Alfred Dearman was born in June 1930 in Abilene, Texas. He was an orphan who was adopted at three days old by an older couple who lived in west Texas. His adoptive mother died when he was six years old. He was going to be placed in a home, but his adoptive mother's sister took him in and raised him in eastern New Mexico on a combination farm and cattle ranch. He enjoyed growing up as a cowboy farmer. His family had all gone through the Great Depression [Annotator's Note: The Great Depression, a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1945] and were staunch conservatives who blamed the Depression on Hoover [Annotator's Note: Herbert Clark Hoover, 31st President of the United States]. He was indoctrinated into that thinking. He enjoyed school. He later married the sister of one his best friends in school. This was after he returned from serving in the occupation of Japan. When he was 17, he decided he had had enough school and joined the Army. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Dearman what he was doing when he heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941.] He remembers it well. They had a radio on the farm. He had gone to a movie and when he came back home, several neighbors were there listening to the radio. He asked what Pearl Harbor was and was told to be quiet and listen. His aunt who was raising him, had a brother who had been in the service who was there. They started talking about the Army. That is when Dearman started getting interested in the Army. The following week they got the rationing books. They could buy stamps to get Savings Bonds with [Annotator's Note: debt securities issued by the United States Department of the Treasury to help pay for the U.S. government's borrowing needs]. A lot of young men were being drafted. Dearman did not think anything about it. His uncle, who was a surrogate father, started teaching him some close order drills and marching. There was no close family who had gone to war. He started thinking that he would get involved when he got old enough. He and his family got updates through the radio. They were not close to town. He would go to the movies and see the newsreels. He did not really know the difference between the European conflict and the Pacific conflict. His uncle was in the Army and out before the war started so he was never in combat. He felt that Army discipline was good for a young man. After Dearman was approaching 17, in the summer the students were thinking about college. Dearman started thinking about the Army instead. He had a close buddy who had hard times at home. They went to Clovis, New Mexico to join the Navy. It was closed but the Army recruiting office was open. They joined the Army after the war had ended. They had their choice of occupation duty in Japan or in Europe. Dearman wanted to go to Germany.

Being a farm boy and being used to hard work, as well as having a disciplinarian uncle who had been in the service, Alfred Dearman was not bothered by basic training at all. He enjoyed it. When he finished, he got orders and they said to go to San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California] to get on a ship after a ten day leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time]. He told the captain he was supposed to be going to Europe because the recruiter said so. The captain told him the recruiters were all liars and that he had better be on that ship to Japan. Dearman only knew what was on the newsreels. He went home on his leave and then went to San Francisco. The war was just about over, and a lot of troops were coming back. He was on a replacement ship that took a month to get to Japan. They stopped in Hawaii, Guam [Annotator's Note: Guam, Mariana Islands], and then Okinawa, Japan. He had never been on a big ship, and it was an adventure. He had plenty of time when they stopped to get off for two or three hours. A lot of people got off in Hawaii and got pineapple juice and tattoos. Dearman got a tattoo of a big rose on his arm. It cost him seven dollars. Years later he spent almost one thousand dollars taking it off. The passage was normal until they hit a typhoon between Okinawa and Japan. It was an experience. Dearman was wondering what each island would be like and what they would do in Japan. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Dearman what he thought about the atomic bombs being dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on 6 August 1945 and Nagasaki, Japan on 9 August 1945.] He thought it ended the war and saved a lot of American and Japanese lives doing it.

When Alfred Dearman got to Japan, he went to a replacement depot. He waited around there with his friend he had gone to infantry basic training with. They were supposed to go into the 24th Infantry Division in northern Japan. His buddy's name got called. He came back and told Dearman that he had signed them up for the Airborne to get jump pay. They were going to go to the 11th Airborne [Annotator's Note: 11th Airborne Division]. Dearman did not know if he wanted to jump out of airplanes. He got called and there was a colonel, a chaplain, and two more officers who said they saw that he played sports in high school. The colonel said they wanted young men to go to Sugamo Prison. The colonel had been a football player at Tennessee [Annotator's Note: unable to identify which Tennessee college] and that the prison was going to have football and baseball teams. They would work at the prison in excellent duty. They would get three day passes [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] and would get ice cream. Dearman said he would go. He told his buddy that they were going to guard the Japanese at a prison instead of jumping out of airplanes. They took a train to Sugamo Prison near Tokyo [Annotator's Note: Tokyo, Japan]. This was January 1947, and they were recuperating. Dearman was intrigued by the rice fields and those sorts of things. The people had hardships. He noticed it was different right away. He was not treated differently when he went in town. The Japanese accepted the occupation. The thing the men had to be careful about was that General MacArthur [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] did not want the Americans to make a bad impression. They got along fairly well. They had shops with things the men were interested in. His buddy had gone to radio school after basic training. Dearman had gone to NCO [Annotator's Note: non-commissioned officer] school. His buddy was assigned as a switchboard operator in the prison. Dearman was sent into training to be a jailer. [Annotator's Note: Dearman loses the picture, and someone comes to help with the computer he is being interviewed on.]

Since Alfred Dearman would be in the cellblock with the prisoners [Annotator's Note: at Sugamo Prison, Tokyo, Japan], he got special training. General MacArthur [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] did not want anyone [Annotator's Note: who had ever fought against the Japanese] coming in contact with the war criminals. That is why they were getting young people like Dearman to be jailers and guards. There was a big division between guards and jailers. Jailers were in with the prisoners and guards were all outside. They were told to never lay a hand on the prisoners unless it was an emergency caused by them. They were to be treated well. His cellblock was Tojo [Annotator's Note: Hideki Tojo, Prime Minister of Japan] and his cabinet. They were 27 old men who had been Admirals, Generals, and Ministers. There was really no problem. It was a new experience. These 27 men [Annotator's Note: in Class A, a category of charges against Japan's top leaders alleging crimes against peace] were in single cells. The other cellblocks had seven or eight to one cell. These men were watched 24 hours. They were often away at trial, and Dearman would be off duty then. There was never any problem. There were problems in Germany at that prison camp [Annotator's Note: Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, military tribunals Nuremberg, Germany, 20 November 1945 to 1 October 1946]. The prisoners had to sleep with a dim light on and with their hands outside of their covers. Dearman thought it was a pretty interesting assignment. He worked shifts. There were 27 prisoners and 30 jailers. They would work from six o'clock in the morning until noon for three days; from noon until six o'clock in the evening for three days; from the evening until midnight for three days; from midnight until morning for three days; then had three days off. When Dearman was off, he would often go to Tokyo to the trials [Annotator's Note: International Military Tribunal for the Far East, also called Tokyo Trial or Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, 29 April 1946 to 12 November 1948, Tokyo, Japan]. It was an experience that a lot of people never had.

Alfred Dearman says that in the book [Annotator's Note: Dearman is referring to a scrapbook he has, as well as to "Sugamo Prison, Tokyo: An Account of the Trial and Sentencing of Japanese War Criminals in 1948, by a U.S. Participant," by John L. Ginn, 1992] there are pictures of what the trials [Annotator's Note: International Military Tribunal for the Far East, also called Tokyo Trial or Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, 29 April 1946 to 12 November 1948, Tokyo, Japan] were like inside. It was a very large building. The 27 men [Annotator's Note: 27 high ranking officials that Dearman was the jailer for] were in a row. There were witnesses and crowded, but well-organized. A lot of the prisoners that were Class B and Class C [Annotator's Note: categories of charges at Japanese of any rank that covered conventional war crimes and crimes against humanity] had been prison camp people themselves and had mistreated a lot of people, such as the Bataan Death March [Annotator's Note: Bataan Death March, the forcible transfer by the Imperial Japanese Army of 60,000 to 80,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war, 9 April 1942]. These were the leaders [Annotator's Note: in Class A, a category of charges against Japan's top leaders alleging crimes against peace] and were being asked about their invasion of China [Annotator's Note: Second Sino-Japanese War, 7 July 1937 to 2 September 1945] and how they treated the Chinese and things. It was a good history lesson of what had happened between the time the Japanese went into China in the late 1930s until the war was over. The trial was conducted in English with translators wearing earphones. There were representatives there of the Russians, Chinese, and British. All of the countries that Japan had fought against had representatives there. The mood was orderly due to the judge. There were a lot of surprising things. These old men were respectful and knew they were on trial for their lives. Dearman went to the other trials, and they were totally different from the one with the old men. Where the Class B people who had been on the Bataan Death March [Annotator's Note: Bataan Death March, the forcible transfer by the Imperial Japanese Army of 60,000 to 80,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war, April 1942] were, they were describing how they had treated the American prisoners in detail. The 27 people he was responsible for were much higher, and the questions were about why they invaded China and why they had bombed Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. As a young man, he learned more than he ever knew about World War 2 in the Pacific. When Dearman heard about the atrocities and their excuses for doing it, it was the first time he realized that being in the Japanese Army was no easy thing. They were hard on their own people. He thought that a lot of these things were unbelievable. When he left there and would get back on the streets with the Japanese people, it was hard for him to believe they were the same people. But they were not Japanese soldiers either. A lot of the Japanese people did not know how their Army treated prisoners. There was one humorous incident. The first day of the trial there was a man [Annotator's Note: Shūmei Ōkawa] sitting behind Tojo [Annotator's Note: Hideki Tojo, Prime Minister of Japan] who kept hitting him on the back of the head. The MPs [Annotator's Note: military police] took him outside. He was declared insane and never tried. Years later, when the trials were over, it was discovered it was just an act he put on. [Annotator's Note: The interview has to stop due to technical issues with the connection. When it is restored, the story about the insane ploy is repeated.]

When Alfred Dearman would come on duty for the morning shift as a jailer, the midnight shift would have had the prisoners finish their breakfast. Dearman would have the prisoners get ready for the trial [Annotator's Note: International Military Tribunal for the Far East, also called Tokyo Trial or Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, 29 April 1946 to 12 November 1948, Tokyo, Japan] and call the guard to come get them. They would get on a bus to go into Tokyo for the trial. They would return around noon and be brought back in. In the evening, they were allowed to visit for one hour, two per cell. Their cell was a Japanese floor of tatami rice mats. They had a bed and a commode arrangement that could be covered as a desk. They had nothing else except their bedding. A lot of them wanted to take an evening bath. They had a big bathtub with hot water for them. They would go back and read. When they went to bed, they had to sleep with their hands on the top of the cover under a dim light. They were observed all night long. In the daytime when they were not at trial, they got an hour for exercising. Their cellblock was two stories high. In inclement weather, they would exercise on the bottom story. If it was nice, they would go outside after being turned over to the guards. There were times they would meet with their attorneys outside of the cellblock. They could have family visitors too. In the cellblocks they were watched all the time to prevent suicide. They had no attempts. In some of other cellblocks they did. None of the 27 old men [Annotator's Note: 27 high ranking officials that Dearman was the jailer for], ever tried. They would talk to the jailers just to talk. Shigemitsu [Annotator's Note: Mamoru Shigemitsu, Japanese diplomat and politician] is the one who signed the surrender on the Missouri [Annotator's Note: USS Missouri (BB-63)]. He had been the Ambassador to England before the war and spoke perfect English. He liked to talk to them about what was happening outside. He told Dearman he should learn some Japanese and started teaching him for two and a half years. That was helpful to Dearman years later when he worked for Chevron [Annotator's Note: Chevron Corporation]. Dearman was the International Manager for the Agricultural Chemical Division and took his wife with him on a trip. They were invited to a gentleman's house for dinner. He told his wife that Dearman had the strangest Japanese. This was due to how the Japanese phrase things and how he learned it. Shigemitsu was sentenced to life in prison. When the Korean War started [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953], the occupation was over, and the prison was turned back over to the Japanese government. They then released him from prison. Shigemitsu then became a mayor of a small town. There was not much conversation with the other prisoners. They had bathrooms and water in their cells, so they had no reason to get out. It was unusual with him as he wanted to use his English, and Dearman wanted to learn Japanese. Dearman just thought why not learn the language as he was interacting with the civilians. He lived in a Quonset hut [Annotator's Note: prefabricated metal building] that Japanese house boys cleaned, so he was already picking up some Japanese.

Alfred Dearman says that Sugamo Prison [Annotator's Note: in Tokyo, Japan] was the largest, most modern prison in Japan. It was built in an industrial area with homes around it. During the war, the prisoners were mostly political prisoners and few people. Knowing they would need a prison after the war, it was never bombed. The area around it was firebombed and destroyed. Coming into the prison was an administration corridor with cellblocks coming off of it. The Army put in Quonset huts [Annotator's Note: prefabricated metal building], an Officer's Club, Serviceman's Club, and a theater all outside of a concrete wall they built around the administration center. About 200 yards away from the wall, the Americans built a tall, barbed wire that had room enough for a jeep to drive around in. Their football fields, baseball fields, and motor pool was in between the prison and the barbed wire. They had a bowling alley. It was nice enough. Dearman enjoyed getting his three day pass [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time]. He had learned some Japanese and he had a buddy he would travel with on a train. They went to Hiroshima and Nagasaki to see what that looked like [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons were dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on 6 August 1945 and Nagasaki, Japan on 9 August 1945]. They would go to the mountains. The trains were all free for occupation troops. He took several pictures. Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not look like much. Things were instantly being cleaned up, but the destruction was terrible. He could see the imprints of people on the walls from the heat. That was two years after the bomb was dropped. Occasionally he would see a person who had been burned badly. The Press Corps wanted to see some of the people who had been burned. Dearman has a picture of them with them. He talked to some survivors. It was a bad thing. The Japanese survivors were more interested in Dearman and his friend and did not want to talk about the bomb and what had happened. In both cities, occupation troops were stationed there, which surprised him. Dearman climbed Mount Fuji. He also went to other small towns and fishing villages. Baseball season was back. He took normal trips and stayed in guest houses. He learned to speak a little Japanese and could make reservations to visit. He went to where Mikimoto [Annotator's Note: K. Mikimoto & Company, Ltd.] pearls cultured. He went to big shipyards. The civilians were courteous and would let G.I.s [Annotator's Note: government issue; also, a slang term for an American soldier] go by on crowded streets. There was very little animosity, and they did not want to talk about the war. If asked where he was stationed, when he replied that it was Sugamo Prison, they would not want to talk about it at all. If you said you were an MP [Annotator's Note: military police], they might talk, but not about the prison.

Alfred Dearman played baseball and football. They had two good teams. They played a lot of other Army units around Tokyo [Annotator's Note: Tokyo, Japan] and won the championship in 1949. They had a good baseball team and played some Navy teams in the Tokyo Giants [Annotator's Note: now Yomiuri Giants, Japanese professional baseball team] stadium. If a game came up when he was to be on duty, he could get excused to play. The colonel who ran the prison was very interested in sports and he made it pretty easy for the players. They did not play any Japanese civilians. 1st Cavalry [Annotator's Note: 1st Cavalry Division], 24th [Annotator's Note: 24th Infantry Division] and 25th Infantry [Annotator's Note: 25th Infantry Division], medical groups, and other Army groups all had football and baseball teams. Dearman did not take part in boxing. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer takes Dearman back to discuss the 27 prisoners he was the jailer for being able to receive visitors.] The jailer was not involved at all. Visits were set up through administration. MPs [Annotator's Note: military police] would bring them in. A guard would come up with a pass for the prisoner. The guard would put cuffs on them as well as a restraining belt and take them to the room for the visit. The jailers never went there. The guard would return them. This happened the same way with their attorneys. For their meals, they had their own kitchen with trustees that worked in the kitchen. Meals came up on carts. The jailers made sure they only had chopsticks to eat with in their cells. The prisoners had their own problems. Tojo [Annotator's Note: Hideki Tojo, Prime Minister of Japan] had fewer visitors than any others and was not very popular with the others either.

Shigemitsu [Annotator's Note: Mamoru Shigemitsu, Japanese diplomat and politician] and Alfred Dearman interacted quite often. General Araki [Annotator's Note: Imperial Japanese Army General Baron Sadao Araki] was responsible for the Invasion and Rape of Nanking [Annotator's Note: Nanking, or Nanjing, Massacre, 13 December 1937 to January 1938]. He had a loud voice. They would have Araki wake up the other prisoners. He was kind of different than the rest of them. They led lonely lives by themselves with only short periods of time to visit with each other. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Dearman if, in his observations, Araki or Hideki Tojo, Prime Minister of Japan owned any of what happened.] He could not really tell. When they visited with each other, they did not talk very loudly. He got was coming to him and was hanged. He was one of the seven of the 27 [Annotator's Note: 27 high ranking officials that Dearman was the jailer for] who were. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Dearman if any of the men on his cellblock ever showed any remorse during the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, also called Tokyo Trial or Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, 29 April 1946 to 12 November 1948, Tokyo, Japan.] Yes. When the atrocities were being recounted, they would frown. They did not like to hear it. The trial was being carried out in English and they were listening on headsets. They did not like being where they were. The prison was not where they planned to be. Dearman could tell there were reactions in the audience. Some of the audience could have been family members. There were Japanese reporters were there and were startled sometimes. The B and C prisoner trials [Annotator's Note: categories of charges at Japanese of any rank that covered conventional war crimes and crimes against humanity] were more about the guards of the Japanese prison camps and the Bataan Death March [Annotator's Note: Bataan Death March, the forcible transfer by the Imperial Japanese Army of 60,000 to 80,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war, April 1942]. That is where you heard more about the atrocities. The men from his cellblock were on trial more for planning the Pearl Harbor attack and invading China. The big things. Dearman did not listen to all of the sentencing. He gave a book [Annotator's Note: "Sugamo Prison, Tokyo: An Account of the Trial and Sentencing of Japanese War Criminals in 1948, by a U.S. Participant," by John L. Ginn, 1992] to the interviewer on Sugamo Prison that has all of the trials in it. It was written by his friend John Ginn several years later. Dearman learned more in reading the book about some of the stuff that was done. He thinks they got a fair trial in general. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Dearman what he thought about the seven that were executed.] Having heard about the Rape of Nanking, about the Japanese soldiers throwing and catching babies on bayonets, and the Bataan Death March, Dearman would say they got what was coming to them. They were responsible and they allowed it to happen. No one except witnesses from the tribunal were allowed to view the hangings. He knew who the hangman was. They hanged four at once and then three at once. Dearman was on duty the evening before they were hanged. They came and got the seven and took them below for 24 hours with a Japanese priest. He knew what was happening. In his book [Annotator's Note: a scrapbook], he has an issue of the Stars and Stripes [Annotator's Note: American military newspaper] from the morning after the night hanging. Dearman got up early to get the paper. It was the same day that Prince Charles [Annotator's Note: Charles, Prince of Wales, heir apparent to the British throne] was christened. The headline was "Japanese Prisoners Hung" and then a picture of Queen Elizabeth [Annotator's Note: Queen Elizabeth II, Elizabeth Alexandra Mary, Queen of the United Kingdom] and Prince Charles. The last time Dearman saw them [Annotator's Note: the condemned prisoners], he was taking them one at a time to the guards. He thought they were going for a visit, until he saw them taking them below and then he knew where they were going. He does not recall what he was thinking. When he got back to the Quonset hut [Annotator's Note: prefabricated metal building], he told the other jailers there was going to be a hanging the next night at midnight. Everyone knew about how the hanging went because others had been on hanging details. The condemned walked up 13 steps and the head jailer put the noose around their neck. Then he or an assistant would pull the trap door. They were then put in coffins and took them to Yokohama [Annotator's Note: Yokohama, Japan] for cremation. The ashes of the seven were scattered over Tokyo Bay so as to not make martyrs of them. Today, there is a shrine in Tokyo where military heroes are enshrined. They will tell you their ashes are there, but the people he knew on the detail says their ashes are not there. It was unique for a young cowboy from New Mexico to wind up doing that job. It was a good experience, and he is happy that it happened. He only got selected because he had been a good high school athlete and the colonel was looking for good athletes.

The main difference between a jailer, which Alfred Dearman was, and a guard, is that the jailer is in the cellblock with the prisoners. Guards can be doing many things. Some of the C and Bs [Annotator's Note: categories of charges at Japanese of any rank that covered conventional war crimes and crimes against humanity] that were trustees did work outside and they were guarded. Jailers were in the cellblock and that was it. They were trained to do both. They were then selected. They were asked which they would like to be. His experience as a jailer was more exciting than a guards would have been. There were 27 prisoners [Annotator's Note: 27 high ranking officials that Dearman was the jailer for] and 30 jailers, so they did not get the same prisoner every shift. Normally they were on the other side facing them, watching two or three cellblocks. They would rotate and had a room where they could take breaks. Sometimes they were face-to-face. Before Dearman went to the trials [Annotator's Note: International Military Tribunal for the Far East, also called Tokyo Trial or Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, 29 April 1946 to 12 November 1948, Tokyo, Japan], and heard what they had done, he was not too impressed with them. Today, he cannot really remember much. Araki [Annotator's Note: Imperial Japanese General Army Baron Sadao Araki], who had been in charge of the Rape of Nanking [Annotator's Note: Nanking, or Nanjing, Massacre; 13 December 1937 to January 1938] was an arrogant person. The rest were pretty calm, older gentleman being accused of war crimes. He never had any dreams or nightmares. He was never on a hanging detail. Some of the men were shot but he never saw any of that. He saw old men every day and got to know them. He did his shifts, played his baseball and football, did his visits around, and then came back to work. They were to stop them if they tried to commit suicide. They were made to keep their hands on top of their blankets. They had to make sure they did not get a piece of the mirror they used for shaving. He never saw one try to commit suicide. They were to stop it if it happened. He had a nightstick but never had to use it. There was always a guard right outside the cellblock door. You could have ten more there almost instantly.

Alfred Dearman had never seen a tv [Annotator's Note: television] and kept reading about them. Another of his buddy and he decided that as soon as they got back to San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California] they would go see what a tv was like. They could not believe a radio had a picture on it. He was thinking about discharge and what life was going to be like. Before he went overseas, he was dating his buddy's sister. He was thinking about her because she wrote to him the whole time that he was overseas. When he got back, he bought a new car and went to see his buddy. He had planned to go to college but that did not materialize. When he got discharged, he said he was going to college on the G.I. Bill [Annotator's Note: the G.I. Bill, or Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, was enacted by the United States Congress to aid United States veterans of World War 2 in transitioning back to civilian life and included financial aid for education, mortgages, business starts and unemployment]. When he joined the Army, the recruiter had said he would be sent to Europe and then he was sent to Japan. At his discharge, the man said he should join the Reserve because he would get more money on his G.I. Bill. He joined on 20 June 1950. On 10 July 1950, the Korean War [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953] started. He got orders to report to Fort Sill, Oklahoma [Annotator's Note: in Lawton, Oklahoma] and then for overseas assignment. Some of his buddies who would have come back in July [Annotator's Note: July 1950] were sent immediately to Korea. A real close buddy wrote him and said their bazookas [Annotator's Note: man-portable recoilless anti-tank weapon] were bouncing off the Russian tanks. Dearman found out 50 years later that they were being sent to Japan to open a prisoner of war camp. When they got on the ship, they were told they were not taking any prisoners. So a lot of them were in Korea early. He tore the letter up, put it in the trash, and joined the Air Force as an MP [Annotator's Note: military police]. He was in Texas and his girlfriend was in Colorado Women's College in Denver [Annotator's Note: Denver, Colorado]. It was too much of a trip to go back and forth so he asked her to marry him. She said she thought he would never ask. He asked her father for his permission. Her father started crying. They got married. He spent four years in the Air Force and then finally went to college on the G.I. Bill.

All the time Alfred Dearman was in the Air Force, he was training jet pilots. All the jet pilots had to learn how to shoot skeet. Dearman was assigned to a school in Texas. He was a Tech Sergeant [Annotator's Note: Technical Sergeant; now referred to as Sergeant First Class; E7] and had other men. He came home one night and told his wife he was saluting 18 and 19 year olds when he was 25 and all they had was a college education. She said to go to college then, so he went to night school. When he got out, he went to Texas Tech [Annotator's Note: Texas Technological College 1923 to 1969; now Texas Tech University in Lubbock Texas] and then graduate school at LSU [Annotator's Note: Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana]. It was a long way from Sugamo Prison [Annotator's Note: in Tokyo, Japan]. He knew that he had had a unique assignment. 50 years later, one of his men saw that there had never been anything written about Sugamo. Nuremberg [Annotator's Note: Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, military tribunals Nuremberg, Germany, 20 November 1945 to 1 October 1946] was much different. A lot more press had been allowed at Nuremberg. MacArthur [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] kept Sugamo pretty closed and under control. Dearman's buddy wrote a book about Sugamo Prison [Annotator's Note: "Sugamo Prison, Tokyo: An Account of the Trial and Sentencing of Japanese War Criminals in 1948, by a U.S. Participant," by John L. Ginn, 1992], and they started having reunions. People would ask them about it. They found out that some of the history teachers would ask some of them to come talk to their classes. Other than that, Dearman just melted back into civilian life. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Dearman why he thinks the Nuremberg trials held so much more interest for the American public than the Japanese war trials.] Dearman has been asked that a lot. The main reason was that they were earlier. More people also knew about Rommel [Annotator's Note: German Army Generalfeldmarschall, or Field Marshal, Johannes Erwin Eugen Rommel] and those people. They allowed a lot more press. There are pictures of the hangings at Nuremberg. MacArthur did not allow that. Nuremberg had people commit suicide. The main thing was that the Nuremberg trials were over, the war was over, and people were getting on with their lives. Something new and different was coming. The glamour was gone.

Since Alfred Dearman did not participate in World War 2, his most memorable experience was being at Sugamo Prison [Annotator's Note: in Tokyo, Japan] and then years later talking about it. He was an orphan and at the end of his junior year, his classmates were thinking about college. He did not think that was his future. He had an old uncle that had been in the Army and influenced him. Dearman thought about the Navy. They were closed, so he went to the Army. World War 2 influenced his life because of the experiences he had in Japan. He learned to speak Japanese. Later, when he worked for Chevron [Annotator's Note: Chevron Corporation], that experience got him some pretty good assignments and good jobs. There was a man who had Japan as his sales territory. He came to Dearman, said he heard he could speak some Japanese and asked him to work for him. He wanted Dearman to listen to Japanese businessmen in meetings but did not want them to know he understood them. Dearman then learned the international business that way. He had a long career with Chevron. His last job was as president of an international company that was in a joint venture with the Japanese. He would never have gotten that job without this man giving him the other. He does not want that to go out in this presentation. Dearman's service at Sugamo Prison gives him pride. It was unique and he is proud of that. He does not know if it is important to teach World War 2, but the history lesson of the war is good knowledge. Teaching it may keep there from being another. He is proud of having served, proud of having gotten a college education, and proud of having worked for Chevron. You have the atomic bomb [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on 6 August 1945 and Nagasaki, Japan on 9 August 1945] that came to play in it, and he has seen those places. He goes back there and when you go down there where the prison was, there is the tallest building in Japan there now. Where the gallows were, there is a garden with rocks that have "Seven Heroes" written on them. Dearman feels that if we had been defeated and Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] and others had been hanged, we might have done the same thing. He hopes that some people enjoy the things he has contributed.