page 9 of 11
Play MovieTranscription below by: Greg W (2010)
Edited transcription by: Joseph Werhan (intern)
Please report errors to: info@tellingstories.org
The Phillippines
You went straight from Fort Snelling to the Philippines?
Yes.
How did you end up getting picked to go to the Philippines?
I don't know. Everything is luck, and I wasn't very lucky because some of them didn't even go then. They just went on to Japan.
You took a plane?
No, we went on ship. We took a trip from Minnesota down to Riverside, California and that was the grouping point. Then we were put on a ship in Los Angeles and we went on to the Philippines.
When you got there, what was it like? What was the first thing you saw?
In the Philippines—its a jungle country. We were in Manila at the beginning. but then when we got to the prison camp it was south of Manila. They built just a regular camp with about eight different units—U.S. units—governing the camp. I think we probably processed maybe 50,000 or more prisoners.
The entire time?
For about seven months—I don't know—because they brought them in and we had to ask what unit they were in.
At any given time, how many prisoners would have been there?
I guess there might have been maybe 90,000 or so—I don't know. I had an interesting experience. I had processed this fellow in the Philippines. After we finished about seven months later, our unit had already moved on to Tokyo so I was sent to Tokyo. I was in the linguist pool, where the other people come in if they need an interpreter. This one officer decided that he was going to have to stay there for a couple years. He was going to get furniture. He was a major or something and I went with him. We went to some factory where they were making household furniture and we walked in. Meanwhile, the Japanese were practicing their English so they didn't want to talk to me in Japanese. Out of the back of this factory this guy yelled "Mr. Ohtaki, Mr. Ohtaki!" and he started bowing and says, "I got home safely and my family is home." And he was telling this major that I had processed him.
He remembered you after all that time?
Yes, I don't remember.
I guess there's only one of you and a lot of them.
Yes. How would you remember? I don't know.
Lets go back to the departure and arrival in the Philippines.
I arrived in the Philippines probably in about September of 1945. I think the war was over in August. We were assigned to what they called the Allied Translator Interpreting section of the General Headquarters of the Southwest Pacific. We were just a linguist pool. They had this prison camp maybe twenty-five miles south where they were having all the prisoners come in and they had to have people to process them. That's when I got picked. First time I was, there were about a hundred guys that went out. We went out maybe one week or so—everyday—and come back. When our unit moved on to Tokyo they sent us—a twenty-four man linguist team—south to this prison camp. They called it Lu-POW. Luzon Prisoner of War Camp. That's where—just twenty-four of us—got left and processed all these men.
Clarification
When you say that you processed someone, what exactly do you do when processing a person?
We had to get their name rank and serial number and what unit they were with and who their commander was and what area they were assigned to. We would put it in the card. Later on—what they would do with this information is—they had what they called a war-crimes trial. When they had certain people accused of war crimes they would go through the file and say, "This fellow was there. Ask them what happened." That's how they used that. Those that got through evidently didn't participate in anything. Those who were more proficient in the language actually worked in the trials. They were they interpreters. Some of them interrogated and talked to General Yamashita, who was the Japanese commander of all the forces. He knew that he was responsible for all that happened. So he just admitted. He was supposed to have asked one of the interpreters—Japanese-American interpreters, "Are you a Nisei or a Japanese-American?" and he says "Yes." He says, "Very good you fought for your country. That's what you should do." I guess it made us feel a little better. I didn't hear it. It just passed on. That's all.
Can you describe the ship that you went from Riverside to the Philippines on?
I was lucky. They had four bunks— the guy down below, then about a foot, then another guy, then about four foot. I was on the top. It was hot up there but it wasn't as smelly. The guy down stairs, I felt sorry for him. The air did not [gestures: circulate]. We were in the front section and they let us out when we were off. They were zigzagging when they went out. They let us out to get a little air anyway. The Navy was pretty nice to us when they heard we were interpreters because first, they didn't have any experience of meeting any Japanese-Americans. And they said "You are fighting against your native country?" I think most of the Japanese-Americans all fought for the United States.
Transcription below by: Jane P (2008)
Edited transcription by: Joseph Werhan (intern)
Please report errors to: info@tellingstories.org
How did you use all the psychological training that you got at Fort Snelling.
I lucked out.
What?
I lucked out I didn't have to.
You keep lucking out.
Yes, well, no, we just asked the questions.
So there was no psychological interrogating work?
No, some of the other guys who went and found that somebody was in that area they had to re-interview them and interrogate them, then they probably would. Actually, that was more for the people when they were in combat before the war was over some of the interpreters were assigned to that. In fact, there were guys assigned to every unit in the United States Army, and the British, and the other. That's where they had the ... if you were able to get a prisoner, they interrogated them.
So, aside from just processing people, what were some of the other things that you had to do when you were at the P.O.W. camp?
Nothing!
Did you have a lot of free time?
No. When we got through, we processed all the prisoners and they didn't need us anymore, the commander ... the commandante or the colonel wanted to use us to take a group of the prisoners to clean up the cigarette butts, and so on. The army said that with all the money invested in us to go to school, we weren't assigned to do that kind of work. So when he heard that we were doing that, he got on [gestures: the phone] and the colonel's back and told him 'Get those people out ... ship 'em back to the regular unit" and that's how we got done.
So, total time spent there was around seven months?
Yes. About seven or eight months, yes.
Did you make a lot of friends there?
We just had our our twenty-four men team. So we got to know them. You know, they'd just pick out twenty-four men and say, "This is your assignment." So we got to know them, yes, but we didn't meet the other people there.
Did you get along with everyone on your team?
Yes, we did. We were all in the same boat.
Aside from that one experience that you told me about, about running into the man you processed at the furniture factory, do you have any other experiences there that stick out in your mind?
No, not really. I don't know. A lot of the guys were meeting Japanese girls. My mother kept saying, "You'd better come back. You've gotta go to school. You've gotta go to school." Maybe she was kind of worried that I was going to marry a Japanese girl. [Laughs] And she's Japanese, you see.
Can you remember an interview that was—I don't know—funny or humorous?
No, we didn't have any. I didn't get any. It was so routine. We went through all these prisoners.
Does anyone stand out in your mind that you would say really was a criminal?
No. That was on to the other department. I'll tell you this, though. We were good boys. We would go from one camp, and we'd finish there, and then there was some other camps—small camps—that had some prisoners. I remember going to one of those and the Sargeant in charge of our team and another guy from Seattle ... We came back and I don't know what made us go to church, but we went to church. They changed the services. The Catholic church set eleven-high mass, and the regular at ten o'clock, in the chapel out there. We thought we'd be pretty good and we went in—we're not Catholic—we went into the eleven o'clock service, and here everyone was doing all this—you know, the kneeling and all that. And we were on the side and doing our thing and finally we decided that we better not—everybody knows we're not Catholic. Then when we were walking out, the priest said, "Thank you boys for coming in." That made us feel good.
