Everybody just naturally assumes that Japan came up with the idea for the Kamikaze pilots. But coincidentally, in the Hollywood film Flying Tigers (1942), the co-pilot “Woody” convinces John Wayne to bail out of their plane and then—mortally wounded with a gunshot to the stomach—Woody flies the plane into a Japanese ammunition train, blowing it up. Even though Woody is dying it is a clear case of Kamikaze tactics, that is, using a plane as a flying bomb. Again, totally by chance, imprisoned Japanese diplomats being held at Greenbrier Hotel in West Virginia were shown recent Hollywood films. In 1943, the second U.S.-Japanese civilian exchange ship took place. One or more Japanese diplomats might have easily told friends, including Air Force friends, back in Tokyo about this Kamikaze scene in the Hollywood film. The Japanese, upon hearing this news, might have just as easily assumed that the film depicted a real military event, not fiction, and so adopted Kamikaze tactics themselves in retaliation.

After Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese diplomats in Washington, D.C., and throughout the country were rounded up and sent to live at the Homestead Hotel in Hot Springs, Virginia. Some 785 Japanese diplomats and their families lived there from December 1941 through June 1942. Many of these diplomats were exchanged for detained U.S. citizens on the first exchange ship, Gripsholm, that left New York on 10 June 1942. Those that were not exchanged on the first ship were then moved to the nearby Greenbrier Hotel in West Virginia. It was a luxury resort hotel. The accommodations were considered top notch, and the foreign diplomats could enjoy shopping, swimming, playing tennis or playing board games.

Recent Hollywood movies were also shown to the guests. We know this because “Every day, bookkeepers and housekeepers, movie operators and telephone operators, painters and waiters, musicians and masseurs and others performed admirably under difficult conditions.” Even the regular Japanese- American relocation centers were well provided with films, and at Tule Lake there were three motion picture projectors for showing films in the mess halls, where: “Films are largely fairly recent Hollywood releases.”