<Begin Segment 16>

TI: Okay, so Peter, we're going to go into the third part. And unfortunately, we don't have the time for you to talk about the thousand days in Siberia, but your book does a wonderful job of covering it. And so I'm just going to touch upon a couple things, because I read the book. And in it, you talk a lot about the suffering, mainly through hunger. And not so much, you didn't recount very much in terms of any ill treatment by the Soviet soldiers, but you did mention that you felt that the Soviets treated the Japanese prisoners differently than the German prisoners. Can you talk a little bit about that and the differences?

IS: Yes. Interesting because when I wrote that, actually what happened is I submit the manuscript all over, and then finally Nebraska took it. And they kind of told me what goes on. They took it, and then the editorial board sort of talk about it and they said, "Yeah, maybe we can publish this. This might sell." So then they have a list of, quote, "experts" that they have review the book and see what they would think, and they have standard question. And interesting thing, they sent me the question and response that two of them did, and I write about, I think I mentioned that Japanese prisoner were treated better than the Germans. And one of the comment was, "Well, it's only natural that that would happen, and I think that's true." But then, interesting thing happened. One, a guy here in San Jose had a cousin in Yokohama who went through that experience. He wasn't a Nisei, he was a Japanese-Japanese. But, so when he found out that I was going to go to visit Tokyo, he says, "I'll call my cousin, and it would be good if you'd visit him in Yokohama," which I did. And he told me this: he said what he saw there, he was there a year longer than I was, I think. But he said, "Here's what I saw." He said, "We would come back from work, and then we're so tired we would like to rest." But he said, "What I saw was German prisoners going home and getting all washed up, changing clothes and going out in town." And he said -- I can believe this -- "there were very few young Russian men, because a lot had died in the invasion from the Germans. So they lacked that man companionship, so they were very happy to see young German, although they were prisoners, in town. So they had a real good time that way." That he told me, this Japanese. And I don't doubt that. He probably saw that. And what I saw and heard was what I write about, where this poor German was saying, "We're hopeless. We're gonna spend the rest of our life here. We never think we'll ever get to go home." That's true, too. That's what I saw and that's what I heard.

Then what happened is some woman from, I think it was Ohio, I loaned that book out, and I wasn't able to get it back yet. But she read my book and said, "I wrote a book about my grandparents who were living in Germany." And she said, "My grandfather was captured by the Soviets in Poland, and he was taken to Siberia. And I interviewed them both and wrote a book about what the Germans went through in World War II." And what he tells her was he observed Japanese prisoners when he was in Siberia, and he said, "Boy, they were treated rough. Way more bad than the way we were treated." And I'm sure that's true. He observed that, and I don't see why he would not say that if that didn't happen. So all of those things are true. It depends on where you were and when it was. And I think you can't say, "It was this way." To a certain degree, all of those are true, I'm sure.

TI: And so when you take that all, because you wrote your book first, and then you got this new information...

IS: Right.

TI: ...what do you think now? If you were to be asked, "Okay, so compare the treatment of the Japanese prisoners with the German prisoners," how would you answer now?

IS: I guess I would say that what I saw was like this or what I heard was like this. But these can very well be true. It could have happened like this because of certain things, and because, and in the time, I'm sure, like even in, when I was working in the factory, I remember some Russian women almost spit out the word, "Stalin," because... and a fellow prisoner said, "You know what happened? They had to, they were in Europe, they were not in Siberia. They lived in Europe somewhere, and I guess they had to evacuate and they can't get back. So they're not happy living in Siberia." So there were people like that. Everybody just didn't praise Stalin.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.