Presentation Date: October 23, 2003
MSGT Philip K. Kurokawa US ARMY Reserve (RET)
* As an American in Japan, Often Stopped by Police to Show Identification * Both Parents Were University Professors of English * Before Family Could Leave Japan, Pearl Harbor was Attacked (Phil was 10) * Both Parents Lost Jobs; Very Hard Times for His Family, Trapped in Japan * Born in Honolulu to a Japanese Father & American (Pennsylvannia-Dutch) Mother
* At Age 5, Family Moved to Kyoto, Japan in 1936, for Friend Peace Mission
* In Late 1930s Heard Many Rumors About Coming War Between USA and Japan
* As an American in Japan, Often Stopped by Police to Show Identification
* Both Parents Were University Professors of English
* Before Family Could Leave Japan, Pearl Harbor was Attacked (Phil was 10)
* Both Parents Lost Jobs; Very Hard Times for His Family, Trapped in Japan
* Experienced Entire World War II Years in Japan, Including: Doolittle Raid and Tokyo Fire-Bombing by B-29s
* Served Active & Reserve Duty in both the US Army and USAF nearly 32 Years
Americans Surviving in Japan, 1941-1945
"I remember when my mother and I were huddled against a rock and cement wall of a school, seeing these things (incendiary bombs) coming down, dropping in front of us two or three feet away,
and seeing the magnesium flame shooting out of it."
Hawaii-born Philip Kurokawa is the son of a Japanese man and a Pennsylvania Dutch woman. He lived in Japan from mid August 1936 until December 1945, giving him a unique perspective on World War II, which he shared at October’s meeting of the Golden Gate Wing.
Phil’s father, Colbert Naoya Kurokawa, was native Japanese, born on the outskirts of Tokyo. Instead of becoming a Buddhist monk, Colbert ran away to Honolulu, Hawaii, where his grandfather was living. There, Colbert started his college education, and he continued it at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
Phil’s mother, Anna Laura Kluck, was born in the Pennsylvania Dutch community of Mont Alto. She attended Shepherdsburg Teachers College. It was at church one Sunday that Anna met Colbert, when he spoke to a women’s organization. Colbert and Anna married, moved to Hawaii and had two sons. Dorsey was born September , 1927 and Philip, in February, 1931. When Philip was five years old, the family moved to Japan on a friendship mission.
Colbert taught at Kyoto’s Doshisha University, while the family lived in a unique home, which Phil described --
"It was furnished in half Japanese and half American style. They were free to invite students they taught in Doshisha University to come over and experience what it was like to sit at a table and eat with silverware, knives forks and spoons. Or if they felt more comfortable, to go into the Japanese side of the house, where they could sit on their legs and eat rice with chopsticks."
Phil’s brother was enrolled in a Kobe school known as the Canadian Academy, while Phil attended a local kindergarten. That was until the parents noticed Phil was forgetting his English. Phil then, too, attended the Canadian Academy.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japanese navy planes on December 7th, 1941, the staff at the Canadian Academy was placed in concentration camps. Anna Kurokawa, by virtue of being Colbert’s wife, was allowed to continue the school year at the Academy until June of 1942. Meanwhile, Colbert lost his job at the University, and when the family moved to Tokyo, he found work translating English manuals on the growth, cultivation and harvesting of medicinal tea. Meanwhile, Phil, his mother and brother, because their facial features were not wholly Japanese, all had to carry special identification papers.
From 1943 until war’s end, Phil’s education suffered. He says the Japanese government diverted children from school to helping the war effort. For Phil, that meant scrubbing tubs of oil soap and cleaning nuts and bolts for their use on manufacturing lines.
News about the war didn’t hold much interest for Phil. He says what information there was came as propaganda - - false accounts and data to cover up Japan’s losses.
Food for the people of Japan was scarce during the war. Kurokawa says all food was rationed, even carrot tops.
"There were times, which were very, very rare, when we would have meat. And of course, we cherished the idea that the meat was there. We never thought of what it was. We began to realize that the meat we had eaten must have been from a cat or dog that we hadn’t seen running around for a day.
"There was a time when one of the families came knocking on our door, presenting us with a bowl of uncooked rice that the husband had been given by his employer for outstanding work. Instead of keeping it for themselves, they brought it over to us, which we graciously accepted.
Phil says he recalls the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo, when sixteen B-25s flew in at low altitude to drop their small payloads of bombs, and then race eastwards towards China.
"At my tender age, what did I know? All I knew is there were some gorgeous looking planes up there. I remember there were times when our neighbors would ask, ‘Do they know you’re down here?’ What could we say, except, ’Even if they did, there’s nothing they could do. They’re following their orders.’
After the Doolittle raid, there were air raid drills, and Kurokawa says the government told citizens to take shelter under their homes, to protect themselves from bombs.
"That turned out to be the worst thing that could be done, because the houses were typically made of mud, lath and plaster. And what the raiders of 1945 would do is drop incendiary bombs, which were in a cluster of 38, strapped together in a shell casing. As it came down from the aircraft, the shell casing fell off, the straps broke off and you had 38 incendiary bombs coming down.
"Instead of exploding when they hit the ground, they shot out a magnesium flame that could not be put out. I remember when my mother and I were huddled against a rock and cement wall of a school, seeing these things coming down, dropping in front of us two or three feet away, and seeing the magnesium flame shooting out of it.
"I remember throwing water on it, because all along the fence inside the wall were buckets of water and sand. And I would grab a bucket, throw the water on it and it would just spread like wildfire. Couldn’t put it out. That was the worst thing that could be done. I remember throwing a pail of sand on the incendiary, and all it did was smother it for a little bit, then burst through the sand."
Kurokawa says he remembers many people who used the under-house shelters were smothered or asphyxiated by the effects of the incendiary bombs. The houses burned like matchsticks, and many of those who weren’t suffocated had a burning house collapse on them. Phil says the Japanese government changed its recommendation to having people fend for themselves out in the open.
"We saw the city of Tokyo completely leveled with the incendiaries that were dropped. Some of the big buildings made of cinderblock, two and three stories high, were completely gutted... and all that remained was a shell.
In May of 1945, Phil’s grandfather came down and took the family to another area. "I remember my eyes were so filled with smoke I couldn’t see more than two feet in front of me."
Into the summer of 1945, the Kurokawa family was relatively safe from bombing raids on the Tokyo area. Yet they felt a stunning psychological impact from the power of the weapons which brought World War II to a close.
"When the atomic bombs were dropped... August the 6th, 1945 on Hiroshima, and August the 9th that same year on Nagasaki... those two bombs caused the end of World War II. Because of that, for the first time in Japanese history, the emperor issued a proclamation over the Japanese radio network that the war must cease, for the sake of future generations. Of course, the military wanted to go on and on and on. But because the emperor, who was held as a god for the national people, had spoken, they had no choice but to surrender in August, 1945."
As young as he was, Phil didn’t have to worry about being conscripted into the Japanese military, and the war’s end spared his brother from being processed for service.
"In August, 1945, he had received orders to report for a pre induction physical into the Japanese Army. But fortunately for him, the war ended when it did and he never got drafted into the army of Japan."
With Japan’s surrender, all women and children under the age of sixteen were ordered to the countryside, away from the metropolis. They were told, says Kurokawa, that the occupying American troops were nothing but beasts, who would think nothing of clubbing the men and boys with their rifle butts.
"But this was not the case. After I got my job as an interpreter for the US Army right after the war, I talked to some of these GIs... and they told me they never did, nor even thought of doing, anything like that."
Phil and his mother occupied a countryside tennis club, a chicken wire-fenced court with a club house. It held a cot, a ping-pong table and a small stove.
Phil remembers seeing an American GI coming through the gate one day, staring wide-eyed and asking ‘What are you folks doing here?’ After Anna explained their situation, the GI told them to go home, that the war was over.
Both Colbert and Dorsey offered their services as interpreters for the US Army, and they daily walked a few blocks to work. Phil, still 14 years old, soon found himself waiting tables in the Officers’ Club. He, too, began interpreting. At first he did so informally while waiting tables, but then he was given an official armband that read both in English and Japanese, "US Army Interpreter."
Soon, the issue of returning to the United States came up. Because Phil’s father was a Japanese national, he was not allowed into the states. But on December 22, 1945, Phil, his brother and mother were among two dozen civilians sailing out of Yokohama on a troop ship headed for California.
Of note to Phil on that voyage was an event on Christmas Day, when he was bustled in his life preserver onto the top deck.
"I was only a 14 year old kid and never exposed to rifles, but I heard this popping sound. As we got to the railing we were looking out over the ocean. The ship was moving up and down, with a little sideways motion, and out in the distance I could see this humongous ball with all kinds of spikes sticking out of it. Obviously, a floating mine. The crew was shooting at it, and eventually hit one of the spikes and blew it up. That caused our Christmas dinner to be delayed several hours."
Phil says when the troopship reached San Pedro, California, all 2000 troops and the remaining civilians were let off the ship before the Kurokawas were cleared to come ashore. Then, they found their way back to Waynesboro, Pennsylvania.
Kurokawa says he was startled when he learned of President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, which led to the wartime rounding up of all first- and second-generation Japanese Americans, and their internment in special remote camps.
"We were flabbergasted. We could not understand why President Roosevelt did this, especially to native-born Japanese Americans. I guess they were so panicky that they felt that West Coast people - - no matter where they were born, as long as they had a Japanese name - - were a threat to the United States."
In January of 1946, Phil was given a battery of tests to see in what class he should be placed. Due to his schooling in Japan being curtailed by the war, Phil was enrolled in the sixth grade, at the age of fifteen.
At a recent high school reunion, Phil says a former fellow student told him what he remembered most was Phil’s courage. He recalled a teacher who asked Phil if he knew any Christmas carols in Japanese. Phil volunteered to sing.
"I don’t know if it was Joy to the World or whatever, but this classmate told me, ‘That’s what I remember more about you than anything else. If that would have been me, I would have been scared. Here you were, practically a brand new kid in the school, coming up in front of a group of kids that you’ve never seen before, and you sang Christmas carols.
Phil enjoyed the arts in school, especially drama, and he was regularly in plays.
Meanwhile, his brother immediately enlisted in the U.S. Army, where he was to spend his next 26 years, retiring from the Signal Corps as a Lt. Col. in 1972.
In July of 1953, a year after graduating from Waynesboro Senior High School, Phil also joined the Army. He spent three years on active duty, then a little more than two years as a Reservist with the 100th Battalion, 442d Regimental Combat Team, before transferring to the U.S. Air Force Reserve in September, 1958.
Phil was recalled to active duty for the year of 1968, after North Koreans captured the USS Pueblo. He then went back into the Army Reserve in June 1975. Retiring at the age of 60, Phil Kurokawa retired from the military as a Master Sergeant with 31 years service.
Phil's civilian career included the U.S. Postal Service, CalTrans, State of California Dept. of Motor Vehicles, Kaiser Electronics and Onizuka Air Station in Sunnyvale. Kurokawa was also a reserve police officer with the City of Palo Alto for 20 years.