Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Richard Kosaki Interview
Narrator: Richard Kosaki
Interviewer: Mitchell Maki
Location: Los Angeles, California
Date: March 19, 2004
Densho ID: denshovh-krichard-01-0018

<Begin Segment 18>

MM: Let's go back to when you're still in the service, and, as you mentioned, you were anticipating that you would be a part of the invasion into Japan. But Japan surrenders, so, fortunately, that didn't have to happen. You, however, did spend some time in Japan.

RK: Yes, well, when the war ended I was back at Fort Snelling, and so, luckily, instead of going into a war zone now, I'm going to be shipped overseas for occupation duty, I feel. So they send me to Fort Mason, California, and I was waiting my call to get out, and then they send me to Hamilton air force, airfield, north of San Francisco to ship me out. And one night at midnight or so, I get a call, and I report. And they said, "We're going to send you to Manila." And they gave me a packet that said, "Top secret," and they gave me a .45, a gun, and they said, "Take this to MacArthur's headquarters." You know, top secret packet. Okay, a good soldier, and I get onto the C54 flying to, first to Hawaii, and I find I'm the only passenger on this cargo ship. So we left at night, and as dawn approached, we're moving into Hawaii. And the pilot say, "Of course, this is your hometown, come on," so I sat up front because that plane had no windows in the back. I had lots of room to sleep. But so, I said, "Yeah, that's Honolulu, there's Waikiki, there's Diamond Head," and so on. And I said, "I haven't been home for over two years. The war is over, why can't I stay home?" 'Cause I had to carry this top secret packet to Manila, but when I got off at Hickam Air Force Base, I talked to the officer in charge there. And at first, he says, "No, no, you have to take it all the way." But after arguing with him for some time, he finally said, "Okay," and they found someone who would take it on. So I went AWOL for two or three days in Hawaii. [Laughs] So I didn't have to take this packet. I don't know... as a young infantry officer you're indoctrinated with all this stuff about loyalty and the armed services and so forth. I didn't think much about it, but later on when I went to occupation duty in Japan... well, eventually I did go to Manila, stayed a few days, and then they flew me, in about October, early October I got into Japan. Eventually I met up with my relatives, of course, and they were curious about, well, first of all to see me in an American army uniform and when I told them that, "Oh yeah, they trusted me, they told me to take this top secret material to MacArthur's headquarters, they couldn't believe it." And then I said to myself, oh, good reason for their not believing it. But in a sense, we had come a long way.

MM: When you were in Japan, where were you stationed?

RK: Yeah, we, of course, we all originally arrived in Atsugi Air Field, and we were in Tokyo for a while. But, that was to wait our assignments. Being in military intelligence, we were assigned to general headquarters, MacArthur's headquarters, and I was assigned to the counterintelligence unit. And of course, most of us thought, gee, want to be in Tokyo, it's a glamorous city. But lo and behold, I didn't have rank. My friends, who were already first lieutenants, I was a second lieutenant, and captains could stay in Tokyo, but I got sent to Osaka. As it turned out, it was good that I did because it was, I think, a nicer place to be. There weren't as many GIs. It was a very good experience in Osaka. I spent a whole year of occupation duty in Osaka.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2004 Japanese American National Museum. All Rights Reserved.