<Begin Segment 24>

RP: And did you hold any other jobs there before you were, before you went into the military?

TI: Not in Detroit, no. That was the only one job that I had. My, oh, what is that... my board caught up with me. Well, what do they call the...

KP: Draft board?

TI: Draft board, yeah. You know, I'd report every time I change of address I'd report. My draft board was in Wilmington. And they caught up with me and they said, "Well, you're gonna be drafted on a certain day in Detroit." So I said, I thought, well, if I'm gonna be drafted I'll volunteer. That's what I did.

RP: And where did you go from Detroit?

TI: Well, I went to, I think it was South Carolina someplace, camp there, had my basic training there. And I talked to my commanding officer. I said, "I am quite bilingual." I said if he could kind of look into it, see if I could go to Japan or some language school so I could go to Japan. And he did look into it. First thing I know I got a ticket to go to New Jersey, some outfit there. Then they sent me to Monterey, there was a language school there. I think it's still in existence isn't it? And...

RP: And you graduated there with flying colors.

TI: Yeah, I think I got it in about two or three months I was out.

RP: Now, had the war ended by then or...

TI: Yeah, the war had ended by then, uh-huh.

RP: And so you were on your way to Japan as part of the occupation forces.

TI: Yeah, right.

RP: And you shared your first experience with us, as part of MacArthur's, MacArthur's headquarters translating the newspapers.

TI: Uh-huh, yeah.

RP: And then you were assigned to some war criminals, war criminal trials.

TI: War criminal trials, yeah.

RP: Can you tell us a little bit more about that? I mean, I guess the war criminals were graded according to their...

TI: Yeah, you know, I could never understand why they were being tried to begin with. I don't know, I can't even remember what the crimes were. But we were assigned... there were others assigned at the trial too. There would be about four or five sittin' around a table and I'd be one of the translators there. And we didn't do any translating. There was a main translator that did all the translating but these Japanese soldiers, they all had a notebook and they're taking notes. I don't know why. But taking notes and writing this and that. And they'd come to some place where they couldn't understand what the translation was. So, they'd ask me and I'd tell 'em what the thing was. And that, that's my translation work there.

RP: That's how it worked.

TI: Uh-huh.

RP: And did they, did the prisoners ever speak to you personally?

TI: Oh, yeah, well, we sat around a table. But they were so busy taking notes. Very seldom that they spoke to me.

RP: Were they surprised to see Japanese Americans in uniform?

TI: No, I don't think they were surprised in any way. I think they were glad in a sense.

RP: When we talked a while back, this was probably over a year ago, you mentioned that one of the cases involved Japanese sailors who had bayoneted several Americans from a B-29 shot down near Okinawa. The other case involved professors and doctors who were trying to find a substitute for blood for transfusions and they took American prisoners were, and were experimenting with seawater as a substitute for blood.

TI: Yeah, maybe I did mention something like that. Yeah. But they had no supplies there and I believe they were not extensively but maybe one or two American soldiers were tested with seawater.

RP: Now did you actually sit in on their trials as well?

TI: Well, these came up but not the seawater trial itself. What was that other one?

RP: The other one involved ...

TI: Oh, involved bayoneting, bayoneting a solider, yeah. And the main translation was if the Japanese that had taken these American prisoners, if they had used their gun and shot them, said, it wouldn't be any trial here. By using the bayonet on the prisoners was a crime. I think that that was the conclusion. You could shoot an enemy but you can't bayonet him. And even this was not done on their own. They were ordered to do it by their superior. So, it's hard.

RP: So the outcome of the, of that particular trial was that...

TI: They were given the death sentence. But I never heard whether the death sentence was... they were executed that way.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.