- I just want to follow up -- Oliver from Brawley, so was he a Nisei?

IS: Yeah, he was a Nisei.

TI: Okay, another Nisei that you knew, he was... and I'm curious, did you run across any other Niseis in the military during this time? You mentioned earlier, this book said there were three, about three thousand. I'm just curious if you ran across them.

IS: No, I didn't meet anyone. And according to this Dr. Stephan of the University of Hawaii, according to his book, he said he came up with, I think he counted, he was able to track down thirty Niseis who were in Siberia from Manchuria. But I didn't see anybody.

TI: And were you on that list? Was he able, were you counted as one of the thirty?

IS: Yeah. Well, yeah, because this guy who wrote that for the Japanese veterans thing, he's a good friend of this Professor Stephan, and he gave him my book, and so I think that's why he listed me. Because I was, in this article, I'm listed as Iwao Peter Sano, and there was no Iwao Peter Sano in the Japanese military, it was Suzuki, Iwao Suzuki. [Laughs]

TI: Oh, that's good, yeah. [Laughs] Interesting, okay. So, Steve, any more questions before we move on?

SF: Just to kind of follow up that question about the lack of information flow to Japan to people in general about what was really happening in the war, did anyone have any sense of the Americans were gonna invade Japan at the end of 1945? Or how was that gonna play out?

IS: Yeah, I think so because... well, I was drafted into the service in March of '45, and actually, I was in Tokyo from March 1 to March 7, and March 10 was when they had that big air raid in Tokyo. I think they estimate that one in a (hundred) thousand died, civilians died in that air raid. But I think in Japan they were saying that after Okinawa, they were going to come to Kyushu and then to the Kanto area also. And by that time, I wasn't there. And I remember seeing B-29s flying overhead, because before I went into the service, I was in Yamanashi. But according to my spouse, she said they were all prepared for landing in Kanto, because she was living in Tokyo. And interesting thing, none of her relatives died because of the bomb or anything, living right there in Tokyo. She said that they were prepared to fight with bamboo spears. [Laughs]

TI: In those war years, how about just hardships for people in terms of food or other resources? Was that something that you saw in terms of people sacrificing during the war years?

IS: Yes. Everything was rationed, and, see, I was in the country for about eight months before I was drafted. I was just waiting to get my notice, and I was living in the country. So in spite of the shortage, you still weren't hungry, I mean, you had enough to eat. But I... when I was drafted and I went to Tokyo, and I still remember, I was full because I had just arrived. And I remember I had some rice leftover and I was going to toss that out, and some old soldier said, "Hey, what are you going to do with that?" And I said, "I'm just going to toss that," and he said, "Don't do that," and he just grabbed it like that and ate it. So I started seeing that. That's the first time I actually seeing somebody willing to eat somebody else's leftover like that.

And then I don't think I wrote about that one, but then once when we went into the shelter, I'd hear somebody eating some corn. And my buddies said, "Hey, that guy's eating that horse..." this was a, they had horses at this military installation in Tokyo where I was for one week. And he said, "That guy's eating some horse feed that he stole." And, but I did experience that after I went to Manchuria, too, that I was willing to eat, it was like a dandelion.

TI: Good.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.