In the Navy, he studied at its elite Japanese Language School located in the University of Colorado. As an officer in naval intelligence, he was then stationed at Iroquois Point near Pearl Harbor. There he interrogated Japanese prisoners of war, officers among them, making daily use of his Japanese. In 1997 he wrote that in Hawaii "I came to know the Japanese." After the war he kept in touch with prisoners "through reunions at a sushi restaurant." For the American occupation he had been transferred to Japan. "I was a small human bridge between Gen. Douglas MacArthur's conquering army and a puzzled but receptive Japanese public."