Mr. Keinosuke Tanaka (1885-1964), an intellectual Issei Japanese from Yamagata Prefecture, was interned in an FBI detention camp and then was placed in a relocation center during WWII. His lengthy but interesting journal contains the interviews with a couple of POWs whom he met at Lordsburg Camp, NM. In this article, I introduce Mr. Keinosuke Tanaka's interview with a commander (a rank called "Kaigun Chusa" in Japanese) of Japanese Navy who was captured after the battle of Midway, 4-7 June 1942. A few officers who were also captured with the commander made some comments in the interview. Mr. Keinosuke Tanaka wrote his journal before Japanese orthography changed drastically after WWII. He wrote in a small, skillful hand, which sometimes caused a great difficulty to me. I did my best to restore his sentences.
Mr. Keinosuke Tanaka set 11 chapters in this interview with a commander in his memoir. Mr. Suekichi Nakamura, who was the second POW on the Japanese side and was introduced in my previous article, tended to talk about his own experience as a seaman and then as a prisoner. Unlike him, the commander tended to talk over the general situations, often looking down on the Allied Forces and praising heroic deeds of valor of the Japanese soldiers as well as a famous general and a renowned admiral. I am not sure whether he intended to entertain the civilian internees in the camp with such an optimistic opinion and bragging.
Fortunately for me, I got acquainted with Mr. Keinosuke Tanaka's three Nisei children. All of them overcame a terrible ordeal during WWII and made a great success of their lives in the United States. The eldest is Dr. John Tanaka, a very renowned researcher in Chemistry. His only daughter is Mrs. Iris Fukutaki, who is a highly intellectual lady and kept Mr. Keinosuke Tanaka's journals. The youngest is Mr. Tyler Tanaka, a successfully retired businessman and still a great figure in the travel industry. Mr. Tyler Tanaka is now an important, admirable friend of mine. I'd like to express my gratitude to Ms. Masako Hanada, Ms. Ryoko Matsuno, Ms.Hatsumi Shimai, Mr. Akira Horiuchi, Mr. Kenji Tanaka (Japan), Ms. Toshiko McCallum, and especially to Mr. Keinosuke Tanaka's children (U.S.).
|
