Densho Digital Archive - George Hara Interview (denshovh-hgeorge

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GH: And eventually, I ended up in Kobe. Now Kobe was one of the larger seaport towns in Japan, and some of our language squad leaders or head had gone through with different divisions and were part of the invasion of the different islands, so they had combat duty. But I was amazed that, here we were, new country, new city; they had access to jeep for our language attachment. They got in the jeep, and I was, we ended up in the hills overlooking Kobe, and it is sort of a cosmopolitan town with a population before the war, you know, of hakujins. Anyway, our men in Japanese ryokan eating miso soup. To this day, I don't know how they made this kind of connection, but from there, I was assigned to the 33rd Division to 136th Regimental Infant Headquarters Company, and they were situated near Kyoto in a little town right on the shores of Lake Biwa called Otsu.

[Interruption]

GH: Anyway, my job was to work with the Caucasian officer and work with the Japanese foreman who had a crew of Japanese laborers who were converting these buildings so that American troops could put in their bunkbeds and individual stoves. They redid the lavatories they had and made arrangements to have that cleared. They had a "honey bucket" crew, and one of the problems was that the people that took the "honey buckets" used it for fertilizer in the outlying farm, but they complained that the American troops had too much toilet paper in the "honey buckets." But that was something we didn't have much, you know, they said you have to work that out. Anyway, again I had to learn a new language, you know, and then pretty soon after that was completed, I was accompanying the officers and go to outlying smaller towns. And as a Nisei translator, interpreter, I would be, you know, the main cog in making sure that they understood each other, and this was to accompany troops in an area, find out a little bit about that, get the cooperation of the people there, and one of the place is Tsuruga, which is located on Japanese sea coast, Japan Sea side. We were entertained by the mayor, and he rustled up a good Japanese meal and had a party for us.

One of the earliest things I learned that dealing at that level with prefectural governors, city mayors, and so forth was that they believed in entertaining the Japanese, the U.S. Army, you know, officers that were going to have a great deal of say about how their government was going to be formed and run. I wasn't into all these mundane duties like translating numerous, you know, documents. I had no interest. I was out there in the field working with the Japanese people, and I was just a young kid just out of high school. And here I was given equal role, equal share, and some of it was difficult. Some of these American officers sort of still looked on the Japanese as enemies, and they wanted to establish the dominance. They would go after them and raise their voice and shout and, you know, berate them. And I had to interpret all that, and I couldn't, you know. Finally, I tell the Japanese people, you know, "I'm supposed to be mad at you," and everything. And the officer, he's not a dummy. He says, "Sergeant," he says, "I want you to interpret word for word what I say, and when I get mad and raise my voice, I want you to do the same." It was a ludicrous situation I was put in, and I think he was smart enough to realize that, you know, I couldn't do that kind of stuff. But the other kind of stuff like, you know, arranging for parties, this or that or girls, I could do, you know. That's the kind of language you pick up in a hurry. I didn't use all that military training language about how many in your troop or anything like that. It's another field entirely. But we moved, met all these people, and I was introduced to parts of Japan that my father and I had never even of dreamed about, and I enjoyed every bit. And later on, when I was going to premed at University of Oregon, I stayed with a group of Niseis, about three of them had been in the same capacity in Japan, and our stories were very similar, and we would exchange all these stories and drink beer and get acclimatized again. Anyway, stay in Japan was interesting.

And then from Otsu, I was transferred back to our language headquarters which was in Kyoto, and we were occupying space in one of the big office building, and we really didn't have any set duties that kept us all that busy. Something came in, we'd go out and accomplish it. We had a jeep to ourselves, and we had a lot of freedom. And I think Nishi Hongwanji Church, the headquarters for the Buddhist located several blocks out, and they invited us as a group, and they entertained us and showed us, you know, the whole place. And Kyoto was a cultural ancient capital of Japan, and it was not bombed, and we were fortunate enough to be stationed there. And actually, our living quarters were right outside one of the famous garden, Heian Jingu Temple, and we were in the center of a previous museum, large halls, we're all stationed there, but we were free to go. You know, we answered evening mess hall, and then we're free to go. Then we did find lots of avenues where we could go and enjoy ourselves. But the beauty of it was that we didn't have the yen to enjoy a lot of these facilities. So being in the United States Army on the winning side, we had access to sake on a ration base, and then we can go to the PX and get cigarettes, and one item that the Japanese enjoyed was Almond Roca, cans of them wrapped up in the little tin foil in the can and that was like gold, and so we bartered. This was a system that we, and they, Kyoto not being bombed, and they had lots of enterprising Japanese there. They opened up a dance hall on the hill nearby called Higashiyama Dance Hall. They had two bands; a Latin band and a Japanese jazz band, and they had these girls dressed there in, you know, kimonos. And after so many, you know, rounds, they changed the band; the band up here in the balcony would play Latin music. None of us knew Latin dance, so it was different. And we were teaching the girls jitterbugging, and you buy dance tickets, actually about twenty dollars' worth, and you get about four or six bottles of beer, and we get tables, and then we'd give these dance tickets about five or ten dance ticket, you know, good for one dance with hostess. And we turned, this is after you learned the ropes. You turned it over to our favorite dance hostess; they would sit with you all night. You won't have to chase them, you know, take them away from some hakujin soldier, you know. They were ours to drink beer, you know. And that's something I learned in Minneapolis to do, and Japanese beer, by the way, was good.

And then, they were all roaming around, I wandered around, and I was by myself at one of the railway station, Shijo, I think it meant forest station or bridge or something, and there was a middle-aged lady, clad in kimono and a younger girl dressed a little more colorfully, finally struck up a conversation. I thought she was a housewife and her daughter. Actually, she invited me to her place of residence. She was not a madam, but the owner and the person running a machiai, a tea house. Now next to, you know, the maikos and the geishas, Kyoto had lots of machiai places, you know, where you meet and where you can eat, drink, and then can call up the central supply, they send girls over. Some can dance, even play shamisen, but mainly it was the next level up from a pure whorehouse. Anyway, she happened to be a madam and most cordial and hospitable, invited me to her place of business. By golly, I took her up on it by myself, god, started out with the food, fantastic meal, sake, she's doing entertainment, girls came, shamisen, sleepover, and I said, "How much is this all this costing me?" I don't have much. So I, you know, soldier, I want to do something good for you, but I knew she ain't in the business for, she's buttering me up, and finally, you know, more conversation, we found out the worth of a, you know, carton of cigarettes that we can bring and that she can sell. And sake, we were allowed about two of those big bottles a week, and we'd bring sake, and then we established the entertainment activity route. We go to the dance hall, drink beer and then instead of going back to, you know, Heian Jingu and the barracks, we head for the machiai, stay there all night. A couple of times the MPs came through, you know, but they hid our uniform, we were in yukata. Good thing for those damn MPs, they're pretty sharp, you know, they sort of wink at you. They knew you were a Nisei, but they didn't bother you. Anyway, you know, this kind of entertainment was beyond dreaming about. This was bad for your health, but in our way, you know, constituted goodwill of the Japanese people, revive the dying industry more or less.