Roehner - Relations between US Forces and the population of Hawaii 2014.pdf

p10
In 1940 the total civilian population of 423,000 comprised 158,000 residents (i.e. 37%) of Japanese ancestry. They are commonly referred to as Nikkei2. Of these, 120,000 (i.e. 76%) were born in Hawaii and were therefore US citizens. They are commonly referred to as Nisei which means “second generation”. To avoid complications we will use this term fairly broadly even for third generation Japanese (sometimes called Sansei). The other 38,000 (i.e. 24%) persons of Japanese ancestry were not citizens; they are referred to as Issei (which means first generation). However, among the Nisei there was another important distinction, namely between so-called dual citizens and non-dual citizens. Dual citizens were persons of Japanese ancestry born in Hawaii (and therefore US citizens) but whose birth had also been registered at the Japanese consulate and who for that reason were also Japanese citizens. Often these dual citizens were sent by their parents to Japan to be educated there. This had the result of making them dual citizens not only from a legal perspective but also from a cultural perspective. For instance, when they came back to Hawaii as teenagers they were able to speak, read and write Japanese but were almost unable to speak English.

What was the number of the dual citizens? An answer is provided by a US Navy intelligence report (NAVY 1941) “Out of a total Japanese population of 320,000 in the United States and its possessions, it is estimated that more than 127,000 have dual citizenship.

1Source: http://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/wwii/orgadmin/org admin wwii chpt9.htm
2The proportion is almost the same for the city of Honolulu: there were 180,000 residents, 34% of whom were of

In the Territory of Hawaii alone, dual citizens constitute approximately 35% of the total Japanese population.”

In short, the 158,000 residents of Hawaii of Japanese ancestry fall in three groups (the numbers of male adults were computed by multiplying the total population by the proportion 0.57/2 (0.57 for the age group and 2 for gender) given by the Historical Statistics of the United States; of course this is only valid for those who were born in Hawaii).

• Japanese aliens: 38,000 (adults: unknown)
• Dual Japanese-US citizens: 55,000 (male adults: 15,675)
• Non-dual US citizens3: 65,000 (male adults: 18,500)

For the 162,000 residents of Japanese ancestry in the continental United States the figures (in 1940) were as follows:

• Japanese aliens: 38,000 (adults: unknown)
• Dual Japanese-US citizens: 62,000 (male adults: 17,670)
• Non-dual US citizens: 62,000 (male adults: 17,670)

According to an FBI memorandum of 1940 (FDRL1, reel 1), there were 234 Japanese language schools in Hawaii with a total enrollment of 42,855 students and employing 731 Japanese language school teachers. These schools were supervised by representatives of the Japanese Government.

There were also Japanese youth associations such as the “Dai Nippon Butoku-kai” and the “Dai Jingu Youth Society” which are believed to sponsor Japanese nationalistic ideals.

As will be seen in the chronology chapter, the Japanese language teachers and the leaders of the youth associations were among the first group of Japanese people to be arrested after the Pearl Harbor attack.

3Either not registered at birth or who dropped Japanese citizenship.

p12
Persons of Japanese ancestry who were arrested, tried, detained, interned It is often stated that in contrast to what happened on theWest Coast, on Hawaii only a small proportion of Nikkei were interned6. This statement must be modified if instead of internment one considers the fact of being arrested and tried by a military tribunal.

It is estimated (see below) that there have been between 55,000 and 120,000 trials by provost courts7. If there is the same ethnic composition for the trials than for the population (a fairly conservative estimate) implies that between 55000 × 0.37 = 20, 350 and 120000 × 0.37 = 44, 400 Nikkei were tried by provost courts8.

4The transition from military to civilian government was carried out progressively in several steps.
5Because Navy men were on board of ships which could be at Pearl Harbor or at sea, it is not easy to give strength figures for sailors in Hawaii. For the whole Central Pacific area, Allen gives a Navy strength of 350,000 in October 1944.
6As an example of such statements one can cite John Stephan (1984, p. 174): “Only a tiny proportion of Hawaii Nisei experienced internment, (about 480 out of 120,000”. [which corresponds to a percentage of 0.4%]
7For the year 1942 alone there were 37,162 trials (see below) so the figure of 55,000 may be rather an underestimate.
8We assume here that Nikkei defendants in provost court trials were in the same proportion as in the general population, namely 37%. This assumption is likely to to under-estimate the number of Nikkei who were tried. If instead we assume that 60% of the defendants in provost courts were Nikkei, then we get 55000 × 0.60 = 33, 000 Nikkei who were tried.

To this number one should add the persons who were arrested and detained for some time without being tried. It will be seen below that these detainees numbered at least 1,234. Indeed, on the electronic catalog of the American National Archives (NARA) there are 1,234 files each of which corresponds to a civilian internee in Hawaii. From the names of these persons it can be seen that about 96% of them are of Japanese ancestry. One may wonder whether or not this list includes all civilian internees from Hawaii. To get an answer we can perform tests with names of internees known from other documents:

• After the incident in the island of Niihau (in the days following 7 December 1941) two persons were interned: Ms. Umeno (Irene) Harada and Mr. Ishimatsu Shintani. Another well known internee was Otto Kuehn (see below) who was tried and sentenced on the charge of being a German spy. All three names are indeed in the list of 1,234 names.

• In the source “NARA 13” the investigation board gives the names of two detainees from Hawaii: Yoshio Oshida (ISN-HJ-1133-CI) and Usabu Morahara (ISNHJ- 1148-CI). None of them is in the list. It would be of interest to understand why. So we know that this list of names does not include all the internees. How many are missing remains an open question. Based on the Internment Serial Numbers (see below) one would conclude that there were ) at least 1,800 internments. But we do not really know if these interments also include persons who were imprisoned after a trial.

Thus, adding the 1,234 to the 20,350 we get a total of 21, 584 Nikkei tried or arrested. Naturally, almost all the persons who were arrested were adults and even more precisely male adults. What was the number of male adults (i.e. over 18) of Japanese ancestry in Hawaii? For the total population of Hawaii the proportion of residents over 18 years was 57% in 1940 (Historical Statistics of the United States 1975, p. 26). This gives a number of 158000× 0.57 = 90, 000 adult Nikkei, and a number of 90000/2 = 45, 000 male adults. In other words, 21584/45000 = 47% of the male adult Nikkei population of Hawaii was arrested, tried and/or detained, almost one half of the male adult population.

If one broadens the category considered by including the people who were interrogated by the military one arrives to the conclusion that nearly all the male population was concerned.

There were several reasons for such interrogations:

1 Investigating the loyalty of persons of Japanese descent. For instance a program was started on 25 November 1944 (see the chronology at this date) to clarify the loyalty status of all Japanese not previously investigated.
2 Before being able to work in military installations any worker had to pass a loyalty and security investigation. This was true on the mainland as in Hawaii.
3 Nikkei residents had to fill in a “Personal History Declaration” (see an example at the date of 5 December 1944).
4 Moreover Japanese Americans were investigated before being drafted.

p18
What happened in Hawaii? We are told that there were neither strikes nor disturbances. If that statement had been made only in US Army reports, one could be suspicious and attribute it to the censorship policy. However, one finds the same statement in books written by union leaders (see for instance Beechert 1985) who were present in Hawaii during the war. This suggests two possible scenarios.

• One scenario is that there were indeed almost no strikes or labor disturbances. If this assertion is correct, it may be explained by the fact that the workers who were of Japanese descent were already under the threat of interrogations or detention15 and therefore they did not wish to attract attention by picketing or distributing leaflets. It is very likely that the few whomay have tried were immediately arrested as suggested by the case of Ichiro Izuka 16.

15As was seen above, about one half of the adult male Nikkei were either arrested, tried or detained.
16Izuka was the president of the Kauai longshoremen. He was arrested in April 1942 and charged with distributing leaflets advocating a strike. Although he was not officially indicted he was kept in detention for 126 days (Beechert 1985).

p19 re sabotage
In chapter 8 of “Guarding the United States and its Outposts” written by Stetson Conn (and co-authors) for the Center of Military History, one finds the following statement: “During and after the Pearl Harbor raid and for the remainder of the war period, no sabotage, espionage, or any other sort of subversive activity is known to have occurred in Hawaii”. A similar statement is made in the “Counter Intelligence Corps History”: “Unquestionably, the Counter Intelligence Corps activities in the Territory of Hawaii contributed significantly to the fact that there was no known espionage, nor a single case of enemy-inspired sabotage, there during the war”. This is obviously not correct as shown by the well-known case of Otto K¨uhn who was sentenced to death by a military commission for espionage (more details can be found in the chronology chapter at the date of 15 June 1943).

*****
Jun 15, 1943: A German named Bernard Julius Otto K¨uhn was arrested on December 8, 1941. On 21 February 1942 he was sentenced to be shot by a Military Commission for giving data on the US fleet to the Japanese. On 26 October 1942 the sentence was commuted to 50 years at hard labor. K¨uhn’s properties, including his Kailua home, were seized by the military and eventually sold. The other members of the K¨uhn family, his wife, son and daughter were also arrested on December 8 and interned. (NYT 15 June 1943, website of the FBI, Starbulletin.com 26 September 2004)

[It can be noted that the name and role of Otto K¨uhn (the NYT spelling is Kuehn) was revealed in the NYT only on 15 June 1943 that is to say 14 months after his trial by a Military Commission.]

Takeo Yoshikawa Very different is the story reported on the website History- Net.com (http://www.historynet.com) of an alleged Japanese spy, Takeo Yoshikawa.
A naval reserve ensign, Yoshikawa came to Hawaii on 27 March 1941. To familiarize himself with the military installations which were mainly concentrated on Oahu, he relied on a hired cab driver named John Mikami, a Japanese-Hawaiian who often performed chores for the consulate. Other times, he used a 1937 Ford chauffeured by Richard Kotoshirodo, a Nisei consular clerk. At mid-afternoon on December 6, Yoshikawa climbed into Mikami’s taxi for what turned out to be his final reconnaissance of Pearl Harbor. Back at the Japanese consulate, he saw that the encoded message be transmitted to Tokyo through the standard RCA commercial communication system. After receiving it, the Japanese foreign ministry forwarded it to the navy general staff and the attack force.

Yet, and in spite of the gravity of these accusations, Yoshikawa after being arrested was transported to San Diego and in March 1942 he was placed in an Arizona camp holding numerous interned Nisei. Eventually, he was exchanged for American diplomats being held in Japan. Back in his homeland, he married and continued working for naval intelligence until the end of the war. Fearful of arrest when US troops occupied Japan in 1945, he fled into the countryside and posed as a Buddhist monk. He was not arrested and told his story in 1960.

[The comparison between these stories which are both based on American intelligence sources raises several questions. (i) Otto K¨uhn was on the suspect list of American counterintelligence as attested by his arrest a few hours after the attack of Pearl Harbor; why then was he not arrested earlier? (ii) Why, in spite of the gravity of the accusations, was Yoshikawa not tried and sentenced like K¨uhn? Is it because as a member of the consulate he was protected by diplomatic immunity? But then, if spying could be done almost without risk by members of the consulate one must wonder why K¨uhn should have taken such great risks for the same purpose. (iii) What was the fate of Mikami and Kotoshirodo, Yoshikawa’s drivers? Once arrested, Kotoshirodo proved exceedingly cooperative with investigators. Within a short time of his arrest, he told investigators everything he knew not just about his own trips around Hawaii but more generally about “the espionage activities carried on by the consulate”. Perhaps did such a positive attitude justify leniency, anyway the fact is that Kotoshirodo was not prosecuted. Mikami was allowed to repatriate to Japan in August 1943 as part of a swap of nationals.]

*****
Among the Nikkei people who, in one way or another, served as Japanese agents or helped Japanese forces one can mention the following cases.

• Yoshio Harada, his wife Irene and their friend Ishimatsu Shintani helped a Japanese pilot after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Yoshio Harada died on 12 December 1941; both Irene Harada and Ishimatsu Shintani were taken into custody but were never tried. See the description of the so-called Niihau incident in the chronology and in Chapter 7.

*****
Dec 7, 1941: •(1,1)
The Niihau incident Accounts of what happened on the island of Niihau after a Japanese plane made a crash landing are fairly confusing. The following account was published in Soga (2008, p. 47, footnote 9).

“Yoshio Harada, a Nisei caretaker on the Robinson ranch decided to guard the Japanese pilot until a boat would arrive from Kauai. While the pilot was asleep a map and some documents were stolen by a Niihau resident. Later, while searching for the material with Harada’s assistance, the pilot tried to set fire on houses. An altercation developed in which the pilot was killed and Harada shot himself. Subsequently, Harada’s wife was jailed on Kauai and then interned for the rest of the war”. With respect to more detailed accounts (e.g. Beekman (1982), Hallstead 2000), this account is misleading in several respects.

• The island was the property of Aylmer Robinson who, after the death of his superintendent in September 1941 had appointed Harada in his place. This made Harada a much more important man on the island than being just a caretaker.

• The account does not say that the struggle in which the pilot was killed occurred on December 12, that is to say 5 days after the landing. • The account does not say that during these 5 days three Nikkei sided with the pilot, namely Yoshio Harada, his wife (both Nisei) and Ishimatsu Shintani.

[Most of the information on this incident comes from a Navy Report46. To what extent is this report really trustworthy is difficult to decide in the absence of any other source. In December 1942 the Reader’s Digest carried an article on the Niihau incident which was entitled “Never shoot an Hawaiian more than twice” and written by Blake Clark. Clearly, the account of this incident was seen as a good war propaganda opportunity which is why it would be necessary to have it confirmed by another source. In this respect see below at the dates of 12 and 17 December 1941.]

46Reference for this report as found on the Internet is as follows: Military intelligence report filed by US Navy Lt. C.B. Baldwin, Branch Intelligence Office, Port Allen, Kauai (26 January 1942). We were not able to find this file on the electronic catalog of the American National archives (NARA). There must have been a short report prior to this one because from a NYT article of 17 December (see below) it can be seen that the main lines of the story were already formatted on that date.

Dec 12, 1941: Niihau incident (continued from 8 Dec)
We give below (see 17 Dec) the US Navy version of the story as published by the NYT on 17 Dec. A different version came to light on 23 Dec 2008 when several Japanese newspapers (e.g. Yomiuri, Mainichi) published the text of an interview of Mrs. Harada conducted by the Japanese Consulate in Hawaii in September 1955. It was the first time that this text was released and made public by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. One learns that around 5 pm on 12 December the pilot and Mr. Harada escaped from Mr. Harada’s house where they were confined. There was a fierce gunfight with some villagers who were armed with hunting guns. On the following day, that is to say 13 December, their bodies were found nearby48. A more detailed discussion of this interview is given in Chapter 7.

Dec 17, 1941: It was revealed last night on the island of Kauai that a stalwart sixfoot Hawaiian, Ben Kanahele, had killed a Japanese pilot who landed on the island of Niihau, 25 kilometer west of Kauai, on the day of the raid on Pearl Harbor. After being struck by 3 bullets from the Japanese flier’s pistol, he seized him and dashed his brains out against a stone wall, a method of execution once used by Hawaiians against their enemies. (NYT p. 7)

[Ben Kanahele’s injuries are somewhat of a puzzle. In the book by Beekman (1982, p. 83) we are told that “Ben was wounded “in the left chest, left hip and penis”, with all shots being fired at close range (during a brawl from a distance of less than 3 meters) and with an army pistol. Yet, he was nevertheless able to throw the pilot, a strong man as shown by his photograph in Beekman (1982, frontispiece), against a wall and on the following day, though wounded, he was “able to walk”(Beekman 1982, p. 87) .

One may also wonder why the pilot did not fire more than 3 times. All the pistols used in the Japanese army, namely Nambu of type 1, 14, 94 or revolver of type 26 had (at least) 6 rounds. The pilot’s pistol was probably a Nambu type 94 which was the one most commonly used by pilots and aircrews because of its light weight.]

Sep 1944: Irene 55 Harada, the wife of Yoshio Harada who played a prominent role in the Niihau incident, was liberated in August or September 1944. After being arrested upon their arrival on the island of Kauai, she had first been kept in custody atWaimea jail, then at the Kauai county jail, then she was transported to Sand Island and eventually to the Honouliuli camp near Waipahu on the island of Oahu. According to Allan Beekman (1982) who has had several conversations with her in 1971, 1972 and 1982, the authorities suspected her of being an agent of Japan and “went to great lengths to force her to talk”. In spite of being an American citizen by birth she was detained and treated as a criminal without being ever tried. At one point she refused to eat and the keepers had recourse to a minister to console her and awaken her desire to survive. (Beekman 1982, p. 116-119.)

55Her Japanese first name was Umeno; there is a file concerning her under this name at NARA (Record Group 389, ARC identifier 900406) see Chapter 7.

*****
• Tokue Takahashi was allegedly a spy; see the chronology at the beginning of 1943.

*****
1943: Dr. Tokue Takahashi was a cancer specialist well-known in the medical community of Hawaii. A Japanese alien, he entertained Imperial Naval officers during their visits to Hawaii 51 in his home which commanded a view of Honolulu harbor..After the Pearl Harbor attack he was promptly arrested. He returned to Japan in an exchange ship in 1943. For the benefit of the Japanese radio he gave very patriotic accounts of the attack of Pearl Harbor. He had two brothers who served in the Japanese Army. (Burlingame 2002 p. 121, 443)

*****
• Giichiro Uyeno allegedly guided a Japanese submarine; see the chronology at the date of 25 July 1942.

*****
Jul 25, 1942: •(25,9) A Japanese alien, Giichiro Uyeno, was fatally shot by a sentry near Waimanalo on Oahu shortly after midnight. Because he was carrying a flash-light it was assumed that he had been (or had the intention of) signaling to a submarine. (Burlingame 2002 p. 369; NYT 28 July 1942 p. 6) [If this interpretation is correct it would be yet another case of spying at Hawaii.]

*****
• Yokichi Uyehara served as agent; see the chronology at the date of 25 February 1942.

*****
Feb 25, 1942 Dr. Yokichi Uyehara, a graduate of Tokyo UniversityMedical School, came to Hawaii in 1917. In 1930 he purchased a waterfront home looking directly onto Pearl Harbor and Ford Island. His home became a meeting place for visiting Imperial Navy officers. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, with his adopted daughter Nancy, Uyehara fled to the basement of his Waipahu hospital where he was arrested by FBI agents on 25 February 1942.

Letters were found at his home in which Japanese officers reminded him of his duties to his “mother country”. According to intelligence reports his name also appeared on a map found in a Japanese midget submarine which was wrecked ashore the day after Pearl Harbor. (Burlingame 2002, p. 122-123) [The book does not say what Uyehara became after his arrest.]

*****
• In the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack, reports were published in the New York Times according to which Japanese residents of Hawaii had provided help to Japanese pilots for instance by cutting arrows in sugar cane fields pointing toward military objectives or by preventing American pilots from reaching their planes (see the chronology at the date of 31 December 1941).

*****
Dec 31, 1941: Japanese spies showed the way for the raid on vital areas in Hawaii.

• Big arrows pointing to military objectives were reported to have been cut in sugar cane fields a few hours before the Japanese struck. • Bombs fell in hangars crowded with planes whereas empty hangars were ignored. • Japanese amateur radio operators were caught apparently communicating with aircraft carriers or planes. • Japanese truck drivers drove side to side of the road from Honolulu to Hickam Airfield to delay American pilots who were frantically trying to reach their planes. • The Japanese pilots knew that the airmen at Wheeler Airfield had to live at the station. So when they had bombed the hangars they attacked the dwellings with machine guns. (NYT p. 3)
*****
Perhaps it may be tempting to discard such information as war propaganda but then it is not obvious why later claims which denied such incidents should be taken more seriously.

In the same line of thought, in February 1942 the “Dies Committee on Un-American Activities” published a report on Japanese activities in the United States according to which there was a spy ring of about 150,000 members. (see the chronology at the date of 5 February 1942).

*****
Feb 5, 1942: The Dies Committee on Un-American Activities soon will make public a “Yellow Paper” on Japanese activities in the United States, disclosing a widespread spy ring of about 150,000 members. (NYT p. 7)

*****
Instances of sabotage include the following.

• September 1942 on Kauai (see the chronology); the culprit was sentenced to 5 years at hard labor.

*****
Sep 1942: •(6) A case of sabotage occurred on Kauai Island when a man from the town of Lihue was convicted of tossing a cable over a transformer which shut off power for half an hour and interrupted inter-island radiotelephone communication. The man was sentenced to 5 years at hard labor by a provost court. (Klass 1970, p. 26)

*****
• Suspected sabotage in early December 1944 on Oahu (see the chronology at the date of 9 December 1944).

*****
Dec 9, 1944: Military Intelligence issued memoranda reports on 3 sabotage cases which had been under investigation for a while. (NARA 2)
[The source does not provide these reports]

*****
• Many cases of sabotage were investigated by the CIC (Counter Intelligence Corps) in Hawaii.

In a report published in 1982 by a commission of the Congress one finds a statement which is similar to albeit not identical with those already mentioned: “Not a single act of espionage, sabotage, or fifth column activity had been committed by Americans of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast or in Hawaii” (Report 1982 p. 3; cited in Knaefler 1991, p. 25). This statement is geographically broader because it covers the West Coast as well as Hawaii but on the other hand it is more restrictive in the sense that it concerns only American citizens of Japanese ancestry17.

Before accepting such statements, an historian would of course wish to know on what evidence they rely. In this respect the main source would be the records of the thousands of trials by military tribunals that took place in Hawaii. The Table gives a comparative view.

17Many acts of sabotage on the west coast have been reported in newspapers. Hundreds of people of Japanese ancestry have been indicted and sentenced (see the chronology). It is rarely stated whether they were Japanese aliens or US citizens of Japanese ancestry. On the mainland 62% of the Japanese were US citizens. If one assumes a random distribution the likelihood that all acts of espionage and sabotage were carried out by Japanese aliens is very small; for n acts it is p(n) = (1 − 0.69)n, for n = 10 this probability is smaller than 0.001%.

.....
All accounts of the war years in Hawaii that I have seen so far explicitly say that there have been no disturbances whatsoever. No strikes, no brawls, no riots, no assaults, no acts of arson, sabotage or vandalism. Yet, it is difficult to take such statements seriously before exploring the records of military tribunals. Due to strict military censorship, disturbances such as strikes, brawls, riots, assaults, acts of arson or vandalism. were not mentioned in newspapers (see below at the date of 10 March 1943), but that does not mean that there were none. The matter can be decided only by using sources which were not (or at least less) subject to censorship. It is the purpose of these notes to fill this gap as far as permitted by the documentation. Over the period of a little bit more than one month in late 1944 for which we have been able to read the “Daily Report of Investigations” of the Office of Internal Security in Hawaii (NARA 2 in the reference section), 4 cases of sabotage were investigated19. If one assumes a similar rate for the months for which we were not able to read the daily reports, that would led to 4 × 43 = 172 investigations of (suspected) sabotage cases over the period from 7 December 1941 to August 194520.

19In one of them about 260 blocks of TNT were discovered in the hold of a US Army Transportation ship about to leave Honolulu Harbor. 20In line with the strategy adopted by the FBI, there was a strong tendency to conclude that alleged sabotage actions were either accidents or were carried out by pranks without any connection with the enemy. For a discussion of this strategy see Chapter 6 entitled “Sabotage and espionage”.

p76
She was also a member of a Buddhist sect called “Nichiren”. A notable part of the hearing concerns the activities of this sect.

Q: The Nichiren is a warlike sect, is it not? The following answer was provided by a Buddhist minister who served as a witness:
A: The main doctrine of this sect is to protect the country.

p105
Dec 30, 1944: At this date the Counter Intelligence Division in Hawaii had under investigation:

• 18 cases of espionage
• 1 case of sabotage
• 63 cases of subversion
• 1 case of sedition
• 928 loyalty investigations
• 135 disaffection investigations
(NARA 2, Daily report of investigation 30 Dec 1944)

[One would need to know more precisely what kind of offenses are understood under these terms and a more detailed description of these cases; unfortunately, the source gives little details especially for the most serious cases. No matter the precise definitions, the first three items in this enumeration show that the assertion (mentioned in chapter 1) according to which there was not a single case of espionage, sabotage or subversive activity is not correct.]

p107
Apr 1, 1945: •(38,131) Death of two Japanese from Hawaii, Shoichi Asami (51 year old) and his youngest son Harold (11) who were aboard a Japanese ship, the Awa Maru, sunk by an American submarine. The story of the Asami family, which is told in Knaefler (1991, chapter 2), is of interest because it illustrates the exchange of prisoners between the United States and Japan. It is summarized below.

• Shoichi Asami was arrested by two FBI men in his house in Honolulu around midnight on 7 December 1941. He was the managing editor of the Japanese section of the bilingual newspaper “Hawaii Times”. • Months later the family of Mr. Asami (i.e. his wife and his five children) received a letter from him sent from a prisoner camp on the mainland. He wanted the family to prepare to leave because they were all to go to Japan with him on an exchange ship.
• In the fall of 1943 the whole Asami family left the United States aboard the liner Gripsholm. The voyage took them first to South America (Rio de Janeiro), then to Africa (Lourenc¸oMarques in the Portuguese colony ofMozambique), Goa (India) and Singapore.
• Instead of continuing the voyage to Tokyo, the Asami family decided to stay in Singapore.
• In March of 1945 Ms. Asami and two of her daughters came back to Japan on board a hospital ship. Mr. Asami and his youngest son left aboard the Awa maru, a Japanese ship which had been used for the exchange of prisoners since June 1942. Marked with a special green-red-green pattern, the exchange vessels were to proceed unescorted and had to follow specified routes to their destination.
• In spite of the fact that the Awa maru was supposed to be given safe passage by Allied forces, it was hit by four torpedoes from the Queenfish, an American submarine, in the night of 1 April 1945 in the Formosa Strait. The safe-passage message which had been sent to all American submarines apparently had been discarded by the Commander of the Queenfish. The ship quickly sank with his 2,000 passengers.

[It would be interesting to know how many Japanese from Hawaii returned to Japan in exchange vessels. For instance, it is known that 2,264 Japanese (permanent residents as well as citizens) from 13 Latin American countries were deported to Japan through of the exchange program.] (http://www.campaignforjusticejla.org/resources/pdf/hostageFAQ.pdf)

p109
Sep 1, 1945: By September 1945, the Counter Intelligence Corps in Hawaii had investigated 6,000 Army volunteers. In order to assess their degree of loyalty the CIC used the following criteria:

+1 if:
• using an Anglicized first name
• being a registered voter
• had married an American citizen
• had attended an American high school or college

-1 if:
• using a Japanese first name
• married a citizen from Japan
• had attended a Japanese language school
• was a fisherman
(Okihiro 1991)
[Another loyalty test was to ask whether the person would accept that his (her) name be used in pro-American propaganda either in Hawaii or in Japan (NARA 2).]

p114
Mar 3, 1946: A Honolulu grand jury charged Jisho Yamashita, Japanese national, with disloyalty to the United States on the ground that as late as last October 1945 he was telling Japanese Americans that victory over Japan was nothing but American propaganda. (North China Daily News p. 3)

[Two remarks are in order:
• There is something bizarre in the fact that a Japanese national can be charged with disloyalty to the United States.
• Testimonies of Japanese people in Hawaii show that “shortly after Japan’s surrender, bizarre rumors started to circulate among the Issei that Japan had won the war and that the victorious Japanese fleet would be arriving at Pear Harbor to take over the Islands”. (Knaefler 1991, p. 22) [See also below Sep 11, 1946]

*****
Sep 11, 1946: An article published in the “Far Eastern Survey” comes back on the rumors of Japanese victory that spread among Issei. The article is based on a report issued in the series “What people in Hawaii are saying and doing” published by the “War Research Laboratory”, which is how the Sociology Laboratory of the University of Hawaii was relabeled during the war. The article emphasizes the following points (Hormann 1946): 
• The rumors took several forms (i) President Truman had been flown to Tokyo to apologize personally to the Emperor for the atomic bomb. (ii) Admiral Halsey had been taken prisoner by the Japanese (iii) The arrival of the Japanese fleet at Pearl Harbor was imminent.
• Several religious and cultural movements were involved in the propagation of these rumors. One of the most popular organizations is Seicho-no-Ie (Home of infinite life and power), a movement which had reached Hawaii before the war but had not attracted a large following. The monthly meetings of Seicho-no-Ie were attended by several hundred people. The meetings have continued since V-J Day and there is little sign of abatement of interest. They often involve music and dance.
• Similar reactions have been observed elsewhere in similar circumstances. Whenever a group is threatened with annihilation it takes refuge in desperate attempts to maintain the group solidarity and existence. The phenomenon has been observed among aboriginal peoples whose culture and social organization have been disorganized by western civilization. The “Ghost Dance” religions among Plains Indians flared up in the period from 1870 to 1890 . Indians of several tribes were expecting a messiah who would save them. Such movements are usually referred to as revivalistic movements.

p115
May 2, 1946: Honolulu. Four Japanese have been arrested for displaying the Rising Sun flag in honor of Emperor Hirohito’s birthday. (North China Daily News p. 6). [This episode occurred after martial law had officially been lifted.]

p118
Oct 6, 1948: Tomoya Kawakita, a 28-year-old dual citizen who renounced his US citizenship and during the war served as an interpreter in a Japanese prison camp, was sentenced to death by a tribunal in Los Angeles. (NYT p. 15).

Kawakita appealed the decision to the United States Supreme Court, which heard it in April 1952. On June 2, 1952, the Supreme Court ruled to support the lower court’s judgment and confirmed Kawakita’s death sentence. However, President Dwight D. Eisenhower viewed the punishment as excessive and on October 29, 1953 commuted Kawakita’s sentence to life imprisonment. Ten years later, during the closing of Alcatraz prison where Kawakita was serving his time, President John F. Kennedy pardoned him on October 24, 1963 on the condition that he be deported to Japan and banned from American soil for life. (Wikipedia article entitled “Kawakita v. United States”.) [As several hundred Nisei served in Japan during the war, it would be interesting to
know how many of them were tried and sentenced after 1945.]

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In 1942 in Washington State 6 Japanese were arrested for having blown up sections of the railroad track in Jefferson County (see the chronology at the date of 19 September 1942). Again, it seems unlikely that 6 persons will act together for purely personal motives.

*****
S, Sep 19, 1942: The same weekly report summarizes all cases of sabotage which occurred in the 9th Service Command since 7 December 1941. Among them is the case of 6 Japanese being arrested in Washington State for blowing up a section of the railroad track in Jefferson County. They were turned over to the FBI. (NARA 6) [The date of the sabotage is not given; it was probably before people of Japanese ancestry were sent to detention camps.]

72It is reported that Edgar Hoover was not favorable to the mass internment of Japanese Americans. The reason is probably that this was considered too broad a move to be efficient.

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Censorship in the balloon-bomb episode

This episode comes as a confirmation of our previous assessment. 
• During 6 months information about the incidents was completely suppressed.
• The threat was disclosed by the War Department and the FBI only after it had all but disappeared. Then, the official line became that the attempts made by the enemy had been completely ineffective and did not lead to any damage; according to a statement made by the War Department “these attacks were so scattered and aimless that they constituted no military threat” The only recognized victims were 6 civilians: the pregnant wife of a minister and 5 teenagers. It would have been difficult to imagine more appropriate victims for the purpose of demonstrating the dark side of Japanese warfare methods.

First we will recall the facts as presented by the War Department; then we will try to assess the truth of the official version.

Between 3 November 1944 and April 1945 some 9,000 balloon-bombswere launched by the Japanese from the eastern coast of Japan in the direction of the western coast of the United States73. The balloons were filled with hydrogen and were 10 meter in diameter; they carried a 15 kilogram anti-personnel fragmentation bomb and two incendiary bombs. In addition they carried a small flash bomb which would provoke the explosion of the balloon with its remaining hydrogen once it reached the floor.

According to G-2 reports, some 300 balloons were reported to have reached the United States. They landed mainly in states of Washington, Oregon, Montana and Idaho but about 30 fell in California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah and New Mexico74. What were the real objectives of the Japanese is not obvious. It has been said that they wanted to provoke forest fires but between November and March almost all forest areas were covered with snow or were too damp to catch fire easily. The Office of Censorship imposed a blackout about the very existence of the balloons until 23 May 1945 when information released by the War Department revealed their existence. The ban was lifted for two reasons:

1 The threat had almost disappeared because in April 1945 US bombers had been able to destroy the main hydrogen production factory near Tokyo. After that only few balloons were reported to have reached the United States.
2 An accident which occurred on 5 May 1945 convinced the authorities that unexploded balloons represented a danger against which people living in the countryside had to be warned. Indeed, on 5May (the article by Rogers cited above says “5 March”, probably a misprint). a minister’s wife and 5 Sunday School students were killed by one of the grounded balloons near Bly, Oregon. Apparently the balloon had been on the ground for some time because there was still snow on the ground under the device whereas there was no longer any snow elsewhere in the forest. The incident was reported in US medias on 23 May after the ban had been lifted. It seems that self-censorship of American newspapers even made them refrain from reporting forest fires, especially in the West. Between 1936 and 1943 the average number of articles published in the New York Times containing the expression “forest fire” was equal to N1936−1943 = 48 ± 7 (where 7 is the confidence interval for a 95% confidence probability level)75. In 1944-1945 this number fell to N1944−1946 = 20 ± 3 (the numbers were: 22, 17, 21). Then, in 1947-1950 it resumed its pre-1944 average: N1947−1950 = 55±14 (the numbers were 21, 67, 53, 66, 35).

There are some reasons which suggest that the official version that the balloon-bomb attacks made no damage whatsoever may not be true.

• In March 1945, at Cold Creek, Washington, a balloon knocked out electrical transmission lines leading fromthe Columbia River’s Bonneville Damto the Hanford Works which stopped the cooling pumps for a nuclear reactor which was producing plutoniumfor theManhattan Project. This resulted in a three days’ production loss76. It is also possible that the reactor suffered some damage because cooling pumps should never be stopped (even if the reactor is shut down) unless the fuel rods get damaged.
• According to military sources, a comprehensive plan was set up to counter balloon attacks. It included the following steps: (a) Create a special air defense zone to protect military and war industry assets near Seattle (“Sunset Project”). In addition a contingent of hundreds of civilian spotters, called the Ground Observer Corps, was trained to scan the skies for strange objects (remember that balloons could not be detected by radar). (b) Attempt aerial intercepts of balloons: “Operation Firefly”. (c) Establish a “smoke jumper” capability to respond to forest fires caused by balloons. The 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion was assigned to this mission. Would it have made sense to design such a plan if the balloons had been completely ineffective?

73To produce 9,000 balloons required a substantial industrial effort at a time when almost everythingwas in short supply in Japan. At first sight it would seem surprising that the Japanese High Command devoted so much resources to attacks which were completely ineffective.
74http://web.mst.edu/∼ rogersda/forensic geology/Japenese%20vengenance%20bombs%20new.htm
J. David Rogers: How geologists unraveled the mystery of Japanese vengeance balloon bombs in World War II.
Fig. 6.3 Diagram of a balloon sent toward the West Coast. According to American sources some 9,000 balloons were launched between November 1944 and April 1945. Fragments of some 300 balloons were recovered in the United States. Source: Mikesh (R.C.) 1973: Japan’s World War II balloon bomb attacks on North America. Smithsonian Annals of Flight No 9, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC.
75The numbers as as follows: 65, 32, 50, 45, 44, 61, 47, 43. Of course, not all these articles reported actual forest fires, some simply referred to this expression in another context.

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S, Feb 11, 1942: 20 Japanese aliens in Monterey were seized with arms. Three Buddhist priests were arrested, namely Rev. Koyo Tamanaka, 43, Rev Bunyu Fujimura,
38 and Rev. Hoshin Fujikado, 38. Moreover, James Charles Grub, 26, was found in possession of blueprints of 5 defense plants. In addition, John George Majus, 36, an American born citizen who was a carpenter on the freighter Calmar was arrested after he was reported cutting the steering rod of the freighter with a hacksaw. After first denying the charges, Majus confessed. (NYT p. 12)

S, Feb 17, 1942: In raids conducted in the Sacramento area, FBI agents uncovered two areal bombs casings, weapons, secret documents and US Army uniforms in the possession of Japanese aliens. The Federal agents said that the bombs were not loaded. The officials also seized signal-lights and enough equipment to make a complete short-wave radio transmitter. The casings and uniforms were found in the possession of Hamada Takahashi described as a Japanese naval officer. Kiju Sato, secretary of the Sacramento Japanese Association was seized with two rifles and a revolver. Ten other Japanese were arrested. (NYT p. 1,17)

p160
S, Jul 19, 1942: Between June 1941 and June 1942, there were 218 convictions for acts of sabotage which included train wrecking, depredations against defense plants and damage to ships. 56 persons were convicted of espionage or failure to register as foreign agents. In the seven months between 7 December 1941 and June 1942, some 9,400 aliens of enemy nationalities were apprehended by the FBI. These included 4,700 Japanese, 3,000 Germans and 1,500 Italians. (NYT p. 18)

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S, Jul 11, 1944: The trial of Mrs Velvalee-Dickinson, 50 year old, who is accused of having served as a Japanese spy was set for July 31 in Federal Court. If convicted, she will face execution or a long prison term. (NYT p. 8) [On 15 August 1944 she was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, see below.]

*****
S, Aug 15, 1944: Mrs. Dickinson [see above at the date of 11 July 1944] was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. She blamed her husband (who died on 29 March 1943) who had agreed to act as an agent for the Japanese. She said he had received $ 25,000 for his services from the Japanese. (NYT p. 19) [It is not clear to what kind of intelligence Mr. Dickinson had access.]