Life in Japan during the war years was not easy for foreign-born persons of Japanese parentage, but relatively speaking it would seem that I had a fairly easy time.
I am Anglo-Japanese in the strictest sense of the term, being a dual national and biracial to boot. My father had arrived in England in 1916, age 24, at the height of World War I to learn the diamond trade -- his uncle, whom he accompanied, was in that line of business in Osaka.
In 1920, however, my father and mother married and made their home in Teddington, a leafy outer suburb of West London. It was there that I was born and lived until I was sent to Japan at age 17 to learn Japanese after leaving grammar school in nearby Kingston-upon Thames. My father had given me dual nationality by registering me at birth with the Japanese consulate in London. In England, I had just taken that for granted, but in Japan I was to discover that it could be a very inconvenient thing to have.
I arrived in Yokohama in January 1941, and went to live with two aunts in Hanayashiki, Hyogo Prefecture. I immediately applied myself to learning Japanese, a task which assumed great urgency in December that year when Japan embarked on war with the United States and Britain. After that, because of my dual nationality, while I was in Japan I was Japanese and there was no question of my returning to England on an exchange ship, nor of laying claim to the privileges and protection of British nationality.
Because of that, my aunts realized I would be subject to conscription. Hence they advised me to study for admission to a Japanese university as university students were exempt from conscription until graduation. This would mean at least a three-year grace period.
After intensive study with the aid of private tutors, I got into a preparatory school attached to a university. But then, I had no sooner entered the university proper than the government scrapped the conscription deferment law and, at one fell swoop, called up all college students except, if I remember rightly, those studying medicine, science/engineering or agriculture.
I was caught in this net, and by having attended university (albeit for only a few months), had forfeited the excuse that I could not speak Japanese. So, ironically, all my efforts to avoid conscription had had the reverse effect!
Despite my poor physique and the blemish of not being 100 percent Yamato stock (50 percent enemy stock, in fact), I was accepted and assigned to the navy (how hard-up they must have been!) and told to report for training at Otake Marine Corps, Hiroshima Prefecture, in December 1943.
On my way home from the medical examination, I was called in by the Kempeitai, the dreaded military police, who were doubtless concerned whether my loyalty was suspect. I was expecting to be severely grilled, but the officer on duty merely asked me very pleasantly how I felt about serving in the Imperial Navy. Believing prison would be preferable, I made so bold as to reply that it didn't feel too good -- expecting the officer to hit the ceiling. But to my astonishment, he said with a laugh, "Oh, you'll soon get to like it."
At Otake I found myself in a different world ordered by brutish people I hardly recognized as being Japanese. Having fellow ex-student conscripts around me made things a lot easier, however.
The training itself was probably no harder than it should be, but what made it almost unbearable were the constant floggings with a club the size of a baseball bat. Group responsibility was the order of the day, and such punishments were meted out to all members of the squad if one of our number committed some misdemeanor such as failing to salute an officer.
After a brief stint in an anti-aircraft unit atop a mountain on Etajima Island in the Inland Sea, I was transferred to the Tokyo Naval Communications Corps and was delighted at the idea of returning to civilization. Imagine my disappointment, therefore, when I discovered that the corps was located not in Tokyo proper, but in a village called Higashi-Kurume on its outskirts. To add insult to injury, upon arrival I was punched in the face for daring to roll up to its gates in a pedicab.
There I was put in a unit made up of American nisei (American-born children of Japanese immigrants) who, like myself, were being trained to monitor enemy aircraft. Compared with the conscripted students who had all had a taste of Japanese military discipline in the kyoren (school military training courses), the nisei tended to be rather easygoing. As a result, under the group responsibility system, we were regularly flogged with a club bearing the inscription seishinbo (spirit stick) -- implying that it was a stick for beating the Japanese spirit into us foreign-born recruits.
I was glad, therefore, when I received orders to proceed to Sasebo in Kyushu and embark there for some undisclosed destination overseas. After spending a couple of months at a naval post near Manila (doing what I can't quite remember), in July 1944 I reached my final destination, which turned out to be Singapore. There I was attached to a communications unit of the 10th Zone Fleet, at a hilltop outpost halfway between Singapore City and Johore Bahru on the tip of the Malay Peninsula.
My life on the hill was not too unpleasant despite the mosquitoes and lack of air-conditioning. I had a room to myself with bed and a radio, and I only left it to take meals in the mess hall with the 30-odd sailors stationed there. Whether this isolation was intentional or not I don't know, but it suited me very well. For company I had a couple of lizards that ran up and down the walls of my room and upside-down across the ceiling. These delightful creatures helped to keep down the number of mosquitoes.
I was supposed to be monitoring enemy propaganda broadcasts aimed at Japan, but no one knew what I was listening to when I had my earphones on. I used to tune in to the regular BBC news and other programs relayed from New Delhi. I particularly enjoyed the comedy program "I.T.M.A. (It's That Man Again)," featuring Tommy Handley, and I think it was while I was listening to "I.T.M.A." that an announcer broke in asking listeners to stand by for an important announcement to be broadcast in all the principal languages of Asia. As I half-expected, the announcer came back after a while to report that Japan had accepted the terms of the Potsdam Declaration. I rather prided myself on probably being one of the first people in Singapore to learn that the war was over.
The end was surprisingly calm and orderly. We assembled ourselves in an improvised POW camp to await the arrival of British troops. I remember a naval captain asking me what I thought the British would do to us when they saw the emaciated condition of our Australian and British POWs. Just to be perverse, I said we should be prepared for the worst, because the British could be very vindictive. At this he protested, "Oh no, the British are gentlemen!" -- as if to say the Japanese were not.
At that time I was rather worried about my having British nationality and serving in the Japanese navy. I thought I could be charged with treason. However, I needn't have worried because, after a brief sojourn at a POW camp a little way up the Malay Peninsula, I was transferred to the headquarters of the Japanese 10th Zone Fleet aboard the Takao, a crippled cruiser anchored in the strait between Singapore and Johore. Among my duties there was the translation of appeals for convicted Japanese war criminals.
All sorts of documents found their way to the office, and one day I came across a list of Japanese internees from India who were being repatriated and were scheduled to change ships at Singapore. Having nothing better to do, I was idly running my eyes down the list when I came across a very familiar name -- my father's!
After the start of the war, I had been able to communicate with my family in England through the International Red Cross, but that all stopped after I was called up. I later learned that my father had requested repatriation to Japan, and had consequently been interned on the Isle of Man (off Liverpool) to await an exchange ship. But then, while this ship was heading for Lourenco Marques in Portuguese East Africa where the exchange of nationals was to take place, the negotiations apparently broke down. As a result, my father and two other Japanese from England were put ashore at Bombay and taken to an interment camp at Deori, a desert location in the hinterland.
By some means -- I forget how -- I managed to get aboard the American ship that was to take the internees back to Japan. Searching the decks, I eventually found my father. Needless to say, he was astonished to see me.
That meeting took place in early 1946, and that August I myself was repatriated. The ship docked at Ujina, near Hiroshima, so I took the opportunity to visit the devastated city. Afterward, I went to live with my father and aunts in Hanayashiki. On hearing I was safe and sound, my mother lost no time approaching the Foreign Office in London to request my repatriation to England. As a result, just six months after my return to Japan, I found myself aboard the Empress of Scotland bound for Liverpool with a British passport. I was amazed at the British authorities' broad-mindedness.
After my arrival in April 1947, though, I found it impossible to get a suitable job. Many servicemen had been demobilized, and it only naturally, employers preferred a man who had served his country to one who had "fought" against it. The fact that I had no qualifications of any sort was also an impediment to my securing employment. But in everyday life I never encountered any hostility, even among people who knew that I had served in the Imperial Japanese Navy.
Nonetheless, after three idle years -- by which time I was getting on for 27 -- I decided to return to Japan, where my father was living. Although I had not expected to spend the rest of my life here, I became more deeply entrenched as the years rolled by, until I finally realized that I had reached the point of no return.
In retrospect, I think I had a relatively easy time during the war -- much easier than my younger brother who, after changing his surname, volunteered for the Royal Navy and served on a cruiser in the cold, rough and U-boat-infested North Sea.
Surprisingly, I encountered very little discrimination in the navy. The first of my two given names being John, it was expunged from the records, but apart from that I seemed to have been accepted just as I was. Apparently I did not stick out like a sore thumb as was sometimes my experience in civilian Japan where, on several occasions not long after the war, I was denied entry to some places on account of my foreign looks.
Although I stuck out less in the military than I had feared, a Japanese civilian with whom I worked briefly in Singapore, and who later became a well-known critic, wrote of me some 35 years later:
"He had the common sense and prejudices of the average Englishman and, because he did not understand the Japanese language very well, his training as a seaman brought about no change in his inner mind. For him it was just a matter of being beaten and knocked about.
"But his lack of fluency in Japanese also saved him. If the other members of his unit knew what he was thinking in English, he would not have got away with just a flogging."
Apparently this writer found my ideas to be a little Kiplingesque. I suppose I should thank him for not reporting me.
I ended my naval career with the rank of petty officer first-class. The word "petty" is perhaps a mot juste, for I was never entrusted with any sort of authority. And needless to say, I never exercised the flogging rights my rank bestowed on me.
