Oral History Videos

Warren Tsuneishi
Interview Length: 1:50

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT:
Interviewer: How did that feel to you knowing that you were serving your country fighting against Japanese people and having your family incarcerated?

Well, ambivalent.  There was no question about that.  But you got to get away from stereotypes.  I said earlier that the GIs on the front who captured these POWs, you would think that they would have been, you would think they would have been indoctrinated with the propaganda and all that.  So you would be thinking about the Japanese soldiers as steer buck type or buck teeth and bandy-legged and evil and all the things like that.  But ones, the American GIs that I worked with didn't feel, didn't see them that way and saw beyond the stereotype.  And as Japanese American there was no way I could have seen them in terms of that stereotype.  I saw them as human beings.  They were on one side and we were on the other side.  If I were had been a prisoner of war of the Japanese.  Some of the American soldiers captured on Corregidor were.  I would probably have an undying hatred of these guys, but, of the enemy Japanese.  But I just didn't feel that way.  I could see them as another human being would.  In the case where I was involved with them as an interrogator.  I couldn't see them as hated enemy or anything like that.  How could I, it would be like hating myself, you know.  So I don't see them that way.