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HH: I know that the military experience has particular significance for you. Perhaps that which your brother lived as much as your own. Can you speak to that situation as you understand it?

BO: Can I speak, address my military experience as to how I feel today, the influence that it has had on my life and such? Yeah, it's great. It was a great shock when my brother was killed. I found out about that in Landsdale where my brother George was, and the three days before I was going to be drafted or going in for active duty. And we get this telegram from President Truman notifying that my brother was killed. And so I went upstairs and cried and cried. Then when I felt better, well then, I just started to look up, and this is a spiritual experience now. And so I could see this white thing, and I looked up like that, and I see Jesus. And it was great, because at this point, I realized if my Lord can cry with me, well, then I can relate to Him. And it was a great experience in my life. And with that, I went into military service and I had a hard time getting adjusted at first, and I wanted to be a conscientious objector. And my officer was Allen Funt of Candid Camera. And they called me "Omaha" in the service, and he was a big help to me. And he said, "No, Omaha, I want you to understand now. He hurts with us." Allen Funt hurt with us. And he wanted to get me straight on that aspect, and he helped me a great deal. And after that, I would say basic training was, well, I really worked it, I was a good soldier.

But then as far as the service in Japan, that was wonderful. I went to Japan right after the war, December after the war, and I served as an interpreter. And I was assigned to the First Cavalry Division, and we were assigned in Nagano Prefecture. And it was our duty and job to go out with an officer, and get the feeling of the public in general. So we talked with the police chiefs, teachers, manufacturers, workers, geisha girls and prostitutes, but we wanted to cover the whole span of the Japanese activity, and it was great. But at first, the defeatist attitude of the Japanese, shikata ga na attitude, was so hard to overcome. And I managed to tell them, I says, "Well, I'm an American and we're the victors," but I said, "America wants Japan to become strong again," and they could not understand that. And I might interject this. My father told me before I left the States, he says, "Then I want you to understand one thing. A lot of the Niseis are coming back bitter about what they experienced in Japan. And so when you go," I said, "you be careful." And he said, "Japan was strong enough to build a military power as big as it was, is able to come back again because of that knowledge." And I said, "Thank you, Dad." And I went to Japan also with that. And so as I talked to the people in Japan, it was so good, I felt it was so important to get them over this defeatist attitude. And it was awfully hard, but primarily it was because I said, "Well, MacArthur is "Makasa Tennou," they called him "Makasa Tennou," which means the Emperor. And I said, "MacArthur passed the order that he wants Japan to become strong, and that's what I'm here for, and I want to help you build up." And that was one of the biggest things that we had to overcome, and I think I helped him a lot, and I felt good about that. And another thing, while we were going on these patrols, at one point, we were studying, we were supposed to check up on the education system and encourage unions in every level. And we found out that the unions were well organized in the education, and so finally I asked one of the teachers, I said, "Well, what union are you in?" And we checked it out, and it's the Communists. The Communists had the teachers organized already to teach them the Communist philosophy. And boy, really, I said, "Lieutenant Moon, this is serious now." And I said, "We're going to have to let the headquarters know about this." And I don't know how many people found that out, but I felt pretty good about that. And even today when I read about Japanese education and they say how good it is, I say, oh, I think I had a little bit of that. But that's probably the highlight of it from the point of Japan.

But from the other, as far as my brother's concern, this is the story that I gave at the Washington, D.C. at the judiciary committee, but basically it'll get down to this. We Americans of Japanese ancestry are the only Americans who had to prove loyalty. And not only did we have to prove loyalty, we had to fight for the very things that was denied us, that put us into the concentration camp. And that's the hard one for America to understand, and that was a story that I gave at the judiciary hearing, and also for, ever since 1950 or so, I've been putting that message across in the churches. I was a member of what they called lay witness mission teams, and we would go from town to town, church to church, and I would go about twice a year. That's a very strenuous thing, to go for a whole weekend and give our testimony. But there, we would meet college professors, doctors, and people who wanted to become authors and so forth. And we would tell them the story about Christ. And so I would always include what Christ meant to me through this whole evacuation story, and I would include my brother. And even to this point, my principle of serving the Japanese American community and America is that these men did not die in vain. And I think that this is a role that Japanese Americans have to carry on, and my commitment is still strong in that area.

HH: Thank you very much, Ben, this has been very valuable.

BO: I thank you.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 1994 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.