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Revisiting Japan

Yeah. What was it like going back to Japan? Since you were there as a child, what was it like going back and seeing it completely different?

I don't know how to describe it, but it was, in a way sad to see something new because I hadn't seen Japan since we left. I was back there with the American President Lines a couple of times, but I didn't stay there that long. Here I am in Tokyo in 1945; we reached Tokyo October 1, 1945. As you will recall, the war ended in August fourteenth or fifteenth of 1945. We were, as soldiers and occupation personnel, maybe one of the earlier ones. The first group went in in September and we followed shortly from Manila on the boat, on the ship, and got into the port of Yokohama. Then we got on these two-and-a-half ton trucks. Two-and-a-half ton trucks are pretty good sized trucks. They have a cover during bad weather and they can be open during good weather. When we got to Yokohama it was good weather so we got on this open two-and-half ton truck-the back of the truck—and we drove from Yokohama to Tokyo. It normally takes about forty minutes, an hour, from Yokohama to Tokyo. On the way to Tokyo we could see the devastation of the bombings. It was a pitiful site. It just told us how devastating war is.

What did you see?

What did we see? We saw buildings with just the skeleton standing or just flat-out homes. One thing one of my G.I. friends expressed to me was, "Hey, Marvin, one thing you can say about the Japanese is they got this thing cleaned up. All the war and debris is cleaned up and all the metal remnants were piled up neatly." He noticed that right away because in Manila it was still just a mess, we had to clean up all the bombed-out buildings. They told us if you go in to some of these buildings you can still smell the smell of dead people.From Yokohama to Tokyo was just devastated, but at least they had cleaned up as much as they could. We got to Tokyo and we were taken to what they call the "finance building," a brick building, and it was pretty much in tact, so that's where we billeted. The soldiers stayed there and that's where we stayed. It had all the comforts of home, except no hot water. Well, there was hot water, but what they had for showers, was in the middle of the patio, they had this great big tank of hot water and you go underneath to take your shower. We learned right away, if you go late, the water's cold. What we did, just thinking, "Hey, let's go find a Japanese bathhouse." We knew that they had public bathhouses where you pay so much and you take a bath. We found one near the finance building where we stayed, so instead of taking a cold shower outside in the patio, we went to these Japanese bathhouse and took our bath and came back.

Of course when we were on the streets like that the Japanese kids would come up right away and, kids are kids, and they're friendly as a puppy, they would come up and want to talk to you, and so we gave them chewing gum, anything, candy, or whatever we had to give to them. They just followed us all over. Then we're out the next night, for example, and these kids would bring their fathers or mothers and they wanted to talk to us. It didn't take too long before we got invited to their homes to eat and chit-chat. We knew they were short on food, they were short on sugar, they were short on meat, they were short on everything, but one of the things that they missed most was sugar. One of our leaders—Mack was his name—he was an operator, he talked the mess sergeant into giving him pounds of sugar. We went visiting the Japanese homes, we'd take a bag of sugar. We befriended them that way and we got invited. One of the things that was in the back of our leaders minds, there could be some nationalists, Japanese nationalists that could come out swinging the sword, coming after us, but no such things happened. They were pretty peaceful people and we like to think that what we did as interpreters helped to keep things quieted down—in contrast to, let's say, what's happened in Iraq. After we got rid of Saddam Hussein, these riots began to happen. Nothing like that happened in Japan or Germany, for example. We like to think we did contribute to stabilizing a war-torn country, disarmed the country. There's a lot of stories I could tell you about the work that our fellows did—that is the Military Intelligence Language School graduates.

We want to know what you did.

My job was to go with these officers to check on these various buildings. One of these buildings that was of interest to us was that work on trial building, war ministry building. I got to see that. My lieutenant—we had a driver, Japanese driver—and the lieutenant, and myself on the Jeep. The Japanese driver scared the heck out of the lieutenant with his driving, kamikaze style. So, the lieutenant says, "Hey, Marvin, tell this guy to stop and you drive." So, I've been a driver ever since. Anyway, we went from these buildings that we were in charge of, the lieutenant was in charge of, to make sure that things were progressing the way we wanted. That's pretty much what I did, it was nothing spectacular it was just helping the renovation of these buildings for the occupation of troops, but eventually for the Japanese themselves, we helped them recover from the devastation. I've got to tell you that bombing was just really devastating, but what was worse was what they call the incendiary bombs. Incendiary bombs are intended to create fire and the Japanese homes were just made to order for incendiary bombs. It's like lighting a match on a matchbox full of matches. We saw the devastation, we saw the poverty; we saw people at the train stations looking for shelter; looking for medicine. You could see so-called "beggars" now with sores on their faces. It was an awful sight to see. We saw some of these old ladies carrying bags on their back. What we found out later was what they did was they went out to the countryside to buy vegetables and stuff. They had food stuff in the country—in the city they were pretty short of food.

Returning to America

By about May of '46 I had finished my tour and so I came back to the U.S. and came back to Loomis where our farm was. There I helped my brother harvest the crop for that year, 1946. After that I came in to Berkeley, and I went to school at Cal under the G.I. bill. When I just about finished that, I got a job with American President Lines. But in the meantime, some of our ex-M.I.S.L.S. veterans formed an association. They called it the M.I.S.L.S. Association of Northern California. That organization was put together for the purpose of fellowship, exchange of war stories and eventually we got into telling our story, interviewing each individual M.I.S. student. We got a whole bunch, we got over 200, 300 people, maybe just in our association. We helped create this documentary on common courage, a ninety-minute documentary that tells the story of the Military Intelligence Language School veterans. In the meantime, the movie went on to, I guess, some kind of recognition for the veterans of the Military Intelligence Service. There's a lot of work that was done, and then we had these senators from Hawaii involved also and they all helped us to push through this recognition effort and that would be this Presidential Unit Citation. This was given to us I think in June of the year 2000, and it was presented to us by General Eric Shinseki who was the army chief of staff at that time. He's the one that told Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz that we're going to need more troops for the work in Iraq than they were figuring on. He's quoted many, many times in some of these arguments or discussions that have taken place that his advice was ignored, so it contributed to the mess we have in Iraq today. This was something that was unique. The Military Intelligence Language School soldiers never fraught as a unit. We were assigned from the pool of interpreters to various fighting units. Not only the fighting units, but even in Washington D.C. we had guys listening in to the communication between the ambassador of Japan with Hitler's group in Germany. There were other very, very interesting stories that even maybe Hollywood writers couldn't even think of.

Presidential Unit Citation is generally given only to units fighting together, like a battalion or a regiment. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team, made up mostly of Japanese-Americans that fought in Europe, they, by comparison, puts us to shame, really. They had eight Presidential Unit Citations, we had just this one. Generally, if you don't fight as a unit, you don't get it, but through special legislation and through congress, we got this presentation. We're all proud of it, that finally at least we got the top recognition for the work that was done by our guys who volunteered, out of camp even, to help in the war effort. There were about nine of our group that got voted in to what they call the "Military Intelligence Service Hall of Fame." We have one fellow that's in the Hall of Fame of the Air Force and we have three or four in the Hall of Fame of the Rangers. In the military circles, we're pretty well recognized. What we did try to do with the association—Veterans Association—was to perpetuate our story, keep it going, so that it might serve as an example that we can learn from. That's something that we continue to do.

At the Presidio of San Francisco, where the first class was held, there's a building, number 640, and we're trying to renovate it and make an interpretive center where not only will we talk about the Military Intelligence group but the other units. Also, it's right across the bay from Angel Island. We're working together with the National Parks Service, the Presidio Trust. We're trying to renovate 640 so that people can understand what took place there and our story can be known by the public and maybe we can learn something from that experience, also involving the so-called "evacuation." It'll help to continue to tell that story so that people can understand more of what took place. Understanding is something I think we all need to have a more peaceful world, really. Not only in the U.S. but the world throughout. That's what we're hoping for.

Afterthoughts

So, to wrap up, do you feel any anger towards the U.S. government for what they did to you and other Japanese-Americans?

When you look back on history, people have been mistreated by governments. Even Japanese government mistreated some of the people there, still they look down on certain people there. It's, to me, a process of us all growing up. We recognize the injustices and I think the big thing is, once we see the injustice, what do we do about it? Like Mrs. Allen told me long ago, "You shouldn't let bitterness eat into you because it can kill you. Rather, you've got to look forward positively and move on." You ask that question, how I feel about it, I don't feel any bitterness. That what we went through can be an example of what not to happen again-then I think we've made our point and contribution. I don't feel, and I'm not just saying it, I feel in my heart that—that's just the way I look at it. Maybe sometimes it's hard to understand how could you not feel bitter after all that, but no it's time to get over bitterness. Maybe I ought to mention one other thing. If you ask the Japanese whether it was right to drop the bomb on Hiroshima, most of them will say no, but if you ask a guy that was in the foxhole like some of our guys, they'll say, "They had to do it. They had to drop that bomb." The lesson there is not whether you consider it wrong or right. The important issue is what are we going to do about it? What are we going to about the future? We're in a nuclear age now, what are we going to do about that? How are we going to save ourselves? Not only in the U.S., but the whole world from exploding the whole earth. That's the lesson and that's the issue. It's not whether you're right or wrong on the Hiroshima thing, the main question is that: how do we save the world from the atom bomb, nuclear bomb or whatever else bomb they're going to discover in the future.

Photographs

I think this is a photograph taken of me when I was a buck private. I think it was in Fort Snelling that it was taken. It's about the only photograph that I have of myself. We have some pictures of me in the fatigues, but this one is the most presentable at this time.

This picture was taken in my fatigues in Tokyo. I think it was on a Sunday when we were out taking a look around and just stopped to take a photograph. That's in my working clothes. I think I was a technician, third grade, at that time—an improvement from my buck private days.