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administrators cooperated, providing necessary materials. Detainees with professional experience in construction led thegroup, so that in a very short time a splendid pool was completed. I participated in the excavation, growing blisters on my hands. But, in the summers, happy shouts and laughter echoed from the pool. Family gardens were an important part of the lives of most detainees. Almost everyone dug up an area in back oftheir barracks and planted vegetable and flower seeds purchased at the camp's general store. Although we were in the middle ofthe desert, the soil was extremely fertile, and as long as it was sufficiently watered almost everything grew marvelously. Watermelons and winter melons grew so large they could not be lifted up by one person. Long squashes grew two or three inches overnight and soon reached over one yard in length. I found this phenomenon startling. In my childhood, I had experienced attempts to establish farming plots in the poor soil of cold Hokkaido. I was forced to reflecton the audacityofJapan to havegone to war against a country so bountiful that it could afford to let such fertile lands go undeveloped. Although we were well provided for materially, there were many people who died in camp. The funerals within the camp were large, elaborate affairs. There were more than 40 Buddhistpriests detained in the camp, and when someone died, all the priests participated in the chanting and general rites ofthe ceremonies. I have seen many funeral ceremonies in my life, but never before or after have I seen such solemn and elaborate ceremonies as within the detention camp. I wanted to take photographs ofthose ceremonies, but cameras were forbidden. Was itnotthecase, I thought, for those who musttaketheir tears offrustration to their resting place in the barbed-wire enclosed camp cemetery, that those ceremonies brought some measure of consolation? Mutual Suicide The wealth and resources of the United States were awesome. Moreover, even ifthey were ofan ~enemy nation," I had to admire the magnanimity ofthe Americans who provided ~prisoners ofwar" such decent material conditions. Buteventhose actions oftheAmerican to so meticulously guarantee our material well being could, depending on one's standpoint, be seen in acompletely opposite light. When we entered the camp I had heard a person say, "The Americans treat us well because they are afraid ofretaliation by the HIGASHIDE-171 Japanese government after the war ends." I was amazed at such creative reasoning. Later, as I became more familiar with the camp situation, I found that such opinions were not unique at all. Because there were those who seriously held to such beliefs, one could not even hint ofa Japanese defeat to those fanatical believers in Japanese victory. In addition to their absurd "war of attrition," consisting of breakage of American chinaware in the camp, they distorted daily news reports with their creative interpretations. Anyone with clear eyes could see Japan's impending defeat, but those in that faction took any unfavorable news as being American propaganda. "The Americans are creating such false and unfounded rumors simply to cover their own desperate situation," they insisted. There were, however, several reasons for their taking everything as "false rumors" created by the Americans. First, from childhood they had received a thoroughly militaristic education and the belief in the "invincible divine nation ofJapan" had been instilled in them to the marrow of their bones. Second, shortwave broadcasts.from Japan that they had heard while in Peru had repeatedly warned them not to be misled by "pernicious, unfounded rumors" perpetuated by the British and Americans. Third, in the early stages of the war, because the American mass media had been in considerable confusion , they had occasionally released reports that were inaccurate or could at the least be called journalistic sensationalism based on unfounded rumors. Forexample, ifone followed American reports, itwould seem that the Japanese battleship, Haruna, was sunk two or three times. Also, bombingraids byJapanese navalattacksquadrons inthe earlystages of the war had been so accurate that the American media had published reports, completely absurd to the Japanese, that "German aircraft carrier pilots must have been deployed." Because they had heard such reports earlier in the unreal and isolated world of the detention camps, it was understandable that such fervent believers inJapanese victory would doubt all American reports as propaganda. That "end not long in coming" was not to be a U.S. defeat-it was to be disaster for Japan. In the detention camp, on August 15, 1945, we heard the report ofJapan's defeat...

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