Correspondents' Correspondence

...Like many of his contemporaries whom I interviewed recently, Nogami came here during the Depression "because there were very limited job prospects in the United States in those days, especially for someone who wasn't white...

...China, meanwhile, sent a softer message on the occasion than has been usual in recent years, but its intentions remain inscrutable here...

...Like most of us who were trapped by circumstances, I tried to make the best of it...

...Even so, the Brezhnev Politburo seems to have decided it has nothing to lose by pursuing a moderate line toward China in the immediate post-Mao era...

...The boat tamed around and returned to Yokohama...

...At the same time, the Kremlin flew in Mongolian Party leader Yamjaagiyn Tsedenbal to reaffirm Soviet-Mongolian friendship, and on October 19 a "frontier treaty" was signed...

...Instead, the Soviet press and radio began reminding the post-Mao leadership of the days when the USSR provided political support as well as many millions of rubles for China's primitive industry...

...Like the earlier condolences, this was spurned...

...In those days, you couldn't refuse service...

...On balance, therefore, it seems that Brezhnev and his colleagues will play a patient suitor role, until it is clear whether post-Mao China is ready to talk about the vast frontier that has been a constant source of tension since Soviet and Chinese troops fought each other seven years ago.-MARK HOPKINS Lost Generation TOKYO-The story of Tokyo Rose, recently in the news again, is only one among hundreds involving Japanese-Americans cut off from their country by World War II...

...After Chairman Mao Tse-tung died last September 9, Moscow abruptly abandoned its harsh polemics branding China and Mao the most reactionary forces in the world, bent on provoking a global war...

...Yet with three Soviet divisions garrisoned in Mongolia, and the clientstate already considered part of Moscow's defense zone against China, this was a clear message that the Kremlin was prepared, if necessary, for continued rivalry...

...His reaction, to judge from those I spoke to, was fairly typical: "I told them to go to hell, and walked out of the Embassy...

...Three days later, in an attempt to reestablish Party-to-Party contact, he sent a message of congratulations to new Chairman Hua Kuo-feng...

...We've gone our separate ways," Nogami explained...

...Some have made money in business, others eke out a living as interpreters or working at odd jobs, still others have turned to journalism within Japan's English-language press...

...I recall the days at the Sutro Baths in San Francisco," Kawashima reminisced, "when the man at the door said 'No Japs allowed.' " "I knew intolerance in America," said Nogami, "but I've found it in Japan as well...

...of trying to "aggravate" Sino-Soviet relations...

...I was 21...

...And they discovered they were not Americans anymore...

...The name of his company, Nissei, used to be written a different way: The Japanese characters meant "second generation" (Japanese-American...

...They were on a boat bound for home after a visit to Japan when Pearl Harbor oame...

...If you're in that spot, with a family to support, what do you do...

...It was a chance to study, to have an entirely new experience...

...In fact, Western diplomats here note, by taking this course the Kremlin places on record its contention that Peking is responsible for the continuing Soviet-Chinese conflict...

...I didn't feel part of the War...

...In addition, he said, his parents thought a brief visit would give him an opportunity to learn more about Japan...

...And as Pearl Harbor Day approaches in this Bicentennial year, the inequities most feel they have suffered are once more a subject of often animated discussion...

...At least it took care to avoid the practice of the past decade and not denounce its erstwhile ally during the celebrations early this month marking the 59th Anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution...

...No details of this tantalizing document were announced...

...Correspondents' correspondence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL INTEREST FROM LETTERS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS Moscow Looks East Moscow-The Kremlin seems as baffled as anyone about the ultimate implications of the leadership changes in China...

...The majority now know each other merely by name...

...The law was discriminatory," he recalled, "but I had good times in the States...

...I was told I would have to go to court to get my citizenship back," said Kawashima...

...we lived on my wages...

...Along with such gestures of reconciliation, though, the Soviets let it be known in their own inimitable fashion that they were unwilling to make any concessions unless the Chinese reciprocated...

...Thus China's rejection of the USSR's condolences upon Mao's death-on the grounds that no Party-to-Party relations exist between the two-was followed by a story floated in London and Paris newspapers by Soviet propagandist Victor Louis cautioning that Moscow might revert to a hard-line approach if Peking did not indicate a readiness to setde longstanding differences...

...Kawashima later married a Japanese, worked for an American firm in Tokyo and worried about the spreading war in China, but he was as surprised as anyone on December 8, 1941-Pearl Harbor Day in Japan...

...The shock didn't stop him and other Japanese-Americans from telling their friends what would happen...

...Despite Brezhnev's declared desire to engage Peking in a "constructive dialogue," however, the Kremlin's one step in this direction has been its hardly appealing announcement that China could rejoin the world Communist movement if it abandoned its anti-Soviet policies...

...A few days after Kissinger said the United States would consider an outside threat to China a grave matter, for example, Pnivda denounced the Secretary's "clumsy inventions" about a Soviet menace and accused the U.S...

...Nogami expressed similar feelings...

...But no sooner had Western diplomats and commentators started speculating about this than a Moscow radio broadcast to China rejeoted as "utterly groundless" suggestions that there would be a "dramatic" turn in Soviet policy...

...Make a brave speech, go to prison, and see your family starve...

...The propaganda exercise could win some points not only with other Communist parties, but possibly with the residual pro-Moscow contingent in China that the Soviets have always believed exists...

...After losing his job he was conscripted to work in a plant that made road scrapers...

...Shortly after Mao's funeral, the Peking press had intensified its attacks on the Soviet leadership...

...I got into a lot of arguments," Kawashima said, "by insisting that Japan could never defeat America...

...John Fujii, who was born in Japan but grew up in America because his clergyman father moved to California, finally left the U.S...

...Unperturbed, Brezhnev, in his first public assessment of the situation, told a session of the Party Central Committee on October 25 that China was passing through a "complicated political process," and its future course was unclear...

...Our Japanese bank told us that if we changed our name, doing business would be easier...

...But what was supposed to be an interlude in Japan has turned into a lifetime for businessman Nogami and others of the "lost generation...

...Business executive Bruce Kawashima, born in Berkeley, and a University of California graduate, also arrived here in the mid-'30s...

...Apparently it hopes relations with Peking can now be improved...

...When the War ended, most of these people were penniless...

...Yet virtually all have one thing in common: They continue to function between two cultures- people with greying hair who remember their Amerioan youth, but whose own offspring are thoroughly Japanese...

...In addition, since the honeymoon with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has ended, the Kremlin is seeking to counter the American strategy of setting China against the USSR...

...They did...

...As Tsedenbal ended his visit to Moscow, the Hsinhua news agency issued a full-scale assault against what it described as Soviet Party leader Leonid I. Brezhnev's clique, accusing it of the crassest superpower chauvinism and treachery...

...Even now, 40 years later, if I get a couple of beers in me, I'll defend America to my Japanese friends-but I'll go the other way, too...

...The club they once had, where they gathered for bull sessions about the old days in America or a little competitive Bingo, has disbanded...

...MICHAEL BERGER...

...A man who preferred anonymity told me: "I was in the Japanese Army against my will, and I was beaten regularly because my sergeant knew I was born in the States...

...We're a lost generation," said 62-year-old Kiyo Nogami, born in Alameda, California, a 1936 graduate of the University of California at Berkeley-and a resident of Japan for nearly four decades...

...They exhibit a variety of emotional scars, having been suspeoted by both sides during the bitter War, stripped of their American citizenship, and forced to adapt to life in what remains for many of them an alien culture...

...because he couldn't get citizenship...

...Looking back today on their youth, the images of the former Americans are ambivalent...

...Neither he nor the others knew until after the War that they had been under continuous surveillance by the secret police...

...They had almost no money...

...who would choose otherwise at 21...

...If you did, you were dead...

...Besides, I had my parents to think about...

...I had no sense of guilt then, and I don't now...