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KS: After the war, we stayed Jakarta around a year and a half about until Japanese ship come to get us to take us back to Japan.

AW: And during that time, were you still working --

KS: We are still working as a nurse. And, oh, during that time, there was very funny incident happened. One distinguished Indonesian gentleman with black mustache and long sarong on and barefoot with slippers on, and he had two servants, two servants with him, and he came to headquarters. And there, we were very much worried about what went wrong now, if we had anything wrong, that's why he came here. We could not understand until after he left there, we were told this distinguished Indonesian gentleman was a village chief. And he already has two Indonesian wives, but now he wanted to have number three, number four Japanese wife. So he had, he told the commanding officer that, "I can exchange one Japanese lady to thirty-nine chickens." [Laughs] And commanding officer was, cannot believe his request. But he said, "No, no, these ladies are very important. They were army employee, and we are supposed to be, take them home to their parents safely. This is what my responsibility." "So, so sorry," he said to him, and he went back. But after that incident, many soldiers teasing us, "Hey, how about thirty-nine chickens. If I give it to you, would you come to be my wife?" They were teasing us, and that was a very, very funny incident.

Another incident, one day outside our camp, egg, man brought a basket of egg, and I don't know how many were there in the basket, about fifty or sixty, and I ask him how many, no, how much it is, how much it is. He said, oh, he said, "One piece is how much by Indonesian money." I said, "Okay." Then I thought I'd cut down the price. I said, "Very expensive and how about so much money, you can give this all for us?" And he said, "Maybe, but let me think." I don't know how to, let me think, and he start counting his ten fingers. Then he start counting from his toe. After twenty, he put both hand in his head, on his head, and he said, "It's so difficult, I cannot count anymore, so I let you have whatever you say. You can take them all." And that was Dutch, under the Dutch administration. They were not, have any school education, nor they did not have, Indonesian did not have any birth certificate. So they don't know, when we ask, "How old are you?" they don't know. They say, "I don't know my age." "Why don't you know your age?" we ask them. And, "Well, because I don't know. Nobody don't know. My parents doesn't know," they said. "Oh, don't you have a birth certificate?" "I don't know such things." Okay then. He was thinking, he said, "Yeah, I'm so old now." And, "How old are you anyway?" and he said, "Oh, now I remember. Please count the ring of the tree or coconut tree in my yard. That's supposed to be my age. My parents told me that coconut tree was planted the year I was born, so that should be my age." So I counted. It was about twenty-six. I said, "You are twenty-six years old, young man." Said, "No, I'm old." So I said, well, here he was only few years older than I am, and he said he was old. He was going to die pretty soon. And that's how everything was so pitifully low, low level, educational level low, nothing, no education, no birth certificate in middle of twentieth century. And when I sometimes went to bicycle ride in the countryside, I visited some people. Inside house, there was no furniture whatsoever, just the dirt floor and some weaved, weaved, what they call that, weaved carpet or something like that on the floor. And there was no furniture, no cooking utensils, and I was surprised how these people were living with. And I asked the lady, "How do you cook? How do you prepare the meals?" She said, "Oh, we going down to the river. We wash the rice there. We had the water in the river. Then we cook rice outdoor by tin can." And that was about the level in the middle of the twentieth century, and I almost cried for them. They were so, so lovely, so nice people, but I almost cried for them. Their history of three centuries, three centuries Dutch occupation made them strip everything to the bone. And so we told them, "Now you are your own country, so you have to be strong about it. You have to do, have to live your own because your own country has so much natural resource, you know, oil and teas, teas and rubber, and so much natural resources there. We really envied them, but that's their own thing. So we never thought, we thought Indonesian people are really sacrificed three centuries. That's why we helped them as much we could.

AW: During those two years when you were there after the Japanese surrendered, did you just expect the Japanese to come back? Were you in contact with the Japanese government when you were still in Jakarta? Were you in contact with the Japanese government?

KS: No. We cannot conduct ourselves with the Japanese government, but the headquarters, I think, they had some. But one of those days, we had order to go to the Tanjung Priok port, and they were taking us to the port, port dock. And there, Japanese ship was waiting for us to take us home. From there, we came home, but we stopped in the Singapore again, and we stayed there about couple of weeks. Then we went back to Japan to Nagoya, and that all took about, for us month and a half to get back home because it was about 7000 miles south from Japan.

AW: You told me a story about a time when you were still living in Jakarta and the Japanese government had sent a boat for some of your crew members to go back to Japan and you had stayed. Could you tell us that story?

KS: Yes. End of the war, I think it was sometimes during the 1944, later part 1944, the war was to Japan was not going too good, so I think the government want to take us back to Japan. And so if we wished, we could go home. And there was, if you signed it up, I thought about it, but I did not signed it up. However, my, couple dozen of my girlfriend signed it up to go back to Japan was last trip to Japan, and we went to see off them in the Tanjung Priok Bay, port. And after that was, they took same Japanese hospital ship also with some patients in it I have heard. And after they left, however, after they left about two, about couple days later, the Japanese Red Cross ship was sunk by American submarines, and we lost all our friends in there. That was Sunda Strait, I think the boat sank.

AW: And these were people that were returning home because they thought Japan was going to lose the war?

KS: Yes.

AW: So many of them were only children or were they just people volunteering to go back? Were their families asking?

KS: Yeah. People volunteering, going back. I volunteer stay there.

AW: And that's twice you saved your life by staying.

KS: So, yes. I really saved twice my life; once submarine attack, and second time in this boat we are supposed to be taking, so the God was with me.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.