<Begin Segment 24>

RP: Many Nisei who ended up in the occupation force in Japan, that was their first visit to Japan and they had an opportunity to visit their family.

KO: Same. It was the first time, I spent fourteen months there. I got assigned to a unit called the 5250th Technical Intelligence Detachment, which was after I volunteered for interviewing the prisoners. They gave me a prime assignment, that was supposed to be one of the best. And it was a very small, small outfit. Maybe we had a couple hundred people, that was it. We didn't report to MacArthur. We were with the Army Security Agency who got all the messages from the Pentagon for MacArthur. And so it was rather a very unique group. And I did some translation and things, time went so fast. It took me, it was very difficult for me to translate, but then we all had to share guard duty, you know. Front gate, or be, what do you call it, man of the day for, and they had a whole bunch of warehouses with all the army technical Japanese equipment in these warehouses. So we had to serve, take our turn being guards since we were such a small outfit. So that was part of our duty, but it was nice that I was able to see my relatives.

RP: Like who did you get a chance to visit?

KO: Fukuoka, you know the southern island, northern part of that.

RP: This is your mom or dad's family?

KO: Both sides. But mainly my mother's side.

RP: Were they kind of shocked to see you at the door?

KO: No, I contacted them. They came up. My mother's younger brother was a mining engineer and things. He was up there on the ladder, so he contacted me, he found out through my mother. And I arranged a furlough, I went down ten days and took all kind of goodies for them because they had nothing. I took two pairs of khaki pants for all that time, a pair of shoes, enough socks and t-shirts. Walked it, he could have had a car, but we walked and visited all the relatives, you know, and even saw, I think, the family farm, but that disappeared, by the way. My younger brother quit farming, nobody wanted to farm up in the mountains, so squatters kind of took over. We should have hung onto it, 'cause I understand that property is worth a lot. So the government took care of it.

RP: Kats, what was it like to see your family for the first time?

KO: Oh, it was different at first, but I had been in Japan long enough that I kind of got used to things, which was good for me. And my younger, my mom's youngest brother who was very, had college degrees and everything, just took me around under his wings to visit all the rest of the family. So we traveled for about seven days, just went around. It felt good, except for one of my young cousins. Kid got drunk one day, we were sitting there having some sake, he came rushing in and he started making a fuss. He looked at me, he says, "It's a good thing," he said, "I would have killed you before if you landed here." And I'm looking at him. [Laughs] So my uncle is big, he grabbed him and tossed him out. Next morning he came in and apologized. Those things happen. I think he was with some of those people that were being trained. You know, they had those people.

RP: Yesterday afternoon when we were interviewing Shig, I forget his last name, but he was saying that it was really different for the Japanese people because here's a person who has got a, obviously has a Japanese face, he's speaking Japanese, but he's wearing an American uniform. Many of the Japanese people were just completely intrigued with that whole idea, like, "Who are you?"

KO: But my relatives weren't bad. Only time I had that was when I was at Maizuru Naval Base, it's on the China side, it's a big naval base. We went up in the mountains to an inn I heard about. Well, they really hadn't seen American soldiers. Some of those places American soldiers never went into. They were kind of looking at us. We stayed at the inn. They were very nice, but they're looking at us like, "What are you doing here?" But it was interesting, we talked to them about what we were and stuff, and they listened. They were willing to listen. 'Cause they're, I'll give 'em credit over there, Japanese people are willing to reform, to make the best of the situation over there, maybe the same way we were with camps. They were all very friendly except for that one cousin. People welcomed us, really did. I was always a special guest and things.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2007 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.