FEATURED VETERAN
Gordon Riess
To pick a fight with Gordon Riess as a boy, all you had to do was hand him a kite. With ground glass glued to the string, he would take to the Hawaii sky battling box kites, fish kites, and triangular kites. The kites mirrored the diversity of the young "warriors" who flew them – Riess's Japanese, Chinese, Filipino and Pacific Islander friends. There were haoles, too, often from the military families that frequented the Army/Navy YMCA operated by Gordon's father on Oahu.
But the radio announcer confirmed the shocking news: Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor. Gordon could see smoke rising in the distance and planes from Hickam Field circling. "Come in the house," his mother ordered. But 13-year-old Gordon had spent too many years obsessed with war planes and making model war ships copied from the pages of Jane's Fighting Ships. Nearby, an American fighter plane from Kaneohe Naval Station had shot down a Japanese Zero plane. Riess ran off and retrieved his souvenirs: a control wire and a bullet.
Gordon's Nisei friends, however, were far from thrilled. For them, Japan's surprise attack brought shame and humiliation. "This has caused us to lose face," they said. Matters worsened with the incarceration of Japanese Americans on the mainland, a ludicrous act considering a state like California had less than 2 percent Japanese Americans compared to Hawaii's almost 40 percent. Being of German heritage, Gordon thought, "Gee, if they're going to round up everybody of German descent, they'd empty Philadelphia!" Plus it was Hawaii, not California, that was within striking distance. "Those ding-dong Californians are in a panic," Gordon said, "and they got nothin' to worry about."
Gordon's family relocated back to the mainland, where his father helped the YMCA establish United Service Organizations for servicemen. It would be four years before Riess turned 18 and could volunteer for the army. The war had ended by then, so after training at Fort Bliss, Texas, Gordon boarded a ship with 1,200 other troops and headed for the Allied Occupation Forces in Japan under the command of General Douglas MacArthur.
Gordon's year-and-a-half of college chemistry landed him in the Chief Chemical Officer's division overseeing disposal of Japan's poison gas stocks. Every Saturday morning his unit executed drills at the Imperial Palace. "It was very thrilling," Gordon remembers. "To this day…every time I hear a John Phillips Sousa song, I can remember exactly the order that follows it: column, half left, march!"
Occasionally watching them would be General MacArthur, whom Gordon considered "one of the most outstanding men of our generation," noting his military record spanning the Mexican War, World Wars I and II, and the Korean War. Despite MacArthur's reputation as a stern disciplinarian who did not tolerate dissent and was widely disliked for his arrogance, Gordon contended, "He was perfect, in my opinion, for the role in Japan, because he was replacing the Emperor."
Gordon remembers MacArthur's first command to his troops: "We are here to rebuild Japan, not to punish them, and troops are not to harass, annoy, or abuse the Japanese people." For Gordon, this was not difficult. Japanese soldiers had returned to a devastated country, with no jobs, no homes, and their parents killed in the bombings. "It's pretty hard to hate somebody when they look miserable, they're starving and living in desolation," Gordon said. "I hadn't been shot at by the Japanese. Maybe if I had been on Iwo Jima, I would feel differently. But I was fortunate … I didn't have the same direct feeling of seeing atrocities or brutality."
Instead, Gordon thought highly of those he supervised—war-hardened soldiers who not long before had been fighting violently and heroically. "And now they're working for a couple of young gaijin kids," he said. He found them stoic, but patient, courteous and remarkably enduring. The little tin boxes they brought for lunch contained fish the size of an anchovy, some rice and a few pickled vegetables. They were grateful for extra K rations Gordon gave them, but did not eat them. "They carefully put them aside to take to their families," he said.
One Japanese ex-officer presented Gordon with a small sword, the type Samurai carried in their sash. "I had given him some food and treated him respectfully," Riess remembered. "Heck, he outranked me! I've been trained to respect officers!"
A sword, some wire, and a bullet – souvenirs of war. But Gordon got much more. Before his discharge, Gordon attended the Japan War Crime trials of Generals Hideki Tojo and Tomoyuki Yamashita (aka the "Tiger of Malaya"). " I felt very fortunate that I could be present at these events," Gordon reflected, "that I got to watch the Pearl Harbor attack, and now I watched the war crimes trials at the other end."
Certainly more than a 13-year-old boy could have ever hoped for.
(Gordon Riess was interviewed as part of the Hanashi Oral History Program's Japan Occupation grant, funded by the U.S. Army and working with the Center for Military History.)
