"We meet again," Sasaki said. Louie gaped at him in astonishment. He knew nothing of Sasaki's alleged spying, and was stunned to see his friend in the service of his enemy. Sasaki looked at him warmly . . ."
During the war, Sasaki conducted many secondary interrogations with high value POWs at Ofuna (mostly navy pilots). During these interrogations Sasaki came off as honorable, polite & highly intelligent. Just as during the time he was spying for the Japanese before the war, during these interrogations he continued to convincingly purport that he had degrees from "Harvard, Princeton and Yale" (this is not mentioned in the book). It's sad that many of these pilots went to their deaths thinking they had been interrogated by a Japanese intellectual with compassion.
Although I have no doubt the interrogation methods employed against POW's not only in the WW2 but also all other wars before and since are partly based on psychological games of false friendship. Many of these same methods are also used in modern day hostage negogiator training, police interrogation training...and also sales person training.
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Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.
John Lubbock
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