PRAISE FOR JAPANESE FAMILY
MacArthur 'Public Hero,'
Says Sydney Girl
Mrs. Betty Katayama, the Sydney girl who mar
ried a Japanese before the war, and lived in Japan
during hostilities, says her Japanese family thinks the
world of her. 'And/' she added, 'I think the world
of them/'
Her husband, Shinshiro Katayama, was a touring pianist,
whom she met in Sydney, and
married, in 1937. Now. she lias
come home for her holiday, with
her black-haired, olive-skinned
little son, David, aged 19 months.
The boy is seldom given his real
name, but is called Kay.
Mrs. Katayama formerly was Miss
McDonald, of Mosman, where her
parents live. She is staying with
them.
She arrived during the week on
the Taiping, which brought her from
Kure, and after a long holiday
(maybe two years) she will return.
'Tokio is my home, and I intend
to go back,' she told Truth shortly
after her arrival.
Shinshiro, who plays the piano
now only for fun, belongs to a
Japanese banking family with lash
ings of dough, and so consequently
the Katayamas had a compara
tively easy trot during the war.
Shinshiro, Mrs. Katayama said,
didn't get a job in the armed services,
but spent a good deal of time with
her. He and father-in-law Kata
yama, together with the rest of the
family, were dead against the war
from the word go.
Mrs. Katayama said throughout the
war years she led a quiet life, and
lived in Tokio until the air-raids got
toe bad.
World Of Hatred
Then her husband insisted on mov
ing her out of town to . Karuizawa,
where the legations were located, be
cause in the raids it was terrifying.
Incendiaries set blocks ablaze, so that
it was possible to read a book even
at midnight. Tokio was without shel
ters.
Karuizawa Is a lovely mountains
resort 120 miles west of Tokio, and
there all the foreign legations, as
well as most of the foreign settle
ments, lived in a world of hatred and
suspicion, the Nazis holding sway —
and the lives of their fellow country
men in their hands.
Mrs. Katayama said food was
short during hostilities, and, al
though there was a lot of captured
Australian food floating around in
the black market, it was the Ger
mans who got it, and not the Japs.
The Occupation, she said, was go
ing along very well. The Emperor
wasn't the Son of Heaven any more.
The general public had given him
away. 'General MacArthur is the
hero of the Japanese — they must have
a hero,' she said.
And democracy? That was going
along fine, too. The Japs were fairly
eating up democracy. Of course, their
democratic background was a little
light on at the moment, but given
time, and if things continued the way
they were going, they'd become 'bon-
zer' democrats.
The Japanese, Mrs. Katayama went
on, were pretty, punch-drunk when
the atom bomb was dropped on Hiro
shima, so there was no especially
noticeable reaction.
MRS. KATAYAMA and 'KAY.'
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