Densho Digital Archive - George Matsumoto Interview (denshovh-mgeorge

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KP: So when you heard about the bombing of Pearl Harbor, was that a surprise to you? Or were you aware of...

GM: Well, I knew that there was something coming up because the, the oil embargo and the scrap iron, those kind of thing, that, I knew that the United States was trying to back Japan into a corner, and my best friend's father was a banker, and he loved to grab me and, every time I went to my buddy's house, he'd grab me and start talkin' about current events.

KP: Do you remember that gentleman's name?

GM: Oh, yeah, Kenneth Hills. It's in my, my report. But he used to say to me, says, "Oh, Japan is just a pipsqueak country." He says, "United States will destroy it in a week." So then when their... attack the United States, and I kept, "No, no, no." I says, "All indications lead to this attack," and I told him, I said, "Hey, Spain, in Spain they had the civil war and the Italians and the Germans were aiding Franco and the Russians were helping the, the loyalists, and the United States claimed to be neutral, but they sent (...) two or three thousand young men." Most of 'em were Communists, and they were working in, on the, working in the, for the Lincoln brigade, and Hemingway wrote about this one guy, (Hemingway) was a war correspondent there. And I told Mr. Hills, I says, "Hey, this is just a rehearsal for World War II." He says, "Oh, go on." Says it's, nothing will come of it. I told him, I say, "Hey, you know, Germany was denied making airplanes and tanks and this kind of, and they're perfecting their war tactic." And they had the stuka dive bomber, and this thing would come down, straight down before they release the bomb and it would take out the bridges and the tanks, and it was a really, a powerful weapon.

KP: You knew about this before Pearl Harbor?

GM: Oh, yes, because I used to read about this in the newspaper and the magazines.

KP: So what did you, did you have any personal feelings about Mr. Hill's assessment of how easy Japan would be to beat?

GM: Oh, yeah. Well, I was thinking it... well, I knew the United States and I knew that Japan had nothin'. It was a, just a country about the size of California, no resources, nothing, and when Roosevelt said that here we got several demands, he came out with the ten point demands, one is to get out of China, and Japan had been fighting since 1933, they lost a lot of men and spent a lot of money and they would lose face. So I knew that that's gonna be a bad point for them. And then they started to say, "Okay, we're not gonna trade with you anymore." And England said the same thing. Then little by little they cut sending scrap iron and oil and this kind of thing, so we were squeezing Japan into a corner.

KP: As a, as kid, do you remember, or as a teenager, do you remember thinking before Pearl Harbor that Japan's getting squeezed so hard they're probably going to...

GM: Yeah, they're gonna explode.

KP: Yeah, when did you, when did you start thinking about that?

GM: Oh, when Roosevelt started to squeeze. There was an officer that formulated a plan to initiate a war, provoke Japan, and Stimson, his secretary of war, and the admirals, they all got together. They said, "How can we provoke Japan to strike first but sustain the least damage?" And this is why Roosevelt never told Short and Kimmel that they had read the message and Roosevelt said the night before, he told his family, he says, "We're gonna be at war tomorrow." So there was no, no mystery, you know? And they said, "Oh, well we were fooled because we thought Japan was gonna attack Malaya and Singapore and Dutch Indies, but they knew all the traffic was going, the naval forces were heading down to Indonesia, the coast. They knew that and then they shot down a British patrol bomber that was tracking them, so they knew that there's a fleet on the move.