1 100 1 https://ndajams.omeka.net/files/original/9a7dabcf8a9ff4440bc73a6a5951e7b7.pdf a5e404ca661656c40fb649445026f2a1 PDF Text Text Go For Broke National Education Center Oral History Project Oral History Interview with Harry Akune, April 26, 2009, Torrance, California INTERVIEWER: Okay, it is April 26, 2009, we are in Torrance, California at the Go For Broke National Education Center. Nick Odani is on camera and sound, Lisa Sueki is on cataloguing, Richard Hawkins is talking, and we have with us Mr. Harry Akune. Thank you very much for coming. AKUNE: You're welcome. INTERVIEWER: Okay, and for the record would you please state your name and your years in military. AKUNE: The what? INTERVIEWER: Your name? AKUNE: Yeah, my name, Harry M. Akune. INTERVIEWER: And you served in the United States military? AKUNE: Yeah, I served in the United States military from December ’42 to January of ’46. INTERVIEWER: Okay. You lived for a short time---a little bit of time in Japan, couple of years prior to Pearl Harbor. AKUNE: World War II. INTERVIEWER: Yeah, World War II. AKUNE: Yeah. INTERVIEWER: Where did you live? AKUNE: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 1 of 26 �I---we went back to Japan because we lost our mother. And since my father could not marry out of his ethnic group, he had to go back to Japan. So we went back and, of course, I didn’t really want to go, I was thirteen at that time, I tried to encourage my father to stay, my sister also did. But there were nine kids, one in diapers, you know, so naturally I don’t think he thought that was a good idea. So we went back to Yokohama, and one of the things I always remember about coming into Japan was the tip of Fujiyama, you could see that way out in the sea; it was a beautiful sight. And then we got into Japan, and Fujiyama, naturally, (02:00)was very fascinating, even for a kid, you know, it was very beautiful. We went back to the my mother's homeland and my father's homeland which was in a place called Kagoshima on the island of Kyushu and it's right at the tip of Kyushu. And our first encounter, naturally, it wasn’t too pleasant because my folks come from a fairly country-type place and they never seen anybody from America like, you know, and so when we spoke English or something, they all gathered together and make a circle around us and look at us like we were some kind of spectacle, you know. And they would be giggling and so forth and laughing at us, and my brother Ken and I would be looking right back at 'em and talk to 'em [and] say, “Hey, those guys are kind of idiots,” you know. [Laughs.] So---but that’s the way it started out. It was a very strange place which didn't relate to mostly anything that we ever had before when we were children, including going to a Japanese school or something like that. There was no connection, like, to that, and their culture which was altogether different, simply because we didn’t live in the Japanese culture even though our ethnicity was Japanese. Of course my parents spoke to us in Japanese, but seldom did we know enough Japanese to reply to them in Japanese; we would reply in English. So that’s the way (04:00) our beginning was. And when I went to Japanese school, the only thing we did was play. And I used to be pretty---must have been a rascal, anyway. The older kids would pick me out because I was always not too obedient to those guys, so they would turn around and, you know, shoot spitballs at me, you know. And there was only one schoolteacher so, you know, I'd hide behind the book and then, you know, pretty soon they'd shoot through the book and everything else, you know. So, that was my Japanese education before I got to Japan. So when I went to Japan, the first thing they did was they got tutors for three of us, and so we went to the tutors for maybe about six months and I didn’t really learn too much. My sister did much better. So my younger sister was in a higher class than I was. I started out, I think, about the third grade, I was thirteen already and the first reaction that I got was I was, you know, in other words, I was about five feet tall, you know, and so the Japanese teachers weren’t sometimes not even five feet tall, you know, and so I went to the classroom and there was a big roar from the school when I went into this third grade, you know, because, after all, I was like a freak, you know, walking in, you know. So my reaction was that, I guess, you know, I wasn’t going to be too friendly with too many people. (06:00) And I spend a year there and learned very little. Then, however, my attitude about my stepmother and everything did not go well with my stepmother or my father. So they decided maybe I should be sent to someone who was little stricter and discipline me, and so I was sent to the city of Kagoshima. In the city of Kagoshima there was this great uncle of mine who was a retired school principal, and of course he didn’t say much, all he told me was, "Sit down over here and look at that book and study," that was it. And I'd sit there all day like, and in my mind, my legs cramped up, you know, you're never---you're supposed to, you know, sit with your knee and legs tucked under, This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 2 of 26 �you know, very popper and everything, and, you know, I kind of leaned over a little bit to relieve myself and my granduncle would walk in and say, "That’s not the proper way to sit," you know, that was it. So I was---you know, he was very strong and disciplined. But one thing I did learn was, when I was a kid, when I was going to school in California, Turlock, I never studied and I never thought that I needed to study because, athletically, I excelled quite easily without practice or anything, so therefore, I thought, "Well, (08:00) I guess studying don’t come naturally to me so, therefore, that’s not for me," you know, and that's the attitude that I had, see. And my mother really was very lenient with me and so that’s the way I just kept on going. And my mother would ask me, “Do you have homework?” I says, “No, I don’t have any homework.” And then the homework was not given to dummies like us, you know, the bottom of the class. They figure they won’t do it anyway so they didn’t give anything. So I wasn’t telling my wife, I mean, my mother any falsehood, because it was true, I didn’t have any homework; all other sisters and brothers had homework. And that’s my educational background in California. When I came to this granduncle, Uncle Shinya, he changed me in a way that I realized that study was important; otherwise then you don’t learn. And can you imagine I'm about 14 years old and the first time I realized that in order to get grades, good grades, you got to study, and I was forced to study, so my grades got better and better and better and better, approaching the tops, you know. And the discipline, naturally, helped because that’s the way I learned and this uncle was a very---well, he liked the culture of where we lived, and every Sunday he used to take me out to the various places in that community and there will be a little rock or something with writing on it (10:00) and he would explain to me what had happened at a certain time in this particular area. And although I wish I could have remembered everything he told me, I really got to appreciate the culture that they had, and by the time I spent one year with him my father called me back because he wanted me to help him farm in the United States again, so that’s why I came back. And that’s the period in Japan which probably affected me more than anything was that granduncle Shinya and how much he meant to me for the rest of my life. INTERVIEWER: Okay, let me adjust your microphone here for a second, we have a thing going on. Okay, now we're set. Okay, just a couple of questions going back. AKUNE: Okay. INTERVIEWER: When---you arrived in Japan when you were 13 years old. Your level of language ability was marginal at best is what I understand. AKUNE: Marginal. I don’t know what you mean by marginal. I hardly had any language ability. INTERVIEWER: You understood, though? You understood when Japanese [indiscernible]. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 3 of 26 �AKUNE: Yes, some of the things, yeah. INTERVIEWER: Oh some of it, okay. Difficult to respond, though, in Japanese? AKUNE: Yeah. INTERVIEWER: Okay, so your language skills were actually fairly low as far as Japanese is concerned? AKUNE: Yeah, very low, yeah. INTERVIEWER: Okay, growing up in California, the household was run as a traditional Japanese household or was it a combination of . . . AKUNE: Well, it was more or less a combination, I would say. Because, my mother, when I couldn’t spell a word or something, I’d go to ask my mother to spell it for me. So she had a background of English, little bit. INTERVIEWER: Okay. AKUNE: And so she did help, I mean, you know, the communication (12:00) wasn’t too much of a problem between my mother and myself. INTERVIEWER: How much kanji could you read? AKUNE: None. INTERVIEWER: At 13 you arrive in Japan not equipped with verbal skills or written skills or reading skills of the language of the country, you now live in . . .? AKUNE: Yeah right. INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 4 of 26 �Okay, that’s a problem. AKUNE: Yeah. INTERVIEWER: Culturally, what was different between you and your experience having grown up in California and the way Japanese kids were taught and lived? AKUNE: Definitely no freedom in Japan, when I was a kid I was very free. I could, in other words, enjoy myself and I just feel that there was no particular restriction, maybe some ethnic restriction, but other than that not much. In fact, I came from a little town that had very few Japanese ethnics, so therefore, most of my friends were not Japanese during the week. On the weekends when they go to Japanese school, then I used to go and meet all my friends there, you know. I forgot the question now. [Laughs.] INTERVIEWER: Yeah, the difference between having grown up in America with Japanese influence, but not a strict formal Japanese household or cultural experience, and all of a sudden, boom! you're in Japan, baby? AKUNE: Oh well, when I saw them I really feel sorry for them. You know, I really felt sorry for them because, you know, from the school on down, you know, (14:00) they were at the demand of the elders or the superiors, you know, and they had a very class conscious society. And, in fact, one of the things that I really treasure myself is that, when we went to Japan, we were referred to as the Americans from a certain part of the village, Americans, see, not Japanese but Americans. When I came back to the United States, the immigration maybe says, "Japanese boy, will you come over here?" And I said, "I'm back to America now, I'm a Japanese." But in Japan I was an American. INTERVIEWER: Describe some of the cultural differences. What was the hardest to take? You already talked about discipline, no freedom; what about clothing, the way you addressed an elder? AKUNE: No, actually, I probably didn't follow the culture too well, and naturally I'm gonna have a reputation of not, you know, being a proper person because I don’t follow their proper things that they do, you know. Even at that time, you know the samurai influence and the serfs was still existing, you know. Believe it or not this is 1933 and the samurais still consider themselves superior to the, you know the farmers and so forth. So these old, you know, these other Japanese people, when a samurai descendant comes walking down the street---this is what my friend told me, (16:00) but he just walked by and say, “Good morning, sir,” you know, and go by and the samurai guy would grunt, you know, that was This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 5 of 26 �his response. Well, like me, if a samurai guy---I wouldn't even know if he was from a family, a descendant, so I didn’t even talk to him or look at him, he probably felt very insulted, "That American guy, you know, he's a real so and so," maybe. That’s what it was. So, the reputation in itself, I'm pretty sure I didn’t exactly have a good one. INTERVIEWER: And then you moved in with your uncle. AKUNE: Yeah. INTERVIEWER: And you begin to . . . AKUNE: Now I feel the discipline. Now I feel the cultural pressure. And then now I'm by myself. So therefore, you kind of set yourself to where you follow that pattern, and I think I got to be a pretty good Japanese by that time. INTERVIEWER: Your language skills. AKUNE: Yeah, my language skills. And not only that but my manners and everything, especially because of my uncle. INTERVIEWER: Describe what changed from the time when you first arrived in Japan and you felt an outsider, you were completely not part of this society but then you move in with your uncle there's a transformation that takes place . . . AKUNE: Yeah. INTERVIEWER: . . . and you start to accept this and take it on. What did you take on, how did you behave differently, what mannerisms did you do, what . . .? AKUNE: I took on the proper polite manners that I was taught by my uncle, but so far as my thinking, I don’t think it changed that much. (18:00) It just---I just felt that---I just felt sorry for these people because, during that period, they had sent soldiers to China, and anything, like taxes and such, was rice they grew. These farmers raised the rice, but never got an opportunity to eat the rice; they eat the lesser food. You see all this kind of thing happening and you yourself feel that, you know, I don’t think that I could support that kind of thought. Even though militarily they had this tremendous amount of This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 6 of 26 �propaganda, you know, and they wanted you to be patriotic and all that kind of stuff, but I don’t think it could change me enough in the two and half years I was in Japan. So when I came back to the United States, it was kind of like a relief, you know; I could be myself again. INTERVIEWER: So even though it wasn’t in your nature to behave in a more disciplined subservient manner, you still acted that way? AKUNE: Yeah, I acted, in other words, where it was convenient to do so. INTERVIEWER: The lesser of the evils. AKUNE: Yeah, right, yeah. INTERVIEWER: Gotcha. Okay. Your view of the Japanese people, you said when you got back to America you kind of felt sorry for 'em, and I get that from an American mind, because you prize individuality and they do not. AKUNE: Well, that’s right. INTERVIEWER: (20:00) You prize freedom and they prize discipline. AKUNE: Yeah. INTERVIEWER: And subservience. AKUNE: Yeah. Not only that, but their sacrifices, they sacrifice so much for the military, their food, they grow, they can't even eat, they have to give it up. Those are the kind of things that I thought, you know, would not really, I mean, maybe the people happily did that on the surface, but I don’t really feel that they could have felt that much of a willingness or sacrifice, but evidently they did because they went out and, you know, guys made banzai attack and everything like that without regards to their own life, you know, and so you think maybe they were that way, you know, but . . . INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 7 of 26 �When you say sacrifice, you've used the example of food twice now with the farmers and that. Okay. When I think about food I think, well, that’s one element, and all of those elements of a life add up to a standard of living . . . AKUNE: Uh-huh. INTERVIEWER: . . . and my question is, the sacrifices that you just talked about, not just food, you know, but other things, quality of clothing, technological stuff that they would be able to buy, whatever it is, a radio, crystal set, you know, whatever, nobody could get there. So their standard of living, their entire standard of living with that or was it just food? AKUNE: Oh yes. Very everything. I don’t think they were able to have the money to go out and buy anything. Because, after all, they don’t even pay their taxes with money, they pay their taxes with the rice they grew. INTERVIEWER: Now, by the time you get back to America you're 15-1/2, 16 years old and you have (22:00) had this experience in another land, another culture. AKUNE: Mmm-hmm. INTERVIEWER: And even though it’s your ancestry, you've already cemented some ideas about who these people are. Who were the Japanese people to the 16-year-old Harry Akune? AKUNE: My parents’ generation and the Japanese people were two different kinds of people. My parents were pioneers, and if you look at any cultural group, if they have become a pioneer by coming to the United States, they are absolutely different from the people they came from. They are willing to sacrifice, they are willing to cooperate with each other. In other words, they were a different kind of human being, they are much, much superior type of human being, and that is what I found when I came back, that I was proud of my father's generation simply because they had come through all this and, in other words, without outside help, in a sense, they come through this and, as a group, they stood together and more or less tried to keep their culture together. And in that sense they were honest, for one thing, very honest, and the Japanese, very dishonest. INTERVIEWER: Okay, when you say it’s important to distinguish who, your father’s generation the pioneers that came to America, the immigrants that came to America [were] honest? AKUNE: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 8 of 26 �Yeah, very honest. INTERVIEWER: Very? AKUNE: Very honest. INTERVIEWER: The people that you experienced in Japan, your experience of the culture in Japan, those Japanese people are dishonest. AKUNE: Dishonest. INTERVIEWER: How dishonest? (24:00) What do you mean dishonest? AKUNE: You couldn’t even depend on a relative. They'd fleece you if they could, because they come from such a low society, economically, that anyway they can get something, they'll get it. They've gone down to that low. In other words, they have honor for certain things, not like stealing or something like this, but they're very willing to steal from their relatives. Believe it or not. INTERVIEWER: To a 16-year-old Harry Akune just back from living in Japan, what did you think of the Japanese people value of discipline? AKUNE: For myself, it helped me from an undisciplined child to a more disciplined child, it helped me that way. In many, many sense those disciplines we lack in America. Maybe we should borrow some of that. Because we really are free [and] at the same time maybe we are too free. Maybe we should have little bit more discipline, that’s the feeling I have on that. INTERVIEWER: That’s interesting, a 16-year-old faced with having lived in two cultures and having to survive in each, you found both negative qualities and positive qualities. AKUNE: Yes, I guess I did, yeah. INTERVIEWER: There was a mixed . . . This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 9 of 26 �AKUNE: Yes, uh-huh, yeah. INTERVIEWER: Japan had invaded Manchuria in 1931, the war had been going on, you mentioned about the sacrifices. (26:00) How much military presence or propaganda were you exposed to while you were living in Japan for those two and half years? AKUNE: Hundred percent. You got it all the time. In other words, if somebody wanted you to do something they'd tell you why you should be doing it. And naturally, maybe there may be some relatives there in Manchuria or they would feel bad about not doing their best to, you know, help their brothers or sisters. I could understand how that propaganda could work, yeah, very much so. Whereas I didn’t have that kind of relationship in Manchuria so I wasn’t really too concerned, but I noticed that the kempeitai, you know, the military police, boy, they were absolute power, there were absolute power. If they wanted to turn around and come at you, even if you didn't do anything, and hit you over the head, that was all right. That’s the kind of society it was. So when a kempeitai comes looking at you, stare you in your eye, you know, you better drop your eye because, if you don’t, he figures that you're challenging him, yeah. That’s the kind of feeling I got. And I had an opportunity be---to participate in emperor's visit in that particular city, and that’s when discipline by kempeitai was really, really, (28:00) you know, you could feel it very much so, and they revered the emperor so much, you know, that you could feel the children's sense of reverence to the emperor, you know. So I think their feeling of sacrificing for the emperor, which is what they were doing for the emperor, not the country, but for the emperor, was genuine, I think, very genuine. Yeah. So I felt that kind of feeling coming out of that visit that he had. It was really a very moving moment because of the masses that are showing that kind of devotion to their emperor, yeah. INTERVIEWER: Where were you when the emperor arrived and where were you when he passed by you? AKUNE: Well, I was---I went as a spectator from the school. In other words, all the schools lined up, and when he came by, it was a little different because I was little surprised when me--just before he came, we gave him a short bow like this, and then just as he passed we stood up and you got to see the emperor I was really surprised that they would permit that. It used to be that when the emperor went by you keep your down until he is gone by so you never saw the emperor, you know. But that’s the thing that I was surprised that they were able to look at the emperor and the emperor would be waving (30:00) and all that, like any politician, you know. INTERVIEWER: So what'd he look like? AKUNE: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 10 of 26 �Well, he looked like a very mild man, a very mild man. He didn’t look, you know, furious or anything like that, just a very mild man, mild princess, I mean, the queen or empress, and they're very mild looking people, yeah, I guess, I don’t know. INTERVIEWER: When everyone around you is in this state of reverence and almost adulation, I mean they're excited this guy's there, man, he is their center, he is their world. How much of Harry Akune’s world was the emperor the center? AKUNE: You know, I felt honored to have been in his presence. Maybe not with adulation so much, but I felt honored that I was able to have been able to participate in that kind of affair. INTERVIEWER: When you got back to America, fifteen-and-half, 16-year-old Harry Akune, did you ever want to go back to Japan? AKUNE: No, I never really wanted to go back to Japan at that moment, yeah. There was nothing that I felt that I wanted in Japan, so I didn’t have any feeling at all. In fact, after the war, I came back and I never went back to Japan again; I never visited Japan, people would tell me, oh, how nice these big cities are, you know, and they got the freeways and all that kind of stuff. You know the thing that I thought about was the country, where the people are, where the people are suffering, you know. And (32:00) that’s the part that I thought I would have liked to have gone back and met some of these people who were good to me, yeah. But the possibility of finding them is almost impossible, so I never even thought about going back. You know, there were some nice people. INTERVIEWER: So in the history storyline, at 15-1/2, 16-year-old, young Harry Akune makes it back to America. Okay, got some good when I was in Japan, some stuff I don’t really care for, never want to go back. AKUNE: Yeah. INTERVIEWER: But the strangeness of this life cannot be measured, a war breaks out, you fight on Corregidor with the 5-0-3, you go on to fight with military intelligence, and you end up back in Japan, a defeated country, you're part of the occupying forces, tell me about setting your foot on Japanese soil as a defeated country? AKUNE: Well, we landed very early, and the prisoners, allied prisoners, there, the sense of freedom is in them. Even if they've been held in a prison, when the guards open the gate, This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 11 of 26 �he says, "You can go," they weren’t afraid one bit. They got on the train and headed for the ports, you know, really, headed for the ports. And by the time we landed, lot of these guys are coming in. And what we did, we were processing them as fast as we could, get 'em on a plane that brought us in, and send 'em back to Okinawa. And we were so busy the first day we got there that we didn’t have any time to prepare ourselves to go into (34:00) where we were supposed to be billeted. And the funny thing is, you know, these people, just because I speak and know Japanese, they figure that I should be able to get on the left-hand drive or something, you know. Everything is left-hand drive so they tell me, "Harry, you better go find a vehicle," you know, they had all kinds of vehicles way out there, so they tell me, "Go out and find a vehicle." So I go over there and, you know, it's not easy, you know, so I go out there and by the time I get there, it's so late, all the good vehicles were taken. I didn’t know, you know, and I thought---at least I thought they had brakes and stuff, you know. I start the thing and I tried rolling it and then I put on the break a little bit. Well, actually it stopped maybe because the momentum stopped, you know, so I got one of those trucks and I got into the---and I said, "Well, I got one." He says, "Okay, Harry, now you drive it." [Laughs.] My god, just because I know the language doesn't mean I know how to drive that damn thing. But I just got on the side, and we were going down this hill, there was---we didn’t know where it was at, see. So we're gonna follow a truck ahead of us, so we followed 'em. And these guys were going like hell, you know, and got a hill, went down a hill, and we were going down the hill and I put on the damn brake, there's no brake [when] I put on the brake. And finally at the bottom of the hill the truck stops. There's a Japanese truck coming from the other side, and it's not wide enough for both to go by together at the same time; one had to pull over and the other guy would go through, see. So the Japanese guy pulled over (36:00) and the guy up in front of us went ahead. But before I could do that, I didn’t have any brakes, so I rammed my truck right into the front truck, you know, knock radiators, right? So we said, "Hey, we better commandeer that truck that the Japanese guy got." Now, you know, he's really scared, you know, here's Americans---so I go over there and ask him, “You're gonna have to drive us in to where we're supposed to go, we don’t know exactly where, but . . .” So he turns this truck around and the American captain on this side, there was an Australian major, Australian sergeant, they always have a sergeant with them, a Dutch flight lieutenant, this captain from National Guard from North Carolina, I mean one of those fellows that "Great honor to be an officer!" that type, you know, and then a couple of jeep drivers with us, see, we didn’t have a jeep, but anyway, so we get into this truck and captain says, "Okay, Harry, you're gonna sit in the middle. If he tries to make a kamikaze attempt, you're gonna have to get 'em out of there." So he struck a gun on him, you know. And this guy is really scared, you know, after all he's just a truck driver, you know, and it’s dark, you know, it's bombed out and there's hardly any city light or reflection or anything. So we're going along and we're looking on both sides and everything is so dark, you know, you feel like you're on an edge of a cliff or something, you don’t know exactly what's gonna happen. And then suddenly there's a one-bulb (38:00) station, one bulb there. And here a Japanese police officer with his sword, and the kempeitai, you know, with his sidearm on, their still armed. They said, "Hey, what's going on, Jesus Christ!" And here we are in---it's supposed to be a surrendered country, you know, and these guys still carrying their arms, you know. I said, "Gee, that's really. . ." Well, anyway, we stopped there and we asked the direction there were really very This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 12 of 26 �sharp salute and everything giving it to us, you know, and then they say, "Go straight ahead." So, right into the dark again we're going straight ahead, this guy, you know. And finally we got to this gate-like place, and these other guys, there's an American lieutenant too, he---first lieutenant, he jumps out of the truck and he said, "Okay, guys get ready," you know, he is really wired up for any kind of action, you know. And then the Japanese guard comes out, he's armed, he salutes, and he says, "Go straight ahead." And again, straight ahead. Now we're going on in there and this is supposed to be the Yokohama racetracks where the 11th Airborne was going to be billeted, we were attached to them. So we got in there. Pretty soon we hear these guys taking a shower, whistling away. And all this time we were thinking, God, everything was against us, you know. (40:00) And then we find these guys, you know, out there stark naked taking a shower and enjoying themself, and here we went through all that crazy stuff, you know, we thought that that’s nuts, you know. INTERVIEWER: Now, when you first landed in Japan, what airport did you land at? AKUNE: In Atsugi. INTERVIEWER: Atsugi. And you immediately got off your transport and started working. AKUNE: Yeah, as soon as we got there we found the prisoners coming in. INTERVIEWER: And what was your units . . .? AKUNE: I didn’t do anything. I was supposed to be the guide/interpreter, right? INTERVIEWER: Right. AKUNE: But they were coming in so I didn’t have to do anything. INTERVIEWER: Yeah, you didn't . . . What was the units you were with, was it the 5-0-3? AKUNE: No, no, no, this was just a Allied prisoner of war recovery team, Allied prisoner of war recovery team. INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 13 of 26 �And there was no number or . . . AKUNE: Yeah, they had a number but I don’t remember what---they gave it a number but I don’t remember what number that was. INTERVIEWER: How many guys were in the unit, approximately? AKUNE: No, just about five guys. So we were going to go out and try to, you know, make sure that the prisoner of war got to where they're supposed to and which is send them on a plane to Okinawa, then do the further processing. But, you know, I learned a lot from that experience. That’s what I want to talk about, and that is, you know how Americans are, you know, they're cocky, you know, they don’t say thank you for everything, right? Well, those prisoner of wars, we had lot of food, we give 'em food and they would eat it and they wouldn’t leave one speck of that food in that can. They had gone through so much that their appreciation of food could not be wasted. I tell 'em, (42:00) "Hell, there's a lot of it over here, you don't have to worry about that." You know, that to me meant a lot. I says, you know, I never realized an American can be so humble and so appreciative, until I saw that. And I talked to several of the prisoners and there was one marine. I asked him, “Well, when you were a prisoner, how did you feel about the Japanese guards and so forth,” and he says, “Ah, we hated 'em. You know, they were rough on us and everything. We hate 'em." "Well, how about the Japanese people?" “Oh, they're the salt of the earth.” Can you imagine that? Well, this person said he would be working in a field and the Japanese would guard, you know, around them, and this little old lady would walk by with hot sweet potato and just drop one so he could have one. He said, “How can you hate people like that.” That really makes me emotional when I think about what he said, you know. And I always remember that marine telling me that story, that I thought, here he would be coming out with nothing but hatred, but yet he says Japanese people are the salt of the earth. That really, really floored me, and I'll never forget the type of people, you know, the prisoners, they were different kind of people, (44:00) they were not ordinary people. They have gone through enough to appreciate the most minute little things. Yeah, I really, really, I can't forget that. I just figure that those people were a different breed of people when they came out, yeah. But yet at the same time I saw some crippled prisoners come out, and naturally they're not gonna be that way either, you know. So, there's the two sides are little different. One met with certain kind of treatment that, even though it's only a hot sweet potato, they were the salt of the earth. And the other person, he maybe got beaten up or something, he got what he got, naturally he's gonna hate 'em, you know. So there's two parts to the story that I think most people never got a chance to hear, and I feel like I was one of those, you know, one of those guys who was fortunate enough to see that there were two sides to the story there too, yeah. INTERVIEWER: Is there a truer side or are both sides very true? This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 14 of 26 �AKUNE: Pardon? INTERVIEWER: Is---for the story you just told me, there's two sides of the story and you got to witness both sides. AKUNE: Yeah, I didn’t have the opportunity to speak to a lot of people, but the few that I did, you know, there's a certain impression that was left with me, see. Not all of 'em are gonna be the same, you know. But I had heard that story told twice. (46:00) Two different people. And I couldn’t believe it. Yeah, so another time was---this is another story but, you know, but they used to go out and steal vegetables, you know, then they wouldn't be hungry, and they came back and they went to visit this village again, I understand. And this old man came out and says, “What's going on out there?” And then he told him, “Did you know that we used to steal vegetables from you?” you know. And he says, “Yeah, I know you guys were stealing it.” And then he says, “Well, how come you didn’t report them.” He says, “Oh no, if I told them they would kill you.” In other words, they didn’t want anybody die because of a vegetable, you know. So, in that sense, it made me feel good that the Japanese people were not all that bad, you know, and after I met many during the occupation I knew there were still good people, you know, yeah, still good people. INTERVIEWER: You translated with the truck driver when you told your truck driving story, so you communicated with him you said you need us to take---when you addressed him, were you commanding him or did you ask him for his truck? AKUNE: I think I asked him, because I've always noticed that commanding is not the best way to ask a favor. It’s usually better to treat them more equally, (48:00) and I think they appreciate that, simply because they probably never gotten that kind of treatment from their own people. They used to get beat up by their own sides and so forth, you know. Whereas during the war times, you know, you have certain circumstances where you have to be tougher but, you know, you never physically do anything to them, because you never get anything good about it, so you'll always get, you know, in other words, you'll never get a answer, a true answer, or you wouldn’t even know if it was good or not, anyway, you know, so, yeah. INTERVIEWER: Now, you were at the airbase processing POWs, then you got in the truck and you went . . .? AKUNE: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 15 of 26 �Yeah, uh-huh. Then after that we got a jeep and we went looking for other prisoner of war camps, and we ran across one that was ladies only. They were Dutch, British, American nurses, and we went into them and those ladies were so excited to see American, British or whatever officers come in, you know. Oh, there was hugging and kissing and everything going on, you know, and I was really, really, very [indiscernible]. But anyway, I was standing on the doorway there with my rifle, you know, I had nothing to do because they're the one that have to process them. So I was leaning back, and suddenly the place became quiet, and these ladies are all looking at me, you know, and (50:00) then they're whispering to the officers, “Hey, what's that guy doing on the wall with the rifle.” They said, “Are we really free?” I guess that’s what they [indiscernible]. And then they would tell 'em that I'm an American soldier. Then everybody smiled and waved at me. INTERVIEWER: Where was this prison camp of women? AKUNE: I don’t know, I don’t remember where it was, it was some place near Tokyo. INTERVIEWER: It was near Tokyo? AKUNE: Yeah, it was near Tokyo. INTERVIEWER: North, south, east, west. AKUNE: I don’t know, I don’t remember. INTERVIEWER: Okay. Then these were all mixed nationalities? AKUNE: Yeah, they were, you know, from, you know, probably from Singapore and places like that, but . . . INTERVIEWER: What kind of shape were they in? AKUNE: Oh, bad shape. There were tuberculosis, there was a couple, old couple, and a daughter, they were the cooks for them, and that’s all they had. And then once or twice a day, this Japanese called Omori-san who goes around and checks places, he used to check in about once or twice a day, that was all. They didn’t have any guards or anything like that. So This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 16 of 26 �seeing that, you know, naturally it makes you feel better, you know, yeah. But I think that’s my end of my story, like, for my occupation because I didn’t do anything while they were trying to keep me. INTERVIEWER: Then if that’s the case, give me---I want to get a sense of the big picture. (52:00) I want to understand the importance of Nisei linguists working in occupied Japan, or maybe they weren’t that important, maybe they could have anybody in there doing the job, what do you think? AKUNE: You know, from what I gather, the war crimes, they did a lot of work. But when you're doing a lot of work and the judge is half asleep, I wonder how much good that translation or whatever had, because it was a disgrace as I understand it, the judicial system that was there at that time. They just didn't feel like they got a fair trial. So in that sense I just feel that maybe the translation of records that, well, for one thing, the Niseis did a great job of locating all the equipment, weapons and such, because they had already broken the index of all the where it was located at. So they went right away and covered it, and so the enemy couldn’t get it, you know. So I think the translation that was done prior to the occupation had a lot of effect on the translation follow-ups on the occupation itself, you know. But I wasn’t there doing my duty because I had a---I was assigned after that prisoner of war recovery team, I was assigned to Supreme Allied Command and I was in the (54:00) Price and Ration and Control Division, and this particular person had gone to Harvard and had a Harvard MBA, and under him, he was a first lieutenant, but there were majors and, you know, commanders under him, because, you know, he had the stuff, you know. And---but he was from Minneapolis, Minnesota. That’s where the Savage is, eh? And all those people of Minnesota were so good to us, you know, I really appreciate that. And I'm sure he had gotten, you know, the same kind of feedback. So the first thing he told me was, “Harry, you went through the war, you can---you went to war, go out and do anything you want.” That was it. INTERVIEWER: What was his name? AKUNE: Eggequist [ph]. INTERVIEWER: First name? AKUNE: I don’t know. He had an initial, but Eggequist [ph]. INTERVIEWER: Lieutenant Eggequist? [ph] This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 17 of 26 �AKUNE: Yeah. INTERVIEWER: E-g-g, like, Eggequist? [ph] AKUNE: A---it has a X in it, no, no, Q in it, like. INTERVIEWER: Equequist [ph] or something like. AKUNE: Yeah, Eggequist [ph]. I don’t what the---he must be a Scandinavian, or maybe not, I don’t know. INTERVIEWER: Yeah. And the unit that he---or the department he was in charge of? AKUNE: Yeah, it was the Ration and Price Control. INTERVIEWER: Ration and Price Control. AKUNE: But above that was a Major General Marquette who controlled the Economic Scientific Division underneath the Supreme Allied Command. INTERVIEWER: And how long were you with them? AKUNE: Until I left. Maybe about four months. INTERVIEWER: (56:00) Okay. If we could stop tape now. If you could give me about fifteen more minutes. INTERVIEWER: Just a few follow-up questions before we get to evaluating Nisei linguists. The women’s prison that you liberated, describe the grounds? AKUNE: The grounds, they had kind of a typical Japanese building, it was built round, not round maybe but, you know, in a square form, had rooms in it, it probably had aisles around it This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 18 of 26 �and the inside was empty. In other words, you know, had an inside court. And on one end of it was two couples and a daughter that were doing cooking for them. INTERVIEWER: Japanese? AKUNE: No. Yeah, Japanese, yeah, and that was about it. INTERVIEWER: Any fence or gate? AKUNE: No. I didn’t notice anything that would keep them in or anything, and only time that they ever came by, this omawarisan they call him, the policeman, he came around maybe twice a day, that’s about it. So there was no such thing as security in a sense, you know; if they wanted to go out, they could have, but I don’t think they had anyplace to go anyway, right? INTERVIEWER: How many other POW camps did you liberate? AKUNE: No, that was the only one we ran across; otherwise, they had all broke out, you know, when the guards let them go and that was it. INTERVIEWER: Had you visited any camps where there were no Allied POWs? AKUNE: No, no, we didn’t run into any of that kind, no. INTERVIEWER: Okay. Now, that assignment was to liberate POWs? AKUNE: Yes. INTERVIEWER: Then you were transferred to another unit. (02:00) You began to tell us near the end of the last tape. AKUNE: You mean the guys that were working? INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 19 of 26 �Yes. AKUNE: Or the prisoners? INTERVIEWER: The guy from Minnesota. AKUNE: Oh, yeah, yeah. I was reassigned to this Ration and Price Control to first Lieutenant Eggequist [ph], and he fought---and of course, you know, he had come for occupation duty only so he knew I had come through the war so he said, “Harry, you know, take it easy, you know, you did your part.” And so I used to check in once---twice a day. I had about half a dozen translators at that time because I had been commissioned, so---and I would always ask them, “Well, you got any problems?" And they say, “No, no problems.” But the only time that I would go out would be to interpret for Lieutenant Eggequist [ph]. In other words, like a conference with the Japanese people and stuff like that. INTERVIEWER: When you say conference with Japanese people, were these farmers, were these businessmen? AKUNE: Oh, yeah, they could have been people that needed oil for fishing, newspaper---paper for newspaper, any kind of supply that they would have to have through the United States they came through this particular office. INTERVIEWER: Now, translation---when you’re translating for someone, the objective is to be as accurate as possible? AKUNE: Yes. INTERVIEWER: Okay. How do you translate the nuances, the small things (04:00) of Japanese language that have great meaning to a hakujin that doesn't get it? AKUNE: Well, the thing is, the thing that got me in problem was that every language has a technical term in it. If it’s newspaper business or if it’s oil business, they all have technical terms. And when those technical terms come up in Japanese, then it became difficult for me to explain to my officer what they were trying to get. So I was not what you might consider a good trans, I mean, interpreter, direction interpreter like, you know. I had to go around in a big circle to get to the idea of what they were trying to get. And I This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 20 of 26 �recall one time, this was a newspaper people, they came down and wanted to get paper for newspaper. And there was, I think, couple of Niseis that were in Japan, you know, as writers or something, and they were looking at it and kind of snickering at me because I was having difficulty translating these particular things that are necessary, you know. Well, it wasn’t really that important because all they really wanted was the paper for their newspaper. Well, I told Lieutenant Eggequist [ph], being that he’s very friendly toward my position, I told him, "You know, there's a couple of guys over there in their section that are experts in the newspaper business, and they know English, so I would like them to come up and (06:00) be the interpreter for you.” And the older people said, “No, no, no, no, we don’t want them. Hey, you guys, shut up!” You know, they just turned around and bawled 'em out. And they say, “We want you to do it,” to me. And the thing is, I think maybe they figure that I would be more honest with them than the other guys, see. So I had situations like that happen to me, too, you know. INTERVIEWER: Now were the other guys Nisei or were they Japanese? AKUNE: I think they were Niseis, yeah, or they were expert in both Japanese and English, too, see, So I knew that the way they were snickering at me and all that, they were trying to make--so I thought, well, I’ll get back at 'em, so that’s what I did, see, I got back at 'em. And the old men, man, they just turned around and bawled those guys out, said, “Shut up.” Because they were underlings, right? The older guys are the boss, anyway, and they wanted it coming from me rather than them. INTERVIEWER: Now, going through this process where you’re constantly translating information about different kinds of businesses with specific technical terms, there’s a learning curve. AKUNE: Yeah. INTERVIEWER: And I understand there’s a learning curve because you were---you didn’t have that background. AKUNE: No, that’s right. INTERVIEWER: Okay. What training would you have liked to have had to do your job in occupation? AKUNE: You know, I think the school did the right thing. When the end of the war was coming, (08:00) they were training these people for that kind of duty. In other words, they were trying to give them the expertise that we didn’t have. We had expertise for wartime terms, and wartime terms worked very well. So evidently, the people that came after us This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 21 of 26 �were probably better prepared than guys like me, So in this instance the new fellows that came in were trained just like Lieutenant Eggequist [ph], he wasn’t trained for warfare but he was trained for occupation duties. So I think I was pretty well prepared to carry on the occupation, and then, of course, maybe other people had greater Japanese background than I did, too, see. What I was trained for was for war, and it's---in another words, if you can learn the terms of the war and the equipments and stuff, then you could get by pretty well. INTERVIEWER: It sounds like the military intelligence language specialists were transitioning into occupation and you were kind of caught in the middle of that transition? AKUNE: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we were. In other words, they wanted us to stay. And then, of course, they had dictionaries; they needed it, you know. INTERVIEWER: Is it possible to train a linguist to handle both the warfare part of war and occupation part of war, or is it better to keep those separate? AKUNE: I think you could train 'em. In other words, eventually there were a lot of guys that went into war with me, became career officers. And they (10:00) in turn had to become expertise in that particular area, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to stay there. So I don’t suppose, like myself, you know, I could understand certain terms but I couldn’t have a direct translation, see, direct interpretation, that was a problem with me. But if I did it long enough, I would be able to. I’ll find the word that represents that. So as far as, like--interpreting is not on my forte simply because during World War II and the Pacific War, I never had an officer with me; I did all my interrogations. They found that the Nisei interrogators could follow-up on little things that interpreting for an officer could not do. INTERVIEWER: Why? AKUNE: Because the continuity gets lost. You know, you’re getting into this guy’s brain and you know a little bit of what he might be thinking, and then you work on him. If you got an interpreter you can’t do that. INTERVIEWER: You speak of continuity and I look at that---is that an actual principle of success, that there has to be continuity in order to attain success or the best possible outcome. If that is correct, then how would continuity apply to occupation? AKUNE: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 22 of 26 �Well, that’s the part that is not as urgent; the sense of urgency is different. Now, on Corregidor, the enemy's maybe a hundred yards away, (12:00) furthest, 200 yards away, and I have a prisoner, and what I get from him, I can’t be typing and, you know, saying this is and so and so, right? I ask him certain things and he gives me a certain answer. I send it directly to the commander because if it means anything to the commander, you can’t waste your time. In fact one of the things that happened on that island, we just missed by, oh, just a very little time, this prisoner came in, and incidentally, that's the guy that got killed on top of me, he jumped me, but he came in just after the explosion of Monkey Point, he just came in. Now if I had gotten him a little earlier---and he was saying---he told me, he says they were all in that tunnel ready to blow themselves up, all the casualties and all that, they were going to blow up, and he told me that. But it just happened maybe minutes before that. So I felt so bad, you know, when I found out that, you know, here was a guy that could have given me key to answer to get those guys off that hill, you know, and the 1st Battalion was on top of that hill, see. INTERVIEWER: I think what I was thinking of when I say continuity, and I understand your point about sense of urgency, that's absolutely I get it. What I was thinking about with continuity, though, that, as a principle for success would be that, (14:00) in occupation, a Nisei linguist who is, say, an interpreter, so face to face with the occupied people, is the same person, it doesn’t change so that there's a familiarity, there's a sense of trust built, all of that business; that kind of a continuity. Same people dealing with the same people, working out through the problems over long periods of time instead of having a guy transfer in for a couple of months then transfer out and a new guy transfers in. What do you think of that? Does that sound like a reasonable thing? AKUNE: yeah, well, that's---that was probably the reason why they had different people assigned to different areas, because they would be able to have that continuity for things that are maybe happening, like, for instance, they had lot of communists, well, were held by the Japanese or held by the communists who came into Japan. They were first isolated so that---in other words, they wouldn't infect other people, like, for instance, okay? And the thing is, they sent a group of people who specialized with that and they probably had certain groups of people who were picked out of that group, like, you know, like picking a spy out of a group. I'm sure that had a lot to do with it, so in that sense there, I think that program worked very well. They turned around and really got---eliminated the communist influence in Japan. INTERVIEWER: Now, stepping back from all the specifics, your specific experience, (16:00) specific experience you’ve heard from other vets, linguists, Nisei linguists, but stepping back from all that and looking at Nisei linguists as a whole, as a group, how successfully did they serve in occupied Japan? How would you rate 'em? AKUNE: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 23 of 26 �Well, the thing is, if the results are the answers to that question, they must have done a good job. Because they brought Japan back to where we really wanted them to be, and they were the bridge between the Americans and the Japanese. And how they did, I think, had a lot of influence in the result of the project of occupation. Probably they consider the occupation of Japan one of the better occupations. So if that is true, then I think the interpreters and the translators had a lot to do with it. INTERVIEWER: How important is it to know the language and the customs, the culture of the people whose land you're going to occupy? Just as a general---how important is that? AKUNE: Very important. Even in wartime it is very important, yeah, very much. The difference you’ll find is that the Niseis that were raised in Japan and that Niseis that were not raised in Japan, (18:00) the advantage of the Niseis that were raised in Japan is the culture part. And the culture part is the thing that binds the people. In other words, even if you’re enemies, you know, you have a binding. I remember one time, this is during wartime, I knew his dialect, and he was trying to---in other words, to disguise himself as somebody else. And I asked him certain question he had given before and I says, "You know, I know you’re not from where you're saying because I know your dialect. You’re probably from so and so.” And that shocked him, [he said,] “Really?” Then right away he says, “Are you from that part of the country?” you know. Then he opens up. He says, “What should I do? I told a falsehood and what should I do to correct that?" I said, "Well, you know, one day the war is gonna end and they're gonna want to find out who you are. They may send you to the wrong place, and if that’s the case then you're the loser. Don’t you think you oughta 'fess up to it and give us everything that you should? That way we'll know who you are." So, he opened up, you know. So I think that’s the part of the culture that makes a difference. In other words, your sense of opening up. Just like (20:00) if you’re from Illinois and you hear a guy says he was from someplace in Illinois and he says, “Yeah, I used to live nearby there,” you know. Right away, friendship develops. That’s the same thing as in camp. When we went outta camp, you know, people went out of camp, you meet somebody, another Nisei, on a platform in Chicago. Right away there would be conversation, “Hey, where you from?” “I'm from the state of Washington.” “Oh, yeah? I'm from California.” You’d think they were neighbors, right off the bat, simply because they were from the West Coast, you know. INTERVIEWER: Now how does that apply to occupation, a linguist, Japanese---or a Nisei linguist in Japan? AKUNE: Yeah, well, I think you’re gonna find people more friendly to you. They’re going to open up to you, they’re going to like you, and whenever you want something done, they’re going to be like friends, you know, not like enemies. So I think the Niseis that went into Japan, if they knew the culture of that area---they didn’t decide how to send them in, see, but they should have sent them in from the culture they knew, you know. I think, you This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 24 of 26 �know, the municipal governments and stuff like that, they really---well, in fact, when I went to where my father’s place, the local mayor called to invite us for lunch. You know what he's saying? He saying, “Oh, our local boy came back successful as an American soldier.” (22:00) I mean it doesn’t make sense. So I went up to the mayor and I said, “You know, it doesn’t make sense for you to greet me because, after all, I was an enemy soldier. You should greet your own soldiers like you did me and, you know, honor them.” And that’s what happened. So I had to walk a couple of miles to the mayor’s office to tell him that. And then my dad, he’s so thrilled that he’s going to go and have lunch with the mayor, you know, he’s very disappointed [laughs]. Oh, man. INTERVIEWER: The U.S. Army is gonna write a book about Nisei linguists in occupied Japan. They assume that knowing the language and the culture made a huge difference and you’ve already given your opinion on that that it does, it makes the biggest. What advice would you give the U.S. Army, I'm not talking about being smart ass, I'm---honestly, what advice would you give the U.S. Army about conducting the next occupation? What’s important? What needs to happen? AKUNE: You know, I think I’ve always felt, you know, right off the bat, when this Iraqi situation and the Afghanistans came up, I was in contact with a colonel out of military intelligence corps over there, and they were training people for intelligence, and he believed in ethnic profiling. And I told him, (24:00) “That’s absolutely wrong, you don’t blame somebody because he is from that particular ethnic group.” That’s my feeling about it. You don’t turn around and use the easiest way. The easiest way is use ethnic profiling, you lumped them together and say, “Well they’re all bad” so you're gonna [indiscernible]. That’s the easy way. But the hard way is really getting to the core, and you can’t get to the core that way. INTERVIEWER: What do you mean core? AKUNE: Means, the reason these people are against you, that’s what’s important. Because they’re not soldier’s, lot of 'em, right? They're civilians. And they're being treated just like the soldier enemy. Now, if you go in there and deal with these people not as being lumped together like they're an enemy, but another human being that’s living under difficult conditions, I think that’s where you get the understanding, and that’s where you get the intelligence from. I remember the one situation in Iraq that I saw, it was in TV. This fellow was an American citizen and he happened---I don’t know for what reason he went to Iraq or Afghanistan, and he got captured there. And two intelligence officers were standing over him berating him. American soldiers. (26:00) And in front of all his other cohorts who are the Iraqis, but this kid was American. You know, in my mind, I would have taken that American boy, took him away where there was nobody around us to look at him, and This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 25 of 26 �talk to him. “How did it happen that you came here? What was the cause?” You would have got a hell of a lot more information than to berate him in front of those people he was with, you see? That’s the part I couldn’t understand. We went through so many wars and we still use the same tactic, when we should have learned something from it, and we haven’t. INTERVIEWER: And further, just to underscore a previous point you made, how important is it to know the language and the culture of the next occupation of the people in the next occupation? AKUNE: Oh, very important. In fact, well, you know, some of those languages are very difficult to pick up, you know, but I would say I would do it just like they did with the Niseis: Go into internment camps and recruit 'em. Like I was one of the first recruits out of the internment camp and we were at that time classified as undesirable, 4-C. They came in and, you know, when they came in and asked me---here I am an internee, less than a citizen, (28:00) and they come in and ask me, “Hey, we need you.” That’s a wonderful feeling, you know. So rather than go out and make the public hate everybody that was a Iraqi or a Arab, they should have gone in there and found friends. We need you. They want to be asked. There are a lot of people who don’t look like one another, but they’re all Americans. And the funny part is, how do you separate your ethnicity from your American whatever it is that gave you the freedom even to feel equal to everybody, more so today than ever, and to have those kind of people, you know, help you find a way, find out why and this kind of stuff. I think that’s really important. I really, really feel that we have to know---because just because you looked at a person and he says, well, that might be Chinese or Japanese or Korean or, you know, whatever, you know, that happens all the time, you know. But once you get to know him, he’s another American guy, you know. He thinks the same way you do and everything. But offhand if you just look at the person, the ethnicity just shows up (30:00) and then, you know, you think, oh, well, that guy, you know, so, you don't get to know them, you know. INTERVIEWER: And on that note we want to thank you very much and . . . This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 26 of 26 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Harry Akune oral history interview, April 26, 2009 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Harry Akune oral history interview transcript [full interview], April 26, 2009 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Akune, Harry: narrator Hawkins, Richard: interviewer Go For Broke National Education Center: publisher US Army Center of Military History: interviewer Type The nature or genre of the resource Transcriptions Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Extent The size or duration of the resource. 26 pages, typescript Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009-04-26 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Torrance, California Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Go For Broke National Education Center Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2009OH0073A_T_Akune