<Begin Segment 25>

RP: How long were you in Japan, Tosh?

TI: I think I was in Japan, gosh... more than a year. But those were the only, only two jobs I had, one translating and the other one war crimes trial.

RP: And can you share with us some of your impressions of postwar Japan?

TI: You mean Japan at that time? Oh, well, all I can say is I know they were talking behind our back, you know, about American soldiers this and that. But they'd never come out and tell us anything. So, I don't know what they felt especially of Japanese American translators, interpreters.

RP: How about the state of the...

KP: Can I... you'd been to Japan in 1940.

TI: Yes.

KP: And now you're back after the war.

TI: Yeah.

KP: Did the country look different? What was the difference between what you'd seen in '40 and what you saw in...

TI: Gosh, I... oh, I can't tell the difference, the way things were going. But they don't come out and say what they want to say like we do it here in the United States. I think they just keep their mouths shut.

RP: One of the struggles that Japanese people had after the war and during the occupation was just trying to find food and a black market existed. You, do you recall any of that?

TI: See, I'm not too familiar with the black market or anything like that. But, no, I can't say anything about black market because we never got in with the Japanese people. Even on the street they'd walk on one side and we'd walk on the other side. And what they felt about Japanese Americans being over there might have been something else but they never came out and told us.

RP: Did you get a chance to go down and visit Koza?

TI: Yes, uh-huh. Yeah.

RP: Had they'd been a, had that part of the country been affected by the war or the bombing that took place?

TI: No, I don't think there was any bombing around there, being in, being just a fishing village. But being on the ocean, I don't know. They may have had something. Not Koza itself but maybe some other close by cities.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.