Nisei in His Imperial Majesty's Service
Japanese Americans Who Served the Fatherland
During World War II
Approximately 20,000 second-generation Japanese (Nisei), born in the
United States, spent World War II in Japan. There were at one time
some 50,000 Nisei in Japan; see
excerpts below. Even though they were American citizens,
because of a special law the Japanese Government regarded them as
citizens of Japan. Incidentally, many Nisei in the United States had
dual citizenship; in the Territory of Hawaii alone, some 60% of the
Nisei were also Japanese citizens (i.e. over one-third of Japanese
in the territory were dual citizens). Per
a US Navy Dept. intelligence report: "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. This estimate is based on
the fact that more than 52% of American born Japanese fall into this
category." Per Roehner's
research (2014):
For the 158,000 residents of
Japanese ancestry in the Territory of Hawaii, the figures (in
1940) were as follows:
- Japanese aliens: 38,000
- Dual Japanese-US citizens:
55,000
- Non-dual US citizens: 65,000
For the 162,000 residents of Japanese ancestry in the continental
United States, the figures (in 1940) were as follows:
- Japanese aliens: 38,000
- Dual Japanese-US citizens:
62,000
- Non-dual US citizens: 62,000
Hundreds of Nisei in Japan worked for the Imperial Government as
translators and interpreters, some as guards at POW camps, and some
even fought in the Imperial Japan armed forces. Official Japanese
figures state that 1,648 Nisei had joined the Imperial forces; other
estimates are as high as 7,000, but the true figure would be much
higher if one considered the many other areas of sub-contracted work
that supported the military. After the war, only 10,000 Nisei were
allowed to return to the United States; quite a number remained in
Japan and worked for the Occupation Forces. The US Military
Intelligence Division produced in Aug. 1945 a 430-page document
(names A-J,
K-O,
S-Y)
listing Japanese, including a number of American-born Nisei, who
were "reported to be loyal" and "expected to cooperate" with the
Occupation Forces (N.B. the Nisei were "reported to be loyal," yet
there is no record of their being interned in Japan).
Duplicity
was normal then and no one thought it strange -- but to most
Americans suddenly confronted with an aggressive Japan, it was
paramount to being a traitor. The trial of "Tokyo Rose" is well
known, and there were several others who were tried for their
anti-American actions. The whole subject seems to be somewhat a
taboo topic -- to many, no doubt, it is embarassing to talk about
their chameleon-like past. You will not find this data on any other
website, and even Wikipedia's page on Japanese-Americans will not
sanction such data to be disseminated.
It is, nevertheless, a historical fact. You will find here an
assortment of news articles and archival material which reveals the
other side of these Nisei who were in Japan during WWII (alphabetical
index here). This list is
only a fraction of the total. I have also included below
some who were probably not directly connected with the Japanese
military. Further research is being conducted by author and
professor-emeritus Hawaii, John Stephan, who is hoping to publish
his massive work on the Nisei, Call
of Ancestry: American Nikkei in Imperial Japan, 1895-1945;
when he does, it will be noted on this page as the go-to reference
book on the Nisei in Japan.
For further info regarding the numbers of Nisei in Japan, here this
from my page on Civilian
Internment
Camps in Japan:
Figures do not include
Japanese-Americans (Nisei), who, in accordance with wartime
directives issued by Japan's Ministry of Home Affairs, were to be
treated as Japanese nationals. As for the numbers of Nisei in
Japan, "Japanese figures show that in 1937 there were 50,000
American citizens of Japanese ancestry residing in Japan" ( Gentlemen
of Japan by Haven, 1944) -- the Japan Foreign Office urged
these kibei shimin (American returnee citizens) to return
to the US. Approximately 20,000 Nisei were living in Japan in 1940
( Zaibei Nihonjinshi, 1940). According to an estimate by the
U.S. Consulate in Yokohama, some 15,000 Nisei were residing in
Japan at the end of the war, 10,000 of whom were eligible to
return to the United States ( Rafu Shimpo, March 22, 1947).
See Were
We
The Enemy? by Rinjiro Sodei for further information.
See here
for number of resident aliens of Japanese descent as of June 1942.
Forthcoming book by John J. Stephan will cover this subject in
detail. For further info and extensive data on ethnic Japanese and
Japanese Americans in the US prior to and during WWII, see my
EO9066 website, The Preservation of a
People, dealing with the evacuation and relocation of people
of Japanese ancestry (assembly and relocation centers, internment
camps, etc.).
From Were we the enemy? American
survivors of Hiroshima by Rinjiro Sodei (1998):
The Japanese
Ministry of Foreign Affairs estimated that the number of Nisei
from both the U.S. mainland and Hawaii who were living in Japan
for family reasons or for education reached almost 30,000 as of
January 1929. Of these, 4,805, or sixteen percent, were living in
Hiroshima Prefecture. Their ages ranged from one to thirty, but
3,803, or some eighty percent, were attending elementary and
middle schools. According to the same statistics, 11,312 Nisei in
the United States, excluding Hawaii, had parents who came from
Hiroshima, while Nisei residing in Hiroshima numbered 3,404. When
2,759 of the latter group were asked in 1929 whether they wanted
to go back to the United States, only 755 answered yes, while
2,004 said no. In other words, seventy percent expressed no desire
to return.
After the 1924 revision of the Immigration Act
prohibited Japanese from immigrating, only Nisei possessed the
right to enter the country without restriction. A book published
in 1929 about Hiroshima immigrants in the United States
emphasized, "From the viewpoint of the development of the Yamato
race overseas ... some measures must be urgently taken to
encourage the Nisei in Japan to come back to the U.S."
The foreign ministry survey was made that same
year, twelve years before Pearl Harbor. In the intervening years,
how many Nisei returned to the United States? A history of the
Japanese in America, published in December 1940 by the Association
of Japanese Americans in San Francisco, states: "As a result of a
nationwide movement that was started around 1935 to encourage
Nisei educated in Japan to return to the United States as the only
real successors to the Issei, it is estimated that about ten
thousand Nisei have returned at the present time." This statement
is qualified, however, by the observation that "around twenty
thousand Nisei are believed to still be in Japan."
How many of the latter were living in Hiroshima
in 1940? No statistics are available, but if we assume that the
sixteen percent of the total that prevailed in 1929 remained
consistent, we get an estimate of around 3,200 for the number of
Nisei in Hiroshima. Most of these would have been living in and
near the city of Hiroshima itself.
The US Consulate estimated there were 15,000 Nisei residing in Japan
at the end of the war, and 10,000 of those were eligible to return
to the US. In May 1946, the GHQ ordered the J-Govt. to produce a
list of all Nisei who lived in Japan during the war, including those
who served in the J-military or in J-govt. Sodei says approx. 5,000
Nisei returned to the US after the war.
Some thoughts:
What made the difference between pro-Japan and pro-US Nisei? It
could have been the home environment, where the parents were always
talking about their motherland, reading news and literature from or
about the motherland, with very little Americanism being absorbed in
their lives, except perhaps through the American schooling their
children were receiving. These Nisei children would then be
receiving mostly news and views from a Japanese perspective via
their parents as well as from the Japanese language schools (if they
were attending) which were teaching not only the language but also
the culture and ethics of Imperial Japan, all so that they would not
forget their heritage. Compounding this with the fact that many of
the Nisei had dual citizenship, it is no wonder, then, that there
would be Nisei with a strong attachment to Japan, or at least
ambivalence. This could be one of the reasons many in the US
military were concerned about the Nisei's loyalties.
Further data:
Up to 7,000
Nisei in Japanese military -- excerpts (PDF) from Michelle
Malkin's book, In Defense of
Internment.
18,000
Nisei in Japan in 1933, per Horne book.
From a very enlightening work, The
Pacific
Era Has Arrived: Transnational Education among Japanese Americans,
1932-1941 (PDF),
by Eiichiro Azuma:
The precise number of Nisei students
in Japan during the 1930s is difficult to estimate. According to
some contemporary sources, there were 40,000 to 50,000
American-born Japanese in the island country in any given year
during the decade. The vast majority of them, however, probably
resided in Japan permanently with their parents, who had returned
home for good. Only about 18,000 Nisei were considered "Americans"
by the Japanese police, who had kept a close eye on any "foreign"
elements. Still, most of them had spent a substantial amount of
time in Japan, receiving much of their formal education there
rather than in the United States. In 1940, a survey of Nisei
students over eighteen estimated the presence of 1,500 in the
Tokyo area. This is probably the most reliable ballpark figure for
the Nisei youngsters who are the subjects of this study. See Nisei
Survey Committee, The Nisei: A
Survey of Their Educational, Vocational, and Social Problems
(Tokyo: Keisen Girls' School, 1939), 2; and Yuji Ichioka, Beyond
National Boundaries: The Complexity of Japanese-American History,
Amerasia Joumal 23 (Winter 1998), viii. For the general statistics
of Nisei in Japan, consult Yamashita Soen, Nichibei
o Tsunagu mono [Those who link Japan and the United
States] (Tokyo: Bunseisha, 1938), 319-334.
See here for more on the 50,000
figure.
See also Chapter 5 re the Nisei in Japan in Japanese Americans and Cultural
Continuity: Maintaining Language through Heritage by
Toyotomi Morimoto.
Nisei_in_Japan_211_G-2_FEC_Jan-Dec_1946.pdf
- List of Nisei employed by the Japanese Govt. and desirous of
repatriation to US. Mention is made of 4,500 Nisei who were granted
Japanese citizenship (possible correlation with number of
renunciants at the relocation centers, viz. Tule Lake). Note also
that Japanese nationality was NOT a pre-requisite; some even were
advised not to acquire Japanese citizenship.
For more information on the Kibei, see this WRA article, Japanese Americans educated in
Japan: The Kibei.
Transnationalism
in
education: the backgrounds, motives, and experiences of Nisei
students in Japan before World War 2 by Yuko Konno
Beyond
Two Homelands Migration and Transnationalism of Japanese
Americans in the Pacific, 1930-1955 - Enlightening
paper by Michael Jin (2013) on the "50,000 American migrants of
Japanese ancestry (Nisei) who traversed across national and colonial
borders in the Pacific before, during, and after World War II. Among
these Japanese American transnational migrants, 10,000-20,000
returned to the United States before the outbreak of Pearl Harbor in
December 1941 and became known as Kibei." A number of Nisei
mentioned by name in this work.
See Densho.org's article, Stranded: Nisei in Japan Before,
During, and After World War II, review of the book Midnight in Broad Daylight by
Pamela Rotner Sakamoto. Densho.org Archives (guest login required)
has a number of interviews relating to Life
in
Japan -- During WWII.
Books on this topic - much to be gleaned from these, esp. re the
issues of loyalty and collaboration:
Nisei
in
Japan -- interesting excerpt from the Far
Eastern Survey, Apr. 19, 1944
See Kabuki's Forgotten War: 1931-1945
by Brandon (2009), p. 390 note: "Ministry of Health and Welfare in
1943... called on Nisei to resist assimilation and 'remain aware of
the superiority of the Japanese people and proud of being a member
of the leading race.'" See also sections dealing with dual
nationality Nisei and their inner conflict (search).
Additional Notes:
Image: Banquet
for
Nisei, Kaigai Doho Taikai (Overseas Compatriots' Convention),
Tokyo 1940-11 (image courtesy of John Stephan). Also related
organization Nisei Rengokai (Nisei Union).
"Bushido is the very core of the Nisei" -- Terry Shima, executive
director for the Japanese American Veteran Association
A number of interpreters are mentioned in the Tokyo War Crimes
Trials (IMTFE) Reviews. A search within this file for "interpreter"
may give possible leads to more Nisei involved at the POW camps:
See further Assorted
Notes at end of this page.
Alphabetical
Index
of Names
Akune,
Saburo and Shiro
Domoto, Kaji
Fujimoto
Fujisawa, Meiji
Fukami, Yasukuni Frank
Fukuhara, Harry
Funatsu, Toshiko
Hamada, George
Harada, Yoshio
Hikita, Toyokazu
Hirano
Honda, Chikaki
Imamura, Shigeo
Inoue, Kanao
Ishio, Jack
Iwatake, Warren
Jibutsu, Fumitane
Kameoka, Masaji
Kanai, Hiroto
Kano, Toshiyuki
Kawakita, Tomoya
Kido, Shigemi
Kotoshirodo, Richard
|
Matsuda,
Jimmy
Matsumotos
Matsumura, Kan
Miho, Fumiye
Mikami, Yoshie
Miura, Kay Kiyoshi
Morishige, Torao
Murada (Murata),
Hisao?
Muroya, Mary
Nakahara, Jiro
Nakatani, Kunio
Nakayama, Michael
Niimori, Genichiro
Nishi
Nishikawa, Mitsugi
Nishimura, Kay
Noda, Eiichi
Nonin
Okada, Haruo
Okimura, Kiyokura
Onishi
Ozaki, Harley (Toyonishiki)
Ozasa, George |
Sakakida,
Richard
Sako, Sydney
Sano, Iwao Peter
Sasaki, James
Shinohara, Samuel
Suzuki, Jerry
Takamura, Clifton
Takeuchi, James
Tasaki,
Hanama Harold
Tateishi, Kei
Toguri, Iva
Tomita, Mary
Tomita, Masao
Tsuda, Taihei
Ueno, Harry
Uno, Kazumaro Buddy
Uyeminami, Fred
Wakatake, Clyde
Yamada, Shigeo
Yamanaka, Bob
Yamane, George
Yamashita
Yamauchi, Kunimitsu
Yempuku
(Empuku), Toru, Goro, and Donald
Yoneda, Karl
Yonekura, Mary and Alice
Yoshida, Jim |
Saburo and Shiro Akune
Per article, MIS
Members
with Brothers Serving in Japanese Imperial Forces during WWII:
Harry and Ken Akune served in the
MIS and their two brothers, Saburo and Shiro, were drafted into
the Imperial Japanese Navy. After the death of his wife,
Ichiro—father of the Akune boys—took his nine children to settle
in his hometown in Kagoshima Prefecture. Later, before WW II,
Harry and Ken were sent to California to work and send remittances
to their family.
Following Japan’s attack of Pearl Harbor, Harry and Ken Akune were
among the 118,000 persons of Japanese ancestry who were placed in
internment camps against their will. “Then, one day an Army
recruiter came with news that the government now wanted young men
from the internment camps to join the military. I didn't care what
the government had done to us," Ken Akune said.
"When they came around, it was a chance for me to do what
Americans were supposed to do, go out and serve their country.
When they opened their door, for me, I felt like my rights were
given back to me. I also thought about if I met my brother out in
the field, what would I do?" Ken Akune said. "You don't want to
kill him, but if he points his rifle at you, what can you do?"
Ken and Harry graduated from the MIS Language School in 1942 and
were deployed to the Asia Pacific war zone, Ken to Burma to work
for the Office of War Information to conduct propaganda against
Japan. Harry was sent to New Guinea and the Philippines to
interrogate Japanese prisoners and to translate documents. Harry,
who had not made a parachute jump before, joined his colleagues of
the 503rd Paratroopers to jump onto Corregidor island. Their
brothers in the Japanese Navy, Saburo was a spotter of American
targets for the kamikaze pilots and Shiro, just 15, served in the
training program for recruits at the Sasebo Naval Base.
After the war, Harry and Ken, while serving in the demobilization
of Japanese armed forces, visited their family in Kagoshima
Prefecture. The four brothers, two on each side, got into a heated
argument as to which side, Japan or America, was right. The
confrontation was stopped by their father, who reminded them the
war was over.
Saburo and Shiro returned to live in America, where, ironically,
Shiro was drafted and fought in the Korean War.
Kaji Domoto
From Foo
Fujita's book:
From Kaji Domoto - Nisei at Omori camp - US News Hiroshima.html:
"The news came much quicker to Sgt.
Frank Fujita, a Japanese-American held eight blocks from the
Imperial Palace in Tokyo. Kaji Domoto, a U.S.-born Japanese who
liked to serve up anti-American diatribes, told the assembled POWs
that the "murderers" had destroyed an entire city with one bomb.
The GIs scoffed. Domoto was notorious for fanciful tales,
including one about a U.S. plane downed by a rice ball. He
convinced them this time by producing Western dispatches on
Truman's announcement."
Domoto at
Bunka camp with Cousens 1946-09-27.pdf - Sydney Morning Herald
article: "Cousens said Domoto had been instrumental in saving the
lives of three officers."
Fujimoto
See Otten
testimony, Nagoya POW Camp #10: "Civilian Interpreter
Fujimoto (Thug) strafed [punished] POW's, was American born and
educated." He was at the Osaka Chikko POW Camp first, according to this
site.
Meiji Fujisawa
Oeyama POW camp interpreter (From Bamboo People
by Chuman):
Lengthy chapter here about Kawakita (Chapter Four) in which Fujisawa
(Fujizawa) is mentioned, Kawakita's childhood friend:
America's
Geisha Ally by Naoko Shibusawa, 2006
Yasukuni "Frank" Fukami
Per Statement
of
Sachio Egawa (from bottom of page 26) of Fukuoka POW Camp #18
(Sasebo):
"About March or April [1943]... a
seamen name FUKAMI, Yasukuni came to our camp. FUKAMI used to say
that he was born in AMERICA [San Francisco, 1915] and indeed,
excelled in speaking English. However, he was of an ugly
temperament, and he often hit the young service personnel and
workers. In spite of his behavior, he was liked by the superior,
SAMEJIMA, and SAMEJIMA once used him to obtain blankets and towels
from the prisoners against their will... I reported the matter to
a superior named TAKAHASHI... [who] made FUKAMI return the
articles to the prisoners... I heard of FUKAMI committing a great
deal of outrages against the prisoners... WATANABE [Navy unit
commander] learned of FUKAMI's acts and wildness and had him
transferred about July or August."
Harry Fukuhara, brothers of (Frank,
Pierce, Victor)
Second Lt. Harry Fukuhara left his native Seattle as a teen when his
mother took him and his siblings to her hometown of Hiroshima
following his father’s death in 1933. He returned to the United
States for college; his three brothers remained in Japan. He served
in the US Army; they served in the Japanese Army. His mother and
oldest brother suffered radiation sickness, with his brother dying
before the end of 1945. “‘Futatsu no sokoku’ hazama ni ikite”
[Living Between ‘Two Fatherlands,’], Tokyo Shimbun, 11 June 1996, p.
28.
From Nisei
Linguists review:
Toshikawa Takao, “Nikkei nisei,
Beigun joho shoko ga hajimete shogen shita: ‘Futatsu no sokoku’
rimenshi,” [“Nisei, U.S. Military Officer Testifies for First
Time: The Inside Story of ‘Two Fatherlands’”], Shukan
Posuto, 3 March 1995: 219. Many Japanese histories,
memoirs, and media reports tell the stories of Nisei in service to
one country or the other. One history of Japanese Americans is
Kikuchi Yuki’s Hawai Nikkei
nisei no Taieheiyo Senso [The Pacific War of Hawaiian
Nisei] (Tokyo: Sanichi Shobo, 1995). A story of Japanese Americans
on the other side is Tachibana Yuzuru’s Teikoku
Kaigun shikan ni natta Nikkei Nisei [The Nisei Who Became
an Officer of the Imperial Navy] (Tokyo: Tsukiji Shokan, 1994). As
Nisei who were living in the United States at the start of the war
joined the US military and intelligence organs, so many of those
in Japan at that time served as linguists in the IJA and IJN, the
Foreign Ministry, and the official Domei News Agency which, like
the BBC, monitored foreign media broadcasts.
--------------------
U.S. Officer Feared Worst For Family
Living in Japan / Brothers split by war and circumstance
August 05,
1995
By Tara Shioya, Chronicle Staff Writer
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."
See also this review
of
book on Fukuharas, "Midnight in Broad Daylight," by Pamela
Rotner Sakamoto. The Japan Times had this article, The unbelievable true story of a
Japanese family that went to war with itself.
From essay by Fukuhara, Military
Occupation of Japan (WWW.NJAVC.ORG):
About two weeks after arriving in
Japan, I was able to get permission from my division commander to
travel by Jeep to Hiroshima to look for my family. I arrived in
early October and found my mother and brothers in our
partially-damaged family home on the outskirts of Hiroshima City.
My mother had survived the atomic bomb because she had been in a
bomb shelter, but my older brother Victor
had been injured by the bombing. He was to die a few months later
from radiation poisoning. Many of my relatives had died or
disappeared in the atomic blast.
I was overjoyed to see my two younger brothers, Pierce
and Frank. They had been drafted into the Japanese Army,
and had returned home just a few days before I arrived in
Hiroshima. Frank
had been assigned to a suicide unit in Miyazaki Prefecture. He
had been training to
blow up a U.S. military vehicle by running up to it and
detonating an explosive
strapped to his back. I shuddered when I heard that he
was supposed to guard the beaches of Miyazaki Prefecture on the
island of Kyushu. That was where my division had been planning to
land on November 1, 1945. I was glad that the atomic bomb had
ended the war.
.....When I was first assigned to the Toyama CIC office, in
September 1947, I met a young Nisei girl who became my wife two
years later. Terry Yamamoto
had come to Japan as a teenager before the war. She was working as
an interpreter at the Toyama Military Government Team.
Japanese book:
日本軍兵士になったアメリカ人たち 母国と
戦った日系二世
門池啓史, 元就出版社, 発行年月: 2010年02月
Americans who became soldiers of
Japanese military - Nisei who fought against their motherland
From Chapter 2:
Frank Fukuhara - brother in
US Army 「二つの母国」 (Two Motherlands)
Toshiko Funatsu
Per Stephan, possibly worked as a communications monitor for the
Imperial Army or Navy. After war was English instructor in Yahata,
Kyushu (PDF).
George Hamada
Nisei? interpreter at Zentsuji POW Camp (photo).
Affidavit
by POW Nelson says that Hamada lived in the US for 20 years. Photo
shows "Bibb County, Georgia" location.
Yoshio Harada
On island of Niihau, helped Japanese pilot who crashed there during
attack on Pearl Harbor. See Robar
p. 340 and Malkin
p. 2+, photo on p. 289.
From Wiener
testimony:
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
Born in Vancouver, BC, 1922. Went to Japan in 1939 and drafted into
J-Army in 1943, then transferred to Tokyo Kempeitai. See p. 5 of
this doc:
Yokohama
Trial
Dockets
No. T294 HIKITA
Hirano
In this article (More_Jap_Atrocities_KingsportTimes_1944-1-30.pdf),
note
on page 2 under "Demands Action," there is mention of a Lieut.
Hirano, "a young Japanese from the United States, who was
responsible for the horrible prison conditions existing there" at
the Shanghai Bridge House jail. This could be the same person as
Cmdr. Smith mentioned in his
statement:
"There was one Kato there [at Bridge
House, Shanghai], an interpreter, who was very vicious. One of the
worst of all was a Japanese interpreter who designated himself as
being No. 56, he being very careful to keep us from learning his
name. No. 56 was this man's official number as an interpreter. I
have his name and something of his personal history safely secured
in Shanghai and full information can be obtained about him after
the war. This man had spent at least half of each year in the
states for a long period as he was in the export business from
Japan. Although being a Japanese subject, he was married to an
American Japanese and had several children. Two of his daughters
at that time were attending the University of Southern California.
All of his family except himself were American citizens. He was
one of the vilest, most vicious men in the whole place. This man
was cautious in handling us military prisoners and evinced strong
wishes to remain incognito."
Chikaki Honda ("Eddie")
Born in Hawaii, went to Japan in 1929, renounced US citizenship in
1941, worked with other Nisei in Civilian Intelligence Corps, gave
talks at Nisei Rengokai in Tokyo, became interrogator on Rabaul whom
Boyington had met. From Black Sheep One: The Life of Gregory
Pappy Boyington by Gamble):
Shigeo Imamura
Born in San Jose, CA, went to Japan when 10 years old, later
becoming a kamikaze pilot. Wrote book, SHIG
--
The True Story of An American Kamikaze: A Memoir.
Kanao Inouye ("Kamloops Kid")
Canadian Nisei (see Wikipedia
entry) -- was at Shamshuipo prison camp, and interpreter for
Kempeitai military police in Hong Kong. Mentioned in Roland's Long
Night's Journey Into Day, pp315-316. Mentioned in The Damned by Greenfield.
Mentioned also in Prisoner of the Turnip Heads: The
Fall of Hong Kong and the Imprisionment by the Japanese
by Wright-Nooth (2000).
See also trial case:
Jack Ishio
From Tacoma, WA; was registered as a dual-citizen. Served as an
anti-aircraft gunner in the Japanese army, shooting down American
dive bombers. Was a mile from Hiroshima when A-bomb was dropped.
Helped cremate the dead over the next two weeks. Quoted in
this
article as saying, "It was dreadful. But I never felt a sense
of anger at the U.S. that they used such a weapon to bring the war
to an end. I think that was the
right thing to do."
Nobuaki Warren Iwatake
From Wikipedia:
Nobuaki "Warren" Iwatake (1923-) was
Radio Operator and communications intercepter and a veteran of the
World War veteran of the World War 2 Imperial Japanese Army.
Family history
He was born in Kahului, Hawaii, USA. Warren was the eldest son of
six children and was raised in Kahului. The father of Iwatake, a
Kobayashi store employee, presumed drowned from a fishing trip at
Peahi. With the loss of the family breadwinner, his mother, four
brothers, and one sister moved to Hiroshima, Japan, to live with
an uncle in November, 1940. Warren stayed on Maui to graduate with
his Maui High School class of '41, and then left to rejoin his
family in Hiroshima. The December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor would eventually have a profound effect on Iwatake's
family, and lead to an unlikely association with George Herbert
Walker Bush, the 41st President of the United States.
Service in Imperial Japanese Army
Iwatake was beaten and drafted against his will to the Imperial
Japanese Army from a Japanese college in 1943. He was present when
former United States President George H.W. Bush was shot down over
the Pacific in his Avenger bomber, during September 1944, and was
later rescued by a submarine. Two American crewman with Bush were
killed. Iwatake had missed the battle of Iwo Jima due to an
American submarine attack on his ship's convoy, and was then
placed on Chichi-jima, 150 miles north of Iwo Jima. American
forces bombed Chichi-jima to cut radio communications between
islands. Former President George H.W. Bush's task was to bomb the
island's communication towers, and possibly any Imperial Japanese
forces. Due to the "island hopping" strategy by American forces,
the island was spared an invasion attack.
Iwatake was present when Japanese Imperial forces captured an
American pilot from Texas by the name of Warren Earl Vaughn. Mr.
Iwatake was assigned to guard and work with Warren Earl Vaughn on
Chichi Jima. He and Warren Earl spent many hours talking and
developed a personal relationship. According to Iwatake, one
evening after a bath, the two were walking back when Iwatake fell
into a bomb pit. "It was pitch black and I couldn't get out. He
reached to me and said take his hand" and Warren Earl pulled
Iwatake out. Shortly after the fall of Iwo Jima in March 1945, the
pilot was taken away by other Japanese Naval Officers and executed
at the harbor by beheading. On that day Mr. Iwatake adopted and
kept the name "Warren" in honor and remembrance of his American
friend Warren Earl Vaughn. The story of Warren Earl Vaughn,
Iwatake's observation of the rescue of George H.W. Bush, and the
experiences of other American "Flyboys" is recounted in the book
Flyboys: A True Story of Courage by James Bradley. Warren Iwatake
and President George H.W. Bush met on Chichi Jima in 2002 in a
symbolic reunion of veterans from both sides of the conflict.
Iwatake lost his youngest brother in the Hiroshima atomic bomb
attack. The youngest brother was 500 yards from the epicenter
attending a school. Reportedly, the only thing left was a US Army
canteen, as the youngest brother was vaporized in the atomic
attack. Iwatake's uncle, Dr. Hiroshi Iwatake, was badly burned in
the atomic explosion, but regained his health and lived into the
1980s. Dr. Hiroshi Iwatake's true story is recounted in the 1966
(1969 Kodansha English translation by John Bester) historical
novel "Black Rain" by Masuji Ibuse. This title is not to be
confused with the 1989 Michael Douglas movie of the same name,
also set in Japan. The Ibuse "Black Rain", though centered around
fictional characters, is based on interviews with actual atom bomb
survivors, including Hiroshi Iwatake. Graphic details in the
novel, such as the maggots eating away at Hiroshi's earlobe, are
true. The nephew in the novel is Warren Iwatake's youngest brother
Takashi. The novel states that Takashi's metal ID tag was found.
However, Warren's brother Masaru reported that all he could find
when he searched for Takashi amongst the ruins of Hiroshima was
Takashi's U.S. Army canteen.
After the war, Iwatake served as a translator for the American
Embassy in Tokyo for 35 years.
And this article:
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."
Another article:
http://www.perkins-smart.com/burmacampaignsociety/archive/news_pdf/Newsletter%2014%20a.pdf
The Burma Campaign Society NEWSLETTER
September 2009
WARREN IWATAKE’S WAR.
George Bush Sr. who later became US
President made his first parachute jump on Chichi Jima during the
Pacific
War when his plane was shot down. I saw his rescue and was happy
to learn that he was picked up by the submarine
Finback. I am also grateful to the captain of the US submarine
that sank our troopship, because if we had not lost
our artillery and ammunition, we would have gone on from Chichi
Jima to Iwo Jima. Our anti-tank platoon, with
which we had trained in Hiroshima, was one convoy ahead of us and
reached Chichi Jima safely, where we met
them. But it was not so lucky. A week later, they were sent on to
Iwo Jima, only a hundred and fifty miles away,
and were all killed. Such is fate.
I had had dual American and Japanese citizenship and had been told
by my high school teacher never to join the
Japanese Army or I would not be able to return to Hawaii. However,
I was attending university in Tokyo in 1943
when the military government ordered all university students to be
drafted into the army. Although they were
exempt from military service, the war was being lost and a hundred
thousand students were drafted, and many
never returned.
I myself did three months basic training in Hiroshima, and life in
the Japanese Imperial Army was a nightmare.
We recruits were constantly reminded that we were fighting for the
Emperor, who was at that time considered to
be a God, and the army tried to pound it into our heads that we
should be willing to sacrifice our lives for him and
for the country. Life was really tough, as we were beaten by our
superiors, and when we were liined up at night
for roll call and our kit was inspected, our faces would be
violently slapped if there was one speck of dust on our
boots.. The beatings were routine and since, in my case, my
English was better than my Japanese, I was singled
out several times because of my enemy background. Since we were in
the artillery, we trained with cannons which
were hauled by manpower. However, things improved after basic
training, as attention was then focused on the
next batch of recruits and we were no longer beaten. After the war
some soldiers called their basic training hell.
I took the name of Pilot Warren Vaughn to honour his memory, as I
became friends with him until he was executed.
Despite being a POW, he managed to smile and tell us jokes. I had
been ordered to join a naval radio facility to
monitor enemy communications and Warren Vaughn was forced to work
with us for a while, and it was he who
caught a message from US Army Headquarters announcing that “all
organized resistance on Iwo Jima has ended.”
One day, a member of our army unit passed by and asked me how the
war was going, and when I told him that
I knew, because of the monitoring, that Japan was losing, he
called me a traitor. The Japanese soldiers did not
know that it was being lost, because the High Command in Tokyo
kept announcing victory after victory for the
Japanese Imperial Army, and during the Battle of Midway, which
turned the tide of the war, and in which Japan
lost three of its top aircraft carriers, Japan announced that it
had won a major victory, sinking several US carriers.
After the war, when the President learned that I had taken Warren
Vaughn’s first name, he called me “a true friend
of America”, and when, in 2004, I was able to visit Childress.
Vaughn’s home town in Texas, with a population
of ten thousand, I received a warm welcome and was made an
Honorary Citizen.
As to the war, my opinion is that wars may be necessary to protect
the democratic way of life and get rid of
dictators, but we must remember that war is a matter of kill or be
killed. I lost my brother, who was only thirteen
when he was killed in his classroom in the atomic bombing of
Hiroshima, and as a result of my experience, I am
opposed to war.
Warren Iwatake
Editor’s note
The above Article is drawn from two Emails which were sent to
Akiko Macdonald.
And another one:
1 family's tradition: Tree that
saw war, survived A-bomb goes up for 70th Christmas
The
Associated Press
Friday,
December
21, 2007
TOKYO: Warren
Nobuaki Iwatake's family has seen more than its share
of calamity.
When he was still a child his
father was lost at sea off Hawaii. With no breadwinner, his
family was forced to move to Japan, where Iwatake was
drafted during the war. He lost a brother when the bomb fell
on Hiroshima.
But through it all one thing has
remained constant.
The tree.
His parents bought it in 1937,
and his family has brought it out every Christmas since,
without fail, even when that meant risking arrest.
"This tree was a shining light,
because it was a symbol of unity in my family," Iwatake said
as he and his wife put the final touches on the frail,
1-meter-tall (3-foot-tall) heirloom that is, once again this
year, the centerpiece of their small, neatly kept apartment
in Tokyo.
"We have put this tree up every
year for 70 years."
___
Though he considers himself
Buddhist, Iwatake was raised in a Christian tradition. He
still keeps a photo of the tiny wooden church on Maui where
he and his five brothers went to services and Sunday school.
Christmas was always a special
time.
His father worked at a
merchandise store, and Iwatake remembers the day he came
home with a tree. It was nothing all that special, just
metal-and-plastic, the kind of decoration that can easily be
placed on a table, or in a corner somewhere. He got a string
of lights, too, the kind with the big bulbs.
Soon after, his father died in a
fishing accident. His body was never found.
Iwatake's mother had relatives
in Japan, and took Iwatake's younger brothers there. Iwatake
stayed behind to graduate from high school, then, in 1941,
six months before Pearl Harbor, he moved to Japan as well.
"Things were pretty bad," he
said. "There were war clouds hanging everywhere."
The United States and Britain
were the enemy, and Japan clamped down on overt displays of
anything Western, including Christianity. Though they had
grown up speaking English, Iwatake and his brothers
communicated solely in Japanese, and did their best to hide
their past.
But their mother refused to give
up on the tree.
"She was in charge and she
wanted to put it up," Iwatake said. "During the war years,
we had to do that in secret because in wartime Japan it was
not welcome. We could have been arrested."
To keep the neighbors from
asking questions, his mother found a place for it in the
back of their house, on the second floor, away from the
windows.
"We were afraid they would
report it to the police, or become suspicious about why we
were harboring Western things," he said. "But we were
brought up in the American way of life. It is something that
you cannot forget. It really is something from the heart."
The year after that first
Christmas in Hiroshima, Iwatake went to Tokyo to study
economics at university. At Christmas, he directed a school
play, a nativity story, again keeping it secret so that the
authorities wouldn't get involved.
Then, in 1943, he was drafted
and sent to Chichijima.
___
Chichijima is a tiny island that
virtually no one has heard of. To get there, you go out to
the middle of nowhere, and turn south.
In 1944, Iwatake boarded a
transport ship from Yokohama to assume his duties at a radio
monitoring post on the remote crag. The ship was torpedoed
and sunk by an American submarine, but he survived and was
put on an oil tanker.
On the island, Iwatake's English
skills were put to use listening in on U.S. military
communications, and keeping watch over a handful of captured
American pilots whose planes had been shot down on their way
to and from bombing raids on Tokyo.
One day, he was in the hills
digging bunkers when he heard that a plane had just been
shot down. He saw a lone pilot on a bright yellow life raft
paddling furiously away from the island. American planes
provided cover, and the submarine USS Finback surfaced and
collected him.
The aviator was 20-year-old
George H. W. Bush, who would later become the American
president. Iwatake met him years later and went back with
him to the island. Signed photos of the two, smiling, are
placed prominently about Iwatake's apartment.
But another American left a
deeper impression on Iwatake's life.
Captured POWs were forced to
monitor U.S. radio traffic. One of them was Warren Vaughn, a
Texan.
"One night after a bath we were
walking back and I fell into a bomb pit," Iwatake said. "It
was pitch black and I couldn't get out. He reached to me and
said to take his hand. He pulled me out."
Vaughn was monitoring the day
Iwo Jima fell. Japan's defeat was virtually assured. Soon
after, several naval officers called Vaughn and took him to
the beach. "He turned before he left and gave me a sad
look," Iwatake said.
For no apparent reason, Vaughn
was beheaded, and his body dumped into the sea.
The atrocities committed against
the POWs — which included acts of cannibalism — remained
largely a secret for the next 50 years. But Iwatake said he
did not want Vaughn's memory to die.
"I thought the best way of
remembering him was to adopt his first name," Iwatake said.
___
Japan surrendered in August
1945, and Iwatake returned home in December.
"I used to think of those joyous
days in Hawaii at Christmas, when we had food and treats,"
he said. "On Chichijima, we were starving."
But Hiroshima was even worse.
"Everything was bad, nothing was
left," he said. "I couldn't even think of the joys of what I
experienced in Hawaii."
Iwatake's younger brother
Takashi had been in the center of the city attending school.
His body, like their father's, was never found.
The Iwatake home was in the
eastern part of the city, behind a small hill that provided
a buffer from the blast. The front end was crushed and
burned, but the back stood largely intact.
And that was where the tree was.
"Japan had surrendered, there
was no food, nothing to celebrate," he said. "Everybody was
in shock and a sad state, but we put it up. My mother put it
up."
After the war, Iwatake became an
interpreter for the U.S. government. He moved to Tokyo, and
from 1950 he took responsibility for the family tree.
At first, putting it up was more
of a simple tradition than anything else.
His family was once again
spreading out. At one stage, four brothers worked for the
Occupation Forces as interpreters and translators, including
Iwatake. He eventually went back to Tokyo, while his
brothers returned to Hawaii. When the Korean War broke out
in 1950, three brothers volunteered, and one served in
Korea.
The Iwatake family remains
scattered.
One brother lives in Chicago,
another on Maui. Another died of cancer, possibly the result
of radiation from the atomic bomb.
But each year, the tree has gone
up. For those not in Tokyo to see it, including Vaughn's
cousins in Childress, Texas, Iwatake, now 84, sends photos.
And each year, it becomes more poignant.
"Gradually, Christmas has become
more meaningful again," he said. "Peace, good will toward
your fellow man, you know? After the war, there was no such
thing."
Fumitane Jibutsu
Mentioned by Patrick Aki (half Nisei, half Chinese-Hawaiian; interview):
https://www.thegardenisland.com/2014/07/04/hawaii-news/love-thy-neighbor/
Aki and his brother befriended a boy
from Japan, named Fumitani Jibutsu, who had just moved into their
Kauai neighborhood, an immigrant child who was shunned by
everybody else, except them. It was a welcoming gesture for
Jibutsu, whose parents were Shinto priests and spoke no English.
Jibutsu also struggled with the language, making finding friends
almost impossible. “No one wanted to be his friend because he
could not speak English, so my brother and I befriended him
because we were taught to love thy neighbor,” Michelle wrote about
Aki’s memories. Little did Uncle Pat know then, but Jibutsu would
return to Japan and become a soldier for her army.
.....
Weeks later, the Japanese overtook Wake Island and Aki became a
prisoner of war. Only 450 of the 550 laborers would be taken to
POW camps in Japan, however. The Japanese soldiers executed the
others, and Aki was singled out to be put to death. “They had us
kneeling on the ground, with our heads hanging, each man would
look up into the barrel of the gun to meet his fate as an officer
would stand directly in front of him to help deliver his destiny,”
Michelle wrote about Aki’s fate. “When it came to my turn, I
raised my head so that I could see my executioner and to my
amazement, the man that held the gun was Fumitani Jibutsu. He
lowered the gun and just stared at me and before I knew it, I was
taken to Japan as a prisoner.”
Per John Stephan:
Jibutsu Fumitane was, contrary to
Patrick Aki's testimony, born not in Japan but in Lihue, Island of
Kauai on 15 Jan. 1922, was taken by his mother in 1923 to sojourn
with his maternal grandfather in Kano-mura, Tsuno-gun,
Yamaguchi-ken, returned to Hawaii in 1925, attended the Wailua
School, where in 1929 he was elected "junior cop." Upon the death
of his father, Ginichi Jibutsu (both of his parents were Shinto
priests, Ginichi doubled as a Buddhist priest), Fumitane departed
with his widowed mother, Atsuko Miyamoto Jibutsu, for Japan on 24
July 1930 (in April, he and his mother were living in Wailua
according to the 1930 US Census). He would have likely completed
primary school, presumably in Kano-mura, Yamaguchi-ken, around
1937, possiblly entered Middle School, and was conscripted or
volunteered for the IJA (or IJN) in 1941. I could find no record
of either Atsuko Jibutsu or her son Fumitane returning to Hawaii
after the war.
Masaji Kameoka
Nisei? interpreter at POW camp, Nagoya #2 Narumi:
Hiroto Kanai
Interpreter for the Kempeitai in Hiroshima; photo here.
Below page from Race War!: White Supremacy and the
Japanese Attack on the British Empire by Gerald Horne
(2005).
Toshiyuki Kano
Toshiyuki
Kano (1914- ). Hawaiian-born Kibei, Salt Lake City. Former
military intelligence officer in the Japanese military.
Tomoya Kawakita
Kawakita was an interpreter at a POW camp in Oeyama, Japan, who was
convicted of war crimes. See here for a Time magazine
article: http://www.mansell.com/eo9066/Kawakita.html
For basic background info, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kawakita_v._U.S.
Section in The Bamboo People (PDF)
on Kawakita (p.288~). Note that the judge said that a US citizen owes
allegiance to the United States wherever he may be! So this
should be true for ALL the Nisei who were in Japan during WWII. Yet
this was not brought up in the trials.
He was later "successfully prosecuted for treason" (Kawakita
v. United States).
Lengthy chapter on Kawakita (Chapter Four), how he was recognized,
trial, etc.:
America's
Geisha Ally by Naoko Shibusawa, 2006
Mentions other Nisei working at the camp: "Two other Nisei were
there as interpreters: Kawakita’s childhood friend, Meiji Fujizawa, who
translated in the POW camps, and Noboyuki
Inoue, who worked in the company’s administrative office."
Also states that former prime minister of Japan, Takeo Miki, was the
one who helped Kawakita get the job at Oeyama Nickel Industry
Company, and later made appeals to the US Govt. for leniency in
dealing with Kawakita.
See also this image series re Okimura, Kawakita, Nishikawa (Nisei in
J-military) - Asian Americans and Supreme Court by Kim, in
PDF
format.
Los Angeles Times article:
Los Angeles Times
September 20, 2002
ON THE LAW
POW Camp Atrocities Led to Treason Trial
Tomoya Kawakita claimed dual citizenship, abusing captured GIs in
Japan in World War II, then moving to the U.S.
DAVID ROSENZWEIG, TIMES STAFF WRITER
Army veteran William L. Bruce, a survivor of Corregidor, the
Bataan death march and three years in a Japanese prisoner of war
camp, couldn't believe his eyes as he shopped with his bride one
autumn day in 1946 at the Sears department store in Boyle Heights.
Standing a few aisles away amid the crush of shoppers in that
quintessentially American setting was the man responsible for
brutalizing Bruce and scores of other GIs held captive in Japan's
Oeyama prison camp on Honshu Island.
Tomoya Kawakita, who held dual citizenship in the U.S. and Japan,
served as an interpreter and self-appointed taskmaster at the
camp, earning the nickname "Efficiency Expert" for his methods of
inflicting pain on inmates weakened by malnourishment and forced
labor.
"I was so dumbfounded, I just halted in my tracks and stared at
him as he hurried by," Bruce, then 24 and attending college under
the GI Bill, said shortly after the encounter.
"It was a good thing, too," said the former artilleryman. "If I'd
reacted then, I'm not sure but that I might have taken the law
into my own hands--and probably Kawakita's neck."
Instead, Bruce followed him outside the store, jotted down the
license plate number of his car and notified the FBI.
Kawakita, who had returned to the United States after the war and
enrolled at USC, was tried and convicted of treason in U.S.
District Court in Los Angeles and sentenced to death.
The sentence was never carried out. In 1953, President Dwight D.
Eisenhower, responding to appeals from the Japanese government,
commuted Kawakita's death sentence to life in prison. In 1963,
President John F. Kennedy ordered him freed after 16 years behind
bars on the condition that he be deported to Japan and never
return.
Now more than half a century since his trial, Kawakita holds the
distinction of being the last person prosecuted for treason
against the United States.
He was represented at his federal court trial by Morris Lavine, a
colorful Los Angeles criminal defense lawyer, who was fond of
describing himself as "attorney for the damned." Lavine's clients
ranged from the indigent, whom he represented at no charge, to the
likes of mobsters Mickey Cohen and Johnny Roselli, and Teamsters
boss James Hoffa.
Heading the prosecution team was U.S. Atty. James M. Carter, who
went on to become a federal appeals court judge.
More than a dozen former POWs testified against Kawakita. They
described how he forced prisoners to beat one another, and then
beat those he thought didn't hit the other prisoners hard enough.
They accused him of forcing prisoners to run laps until they
collapsed in exhaustion simply because they had finished their
work assignments early.
The camp was set up next to a nickel ore mine and processing
plant, where most of about 400 American POWs were forced to work.
Kawakita was employed by the mining company.
Once, he forced a prisoner to carry a heavy log up an icy slope.
The prisoner fell and suffered a serious spinal injury. Fellow
POWs testified that Kawakita waited five hours before summoning
help for the injured American.
They also recalled being taunted by Kawakita with comments such
as: "We will kill all you prisoners right here anyway, whether you
win the war or lose it."
And, "You guys needn't be interested in when the war will be over,
because you won't go back. You will stay here and work. I will go
back to the States because I am an American citizen."
Kawakita's citizenship proved to be a crucial issue during the
trial and subsequent court appeals.
By definition, treason can be committed only by someone owing
allegiance to the United States.
Born in Calexico to Japanese parents, Kawakita held dual
citizenship under U.S. and Japanese laws. In 1939, at the age of
18, he went to Japan to attend school. He remained there after the
outbreak of war, graduating from Meiji University.
At the trial, Lavine advanced a novel argument. As a dual U.S. and
Japanese citizen, he argued, his client owed exclusive allegiance
to the country in which he resided. In this case, Japan. Lavine
also contended that Kawakita had effectively renounced his U.S.
citizenship by signing a family census register maintained by
Japanese authorities.
In his instructions to jurors, U.S. District Judge William C.
Mathes made it clear that if they found that Kawakita genuinely
believed he was no longer an American citizen, then they must
acquit him of the treason charges.
Sequestered during deliberations, the jury struggled mightily to
resolve the question--declaring several times that they were
hopelessly deadlocked. But ultimately they found Kawakita guilty
on eight of 13 overt acts of treason charged by the prosecution.
When he appeared for sentencing, Kawakita continued to insist he
was innocent. "As I have been found guilty by the jury, I ask your
honor for mercy," he said.
By law, Mathes had leeway to impose a sentence ranging from a
minimum of five years in prison to a maximum of death at Alcatraz.
He chose the latter, saying: "Reflection leads to the conclusion
that the only worthwhile use for the life of a traitor, such as
this defendant has proved to be, is to serve as an example to
those of weak moral fiber who may hereafter be tempted to commit
treason against the United States."
Today, most of those involved in the case are either dead or, if
alive, could not be located. One exception is William J. Kelleher,
then a federal prosecutor and now a senior U.S. District Court
judge in Los Angeles.
Although he did not take part in the trial, Kelleher was assigned
to draft the government's response to Kawakita's appeal of his
conviction. As a result, he immersed himself in every detail of
the case.
In an interview last week , Kelleher recalled being visited at his
office by Bruce and two other former POWs while he was working on
his brief for the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
"Me and the boys had a little meeting last night," he said Bruce
told him. "And we want you to know that if he ever gets out, we'll
be waiting for him."
Fortunately, Kelleher said, the appeals court upheld Kawakita's
conviction by a 3-0 vote.
It was a much closer call when the appeal went before the U.S.
Supreme Court in 1952. The vote was 4 to 3 to uphold the
conviction. Two of the court's nine justices disqualified
themselves.
At the crux of the case was this question: Where does the
allegiance of a dual citizen lie when two nations, each claiming
his loyalty, go to war?
"Of course, a person caught in that predicament can resolve the
conflict of duty by openly electing one nationality or the other,"
said Justice William O. Douglas, writing for the majority.
Kawakita, the court said, chose neither option, trying instead to
hedge his bets on the war's outcome while freely performing acts
of hostility against the U.S.
"One who wants that freedom can get it by renouncing his American
citizenship," Douglas wrote. "He can not turn it to a fair-weather
citizenship, retaining it for possible contingent benefits but
meanwhile playing the role of the traitor. An American citizen
owes allegiance to the United States wherever he may reside."
Related treason case in the US regarding the three
Shitara sisters can be found at: Prosecution of the Shitara Sisters.
Another article here, in four parts: Betrayal on Trial: Japanese American
"Treason" in World War II.
Shigemi Kido
From The Two Worlds of Jim Yoshida
by Yoshida and Hosokawa:
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
http://michellemalkin.com/2004/08/06/book-notes-4/
Finally, in knocking down my
argument for the Roosevelt administration’s military rationale,
Greg focuses on a few of my points and ignores the rest of the
evidence of bona fide security threats that I present to readers,
including:
- the Niihau incident, in which a Japanese-American couple and a
Japanese permanent resident alien sided with a downed Japanese
pilot in a violent effort to take over a tiny Hawaiian island;
- Japan’s ascendance throughout the Southeast Asia, and the
efforts of ethnic Japanese residents throughout southeast Asia to
assist Japan’s conquering troops;
- the numerous attacks on U.S. ships by Japanese submarines just
off the West Coast;
- the thousands of ethnic Japanese in Hawaii and the West Coast
who were members of pro-Japan groups considered subversive;
- the Honolulu spy ring that Richard Kotoshirodo assisted, which
provided critical information to Japan that was used to design the
Pearl Harbor attack;
- the Los Angeles-based spy ring led by Itaru Tachibana, which
included numerous ethnic Japanese residents; and
- the thousands of U.S.-born Japanese-Americans who served in the
Japanese military.
See The Broken Seal: The Story of
'Operation Magic' and the Pearl Harbor Disaster by
Farago for quite a lot of info, p. 145~.
Jimmy Matsuda
Nisei Kamikaze: Sunnyvale Gardener
Recalls Life on the Edge of Extinction
By editor. Posted on Friday,
September 11, 2009.
Published in the Nichi Bei Times
Weekly Sept. 3-9, 2009.
By KOTA MORIKAWA
Nichi Bei Times
Jimmy Matsuda, an 82-year-old
Japanese American gardener in Sunnyvale, Calif., had never
talked about the experience he had as a kamikaze pilot during
World War II, until a small plastic figure of a Japanese Zero
plane caught his grandson Jonathan’s attention two years ago.
The then-11-year-old wondered what
the item on his grandfather’s desk was. After Jonathan asked his
father about the airplane, the elder Matsuda decided to talk
about his wartime experience.
“I believed I should talk about my
life story,” he said. “Otherwise, our grandchildren will never
know what happened.”
Born in Hood River, Ore., the Nisei
(second-generation Japanese American) visited Japan for
Christmas vacation in 1938 at the age of 11. While there, he got
sick and missed the ship returning to the United States. His
whole family decided to stay in Japan for good.
In April of 1943, after graduating
from high school, Matsuda volunteered to enlist in the Imperial
Japanese Navy. Back then, Navy pilots were already known to
eventually become kamikaze pilots. Yet he had no fear of certain
death.
“The war atmosphere seemed
overwhelming,” Matsuda said. “Everybody was chanting for the
war.”
Kamikaze missions are believed to
have started during the war in the Philippines in 1944. It was a
suicide attack on one of the U.S. aircraft carriers in the
Pacific. By the end of the war, more than 14,000 Japanese
soldiers lost their lives in the suicide missions. Most of them
were pilots, some were human torpedoes, and some were body
attacks on tanks.
Matsuda recalled his mother telling
him before he left home for the war, “If you die, the skull
would go to Yasukuni Shrine so don’t come back alive. Don’t even
think about becoming a POW, so that you can survive.”
Matsuda performed well in the
training camp. His only obstacle was language. As English was
his primary language, he had a hard time adjusting to various
dialects that the other soldiers spoke. He was sometimes picked
on as a result.
In August of 1945, the military
headquarters ordered Matsuda’s unit to go to Okinawa, which the
U.S. military had invaded.
“It was a suicide mission by
airplane or running into the tanks with bombs to kill as much as
possible,” he recalled.
However, Matsuda was ordered to stay
at the city of Hakata in Fukuoka Prefecture to translate the
U.S. military code. While working as a translator, the war
ended. He still doesn’t know what happened to the rest of the
Navy.
After the war, Matsuda worked for
the U.S. military as a translator. When the Korean War broke, he
was ordered to go to Korea to fight. He rejected the order by
writing to then-U.S. president Harry Truman, saying what he went
through as a kamikaze pilot — that he had seen enough dead
bodies, and did not want to kill anymore.
During the early 1950s Matsuda came
back to the United States, settled in California and married. He
still works as a Japanese gardener. In the recent years, he has
volunteered to talk about his war experience at the Santa Clara
Valley Japanese Christian Church in Campbell, where he and his
wife go every Sunday.
Impressed by Matsuda’s story, one of
his son’s friends decided to film the former kamikaze talking
about his experience. It is still in production.
photo by Kota Morikawa/Nichi Bei
Times
*** Matsuda
interview transcript to be posted
Matsumotos
Takeshi (Japanese Army), Noboru (Japanese Army), Harue, Kaoru,
Shizue. See work by John Stephan for details. Brother, Roy
Matsumoto, was a US Army Ranger with Merrill's Marauders in Burma.
Tsutomu Tom Matsumoto was a MIS linguist and served in the
Occupation of Japan. Per article, MIS
Members
with Brothers Serving in Japanese Imperial Forces during WWII:
Roy’s other two brothers, Isao and
Noboru, served in the Japanese military, Noboru in the artillery
in Guadalcanal and Hiroshi in China. Roy’s third brother in Japan
worked as a civilian for the Imperial Japanese Navy.
Kan Matsumura
From Hawaii Under the Rising Sun: Japan's
Plans for Conquest After Pearl Harbor by John
Stephan:
Fumiye Miho
From Hawaii Under the Rising Sun: Japan's
Plans for Conquest After Pearl Harbor by John
Stephan:
Yoshie "Johnny" Mikami
Taxi company owner in Honolulu. See The Broken Seal: The Story of
'Operation Magic' and the Pearl Harbor Disaster by
Farago, p. 146~.
Kay Kiyoshi Miura
Worked as interpreter and translator for the Japanese Consulate in
Hankow, China, then worked as announcer at a Japanese radio station
in Shanghai, then for War Crimes Office after the war. Nisei wife,
Toshiko, was also in Japan during the war. See details in this
PDF (courtesy of Frank Baldassarre).
Torao Morishige
From Hawaii Under the Rising Sun: Japan's
Plans for Conquest After Pearl Harbor by John
Stephan:
Murada (or Murata
- same as Hisao Murata?)
Mentioned in this
article. Nisei Linguists has this:
The Hawaii Nisei well understood
that they would have to fight against Japan, where many had family
ties. Kenichi Murata, thirty-four, told a reporter he already had
one brother in the U.S. Army, but also another brother “on the
other side of the fence,” working as a
radio broadcaster in Tokyo: “I’m ashamed to admit that I
have a brother dishing out Jap propaganda. But both Jack, who’s in
Louisiana, and I will try to wipe out that shame by our record in
the army. We’re going to shove all that propaganda back down the
throats of Tojo and the emperor and their militarists.”
From Linda Holmes:
I scanned the indexes of Unjust
Enrichment and Guests
of the Emperor, double-checking all Japanese names. I've
come up with just one positive ID of a Nisei who went out of his
way to abuse POWs, at the Mukden camp. He was Lt.
Murada, who had round eyes and grew up in San Francisco.
He is referred to by several ex-POWs, on pp. 33, 38, 55, 76 and 93
of Guests
of the Emperor.
Mary Muroya
Joyce
Hirohata, Paul T.
Hirohata - 2004 - 262 pages -
Snippet view
While Yamagata was a Russian POW, his
American-born Nisei wife, Mary Muroya,
suffered the fate of many civilian women waiting
for repatriation to Japan. She worked at
menial jobs and taught English, and was once
almost raped... |
|
Jiro Nakahara
See webpage on Nakahara.
Kunio Nakatani
Was born in 1921 in central California and studied medicine at Keio
University, becoming quite a model student. He was drafted, then
trained to decipher code using his language skills. Became a crew
member on the battleship Yamato,
and died when the Yamato
was attacked and sank. Nakatani's two younger brothers both fought
in the American 442nd Regimental Combat Team in southern Europe.
Michael S. Nakayama
Interpreter at Fukuoka POW Camp #21, Nakama. See NAKAYAMA_Michael_interpreter_FUK-21_Nakama
(PDF)
Genichiro Niimori
AKA "Panama Pete." Senior interpreter in Hong Kong. Excerpts from
book, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads: The
Fall of Hong Kong and the Imprisionment by the Japanese
by Wright-Nooth (2000). Trial case file here: http://hkwctc.lib.hku.hk/exhibits/show/hkwctc/documents/item/47
Nishi
Was at Fukuoka POW Camp #3, Yahata; born and raised in San Francisco
(per Terrence Kirk in The
Secret
Camera: A Marine's Story: Four Years as a POW).
Mitsugi Nishikawa
From Japanese
American
history: an A-to-Z Reference from 1868 to the Present
(Brian Niiya, editor):
See also Bamboo People, p. 281~.
See also this image series re Okimura, Kawakita, Nishikawa (Nisei in
J-military) - Asian Americans and Supreme Court by Kim, in
PDF
format.
Kay Nishimura
From interview
with
Mr. George Fujii for the Japanese
American
Project of the Oral History:
Notes:
1. According to one local historian, this earthquake "destroyed
many buildings and severely damaged the downtown [Orange County]
areas of Santa Ana, Garden Grove, and Anaheim, [and] twelve
persons were killed." See Pamela Hallan-Gibson, The Golden
Promise: An Illustrated History of Orange County (Northridge,
Calif.: Windsor Publications, 1986), 205.
2. The late Orange County historian Leo Friis, in Orange County
Through Four Centuries (Santa Ana, Calif.: Pioneer Press, 1965),
155, provided a vivid discussion of this incident. Because Friis
was Anaheim's city attorney during the World War II years and
closely connected with Orange County's civil defense effort, his
account of this alleged event merits repetition here.
Shortly after midnight on February 25, [1942], American radar
posts "reported an unidentified target about 120 miles west of the
city of Los Angeles." At 2:27 A.M. it was tracked within three
miles of the city and nine minutes later Orange County air raid
sirens sounded. Simultaneously, anti-aircraft guns in the Los
Angeles Harbor area commenced firing. Residents of much of Orange
County could hear the explosion of bursting shells and see the
vivid red-orange balls of fire popping from tracer bullets. On the
following day Secretary of War [Henry] Stimson announced that "as
many as fifteen aircraft, probably commercial planes," caused the
air raid alarm. He theorized that they were flown by enemy agents
in an effort to discover the locations of anti-aircraft batteries
and to demoralize the civilian population. On the other hand,
Secretary of the Navy [Frank] Knox dubbed the whole affair "a
false alarm."... To this day the "Battle of Los Angeles" is a
mystery. Supposedly all civilian planes had been grounded since
December 7, [1941]. No bombs were dropped and no aircraft shot
down although some 1430 shells were fired. It is probable that the
range of the defending guns was inadequate.
3. The Meiji era in Japan began on January 3, 1868, with the
successful coup d'état against the Tokugawa Shogunate by
anti-shogunate forces and the restoration of the emperor to the
throne, and ended on July 12, 1912, with the death of the Meiji
emperor, Mutsuhito. These years witnessed the transformation of
Japan into a Western-style modern state and the emigration of
large numbers of Japanese to the Territory of Hawaii and the
United States. In the words of Stacey Hirose, in Brian Niiya, ed.,
Japanese American History: An A-to-Z Reference from 1868 to the
Present (New York: Facts on File/Japanese American National
Museum, 1993), 230, "Because most of the issei
[immigrant-generation Japanese Americans]... were raised during
this period, they brought with them and passed on to their nisei
children Meiji ideologies, values, manners and patterns of
speech." The subsequent Taisho Era, reigned over by Emperor
Yoshihito, extended from 1912 until December 25, 1926. During
these years, Japan continued along the lines of modernization and
Westernization begun in the Meiji period, and followed policies
generally congenial to Western powers like the United States.
Yoshihito was succeeded as emperor in 1926 by his oldest son
Hirohito, who had been appointed prince regent in 1921 when
Yoshihito became mentally ill; Hirohito's ascent to the throne
officially launched the Showa Era.
4. For the background on and larger context of the Panay Incident,
see Michael Montgomery, Imperialist Japan: The Yen to Dominate
(London: Christopher Helm, 1987), 394-96, 424, and Edward Behr,
Hirohito: Behind the Myth (New York: Villard Books, 1989), 170-71,
244. This incident is covered in many other secondary sources, but
the two accounts mentioned here are both recent and succinct.
5. A terse but very useful social-economic-historical account of
this island, located in San Pedro Bay some twenty-five miles south
of downtown Los Angeles, replete with pertinent bibliographic
references, can be found in Niiya, Japanese American History, 327.
6. See ibid., 344, for an in-depth discussion, with suggested
sources for further reading, on the three-week period of
"voluntary" relocation or resettlement that transpired following
the U.S. government's announcement on March 2, 1942, that Japanese
Americans would be excluded from the West Coast.
7. See ibid., 294-95, for a non-quantitative yet useful discussion
(with references) to the resettlement pattern of Japanese
Americans during World War II.
Of the some 2,000 people who comprised the Japanese American
community in Orange County at the outset of the Evacuation, about
1,500 left the county from Huntington Beach and Anaheim on May 15
and May 17, 1942, for the Poston War Relocation Center in Arizona.
This number did not include those Japanese Americans in the San
Juan Capistrano area of the county, about 40, who were evacuated
from Oceanside in north San Diego County. Then, too, approximately
450 Japanese Americans left Orange County prior to April 30, 1942
(presumably, either as participants in the short-lived "voluntary
relocation" (see note 6 above) or as part of the population
evacuated to one of the nine War Relocation Authority centers
established in addition to Poston. See the letter, dated 26 August
1942, from Roy E. Black, Deputy Agricultural Commissioner,
Department of Agriculture, Orange County, to Dr. A. E. Leighton,
Coordinator, Bureau of Sociological Research, Colorado River War
Relocation Project, Poston, Arizona, Folder 52, Box 15, Collection
3830: Japanese-American Relocation Records [JARR], Department of
Manuscripts and University Archives-Cornell University Libraries
[DMUA-CUL]. This letter is contained in the joint files of Dr.
Leighton and Dr. Morris Opler, who served as the community analyst
for the War Relocation Authority at the Manzanar center, at
Cornell University, where both of these distinguished social
scientists taught during the post-World War II years. For an
inventory of the holdings in this collection of Evacuation
materials, see D. Gesensway, M. Roseman, and G. Solomon, Guide to
the Japanese-American Relocation Centers Records, 1935-1953
(Ithaca, N. Y.: Department of Manuscripts and University Archives,
Cornell University Libraries, 1981).
The letter from Black to Leighton cited above is also useful in
that it provides statistics as to the total acreage farmed by
Japanese Americans in Orange County prior to their evacuation
(approximately 10,000-8,825 leased, 1,175 owned), including a
crop-by-crop breakdown and quantitative information on poultry and
hog breeding activity. The spirit of the time is powerfully
conveyed in Black's concluding remark to Leighton: "You will
realize, of course, that considering the fact that the source of
this information was largely Japanese, we can not guarantee its
accuracy."
The Poston center, officially named the Colorado River Relocation
Center, was located in Yuma County, Arizona; seventeen miles south
of Yuma on the Colorado Indian Reservation, it consisted of three
camps: Poston I, Poston II, and Poston III. Poston I, the largest
and most studied of these camps (whose total peak population of
17,814 made it the most populous of the WRA's relocation centers),
was opened on May 8, 1942, and closed on September 29, 1949.
Poston was under the joint supervision of the Office of Indian
Affairs, Department of the Interior, until January 1, 1944, when
complete administration was assumed by the WRA. See, Niiya,
Japanese American History, 285-86, for a profile of the Poston
center and suggestions for further reading as to its history and
demography.
Although some of the interned population at Poston originating
from Orange County lived in the smaller two camps, the
overwhelming majority lived in the thirty-six blocks of barracks
residences (each housing about 250-300 people) comprising Poston
I. According to the late anthropologist Edward H. Spicer, who
served as Alexander Leighton's assistant for the Bureau of
Sociological Research at Poston before accepting the position of
head of the WRA's Community Analysis Section, the ten contiguous
Orange County-San Diego County blocks (5, 12, 21, 22, 27, 28, 37,
38, 43, 44) at Poston I should be "classified together because of
the similarity of economic, social, and cultural conditions under
which they lived [during the prewar period]." In addition, two
other blocks (6 and 11) contained a substantial number of former
Orange County residents. See Edward H. Spicer, "Statistical
Survey: Blocks," Folder 63, Box 7, Coll. 3830, DMUA-CUL.
George Fujii resided in Block 28 until spring 1943 when, following
his marriage, he moved to Block 27. According to one source, the
reason for this move was a lack of vacant living quarters for
married couples in Block 28. See, "Block #28," Folder 25, ibid.
However, Fujii's change of residence is explained quite
differently in another primary document:
Nakase revealed today the circumstances under which George Fujii,
executive secretary of the Local Council, was kicked out of block
28 recently. It appeared that at the send-off party for the first
contingent of volunteers for the combat unit someone who worked in
the subsistence departments brought a hunk of meat to celebrate
the occasion. Kinjo and two others after the party accused the
kitchen of using food which rightfully belonged to block
residents. The fellow who brought the meat denied it saying, "It
wasn't any of the stuff in the kitchen." They challenged him:
"Then where did you get it?" He answered: "That's none of your
business." They retorted: "Alright, we will report to Snelson."
Kinjo and his gang persuaded George Fujii to report the affair to
Snelson. When the kitchen crew heard of this they were indignant
and called a strike. To settle the matter George Fujii was
transferred to block 27.
See "Block 28 Politics," 20 July 1943, Folder J?, Colorado River
Relocation Center [CRRC], Japanese American Evacuation and
Resettlement Study [JERS], Bancroft Library-University of
California, Berkeley [BL-UCB]. For a guide to this extensive
primary material, see Edward N. Barnhart, comp., Japanese American
Evacuation and Resettlement: Catalog of Material in the General
Library (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California General
Library Berkeley, 1958).
10. This seven-day general strike in the Poston I camp, extending
from November 18-24, 1942, was precipitated by the beating on
November 14, 1942, of a Kibei inmate (Kay Nishimura, the former
brother-in-law of George Fujii) widely suspected among camp
inmates of being an administrative collaborator and FBI informer.
It led to the arrest and jailing (without formal charges filed
against them) of Fujii and Isamu Uchida, two popular interness.
Ultimately, the strike—which never entailed the curtailment of
essential services or encompassed the Poston II and Poston III
camps—was terminated with key concessions to the strikers,
particularly in the area of self-government and Issei political
control, and the establishment of improved relations between the
camp's administration and imprisoned population. For the most
thorough account of the strike and the events leading up to it,
see Alexander Leighton, The Governing of Men: General Principles
and Recommendations Based on Experience at a Japanese Relocation
Camp (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1945). The rich
and varied primary materials upon which this study was based
derived from the Leighton-headed Bureau of Sociological Research
(BSR) at Poston. See fn. 8 above for the bibliographical data
pertaining to this invaluable collection's finding aid at Cornell
University. Many of these same documents are also available in the
Poston materials archived in the Japanese American Evacuation and
Resettlement collection at the Bancroft Library at the University
of California Berkeley (as cited in fn. 9 above); see, in
particular, Folders J 1.12, J 1.811, J 6.16C-D, J 6.18, and J 6.24
(which is a chronological account of the strike prepared by Tamie
Tsuchiyama). An influential revisionist assessment of the Poston
Strike is found in Gary Y. Okihiro, "Japanese Resistance in
America's Concentration Camps: A Re-evaluation," Amerasia Journal
2 (1973): 20-34. See also the trenchant entry on the Poston Strike
in Niiya, Japanese American History, 286, and the relevant
sections of the following three sources: Paul Bailey, City in the
Sun: The Japanese Concentration Camp at Poston, Arizona (Los
Angeles: Westernlore Press, 1971); Toshio Yatsushiro, Politics and
Cultural Values: The World War II Japanese Relocation Centers and
the United States Government (New York: Arno Press, 1978); and
Rita Takahashi Cates, "Comparative Administration and Management
of Five War Relocation Authority Camps: America's Incarceration of
Persons of Japanese Descent during World War II" (Ph.D. diss.,
University of Pittsburgh, 1980).
11. Kay Nishimura lived in the bachelor barracks of Block 14 in
the Poston I camp, where he worked as a translator and interpreter
for the Issei Information Bureau and served on the Temporary
Community Council. Born in 1911 in Seattle, Washington, he lived
in Japan for fifteen years, before returning to Seattle in 1927 to
complete his high school education. After working as a business
manager and interpreter/translator for two Japanese American
vernacular newspapers in Seattle and Los Angeles, in 1940
Nishimura became a rice grower in California's Imperial County. In
the period between the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and
Nishimura's evacuation to Poston in May 1942, he served as
executive secretary for the Imperial County Citizens Welfare
Committee and as an interpreter and translator for the Federal
Bureau of Investigation, Immigration and Naturalization Service,
in El Centro, California. At 10:30 p.m., on November 14, 1942,
Nishimura, while asleep in his Block 14 quarters, "was assaulted
by a gang of eight men dressed in Samurai hoods and armed with
pieces of pipe." See "Exhibit F: Personnel Record of Kay
Nishimura," 23 November 1942, Folder?, JERS, BL-UCB. According to
Alexander Leighton, Poston's reports officer, Norris James, said
that Nishimura "had been beaten and almost killed,...[had]
twenty-six stitches in his head [and] had been semi-conscious all
the next day." See "Series #12: Employment," Folder 6, Box 10,
Coll. 3830, DMUA-CUL. Isamu Uchida, like George Fujii, was a
member of Poston I's Judo Club; a popular instructor, Uchida could
boast of having some 100 dedicated students and loyal supporters.
As with Fujii, also, Uchida resided in Block 28. This block was
very homogeneous in that about 90 percent of its nearly 250 people
came from the agricultural southern coastal region of California
between Los Angeles and San Diego, while twice as many of the
residents were Buddhists as against Christians. This block served
as the camp's "city center," in which were located the main
canteen or stores as well as the police department and the city
jail—the focal point for the Poston Strike (which was solidly
supported by Block 28 residents). See "Block #28," Folder 32, Box
7, ibid. For contemporary personality studies of Nishimura,
Uchida, Fujii, see, respectively, Folders 57, 82, and 13, Box 12,
ibid. In order for researchers to gain access to these studies,
however, permission must be granted both by the individuals
involved (or their heirs) and Alexander Leighton, the former head
of Poston's Bureau of Sociological Research.
12. See, for example, the watercolor "Poston Strike Rally" by Gene
Sogioka depicting the Rising Sun-like flag employed during the
November 1942 uprising by Block 35 residents. Because Sogioka was
employed by Alexander Leighton's Bureau of Sociological Research,
the original watercolor is included within the Poston materials
archived at Cornell University, Mapcase drawers 1-7, ibid. A color
copy of this painting can be found in Deborah Gesensway and Mindy
Roseman, Beyond Words: Images from America's Concentration Camps
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press), 153, and a
black-and-white version is reproduced in Arthur A. Hansen's review
of the Gesensway and Roseman volume, "Representations of an
Imprisoned Poston Past," Journal of Orange County Studies 3/4
(Fall 1989/Spring 1990): 105.
13. Kay Nishimura and George Fujii were both members of the
Temporary Community Council (TCC), which was comprised (by WRA
fiat) entirely of Nisei and Kibei-Nisei (i.e., American citizens).
Issei mockingly designated it the "Child's Council" (the average
age of its representatives was 31.2 years); for them, it
symbolized the creation of an artificial Nisei leadership at the
expense of their natural community and cultural predominance.
While the abolition of this council and its replacement with one
whose membership was open to citizens and non-citizens alike was
certainly one of the objectives (and outcomes) of the Poston
Strike, the roles played by Nishimura and Fujii on the TCC do not,
in fact, seem to have been an "important" factor in the strike.
See, Edward H. Spicer, "Political Organization of Poston I" (25
September 1942), 7-10.
Fujii, in point of fact, was released unconditionally on the
afternoon of November 20, 1942, because of a lack of evidence.
Isamu Uchida, on the other hand, was not set free at this time
because the Poston administration felt that it had strong evidence
of his guilt. Between Fujii's release and the termination of the
strike on November 24, the striking population's chief bone of
contention was that Uchida be tried in camp by his peers instead
of being prosecuted for attempted murder in Yuma County, Arizona
(i.e., outside the camp where, it was argued, no Japanese could
get a fair trial). The ultimate disposition of the Uchida case is
clarified in a 12 June 1943 teletype sent from Poston's director
W. Wade Head to Dillon Myer, the WRA's national director:
RE: ISAMU UCHIDA. HE WAS DELIVERED INTO THE CUSTODY OF THE U.S.
MARSHAL IN YUMA BY ME PERSONALLY FOLLOWING THE STRIKE IN POSTON. A
HEARING WAS HELD BEFORE THE COMMISSIONER AND UCHIDA WAS RELEASED
FOR LACK OF SUFFICIENT EVIDENCE. ON HIS RELEASE HE WAS RETURNED TO
THIS PROJECT. LATER, HEARINGS WERE HELD HERE BY ME AND THE ENTIRE
EVIDENCE ACCUMULATED AGAINST UCHIDA WAS GONE INTO AND FOUND IT WAS
NOT SUBSTANTIAL NOR COMPLETE ENOUGH FOR CONVICTION.
See Folder J 1.14, CRRC, JERS, BL-UCB.
15. In the words of Tamie Tsuchiyama, a University of California,
Berkeley, doctoral candidate in Anthropology who served as a field
researcher/participant-observer for Alexander Leighton's Bureau of
Sociological Research and Dorothy Swaine Thomas's Evacuation and
Resettlement Study, "I signed the petition along with the rest of
the people without full knowledge of the situation. In fact, I had
to sign it, for fear that not doing so would class me as an
undesirable pro-administration individual in the eyes of the block
residents." See Tamie Tsuchiyama, "Aftermath of the Strike,"
Folder J 6.18, ibid.
16. That the arrest and jailing of Fujii and Uchida were but the
visible outward manifestation of the underlying grievances and
dissatisfactions of the Poston I population is a point that is
made pervasively in the relevant primary documents on the Poston
Strike. On the other hand, Fujii's intriguing explanation about
the communication gap between Poston's administration and interned
population that allegedly was created by Kibei translators and
interpreters does not assume saliency in these same sources.
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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--------------------
Also mentioned in 日
本軍兵士になったアメリカ人たち 母国と戦った日系二世, chap. 2 (Americans
who became soldiers of Japanese military - Nisei who fought
against their motherland).
Eiichi Noda
See his Tokyo
trial
review PDF (esp. p9) and this Oct.
23, 1947 newspaper article re Noda's sentencing.
From NARA pamphlet, RESEARCHING
JAPANESE
WAR CRIMES: INTRODUCTORY ESSAYS:
Other documents drawn from the Hoten
prisoners’ experiences are also available. After their liberation,
former POWs at the camp completed questionnaires that documented
the atrocities they suffered or witnessed. Though not all POWs
held at Camp Hoten were aware of the atrocities committed against
other captives, some were eyewitnesses to the executions of
comrades, and the majority claimed to have either experienced or
observed beatings by Japanese guards. Many testimonies and
affidavits, collected in part by Donovan’s recovery team, describe
the behavior of Lt. Miki Toru and Corporal—later Sergeant—Noda
Eiichi, two of the most infamous of Camp Hoten officials.
The testimonies of American POWs led to the prosecution of Miki in
1946 and Noda in 1947. Both Miki’s and Noda’s trial records are
also available in the SCAP records (RG 331).
Because of his background, Noda’s case is particularly
interesting. A second-generation
Japanese American, Noda was one of the most notorious
abusers of Allied POWs at Camp Hoten. Affidavits and transcripts
of U.S. POW testimonies can be found in his prosecution file.
Based on evidence gathered from former U.S. POWs, he was tried as
a Japanese war criminal in Yokohama, Japan, in September 1947.
Citing his participation in the unlawful killing of at least four
men and the beating of countless others, prosecutors charged Noda
with violating the laws and customs of war. The court found Noda
guilty on all ten counts of abusing prisoners, though not of
participating in certain activities that led to the death of four
of them. It sentenced him to twenty years’ imprisonment. One of
the more interesting documents in Noda’s legal file is a clemency
petition that is supported by remarks from an American POW whom
Noda befriended in Hoten.
Fayal affidavit re Noda
(JPG)
?? Nonin, son of Kuwaichi Nonin
From Hawaii Under the Rising Sun: Japan's
Plans for Conquest After Pearl Harbor by John
Stephan:
Haruo Okada
See IMTFE
Review
PDF, pp. 2, 33, 43; also his sister, Hiroka
or Hiroko was in Japan, born in Pacific City, WA, p. 36.
Haruo Okada (age 27) born in US,
graduated from Auborn High School, came to Japan in 1939.
Kiyokura Okimura
Possibly the same as Kikukuro Okumura (Okamura?) in Bamboo People, p.370,
372
See also this image series re Okimura, Kawakita, Nishikawa (Nisei in
J-military) - Asian Americans and Supreme Court by Kim, in
PDF
format. Mentioned in this
article.
Onishi
Nisei interpreter at Fukuoka POW Camp #2 (Nagasaki). Note the
interest of the Japanese personnel in having Fujita "join their
side." Per Foo
Fujita's
book:
We had nisei interpreters in this
camp who, like many, many, other nisei, were caught in Japan when
the war broke out and were forced into the service of Japan even
though they were American citizens; in many cases they did not
fare much better than we POWs. The oldest one of these was the
chief interpreter, a guy by the name of Onishi,
from San Diego, California. He came to me and told me to
have all my gear packed and be ready to leave. I asked him where I
was going and if anyone else was going along. He told me that I
was the only one going and that I was being sent to Tokyo and he
thought that it might possibly have something to do with
propaganda. I thought that he knew that I was going to be executed
and was only trying to allay my fears by mentioning the propaganda
aspect. I was convinced that "Sgt. Teeth" was correct and the fact
that no one besides me was going convinced me of this. I felt that
my days on this earth were truly numbered and so I went to the
officer's room and called for Lt. Allen and asked to speak with
him and Maj. Horrigan, the senior American officer in camp, and
then proceeded to tell them what was about to happen and that I felt that the Japanese were going
to make one final attempt to get me to join their side or else.
Harley Ozaki (Toyonishiki)
From Wikipedia:
Toyonishiki Kiichiro (3 February
1920 - 26 September 1998) was a Japanese-American sumo wrestler
who joined the sport shortly before World War II. He was one of
the first foreign-born wrestlers to reach the top makuuchi
division.
He was born as Harley Ozaki in Pierce, Colorado, although he was
to list Chikujo, Fukuoka as his birthplace on the banzuke ranking
sheets. He joined Dewanoumi stable in January 1938. He had been
introduced to the stable by a relative during a visit to Japan.
Initially he knew nothing about sumo, assuming that the sand
covered clay dohyo was made of concrete.
He was the fifth Japanese-American in sumo and the first to reach
elite sekitori status. He never had a losing score in his eight
years in sumo. He was promoted to the second juryo division in
January 1943 and reached the top makuuchi division in May 1944. He
scored six wins against four losses, but this was to be his last
tournament before being drafted into the Japanese army.
He still had American citizenship and had really wanted to fight
for the United States, but as he could not return to the US he
agreed to change his citizenship at the urging of the Japan Sumo
Association. He adopted the Japanese name of Kiichiro Ozaki.
He survived the war but decided not to return to sumo, believing
he could make a better living as an interpreter. He regained his
US citizenship and in his later years ran a ryokan (inn) in Tokyo
with his wife.
Per Asahi News article (11-22-2022):
Toyonishiki,
the
first Sekitori of U.S. nationality, second-generation
Japanese-American, under surveillance, drafted... tumultuous
history
Toyonishiki was born Kiichiro Ozaki in Colorado, U.S.A., in 1920.
When he was 17 years old, he came to Japan and joined the
Dewanoumi stable, where he won many matches with his 187-cm height
and springy movements. However, when the Pacific War broke out in
1941, he was watched by the Special Higher Police, and on the
advice of his stablemaster, he became a Japanese citizen. He was
drafted into the former army and worked as a monitor and
translator for U.S. radio broadcasts. After the war, he ran an inn
in Tokyo. His military service in Japan was a stumbling block, and
he was only able to return to his home country 15 years after the
war ended. From 1993, he lived in the town of Chikujo (Fukuoka
Pref.), where he died in 1998 at the age of 78.
George Y. Ozasa
From Bamboo People by Chuman,
starting on p. 381?:
Richard Sakakida
Perhaps could be called an undercover double agent, would make for a
good comparative study of how citizenship change worked. Interesting
chapter on him here:
Quite a bit on him, including what Roger Mansell had (sakakida19.htm):
More from GoogleBooks:
See this here for more Nisei names:
From Nisei
Linguists:
Footnote 22: To avoid complications,
some Nisei renounced their Japanese citizenship before they
traveled to Japan. Richard Sakakida’s mother did this in the
summer of 1941 on behalf of her son after he secretly enlisted in
the Army and was sent to the Philippines. Richard Sakakida and
Wayne S. Kiyosaki, A Spy in
Their Midst (Lanham, Md.: Madison Books, 1995), pp.
137–38.
From a review of Nisei Linguists:
In fact, the story of the Nisei
linguists extends from before the Second World War until the end
of the Cold War. As McNaughton notes, the CIC had sent two Nisei
officers, Arthur Komori and Richard Sakakida, under cover into
Manila in the spring of 1941 to gather intelligence on Japanese
fifth-column activity in the US colony.
FOOTNOTE: Sakakida related his wartime exploits to his
brother-in-law, Wayne Kiyosaki, who wrote A
Spy in Their Midst:
The World War II Struggle of a Japanese-American Hero
(1995). An unclassified review of this book appeared in Studies
in
Intelligence 40, no. 2 (1996).
Sydney Sako
Web Posted: 09/26/2009 12:00 CDT
As a Soviet prisoner of war in
World War II, Seiichi Sakamoto was far different from the
other Japanese soldiers.
The Texas-reared soldier
graduated at the top of his class at South San Antonio
High School and was a very proud Aggie.
Sydney Sako, who changed his
name when he became an American citizen, served in the
U.S. Air Force and later taught at the Defense Language
Institute at Lackland AFB. A former president of the
Japanese-American Society who helped in the Japanese booth
at the Texas Folklife Festival, Sako died Wednesday of
heart failure. He was 91.
“He still was a kind, gentle,
understanding person, even with what he went through,”
said his daughter, Naomi Maulden.
Although he was born in Japan,
his parents had lived in the United States for years and
came to Texas when they returned from Japan. The young man
graduated two years early from South San High School in
1934 as valedictorian, and decided to attend Texas
A&M.
After college, he wanted to
learn Japanese and become a missionary. In 1940, he used
his savings and traveled to Tokyo, where he enrolled in a
special school for American-born Japanese who wanted to
learn the language.
The following year, Japan
attacked Pearl Harbor, and he was drafted into the
Japanese army in 1943. After he finished his physical
training, he was sent to Harbin, a city in northeastern
China, for Russian language training.
Russian forces captured Harbin
in 1945 and took thousands of Japanese soldiers as
prisoners. Sako was sent to a labor camp in Siberia.
Released as a Japanese POW five years later, he returned
to Japan.
He made his way to Tokyo and
wanted to report to American counterintelligence his
observations of Soviet construction projects in Siberia.
When he entered the intelligence building, he entered an
elevator and saw a familiar face inside: one of his
brothers, in an American uniform.
His mother sent him the money
he needed to return home. His application to become a
citizen was denied, but he was allowed to join the Air
Force. Racial restrictions on immigrations were abolished
in 1952, and he was naturalized two years later and
changed his name.
A year after he became a
citizen, a chaplain introduced him to an interpreter who
became his wife, and in 1956, they returned to the United
States.
Sako worked 32 years as a
language instructor with the Defense Language Institute
and Officer Training School at Lackland.
In November 1991, the local
A&M Club named him Aggie of the Month.
Iwao Peter Sano
Iwao Peter Sano, a California Nisei, sailed to Japan in 1939
to become an adopted son to his childless aunt and uncle. He was
fifteen and knew no Japanese. In the spring of 1945, loyal to his
new country, Sano was drafted in the last levy raised in the war.
Sent through Korea to join the Kwantung Army in Manchuria, Sano
arrived in Hailar, one hundred miles from the Soviet border, as the
war was coming to a close. In the confusion that resulted when the
war ended, Sano had the bad luck to be in a unit that surrendered to
the Russians. It would be nearly three years before he was released
to return to Japan. Sano's account of life in the POW and labor
camps of Siberia is the story of a little-known part of the great
conflagration that was World War II. It is also the poignant memoir
of a man who was always an outsider, both as an American youth of
Japanese ancestry and then as a young Japanese man whose loyalties
were suspect to his new compatriots.
Also mentioned in 日
本軍兵士になったアメリカ人たち 母国と戦った日系二世, chap. 2 (Americans
who became soldiers of Japanese military - Nisei who fought
against their motherland).
James Sasaki
Born in Japan, set up radio transmitter, spy?
Discussed in Unbroken. See also his Tokyo
trial
record (PDF). Was at Ofuna
Interrogation Center as interpreter and translator;
includes various testimonies re his actions, including by Zamperini.
Was spy per Zamperini's book, Devil At My Heels; see
many references to him there in that book; excerpts in PDF:
Samuel Shinohara
Shinohara mentioned in Roger Mansell's guam
war trials.wpd
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.
Here are the charges against him -- scans of these in SHINOHARA
TRIAL folder:
From War Crimes Trials affidavit:
From:
http://users.ap.net/~burntofferings/adsusmc_guam_parttwo.html
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
See this PDF file that mentions Suzuki on pg. 10 and others who were
in Japanese Army: Wataru
Misaka
- Philippines - Jerry Suzuki
Clifton Takamura
Kamikaze pilot, Chiran Base. Crashed his Zero into the USS Missouri
during battle for Okinawa. This
article courtesy of John Stephan.
James Takeuchi
Nisei? interpreter in Taiwan:
Hanama Harold Tasaki
From Hawaii Under the Rising Sun: Japan's
Plans for Conquest After Pearl Harbor by John
Stephan:
Kei Tateishi
Per this
article: Journalist; during the war, worked for Domei News
Agency as a translator. Later worked for Time magazine and the
Associated Press. Article quotes him as saying, "... perhaps
thousands of Nisei were forced to serve in Japan's army and navy.
But the exact number may never be known because the Japanese
government did not record evidence of dual citizenship when it
conscripted them."
Iva Ikuko Toguri
Probably the most well-known of all Nisei in Japan. She referred to
herself as: "Orphan Ann(ie)," "your little playmate, Ann," "your
favorite little enemy, Ann," "your sworn enemy," "your bitter enemy,
Ann." There is an immense amount of archival material on her, not to
mention all the books and online chapters on her life, e.g. here.
See transcripts of her broadcasts (rose1a.pdf) where she
refers to the listeners as "my enemies the Orphans of the South
Pacific," "a programme of dangerous and wicked propaganda for my
victims in Australia and the South Pacific," "my Boneheads in the
South Pacific... I'm lulling their senses before I annihilate them
with my nail file," "Dangerous enemy propaganda, so beware!" Much
other info in rose1b.pdf
and rose1c.pdf
files. Also rosecourt.pdf
court summary.
NOTE: These have been compiled into Iva
Toguri FBI files. This section excerpted: Henshaw
interview - list of POWs at Bunka Camp - pages 8-19.
See also: US vs Toguri
trial documents (includes photos at end)
Other Nisei with her (total of 12?) -- from They Called Her Tokyo Rose
by Gunn:
Re Bunka Camp,
known as Surugadai Gijitsu
Kenkyusho (Surugadai Research Institute): see TOGURI DAQUINO v UNITED STATES - US
Court of Appeals 1950
Nisei friends of Iva's who were at Waseda Int'l Institute:
Chiyeko Ito
Yoniko Matsunaga
Excerpts from Gunn's book (PDF): DeWolfe memo re Toguri
(2 pages) and re Toguri citizenship (3 pages)
Excerpts from Treason on the Airwaves: Three
Allied Broadcasters on Axis Radio during World War II
by Judith Keene (2008):
- Issei and Nisei ties to Japan
- hundreds of Nisei working for J-media
- several hundred Nisei at Radio Tokyo
- re Toguri and Nisei giving up citizenship
Broadcasts can be found here: https://archive.org/details/TokyoRose
See also EarthStation1.com's
Radio Propaganda Page: "Orphan Ann" ("Tokyo Rose")
Additional info in Tokyo Rose / An American Patriot: A
Dual Biography by Frederick Close -- Toguri was not
"a villain or a traitor," only a "flawed human being." For those
interested in reading about "debunking the myth," see Tokyo Rose: Orphan of the Pacific
by Masayo Duus.
Related treason case in the US regarding the three
Shitara sisters can be found at: Prosecution of the Shitara Sisters.
Another article here, in four parts: Betrayal on Trial: Japanese American
"Treason" in World War II.
Mock US Navy "Citation" for Tokyo Rose, Aug. 7, 1945
by Capt. O'Brien, The Navy Reporter
Names of
officials and employees associated with Radio Tokyo, or sought out
after the war by the FBI for possible interviews:
Abbeg,
Lilly - Swiss broadcaster
Domoto, Kaji - Nisei;
graduated from Amherst College; lived in Japan from 1925; was in
contact with the Emperor's household; after Uno, took over senior
civilian position at Bunka Camp in early 1945 and became main
interpreter; helped POWs; Foo Fujita quoted Domoto as saying,
"America is a very bad nation. They have no respect for life and
are a bunch of muderers."
Fujimuro, Nobuo - listed
in Streeter
PDF
Fujiwara, Katherine -
typist
Furuya, Mieko - born in
Calif.; became Japanese citizen; typist and broadcaster on Zero
Hour (Feb.-May 1945); sometimes substituted for Toguri; later
married Kenkichi Oki
Hayakawa, Ruth Sumiko -
native of Fukuoka, Japan, but lived in the US from childhood
through college; usually replaced Toguri on Sundays after Toguri
became a broadcaster; suspected of being a Kenpeitai agent; Uno
stated that the Zero Hour "featured Miss Ruth Hayakawa as Tokyo
Rose"; "soft voice and Boston accent"... probably the "Tokyo Rose"
GI's remembered as she had the soft and sweet voice; after the war
worked as interpreter for the Commanding General of the US Army in
Fukuoka
SAME PERSON?: A Ruth Sumiko
Kacho is mentioned in MICHI KAWAI, JAPANESE EMIGRANTS
AND NISEI by Tomoko Ozawa (2015): "'I applied for a
position at the Overseas Broadcasting Station Radio Tokyo as an
English announcer and was hired in March of 1943.' After working
for the radio station, Kacho entered the American Department of
the Ministry of Trade and Industry in Occupied Japan."
Hayasaki, Edward H. -
doctor called in to administer shots at Bunka Camp; Per Mark
Streeter: "Hayasaki laughingly said he was only a horse doctor."
( Higuchi, Mary Kazuko -
born on Maui Island; arrived in Japan in 1935; affiliated with
Radio Tokyo; returned to Hawaii in June 1941; worked with FCC)
Higuchi, Mary Morris -
Eurasian; worked with NHK overseas bureau 1940-1945; typed some of
the radio scripts
Hirakawa, "Joe" Tadaichi -
born in Okayama, moved to Portland, OR, in 1919, then to Seattle;
returned to Japan Oct. 1937; worked at NHK, replaced Ikeda as
chief of broadcasting section
?( Hirakawa, Yuichi - chief
announcer of the English division) <-- same as above?
Hishikari, Takabune -
replaced "silly giggling" Count Ikeda as Bunka camp director
Hiyoshi, Naomichi - listed
in Streeter
PDF
Hollingsworth, Reggie -
German broadcaster; looked and talked like an Englishman
Hyuga, Seizo David - along
with Domoto, was in contact with the Emperor's household and would
pass information to Cousens
Igarashi, Shinjiro - radio
announcer for Radio Tokyo from Nov. 1943 to Aug. 1945
Ikeda, Norizane - chief of
broadcasting section; was instructed to research ways to influence
Pres. Roosevelt, also to watch for news re wild fires on the US
West Coast as a result of the balloon bombs from Japan; was later
replaced by Joe Tadaichi; was in Australia when war broke out and
subsequently interned for a short time
Ikeda,
Yukio "Count"? - became associated with Radio Tokyo in May 1944;
head of Personnel Section at Radio Tokyo 1944-45
Ishii, Kenneth -
announcer for Radio Tokyo; sister is Mary Ishii; worked for
Reuters after the war
Ishii, Mary - half
Japanese, half English; broadcaster on Zero Hour (June-July 1945);
spoke with a British accent as some listeners claimed Tokyo Rose
did, and she too replaced Toguri at various times; brother is Ken
Ishii
Ito, Chieko (Chiyeko) - at
18 years of age, accompanied Toguri to Japan in 1941
Kabayama, Count - Per Mark
Streeter: "Count Kabayama’s connection with Bunka was in an
advisory capacity to the other Japanese authorities. Count
Kabayama spoke perfect English, having been educated at Oxford in
England and having spent a great deal of time in the Unites
States. The Kabayama family was on of the most influential in
Japan."
Kanzaki, Yoneko - Nisei;
broadcast from Radio Tokyo on the "German Hour"
Kato, Margaret - brought
up in London
Kojima, Taisaku - listed
in Streeter
PDF
Kuroishi, Yoshio Edward
Matsuda, Emi - Japanese
Foreign Office employee with dual citizenship
Matsunaga, Yoneko Ruth
"Toots" - introduced records on the German Hour; said the Japanese
forced her to work as a torpedo painter and later as a broadcaster
<--CONFIRM NOT SAME AS ABOVE KANZAKI, YONEKO
M(N?)iino, Hiroshi
Mino, Kan
Mitsushio, George
Hideo (aka George Nakamoto)
- born in San Francisco, Calif.; worked for Domei before Radio
Tokyo; registered as Japanese citizen but had dual citizenship
before, presumably (per FBI, "regained his Japanese
citizenship."); head of the Zero Hour program from June 1942
Per Close in Tokyo Rose American
Patriot (2010):
To prevent confusion, I have used the name "George Mitsushio"
throughout the book. Mitsushio was his correct name after 1944,
and it appears most often in FBI files. His birth name was Hideo
Tanabe. His father, Sanzo Tanabe, died in Japan in 1911, his
mother remarried, and he was adopted by his stepfather, Kanehito
Nakamoto. During his years in the United States, he was known as
George Nakamoto. Iva referred to him as Nakamoto. His biological
father's actual birth name was Mitsushio, but following Japanese
custom, Sanzo adopted the family name of his mother (Tanabe)
when that family produced no male children. When George returned
to Japan, he again became Hideo Tanabe. He assumed the surname
Mitsushio on July 1, 1944, when that family name was restored.
Were all this not complicated enough, on Radio Tokyo Mitsushio
assumed the persona of "Frank Watanabe." Worse, an actual
Watanabe worked on Zero Hour for the Japanese military to make
sure nothing favored the Allies. In summary, George Mitsushio,
George Nakamoto, Hideo Tanabe, and broadcaster Frank Watanabe
are the same person.
Momotsuka, Kiwamu - expert
radio engineer qualified by Japanese Govt. and worked at Radio
Tokyo from before the war
Moriyama, Hisashi - staff
member of Zero Hour program
Muraoka, Kaoru Katherine -
born in Calif.; married Reyes on Sept. 29, 1944; typist;
substituted for Toguri regularly as a broadcaster; her support of
the Japanese caused Toguri to remark with some bitterness, "I
never could figure out how she came out smelling like a rose. I
never could figure that out at all"
Murayama, Ken - from New
York; reporter for Domei News in Manila; wrote scripts for Myrtle
Lipton ("Manila Rose")
Per Kawashima in The
Tokyo Rose Case: Treason on Trial (2013):
According to Duus, the deposition by Ken Murayama, a New York
nisei, seemed more crucial. A Domei News Agency reporter in
Manila, Murayama had written scripts for Myrtle Lipton, known as
“Manila Rose.” Murayama, in his deposition, testified that the
scripts he wrote for her “were designed to create a sense of
homesickness among troops in the Southwest Pacific. Their tone
was one of trying to make the soldiers recall certain good times
they might have had when they were back in the United States. .
. . We had stories of girls having dates with men at home, while
possibly their sweethearts and husbands might be fighting in the
Southwest Pacific area.”
Murayama also testified that Myrtle Lipton had a very sexy
voice, like “a torch singer . . . quite low-pitched, husky . . .
the sort of voice that would carry well and was in keeping with
the general tenor of the program itself.”
The objective of the defense in the trial was to distinguish the
“Orphan Ann” broadcasts from those of Tokyo Rose, which were
originating either from Radio Tokyo or from one of the other
Japanese stations in Asia, like the “German Hour” and Myrtle
Lipton’s broadcasts. The latter two certainly more closely
resembled “Tokyo Rose” broadcasts of rumor. More specifically,
Myrtle Lipton, whose broadcasts were confused with Iva’s, was
the strongest candidate for “Tokyo Rose.” The government had
thus failed to prove that Iva had been Tokyo Rose and had made
those announcements that Myrtle Lipton was supposed to have
announced.
Murayama, Tamotsu - Nisei
interpreter
Muto,Yoshio
Mutsu, Jan - Domei News
Nakabayashi, Jim
Nakamura, Satoshi - Master
of Ceremonies on Zero Hour from Aug. 1944 to Feb. 1945
Nakashima, Leslie S. -
from Hawaii; was with Domei News Agency, then worked at Radio
Tokyo
Nii, Motomu - born in
Hawaii; script rewriter
Noda, George
Okamoto, Shigeru - radio
engineer qualified by Japanese Govt. and worked at Radio Tokyo
from before the war
Oki, Kenkichi - born in
Sacramento, Calif.; attended New York University; became Japanese
citizen in 1940?; supervised "Zero Hour"; per Close: Oki and
Mitsushio "were among the 10,000 Nisei who had returned to Japan
because they could not find work in America. Although they never
formally renounced their U.S. citizenship, both disliked the
United States, now considered themselves Japanese, and openly
supported Japan's war efforts."
Oki, Mieko - Kenkichi's
wife, née Furuya
Os(z?)aki, Ray? Roy?
Oshidari, Shinichi - Nisei
musician and skit writer
Ozasa, Teruo - born in
Salt Lake City; moved to Japan in 1940; became a Japanese citizen
because "it was impossible to get a job if you weren't Japanese";
was sound engineer for Zero Hour
Saisho, Foumy -
Japanese-born but married and then divorced a Nisei; was in charge
of censoring scripts prepared for broadcasting
Sato, Asako - worked
for Domei; said Tokyo Rose was either Suyama, Hayakawa or Toguri
Sawada, Shinnojo
Shimomura, H.
Sugiyama, F. Harris
"Bucky" - staff announcer at Radio Tokyo
Suyama, June - from
British Columbia, Canada; previously known as "The Nightingale of
Nanking"; "the most exciting female personality... top salary of
150 yen"; Toguri recalls "she was the one with the soft, sultry
voice but she mainly did the news"
Tanabe, Yoshitoshi -
radio engineer qualified by Japanese Govt. and worked at Radio
Tokyo from before the war
Tasaki, Hanama - civilian
Japanese interpreter. Per Mark Streeter in They
Called Us Traitors:
I was very much surprised to find
out that Tasaki was a very active member of the Japanese
underground who was working for the overthrow of the military
clique who were in control of the Japanese government, and that
Major Hifumi was also high in the underground movement. Tasaki
was not content with just telling me these things but took me to
see quite a number of Japanese who were in the underground
movement. They had agents in Naval Headquarters, Army
headquarters, Domei, the Japanese Broadcasting Company, the
Japanese Information Bureau, the foreign office, the Tokyo
police department, and the neighborhood associations, even the
Japanese Diet. The Emperor’s Brother Prince Kuni was in favor of
their actions, however belonging to the Royal family could not
be an active participating member. A former member of the
Japanese Diet was now working in the Bunka offices, as was Maso
Takabatake of the foreign office and others including some
Japanese women translators. Bunka was fast becoming one of the
principles working centers of the underground movement. Tasaki
solemnly told me that if any of us were caught it would mean
certain death and for that reason, we had to be doubly careful,
working right under the noses of the military clique.
Togasaki, Kiyoshi "George"
- born in San Francisco and graduated from the University of
California in 1920; per Toguri: "Mr. Togasaki took over the
running of the Zero Hour program from about August of 1944 to
about March 1945. He was connected with the English paper, Nippon
Times, offices in Tokyo, Japan. He is at present English editor
for the same paper. I understand he is a national of Japan,
educated in the United States, speaks English very well." Per
Close: Ran the Nippon Times until 1956, was a Christian who helped
missionaries in Japan, and became president of Rotary
International.
Toguri, Ikuko Iva -
employed at Radio Tokyo from Aug. 23, 1943 until Sept. 26, 1945;
never registered as a Japanese citizen, but tried to recover her
Japanese citizenship, then later cancelled that request.
Per Close in Tokyo Rose American
Patriot (2010):
After the war ended, the other women who broadcast and worked
for the Japanese on the dozens of radio programs, including Zero
Hour, also disappeared from public view. So did the many Nisei,
male and female, that Iva met at Domei, Radio Tokyo, and
elsewhere in Japan. They were a sore subject with her because
too many sold out their allegiance. Remembering them elicited
from Iva a rare outburst of anger. "I dropped many of my Nisei
friends because they would say, 'Oh, isn't it great! We're
winning the war!' And I said, 'What the hell do you mean? We are
winning? By we, do you mean the Japanese?' Isn't it ironic that
these people came back to the U.S. without any problems as
devoted United States' citizens. They deserted the victorious
Japanese and now they're with the victorious Americans. I just
want to spit in their faces. Some of them had the gall to write
me and say how happy they were I had gotten my pardon and all
that baloney-I'd use another expression if I weren't a lady. It
just burns me up. Every one of those monkeys would say, 'We're
winning the war!'"
This bitter complaint represents Iva's hardened attitudes late
in her life. In 1948, she did not condemn her fellow Nisei so
universally, writing, "In December of 1943 there were quite a
few Nisei girls who started to work at Domei and ... I felt it
best to ... get away from the Niseis who were hard to size up in
their feelings towards the war. I had heard that some of them
had taken Japanese citizenship and wondered why I never said
anything about becoming a Japanese citizen." Her assessment of
fellow broadcaster Ruth Hayakawa typifies her change over the
decades. In 1987, Iva disparaged Hayakawa as "someone who's
going to make damn sure she's not on the losing side." But in
1948, she wrote that Ruth "came to see me on the Sunday before I
was rearrested on August 26, 1948. She offered to help in every
way possible and she asked that she be called as my witness
should it be necessary to do so." Hayakawa testified via
deposition.
Topping, Genevieve - known
as "Mother"; 83 yrs. old, the wife of an American missionary;
along with Hayakawa and Furuya as the first women broadcasters for
"Humanity Calls"
Tsuneishi, Shigetsugu - Major with Army Propaganda
Section at Radio Tokyo, taking part in psychological warfare
against US troops; "in charge of propaganda and the collection of
news and information regarding the military activities of
Americans"; prior to end of the war referred to Toguri as "Tokyo
Rose"
Uno, Kazumaro "Buddy" -
grew up in Salt Lake City, UT; first came to Japan in 1937; was
civilian journalist with Japanese Army in Shanghai; in March 1942
was on Corregidor to interview captured US GI's; supervised POW
scriptwriters and broadcasters at Bunka Camp; in autumn of 1944
was transferred to Manila to oversee NHK broadcasts
Watanabe, Hodge (Chujo?) -
"Chujo" is listed in Streeter
PDF
Yamaz(s?)aki, Isamu -
Vice-Chief of American Continental Section of Radio Tokyo
Yoshii, Charles "Chuck" -
worked at NHK since 1935 and was called the "Japanese Lord Haw
Haw"
Mary Tomita
Book by Tomita, Dear
Miye:
Letters Home from Japan, 1939-1946.
Masao Tomita
Interpreter from Pomona, CA, suspect under investigation in Sasebo,
Nov. 30, 1945:
Taihei Tsuda
TSUDA Taihei (Nisei, interpreter) at Tokyo POW Camp #11D, Tsurumi.
Was born in the US in 1906, lived there till 7 yrs. old, in Japan
1913-1925, in US until 1935, in Italy until 1939 then back to US,
then back to Japan in 1940, became interpreter in April 1944 as
civilian for J-military.
See full IMTFE
trial
document T-308.
Harry Ueno (and wife,
Atami)
From The Asian Reporter,
V21, #09 (May 2, 2011):
Henry spent his childhood in the
shadow of a war between his two countries. A U.S. citizen, he
lived in Japan from 1931 to 1949. While people of Japanese
ancestry were imprisoned in the United States during World War II,
in Japan he and his family were dodging bombs day and night. Two
houses belonging to Henry’s uncles — with whom Henry was staying
on both occasions — were destroyed by incendiary bombs. The
aftermath of that war, he says, "was even worse. There was nothing
to eat for two years."
Both Henry and Atami were born in the U.S. — Henry in Pendleton,
Oregon and Atami in Hilo, Hawaii. Atami moved from Hawaii to Japan
when she was 12, but met Henry on a ship travelling from Japan to
the United States in 1949. Atami disembarked in Honolulu, but
Henry was headed for Portland.
From Henry Ueno Interview
at Densho Digital Archives:
When I was sixteen, the year 1941, I
was, I received a letter from district office of city that I
should appear to take a physical, and those days, a lot of my
friends included too, volunteer for the youth military schools and
that type of thing, and I suppose they desperately need soldiers,
but they cannot draft underage people, so they probably direct the
young mens for the different schools, the trainings and that type
of thing, and I took a test and passed the physical. They asked me
whether my mother, my parents were, approved of my joining the
service. And I didn't really expected this because, young, but I
start thinking, gee, what to answer this, you know.
At that time, I knew I was American citizen, but I just stop,
think, and quiet for a while, then I thinking all the situations
how my mother feels, all the relatives. My brothers, the Japanese
army, and can I refuse. That's the biggest fear, can I refuse. If
I refuse, tell them I can't serve, I'm American citizen. Then how
they feel, how they'll treat it, so I didn't answer that
questions, and the city people said, "How come you don't answer
all my questions?" Then I have to confide, you know. Finally, I'm
American citizen, so that was it. They cannot draft me, draft
American citizen. And then the day goes on. And about a few months
later, my mother in hometown received from town hall that I was
given Japanese citizenship. I wasn't asked for it, you know.
So anyway, so they could technically draft me, I
was dual citizenship, and they did. But fortunately
because of the incident, being American citizen, war ended just a
few days before my induction date. I didn't know exactly what
they're going to do to me because I'm sixteen years old. They
probably send me to youth training center and whatever, but I was
saved by the bell. That was just a terrible things in my
situations. My life is just so complicated, the half brothers and
my brothers and all that type of things.
Fred Uyeminami
Born in Seattle, WA, consultant to Imperial Japanese Navy; "...in
Japan during the war and is mentioned in several of the US Navy’s
technical reports of Japan after the war... and he is mentioned
somewhere in the public press of the 1930s justifying Japan’s arms
and weapons programs."
Kazumaro "Buddy" Uno
NOTE: one of Buddy's brothers --> Edison Tomimaro Uno, "father of
the redress movement"
See CIA
DOC_0000112821.pdf on p.16 and p.29.
See Tokyo Rose doc rose1b.pdf
(p. 17, heavily redacted; p. 57) re info on Uno being in charge of
the "Hinomaru Hour."
Whole chapter on him, The
Meaning
of Loyalty: The Case of Kazumaro Buddy Uno (from Before
internment: essays in prewar Japanese American history by Yûji
Ichioka).
From a fellow researcher:
I'm presuming that most list
members are aware of Kazamuro "Buddy" Uno, the
American Nisei who lost his citizenship due to his service
in the Japanese
Army before Pearl Harbor, and who became a well known
figure in the Japanese
Army Press Bureau before and during the war.
In 1942, he wrote a book, in English, which was published
in Shanghai by the
Shanghai Evening Post and Mercury - it had been taken over
by the Japanese
and run as an English language daily in the city. During
my research I
interviewed people who recall reading this book in
occupied Shanghai.
The text, I believe, is posted on the web. However, I
recently viewed a
copy of this book and took digital photos of the pictures
in the book.
Should anyone wish to receive copies of these, let me
know.
-------------------------------------------------
To those who expressed interest in the Corregidor photos
taken by Kazumaro
"Buddy" Uno, the American Nisei who joined the Japanese
Army Press Bureau, I
will send them out in a few days.
Several people asked about Kazumaro Uno. He was an
American who grew up in
Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. He went to Japan in 1938
and spent most of
the war in Shanghai, overseeing the Japanese controlled
English language
daily, the Shanghai Evening Post and Mercury. He was
covered the fall of
Corregidor and on his return to Shanghai wrote his account
as a book. He
was sent back to the Philippines in late 1944, and was
captured there after
the war. After being imprisoned in Manila for a period, he
was sent back to
Japan. He died there in the 1950s. Three of his brothers
fought for the US
during the war. The rest of his family was interned.
The book is rather scarce. The text can be found on the
web at:
http://corregidor.org/book_uno/introduction.htm
Because Uno grew up in America, he was fluent in
"American" English and
spoke to many of the men captured on Corregidor. He also
spoke to many of
the Fourth Marines, who had only a few months before been
stationed in
Shanghai, and thus had many friends in that city. Uno
brought back many
messages from these Marines to friends and acquaintances
in Shanghai when he
returned to the city in the summer of 1942.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RE: Uno
Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 20:58:57 -0500
There were a number of American Nisei who served in the
Japanese armed forces or worked in support roles. The best
known was Buddy Uno, probably because of his presence
during the surrender at Corregidor, and his work with
American POWs producing propaganda radio shows. According
to Lt. Col. Shigetsugu Tsuneishi, who was in charge of
Japanese propaganda in English, there were “more than 200
Japanese Americans were employed by the Japanese
government in propaganda roles.” These included several
American Nisei women who collectively became known among
GIs as Tokyo Rose.
Corregidor, Isle of Delusion was published in Shanghai
during the war in an English and Japanese language
version. Some time ago I came across a copy in the Cornell
library and I made copies of the photos and sent them to a
number of list members. The text of the book is available
online. I also have it as a Word Document.
There is scattered information about Uno on the internet,
some of it erroneous. (One source claims he did not
survive the war, but he did.) The US Justice Department
ruled that by joining the Japanese Army Press Bureau in
1939 he expatriated himself and thus was not a US citizen
at the time of this alleged treasonous activity. He was
captured in the Philippines and eventually returned to
Japan. He died there in the 1950s.
Hajima Masuda, a graduate of Venice High School, Venice,
California, was a Nisei captured at the end of the war –
in Canton, where he had ties to German intelligence. Jim
Katsumi Yoshida was another Nisei who served with the
Japanese army in China. He stated that he knew of several
Nisei who served in the Japanese army. I have documents
from NARA pertaining to both of these men.
Another name which has popped up: Ray Uyeshima (or
Ueshima). Don’t have anything on him but I believe he was
from California and worked for the Japanese in Shanghai.
Another Nisei who was convicted of treason and ended up in
Alcatraz was Tomoya Kawakita. He was a prison guard who
was recognized by a former American POW after the war,
while shopping in a Los Angeles department store. Here are
a couple of links pertaining to him:
http://home.comcast.net/~eo9066/Kawakita.html
http://www.nichibeitimes.com/articles/stories.php?subaction=showfull&id=1177026213&archive=&start_from=&ucat=2&
I am slowly collecting material on Uno, as he is one of
the main focuses of my next project – a nonfiction account
of several Americans in Shanghai before and during the
war, including an undercover ONI agent.
|
Excerpts from Treason on the Airwaves: Three
Allied Broadcasters on Axis Radio during World War II
by Judith Keene (2008):
Frank Wada
Born in California, served as a truck driver for the Japanese army
in Manchuria. After the war, went back to his job as a mining
engineer for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Mentioned in this
article.
Clyde Wakatake
Worked for Domei News Agency in Tokyo, then as a translator under
the Japanese Naval Press Bureau in Shanghai, then later with the War
Crimes Office. See details in this
PDF (courtesy of Frank Baldassarre).
Shigeo Yamada
Yuzuru Tachibana wrote about Yamada in his 1994 book, Teikoku Kaigun shikan ni natta
Nikkei Nisei (A Second-Generation Japanese-American
Who Became an Officer of the Imperial Japanese Navy). Yamada, born
in Idaho, was at Keio University (one of several colleges in Japan
accepting American Nisei) when the war broke out, was drafted and
became an officer (ensign) in the Japanese Navy. He participated in
the suicide attack mission to Okinawa on board the Yahagi
as radio officer, accompanying the battleship Yamato,
and survived after both ships were sunk (April 1945). Yamada later
worked as a salesman for Japan Airlines in the US, later becoming
executive vice president. The book mentions a total of six
Nisei who were on the two ships. Only Yamada survived.
Nisei 2nd Lt. Kunio Nakatani
was also among those who died aboard the Yamato;
details in the book, Senkan
Yamato no Saiki (The Final Days of Battleship Yamato) or Senkan Yamato to Sengo
(Battleship Yamato and Postwar Period) by Mitsuru Yoshida. A movie
was produced in 1953 (Senkan
Yamato) which also features Nakatani.
Bob Yamanaka
Nisei interpreter who was at Karenko POW Camp, Taiwan; from San
Francisco; parents were evacuated to a relocation center. "...he was
so afraid the Nipponese authorities would think him pro-American..."
See PDF
of excerpts from The Hard Way Home by
William Braly.
George Yamane and sister, Nobuyo
From George Yamane led fight to honor two
nisei veterans (Aug. 7, 2002):
Born in Tacoma on June 11, 1923, Mr.
Yamane moved to Japan at age 13 to take care of his grandmother.
He almost died from sickness because food and drugs were scarce
during the war. His sister Nobuyo saved his life by traveling more
than 24 hours by train to give him fresh eggs to eat, said Jeff
Yamane, Mr. Yamane's second son. He moved back to Washington in
1948 and settled in Seattle, where he met his wife, Charlotte, at
a church function. They married in 1957 and had four sons.
OBITUARY:
George YAMANE Born June 11, 1923 and died peacefully on July 31,
2002 in Seattle at the age of 79. George was born and raised in
Tacoma until, at age 13, he went to live in Japan to take care of
his grandmother. The most difficult period of his life occurred
when World War II started in 1941. He decided to stay in Japan to
continue caring for his grandmother but, as an U.S. citizen in
Japan, he worried about his family in America and, also, what
would happen to him in Japan. Food and material resources were
very scarce and he almost died from illness. In 1947, he graduated
from Tokyo University with a degree in Civil Engineering. George
returned to Seattle in 1948. He was drafted into the U.S. Army and
served in the Korean War in 1951. - See more at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/seattletimes/obituary.aspx?pid=429120#sthash.kVrliazl.dpuf
There is an article on George's sister, Nobuyo: A Nisei Woman in Rural Japan.
Amerasia Journal: 1997, Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 183-196. Born in Tacoma,
WA, in 1921, moved to Japan in 1935. Michael Jin has this in his
paper:
Mary was an American citizen and
Nobuyo retained her dual citizenship while Frank obtained
exclusively Japanese citizenship to receive graduation
certificates from his elementary school. "The
Japanese police asked me where I would go, but did not detain me
because I looked Japanese," Mary states. However, she
continues, "I had to keep a low profile so my American mannerisms
and conspicuous speech would not be obvious." Her interpersonal
conflict was even more shocking. She suffered from cruel treatment
by a Japanese woman for whom she worked as a maid. “Mrs. Sakai
used to lord over me and boast about how Japan was winning the war
and looked down on me as the enemy.” Nobuyo was actually summoned
by the police. "All Nisei living
in Japan during the war were monitored by the police,"
she recalls. "I received a police summons once to appear at the
Yanai police station.... I was scared because the
police
had great power and was suspicious of the Nisei."
Yamashita
From email received:
The drive was through only partly
repaired roads, rough and nervewracking. Considerable traffic,
slowly moving trucks, and some military vehicles on the highway
made progress very slow. On the way we picked up a young man named
Yamashita who was working as an interpreter. He is one of the Los
Angeles "double citizens" who had returned to Japan before 1941
and had apparently felt that Japan would be winning the war. He
had gotten himself well-fixed for a post-war job, had Japan in
fact been victorious.
YALE JOURNAL OF BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE, Volume 38, October, 1965
Kunimitsu Yamauchi
Nisei interpreter at Fukuoka POW Camp #17, Omuta; renounced US
citizenship in 1942. See Tokyo
War
Crimes Trials, Case #29.
Toru, Goro,
and Donald Yempuku (Empuku)
Per article, MIS
Members
with Brothers Serving in Japanese Imperial Forces during WWII:
Lieutenant Ralph Yempuku served as
Commander of the 2nd Battalion of Detachment 101, Office of
Strategic Services (OSS) in Burma, and subsequently in Detachment
202 in Kunming, China. Three of his brothers served in the
Imperial Japanese Army.
Yempuku and 17 other Nisei of the 442nd Combat Team were selected
to serve as linguists in the OSS. Yempuku’s unit in Burma
consisted of Americans, British and several thousand Kachin
natives of northern Burma. A Kachin served as Yempuku’s body guard
and interpreter and their language of communication, ironically,
was Japanese. When Detachment 101 disbanded on July 12, 1945,
Yempuku joined OSS Detachment 202 in Kunming, China.
Yempuku had frequently thought of his brothers in Japan. On
September 12, 1945 Yempuku was in the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong
where he came close to meeting his brother Donald.
Donald, an interpreter for the
Japanese Army, walked into the hotel with the Japanese
surrender delegation. Donald later told a Nisei interrogator that
seeing Ralph in “enemy uniform was the most trying moment in my
life. For a brief second I felt the urge to call out but I could
not allow myself to do that. I just couldn’t. In
my mind the war was still going on and we were enemies.”
The data does not show that Ralph remained for the surrender
ceremonies. Following the War, fearing that his family had
perished from the atom bomb, Ralph visited Ataka Island near
Hiroshima City. He found his mother and father alive and well as
all his brothers, Paul, Goro, Donald, Joshu, and Toru. Toru,
Goro,
and Donald served in the Japanese Army.
Karl Yoneda
Was born in 1906 in Glendale, CA; later lived in Hiroshima; arrested
for radical publication in 1926; drafted into Japanese Army but ran
away and returned to California; joined American Communist Party in
1927; took the name Karl Hama; placed in Manzanar Relocation Center
for a short time; joined with MIS for service in India, Burma and
China.
Mary and Alice Yonekura
Interpreters for Occupation Forces in Saga, Kyushu, Japan. Were in
Japan during WWII as well? See this file:
YONEKURA_sisters_VAC_p550_1945-11-30.pdf
Jim Yoshida
Excerpts from The
Two
Worlds of Jim Yoshida (also at Google Books here):
SYNOPSIS: Life is nothing if
not an identity crisis, but few of us have had to face the extreme
paradox that Jim Yoshida did. A great paradox requires a great
affirmation, and Jim fought hard to make it, succeeding
outstandingly finally. Raised in Seattle, a high school football
star there, he travelled to Japan with his family in 1941 to
return his father's ashes and was caught by the outbreak of war. A
student of martial arts, especially Judo, he suddenly found the
two dearest sources of his identity in mortal combat with each
other. Drafted into the Japanese army, he was carried away weeping
and shouting for his mother. Thanks to the harsh treatment of
Sergeant Kido, he was not of much use to the Japanese army and
never rose far within it. As it turns out, Kido was another nisei,
looking after him and making sure he drew no suspicion on the two
of them. After the war Yoshida fought long and hard to win back
his American identity, serving more usefully in the Korean War,
and taking the matter to court. He won the backing of the veteran,
Senator Inouye, a significant character reference. The judge
simply ruled that he had been a citizen all along, and thanked him
for his Korean War service.
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)
Re his citizenship restored:
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)
Good article, Jim Yoshida's Strange, Strange
Story of Divided Patriotism from Black
Belt magazine, May 1974.
Asian American Autobiographers: A
Bio-bibliographical Critical Sourcebook has piece on Jim
Yoshida.
Also mentioned in 日
本軍兵士になったアメリカ人たち 母国と戦った日系二世, chap. 2 (Americans
who became soldiers of Japanese military - Nisei who fought
against their motherland).
Assorted Notes
Nisei mentioned in Our
House Divided by Tomi Knaefler (1991):
Fumiye Miho p. 36~
Asami kids - Kinichi and Jane p. 49~; Harold - died on Asama Maru;
Morris and Alice
Muriel Chiyo Tanaka p. 60~
Isamu Shimogawa (POW) p. 63~
Yempuku kids - Toru p. 78~; Goro p. 79~; Paul p. 81~; Donald p.85~
Florence Honda p. 85
Albert Miyasato p. 97~
Robert Fujiwara p. 107~
Kazuyuki Yamamoto, an Issei, with good comments p. 115~
Nisei who lost citizenship due to their voting in elections in 1946
and 1947; later citizenship restored via court cases (p. 370, 372);
from The
Bamboo
People by Frank Chuman (1976):
Etsuko Arikawa
Miyoko Tsunashima
Hatsuye Ouye
Yamamoto
Kuniyuki
Haruko Furuno
Haruko Kai
Harumi Seki
Yada
Fumi Rokui
Fujiko Furusho
Akio Kuwabara
Hichino Uyeno
Kikukuro Okumura (Okamura?) - or is this the Kiyokura Okimura
below??
Teruo Naito
Minoru Furuno
Fusae Yamamoto
Hisao Murata
Katamoto
Kiyama
Yukio Yamamoto
Kozuki
p. 281~
William Ishikawa
Noboru Kato
Paul Nobuo Tatsuguchi? p. 266
Names of men from Chapter 2:
Ben Saito - hit by friendly fire
Henry Yasuda
Mike Iwasaki - kamikaze pilot
NOTE: Names can be looked up
in Japanese
American history: an A-to-Z reference from 1868 to the present.
Mentioned in Nisei POW on
Saipan:
ISHIDA, Charles - Age about 35, from
State of Washington. Broadcaster for Radio Tokyo.
KUWABARA, Mitsugi - From Alberta, Canada. Radio monitor on Saipan,
March-July 1944.
NAKANO, Aiko - From Arizona. Worked for "Japan Times."
NAKASHIMA, Miss ? - From Canada. Radio monitor in Japanese War
Ministry.
SATO, Minoru - From B.C., Canada. Radio monitor on Saipan
(March-July 1944).
SHIMOGAWA, Isamu - From Hawaii. Radio monitor on Saipan,
(March-July 1944).
SHIRAKAWA, Takeshi - From B.C., Canada. Radio monitor on Saipan
(March-July 1944).
SUYAMA, Miss ? - Canadian. About 27. Broadcaster for Radio Tokyo.
From Nisei
Linguists (McNaughton, GPO, 2007):
Some Nisei who had served in the
Japanese Army in the 1930s subsequently returned to the United
States, even though foreign military service cost them their U.S.
citizenship. One was Terry Takeshi Doi, who regained his
U.S. citizenship and earned the Silver Star as an interpreter with
the 3d Marine Division on Iwo Jima. John Weckerling, “Japanese
Americans Play Vital Role in United States Intelligence Service in
World War II ” (1946), first printed in Hokubei Mainichi, 27 Oct–5
Nov 71, reprinted as a pamphlet. Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p.
276. Another was Karl Yoneda, who was born in California
and sent to Japan, where he was conscripted into the Japanese
Army. In 1927 he escaped and returned to America. He volunteered
for the MIS and later served in China-Burma-India.
See Roger Mansell's file (guam
war trials.wpd) re these men:
Worst collaborator was Shinohara,
Ben Cook and A 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.
Nisei aboard the Yamato
battleship; mentioned in A Glorious Way to Die: The Kamikaze
Mission of the Battleship Yamato by Russell Spurr
(2010): Kunio Nakatani (Sacramento, CA), Kuramoto (from Santa
Monica, CA), Shigeo Yamada (Idaho).
Bozo Wakabayashi, baseball player -- see this
book
by Fitts.
Mary Muroya Yamagata in Manchuria -- this
book
Fumio Kido -- lots of refs here
Nisei born and raised in Pasadena, CA, until going to Japan in 1936,
later serving in Japanese Navy as an ensign; interesting comments re
communication problems with Japanese language (PDF
excerpt)
P/W 1458
MILITARY INTELLIGENCE DIVISION,
U.S. WAR DEPARTMENT
REPORT FROM CAPTURED PERSONNEL AND MATERIAL BRANCH
Because there has been considerable discussion of the issue of
loyalty of persons of so-called "dual citizenship" in the present
war, this report of interrogation of an American-born Japanese
P/W, who volunteered to serve as a radio monitor in Japan,
is being reproduced. P/W was captured 9 July 1944 on Saipan
and interrogated in the U.S.A. 31 March 1945. Information given is
considered truthful on civil matters but unreliable as regards
military.
- CHRONOLOGY AND EXPERIENCE OF P/W.
- NISEI FROM AMERICA IN JAPAN.
- NISEI AS RADIO MONITORS.
- CONTACT WITH OUTSIDE WORLD THRU SHORT-WAVE RADIO.
- ATTITUDE OF NISEI TOWARD THE WAR SITUATION.
- NISEI IN JAPAN AS A NUCLEUS FOR A JAPANESE UNDERGROUND.
- 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.
See here for the rest of the report: Nisei
POW.
Is this the same??
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
Gentlemen
of
Japan: a study in rapist diplomacy by Violet Sweet
Haven (1944):
A number of leading American-born
Japanese in . responsible government positions
co-operated in the development of the ... Japanese
figures show that in 1937 there were 50,000 American
citizens of Japanese ancestry residing in Japan.
...
In May 1937 Japan was campaigning to induce some 50,000
American-born Japanese to return to the US per McClatchy:
Race
war:
white supremacy and the Japanese attack on the British ... -
Page 131 - by
Gerald Horne (2004)
15
Caught up in the frenzy of distaste for white supremacy, one Japanese
general inquired, "Why should the United ... that "over
50000 boys and girls... returned" to Japan
proper.22 A few months later, "75 American- born
youths of ...
Stats
re
Nisei in J-military here in Michele Malkin's book - 1,648
(official J-Govt figure) or as high as 7,000; these figures from
John J. Stephan, "Hijacked by Utopia: American Nikkei in
Manchuria" and his book, Hawaii
Under the Rising Sun.
From Nisei
Linguists (PDF), with footnotes:
As war approached, many Americans
became increasingly suspicious of the loyalty of the Nisei
regardless of the evidence of assimilation of American values.
Many white Americans found support for their suspicions in the
tangle of U.S. and Japanese laws that left many Nisei with dual
citizenship, claiming this as proof of loyalty to the emperor.
The truth was more complicated. Until 1924 Japan automatically
extended citizenship to children born abroad of Japanese
nationals. After 1924 the parents had to register their children
with the local consulate for Japanese citizenship. Many Issei,
denied U.S. citizenship themselves, took this simple step for
their children. Realizing that their antagonists could use dual
citizenship as propaganda, Nisei leaders seized the issue as yet
another way to demonstrate their loyalty. They encouraged and
assisted Nisei to file with Japanese consulates the necessary
paperwork to revoke their Japanese citizenships. Nevertheless,
the War Department was sufficiently concerned about the issue
that in the spring of 1941 the Military Intelligence Division
(MID) recommended that Congress allow individuals to clarify
their status simply by swearing an oath of allegiance to the
United States in naturalization court.22
Moreover, some suspected that Japan was conscripting
American-born Nisei to serve in the Imperial Japanese Army. In
1940 Senator Guy M. Gillette (D-Iowa) even charged that Japan
was conscripting Nisei for espionage, which the JACL vigorously
protested. Nisei visiting Japan in the 1930s indeed risked
conscription while in Japan, but there is no evidence that Nisei
in Hawaii or on the mainland were being conscripted.
Nevertheless, this accusation circulated widely.23
For the U.S. government and most white Americans, Nisei loyalty
remained an open question. In the autumn of 1941 the White House
secretly dispatched an investigator to make an independent
assessment of the “Japanese problem.” After conferring with Army
and Navy intelligence and the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
Curtis B. Munson reported that the Nisei were “approximately
ninety-eight percent loyal.” “The Nisei,” he concluded, “are
pathetically eager to show this loyalty. They are not Japanese
in culture. They are foreigners to Japan.” 24
Another aspect of the Nisei culture that raised suspicion was
their Japanese language schools. Like other immigrants, Issei
parents set up private language schools so their children could
learn something of the Japanese language and culture. Typically
these schools held classes one hour each afternoon after the
public schools let out, as well as on Saturday mornings.
Caucasian Americans pointed to these schools as one more example
of how even the children of Japanese immigrants were being
indoctrinated into Japanese culture and loyalty to the
emperor.25 In fact, these schools did little to inculcate
Japanese values in the Nisei and even less in teaching the
language. For most Nisei it reinforced their sense of.....
22 Frank F. Chuman, The Bamboo People: The Law and Japanese
Americans (Chicago: Japanese American Citizens League, 1981),
pp. 167–68; Murphy, Ambassadors in Arms, pp. 17–24; “Dual
Citizenship,” in Encyclopedia of Japanese American History, rev.
ed., ed. Brian Niiya, (New York: Facts on File, 2001); Okihiro,
Cane Fires, pp. 201–04; Tamura, Americanization, Acculturation,
and Ethnic Identity, pp. 84–88. For War Department memos on the
issue of dual citizenship in 1941, see Security-Class Gen
Corresp, 1926–1946, Far Eastern Br, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2,
RG 165, NARA. To avoid complications, some Nisei renounced their
Japanese citizenship before they traveled to Japan. Richard
Sakakida’s mother did this in the summer of 1941 on behalf of
her son after he secretly enlisted in the Army and was sent to
the Philippines. Richard Sakakida and Wayne S. Kiyosaki, A Spy
in Their Midst (Lanham, Md.: Madison Books, 1995), pp. 137–38.
23 Pacific Citizen, Jan 41, p. 1. For a discussion of Nisei
serving in the Japanese Army before the war, see John J.
Stephan, Hawaii under the Rising Sun: Japan’s Plans for Conquest
after Pearl Harbor (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984),
pp. 35–37, 44; and John J. Stephan, “Hijacked by Utopia:
American Nikkei in Manchuria,” Amerasia Journal 23, no. 3
(Winter 1997–1998): 23–24, note 168.
During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, a number of Issei
returned home from Hawaii to serve in the Imperial Japanese Army
and Navy, which may have been the source of white American
concerns in 1940–1941. See Stephan, Hawaii under the Rising Sun,
p. 15; Franklin Odo and Kazuko Sinoto, A Pictorial History of
the Japanese in Hawaii, 1885–1924 (Honolulu: Bishop Museum,
1985), p. 206.
For the autobiography of a California-born Nisei who was
conscripted into the Japanese Army, see Iwao Peter Sano, One
Thousand Days in Siberia: The Odyssey of a Japanese-American POW
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997). Some Nisei who
had served in the Japanese Army in the 1930s subsequently
returned to the United States, even though foreign military
service cost them their U.S. citizenship. One was Terry Takeshi
Doi, who regained his U.S. citizenship and earned the Silver
Star as an interpreter with the 3d Marine Division on Iwo Jima.
John Weckerling, “Japanese Americans Play Vital Role in United
States Intelligence Service in World War II ” (1946), first
printed in Hokubei Mainichi, 27 Oct–5 Nov 71, reprinted as a
pamphlet. Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 276. Another was Karl
Yoneda, who was born in California and sent to Japan, where he
was conscripted into the Japanese Army. In 1927 he escaped and
returned to America. He volunteered for the MIS and later served
in China-Burma-India.
24 Murphy, Ambassadors in Arms, pp. 31–32; Greg Robinson, By
Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese
Americans (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001),
pp. 65–72.
25 “Japanese-language Schools,” in Encyclopedia of Japanese
American History; Murphy, Ambassadors in Arms, pp. 8–11;
Okihiro, Cane Fires, pp. 153–56; Toyotomi Morimoto, Japanese
Americans and Cultural Continuity: Maintaining Language and
Heritage (New York: Garland, 1997).
The National Defense Migration
Hearings (excerpts in this
PDF) mentions the 50,000 in a few places (figure first appears
early 1937 perhaps?):
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.
And:
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.
And:
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.)
And:
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.
And:
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.
DeWitt in his Final
Report has this, cutting the figure down by 30,000, which
agrees with the Zaibei Nihonjinshi in 1940:
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.
At the end of the war, a census conducted by the US Consulate in
Yokohama showed that there were 15,000 Nisei residing in Japan. For
more information on the Kibei, see this WRA article, Japanese Americans educated in
Japan: The Kibei.
From Report on Japanese
Activities:
Investigation has revealed that a
number of Nisei (first generation American-born Japanese) have
returned to Japan at the insistence of these Japanese military and
naval organizations to serve in the Japanese Army.
In the Japanese magazine Japan-to-America (Japan and America)
edited in the United States but printed in Japan and sent to the
United States for distribution, in the issue of January 1941, is
an article stating:
In view of the latest
Japanese-American relations and in anticipation of the enactment
of the peacetime conscription law in America, many Japanese
parents, fearing their sons' pointing guns against their
parents' country, have sent their sons back to Japan, where
available manpower is sorely needed.
Rishin Nakamura, second son of Nazaemon Nakamura, of San
Francisco, Calif., was made a sub-lieutenant in the Japanese Army
Medical Corps after graduating from the Showa Medical School in
Tokyo. Donald Seichi Murata went to the army in January 1941. He
is a graduate of Waseda University in Tokyo and was a radio
announcer in the international department of the Japanese
Broadcasting Society of Tokyo. He is the third son of Ryuichi
Murata, principal of the Manao Japanese Language School in
Honolulu, Hawaii.
In Los Angeles several months ago some Nisei applied for United
States passports so that they could return to Japan. They stated
they had been called up to serve in the Japanese Army. When they
were informed that American passports were no longer issued for
travel to Japan, they remarked that they were going to Japan,
passport or no passport, and were going to serve in the Japanese
Army even if it meant the loss of their American citizenship.
These are probably not the only instances of such feelings on the
part of the Nisei in the United States.
From the National
Japanese
American Veterans Council, George Yoshinaga relates right at
the end of the war his conversation with two Nisei in Okayama,
Japan, who had repatriated from Tule Lake:
George Yoshinaga
As the troop ship S.S. Pennant slowly docked at the port in
Yokohama about three weeks after peace in the Pacific War was
declared, I stood on the top deck of the vessel and peered down at
the Japanese men working on the wharf and thought to myself, "I
finally made it. I'm finally going to set foot on Japanese soil."
These thoughts crossed my mind because who would have imagined
when I was growing up that a war would make it possible for me to
finally enter the country where my immigrant parents originated
from.
A fellow GI, a Caucasian youth spit towards the men below.
One of the Japanese men glared up and bellowed "bakayaro."
Of course, the GI didn't know what the man was saying so he
laughed and waved at him.
I moved away and grabbed my equipment to prepare to disembark from
the vessel. We were loaded into a truck and we rumbled away from
the pier.
None of us knew where we were going. There were a dozen other
Nisei in the group, all of us members of the U.S. Army
Counter-Intelligence-Corp.
When we arrived at our destination, we learned that we were at
Camp Zama about thirty miles from Tokyo.
En route, I was amazed at the sight which we witnessed from the
back of the truck. People, men, women and children were wandering
along the road aimlessly with the bombed out wreckage of the city
as the background.
At Zama we were moved into tents because there were no buildings
large enough to hold the troops.
And, we still had to dine on C and K rations since there were no
mess halls set up to feed the troops.
Our stay was short, however, as each of us were assigned to units
throughout Japan. Two other Nisei and I were ordered to Okayama in
Central Japan.
Living conditions were better there since the Army took over
houses belonging to the Japanese because as members of the CIC we
did not have to live at the military housing set up by the Army.
As CIC personnel, our work was vastly different from those of the
regular GIs who were members of infantry units whose main job was
to maintain law and order in the area.
Using our Japanese language skills, we were assigned to
interrogate former Japanese military officers in an effort to take
into custody those who were considered to be on the "wanted list"
by the U.S. Army.
On one assignment we took into custody a high ranking naval
officer who was alleged to have been part of the Pearl Harbor
attack. We turned him over to the proper Occupation Forces
department in Osaka.
While the Nisei had official duties as members of the Occupation
Forces, there are two experiences that I, and other Nisei in the
military, encountered that is a story which has never been told
but we encountered while stationed in Japan. The first was the
face-to-face encounters with the native Japanese.
We quickly learned that almost all of the native Japanese were
completely ignorant about Japanese Americans.
Their confusion about Japanese Americans was compounded by the
fact that we were serving in the U.S. Military as part of the
Occupation Forces.
As I moved around on my official duties, the most frequently asked
question was "ana ta was Nihonjin desuka?" (Are you really
Japanese.)
When I explained that my parents immigrated to America and I was
born there, therefore I was classified as an American, they seemed
just as puzzled.
Some comprehended my explanation but many were befuddled.
When told of my parents were from Japan, the next question usually
was, (in Japanese of course) "where in Japan did they live before
going to America?"
"Kumamoto," I would tell all of them.
During these give and take discussions, the tension between us
seem to lighten considerably.
Some of the Japanese even invited me to come to their home and
have dinner. It was an invitation I did not accept but in
retrospect, regretted that I didn't because it would have been an
educational experience for me to learn about the Japanese and what
their lives were like during the height of the Pacific War.
Of course, during my seven month tour of duty in Japan I did
become friends with a few Japanese but most were hired by the
Occupation Forces to work with us in various capacities.
The other experience which I encountered but which was equally
veiled in mystery involves those Japanese Americans who
repatriated to Japan during the war, most from Tule Lake which was
converted from a relocation camp into a segregation center for
those desiring to go to Japan.
I spotted two of them while riding in my jeep in downtown Okayama.
They were easy to distinguish from the native Japanese simply by
the way they were dressed. They wore their flannel plaid shirt and
blue jeans and leather boots, the style of clothing most of us
wore when we were in camp before entering the U.S. Army.
Initially, I was hesitant about making contact with them because I
did not know what their reaction would be in meeting a follow
Nisei in an Army uniform. About the third time I saw them on the
street, I stopped my jeep and said, "hey guys, what going on?"
They were surprised that I addressed them in English.
"How come you didn't speak Japanese to us," one of them responded.
"How did you know we were not Japanese Japanese?"
I explained about their clothing.
We laughed about it "Yeah, these were the only clothes we brought
along."
During the conversation, I learned that life was tough for the
repatriates because life condition in Japan was terrible and it
was tough to adjust to things like food shortages land poor
housing because of the damage inflicted by U.S. Air Force bombing
raids.
Both of the fellows I talked to said they were 17 years old.
"If we knew what it was going to be like, we would probably have
refused to repatriate and part with our Issei parents who were
determined to return to Japan."
"We hope that we can return to America one day," they both
lamented.
I also learned that one of the determining factors in their
families to repatriate was that everyone seem to agree that Japan
was going to win the war and life would be better for Japanese
Americans in Japan.
"Man, that was a lot of crock," one of them said.
In an effort to lift their morale, I said "well since both of your
were minors when you left Tule Lake, when all the turmoil is
settled, it may become possible to return because, after all, you
are still U.S. citizens and were too young to have made the
decision that your parents made for you."
"Do you really think so?" they said in unison.
I explained that I had heard something about this from some
knowledgeable people. "Man, I hope you're right."
I told them that my sister repatriated from Tule and was living in
Kumamoto and her son, (my cousin) was trying to volunteer to join
the U.S. Army and that things were going pretty well.
They both looked at each other and said, "hey, maybe when we turn
18 we might try to go that route."
We then parted company. As I drove away from them I looked in the
rear view mirror and saw them smiling and waving goodbye.
To this day, I wonder if they ever did make it back to the good
old U.S.A.
And this is the story about the Nisei and the Occupation of Japan
that should be told to the Japanese Americans who might have
wondered happened to all those who gave up on America and
journeyed across the Pacific to a land they had never seen before.
From The Nisei Coming to Japan
(by ????, year ????):
In 1934, Foreign Minister Koki
Hirota delivered a speech to the members of the cabinet and the
several hundred industrial leaders of Japan, seeking their support
for Nisei education in Tokyo and the establishment of an
educational institution to prepare the Nisei with the
prerequisites necessary for entering a recognized college in
Japan. Hirota stated, “it is the policy of the government to look
after the welfare of our countrymen’s education whether they are
abroad or at home in the light of the relation of our nation to
the other countries and the effect bearing upon our foreign
relationship.” He continued as follows:
Second generation Japanese born on
a foreign soil and who [have] never seen Japan are often in a
position where they may lose their affection for their parents
through the difference in environment and culture and that of
their parents’ education or the difference in language. Added to
this, oppression by the people of that country may cause the
individual to lose his self-respect... I suggest that the second
generation Japanese be given an opportunity to visit our
country, obtain a supplementary or intermediate education to fit
the needs of the individual, to come [in] direct contact with
the spirit of Japan, to realize the true value of Japan and the
Japanese race.
Hirota explained that the Japanese government had always taken
into consideration the social and economic condition of the
country in which Japanese resided. They were spreading forth the
Japanese culture in order that “they [might] be good Japanese
subjects or faithful citizens of their adopted country—that they
[might] well contribute to the culture of the world as the tie
that binds the friendship bonds between the two nations.” ( Rafu
Shimpo, February 25, 1934) Hirota extended the Japanese
race to include the Nisei. The practical purpose behind the
Japanese government’s aid was helped by the political climate of
the time. In addition to the developments in the transportation
system, Japan’s secession from the League of Nations demanded a
stable bi-national foreign policy. As one response to this
situation, it is likely that as one of many sources the Nisei were
expected to contribute as go-betweens of Japan and the U.S.
.....
In general, the parents who sent their children to study in Japan
seem to have counted on their Japan-educated Nisei to fall back on
when their careers in the U.S. ended in failure or in anticipation
of returning to Japan. At the same time, being able to send their
children to college in Tokyo was probably a proud achievement for
most parent(s), and hence had some driving force in sending their
children to Japan. Also, the Issei were seeking a realistic way to
narrow the linguistic and cultural as well as generational gap
between themselves and their children.
Imperial
Japan
at Its Zenith: The Wartime Celebration of the Empires 2,600th
Anniversary by Kenneth J. Ruoff (2010)
Remarks re Nisei: Kumamoto
p169 and Murokuma p170
Nisei interpreters at Omuta and Yahata POW camps?
Mentioned by Terrence Kirk:
http://www.rense.com/general8/pows.htm
Maybe this interpreter:
23 June 2008 · 10:04 pm
My sociolinguistics professor in grad school once opined that
the best place to learn a foreign language was in a foreign
prison. I assume he was thinking of the advantages of a
complete immersion environment, total
physical
response methodology, and very rigorous incentive
structures.
He must have been at least half serious, because he later
applied for a grant to fund an audacious experiment to see
what innate linguistic structures might emerge in an isolated,
silently administered camp whose workers were recruited in
equal numbers from communities speaking languages of a full
range of word-order
typologies and in minimal prior contact with
typologically different languages. I believe the granting
agency’s Committee on Human Experimentation nixed the
proposal, for reasons one can well understand.
What makes me recall this is the abundance of fascinating
bits of data about foreign language learning in prison that
I’ve been finding in one of the books I’m currently reading, First
into
Nagasaki: The Censored Eyewitness Dispatches on
Post-Atomic Japan and Its Prisoners of War, by George
Weller (1907-2002), ed. by Anthony Weller (Three Rivers,
2006). Here are some of the insights of the reporter and the
prisoners themselves, arranged under a few general headings.
Incentive Structure
Tervald Thorpson (Wadena, Iowa): “I managed to go
a whole year without being beaten. Americans worked hard in
the mine, but some had difficulty learning Japanese, and
misunderstanding commands got them beatings.” (p. 97)
Sergeant Robert Aldrich (Capitan, New Mexico): “I
was in the mine ever since it opened, but I was more
fortunate than most because I learned Japanese, thus
avoiding beatings due to misunderstanding.” (p. 101)
Methodology
Oscar Otero of Los Lunas, a husky New Mexican
captured on Bataan, learned Japanese by being chauffeur to a
colonel. By refusing to allow him to talk any Filipino [?],
the Japanese furnished the coal mine prisoners with their
ablest unofficial interpreter. (p. 88)
Bilingual Assistants
Dark-skinned Junius Navardos (Los Angeles):
“Pressure in the mine caused me to pass out once while
working. When I came around in the hospital I found myself
with burned patches all over my skin. The boys told me that
the burns had been made by an American-educated
interpreter, Yamamuchi [Yamaguchi], whom we called
Riverside because he was brought up there. Asked
whether he had done the burning, the interpreter told the
doctor, ‘Yes, I did this, because I thought he was
feigning.’”
Leland Sims (Smackover, Arkansas): “Many guards
could speak English. One
who
we called Long Beach, because he was educated
there, caught me smoking and said, ‘It’s all right with me,
but don’t let the other guards catch you.’” (p. 96)
Japanese for Special Purposes
Corporal James Brock (Taft, Texas): “I was most
often overworked by a boss we called Shitbird, usually with
a hammer handle or a mairugi—that’s a small timber
[丸木 maruki 'round wood = log'?]. He hit everybody
who passed him, whether you belonged to his shift or not.
I’m sorry he’s disappeared since the camp was liberated.”
(p. 86)
Henry Sublett of Cisco, Texas, a Marine captured
on Corregidor: “I was down with pneumonia and worked in the
mine both after and before. Our first Buntai Joe [分隊長 buntaichō
'squad leader'], or overseer, used to be drunk all the time
and beat me every day for my first three months. He always
used to the day start off with a few savas [サービス =
sābisu 'freebie']—meaning ‘gifts’—of blows.” (p.
88)
Runge, captured at Singapore, was “an old Aussie,” which
means he arrived at the Mitsui camp and entered the coal
mine in June 1944, joining the Bataan and Corregidor
Americans who had already been toiling for nearly a year
underground. By February 1945 Runge was instructing “new
Aussies” in the use of a jackhammer. He was showing F. R.
Willis and Robert Tideswell how to chip rock, the whole
party being under an overman named Katu-san [prob. Katō],
when three cars carrying coal ran off the rails, causing
Katu-san’s temper to do likewise. Saying “Dummy, dummy,
that’s no good,” the Japanese promised that he would report
Runge for haitis savis [兵隊サービス heitai sābisu
'soldier freebie'], meaning “military gifts”—that is, a
beating. (p. 104)
The idea of the camp administrator, Captain Yuri, was that
a prisoner’s main and only job was to dig coal for the
Japanese, and his only reward for twelve hours’ daily labor
should be his salary of three-quarters of a cent daily, plus
a yassamai [休み yasumi 'rest'] or rest
day every ten days or so. (p. 108)
With the arrival by train from Nagasaki of the first
Army-Navy team for the evacuation of Kyushu’s largest
prisoner of war camp, the final sinkes [出欠 shukketsu
'attendance, (take) roll'] (Japanese for roll calls
[otherwise 点呼 tenko lit. 'point call']) were
sounding today over the grimy buildings and meagerly-clad
G.I.s. This camp, 1,700 strong—700 being Americans from
Bataan and Corregidor—has been thinned already to 1,300 by
impatient ex-prisoners, mostly Americans, who have hit the
high road for the American airbase at Kanoya in southernmost
Kyushu. (p. 92)
So profound is the prisoners’ hatred of Baron Mitsui’s coal
mine, the Japanese military police, and the aeso
[営倉 eisō] or guardhouse where five Americans have
found a violent death, that the entire camp would probably
have been deserted had not the Army-Navy team arrived today.
Hospitals filled with cases of malnutrition, diarrhea,
beriberi, and mutilated men offer special problems. (p. 92)
Graduate Assistants
Pharmacist William Derrick (Leesville, Louisiana):
“The Korean straw bosses were decent to us except when the
Japs were around, who frightened them.” (p. 96)
Sergeant Wiley Smith (Coushatta, Louisiana): “We
looked across the bay toward Nagasaki after emerging from
the mine and saw black smoke starting up. The atomic bomb,
falling ninety minutes before, had kindled Nagasaki. Our
Japanese bosses kept pointing that way and chattering. It
was better than Germany’s surrender, which we only heard
about from Korean miners.” (p. 91)
Thoughts on Graduation
Navy Cook Laurel Whitworth (Bourne, Texas): “Leaving Japan
for me means not having to cook any more dogs to eat. One
day I had to cook sixty-nine, another seventy-three, another
fifty-five. I hate cooking dogs.” (p. 94)
Also this article:
Frank Brennan
June 24, 2008
SUBMITTED COMMENTS
Mike Holt
17 Dec 2009
Michael
Walzer has no idea what he is talking about. The fact is that
the Japanese were planning to completely eliminate up to
15,000 Australian POWs, not to mention the thousands more
Americans in custody. Coincidentally, the date was set for 9
August, 1945.
The top secret order was issued by Field Marshal Terauchi. The
order directed POW camp commanders to build special machine
gun emplacements around the parade grounds. The prisoners were
to be assembled as usual, and then gunned to death. Failing
this, the camp commanders were to make every effort to
completely eliminate the prisoners so that there was no
evidence they had ever existed. Only the atomic bomb stopped
the massacre.
As well, the Emperor had ordered all Japanese, not just
troops, to fight to the death. The ONLY way to get the Japs to
see any sense was to show them such overwhelming strength that
even the Emperor was forced to accept total capitulation.
Dr Ian Duncan, one of the POW leaders at the Omuta camp about
50 kilometers east of Nagasaki was read the order by the camp
interpreter "Riverside"
Yamaguchi, who was later executed for war crimes. Dr
Duncan reported that Yamaguchi was a "callous man who had
seemed to take perverse pleasure in reading the execution
order to the camp doctors."
If Allied troops had been forced to fight on Japanese soil, at
least half a million men would have died. And for what?
It was far better to drop the atom bombs than to suffer the
useless murder of so many young men. Imagine what our lives
would have been like if we had lost so many men who later went
on to rebuild our countries? Perhaps the inventors of many of
the machines and technology we take for granted now would have
perished.
Yes, the bombs killed many civilians. But they supported the
Emperor and their war mongering military without reservation.
They were just as culpable as the most vicious soldier.
As for our Australian PM visiting the Hiroshima Peace Memorial
Park, he was just doing what he does best: playing the
politician to curry favor, without any regard for reality, or
the feelings of most Australians. He has lost my vote.
日
本軍兵士になったアメリカ人たち 母 国と 戦った日系二世
門池啓史, 元就出版社 (2010/02)
Americans who became soldiers of
Japanese military - Nisei who fought against their motherland
神
風特攻隊員になった日系二世
今 村 茂男 (著), 大 島 謙 (翻訳), 草思社 (2003/07)
Nisei who became members of the
Kamikaze special attack force
帝
国海軍士官になった日系二世
立 花 譲 (著), 築地書館 (1994/08)
Nisei who became officers in the
Imperial Japanese Navy
或
る英雄 日本軍に見捨てられた日系二世
河 崎 明彦 (著), 文芸社 (2009/8/1)
Some heroes: Nisei abandoned
by the Japanese military
Related:
二つの祖国で日系陸軍情報部 (DVD)
2013/04/26
Nikkei Intelligence Unit with Two
Fatherlands - interesting that this term 祖国 (native
country) is used
Japanese American history: an A-to-Z
reference from 1868 to the present
By Brian Niiya, Japanese American National Museum (Los Angeles,
Calif.)
Search in this work for all instances of "Japanese army" "inducted"
etc. Some mentioned are:
Mitsugi Nishikawa p.265 (see above)
- DONE
Paul Nobuo Tatsuguchi? p. 266
Interesting history of JACL p.182, starting as American Loyalty
League in 1918 (why "loyalty"? perhaps there were disloyals??).
First convention was held in 1930 by older nisei to "emphasize
loyalty, patriotism and citizenship.
TIME magazine articles,
collection either in folder or in emails from 11/11/2006: \J-A
Relocation\Scans\TIME articles
Excellent article on the work of some of the Nisei involved in
translation and interpreting work during WWII and the Occupation of
Japan:
It has been said that the efforts of these brave Nisei in the MIS
contributed towards saving a million lives and shortened the war by
two years. However, that exaggeration does not hold up to any
factual evidence. There were many factors involved, and many other
non-Nisei intelligence personnel who were trained in the Japanese
language. I'm sure the Allied codebreakers in the Pacific would take
offense at such a statement.
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