Nisei in His Imperial Majesty's Service

Japanese Americans Who Served the Fatherland During World War II

Alphabetical Index of Names

Saburo and Shiro Akune

Kaji Domoto

Fujimoto

Meiji Fujisawa

Yasukuni "Frank" Fukami

Harry Fukuhara, brothers of (Frank, Pierce, Victor)

U.S. Officer Feared Worst For Family Living in Japan / Brothers split by war and circumstance

In the summer of 1945, U.S. Army Lieutenant Harry Fukuhara was assigned to the Philippine island of Luzon as a linguist with the 33rd Infantry Division. The end of the war was near, and Allied forces were preparing to invade Japan. Fukuhara's unit would head the invasion.

And for the first time since he joined the Army, Fukuhara thought of what that could mean for his family in Japan.

Before the war, his mother and his three brothers had returned to Hiroshima from the United States, where Fukuhara was born. He had not heard from them in four years, since the war broke out. When the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, on August 6, Fukuhara assumed the worst. There were no survivors, he was told. In Hiroshima, nothing would live for the next 100 years. Still, he knew he had to go see for himself.

He was not expecting what he found.

"I thought I should go to Japan and at least see if I could find them," recalls Fukuhara, now 75, a retired Army colonel who lives in San Jose. "But I figured there was no chance that they would have survived."

He arrived in Japan a month later, having been reassigned to the American occupation forces in Kobe. With the Army's permission, he and a driver set out for Hiroshima in a jeep one morning before dawn.

They drove all day and night, using train trestles to cross rivers where bridges had been destroyed. The next morning they reached Takasu-machi, the Hiroshima suburb where Fukuhara's family lived. The houses appeared to be intact, but on the streets there were no people. Through the neighborhood, the usual early- morning murmur of waking families, children's squeals, chickens in the back yard -- the sounds of life -- were not to be heard.

The Fukuhara home was among those standing. A row of shrubs had been charred, their silhouettes superimposed on the back wall of the house, which faced the center of the city. Inside the two-story house, daggers of glass jutted from the walls -- the windows and doors were gone. Fukuhara stood in the hallway and called out "moshi moshi" ("hello, hello"). But there was no reply.

As he surveyed the damage, his mother appeared.

"I was pretty surprised," remembers Fukuhara, a quiet man who seems to yield to his emotions only reluctantly. "We just stood there looking at each other."

His mother and her sister had survived the bomb by hiding in an underground shelter. At the time of the blast, his mother was rinsing her feet outside the house. Her oldest son, Victor, 32, had been less fortunate. When the bomb hit, he was on his way to work at a factory in Hiroshima. The radiation had left him scarcely able to talk or eat. The day after the bomb, relatives had found him wandering through town, dazed and with his shirt burned to rags, and had brought him home.

At first, Fukuhara's mother did not recognize her American son. His complexion had turned sallow from medication he was taking for malaria. She had not seen him since 1938 and was confused by the U.S. Army uniform.

After her husband's death in 1933, Kinu Fukuhara had left Washington state -- the family's home for more than 20 years -- and returned to her hometown of Hiroshima with four of her children. But Harry had come back to the United States soon after graduating from high school and had gone to California, following a sister. In the intervening years, the family wrote letters. But then, after Pearl Harbor, the letters stopped.

Now, from his mother and aunt, he learned that his other two brothers had also survived. They had not been in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing but on the southern island of Kyushu, preparing for what was expected to be imminent invasion by American troops.

Fukuhara learned several months later that while he was studying aerial attack-plan photographs of the island, his youngest brother, Frank, was digging foxholes for the Japanese army in the Kyushu mountains in expectation of the U.S. landing.

"That was pretty ironic," said Frank Fukuhara, from his home in Komaki, Japan. "We could have met up face to face, fighting against each other."

Now 71, he laughs as he recalls his army training -- learning to crawl on his stomach with a dummy bomb strapped to his back, to slip beneath the American tanks.

During most of the war, he says, he had avoided military service by enrolling in an engineering college. Eventually he was drafted, in April 1945, and was assigned to the Western Second Battalion Infantry and sent to Kyushu, like the fourth brother, Pierce.

By the time Harry returned to Japan, Frank and Pierce had gone back to Hiroshima to work as interpreters for U.S. forces just outside the city.

"When Harry showed up, I was really shocked," said Frank Fukuhara. "I thought that he was a prisoner of war, and that he had been sent back to Japan."

After several hours, he understood that his brother was in fact a U.S. Army officer and that the tall, blond soldier who accompanied them on the jeep ride home was not holding Harry prisoner.

The last Frank had heard, Harry was working as a houseboy in Glendale, Calif. He had heard nothing of the Japanese American evacuation and the internment camps. He had no idea that Harry and their sister, Mary, and her 2- year-old daughter were relocated to a camp at Gila River, Ariz., and that Harry had volunteered to join the Army -- or that circumstance had placed them on opposite sides of the war.

For Frank, who had always hoped to return to the United States, the choice between "American" and "Japanese" had been made for him when he was drafted into the Japanese Imperial Army. But for Harry, that decision was a conscious one.

"I felt I had to make up my mind to stay as an American," he says of his decision to volunteer. "I had no feeling of loyalty to Japan."

Today, Harry Fukuhara still spends considerable time thinking about the war, as president of the Northern California Military Intelligence Service (MIS) -- a 400-member association of Japanese Americans who served in the war in the Pacific.

He says he still believes that dropping the A-bomb shortened the war and ultimately saved lives, despite the price his family paid. His brother Victor died of radiation sickness in 1947. His mother died of similar causes in 1968.

Frank Fukuhara is unable to say whether he believes that use of the bomb was justified, especially when he thinks of their 13-year-old cousin Kimiko. On Aug. 6, 1945, she had just finished her wartime work duties at school and was on the roof of the building when the bomb struck. Blinded by the flash and badly burned, she crawled half a mile to a temporary hospital. Minutes after her mother found her, she died.

"I thought the atomic bomb was really miserable," Frank Fukuhara says, his voice faltering for a moment. "But it ended the war. It could have lasted much longer."

But the memory of Hiroshima is painful for both brothers.

Despite Harry Fukuhara's apparent pragmatism about the bomb, it was not until 1989 that he returned again to Hiroshima.

"I guess I wanted to avoid going there," he says. "I didn't even want to think about it. There was nothing positive about the time I was there in 1945."

Toshiko Funatsu

George Hamada

Yoshio Harada

b. Another Nisei, Harada, committed treason against the United States within the constitutional definition (Art. III, § 3) of "adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." A Japanese warplane, damaged during the Pearl Harbor attack, landed on the small Hawaiian island of Niihau. Local Hawaiians took away the pilot's pistol and his papers, but Harada supplied him with other arms belonging to Harada's employer, after which, for six days, the pilot and Harada terrorized the entire island. Then a Hawaiian who had been shot by the pilot managed to kill him, after which Harada committed suicide. S. Conn, Guarding the United States and Its Outposts, p. 194 [hereafter "Conn, Guarding"]; W. Lord, Day of Infamy, pp. 195-200; J.J. Stephan, Hawaii Under the Rising Sun, p. 168.

The Commission relegates this incident to a footnote (Rep. 430-431, n.14), does not recognize that Harada's acts constituted treason, and therefore fails to recognize that, flatly contrary to its own blanket assertion, Harada, like Kawakita and Tokyo Rose, was indeed an "individual American citizen... actively disloyal to his country."

Toyokazu Hikita

Hirano

Chikaki Honda ("Eddie")

Shigeo Imamura

Kanao Inouye ("Kamloops Kid")

Jack Ishio

Nobuaki Warren Iwatake

Childress vet 'was a great man'

By CAPT. NEIL F. MURPHY
Marine Corps Public Affairs Office

CAMP S.D. BUTLER, Okinawa, Japan - On Feb. 23, 1945, on the tiny coral island of Chichi Shima, jutting out of the Bonin Islands east of Okinawa and north of Iwo Jima, anti-aircraft fire ripped through the sky.

A Marine Corps F-4U Corsair fighter, on an air-raid mission from the USS Bennington, lumbered over the island and slammed into the ocean after being shredded by the wall of lead.

Slowly descending in his parachute to the ocean, the pilot, 23-year-old Childress native 2nd Lt Warren Earl Vaughn, watched helplessly as his co-pilot sank silently into the ocean.

Hitting the water and swimming through shark-infested coral to the surf, Vaughn was snatched from the shore by defending Japanese soldiers and sailors and dragged into their camp.

Vaughn had not been the first to be shot down near this island. Five months before, future President George Bush, a naval aviator aboard the USS San Jacinto, also was shot down in his Avenger aircraft off this dreaded coastline. But Bush was rescued by the submarine USS Finback, narrowly avoiding the fate that awaited Vaughn.

Now a prisoner of war on desolate Chichi Shima, Vaughn was forced to work in a sweltering communications hut high atop Mount Yoake, routinely monitoring his own forces' radio communications along with a young Japanese army private.

Private Nobuaki Iwatake, now 76, also was stranded on the island after the freighter ship he and other Japanese soldiers were traveling on months before, the Nissho Maru, was torpedoed miles off the coast.

Iwatake, an unwilling Japanese conscript with dual U.S.-Japanese citizenship, was forced to join the Imperial Japanese Army because of his English skills.

Having attended Maui High School in Hawaii, he was a student at Mejii University in Tokyo when the war broke out. Two years after being drafted, Iwatake found himself on Chichi Shima monitoring U.S. radio transmissions and working with a fellow U.S. citizen who was labeled his enemy.

Meanwhile, the battle for Iwo Jima raged on just south of the island. As Americans and Japanese bled and died at each others' hands on the hot, black sands, Vaughn and Iwatake began to share a friendship that has remained in Iwatake's mind and heart to this day.

"Warren was a great man," Iwatake said. "Even as a prisoner, he had a sense of humor and often told us jokes and had a good, healthy spirit.

"I remember him being brought into our camp with his green flight suit on months after I had seen (George) Bush shot down and rescued by the U.S. Navy. Warren wasn't as lucky. Warren was tall and handsome and had a real Texas accent.

"I always wonder if he had been rescued, what would have become of him and what great things he would have done for his country, like Bush.

"One night, Warren was talking with some kamikaze pilots who had come into our hut, and they asked what he would do if they got on his tail. Warren stood up, towering over them and using his hands to depict flying aircraft, he explained how he would roll up and loop to get behind them and shoot them down. Impressed by his skill, they shook his hand and wished him luck as they departed."

Another time, while the two were in their hut working, their area was hit by bombs dropped by U.S. P-51 Mustangs that were attacking the island.

"They had no idea Warren was there, and he was very upset that they dropped bombs on him. He ran out and yelled at them as they flew past, shaking his hands and cursing," Iwatake said.

Late one evening, Iwatake even smuggled Vaughn into a Japanese-style bathhouse on the island, so he could clean himself up. On the way to the facility, the nearsighted Iwatake fell into a bomb crater, which offered Vaughn a chance to escape. Instead, Vaughn reached down into the six-foot pit and helped his friend out to safety.

"That's the way he was," Iwatake said.

While monitoring the nightly radio transmissions from Iwo Jima, Vaughn and Iwatake continued to trade stories of their lives and what they would do once the war ended. The two even had begun to plan an escape from the island, but as fate would have it, time ran out.

One morning in early March, Vaughn intercepted a message that stated, "All organized Japanese resistance has ended. The U.S. Marines have taken Iwo Jima."

He hesitantly passed the transmission to Iwatake, who translated it and forwarded it to his chain of command.

The morning after learning of the fall of Iwo Jima and the impending Japanese defeat, an irate Japanese Imperial Navy officer-in-charge of the communications unit on Mount Yoake, Capt. Yoshii, came into the hut. He removed Vaughn from his work area and collected seven other prisoners of war who also were shot down over the island.

Iwatake said Vaughn looked at him and replied, ' "They're taking me away. Goodbye and take care, my friend.' "

Vaughn was led down the mountain.

"I will never forget that sad look on his face as he left," Iwatake said.

That afternoon, in a horrific display of inhumanity, Yoshii and some of his men bayoneted and beheaded the prisoners by the seashore.

Months later, according to "The History of Marine Corps Aviation," Yoshii and many others were tried and hanged in Saipan for war crimes against Vaughn and the others.

"I found out the day after it happened. I was shocked, shaken and deeply saddened. They had killed my friend, Warren, and for what, I couldn't understand why," Iwatake said. "I hated Yoshii for that."

More than half a century later, the friendship that ended in such dismay still lives today in the mind of that unwilling Japanese conscript. Iwatake is still searching for final closure to the events leading up to Vaughn's death.

Recently, Iwatake expressed his desire to meet any of Vaughn's remaining family members to help heal the wounds and share the memories of his last days alive.

"Some of the men who witnessed the execution said he was very brave, and that was just like him. I want people to remember Warren," Iwatake said. "After the war, I changed my given name (to Warren) in remembrance of my friend. He lives in my memory forever.

"I vowed that if I ever survived that war, Warren Iwatake would do something to contribute to U.S.-Japan relations in some way."

Iwatake recently retired after 25 years of working in the press section of the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo. While there, he often searched for Vaughn's family, and every time it produced nothing.

"Time is running out, and I want to see his family so bad," Iwatake said.

Vaughn is currently listed as a POW, killed in action, as of March 5, 1945, and his body never was recovered from the island.

His last known listed relative was his mother, Evia McDonald, from Childress.

Born in Childress on Sept. 20, 1922, Vaughn enlisted in the Marine Corps on Sept. 1, 1943, in Corpus Christi, said R.V. Aquilina, Headquarters Marine Corps History and Museums Division, who located some of Vaughn's information in Marine files.

"It's been a long time, but I remember Warren told me he was going back home to get married and teach. He had graduated from Southwest Texas Teachers College (now Southwest Texas University) and was looking forward to getting home," Iwatake said. "I can still see his face when I close my eyes, and it seems like yesterday. I'll never forget Warren for as long as I live."

WARREN IWATAKE’S WAR.

Fumitane Jibutsu

Masaji Kameoka

Hiroto Kanai

Toshiyuki Kano

Tomoya Kawakita

Shigemi Kido

Then I found Sergeant Kido's file. Apparently it hadn't been transferred back to Japan yet. My eyes widened and I broke out in a cold sweat at what I read.

Name: Kido, Shigemi
Place of Birth: Island of Maui, Hawaii
Education: Graduated McKinley High School, Honolulu,
Hawaii; some courses in Japanese universities.
Home Address: Yamaguchi Prefecture, Kumage-gun, Hirao
Village.

Kido was born in Hawaii! Educated in Hawaii! That made him a Nisei, just like mel And he lived in Japan in the same village where my father was born, the village where I had lived before being conscripted! (p. 119)

Richard Kotoshirodo

Jimmy Matsuda

Matsumotos

Kan Matsumura

Fumiye Miho

Yoshie "Johnny" Mikami

Kay Kiyoshi Miura

Torao Morishige

Murada (or Murata - same as Hisao Murata?)

Mary Muroya

Jiro Nakahara

Kunio Nakatani

Michael S. Nakayama

Genichiro Niimori

Nishi

Mitsugi Nishikawa

Kay Nishimura

From interview with Mr. George Fujii for the Japanese American Project of the Oral History:

page 103

17. At the time of the Poston Strike, according to Alexander Leighton, in The Governing of Men, 164, Isamu Uchida, like George Fujii, was twenty-seven. Leighton, ibid, drew comparative portraits of the two suspects:

He [George Fujii] was a Buddhist, single, aged 27, and a Kibei, but he spoke English well and was popular with numerous Niseis, Isseis and members of the Administration as well as other Kibeis. He had completed high school in Japan and had then gone to the University of Southern California for two years to study foreign trade. His family were wealthy and operated a large restaurant in a town in California.

In appearance, he was small, well-built, and exceedingly neat in dress. His manner was quiet, unobtrusive and friendly and almost all who knew him agreed that he was a very likable person. He took his responsibilities to the community seriously and seemed cooperative and well disposed toward the Administration.

One of his sisters [Fumi] had been married to and then divorced from the victim of the beating [Kay Nishimura] and there was considerable hostile feeling between the two men.

The other man [Isamu Uchida] was also a Kibei, single and aged 27, but he spoke very little English and was unknown to the Administration. The son of a farmer in California, he had received in Japan a fourth-grade rating in judo which is considered extremely high. Prior to evacuation he had been a judo instructor and after arriving in Poston he had continued in that activity at the Judo Club under the auspices of the Department of Adult Education.

He was not widely known to the Poston residents but moved among close friends, neighbors, the Goh Club, and his associates in judo. Because of his high judo rating, he enjoyed a good deal of prestige and was the leader of a group of younger men who were principally his students. Although he had a brother in the American Army, his own attitude was one of dislike toward the United States.

As far as the attack [on Nishimura] was concerned, there was no evidence that he had had anything to do with it, but there were considerable circumstantial data indicating that he had participated in one of the previous beatings.

18. Camouflage net factories were established at two other WRA camps, Manzanar and Gila River, aside from Poston. These "war work" industries were contracted by the Army to a private firm, Southern California Glass Company, and only citizen interness were permitted to work in them. In all three cases, these factories were productive, profitable for the company and its employees, and provoked strife among the interned population that led to their being shut down. Apart from contemporary studies by WRA community analysts and field workers for the University of California-sponsored Evacuation and Resettlement Study, this ironic facet of the Japanese American Evacuation experience has not been systematically studied.

19. For corroboration of this charge, see Richard S. Nishimoto, "Gambling at Poston," Folder J 6.09, CRRC, JERS, BL-UCB. This essay will appear in an edited anthology that Lane Ryo Hirabayashi is preparing on Nishimoto's ethnographic role at the Poston center for the Bureau of Sociological Research and the Evacuation and Resettlement Study. For a preliminary analysis of that role, see Lane Ryo Hirabayashi and James Hirabayashi, "The `Credible' Witness: The Central Role of Richard S. Nishimoto in JERS," in Yuji Ichioka, ed., Views from Within: The Japanese Evacuation and Resettlement Study (Los Angeles: Asian American Studies Center, University of California, Los Angeles, 1989), 65-95.

20. In the words of Kiyoshi Shigekawa, the evacuee police chief at Poston I and a resident of Orange County-dominated Block 21, "We came in on May 15th [1942].... We were the early arrivals, the same as some of the volunteers. That's why we got so many of the $19.00 [per month, professional scale] jobs. At one time we [Block 21 residents] had the largest number of policemen in camp. I was asked to organize the police department; naturally I chose many from my block." See "Block 21," Folder 21, Box 7, Coll. 3830, DMUA-CLC.

21. For a discussion of the role of the military police at the WRA centers, see Reagan Jack Bell, "Interned Without: The Military Police at the Tule Lake Relocation/Segregation Center, 1942-46" (Master's thesis, California State University, Fullerton, 1989).

22. According to the entry on "newspapers" in Niiya, Japanese American History, 252, "the mass removal and detention of all West Coast Japanese Americans put a halt on the major Japanese American papers—for a few, the halt would be permanent. Several papers that published inland kept going through the war—the Pacific Citizen, ...[the] Rocky Shimpo, the Utah Nippo, and the Colorado Times. " The Pacific Citizen, the official organ of the Japanese American Citizens League, and the Utah Nippo were published in Salt Lake City, Utah, while the Rocky Shimpo, which was also published under the prior name of the Rocky Nippon, and the Colorado Times, were issued out of Denver, Colorado.

23. Question 27 on the Army form that every male citizen of military service age was required to complete stated: "Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty, wherever ordered?" For a detailed discussion of the loyalty registration crisis of February 1943 at the WRA centers, see the entry on "loyalty questions" in Niiya, Japanese American History, 217-19.

24. On April 13, 1944, Dorothy Swaine Thomas, the director of the Evacuation and Resettlement Study, wrote a letter to one of that project's researchers at Poston, Richard Nishimoto, in which she said:

In your Journal, April 6 [1944]...I note that only around half of the fund that was collected for George Fujii was necessary for getting him out on bail, and so on, and I am curious to know what happens to the balance of the fund under these circumstances. I am interested in the great number of voluntary contributions that are received from time to time for one cause or another. In view of the low wage scale, these contributions seem to me to be very great.

In reply to Thomas's inquiry, Nishimoto wrote the following answer on April 18, 1944:

Re: Fujii donation. The "Friends of Fujii" expected a collection of about $2,500 from the three Units [Poston I, II, and III] originally. They were quite skeptical even for this amount, because of grumblings of the community toward the proposed drive when the news had gotten around prematurely. The figure of $2,500 was agreed on in its first meeting thus:

One thousand dollars for attorney's fee for trial in the Circuit Court.

Five hundred dollars for obtaining documents for appeal to a higher court. (They expected Fujii to lose his case in the Phoenix Court.)

One thousand dollars for attorney's fee in the District Court of Appeal.

There was a question, then, of taking the case to the Supreme Court. But the expense for such a move, it was decided, would be raised at a later date when an appeal to the Supreme Court becomes necessary. Later the committee agreed to bail Fujii out, because the result of the drive was much more than anticipated.

True, with other donations, residents could not very well to refuse to chip in when Yushi [leaders] of a block went around and appealed to them face-to-face. Especially in Fujii's case the residents were afraid to refuse to donate for a fear that they might be regarded by others as "anti-social" or "anti-Japanese." They are afraid of consequences from their refusals.... I suspect only a small number of people donated conscientiously agreeing with the purpose of the Fujii drive.

For this exchange between Thomas and Nishimoto, see Folder J?, CRRC, JERS, BL-UCB.

25. Documentation for this incident, including numerous press clippings, is sprinkled throughout the pages of the journal that Richard Nishimoto kept for the Evacuation and Resettlement Study. See, in particular, Folder J 6.15B, ibid.

26. Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945. Leighton's precise language on this point, 227, is as follows:

For a time following the strike, the Judo Instructor was a hero and he spoke of doing something for the community by taking a gang out to work on some of the projects, such as irrigation construction, where it had been hard to secure men. He did this for a while and contributed much help, but in time trouble occurred between his followers (nearly all of the aggressive Kibei type) and others. They participated in several other kinds of work and then joined the fire department, but wherever they went there seemed to be friction with the other residents and with government employees. The Judo Instructor seemed to sink lower and lower in the esteem of the community, and many of those who had most ardently followed the symbol he had represented came to feel "very disappointed." Had he died, or been taken away by force during the strike, he probably would still be a shining light of martyrdom, but since neither of these happened, people began to see him in his true proportions. He eventually went to the Tule Lake [Segregation] Center.

What Leighton, 226, 227, notes in his pioneering study of Poston about what happened to George Fujii and Kay Nishimura following the November 1942 strike is also worth quoting at length.

[George Fujii] The member of the Judicial Commission, whose plight as a prisoner had been one of the factors that set the strike going, was a friend and confidant of the new [Temporary Community] Council [of Poston I] Chairman and became Secretary to the second Council and to the ultimately established Permanent Council. He was particularly interested in the construction of the schools and did much to promote community interest in them. Later on he became Chairman of the Police Commission and then one of the three trustees for the Trust Fund.

He was one of those Kibeis who, instead of displaying reactions of maladjustment and aggression, seemed to use his marginal position between American and Japanese culture quietly and consistently to bring the poles in Poston closer together, to promote better understanding among Isseis, Niseis and Administration and to work for just and fair-minded solutions to the community's major problems. There were several such in the Council and the Central Executive Board and in other places, and their influence in the post-strike period was very important.

[Kay Nishimura] The victim of the beating, the forgotten man in all the turmoil, left camp as soon as he had recovered from his wounds and no more was heard of him.

28. The Lockheed Incident, in which high-ranking Japanese government officials and corporate officers were accused of perjury and bribery charges in connection with peddling influence on behalf of Lockheed, is covered briefly, 270-71, by David Boulton in The Grease Machine (New York: Harper & Row, 1978). Boulton's book was originally published in Great Britain under the title of The Lockheed Papers.

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Eiichi Noda

?? Nonin, son of Kuwaichi Nonin

Haruo Okada

Kiyokura Okimura

Onishi

Harley Ozaki (Toyonishiki)

George Y. Ozasa

Richard Sakakida

Sydney Sako

Iwao Peter Sano

James Sasaki

Samuel Shinohara

Worst collaborator was Shinohara, Ben Cook and "Ozone." (Who was Ozone?)
All agreed the worst collaborators were T. Shinohara, Mrs K. Sawada, J.K. Shimizu and D.K. Takano.
Thomas Cruz Oka- charges of collaboration dismissed
Samuel Takekuma Shinohara file-
1966 entry- ship owned by his company (Tenyo Maru) entered Apra Harbor unannounced- spied on Polaris Missile sub- probably for the Russians.
He was tried, sentenced to death by hanging- lowered to 15 years- transferred to Japan for internment but paroled in 1951. He was allowed to re-enter Guam 26 June 1961. He was employed as a sales agent for Nissho Sangyo Kabushiki Kaisho, Tokyo. He worked for the company that owned the ship.

    The local Chamorro people got along well with members of the Marine Corps. Every once in a while, though, there was a snag in these relationships. Any Asiatic Marine, officer or enlisted man who wanted to marry a local girl, had to have the permission of his commanding officer. Permission wasn't generally given. Another good example of how relationships can sour comes from a letter dated Nov. 15, 1936:

    I think I had the worst scare in my life last night in the capital city. Another Marine and myself were in a place called "Shinohara's" eating chow, so as the meal progressed we noticed natives going into the men’s washroom and not coming out. After we had finished we went outside and were shooting the breeze when out of nowhere drops two patrolmen and goes upstairs and barges in on the men’s washroom and puts everyone under arrest. The natives were shooting craps which is a very serious offence and draws about $50 fine and 6 months in the civil jail. My friend and I separated after they had taken the natives to jail to answer questions. I was just looking the town over and in the meantime the eight natives were released to come back Monday and appear at the island court. After they left the jail they started looking for our friend "Chad" and found me walking in a very dark alley and, as sure as I write this, they were going to cut my throat. Their only thought was that my friend and I being the only ones eating in Shenohara's had left and tipped the patrolmen off as to the dice game. I talked for fully an hour before I convinced them I was innocent.

    For those readers who want a third example of a troubled Guam relationship, fast forward ten years until just after the end of World War Two. Restaurant owner Takekuna (Samuel) Shinohara was found guilty at his collaborator trial of "treasonous behavior," and sentenced to eight years in Tokyo's Sugamo Prison.

Jerry Suzuki

Clifton Takamura

James Takeuchi

Hanama Harold Tasaki

Kei Tateishi

Iva Ikuko Toguri

Names of officials and employees associated with Radio Tokyo, or sought out after the war by the FBI for possible interviews:

Mary Tomita

Masao Tomita

Taihei Tsuda

Harry Ueno (and wife, Atami)

Fred Uyeminami

Kazumaro "Buddy" Uno

Frank Wada

Clyde Wakatake

Shigeo Yamada

Bob Yamanaka

George Yamane and sister, Nobuyo

Yamashita

Kunimitsu Yamauchi

Toru, Goro, and Donald Yempuku (Empuku)

Karl Yoneda

Mary and Alice Yonekura

Jim Yoshida

At the time I was born in Seattle, the Japanese government laid claim to my allegiance simply because I was the child of Japanese citizens. The law stated that a child is a Japanese if his or her father is a Japanese at the time of his or her birth. This, I learned later, is called the law of jus sanguinis and is practiced by many countries. In 1924, three years after I was born, Japan changed its citizenship laws, largely at the request of Japanese residents of the United States who foresaw complications. The new law stated that a child born of Japanese parents in the United States, Canada and many South American countries no longer would be considered a Japanese subject unless the parents indicated within fourteen days their intention of claiming Japanese citizenship for the child. This meant a child was no longer automatically Japanese. It required a positive act to claim Japanese citizenship. The law also provided that those born prior to 1924, and who consequently possessed dual citizenship, could cancel their Japanese citizenship by filing formal papers. My parents had neglected to do this. Apparently it was just a lot of red tape they didn't understand. And so even though I had known nothing about it, I was legally both Japanese and American. (pp. 59~60)

A few days after the examination I received a red card in the mail. It stated that I had passed my examination and that I was to report to the 42nd Division in Yamaguchi City on the first Sunday of February, 1943. The notice was not unexpected. In fact, even though I dreaded the thought of serving in the Japanese Army-what would I do if I were sent to the South Pacific to fight the Americans?-it was almost a relief to be called and get the suspense over with. (p. 60)

I recalled a New Year's celebration in Seattle when I was only fourteen years old. Dad made it a custom of drinking a toast to the Emperor, shouting three loud banzai's for his long life and good health. There was nothing political about it. It was just Dad's way of paying his respects to an institution that he had been taught to revere and respect. All of us children were expected to take part in the rite, performed in front of a portrait of Emperor Hirohito, but for some reason I had refused on that morning. Perhaps it was teen-age rebellion. Perhaps I was simply expressing my independence. At any rate, I stubbornly shouted that the Emperor meant nothing to me and refused to join in the toast. (p. 61)

"You are still stubborn. I worry about you very much. You must remember that this is Japan, not America, and you are powerless. You must do what you are told to do. In a few weeks you will be in the Army. in the service of the Emperor whether you like it or not. The important thing is that you come back sound of mind and body. It is all very well to stand on principle, as you did back in Seattle on that New Year's Day so long ago, but principle will not mean a thing if you are imprisoned, or perhaps executed, for insubordination. Remember, the military knows no law. To die in battle is one thing. but it is another matter to bring shame to the Yoshida name. I know you will have a very difficult time in the Army. but you can endure anything if you make up your mind to do so. You have an excellent constitution, toughened and disciplined by football and judo. Your body will serve you well if you will only toughen your mind and spirit in the same manner. And don't worry about your mother and sisters. They will be all right. You will be in our thoughts always. Son, take good care of yourself."

This is the gist of what she said and I think I quote her accurately. There was still a communications barrier between us through the fact that her English was halting and my Japanese only rudimentary. We could talk easily about the ordinary, everyday, housekeeping type matters. But when it came to discussing philosophical and moral concepts like honor and responsibility, I could only guess at the meaning of her words. Mom was not accustomed to revealing her feelings, so I knew she spoke from the heart, and I sensed rather than understood the precise import of what she said that day.

I had many occasions to think about her admonitions. What did she mean by the importance of not bringing shame to the Yoshida name? How did she expect me to behave? As an American? As a Japanese? Honor meant as much in the United States as it did in Japan, I knew.

These thoughts always ended up with the question as to what I would do if by some great misfortune I should meet, face to face, friends like Pete and Mud and Joe on the field of battle. They were almost like brothers. They would be in American uniforms, serving their country. I would be in Japanese uniform through circumstances beyond my control. Would they shoot me? Would I shoot them? Would I shoot other Americans who were simply nameless boys like those I had played football againstand with? I had no answers except this: If I met Pete and Mud and Joe, I could not hurt them. I would let them kill me before I pointed a weapon in their direction and pulled the trigger. Of this I had no doubt whatever. (pp. 62~63)

Judge Wiig rendered his "decision" nearly two months later, on December 4, 1953. He reviewed the case in a fivepage document which was delivered, most undramatically, through the mail. Miho summoned me to his office and we went through the decision together. The news I had been waiting for was contained in two totally unemotional sentences:

"The defendant offered no evidence proving expatriation, and has failed to rebut the presumption that plaintiff's service in the Japanese Army was involuntary... It is the opinion of the Court that plaintiff's conscription into the Japanese Army under the circumstances of this case was not his free and voluntary act within the meaning of Section 401 (c) of the Nationality Act of 1940 and that his service in the Japanese Army did not cause him to lose his status as a national of the United States."...

On April 16, 1954, Judge Wiig took the most unusual step of assembling all parties to Civil Suit No. 1257 in his court· room to hear his "judgment." With Mr. Miho at my side, I stood to hear Judge Wiig intone the unforgettable words:

"Now, therefore, it is ordered, adjudged and decreed as follows: That the plaintiff Katsumi Yoshida was born at Seattle, Washington, on July 28, 1921, of parents born in Japan. At all times since his birth, plaintiff has been and he now is a national and a citizen of the United States of America with all the rights, privileges and immunities of such a citizen. The plaintiff, Katsumi Yoshida, did not lose his United States citizenship by virtue of or because of his service in the Japanese Army from February, 1943, to July, 1946." (p. 253)

Assorted Notes

P/W 1458

1. CHRONOLOGY AND EXPERIENCE OF P/W.
2. NISEI FROM AMERICA IN JAPAN.
3. NISEI AS RADIO MONITORS.
4. CONTACT WITH OUTSIDE WORLD THRU SHORT-WAVE RADIO.
5. ATTITUDE OF NISEI TOWARD THE WAR SITUATION.
6. NISEI IN JAPAN AS A NUCLEUS FOR A JAPANESE UNDERGROUND.
7. MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS OF INFORMATION.
   Opinion of U.S. Broadcasts. Evaluation of Japanese Medical Services. Temporary Workers. Uniforms Worn by Radio Monitors. Pay of Radio Monitors. Pay of Regular Army Men in Overseas Service.

Just posted this about a Nisei who worked for the IJN as a radio monitor and interpreter on I-8. Sad sad story he relates. I wonder what became of him, and other Nisei like him.
http://www.mansell.com/eo9066/Nakahara.html

I imagine SCAP hired him after the war... with immunity. Like a bunch of other guys.

This site bring up the story:
http://www.armed-guard.com/ag87.html

And his name is on a memorial thing here:
http://www.nikkeiconcerns.org/pdfs/Tayori%20Fall%202004.pdf.

50,000 Nisei in Japan

Another Japanese organizational activity which is worth noting is the Kibei Shimin movement. The Kibei Shimin movement was sponsored by Japanese Association of America and had as its policy the encouragement of the return to America from Japan of American-born Japanese. At the time the movement commenced it was ascertained that there were around 50,000 American-born Japanese in Japan. The Japanese Association of America sent representatives to Japan to confer with prefectural officials on the problems of financing and transportation, and a policy of publicity to induce these Japanese to return to America. The Japanese Association of America also arranged with the steamship companies for special rates for groups of 10 or more returning to America and requested all Japanese associations to secure employment for returning American-born Japanese. In addition, they printed leaflets and sponsored lectures throughout Japan to urge American-born Japanese to return to this country. That this campaign was successful in securing the return of a large number of American-born Japanese is apparent.

POSITION OF KIBEI SHIMIN

Likewise, through the years there have been what are known as Kibei Shimin, meaning those who are the sons or daughters of a United States citizen, one who was born in the United States of Japanese forebears who have returned to Japan. There are instances where, if the parent was a United States citizen, even if they were born in Japan, they would be entitled, under our immigration laws, to be considered as a citizen of the United States, provided before reaching the age of 18 they have come here, probably at the age of 14, to be educated and continue forth and declare themselves a United States citizen.

In this group there are many thousands. The exact number we are not in a position to say. But we do know, according to the Japan foreign office announcement, that there were about 50,000 of these Kibei Shimin. Many thousands of them returned to the State of California and to Hawaii and there they became a part of and partially responsible for the conditions that existed at the time that the 1924 Exclusion Act was passed. Those particular individuals, being foreign in ideas and background and purposes and so forth, have created a very bad situation so far as the native-born American-Japanese citizen is concerned, who was born here and educated here, because by their actions and conduct they have indicated their lack of loyalty to this country. There may be Japanese who are loyal to this country, yet there is no way of proving that loyalty.

The Japan Foreign Office has recently urged the return of 50,000 "Kibei Shimin," now in Japan, to California and other Pacific coast States, where their American citizenship can be of most service. The Japanese Association of America is promoting the movement. "Kibei Shimin" are Japanese born in the United States and sent back in early childhood to Japan and there trained through youth to maturity in the duties and loyalty of Japanese citizenship. "Kibei Shimin" are received without question into full membership by the Japanese American Citizens' League. (Osaka Mainichi, March 19, 1937. C. J. I. C. Doc. No. 506.)

Many American-born children are sent to Japan in early childhood for education, and when they return are practically alien Japanese, frequently speaking no English. There were about 50,000 of these Kibei Shimin in Japan until recently, when the passage of the 1940 American nationality law, presuming expatriation of those who have been in the country of their parents for more than 6 months was passed. To avoid losing their American citizenship under this law many of them are scurrying back before the deadline in the middle of July. After that time they will be in grave danger of losing it.

The following facts in connection with the California situation are of interest: The Japanese American Citizens League, a powerful organization with approximately 50 chapters in the Paeific States, has for its main proclaimed purpose the training of American-born Japanese so that they may properly discharge their obligations as American citizens. The league admits to membership without question, however, all Japanese born under our flag, many if not most of whom, it would seem, still retain Japanese citiz.enship. It even admits the Kibei Shimin, Japanese born here and sent in early childhood to Japan and there brought up to manhood and womanhood as Japanese citizens. They are, to all intents and purposes when they return here, alien Japanese immigrants who have the privileges of American citizenship. Japanese authorities place the total number of Kibei Shimin at between 40,000 and 50,000 and say they are returning now at the rate of 1,000 per year. The Japanese Association of America is planning to bring back at once to California all the Kibei Shimin still in Japan who will come.

The Kibei Shimin movement was sponsored by the Japanese Association of America. Its objective for many years had been to encourage the return to America from Japan of American-born Japanese. When the movement started it was ascertained that there were about 20,000 American-born Japanese in Japan. The Japanese Association of America sent representatives to Japan to confer with Prefectural officials on the problems of financing and transportation. The Association also arranged with steamship companies for special rates for groups of ten or more so returning, and requested all Japanese associations to secure employment for returning American-born Japanese.

During 1941 alone more than 1,573 American-born Japanese entered West Coast ports from Japan. Over 1,147 Issei, or alien Japanese, re-entered the United States from Japan during that year.

Nisei interpreters at Omuta and Yahata POW camps?