Nisei Linguists

Japanese Americans 

in the Military 

Intelligence Service during 

World War II

by

James C. McNaughton

Department of the Army

Washington, D.C., 2006
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McNaughton, James C., 1952–

Nisei linguists : Japanese Americans in the Military Intelligence Service during World 

War II / James C. McNaughton.

 p. cm.

 Includes bibliographical references and index.

 1. World War, 1939–1945—Participation, Japanese American. 2. United States. 

War Dept. Military Intelligence Service. 3. Military Intelligence Service Language 

School (U.S.)—History. 4. World War, 1939–1945—Military intelligence—United 

States. 5. Translating services—United States—History—20th century. 6. Japanese 

Americans—History—20th century. I. Title. 

D769.8.A6M45 2006

940.54’8673089956—dc22 2006019774

First Printing—CMH Pub 70–99–1
Foreword

From long experience, U.S. Army leaders have found that success in sustained land operations has often required extremely sophisticated linguistic skills. 

In many cases, such abilities are unique to narrow sections of the nation’s civilian populace. Nevertheless, where intelligence gathering, coalition building, and 

military government are concerned, the ability to understand the languages of the 

nation’s allies and opponents can spell the difference between victory and defeat.

When America entered the war against Japan in 1941, the need for this skill 

was imperative. A deep understanding of both Japanese culture and the Japanese 

language would be necessary for American intelligence efforts to succeed. However, with the exception of about 300,000 Japanese immigrants and their American-born children living on the West Coast and in Hawaii, few Americans were 

familiar with the enemy’s language and culture. The atmosphere of outrage and 

fear that followed the attack on Pearl Harbor complicated matters. Most Americans wanted little to do with anything Japanese, particularly their fellow citizens 

of Japanese origin. Even so, the War Department’s General Staff recognized the 

necessity of mastering both the culture and the language of their Asian opponent 

in order to pursue the war effort effectively and efficiently. In response, they turned 

to the nation’s second-generation Japanese Americans, or Nisei, in the hopes that 

they would be willing and able to fill that void. 

Initially, these wartime leaders had to address a number of the same questions 

facing today’s Army. How well did these second-generation Americans actually 

speak the complex language of their forebears? Could those that did be trusted? 

What was the best way to integrate them into the various tactical and strategic 

intelligence organizations that could benefit from their services? That it took only 

two years to answer these questions bears witness not only to the effectiveness of 

the innovative programs that the War Department created, but also to the willingness of America’s loyal Japanese to ignore the distrust of their fellow citizens and 

give their best to the war effort. The end result contributed heavily to Allied victory 

in the Pacific by making possible the rapid exploitation of information from captured enemy documents, intercepted radio communications, and prisoners of war.

To supplement the Center of Military History’s works covering the exploits 

of the Japanese American 442d Regimental Combat Team in Europe, this volume 

chronicles the establishment and achievements of the organization that trained and 

employed these uniformed Japanese American linguists, the U.S. Army Military 

Intelligence Service. Although often overlooked, the entire experience provides 

valuable lessons to U.S. Army officers both present and future. In fact, the Global 

War on Terrorism underlines the need for similar capabilities and programs as the 

Army girds itself for the sustained struggle ahead.

Washington, D.C. JEFFREY J. CLARKE

2 September 2006 Chief of Military History
The Author

James C. McNaughton serves as command historian for the U.S. European 

Command. He received his B.A. from Middlebury College, Vermont, and M.A. 

and Ph.D. in history from The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland. 

He has served in the U.S. Army in several components: Active Army, National 

Guard, Army Reserve, and civilian sector. He has worked as command historian 

for the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center and for U.S. Army 

Pacific.
Preface

This book tells the story of an unusual group of American soldiers in World 

War II, second-generation Japanese Americans (Nisei) who served as interpreters and translators in the Military Intelligence Service. It describes how the War 

Department recruited soldiers from an ethnic minority and trained them in a secret 

school to use the Japanese language. Months before the Japanese attack on Pearl 

Harbor, the Fourth Army Intelligence School was established on the Presidio of 

San Francisco with sixty students. After the attack the Western Defense Command removed all persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast. The War 

Department transferred the school with its Nisei instructors and students to the 

Midwest. For the rest of the war the renamed Military Intelligence Service Language School operated in Minnesota at Camp Savage from 1942 to 1944 and then 

at Fort Snelling from 1944 to 1946. By the spring of 1946 the school had graduated 

nearly 6,000 military linguists in the Japanese language.

The book also describes how these Nisei served with every major unit and 

headquarters in the Pacific war. Their courage, skill, and loyalty helped win the 

war sooner and at lower cost to the United States than would otherwise have been 

possible. During the American occupation of Japan they helped turn bitter enemies into friends, thus securing the victory and serving as a bridge between the 

two cultures.

During the decades after the war little was publicly known about the Nisei linguists due to continued secrecy about wartime intelligence activities. Meanwhile, 

other Nisei who served in the 100th Infantry Battalion and 442d Regimental Combat Team in Italy and France received widespread recognition. This changed in the 

late 1970s through the efforts of one man, Joseph D. Harrington. A retired Navy 

journalist, Harrington contacted hundreds of veterans to assemble their stories 

into the first book ever to describe their exploits in detail. He called them Yankee 

Samurai to symbolize their blend of American and Japanese traits and values. My 

own work is indebted to him on almost every page.

The 1980s and 1990s witnessed a flood of Nisei veterans’ memories and writings. Many veterans felt that a more comprehensive overview was needed. In 1994 

U.S. Senator Daniel K. Akaka and several other members of Congress called on 

the Secretary of the Army to publish an official history of the Nisei linguists. Dr. 

Jeffrey J. Clarke, then chief historian, invited me to undertake this task. At the time 

I was serving as command historian for the Defense Language Institute Foreign 

Language Center at the Presidio of Monterey, California, the direct descendent of 

the wartime Military Intelligence Service Language School. I began research with 

support from a Secretary of the Army Research and Study Fellowship. During this 

time I also served as research director for the Asian American Medal of Honor 
Review from 1996 until 1998. I am grateful for the commandants and chiefs of 

staff under whom I served who recognized the value of these two projects. 

I completed the manuscript while serving at Headquarters U.S. Army Pacific 

at Fort Shafter, Hawaii, from 2001 to 2005. I thank the commanding generals 

and chiefs of staff there who supported my work. In 2003 the Center of Military 

History convened a review panel for the manuscript. I am grateful to the panel 

members whose recommendations resulted in a much improved final product. I

completed revisions while serving as command historian at Headquarters U.S. 

European Command, Patch Barracks, Germany. Although U.S. European Command is on the other side of the world from the Pacific, the Global War on Terrorism reminds Americans everywhere of the continuing need for courage, loyalty, 

and language skills for members of our armed forces in war and peace. 

Many people helped me write this book; they have waited far too long to see it 

completed. My deepest regret is that my father, Col. George C. McNaughton, U.S. 

Marine Corps, Ret., did not live to see the final result. A combat veteran with the 

1st Marine Division in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, he encouraged me in 

the book’s early stages but sadly passed away before its completion. As time went 

on, the Nisei veterans became my adoptive uncles. This book could not have been 

completed without their generous assistance, especially through veterans associations, including the Military Intelligence Service Association of Northern California, the Military Intelligence Service Veterans of Hawaii, the Military Intelligence Service Veterans of Southern California, the Japanese American Veterans 

of America, and the Military Intelligence Service Northwest Association.

In particular I want to thank those individuals whose assistance over many 

years was above and beyond the call of duty: Jeffrey J. Clarke, Stanley L. Falk, 

Shigeya Kihara, Harry K. Fukuhara, Richard K. Hayashi, S. Phil Ishio, Stephen 

M. Payne, Thomas T. Sakamoto, James T. Stensvaag, John A. Tagami, Ted T. Tsukiyama, Warren M. Tsuneishi, and Roy T. Uyehata.

For research assistance, my special thanks to the staff at the Combined Arms 

Research Library, Hoover Institution, Japanese American National Museum, 

MacArthur Memorial, Military History Institute, National Archives, and National 

Japanese American Historical Society. I must also thank the Publishing Division 

staff at the Center of Military History, including Diane M. Donovan, who carefully reviewed the text, and S. L. Dowdy, who translated my vague notions of 

geography into proper maps.

Special thanks go to my family who watched this project evolve, and especially to my wife, without whose constant support and encouragement this book 

would never have been completed.

I am solely responsible for all interpretations and conclusions, as well as any 

errors that may appear. The views expressed in this book are mine and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, the 

Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

I have been privileged to meet so many men and women of the “greatest generation” who served their country so loyally during such trying times. To them 

all I owe a great debt. Traditional Japanese culture distinguishes between two 

 vi
kinds of obligations. Giri is a simple obligation one incurs in exchange for favors, 

gifts, goods, or services. On is a more complex and demanding obligation, such as 

the debt you owe your parents for bringing you into the world and raising you to 

adulthood. According to the Encyclopedia of Japanese American History, “on is 

so profound that it can never be completely repaid in one’s lifetime.” My debt is of 

the latter kind; I can only hope that my friends will accept this book as a partial 

repayment of their trust, patience, and many kindnesses.

Stuttgart-Vaihingen, Germany JAMES C. McNAUGHTON

15 August 2006 Command Historian

 U.S. European Command

 vii

Contents

Chapter Page

1. The U.S. Army and the Nisei before Pearl Harbor. . . . 3

The Nisei Enter the U.S. Army, 1940 –1941 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Japanese in America, 1885 –1941 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

The Military Intelligence Division Prepares for War 

with Japan, 1940–1941 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

A “Master Stroke”: Establishing a Japanese-Language 

School, April– October 1941 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

The Office of Naval Intelligence Prepares for War with 

Japan, 1940 –1941 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

2. Fourth Army Intelligence School, November

1941–May 1942. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

“Your Country Needs You”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

“Now the Time Has Come To Prove Your Loyalty” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

“Shikata Ga Nai,” December 1941–May 1942 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

Disasters at Home and Overseas, Spring 1942 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

3. MIS Nisei Pioneers, May 1942 –February 1943. . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Intelligence in Hawaii: Pearl Harbor to Midway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

Intelligence in Alaska: Defending the Aleutian Islands. . . . . . . . . . . . 65

Intelligence in the South Pacific Area: The Guadalcanal 

Campaign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

Intelligence in the Southwest Pacific Area: The Allied 

Translator and Interpreter Section . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

Papua New Guinea, October 1942– February 1943 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

War Department Decision To Form a Nisei Combat Unit. . . . . . . . . . 85

4. Camp Savage, 1942 –1943 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

John F. Aiso as Technical Director. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

Recruiting Students, June –December 1942. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

Teaching and Learning at Camp Savage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Chapter Page

4. Camp Savage, 1942–1943 (Continued)

Forming Language Teams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122

5. Camp Savage, 1943 –1944 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

Recruiting Students, 1943 –1944 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

Army Intensive Japanese Language School, University 

of Michigan, 1942–1944 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

Navy Japanese Language School, University of 

Colorado at Boulder, 1942 –1944 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150

Other Japanese-Language Programs, 1942 –1944 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152

6. MIS Nisei in the Campaigns of 1943 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

The Aleutians. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166

South Pacific Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172

Navajo Code Talkers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177

Southwest Pacific Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

Central Pacific Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190

7. MIS Nisei Serving in the Continental United

States, 1943 –1945 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195

The Military Intelligence Division after Pearl Harbor . . . . . . . . . . . . 198

Pacific Order of Battle Section. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201

Prisoner of War Interrogation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203

Psychological Warfare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207

Signals Intelligence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214

Pacific Military Intelligence Research Section. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218

The Manhattan Project. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222

Army Map Service. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224

II Armored Corps Training Center. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224

Preparing for Military Government . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225

Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228

Military Intelligence Training Units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229

8. MIS Nisei in the Campaigns of 1944 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235

South Pacific Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236

Southwest Pacific Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242

x
xi

Chapter Page

8. MIS Nisei in the Campaigns of 1944 (Continued)

Central Pacific Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258

China-Burma-India Theater. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273

Leyte . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291

Frank Hachiya and the Hood River Incident . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296

9. Fort Snelling, 1944–1945. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299

Spirit of the School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300

Recruiting Students. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304

School Operations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308

Nisei in the Women’s Army Corps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316

Graduate Assignments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318

Other Japanese-Language Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322

Training for the Invasion and Occupation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326

10. MIS Nisei in the Campaigns of 1945 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331

Liberation of the Philippines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332

India-Burma and China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344

Central Pacific . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349

Okinawa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355

Army Air Forces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369

Preparing for Operation Olympic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372

11. MIS Nisei and the Surrender of Japan, 

August–September 1945 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379

The Japanese Surrender. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385

Regional Surrenders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395

 Southeast Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 396

China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398

Central Pacific. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404

Korea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410

 The Philippines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411
xii

Chapter Page

 12. MIS Nisei and the Early Occupation of Japan, 

September 1945 –February 1946 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415

Fort Snelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416

Nisei Arrive in Japan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426

Counter Intelligence Corps, War Crimes Trials, 

and the Purge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437

Other Occupation Duties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447

Epilogue: MIS Nisei and History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457

BIBLIOGRAPHY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463

INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491

Tables

No.

1. Summary of Student Personnel for MISLS Academic Terms 

November 1941–February 1944 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

2. Summary of Student Personnel for MISLS Academic Terms 

August 1944 –March 1946. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306

Charts

1. Disposition of Enlisted Nisei MISLS Graduates, 19424 –1944. . . . . . . . . 124

2. Disposition of Enlisted Nisei MISLS Graduates, 19424 –1945. . . . . . . . . 321

Maps

1. Western Defense Command, 1941 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

2. South and Southwest Pacific Areas, Operations, 

May 1942 –February 1943 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

3. War Relocation Centers, 1942 –1946 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

4. Japanese-Language Training Programs, 1942–1945 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154

5. The Aleutians, Operations, 1942–1943 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

6. South and Southwest Pacific Areas, Operations, 1943 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

7. Military Intelligence Service, Nisei Linguist Locations, 

1942–1945. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196

8. South and Southwest Pacific Areas, Operations, 

November 1943 –December 1944 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239

9. Central Pacific Area, Operations, 1944 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259

10. China-Burma-India, Area of Operations, 1944 –1945 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274

11. Burma, Operations, 1944 –1945 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277

12. The Philippines, Operations, 1945 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
xiii

No. Page

 13. Central and Southwest Pacific Areas, Operations, 

January–August 1945 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351

14. Ryukyu Islands, Operations, March– June 1945. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356

15. Japanese Forces, Pacific Theater, August– September 1945 . . . . . . . . . . . 388

16. Occupied Japan, U.S. Unit Locations, January 1946 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433

17. Occupied Japan, Principal Reception Centers, 

30 September 1945 – 31 December 1948 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449

Illustrations

John F. Aiso . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

John Weckerling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Kai E. Rasmussen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Three instructors at Crissy Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Classroom at Crissy Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Nisei students in Chinatown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Attack on Pearl Harbor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Newspapers announcing ouster of Japanese Americans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

Nisei soldier and his mother . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Making a broadcast to urge Japanese soldiers to surrender . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

G – 2 Section, XIV Corps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

Interrogating a Japanese prisoner, Papua New Guinea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

Camp Savage, Minnesota . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

Nisei volunteering for Military Intelligence Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

Teaching Japanese tactics at Camp Savage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

Temporary barracks at Camp Savage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

Harsh winter at Camp Savage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

Military Intelligence Service Language School emblem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

Barracks poker, Camp Savage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

Faculty at Camp Savage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

Top Class at Camp Savage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

Five Nisei soldiers who completed airborne training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

Two Nisei soldiers visiting a relocation camp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

Nisei instructor and students, Ann Arbor, Michigan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

Interrogation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

Nisei soldier questioning Japanese prisoners. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

Two Nisei on Kiska, Aleutian Islands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

Questioning a Japanese prisoner, Vella Lavella . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177

Students monitoring Japanese shortwave news broadcasts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

Nisei with the Army Signal Intelligence Service. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217

Recent graduates working in the translation pool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

Two Nisei demonstrating a Japanese machine gun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232

Dye Ogata and teammates on Bouganville, South Pacific . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237

Allied Translator and Interpreter Section, Brisbane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
xiv

Page

Nisei with the 6th Radio Squadron Mobile in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249

Terry Mizutari and his team, New Guinea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251

Harry Fukuhara with wounded prisoners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253

Frank Hachiya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263

Nisei interrogating Japanese prisoners, Saipan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266

Hoichi Kubo comforting a child, Saipan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267

Two Nisei with General Merrill after Battle of Nhpum Ga . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280

Nisei with captured Japanese flags, Burma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290

Nisei color guard, Fort Snelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301

Colonel Rasmussen commissioning Aiso as a major . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303

Temporary barracks known as the Turkey Farm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312

Women’s Army Corps students at choir practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317

Graduates heading overseas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319

Merrill’s Marauders veterans with Rasmussen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327

Henry Suzuki in Luzon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334

Nisei helping question a Japanese soldier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343

Three Nisei, Burma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345

Questioning a prisoner, Iwo Jima . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353

Nisei language team with the marines, Iwo Jima . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354

Two Nisei questioning a Japanese sailor, Okinawa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360

Nisei with a captured Japanese soldier, Aka Shima . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363

Wallace Amioka and American patrol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364

Seiyu Higashi reunited with his father, Okinawa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267

Allied Translator and Interpreter Section, Manila . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374

Nisei becoming second lieutenants. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385

General MacArthur meeting with the Japanese press corps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393

Nisei assisting in the Japanese surrender, Bonin Islands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407

Interrogating a senior Japanese officer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408

Interpreting for Admiral Fletcher during surrender talks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409

First women MISLS graduates deploying overseas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421

Lt. Charles Tatsuda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427

NYK building, Tokyo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431

A Nisei and parents after their return from a camp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435

Nisei agents with the Counter Intelligence Corps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439

Tad Ichinokuchi with General Yamashita, Manila . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441

Nisei sergeant interpreting at a war crimes tribunal, Japan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443

War crimes trial, Kwajalein Atoll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445

Questioning a Japanese shipmaster. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448

Japanese civilians working for the Civil Censorship Detachment . . . . . . . . . . 453

Nisei with Japanese women at a dance, Tokyo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455

Illustrations courtesy of the following sources: cover, 83, 105, 169, 171, 177, 

237, 253, 266, 280, 290, 343, 353, 360, 363, 364, 367, 374, 385, 393, 407, 408, 
xv

443, 455, National Archives; 10, 13, 38, 95, 109, 111 (top), 219, 263, 301, 303, 421, 

Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center; 24, 36, 39, 75, 112, 113, 117, 

118, 213, 312, 317, 319, 327, 409, Military Intelligence Service Language School 

Album, 1946; 46, Library of Congress; 57, 128, 435, Bancroft Library, University 

of California at Berkeley; 111 (bottom), 127, Stone Ishimaru; 149, 431, Fordham 

University Press; 217, 249, 439, 445, Military Intelligence Service Veterans Club 

of Hawaii; 232, Fort Ord Panorama; 251, 345, Military Intelligence Service Association of Northern California/National Japanese American Historical Society; 

243, Vantage Press; 261, 354, Pettigrew Enterprises; 334, Henry E. Suzuki Family; 427, Collier’s magazine; 441, National Japanese American Historical Society. 

All other illustrations from U.S. Army files.

Nisei Linguists

Japanese Americans in the 

Military Intelligence Service 

during World War II

1

The U.S. Army and the Nisei

before Pearl Harbor

On 7 December 1941, the United States was plunged into a war with Japan. 

Bitter fighting throughout East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific ended almost 

four years later with the defeat and occupation of Japan. The U.S. Army needed 

soldiers who could read and speak Japanese to serve as translators, interpreters, 

and interrogators. In an unprecedented experiment, the Army turned to an ethnic group it had previously distrusted—American citizens of Japanese ancestry 

known as Nisei (second generation)—and trained thousands for the Military Intelligence Service (MIS). While their brothers were fighting in Italy and France with 

the famous 100th Infantry Battalion and 442d Regimental Combat Team (RCT), 

the MIS Nisei fought in secret using the language of their parents’ homeland to 

help win the war against Japan for America, the land of their birth. In this way 

they overcame racial prejudice and proved their loyalty, skill, and valor. After the 

war, the Military Intelligence Service Language School grew into the Defense 

Language Institute Foreign Language Center, an enduring legacy of the Nisei’s 

service to the nation.

The Nisei Enter the U.S. Army, 1940–1941

America did not begin preparing for war in earnest until 1939, by which time 

the war was already raging around the world. Germany had conquered Austria, 

Czechoslovakia, and Poland, quickly adding France and other countries and attacking Britain by air and sea. In the Far East, Japan had clashed with the Soviet Union, 
4 NISEI LINGUISTS

was waging war in China, and threatened Europe’s Southeast Asian colonies. 

America’s diverse ethnic groups all followed the fighting with concern, none more 

so than Japanese immigrants and their American-born children. Like other Americans who could trace their ancestry to lands engulfed in war, Japanese Americans 

hoped that America could avoid open conflict with Japan. If Japan and America 

went to war, they would have much to lose.1

In September 1940 the U.S. Congress approved the first peacetime draft. The 

Selective Service System began to affect all Americans, as local boards across 

America registered 16 million men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-six. 

That December the boards sent out the first induction notices, and fresh manpower 

soon began to swell the Army’s ranks. Draft notices reached into every corner of 

America, whether black or white, rich or poor, even to groups that had not yet fully 

shared in American society. On the West Coast and in the Territory of Hawaii, they 

reached into the homes of the 284,000 Japanese immigrants and their families.2

Japanese American communities responded with pride. In late 1940 and into 

1941 they held festive ceremonies for their Nisei sons being inducted into the 

U.S. Army. (Most of the parents, known as Issei [first generation] had come to 

America before 1924, when Congress had closed the door to further immigration 

from Japan. Their children, the Nisei, were citizens by birth.) The Nisei and their 

parents hoped that military service would dispel any lingering questions of their 

loyalty to America.

When the day came for the young men to report for induction, many towns 

hoisted the Stars and Stripes alongside the Rising Sun, symbolizing the Nisei’s 

dual heritage. The festivities featured patriotic speeches by community leaders, 

group photographs, and traditional songs in Japanese and English. Prominent families hosted banquets in local restaurants. Some families gave their sons traditional 

Japanese sennin bari (thousand-stitch belts) into which female family members 

and friends each had sewn one stitch for good luck. Some Issei mothers wept 

openly; others remained silent. Issei fathers swelled with pride, often recalling 

their own service in the Japanese Army many years before. Now their sons would 

finally gain recognition as true Americans; they could be Yankees and Samurai.3

The Issei parents told their sons that it was now their duty possibly to die for 

their country. Above all, they must never disgrace the family: “No bring shame!” 

1 For responses of American ethnic groups to the war, see John M. Blum, V Was for Victory: 

Politics and American Culture during World War II (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976), 

pp. 147–81, and Ronald Takaki, Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War 

II (Boston: Little, Brown, 2000). James C. McNaughton, “Japanese Americans and the U.S. Army: 

A Historical Reconsideration,” Army History (Summer/Fall 2003): 4–15. 2

 George Q. Flynn, The Draft, 1940–1973 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993), pp. 

9–52. In the year before Selective Service began, the Army expanded through voluntary enlistments but allowed no Nisei to enlist, except for a few who enlisted in National Guard units. 3

 The pairing of “Yankees” and “Samurai” was first popularized in Foster R. Dulles, Yankees 

and Samurai: America’s Role in the Emergence of Modern Japan (New York: Harper & Row, 

1965). In 1979 Joseph D. Harrington titled his book Yankee Samurai: The Secret Role of Nisei in 

America’s Pacific Victory (Detroit: Pettigrew Enterprises, 1979).
THE U.S. ARMY AND THE NISEI BEFORE PEARL HARBOR 5

Cheers rang out: in Japanese, “Banzai!” (Ten thousand years!) and in English, 

“Good luck!”4

The Nisei were following in the footsteps of other American minority groups 

that had used military service to obtain recognition and citizenship. During the 

Civil War, Frederick Douglass had described the progression in vivid terms: “Let 

the black man get upon his person the brass letters U.S.; let him get an eagle upon 

his buttons and a musket on his shoulder, and bullets in his pocket, and there is 

no power on the earth which can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship.” 5

 For the Nisei, military service was an important sign of acceptance into the 

mainstream of American society. The Nisei, like Chinese Americans and other 

immigrant groups from Asia before them, had grown up under the shadow of 

racial prejudice reinforced by American fears of Japanese militarism. The Japanese invasion of China in 1937 had raised some Americans’ fear and hatred of 

Japan to new heights.

Donning U.S. Army uniforms was the culmination of the Nisei generation’s 

rise to recognized citizenship. When the Japanese American Citizens League 

(JACL) held its national convention in August 1940, President Walter Tsukamoto 

proclaimed his support for Selective Service and “call[ed] upon every American 

of Japanese ancestry to offer his life if necessary in defense of his country.” Tsukamoto himself set the example, holding a commission in the Officers’ Reserve 

Corps. His successor as president stated the political calculus even more bluntly 

in February 1941: “The number that we send into the army is one of the best evi-

 4 Elliott R. Thorpe, East Wind, Rain: An Intimate Account of an Intelligence Officer in the 

Pacific, 1939–49 (Boston: Gambit, 1969), pp. 7–8; Daisuke Kitagawa, Issei and Nisei: The Internment Years (New York: Seabury Press, 1967), pp. 31–33; Masako M. Yoshioka, “Just Remembering My Brother Yukitaka Mizutari,” Remarks at a Ceremony, Defense Language Institute, 9 May 

80, copy at Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC), Monterey, Calif.; 

“Caught between Two Worlds, He Chose, and Fought Well,” San Jose Mercury-News, 7 Mar 99; 

Thomas T. Sakamoto autobiography, p. 1, Unpubl Ms, 1 Nov 96, copy in author’s files; John A. 

Rademaker, These Are Americans: The Japanese Americans in Hawaii in World War II (Palo Alto, 

Calif.: Pacific Books, 1951), p. 12.

In Japanese villages, the departure ceremony for new conscripts had been traditional since the 

1870s. See Warren J. Clear, “Close Up of the Jap Fighting Man,” Infantry Journal (November 

1942): 16–23; John F. Embree, Suye Mura: A Japanese Village (Chicago: University of Chicago 

Press, 1939), pp. 109, 197–201; Hillis Lory, Japan’s Military Masters: The Army in Japanese Life

(New York: Viking, 1943), pp. 12, 15–31; Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989), p. 311.

Some Japanese emigration to America before 1924 resulted from Japan’s conscription laws. 

Yamato Ichihashi, Japanese in the United States: A Critical Study of the Problems of the Japanese Immigrants and Their Children (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1932), pp. 87–88; 

David J. O’Brien and Stephen S. Fugita, The Japanese American Experience (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), p. 11; Paul R. Spickard, Japanese Americans: The Formation and 

Transformations of an Ethnic Group (New York: Twayne, 1996), p. 12. 5 Quote from Arthur E. Barbeau and Florette Henri, The Unknown Soldiers: Black American 

Troops in World War I (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1974), p. xii.
6 NISEI LINGUISTS

dences as to where our loyalty lies.” 6 In the spring of 1941 a Nisei political activist from Salt Lake City, Mike Masaoka, wrote a summons to patriotism, which 

the JACL published as the “Japanese American Creed.” Masaoka called on each 

Japanese American to defend America “against all enemies, foreign or domestic,” 

and “to actively assume [his] duties and obligations as a citizen, cheerfully and 

without any reservations whatsoever.” 7

The Issei felt pride at seeing their sons in uniform but could scarcely conceal 

their anxiety that these American-born soldiers might have to fight against Japan. 

They could take comfort that President Franklin D. Roosevelt promised in 1940 

not to send American boys into any foreign wars and that the Army’s stated role 

was limited to hemispheric defense. Issei hoped that America and Japan could 

avoid a war that would place their sons in an impossible position.

Because the U.S. Navy, Marines, and Air Corps refused to accept most Nisei 

enlistments, the Army Ground Forces took the Nisei selectees. By the spring of 

1941 more than a thousand at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii and a similar number 

in Army camps on the West Coast were in basic training. Together with hundreds of thousands of other young American men, they were learning the basics 

of soldiering.8

Thomas Tokio Sakamoto from San Jose, California, was the oldest son of 

eleven children. When he turned sixteen, his Issei parents sent him to Japan for 

schooling. After four years of studying at a Japanese high school, Sakamoto 

returned to America in 1938 to help his parents start a 43-acre fruit and vegetable farm. When he was drafted on 26 February 1941, a large crowd of Japanese 

Americans from the local community came to bid farewell to him and several 

other Nisei draftees: “As the train slowly moved from the then–Santa Clara train 

station,” he recalled, “the families waved both the U.S. and Japanese flags, shouting banzai over and over. The echoes of banzai stayed with me for a long time, as 

we rode the train with mixed feelings. As the oldest son, I worried about leaving 

my parents and the farm, wondering just how my parents would get along without 

 6 Bill Hosokawa, JACL in Quest of Justice: The History of the Japanese American Citizens 

League (New York: William Morrow, 1982), p. 106. Walter Tsukamoto was an ROTC graduate of 

the University of California. An attorney, he held a reserve commission in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. For other evidence on JACL support for Selective Service in 1940–1941, see Pacific 

Citizen, Oct 40; Mutsuye Kawanami, “A Nisei Couple Faces the Draft Problem: Goodbye—For 

Just a Year,” Pacific Citizen, Dec 40; Saburo Kido, “The President’s Corner,” Pacific Citizen, Feb 

41. For the overall dilemma facing the Nisei, see Saburo Kido, “Situation of Japanese in United 

States Today,” Pacific Citizen, Jul 41. 7 “Japanese American Creed,” Pacific Citizen, Apr 41, p. 1. In Mike Masaoka, They Call Me 

Moses Masaoka: An American Saga (New York: William Morrow, 1987), p. 50, the word “any” is 

omitted from the last phrase. This error is commonly repeated. 8 For the exclusion of persons of Asian descent by the Army Air Corps at this time, see the 

Henry H. Arnold Papers, Air Force Historical Research Agency, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. 

The Army Air Corps accepted a few Nisei in 1941–1942, perhaps inadvertently. For the Navy’s 

racial exclusion policies in World War II, see Morris J. MacGregor, Jr., Integration of the Armed 

Forces, 1940–1965 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1981), pp. 58–122.
THE U.S. ARMY AND THE NISEI BEFORE PEARL HARBOR 7

my help.” Sakamoto took his basic training at Fort Lewis, Washington, and was 

then assigned to an antitank company.9

Born on Maui in 1919, Hoichi Kubo had attended public schools in Hawaii and 

then enrolled at the University of Hawaii, majoring in agriculture. Both his grandfathers had fought in the Russo-Japanese War. He was drafted on 30 June and took 

basic training at Schofield Barracks, where he was assigned to the medical section 

of the 298th Infantry.10

Although the interwar Army permitted no Nisei enlistments, thousands 

attended colleges offering the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC). By 1941 

several hundred Nisei were enrolled at the University of Hawaii, where they were 

allowed to join ROTC and earn reserve commissions. Another 500 Nisei were 

enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley, where they were not allowed 

in the ROTC. When the Army called most reserve officers to active duty in the 

autumn of 1940, few Nisei were included.11

By the summer of 1941 about 3,000 Nisei wore “the brass letters U.S.” They 

represented the intersection of two stories: how the Japanese came to America and 

how the U.S. Army prepared for war with Japan, the war that would eventually 

bring these stories together in previously unimagined ways.

Japanese in America, 1885–1941

For over fifty years immigrants from Japan had been coming to Hawaii and 

the mainland and staying to raise families. They began arriving in Hawaii in 1885 

to work on the plantations and grew in number to comprise over half of Hawaii’s 

agricultural labor force within a few years. Some moved onward to the mainland 

through Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles to work as farmers, fishermen, 

and shopkeepers. These “strangers from a different shore” were not eligible for 

 9 Interv, author with Thomas Sakamoto, 16 Nov 87; Thomas Sakamoto, “Original Japanese 

Student Reflects on MISLS Language Training,” DLIFLC Globe (December 1996): 12–13; Sakamoto autobiography, 1 Nov 96; “Caught between Two Worlds.” 10 Hoichi Kubo, “Military Biography,” Unpubl Ms, 1996, copy in author’s files; Interv, author 

with Hoichi Kubo, 30 Oct 87. 11 In 1939 a War Department (WD) General Staff officer addressed the problem of the growing 

numbers of Nisei reserve officers in Hawaii by proposing a special reserve unit to be composed 

solely of these Nisei. The G–2 concurred, but Lt. Col. Rufus Bratton of the Far Eastern Section disagreed, saying their loyalty could never be trusted. If the Army did not plan to use them, he recommended instead that they simply not be allowed to enroll in advanced ROTC. Memo, R. S. Bratton 

for Chief, Intelligence Br, G–2, sub: Hawaiian Dept. Reserve Officers of Japanese Extraction, 4 

Feb 39, unmarked folder; Security-Class Gen Corresp, 1926–1946, Far Eastern Br, Ofc of the Dir of 

Intel G–2, Record Group (RG) 165, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

In the summer of 1940 the Army called several Nisei reserve officers to active duty in Hawaii 

along with non-Nisei. Sixteen Nisei reserve officers shipped out with the 100th Infantry Battalion 

in June 1942. In November 1942 the Hawaiian Department reported it had three Nisei reserve officers remaining on active duty and thirty-two as yet uncalled. Some of these were called to active 

duty in 1943 to serve with the 442d RCT. Thomas D. Murphy, Ambassadors in Arms (Honolulu: 

University of Hawaii Press, 1954), pp. 65, 67, 107.
8 NISEI LINGUISTS

citizenship. The 1900 census counted 85,393 Japanese living in America, of whom 

72 percent lived in Hawaii.12

Like the Chinese before them, the Japanese encountered racial prejudice in the 

New World. The Chinese had endured prejudice against “Orientals” that began 

during the California Gold Rush and culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act 

of 1882. Japan’s dramatic 1905 victory over Russia inflamed anti-Japanese prejudice in America. The California state legislature and the U.S. Congress further 

restricted Japanese immigration. The Japanese government acted to protect its 

citizens and in 1907–1908 negotiated a “gentleman’s agreement” with the United 

States that restricted further immigration to family members. In 1913 California 

passed an “alien land law” that prohibited individuals “ineligible for citizenship” 

from purchasing land. Other states soon followed suit. The Japanese persisted but 

lived under a cloud of suspicion, prejudice, and legal restrictions on the part of 

their non-Asian neighbors.13

Despite the discrimination, hundreds of Issei served in the U.S. Navy from the 

1890s until 1907, usually as mess men and cooks. When the USS Maine blew up 

in Havana Harbor in 1898, seven Issei on board lost their lives. During the First 

World War, over a thousand Issei, mostly from Hawaii, served in the U.S. Army. 

After the war these veterans sought to become naturalized citizens. In 1925 the 

U.S. Supreme Court ruled against them on the basis of race, but in 1935 the U.S. 

Congress reversed the decision and granted them naturalization rights in exchange 

for their military service.14

By 1920 the population of Japanese descent living on the mainland United 

States and Hawaii had risen to 220,122. By the time Congress slammed the door to 

further immigration from Japan in 1924, the Issei had already established families 

and continued to grow in number. The 1940 census counted 284,731 persons of 

Japanese descent living in Hawaii and on the mainland. By this time more than 

half were citizens by birth in a land that did not fully accept them.15 Most Japanese 

12 For overviews of Japanese American history, see Harry H. L. Kitano, Japanese Americans: 

The Evolution of a Subculture, 2d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1976); David J. 

O’Brien and Stephen S. Fugita, The Japanese American Experience (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991); Spickard, Japanese Americans; Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different 

Shore: A History of Asian Americans (Boston: Little, Brown, 1989). 13 Roger Daniels, The Politics of Prejudice: The Anti-Japanese Movement in California and the 

Struggle for Japanese Exclusion, 2d ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977); Gary Y. 

Okihiro, Cane Fires: The Anti-Japanese Movement in Hawaii, 1865–1945 (Philadelphia: Temple 

University Press, 1991).

14 Bill Hosokawa, Nisei: The Quiet Americans (New York: William Morrow, 1969), p. 394. For 

one Issei World War I veteran, see Eileen Sunada Sarasohn, The Issei, Portrait of a Pioneer: An 

Oral History (Palo Alto, Calif.: Pacific Books, 1983), pp. 71–74. 15 For a perceptive description of Japanese Americans before the war, see Roger Daniels, “Japanese America, 1930–1941: An Ethnic Community in the Great Depression,” Journal of the West

(October 1985): 35–49. For more recent detailed studies, see Eileen H. Tamura, Americanization, 

Acculturation, and Ethnic Identity: The Nisei Generation in Hawaii (Urbana: University of Illinois 

Press, 1994), and David K. Yoo, Growing Up Nisei: Race, Generation, and Culture among Japanese Americans of California, 1924–1949 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000).
THE U.S. ARMY AND THE NISEI BEFORE PEARL HARBOR 9

Americans were still strangers to their neighbors. The average American could 

see only an alien presence within the American melting pot. In Hawaii, Japanese 

Americans comprised more than a third of the population and formed thriving 

communities within that multiracial society. They were moving out of the plantations into other sectors of the economy, but they remained under the domination of 

the white oligarchy. Nevertheless, in the 1940 elections thirteen Nisei were elected 

to the territorial legislature.16 On the West Coast, Japanese Americans made up a 

much smaller percentage of the population. They worked as farmers or as keepers 

of small shops. Many lived in the “Japantowns” or “Little Tokyos” of Los Angeles, 

San Francisco, and Seattle.

In Hawaii and on the mainland, the Issei raised families and built the institutions of the immigrant community, including schools, churches, temples, and 

civic organizations. Some were Buddhist, and some were Christian. As the years 

passed, some Issei returned to Japan; most abandoned the dream of returning. 

The Japanese government remained solicitous of its subjects residing in America 

and maintained consulates in Honolulu and the major West Coast port cities. The 

Imperial Japanese Navy periodically sent training vessels to call at American 

ports, where the local Japanese communities always greeted them warmly. The 

Issei sent their children after regular school hours to Japanese-language schools. 

They hoped their children would remain connected to their ancestral homeland. 

But they could see that for all America’s faults, it was a far better place than Japan 

for their families to live. Although they were denied citizenship, the Issei had 

made their lives in America, a country that held great promise for their children. 

The Nisei had an outlook very different from their parents. Born and raised 

in America between 1910 and 1940, the Nisei attended public schools and spoke 

English or, in Hawaii, pidgin Hawaiian, among their friends. The parents sometimes sent their children to Japan to visit relatives or attend school. But American 

and Japanese observers were unanimous that at heart the Nisei were growing up 

as American boys and girls. The lure of American society and culture proved far 

stronger than the distant call of their parents’ homeland. 

The Nisei were a problematic generation from the beginning, an object of concern for their Issei parents and scholars alike.17 Like most children of immigrants, 

they grew up between two worlds. “The Nisei lived in two societies,” wrote one 

sociologist at the University of Hawaii: “The home, the language school, and the 

Japanese community formed one. Surrounding this smaller world was the rest of 

American Hawaii. Much of what the children learned in one society they were 

16 Lawrence H. Fuchs, Hawaii Pono, “Hawaii the Excellent”: An Ethnic and Political History

(Honolulu: Bess Press, 1961), p. 136. For a vivid portrait of Hawaiian plantation life in the 1930s, 

see the novel by Milton Murayama, All I Asking for Is My Body (Honolulu: University of Hawaii 

Press, 1988). Murayama served with the MIS in the China-Burma-India Theater. 17 For example, see Yamato Ichihashi, “The Problem of the Second-Generation Japanese,” in 

Japanese in the United States (New York: Arno Press, 1969), and Edward K. Strong, The SecondGeneration Japanese Problem (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1934).
10 NISEI LINGUISTS

expected to forget or disregard in the 

other.”18 The pull of assimilation was 

strong. From their classmates they 

learned the stuff of American popular culture: music, movies, slang, and 

sports. From their schools they learned 

the civic culture of interwar America: 

Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln; 

the pledge of allegiance; and an intense 

loyalty to their country.19

On the West Coast, the best known 

of the Nisei generation was John Fujio 

Aiso, born in 1909 in Hollywood, California, where his father worked as a 

gardener.20 His parents stressed academic achievement and patriotism. His 

mother hung pictures of Washington, 

Lincoln, and Jesus in the family parlor 

to inspire her children.

Encountering prejudice early in life, 

Aiso responded by studying harder. In 

1922 he ran for student body president 

of his junior high school; when he won, the principal dissolved the student government rather than permit a Japanese boy to take office. When this incident was 

publicized, Aiso became the iconic Nisei; in the 1920s and 1930s Issei parents in 

southern California pressed his example on their children.21

Aiso was his high school class valedictorian, having achieved the highest academic ranking. A skillful debater, he nevertheless was denied a top spot on his 

school’s team in the national championships in 1926. The publisher of the Los 

Angeles Times sponsored Aiso to accompany the winners to Washington, D.C., 

18 Murphy, Ambassadors in Arms, p. 11. 19 For example, see Fuchs, Hawaii Pono, pp. 263–98. For a nuanced study of the Americanization campaign in Hawaii and the Nisei, see Tamura, Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic 

Identity, pp. 45–88. 20 Kiyoshi Yano, “Participating in the Mainstream of American Life amidst Drawback of Racial 

Prejudice and Discrimination,” in John Aiso and the M.I.S.: Japanese-American Soldiers in the 

Military Intelligence Service, World War II, ed. Tad Ichinokuchi (Los Angeles: Military Intelligence Service Club of Southern California, 1988), pp. 4–32; Interv, Loni Ding and Eric Saul with 

John F. Aiso, 10 Jan 86, National Japanese American Historical Society (NJAHS), San Francisco, 

Calif.; Interv, author with John F. Aiso, 30 Oct 87; John F. Aiso, “Observations of a California 

Nisei,” Interv by Marc Landy, University of California at Los Angeles, 1971. For a personal appreciation, see James Oda, Secret Embedded in Magic Cables (Northridge, Calif.: J. Oda, 1993), pp. 

113–24. 21 See, for example, Tad Ichinokuchi, “John Aiso and the M.I.S.,” in Ichinokuchi, John Aiso and 

the M.I.S., pp. 1–3.

John F. Aiso
THE U.S. ARMY AND THE NISEI BEFORE PEARL HARBOR 11

where he was introduced to the Japanese ambassador. After a year of Japaneselanguage study in Japan, he entered Brown University on a Japanese government 

scholarship. He followed this with a law degree from Harvard in 1934 and then 

worked in New York (1934–1936) and Japan and Manchuria (1936–1939), practicing American and Japanese commercial law. He returned to California in 1939, 

passed the state bar exam, and set out to practice law in Los Angeles.

In April 1941 Aiso was inducted into the Army. When the 31-year-old private, 

first class, reported to D Company, 69th Quartermaster Battalion (Light Maintenance), at Camp Haan, Riverside, California, a Regular Army master sergeant 

snarled, “Just what we need, another goddamned lawyer.” He sent Aiso to the 

motor pool to be a parts clerk. The exemplary Nisei, talented and overeducated, 

became just another soldier in the rapidly expanding Army.

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 

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.
12 NISEI LINGUISTS

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 Japaneselanguage 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 

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 U.S. ARMY AND THE NISEI BEFORE PEARL HARBOR 13

themselves as American, not Japanese.26

Carey McWilliams, California journalist and editor of The Nation, downplayed 

the schools: “The fact of the matter is 

that these schools were never successful.” The typical Japanese youngster, he 

wrote, spent a “precious hour and onehalf tossing spit balls at his classmates 

and calling his teacher names in American slang which she pretended not to 

understand. Physically he was in school; 

mentally he was making a run around 

left end for another touchdown. He was 

restless. He counted the minutes. At the 

gong, he dashed to freedom.”27

Some Nisei did pay attention and 

acquired a working knowledge of the 

Japanese language, but they were the 

exceptions. Brig. Gen. John Weckerling, who established the Fourth Army 

Intelligence School in 1941, later concluded that “Japanese language schools 

created and encouraged by the Japanese 

government before the war to maintain ties with the homeland had not achieved 

the results with which they were generally credited.” 28

Some went to experience Japan for themselves. Inexpensive steamship fares 

made travel between the United States and Japan relatively easy. Many Issei made 

the return trip or sent their children to stay with relatives. Other groups such as 

Chinese and Filipinos periodically traveled back to their homelands or sent their 

children. By one estimate, 50,000 Nisei visited Japan before the war. Perhaps 

20,000 had returned to the United States by the autumn of 1941.29 Some went to 

26 For example, see Daniel K. Inouye, Journey to Washington (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall, 1967), pp. 35–38. 27 Carey McWilliams, Prejudice: Japanese-Americans, Symbol of Racial Intolerance (Boston: 

Little, Brown, 1944), pp. 121–23. Tamura also minimizes the effect of the schools in Hawaii: Tamura, Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic Identity, pp. 146–61. As early as 1932 Ichihashi 

declared the language schools a failure. Ichihashi, Japanese in the United States, pp. 326–33. 28 Weckerling, “Japanese Americans Play Vital Role.” 29 Spickard, Japanese Americans, pp. 89–90. Spickard gives the number of Kibei as 10,000, 

but this applies only to the mainland. According to the War Relocation Authority, of the 101,278 

persons in camps in 1942, 9,892 were Kibei. Spickard, Japanese Americans, p. 167; War Relocation 

Authority, The Evacuated People: A Quantitative Description (Washington, D.C.: Government 

Printing Office, 1946), tables 27–34. Nisei from Hawaii may have traveled to Japan in even larger 

numbers. See also McWilliams, Prejudice, pp. 321–22, and Jacobus tenBroek et al., Prejudice, War, 

and the Constitution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954), pp. 279–82.

John Weckerling
14 NISEI LINGUISTS

Japan for schooling. For others the trip resulted from a family emergency such as 

the death of a parent. 

Nisei who visited Japan and then returned became known as Kibei (returned 

to America).30 Many Americans feared that the Kibei had been exposed to the 

“bacillus” of Japanese militarism. The effects were usually quite the opposite. 

Upon arriving in Japan, the Nisei were often ostracized for their funny speech, 

manners, and dress. Munson reported: “Many of those who visited Japan subsequent to their early American education come back with added loyalty to the 

United States. In fact it is a saying that all a Nisei needs is a trip to Japan to make 

a loyal American out of him. The American educated Japanese is a boor in Japan 

and treated as a foreigner.” 31

While studying in Japan, Kibei often were exposed to compulsory military 

training in Japanese middle and high schools. Thomas Sakamoto took such training while attending high school in Japan. When he graduated in 1938, a Japanese 

Army major offered him a commission in the Army. Sakamoto declined because 

he was an American citizen. He recalled that the Japanese officer became agitated 

and waved his sword and called the young man a traitor to his homeland. Sakamoto returned soon afterward to his real home, California.32

As diplomatic tensions rose in the autumn and winter of 1940–1941, the U.S. 

embassy in Tokyo contacted Nisei visiting in Japan and urged them to return home. 

Those who had been in Japan the longest suffered the most, some having almost 

completely lost their ability to speak English. Now they were cast adrift in Hawaii 

or on the West Coast with little chance of finding work. Those who enrolled in 

American high schools were older than most other students. They sometimes found 

themselves rejected by both worlds. John Aiso described the Kibei’s experience, 

“With over twenty years of close infighting against prejudice and discrimination 

heaped upon him by chauvinistic elements in both the United States and Japan, he 

was by 1941 already a mentally and morally battle-conditioned veteran.” 33

In the impending crisis, the Army would come to prize the Kibei for their language skill. Who better to translate or interpret that difficult language? But often 

30 The War Relocation Authority reserved the term Kibei for Nisei who had spent three or more 

years in Japan. See Alexander H. Leighton, The Governing of Men: General Principles and Recommendations Based on Experience at a Japanese Relocation Camp (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1945), pp. 79–80; Spickard, Japanese Americans, pp. 89–90; Brian Masaru Hayashi, 

Democratizing the Enemy: The Japanese American Internment (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 45–48, 161–63. 31 Pearl Harbor Attack: Hearings before the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl 

Harbor Attack, 39 parts (Washington, D.C: Government Printing Office, 1946), pt. 6, p. 2685. 32 “Caught between Two Worlds.” 33 John F. Aiso, “Tribute to Nisei in G–2,” Arlington National Cemetery, 2 Jun 63, printed in 

“Tributes to Japanese American Military Service in World War II,” Congressional Record (11 Jun 

63), p. 7. In October 1940 and again in February 1941, the U.S. embassy advised all U.S. citizens to 

leave Japan. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1940, vol. 4, The Far East (Washington, D.C.: 

Government Printing Office, 1955), pp. 930–55; Foreign Relations of the United States, 1941, vol. 

5, The Far East (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1962), pp. 397– 453.
THE U.S. ARMY AND THE NISEI BEFORE PEARL HARBOR 15

the same Kibei felt most keenly the anguish of the two countries’ going to war, for, 

as Aiso put it, “those best qualified for G–2 service were those whose sentimental 

heartstrings for relatives and close friends tugged the strongest.” 34

The Military Intelligence Division Prepares for War with Japan, 1940–1941

The War Department’s Military Intelligence Division was ill prepared for war 

with Japan or any other country. War Plan Orange called for the Army to defend 

the Philippine Islands in the event of war with Japan, but the Navy would wage the 

decisive campaign.35 MID itself had dwindled in size during the interwar years. 

Combat units lacked intelligence personnel and the specialized schools to train 

them, and few officers valued intelligence as a career. One exception, Col. Rufus 

S. Bratton, headed MID’s Far Eastern Branch after 1937. A West Point graduate, 

he had served three tours in Japan.36

The Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) fared little better in apprehending Japanese plans. It had radio intercept stations targeting Japan from Fort Shafter, Hawaii, 

and Fort McKinley in the Philippines. In Washington, D.C., a handful of officers, 

enlisted men, and civilians had been decrypting and translating Japanese diplomatic messages since August 1940. However, with the low volume of messages 

intercepted and decrypted, the Army needed only a handful of translators.37

By early 1941 it was clear that the Military Intelligence Division had to prepare for a possible conflict with Japan. If the U.S. and Japanese Armies should 

meet on some future battlefield, combat intelligence would be critical. This would 

require soldiers who could read and speak Japanese. The War Department needed 

34 Aiso, “Tribute to Nisei in G–2,” p. 7. 35 Louis Morton, Strategy and Command: The First Two Years, U.S. Army in World War II

(Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1962), pp. 21–127; Brian M. Linn, 

Guardians of Empire: The U.S. Army and the Pacific, 1902–1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North 

Carolina Press, 1997). 36 Bruce W. Bidwell, History of the Military Intelligence Division, Department of the Army 

General Staff: 1775–1941 (Frederick, Md.: University Publications of America, 1986); John P. 

Finnegan and Romana Danysh, Military Intelligence, Army Lineage Series (Washington, D.C.: 

U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1998), pp. 41–60; David Kahn, “The United States Views 

Germany and Japan in 1941,” in Knowing One’s Enemies: Intelligence Assessment before the Two 

World Wars, ed. Ernest R. May (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. 476–501; Ladislas Farago, The Broken Seal: “Operation Magic” and the Secret Road to Pearl Harbor (New York: 

Random House, 1967), pp. 279–92. 37 Ronald Lewin, The American Magic: Codes, Ciphers and the Defeat of Japan (New York: 

Farrar Straus Giroux, 1982); Diane T. Putney, “The U.S. Military Intelligence Service: The Ultra 

Mission,” in Ultra and the Army Air Forces in World War II, ed. Lewis F. Powell (Washington, 

D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1987), pp. 65–103; James L. Gilbert and John P. Finnegan, eds., 

U.S. Army Signals Intelligence in World War II: A Documentary History, U.S. Army in World War 

II (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1993); Ronald Spector, ed., Listening 

to the Enemy: Key Documents on the Role of Communications Intelligence in the War with Japan

(Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1988); “History of Special Branch, MIS, WD, 1942–1944,” 

SRH–035, Records of the National Security Agency/Central Security Service, RG 457, NARA.
16 NISEI LINGUISTS

speakers of European languages as well, but these were easier to find, having been 

required in previous wars. Maj. Gen. Charles A. Willoughby, General MacArthur’s 

chief of intelligence during the war, later commented that “linguist requirements 

for the European theater of war could have been met without leaving the sidewalks 

of New York City, but there was a vastly different story in the Far East.” 38

From January through March 1941 the United States and Britain held their first 

staff talks in Washington to coordinate their defense plans in the Far East.39 Soon 

after, MID sent a former language attaché, Lt. Col. Moses W. Pettigrew, to the Far 

East to assess the overall intelligence posture against Japan. He met with American and allied intelligence officers in Honolulu, Manila, Hong Kong, Chunking, 

Singapore, and elsewhere and returned with a great sense of urgency. As a result, 

the Army published a handbook on Japanese military forces in July 1941. The 

Army also decided to establish a Japanese-language training program.40

The War Department possessed one valuable resource: a small group of Regular Army officers such as Bratton and Pettigrew who had learned Japanese through 

the language attaché program. In Tokyo, the U.S. embassy had operated a joint language-training program for the Army, Navy, and State Department since before 

the First World War. In the 1920s the embassy hired Naoe Naganuma as a language instructor. Naganuma developed a set of textbooks and readers with which 

all the language attachés became familiar.41 Each year between the wars MID sent 

two officers to Japan for four years of language training and service as assistant 

military attachés. Language attachés took intensive language classes in Tokyo 

38 Maj. Gen. Charles A. Willoughby, Remarks to Japanese American Citizens League, reprinted in 90th Cong., 1st sess., Congressional Record 113, No. 22 (15 Feb 67). 39 Morton, Strategy and Command, pp. 86–90; Ray S. Cline, Washington Command Post: The 

Operations Division (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1951), pp. 58–60. 40 Bidwell, History of the Military Intelligence Division, pp. 435–36. Pettigrew’s recommendations were printed in Pearl Harbor Attack, pt. 18, pp. 3436–39; Classified Material for 1941, Jap 

[sic] Empire File, Security-Class Gen Corresp, 1926–1946, Far Eastern Br, Ofc of the Dir of Intel 

G–2, RG 165, NARA.

Technical Manual 30–480, Handbook on Japanese Military Forces (Washington, D.C.: War 

Department, July 1941), was revised and expanded as the war progressed. MID sent page proofs to 

the Philippine and Hawaiian Departments in early June 1941.

In August MID sent Maj. Warren J. Clear, U.S. Army, Retired, to recommend a War Department secret intelligence system in the Far East. He submitted his recommendations on 3 November 

1941, but they were never implemented. Bidwell, History of the Military Intelligence Division, 

pp. 438–40. 41 “Reminiscences of Rear Admiral Arthur H. McCollum, U.S. Navy Retired,” 2 vols., pp. 

254–55, Unpubl Ms, 1970–1971, Naval Historical Center, Washington, D.C.; Office of the Chief of 

Naval Operations, “School of Oriental Languages,” pp. 5–12, Unpubl Ms, Naval Historical Center, Washington, D.C. Naoe Naganuma, Hyojun Nihongo Tokuhon [Standard Japanese Readers] 

(Tokyo: various publishers and editions). Each year the State Department trained one or two Foreign Service officers in the Japanese program. John K. Emmerson was a student in 1936–1939. 

See John K. Emmerson, The Japanese Thread: A Life in the U.S. Foreign Service (New York: 

Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1978). Naganuma was a local employee of the U.S. embassy, not a 

U.S. citizen. After the war, he resumed teaching for the U.S. Army. His textbooks continued to be 

published into the 1980s.
THE U.S. ARMY AND THE NISEI BEFORE PEARL HARBOR 17

and often were subsequently sent to Japanese Army units as observers. They came 

away with a firsthand appreciation of the Japanese Army, its soldiers, leaders, 

tactics, equipment, and spirit. When then–First Lieutenant Weckerling returned 

from Japan in 1932, he published an article in the Cavalry Journal describing his 

tour and urging other officers to volunteer.42 By 1941 MID had a pool of more than 

forty officers who could speak at least some Japanese. However, not all were available by then, many being “retired, incapacitated or . . . beyond the age and rank of 

interpreters,” Weckerling later explained.43 The Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) 

had a similar number of language-qualified officers.44

Army and Navy intelligence officers were also responsible to protect U.S. territories against espionage and sabotage. MID and ONI coordinated their efforts 

with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The Japanese populations on the 

West Coast and in Hawaii were prime suspects, as were the Japanese communities in Mexico, Panama, and the Philippines. Stunning German victories in 

Europe since 1939 greatly increased American fears of a “fifth column” inside 

their own country.45

MID, ONI, and the FBI developed active surveillance programs directed at 

Japanese communities in the United States and its territories.46 In 1933 the G–2 of 

42 1st Lt. John Weckerling, “The Japanese Language Detail,” Cavalry Journal (May–June 

1932): 31–34. First Lt. Harold Doud spent 1933–1935 learning Japanese. “Six Months with the 

Japanese Infantry,” Infantry Journal (January–February 1937). 43 Weckerling, “Japanese Americans Play Vital Role.” List of Japanese-Qualified Officers, 27 

Mar 41, Security-Class Gen Corresp, 1926–1946, Far Eastern Br, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, RG

165, NARA. Of the three full colonels on the list, by 1942 two were retired and the third was military 

attaché to Australia. Another graduate, Maj. Maxwell D. Taylor (Tokyo, 1935–1939), who later commanded the 101st Airborne Division and served as Army Chief of Staff, never served in MID. Maxwell D. Taylor, Swords and Plowshares (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972), pp. 31–36. See also Sidney 

F. Mashbir (Tokyo, 1920–1923), I Was an American Spy (New York: Vantage, 1953), pp. 59–161.

John T. Greenwood, “The U.S. Army Military Observers with the Japanese Army during the 

Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905),” Army History (Winter 1996): 1–14, 16; Bidwell, History of the 

Military Intelligence Division, pp. 379–94; Scott A. Koch, “The Role of U.S. Army Military Attachés between the World Wars,” Studies in Intelligence (Winter 1994): 53–57; John F. Votaw, “United 

States Military Attachés, 1885–1919: The American Army Matures in the International Arena,” 

Ph.D. Diss., Temple University, 1991. The British Army had a similar program for training language 

attachés. M. D. Kennedy, The Military Side of Japanese Life (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1923). 44 Memo, Naval Attachés, Assistant Naval Attachés, and Language Officers Attached to American Embassy, Tokyo, Dec 38 [updated through 1941], in Henri H. Smith-Hutton Papers, Box 1, 

Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif. For a similar list, see Wyman 

H. Packard, A Century of U.S. Naval Intelligence (Washington, D.C.: Office of Naval Intelligence/

Naval Historical Center, 1996), pp. 367–71; Lewin, American Magic, pp. 29–31. 45 John A. Herzig, “Japanese Americans and Magic,” Amerasia Journal 11, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 

1984): 47–65; Bob Kumamoto, “The Search for Spies: American Counterintelligence and the Japanese American Community, 1932–1941,” Amerasia Journal 6 (1979): 45–75; Francis MacDonnell, 

Insidious Foes: The Axis Fifth Column and the American Home Front (New York: Oxford University 

Press, 1995), pp. 82–90; Personal Justice Denied: Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation 

and Internment of Civilians (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), pp. 51–60, 471–78. 46 Okihiro, Cane Fires. For firsthand accounts, see Thorpe, East Wind, Rain, pp. 3–30; Ellis M. 

Zacharias, Secret Missions: The Story of an Intelligence Officer (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 
18 NISEI LINGUISTS

Ninth Corps Area at the Presidio of San Francisco gave a reserve commission to 

David Swift, a Japanese-speaking customs inspector born in Japan. Swift reported 

to G–2 what he found out about Japanese visitors to the busy port. The 12th Naval 

District intelligence officer retained John Anderton, a San Francisco lawyer who 

had learned Japanese and knew the local Japanese community, to be a translator.47

When Capt. Frederick P. Munson returned in 1937 from his tour as a language 

attaché in Tokyo, he was assigned to Ninth Corps Area Headquarters in San Francisco. The headquarters “wanted a Japanese-speaking person,” he recalled, “particularly to work with the Navy and FBI on Japanese relations in San Francisco 

because we had a lot of Japanese going through there and they were doing all 

kinds of things.” In 1939 the War Department assigned then-Major Weckerling 

to the Panama Canal Zone to keep an eye on the substantial Japanese population 

there. MID also posted Japanese-speaking officers to the Hawaiian and Philippine 

Departments.48 Growing concerns led the FBI to reopen its office in Honolulu in 

August 1939.49

Local Army, Navy, and FBI offices hired a few trusted Nisei as translators, interpreters, even as undercover informants. As early as 1931 the Hawaiian 

Department G–2 recruited Gero Iwai to monitor the local Japanese; he was one of 

the first Nisei to receive a reserve commission through the University of Hawaii 

ROTC. In 1937 the 14th Naval District intelligence officer recruited Douglas T. 

Wada, a graduate of the University of Hawaii.50 In other ways, intelligence officials 

1946), pp. 136–212. ONI began offering reserve commissions to Japanese-speaking Caucasians in 

the mid-1930s. Mashbir, I Was an American Spy, p. 223. 47 David W. Swift, Sr., Ninety Li a Day, ed. David W. Swift, Jr., Social Life Monographs, vol. 69 

(Taipei: Chinese Association for Folklore, 1975), pp. 265–68. For Anderton, see Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 44–45; Memo, 12th Naval District to Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), 7 Jan 36, 

sub: Japanese Translators, Folder A8–2/P11–5, Translators (5), Commandant’s Ofc, Gen Corresp 

(Declass), 12th Naval District, RG 181, NARA–Pacific Region, San Bruno, Calif. 48 Interv, Frederick P. Munson, 5 Mar 75, in Frederick P. Munson Papers, Hoover Institution 

Archives. Munson returned to the Far East in 1938 as assistant military attaché in Peking under 

Col. Joseph W. Stilwell. He later transferred to Tokyo, where he was the military attaché when the 

war began. The Army’s Hawaiian Department was authorized one Japanese language officer, but 

the incumbent left in the summer of 1941 without a replacement. Memos, Col. R. S. Bratton for 

AGO [Adjutant General’s Office], 11 Jul 41, and Lt. Col. Ralph C. Smith for AGO, 22 Jul 41, both 

in Security-Class Gen Corresp, 1926–1946, Far Eastern Br, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, 

NARA. According to historian Gary Okihiro, as late as July 1940 the ONI office in Hawaii had one 

Japanese translator and one undercover operator and the Hawaiian Department G–2 had the same. 

Okihiro, Cane Fires, p. 178. Memo, G–2 to TAG [The Adjutant General], sub: Assignment of Major 

John Weckerling, 19 Jun 41, Security-Class Gen Corresp, 1926–1946, Far Eastern Br, Ofc of the Dir 

of Intel G–2, RG 165, NARA. 49 Tom Coffman, The Island Edge of America: A Political History of Hawaii (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003), pp. 43–44; Murphy, Ambassadors in Arms, pp. 27–30; Okihiro, Cane 

Fires, pp. 178–79. 50 Ted T. Tsukiyama et al., eds., Secret Valor: M.I.S. Personnel, World War II Pacific Theater, Pre–Pearl Harbor to Sept. 8, 1951 (Honolulu: Military Intelligence Service Veterans Club of 

Hawaii, 1993), pp. 31–33; Interv, Ted Tsukiyama with Douglas T. Wada, 21 Mar 02, copy of tape 

in author’s files.
THE U.S. ARMY AND THE NISEI BEFORE PEARL HARBOR 19

obtained the quiet cooperation of Nisei community leaders who provided information on Issei and Nisei. In the spring of 1940 FBI officials in Hawaii organized 

Nisei advisory committees. In Los Angeles, on 21 March 1941, Nisei leaders held 

a meeting with “representatives of the Naval Intelligence, the Army, the County 

government, the Chamber of Commerce and the metropolitan press.” At the meeting, the 11th Naval District intelligence officer, Lt. Cmdr. Kenneth D. Ringle, and 

other military and local officials reaffirmed their belief in the loyalty of the Nisei 

and rejected any accusations of disloyalty.51

Nevertheless, intelligence officials had some cause for concern about the Japanese government. In January 1941 Tokyo urged its consulates in Hawaii and the 

West Coast to step up efforts to gather information, using “U.S. citizens of foreign extraction (other than Japanese), aliens (other than Japanese), communists, 

Negroes, labor union members, and anti-Semites.” As for the Issei and Nisei, the 

Japanese foreign ministry advised, “In view of the fact that if there is any slip 

in this phase, our people in the U.S. will be subjected to considerable persecution . . . the utmost caution must be exercised.” 52 However, Japanese espionage 

efforts brought few rewards beyond what was freely available in the daily newspapers. American surveillance of the Issei was tightened in the autumn of 1940, 

when Congress directed the registration of all alien residents, allowing government agencies to open investigative files on all Issei. In the spring of 1941 the FBI

broke into the Japanese consulate in Los Angeles and photographed documents 

that detailed Japanese espionage operations on the West Coast. In June 1941 the 

FBI broke up an espionage ring of Japanese military officers but found no evidence of Nisei involvement.53

The War Department was also concerned about Japanese fifth-column activity 

in the Philippines, where Japanese residents numbered over 20,000. In late 1940 the 

Philippine Department G–2 asked the Hawaiian Department to send two reliable 

Nisei to infiltrate the Japanese community in Manila. In March 1941 the Hawaiian Department G–2 selected Arthur S. Komori and Richard M. Sakakida. Neither had ever set foot in Japan, but both spoke excellent Japanese. The department 

51 “Intelligence Officers Invite SCDC [Southern California District Council] Members to Dinner Meeting, Express Faith in Loyalty of Nisei Citizens,” Pacific Citizen, Apr 41, p. 1. 52 Msg no. 44, Tokyo to Washington, 30 Jan 41, in The “Magic” Background of Pearl Harbor, 

5 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Department of Defense, 1977), vol. 1. Memo, WD Gen Staff G–2 to 

Chief, Counter Intelligence Br, 12 Feb 41, sub: Reorganization of Japanese Intelligence Service in 

the United States, Classified Material for 1941, RG 165, NARA. 53 Pacific Citizen, Jan 41. The Alien Registration Act of 1940 called for all resident aliens to be 

registered and fingerprinted between 27 August and 26 December 1940. MacDonnell, Insidious 

Foes, pp. 82–85; New York Times, 10 Jun 41, p. 3; Time (23 June 1941): 17.

On the effectiveness of prewar Japanese intelligence about the United States, see Michael A. 

Barnhart, “Japanese Intelligence before the Second World War: ‘Best Case’ Analysis,” in May, 

Knowing One’s Enemies, pp. 424–55; Pedro A. Loureiro, “Japanese Espionage and American 

Countermeasures in Pre–Pearl Harbor California,” Journal of American–East Asian Relations 3, 

no. 3 (Fall 1994): 197–210; Stephen C. Mercado, “Japanese Army Intelligence Activities against the 

United States, 1921–1945,” Studies in Intelligence 38, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 49–55.
20 NISEI LINGUISTS

G–2 secretly enlisted the two young men into the Corps of Intelligence Police (later 

redesignated the Counter Intelligence Corps) and sent them undercover by steamer 

to Manila in April. There, they infiltrated the Japanese business and diplomatic community and soon began reporting valuable information to the Philippine Department 

G–2. Sakakida found work as a desk clerk at a hotel favored by Japanese visitors and 

began to win their trust. That summer, when the U.S. government froze all Japanese 

assets, Sakakida helped Japanese businessmen fill out their declaration forms, carefully remembering any information they asked him not to write down, which he 

later passed to his superiors.54

Despite the use of individual Nisei in sensitive assignments and considerable 

success in countering Japanese espionage, American officials remained uncertain of the loyalty of American-born Nisei before the war. No amount of Nisei 

cooperation or fervent declarations of patriotism such as the “Japanese American 

Creed” could allay white suspicions that at least some Nisei might prove disloyal. 

Nisei leaders worked hard to dispel these fears. They even feared their expressions 

of patriotism might backfire and make whites more suspicious than ever.55 Intelligence officials searched for a formula that would tell them what they wanted to 

know. Could they trust the Nisei, but not the Issei? Were Christian Japanese more 

trustworthy than Buddhists? Could they trust Nisei who had never visited Japan 

but not those who had? Could they trust only Nisei who seemed more “Americanized” and took no part in Japanese community organizations?

Put this way, the question was unanswerable. How could an outsider evaluate 

participation in sports clubs, language schools, community-sponsored events, or 

even Japanese government–sponsored study tours to Japan and Manchuria? How 

to weigh having relatives in Japan? Absent any explicit evidence of disloyalty, how 

could Army, Navy, or FBI officials look into the hearts of the young Nisei men in 

particular, many of them still in their teens or twenties, and predict the future? The 

Nisei would have to demonstrate their loyalty in action under the most difficult 

circumstances, but first they would have to be given the chance to do so.

A “Master Stroke”: Establishing a Japanese-Language School, 

April–October 1941

If the U.S. Army were to defeat the Japanese Army, it would need not just 

a few dozen officers, but hundreds and possibly thousands of interrogators and 

translators. On 24 March 1941, without specifically mentioning the Nisei, MID 

directed the Fourth Army G–2 to survey its ranks for Japanese-speaking soldiers: 

“In the event of a major emergency involving Japan, there will be a great demand 

for Japanese speaking men in intelligence units of many combatant troops and for 

54 Ann Bray, “Undercover Nisei,” in Military Intelligence: Its Heroes and Legends (Arlington 

Hall Station, Va.: U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, 1987), pp. 29–45; Sakakida and 

Kiyosaki, A Spy in Their Midst, pp. 62–64; Duval A. Edwards, Spy Catchers of the U.S. Army in the 

War with Japan (Gig Harbor, Wash.: Red Apple Publishing, 1994), pp. 15–21. 55 Kido, “Situation of Japanese.”
THE U.S. ARMY AND THE NISEI BEFORE PEARL HARBOR 21

certain duties under the War Department. It would appear desirable, therefore, to 

have readily available some record of this personnel, together with such information as to probable loyalty and ability as is obtainable.” 56

Fourth Army, headquartered on the Presidio of San Francisco, was the Army’s 

area command on the West Coast. That spring the headquarters was consumed by 

the mobilization of Regular Army and National Guard divisions in training camps 

stretching from the 3d Division at Fort Lewis, Washington, to the 7th Division at 

Fort Ord, California, to the 40th Division at Camp San Luis Obispo, California. As 

an indication of the seriousness of the mobilization, on 17 March the War Department designated Fourth Army as the Western Defense Command (WDC) under Lt. 

Gen. John L. DeWitt, one of the Army’s most senior generals. (See Map 1.) By the 

summer of 1941 Fourth Army counted over 100,000 soldiers, including 1,000 Nisei. 

Even so, it soon became clear that the Fourth Army’s ranks would not yield enough 

proficient Japanese-speakers to meet requirements. The Army needed a training 

program. The former language attachés knew that Japanese took longer to learn 

than did most European languages. The training would take at least six months, 

but the War Department had few alternatives. Weckerling later wrote: “Those few 

who realized the language difficulties involved in prosecuting a war against the 

Japanese were alarmed by the lack of our preparations in this regard.” 57

In April Maj. Carlisle C. Dusenbury, a former language attaché then in the 

Far Eastern Branch, suggested using Nisei soldiers as linguists.58 Some Nisei, 

he thought, already spoke Japanese and would need training only in the military 

aspects of the language. He discussed his idea with Maj. Wallace H. Moore, who 

had been born in Japan of missionary parents and had taught at the University 

of California before being called to active duty. Together Dusenbury and Moore 

sold the idea to their branch chief, Colonel Bratton. After the war school officials 

esteemed their idea as a “master stroke.” 59

At that time the War Department had no schools for training in foreign languages or in combat intelligence. The Signal Corps operated a small school at 

56 Draft Ltr, WD G–2 to G–2, Fourth Army, 24 Mar 41, Security-Class Gen Corresp, 1926–

1946, Far Eastern Br, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, NARA. Related correspondence alluded 

to a subsequent letter, dated 5 May 1941, on the same subject. Fourth Army declined to conduct 

the survey, recommending instead that its subordinate commands maintain these files. Memo, HQ, 

Fourth Army, to TAG, 14 May 41, sub: Personnel Familiar with Japanese, Far Eastern Br, Ofc of the 

Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, NARA. 57 Weckerling, “Japanese Americans Play Vital Role.” 58 By December 1941 Dusenbury was chief of the Japanese subsection of the Far Eastern Section. He had served as a language officer in Japan in 1929–1933 and in China under Stilwell in 

1935–1937. Bidwell, History of the Military Intelligence Division, p. 454. 59 Weckerling, “Japanese Americans Play Vital Role.” The phrase “master stroke” first appeared 

in a MISLS press release of 22 October 1945. Japanese Evacuation Research Study (JERS), pt. 2, 

sec. 2, reel 20, frame 0037, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Bidwell, History of 

the Military Intelligence Division, p. 225, dates the decision in April 1941. Weckerling says Dusenbury first proposed it in June, when the correspondence from MID to Fourth Army begins. MID 

apparently did not consider directing the Hawaiian Department to organize such a school.
X X X X

FOURTH Western Defense Command

X X

7

X X X

III

X X

40

X X

41

X X

3

X X X

IX

C A N A D A

M E X I C O

Ft. Ord

Presidio of Monterey

Fort Lewis

Fort Lawton

Presidio of San Francisco

Camp San Luis Obispo

Camp Roberts

Fort MacArthur

Camp Callan

Fort Douglas

Camp Haan

14,565

4,071

1,191

470

2,210

632

186

2,734

643

506

458

93,717

U T A H

A R I Z O N A

N E W M E X I C O

C O L O R A D O

W Y O M I N G

I D A H O

O R E G O N

W A S H I N G T O N

M O N T A N A

C A L I F O R N I A

N E V A D A

T E X A S 1941

WESTERN DEFENSE COMMAND

Japanese Population per State

Major Military Installations

Western Defense Command Area

583

MAP 1
THE U.S. ARMY AND THE NISEI BEFORE PEARL HARBOR 23

Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, for radio intelligence. In November 1941 the Corps 

of Intelligence Police established its own training school in Chicago. MID itself 

was neither staffed nor organized to supervise a school, so the logical choice was 

to assign the task to Fourth Army, the command nearest to potential instructors 

and students.

In June 1941 the Far Eastern Branch got to work on the problem. On 19 June 

it requested that Major Weckerling be reassigned to Fourth Army to organize the 

school. On 23 June Colonel Bratton asked the G–2 to direct Fourth Army to establish a school with a minimum of fifty Nisei students. As he envisioned it, the program would consist of “3 months’ intensive review of the language (mostly oral), 

2 months’ study of military terminology, 1 month’s instruction in application of 

the language to Combat Intelligence (specifically examination of prisoners and 

duties of interpreters in the field).” 60 The Adjutant General’s Office provided data 

on the number of Japanese Americans in uniform, reporting that as of March 1941 

there were 1,690 Nisei in the service divided roughly equally between Hawaii and 

the mainland.61 Hundreds more were being inducted each month. The Far Eastern 

Branch also asked Colonel Munson, the military attaché in Tokyo, to purchase and 

send to Fourth Army some Japanese dictionaries.62

On 1 July the War Department directed Fourth Army to establish an intelligence school “to train combat intelligence personnel for work as translators and 

interpreters of the Japanese language.” 63 The directive came just in time. That 

month relations between America and Japan plunged deeper into crisis when 

Japan occupied French Indochina and the United States froze all Japanese assets, 

imposed an oil embargo, and recalled General Douglas MacArthur from retirement to establish a new command, U.S. Army Forces in the Far East. The Office 

of Naval Intelligence withdrew its naval officers studying Japanese in Tokyo, but 

the Army language attachés remained in place.64

The United States was ill prepared for war in almost every respect, not the 

least in the languages of the Far East. In early 1941 the Rockefeller Foundation 

60 Memo, Bratton to Assistant Chief of Staff (ACS), G–2, 23 Jun 41, sub: Intelligence School 

Fourth Army, Security-Class Gen Corresp, 1926–1946, Far Eastern Br, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, 

RG 165, NARA.

61 Memo, TAGO for Bratton, 1 Jul 41, Security-Class Gen Corresp, 1926–1946, Far Eastern Br, 

Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, NARA. TAGO reported the following figures for Nisei enlistments by month: November 1940, 6; December 1940, 397; January 1941, 128; February 1941, 208; 

March 1941, 906. During the same period another forty-five Nisei joined the National Guard. 62 Memo, WD Gen Staff G–2 to ACS, G–2, Ninth Corps Area, 23 Jun 41, sub: Japanese Dictionaries, Security-Class Gen Corresp, 1926–1946, Far Eastern Br, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, RG

165, NARA. 63 Memo, TAG to CG [Commanding General], Fourth Army, 1 Jul 41, sub: Intelligence School, 

Fourth Army, AG 352.01, cited in MISLS, “Training History of the Military Intelligence Service 

Language School,” ann. 10, Personnel Procurement Office, sec. IV.A., p. 1, Unpubl Ms, 1946, U.S. 

Army Center of Military History (CMH). 64 For some reason the Navy language attachés lacked diplomatic immunity and were thus 

at more risk than those of the Army. “Reminiscences of Rear Admiral Arthur H. McCollum,” 

pp. 298–99.
24 NISEI LINGUISTS

awarded a $100,000 grant to the American Council of Learned Societies for 

“the development of intensive instruction in foreign languages.” The “scientific” linguists at several universities 

proposed to begin methodically with 

a descriptive analysis of each selected 

language before moving on to preparing instructional materials.65

In July 1941 Cornell University 

sponsored a three-day conference of 

Japanese-language teachers from seven 

American universities; representatives 

of MID, ONI, and the FBI attended. The 

officers found the results sorely disappointing. They learned that only sixty 

Caucasian students nationwide were 

enrolled in college-level Japanese-language courses, mostly “from a purely 

literary, artistic, or philological point of 

view,” according to one participant. “It 

became obvious to all concerned that 

the teaching methods and techniques” 

then in use “were in a state of unmitigated confusion.” On the conference’s last 

day the War Department representative, Maj. Wallace H. Moore, stood up and 

delivered a harsh assessment: “Well, gentlemen, you haven’t got a thing that’s any 

use to the government at all.” The Army and Navy officers “left the conference 

determined to do the job [them]selves.” 66

The Army realized several advantages in having its own Japanese-language 

school at the Presidio of San Francisco, among them Capt. Kai E. Rasmussen, a 

coast artillery officer then commanding harbor defenses for San Francisco Bay.67

Rasmussen had emigrated from Denmark to the United States in 1922 and enlisted 

in the Army. He was selected for the U.S. Military Academy class of 1929. He later 

spent four years in Japan learning the language and observing the Japanese Army. 

He returned to the States in 1940; but instead of using his language skills, the 

Army assigned him to command Battery E, 65th Coast Artillery, guarding the 

Golden Gate. By the spring of 1941 Rasmussen was serving on the Fourth Army 

65 Paul F. Angiolillo, Armed Forces Foreign Language Teaching: Critical Evaluation and 

Implications (New York: Vanni, 1947), p. 23. 66 Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, “School of Oriental Languages,” pp. 2–3; “Reminiscences of Rear Admiral Arthur H. McCollum,” pp. 280–82. 67 The most important sources for the origins of the school are: “Training History”; Ibid., ann. 1, 

Academic Training, 20 Feb 46; MISLS Album (Minneapolis: Military Intelligence Service Language 

School, 1946); and Weckerling, “Japanese Americans Play Vital Role.”

Kai E. Rasmussen
THE U.S. ARMY AND THE NISEI BEFORE PEARL HARBOR 25

staff overseeing the harbor defenses. The Army would soon have great need for 

his language skills.68

Building a Japanese-language school presented a daunting challenge. Rasmussen could hardly expect to screen all the Nisei soldiers himself. To help out, 

MID sent another language attaché, Capt. Joseph K. Dickey, who had been serving 

in the U.S. embassy in Tokyo. Dickey sailed for San Francisco in August. To lead 

the effort to build a school, the War Department dispatched a more senior officer, 

Lt. Col. John Weckerling (promoted that summer). He arrived in San Francisco 

in September. A 44-year-old infantry officer, Weckerling had enlisted in 1917 and 

subsequently earned a commission. As a language attaché in Tokyo from 1928 

to 1932, he had watched as the Imperial Japanese Army occupied Manchuria in 

1931. Returning to Tokyo as the assistant military attaché from 1935 to 1938, he 

had watched as the Japanese Army attacked China in 1937. After a total of eight 

years’ duty in Japan, he was well versed in the Japanese threat. Since late 1939 he 

had served in Panama, searching for possible Japanese subversion, espionage, or 

sabotage directed against the canal. Now he would be searching for Americans of 

Japanese ancestry and recruiting them for language training.69 These three former language attachés, Rasmussen, Dickey, and Weckerling, worked together to 

assemble students and instructors.

That summer the Western Defense Command held the largest maneuvers 

ever seen on the West Coast. All Regular Army and National Guard units under 

DeWitt’s command remained in the field for several weeks, enduring long hikes, 

choking dust, and stifling tents. In the intervals between marches and training 

exercises, a strange scene played out hundreds of times in various camps: an Army 

officer appeared wearing civilian clothes and carrying secret orders. At the camp 

headquarters, he presented his credentials and asked to meet every Nisei soldier in 

the camp. When each soldier reported to him, the mysterious officer showed him 

a Japanese Army manual and asked him to read a few passages.70

68 George W. Cullum, Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the U.S. Military 

Academy at West Point, New York, Since Its Establishment in 1802, vol. 7, supplement, 1920–1930, 

ed. William H. Donaldson (Chicago: Lakeside Press, 1931); Kai E. Rasmussen, speech, DLIFLC, 

25 Jun 77, printed in DLIFLC Forum (November 1977); “In Memoriam, Kai E. Rasmussen, 1902–

1988,” memorial service booklet, 1988; Norman Y. Mineta, “Tribute to Col. Kai E. Rasmussen,” 

Congressional Record (3 May 1988). Rasmussen was promoted to major on 10 October 1941. 69 John Weckerling, Personnel File, National Military Records Center, St. Louis, Mo.; Weckerling, “Japanese Language Detail.” The War Department requested his reassignment from Panama 

to Fourth Army on 19 June 1941. Memo, WD G–2 to TAG, 19 Jun 41, sub: Assignment of Major 

John Weckerling, Security-Class Gen Corresp, 1926–1946, Far Eastern Br, Ofc of the Dir of Intel 

G–2, RG 165, NARA. He arrived on or about 5 September.

From July 1941 to February 1942, the Fourth Army G–2 was Lt. Col. Donald A. Stroh; Weckerling was his assistant. Shigeya Kihara recalls that when he became an instructor in October 1941, 

Weckerling was the Fourth Army G–2 (personal communication to author, May 99). Weckerling’s 

personnel file indicates he did not replace Stroh until March 1942. 70 “Training History,” ann. 10, sec. IV.A., gives details.
26 NISEI LINGUISTS

Captain Rasmussen found Pvt. Thomas Sakamoto assigned to an antitank unit 

on maneuvers at Fort Hunter Liggett, California. Sakamoto remembered a man 

wearing civilian clothes and speaking with a Scandinavian accent. The Danishborn Rasmussen took Sakamoto into a field tent, pulled a Japanese field manual 

from his coat pocket, and asked him to translate some passages. “Since I graduated from the Japanese high school in 1938, reading and translating this textbook 

wasn’t difficult.” Sakamoto recalled that Rasmussen mentioned the chance of a 

commission if he would volunteer for the school. Sakamoto soon received orders 

for the Presidio.71

Captain Dickey visited the 40th Division at Camp San Luis Obispo and interviewed Pvt. Masaji Gene Uratsu, a Kibei who as a child had lived five years in 

Japan. Uratsu was ordered without explanation to report to division headquarters, 

“scared and apprehensive to say the least.” Dickey “produced several Japanese 

field manuals and requested that I read and translate portions of the manuals. The 

whole procedure, which lasted about thirty minutes, seemed like an eternity to me. 

Upon conclusion of the interview, the officer stated that I would be hearing from 

him again, and he warned me, in no uncertain terms, that this interview was not to 

be revealed or discussed with anyone.” Two months later, Uratsu and three other 

Nisei from the camp received orders to report to the G–2, Fourth Army.72

For most Nisei, the interviews proved embarrassing. One of the books the 

officers used was the Imperial Japanese Army field service regulations, Sakusen 

Yo ̄murei. Another was the Japanese military academy textbook on applied tactics, 

O ̄yo ̄ Senjutsu. Even if the Nisei had paid attention to their lessons, none knew 

the complicated Japanese military terminology, heigo. Perhaps their fathers could 

have read these materials, but the Nisei could not. The Nisei probably recalled all 

those boring afternoons spent in the Japanese-language school while their nonJapanese friends were already on the baseball diamond. When tested, even if some 

could speak a few words of simple Japanese, most could not translate even the 

simplest sentences.

From July to October 1941 Rasmussen, Dickey, and Weckerling interviewed 

all 1,300 Nisei soldiers on the West Coast.73 For reasons of time, or perhaps not 

71 Thomas Sakamoto, speech, DLIFLC, 1 Nov 87; Sakamoto, “Original Japanese Student 

Reflects”; Interv, author with Sakamoto, 16 Nov 87; “Caught Between Two Worlds”; Sakamoto 

autobiography, 1 Nov 96. Arthur M. Kaneko also was promised a commission in 1941, when he was 

selected for language training. David W. Swift, Jr., ed., “First Class,” p. 15, Unpubl Ms, 2000, copy 

in author’s files. Not all Nisei recruited that summer for language training recall being promised 

commissions. 72 Gene Masaji Uratsu, Biography, Military Intelligence Service Club of Northern California 

(this and similar biographies hereafter cited as MISNorCal Bios). 73 Some sources, such as the MISLS press release of 22 October 1945 and the MISLS Album, 

give the number of Nisei soldiers interviewed at this time as 3,700. Other sources do not necessarily 

bear this out. For example, Weckerling uses 1,300 in his letter of 31 December 1941. “Training History,” ann. 1 (dated December 1945), uses 1,300; “Training History” (dated April 1946) uses 1,200. 

After 7 December 1941, an unknown number of Nisei were discharged, but others were still being 

drafted as late as February 1942. That month the Western Defense Command reported transferring 
THE U.S. ARMY AND THE NISEI BEFORE PEARL HARBOR 27

wishing to cross command lines, no one screened the Nisei serving in Hawaii. In 

December Weckerling reported to the War Department: “The general impression 

gained by Rasmussen and me in our interviews with these men was an excellent 

one. The majority seemed eager to serve although the nature of the school, classified 

by the War Department as secret at that time, could not be fully explained. Many 

thought that it was to be organized along F.B.I. lines but their eagerness to serve 

still remained high. Only a few were obviously sullen and uncommunicative.” 74

The officers then tried to determine the loyalty of each Nisei candidate based 

on the interview and security questionnaires, which they used for background 

investigations. In addition to the few malcontents, about 30 percent of the Nisei had 

a parent or sibling living in Japan, an automatically disqualifying factor.75 For the 

remaining candidates, the officers questioned families, neighbors, and teachers; in 

some cases they searched the candidates’ homes. Many “were ‘blackballed’ by the 

investigators simply because of racial prejudice or because the person being investigated had made a trip to Japan or had belonged to a Japanese athletic club.” 76

Weckerling reported that “only 40 men were sufficiently qualified linguistically to pursue a six months course in the Japanese language.” Of all Nisei 

screened, only 3 percent could be rated “accomplished,” 4 percent “proficient,” 

and 3 percent “fair.” Of the Nisei interviewed, Weckerling reported, “only 17 men 

spoke, read and wrote Japanese proficiently, indicating a gradual moving away 

from the influence of the first generation Japanese.”77

The Army officers were especially interested in Kibei like Sakamoto and 

Uratsu. Ironically, some Kibei spoke English so poorly that they were of little use 

to the Army. Weckerling identified about half who “had lived in Japan only for a 

short period of time and whose outlook is essentially American, or, who as a result 

of their visit to Japan were embittered against the Japanese by treatment received 

1,211 Nisei soldiers from the West Coast. Memo, TAGO to Commanding General, Western Defense 

Command & Fourth Army, 3 Mar 42, Sub: Enlisted Personnel of Japanese Extraction (AG 220.31); 

Enemy Aliens File, Box 23, General Robert C. Richardson, Jr., Papers, Hoover Institution Archives. 

The Selective Service later reported that 3,188 Nisei were drafted up to 1 November 1941. Selective 

Service System, Special Groups, Special Monograph no. 10 (Washington, D.C.: Selective Service 

System, 1953), p. 114. Of these, perhaps 2,000 were from Hawaii. War Department estimates for 

the summer of 1942 range from 3,000 to 4,600. The figure 3,700 may represent an estimate of the 

total number of Nisei soldiers in December 1941, but it is too high for the total in the WDC. Another 

report gives a much higher figure. “Training History,” ann. 10, sec. IV.A., p. 2. This cites 5,700 

“Presidio of San Francisco interviews” and states that this was the number interviewed for the first 

class. A footnote adds “but only about 1,500 personal history statements on file.” 74 Ltr, Weckerling to Dusenbury, 31 December 1941, Trng Grp, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, RG

165, NARA; Weckerling, “Japanese Americans Play Vital Role.” 75 “Training History,” ann. 4, Intelligence Section. 76 “Training History,” p. 5. Some Nisei initially disqualified were accepted for the school after 

the war began. 77 Ltr, Weckerling to Dusenbury, 31 December 1941; Weckerling, “Japanese Americans Play 

Vital Role.” Rasmussen later gave slightly different figures, 3 percent as “fully qualified” and 

another 8 percent as “potential students after a long training period.” Rasmussen, speech, DLIFLC, 

25 Jun 77.
28 NISEI LINGUISTS

there.” The other half had attended school in Japan and lived there for a longer 

time. “During this stay it is probable that, while in Japan at any rate, the thought 

of those who returned to Japan at a very early age was predominantly Japanese. In 

many cases the influence of Japan had disappeared since their return.” 78 The Kibei 

proved to be the most valuable of all. A few even had personal knowledge of the 

Japanese Army from having served as conscripts.79 Weckerling deemed 5 percent 

or less of the Kibei completely unsuitable for military service, describing them as 

“those unassimilated elements who have, or believe they have, cause to hate the 

United States, those whose parents have maintained a very close tie with the old 

country, those who went to Japan as infants and only returned within the last year 

or two—their outlook being wholly Japanese.” 80

The War Department also searched for Caucasian soldiers who spoke Japanese, 

to little avail. Many claimed an ability to speak Japanese that far surpassed their 

facility with the language. Only two Caucasian enlisted men were selected for the 

first class. Both had lived in Japan for a time and spoke some colloquial Japanese.81

Weckerling later concisely described how “the selection of Nisei of unquestioned loyalty reasonably qualified in the Japanese language became the primary 

task.” 82 In four months of searching, the Army officers found fifty-eight Nisei who 

met these two criteria.

The Office of Naval Intelligence Prepares for War with Japan, 

1940–1941

ONI was making its own preparations for the coming conflict with Japan. For 

decades the U.S. Navy had been rehearsing War Plan Orange. ONI used radio 

intercept stations to monitor the Japanese Fleet. District intelligence officers kept 

watch over local Japanese communities on the West Coast and in Hawaii.83 In 

Washington, the ONI Far East Section employed a handful of Japanese translators. 

The section chief, Lt. Cmdr. Arthur H. McCollum, had been stationed in Tokyo 

in 1922–1925 and again in 1928–1930 and spoke Japanese. In 1940 he happened 

78 Ltr, Weckerling to Dusenbury, 31 December 1941. 79 Masaharu Ano, “Loyal Linguists: Nisei of World War II Learned Japanese in Minnesota,” 

Minnesota History 45, no. 7 (Fall 1977): 273–87, includes a discussion of the special role of the 

Kibei. 80 Ibid. 81 Some Caucasians who spoke Japanese, such as Faubion Bowers, were overlooked at the time, 

particularly if they were assigned outside Fourth Army. Stanley L. Falk and Warren M. Tsuneishi, 

eds., MIS in the War against Japan (Washington, D.C.: Japanese American Veterans Association, 

1995), pp. 11–12, 94. The two Caucasians selected for the first class were Dempster Dirks and 

Victor V. Belousoff, a Russian immigrant who later changed his last name to Bell. Neither was 

proficient enough to graduate with the first class. 82 Weckerling, “Japanese Americans Play Vital Role.” 83 For naval intelligence against Japan before 7 December 1941, see Alan H. Bath, Tracking the 

Axis Enemy: The Triumph of Anglo-American Naval Intelligence (Lawrence: University Press of 

Kansas, 1998), pp. 135–68; Lewin, American Magic, pp. 16–48.
THE U.S. ARMY AND THE NISEI BEFORE PEARL HARBOR 29

upon Glenn W. Shaw, an acquaintance who had taught English in Japan and had 

published translations of modern Japanese plays and novels. McCollum made him 

chief of the Translation Section.84

The Navy had its own small pool of officer-linguists using the same program 

at the U.S. embassy in Tokyo. Several former naval language attachés worked in 

the Far East Section and understood the urgent need for more Japanese linguists. 

Several were already attacking the Japanese naval and diplomatic codes; the effort 

would soon require many more.

In the autumn of 1940, as the Navy began calling reserve officers to active 

duty, Albert E. Hindmarsh, a professor of international law at Harvard University, obtained a commission and approached the Far Eastern Branch to offer his 

services. While spending a year as an exchange professor at the Imperial University in Tokyo, he had learned some Japanese. In December 1940 McCollum gave 

Hindmarsh and Shaw the task of developing a Japanese-language program for the 

Navy. In the spring of 1941 they conducted a survey of college students and found 

fifty-six who had some potential to learn the language.85 The Navy could not draw 

upon the services of Nisei as easily as the Army for one simple reason: As the 

Navy rapidly expanded in 1940–1941 it had continued its traditional racial exclusion policies against Asians. Filipinos were allowed to serve, but only as cooks and 

mess stewards. If the Navy wanted Japanese linguists, it would have to train them 

from scratch.

In July 1941 McCollum and Hindmarsh attended the disappointing language 

conference at Cornell University. Upon returning to Washington, Hindmarsh recommended that the Navy establish its own language program through contracts 

with leading universities. At Harvard University, he secured the services of one 

of the leading Japanese scholars in the country, Russian émigré Professor Serge 

Elisséeff. Elisséeff was a world authority on Japanese art and theater and taught 

the Japanese language. He and his younger protégé, Edwin O. Reischauer, had 

just published a two-volume textbook for the Japanese language.86 While visiting 

California, Hindmarsh chose Florence Walne, an unknown language instructor at 

the University of California. Walne had been born in Nagasaki, the historic seat of 

Christianity in Japan, and was raised by missionary parents. In 1931 she left Japan 

for the United States and graduate studies. While completing her doctorate, she 

84 “Reminiscences of Rear Admiral Arthur H. McCollum,” pp. 260–61. In September the naval 

attaché in Tokyo sent all ten naval language attachés out of the country. 85 “School of Oriental Languages”; “Reminiscences of Rear Admiral Arthur H. McCollum,” 

pp. 282–83. See also key Navy documents from this period reproduced in Scott E. Nadler, The Evolution of Foreign Language Training in the Armed Forces (Washington, D.C.: Defense Language 

Institute, 1972). 86 Serge Elisséeff and Edwin O. Reischauer, Elementary Japanese for University Students

(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard-Yenching Institute, 1941). Elisséeff also coedited with Hugh Borton and Edwin O. Reischauer A Selected List of Books and Articles on Japan in English, French, 

and German (Washington, D.C.: Committee on Japanese Studies, American Council of Learned 

Societies, ca. 1940). Donald Keene describes Elisséeff in On Familiar Terms: A Journey across 

Cultures (New York: Kodansha, 1994), pp. 10–11, 87–90.
30 NISEI LINGUISTS

supported herself by teaching Japanese. The personable “Miss Walne” counted 

many Nisei among her students.87

McCollum and Hindmarsh narrowed their list of potential students to fortyeight, “all native-born United States citizens, white, male, and anxious to serve 

the Navy; most of them had lived and studied in Japan or China, had university degrees, and were in the age bracket of twenty to thirty.” All were promised 

reserve commissions upon graduation. Instruction began on 1 October 1941, with 

twenty-seven students at Harvard and twenty-one at the University of California 

at Berkeley.88 Meanwhile, in July 1941 the U.S. Marine Corps sent twelve reserve 

officers to a separate program at the University of Hawaii to learn Japanese.89

For textbooks McCollum had the naval attaché in Tokyo send copies of the 

Naganuma readers; fifty complete sets arrived in September. Hindmarsh then 

designed a practical course of instruction that crammed the three-year Naganuma 

course into one. The final course objectives were vague. “We didn’t have anything 

specific in mind,” he later recalled, “but we thought it would be useful to have 

some people who could handle the language.” 90

At Harvard, Professor Elisséeff did not like naval officers telling him how 

to teach Japanese. The Navy directed him to use the Naganuma readers, but he 

preferred his own textbook. Hindmarsh visited in November and wrote a sternly 

worded report that demanded changes in the curriculum, which Elisséeff ignored. 

Meanwhile, things were much more to the Navy’s liking on the West Coast, where 

Miss Walne had fewer preconceptions about the “right” way to teach the language 

and her students were making steady progress.91

As Army officers interviewed prospective students, a “delay in the establishment of the school was barely averted,” Weckerling recalled, as MID wavered 

on whether to open a Japanese-language school at all.92 Some argued it would 

be better to open a centralized intelligence school. That summer a group of mili87 The U.S. Navy had identified Walne as a potential intelligence asset in 1935, shortly after she 

enrolled at the University of California: Memo, 12th Naval District to CNO, 7 Jan 36, sub: Japanese 

Translators, Folder A8–2/P11–5, Translators (5), Commandant’s Ofc, Gen Corresp (Declass), 12th 

Naval District, RG 181, NARA–Pacific Region. 88 “School of Oriental Languages,” p. 2. See also Bureau of Navigation, “Organization and 

Contents of an Intensive Course in the Japanese Language for Naval Students,” [ca. Aug 41], in 

Folder P16/P11–5 (12), Course in Japanese Language, Box 12, Commandant’s Ofc, Gen Corresp 

(Declass), 12th Naval District, RG 181, NARA–Pacific Region. 89 Roger Pineau, “World War II Japanese Language School for Marines,” Unpubl Ms, author’s 

files; Roger V. Dingman, “Language at War: U.S. Marine Corps Japanese Language Officers in the 

Pacific War,” Journal of Military History 68 (July 2004): 856–57. One Marine officer who trained at 

the University of Hawaii was Gerald Holtom, born in Japan to missionary parents. He was assigned 

to the 2d Marine Raider Battalion and died on Makin in August 1942. “Palo Alto Marine Finally 

Comes Home,” Palo Alto Daily News, 2 Dec 00. 90 “Reminiscences of Rear Admiral Arthur H. McCollum,” p. 56. 91 Elisséeff’s 28 November 1941 response to Hindmarsh’s criticisms is reproduced in part in 

Nadler, Evolution of Foreign Language Training, pp. 112–14. 92 Weckerling, “Japanese Americans Play Vital Role.” See also Rasmussen’s comments in Minnesota Morning Tribune, 23 Oct 45.
THE U.S. ARMY AND THE NISEI BEFORE PEARL HARBOR 31

tary intelligence officers visited Britain and were impressed by the British Army’s 

interrogator-training school. When they returned to Washington, D.C., in July, 

they recommended that MID establish a similar school. One of the observers was 

the Fourth Army G–2, Lt. Col. Donald A. Stroh, who agreed with the British 

approach. But his assistant G–2 in San Francisco, Weckerling, disagreed, as did 

the officers in the Far Eastern Branch. They argued that the psychology of captured Asian personnel was quite different from that of captured Germans. Hence 

the need for a separate school that would teach only Japanese and interrogation 

techniques appropriate to Japanese prisoners of war.93 At the end of August the Far 

Eastern Branch won out and MID directed Fourth Army to proceed with establishing their school “as soon as practicable.” 94

Another threat to the school came from a new Army organization, General 

Headquarters (GHQ), responsible for the supervision and direction of Army training. In June 1941 GHQ moved to block MID’s plans for intelligence training. 

In July Fourth Army requested GHQ’s permission to start a Japanese-language 

school. MID endorsed Fourth Army’s request but conceded that “the question 

of training translators and interrogators is only one phase of combat intelligence 

training.” MID recommended that “a War Department study should be made to 

determine the needs of all task forces for translators, interpreters and interrogators 

for all required languages, rather than only Japan.” GHQ then approved Fourth 

Army’s request and allowed the school to proceed. The General Staff scheduled 

a meeting for 8 December to decide which War Department staff section would 

control language and intelligence training. The meeting would never happen.95

By October 1941 Fourth Army had assembled sixty students to begin Japanese-language training at Crissy Field on the Presidio of San Francisco. Across the 

San Francisco Bay at the University of California, the Office of Naval Intelligence 

had begun training Caucasian officer candidates and had a similar program at 

Harvard University.

93 The perceived differences in the “psychology” of interrogating Asians vs. Caucasians persisted during the war and after. In 1946–1947 the basic intelligence officers course taught at the 

Intelligence School, Fort Riley, Kansas, had two separate blocks of instruction based on wartime 

experiences, labeled “Interrogation Techniques, Caucasian,” 28 Feb 47, and “Interrogation Techniques, Oriental,” 20 Feb 47, both in Trng Grp, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, NARA. 94 Weckerling, “Japanese Americans Play Vital Role”; Memo, Fourth Army G–2 to WD G–2, 

18 Aug 41, sub: Fourth Army Language and Intelligence School; Ltr, MID to Fourth Army, 30 Aug 

41. Both in Security-Class Gen Corresp, 1926–1946, Far Eastern Br, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, RG

165, NARA. Colonel Stroh was a military observer in England from May through July 1941. 95 Kent Roberts Greenfield et al., The Army Ground Forces: The Organization of Ground Combat Troops (Washington, D.C.: Historical Division, Department of the Army, 1947), pp. 32–55; 

Bidwell, History of the Military Intelligence Division, pp. 366–67; Weckerling, “Japanese Americans Play Vital Role.” Weckerling and Rasmussen were aware of the Navy’s language training in 

Berkeley. Memo, CG, Fourth Army, to ACS, G–2, WD, 17 Sep 41, sub: Navy and Marine Japanese 

Language Schools, in Security-Class Gen Corresp, 1926–1946, Far Eastern Br, Ofc of the Dir of 

Intel G–2, RG 165, NARA.

2

Fourth Army Intelligence School, 

November 1941–May 1942

As diplomatic tensions with Japan increased during 1941, the War Department 

Military Intelligence Division (MID) quietly turned to its Nisei soldiers to train 

a carefully selected few for special duty as interpreters and translators. Several 

officers who had studied Japanese in Tokyo in the 1930s were assigned to Fourth 

Army at the Presidio of San Francisco; they selected sixty students from among 

the roughly 1,300 Nisei from the western states who had been enlisted through 

Selective Service over the previous year.

“Your Country Needs You”

It was difficult to find Nisei students proficient in both English and Japanese 

who could pass a security check; finding qualified instructors was even more so. 

Pfc. Arthur Masaji Kaneko and Pfc. John Fujio Aiso, interviewed at Camp Haan, 

California, seemed especially promising. Kaneko had been born in Riverside and 

had spent ten years attending school in Japan before returning to California for 

high school. In March 1941 he was studying architecture at Los Angeles Junior 

College when he received his Selective Service notice. Because of his drafting 

skills, the Army assigned him to the Coast Artillery. Though Kaneko’s Japanese 

and English skills were excellent, he felt unqualified to teach Japanese. Aiso tried 

to persuade him, but Kaneko joined the school as a student.1

1 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 
34 NISEI LINGUISTS

Aiso, the Harvard-trained lawyer now working as a parts clerk, had his doubts 

too. At the Presidio of San Francisco, he reported to Maj. John Weckerling in his 

office in the Fourth Army headquarters building. Aiso was the most promising of 

all the Nisei the officers had identified. In addition to speaking excellent English 

and Japanese, he was more mature than most. Weckerling offered Aiso the job of 

chief instructor. 

Aiso thought for a moment. It was clear that relations between the United 

States and Japan were deteriorating sharply. Who knew how all that would turn 

out? In Washington, the two governments were engaged in tense negotiations; 

but most American newspaper readers remained hopeful that a conflict could be 

avoided. Aiso had no intention of staying in uniform. In fact, he was already on his 

way out of the Army. About this time the War Department changed its age rules 

for selectees: those over twenty-eight years old would be released (he was thirtytwo). In Los Angeles, his fiancée was waiting for him; he was planning to marry 

and resume his law practice.

Aiso declined Weckerling’s offer, and what happened next surprised him. 

Weckerling came out from behind his desk, put his hand on Aiso’s shoulder, and 

said, “John, your country needs you.” This caught Aiso off guard. He paused for 

only a moment and then responded: “Yes, sir, I will take the job.” The encounter 

was a turning point in his life, Aiso later recalled. “No American person had ever 

told me that America was my country.” 2

Weckerling felt it would not be right for the chief instructor to be a junior 

enlisted man. Aiso was too old for a direct commission, so Weckerling decided to 

make him a War Department civilian. He had Aiso discharged from the Enlisted 

Reserve Corps and hired as a civilian “with the understanding that if he should 

sever his connection with the school he would be recalled to active duty as an 

enlisted man.” Now that Aiso was no longer a soldier, he and his fiancée set as their 

wedding date his birthday, 14 December, just before the Christmas holidays.3

pamphlet; Interv, author with Arthur M. Kaneko, 23 Aug 95; Joseph D. Harrington Papers, National 

Japanese American Historical Society (NJAHS), San Francisco, Calif. After Kaneko’s class graduated in May 1942, he was held back as an enlisted instructor for two years. Similar in age and 

upbringing to most Nisei, Kaneko was a rare Sansei (third-generation Japanese American). His 

grandfather had immigrated to the United States in 1893, so his father was a Nisei. 2

 This story is recounted in various sources: John F. Aiso, “Observations of a California Nisei,” 

Interv by Marc Landy, University of California at Los Angeles, 1971; Interv, author with John F. 

Aiso, 30 Oct 87; Joseph D. Harrington, Yankee Samurai: The Secret Role of Nisei in America’s 

Pacific Victory (Detroit: Pettigrew Enterprises, 1979), pp. 20–21; Shigeya Kihara, “Remembering General John Weckerling,” Unpubl Ms, Dec 92, author’s files; Interv, Stephen A. Haller with 

Shigeya Kihara, 21 Jan 94, pp. 15–16; Kiyoshi Yano, “Participating in the Mainstream of American Life amidst Drawback of Racial Prejudice and Discrimination,” in John Aiso and the M.I.S.: 

Japanese-American Soldiers in the Military Intelligence Service, World War II, ed. Tad Ichinokuchi 

(Los Angeles: Military Intelligence Service Club of Southern California, 1988), p. 15. The meeting 

probably took place in late September or early October 1941. 3 MISLS, “Training History of the Military Intelligence Service Language School,” ann. 1, 

Academic Training, p. 4, Unpubl Ms, 1946, U.S. Army Center of Military History (CMH). See also 
FOURTH ARMY INTELLIGENCE SCHOOL 35

The search for qualified instructors continued. Capt. Kai E. Rasmussen crossed 

the San Francisco Bay to Berkeley to see Florence Walne, who was already working for the Navy’s Japanese-language program. Walne knew many Nisei students 

at the University of California but also knew that most were not interested in working for the War Department. Rumors had spread that the Army’s school would 

train informers to spy on the Japanese American community.

Walne suggested that Rasmussen speak with two of her recent students, Akira 

Oshida and Shigeya Kihara. Oshida had graduated from Berkeley High School 

and Meiji University in Tokyo. Most recently he had worked in the Japan pavilion 

at the Golden Gate International Exhibition. Oshida received a phone call from an 

Army officer with “a thick German accent” (the Danish-born Rasmussen) inviting him for an interview at the Presidio of San Francisco. After some questions 

about his schooling and work experience, the officer “threw a book on the table 

and asked me if I knew what it was. I said, “Yes,” Oshida replied, “I used to carry 

one in my back pocket” (during his military training at Meiji University). After 

the interview, the officer told Oshida he was in. “In what?” Oshida asked. Only 

then did he learn the nature of the job.4

Kihara had earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and a master’s 

degree in international relations at the University of California. In October 1941 

he had just returned from a short trip to Japan and began working in his father’s 

grocery store. His experiences in Japan convinced him that a conflict would soon 

break out between the two countries. Kihara was interviewed but was not given 

a reading test. If he had, he later reflected, he probably would not have done very 

well. In any event, Walne’s recommendation was good enough for Weckerling to 

offer him a job.5

Tetsuo Imagawa was selected as the fourth instructor. Although he had a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of California, he could find work 

only as a salesman for a liquor company. Imagawa was the only instructor with 

firsthand experience teaching at a Japanese-language school.6

On Monday morning, 20 October 1941, Weckerling assembled the four Nisei 

instructors in a basement room of the Fourth Army headquarters for their first 

meeting. Piled on an orange crate was Rasmussen’s personal collection of textbooks from Tokyo: the Naganuma readers (eight volumes), Creswell’s JapaneseEnglish military dictionary, various Japanese and American training manuals, 

Ueda’s Daijiten (a voluminous compendium of kanji, or Chinese characters), and 

Aiso, “Observations of a California Nisei”; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 32; Yano, “Participating in the Mainstream,” p. 16. 4 “Akira Oshida: DLI’s ‘Living History,’” DLI Globe (13 March 1980). 5

 Intervs, Haller with Kihara, 21 Jan 94, and Lt. Cmdr. Donald McCabe with Shigeya Kihara, 

19 Jul 91. 6 Harrington Papers; Biographies, Military Intelligence Service Club of Northern California 

(hereafter cited as MISNorCal Bios); Weckerling, “Japanese Americans Play Vital Role”; Shigeya 

Kihara, autobiography, Unpubl Ms, NJAHS; Intervs, McCabe with Kihara, 21 Jan 91, and Haller 

with Kihara, 19 Jul 94.
36 NISEI LINGUISTS

several other books.7 Weckerling suggested they go to the school building. A tenminute walk took them down toward the bay across some railroad tracks to a 

shabby warehouse, a converted hangar that was a relic of the days when Crissy 

Field had been an active airfield.8 There were no desks or chairs, only two old 

Army cots. One side would serve as classrooms, the other as the sleeping area. 

“Sixty Nisei soldiers will report here in two weeks on November 1,” Weckerling told them. “Be prepared to start training them.” He then turned on his heel 

and walked out. The new instructors looked at each other for a minute, not sure 

where to begin. After a moment, Aiso took charge and began giving them their 

assignments. They had no time to lose.9

7 Kihara, “Remembering General John Weckerling.” Though 15 and 16 October have both been 

given for the first meeting, Kihara recalls it as a Monday (personal communication to author). That 

would make the date 13 or 20 October 1941. The confusion may have arisen in later years because 

the four new civilian instructors were placed on the payroll at the beginning of the mid-month pay 

period, i.e., 16 October. 8 Crissy Field was established in 1921, the hangar erected in 1921–1922 for the Air Mail Service. Originally Bldg. 907, sometime after 1942 the hangar was renumbered as Bldg. 640. In 1928 

it was converted into barracks for ROTC summer camp. In 1936 the airfield was closed. Stephen A. 

Haller, The Last Word in Airfields: A Special History Study of Crissy Field, Presidio of San Francisco, California (San Francisco: National Park Service, 1994); Mary Grassick, Fourth Army Intelligence School: Historic Furnishings Report (Harpers Ferry, W.Va.: National Park Service, 1999). 9 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 21; Interv, Haller with Kihara, 19 Jul 94.

Three of the instructors at Crissy Field take a lunch break. Shigeya Kihara is in 

the center.
FOURTH ARMY INTELLIGENCE SCHOOL 37

Aiso laid down the daily schedule: classes from 0800 to 1130, a lunch break, 

then back into the classroom from 1300 to 1630, five days a week. Supervised 

study hours would be four evenings a week from 1900 to 2100. Saturday mornings 

from 0900 to 1200 were spent on review and examinations.10 The school was to be 

all work, for students and instructors alike. 

The curriculum was based on Naganuma’s and Hyojun Nihongo Tokuhon, 

standard Japanese readers, which had to be reprinted as soon as possible. The 

books came with a set of flash cards that showed the kanji characters on one side 

and English on the reverse. Oshida had the best handwriting, so he was assigned 

to write the kanji on stencils for mimeographing. The curriculum covered reading, translation, interpretation, grammar, and military terminology. For military 

terminology the instructors used the same Japanese field manuals that Rasmussen and Capt. Joseph K. Dickey had used to screen prospective students. Weckerling also gave them Lt. Col. Moses W. Pettigrew’s new technical manual on 

the Japanese military. Using Creswell’s military dictionary, the instructors laboriously translated Pettigrew’s manual into Japanese. Meanwhile, other instructors 

scoured San Francisco’s Little Tokyo for print shops that could reproduce Japaneselanguage materials. With the start of classes barely two weeks away, they wasted 

precious hours soliciting multiple bids on each print job as required by government 

contracting rules. From Washington, MID requested that the U.S. military attaché 

in Tokyo ship more dictionaries to the school directly from Japan.11

The school needed money as well as instructors. There had been no requirement for an intelligence school in the Fourth Army budget when the new fiscal year 

began on 1 July. Nevertheless, Weckerling obtained $2,000 from the Fourth Army 

quartermaster. Carpenters erected partitions to make three classrooms on one side 

and offices and barracks space on the other. During the last weeks of October, the 

Nisei students trickled into the hangar and waited for the school to begin.

On the morning of Monday, 3 November, classes began.12 Fifty-eight Nisei 

and two Caucasians sat down in three makeshift classrooms in the hangar, almost 

in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge.13 Kihara, Oshida, and Imagawa each 

10 “Training History,” ann. 1, para. 9a.; Interv, McCabe with Kihara, 19 Jul 91, pp. 18–20. 11 Weckerling, “Japanese Americans Play Vital Role.” Intervs, author with Kaneko, 23 Aug 95; 

McCabe with Kihara, 21 Jan 91; Haller with Kihara, 19 Jul 94. MISLS Album (Minneapolis: Military Intelligence Service Language School, 1946), pp. 30–31. The military attaché in Japan shipped 

the requested dictionaries, but they made it only as far as Manila, where they fell into Japanese 

hands when the war broke out. “Training History”; General Records, 1943–1945, Military Intelligence [Service] Language School, Fort Snelling, Minn., Records of the Army Staff, Record Group 

(RG) 319, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), p. 4.

12 The Fourth Army Intelligence School was formally activated on 1 November 1941, the date 

commonly used to denote the school’s origin. However, classes did not begin until the following 

Monday, 3 November. The four students from San Luis Obispo were ordered to travel by rail to 

the Presidio of San Francisco starting on the afternoon of Friday, 31 October. Gene Masaji Uratsu, 

MISNorCal Bio.

13 No official list of the students who started the class has been found. Forty-two graduates are 

listed in MISLS Album, p. 125. The two Caucasians, Dempster Dirks and Victor Belousoff, who 
38 NISEI LINGUISTS

took one class.14 They covered reading, Japanese-to-English translation, conversation, and interpreting and tested the students’ memorization skills by drilling them 

daily on kanji, with the top section learning fifty to sixty kanji each day. John Aiso 

became the unquestioned leader, and the instructors and students looked to him to 

run the school.15

Aiso and his instructors intended the course as a refresher, because the students were supposed to have a good grasp of Japanese already. This assumption 

turned out to be mistaken. They soon found out that only the top twenty or so 

students could handle the language with ease. For the rest, “the process was one of 

learning anew rather than merely refreshing up on knowledge previously acquired 

but presently dormant.”

began with the fifty-eight Nisei, graduated later than the Nisei in the first class. “Training History,” 

ann. 1, states that the first class was composed of fifty-seven Nisei and three Caucasians (para. 6, 

p. 5). The third Caucasian name might be that of S.Sgt. George Spence, who began as the supply 

sergeant and later attended training. Grassick, Fourth Army Intelligence School, p. 26. 14 The basic sources for the first class are “Training History,” MISLS Album, and Weckerling, 

“Japanese Americans Play Vital Role.” See also Uratsu, MISNorCal Bio. Intervs, author with John 

F. Aiso, 30 Oct 87; McCabe with Kihara, 21 Jan 91; Haller with Kihara, 19 Jul 94; author with 

Thomas Sakamoto, 16 Nov 87. 15 The school’s opening was supposed to be secret, but Aiso recalled that the Japanese Do ̄mei

radio service mentioned the school on the air and identified the instructors by name. Yano, “Participating in the Mainstream,” p. 16; Aiso, “Observations of a California Nisei.”

Classroom inside Crissy Field hangar, late 1945
FOURTH ARMY INTELLIGENCE SCHOOL 39

The Japanese language was notoriously difficult for English speakers to learn. 

Written Japanese uses a mixture of kanji and letters of the Japanese syllabary (kana, 

or -gana). Kanji may be written in block print or in cursive (so ̄sho, also known as 

grass writing). Two types of kana, katakana and cursive hiragana, must also be 

learned. Additionally, Japanese may be written using the Latin alphabet (ro ̄maji). 

Its spoken form has several dialects. Nationalists in Japan boasted of this complexity and assured the Japanese people that few foreigners could master their language. 

American commentators also stressed its complexity but as if this was somehow 

additional evidence of the perversity and cunning of the Japanese mind.16

Inside the hangar, the students worked hard day and night. Many wished they 

had paid more attention in Japanese school. But all preferred this to being on 

summer maneuvers or driving a truck. One of the Kibei students later recalled: 

“There I was, a farm boy turned soldier, studying a language I already knew, in 

the wonderful city of San Francisco. It was the happiest six months of my entire 

16 Weckerling, “Japanese Americans Play Vital Role”; Sidney F. Mashbir, I Was an American 

Spy (New York: Vantage, 1953); Francis S. Wickware, “The Japanese Language,” Life (7 September 1942). Warren Tsuneishi assisted the author with this explanation.

Nisei students in front of Chinatown YMCA in San Francisco 
40 NISEI LINGUISTS

life!” Their parents would be proud that their sons were finally buckling down to 

learn the language. After hours a popular place to study was the latrine, where 

the lights stayed on all night. The intensive instruction soon revealed where each 

student stood; after a few weeks the students were redivided into four sections by 

skill level.17

Meanwhile, on the weekends the students found San Francisco a congenial 

city. Several had families or other relatives living in the Bay Area. San Francisco 

had a thriving Little Tokyo with over 6,000 inhabitants, which gave the students 

plenty to do with their off-duty time. Shops, bars, and restaurants welcomed Nisei 

soldiers; and several students owned cars.

Weckerling visited the school once or twice each day but left the day-to-day 

administration to Aiso.18 After several weeks, Lt. Gen. John L. DeWitt visited the 

school just down the hill from his headquarters at the Western Defense Command. 

When Aiso was introduced as the chief instructor, DeWitt patted him on the shoulder and said “John, you’re doing a good job. If there is anything I can do for you, 

come and see me.” It was Friday, 5 December.19

“Now the Time Has Come To Prove Your Loyalty”

On the morning of 7 December the students slowly awoke in their hangarbarrack at Crissy Field. Sunday was their day off, so they had no reason to hurry. 

Five weeks had passed since classes began, and they had fallen into a routine. Some 

skipped breakfast to sleep late. The quiet was broken when Captain Dickey walked 

into the building and someone yelled, “Attention!” Dickey somberly announced: 

“I have just received the bad news: Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.”

The Nisei were stunned. Before they could recover, Colonel Weckerling 

appeared and they all gathered in a classroom. “Well men, you have just heard the 

bad news. I sincerely sympathize with you boys on your peculiar predicament. I

was in the same spot when World War I broke out, as I happen to be of German 

17 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 24; Grassick, Fourth Army Intelligence School, pp. 26–27; 

“Training History,” ann. 1, pp. 5–6; Ltr, Weckerling to Dusenbury, 31 December 1941.

18 Some sources report that Dickey was the commandant between November and December 

1941 and in the spring of 1942. In fact, Weckerling was the commandant and Dickey the deputy. 

After assisting with student selection, Rasmussen had no formal connection with the school until 

May 1942. Dickey and Rasmussen apparently alternated recruiting and supervision duties. See 

Grassick, Fourth Army Intelligence School, p. 8; The Army Almanac (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, 1950), p. 383. 19 Aiso, “Observations of a California Nisei,” p. 72. Intervs, Loni Ding with John F. Aiso, 

1986, NJAHS; author with Aiso, 30 Oct 87. Harrington claims DeWitt made this remark to Roy 

Kawashiri, another student in the class, but he is probably mistaken. Harrington, Yankee Samurai, 

pp. 25–26; Roy Kawashiri autobiography, in David W. Swift, Jr., ed., “First Class,” p. 15, Unpubl 

Ms, 2000, copy in author’s files. Quote from James Matsumura, Harrington Papers.
FOURTH ARMY INTELLIGENCE SCHOOL 41

descent. You are free to leave if you so desire, but now the time has come to prove 

your loyalty and I expect each and everyone’s utmost.” 20

The Nisei hardly knew what to think. Some were angry, others confused and 

frightened. The country of their birth was now at war with their parents’ home 

country. How would America treat its Nisei soldiers? Their reaction, Weckerling 

wrote to the War Department a few weeks later, “was not unlike that of other 

Americans, one of surprise and shocked amazement. . . . [They] reacted as any 

American would.” 21

20 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 29; Interv, Haller with Kihara, 19 Jul 94, p. 21; Aiso, “Observations of a California Nisei,” p. 73. According to the recollection of one student, Kazuo Kozaki, 

Weckerling did not address the students until the following Monday morning. Swift, “First Class,” 

p. 127. 21 Ltr, Weckerling to Dusenbury, 31 December 1941.

The USS Shaw explodes during the Japanese attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet 

at Pearl Harbor. 
42 NISEI LINGUISTS

John Aiso, the chief instructor, left his apartment that morning for the main 

telegraph office. He and his fiancée were to wed the following Sunday, and he 

was sending her one last telegram about the arrangements. When he boarded a 

streetcar to return to his apartment, a woman began to scream: “Kill him! He’s a 

Jap!” She became hysterical and shouted again and again to the other men on the 

streetcar: “Kill him!” No one took up her challenge, but Aiso was grateful when 

the streetcar stopped at the gates to the Presidio and he escaped to the relative 

safety of the post.22

The entire West Coast had flown into panic; the Western Defense Command 

commenced frantic preparations against air attack and sabotage. San Francisco 

was blacked out. Almost daily, enemy aircraft and submarines were reported to be 

approaching the coast. The War Department rushed troops and aircraft westward 

to protect the mainland. 

The attack shocked Americans everywhere. Even though tensions had been 

growing, it came as a total surprise. Americans were quick to label it a “sneak 

attack.” On 10 December the Chicago Tribune published an editorial cartoon 

calling for “War without Mercy on a Treacherous Foe,” reflecting the emotional 

response of most Americans.23

For Japanese Americans the attack was doubly devastating. Any hope of reconciling their dual heritage was shattered, replaced by an overwhelming sense of 

fear and shame. A young Nisei in Hawaii later wrote: “It was like watching your 

older brother whom you’d believed in and loved now running wild committing 

murders.” 24 One Nisei stationed at Fort Ord, California, recalled his feelings of 

“shock, bewilderment, anger, shame and sorrow. But mostly, I felt deep anguish 

and despair because the land that I had been taught to honor by my parents had 

committed an act of war against the country that I loved.” 25

The Nisei students at Crissy Field were deeply affected. Would the Army close 

the school? Would they be arrested or discharged? One Kibei took John Aiso 

aside and asked, “Sensei [teacher], why don’t we run away now, while we have a 

chance?” Aiso simply told him, “We’ll have to be patient.” 26

22 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 29; see also sources on Aiso in note 2, above. In the 1987 

interview, Aiso described the woman’s words differently: “There’s a Jap there! Why don’t you get 

after him? Are you people yellow or something?” Interv, author with Aiso, 30 Oct 87. 23 Quote from John W. Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New 

York: Pantheon, 1986), p. 181. See also Emily S. Rosenberg, A Date Which Will Live: Pearl Harbor 

in American Memory (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003), pp. 11–33. 24 Milton Murayama, All I Asking for Is My Body (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1988), 

p. 83. 25 Akiji Yoshimura, who later joined the MIS, fought in Burma with Merrill’s Marauders and 

earned a battlefield commission. Quote from Bill Hosokawa, Nisei: The Quiet Americans (New 

York: William Morrow, 1969), pp. 229, 420. 26 Aiso, “Observations of a California Nisei”; John F. Aiso, in The Color of Honor, documentary film, Loni Ding, prod., Vox Productions, 1987; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 29; Shigeya 

Kihara, in Unsung Heroes: The Military Intelligence Service, Past-Present-Future (Seattle: MISNorthwest Association, 1996), p. 63. The student, Kazuo Kozaki, remained at the school and went 
FOURTH ARMY INTELLIGENCE SCHOOL 43

Compounding the Nisei’s fear and anger was the sense of shame. When they 

had been inducted into the Army, many of their Issei parents told them to bring no 

shame to the family. Now they could feel the angry stares of their fellow Americans. They were innocent of any crime, yet the accusations remained. If they were 

innocent, why were the newspapers full of the wildest rumors? How could they 

prove their accusers wrong? 27

In Hawaii, as the attack continued, Nisei soldiers rushed to defend the skies 

and beaches. A seventeen-year-old high school student, Daniel K. Inouye, hurried 

through the streets of Honolulu to his civil defense station; “choking with emotion 

[he] looked up into the sky and called out, ‘You dirty Japs!’” Hoichi “Bob” Kubo, 

assigned to the 298th Infantry medical section, saw the Japanese aircraft flying 

low over Schofield Barracks and shooting up Wheeler Field. He threw open the 

locker of medical supplies and began dispensing plasma, bandages, and medicines 

as fast as he could. The governor activated the Territorial Guard, mostly ROTC 

cadets at the University of Hawaii, including over 160 Nisei. The next morning at 

first light two Nisei soldiers spotted a Japanese midget submarine caught on a reef 

on Oahu’s eastern shore. A story was told of two local soldiers who were manning a machine gun on a beach in Hawaii shortly after the attack. One soldier of 

Hawaiian ancestry asks his companion of Japanese ancestry, “If dey come, who 

you shoot? Dem or me?” The Nisei replies, “Who you t’ink, stupid? Me as good 

American as you!” 28

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) joined with Army and Navy counterintelligence officials to seize all Japanese diplomatic and commercial personnel in 

Hawaii and on the mainland, together with hundreds of Japanese Association leaders, language school teachers, newspaper editors, Buddhist priests, and anyone 

with close ties to Japanese consulates. J. Edgar Hoover and the attorney general 

were confident they had headed off any threat of sabotage or espionage. Within a 

week the Justice Department had about 3,000 Japanese aliens in custody.29 Out of 

on to fight with the Australian 9th Division at Lae in New Guinea, where he became the first Nisei 

to receive the Silver Star. 27 Many observers identify haji, or shame, as central to Japanese American culture. See Tom 

Kawaguchi, quoted in John Tateishi, And Justice for All: An Oral History of the Japanese American 

Detention Camps (New York: Random House, 1984), pp. 182–83. Ruth Benedict made much of the 

culture of shame in Japanese society based on her wartime study of Issei and Nisei. Ruth Benedict, 

The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 

1989), pp. 222–27, 270–72. 28 Hoichi Kubo, “Military Biography,” Unpubl Ms, [1996], copy in author’s files; Interv, author 

with Hoichi Kubo, 30 Oct 87. Kubo later joined the MIS and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross in 1944. Daniel K. Inouye, Journey to Washington (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall, 1967), p. 56. Inouye later served with the 442d Regimental Combat Team; after the war, he 

served in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. Thomas D. Murphy, Ambassadors 

in Arms (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1954), frontispiece. 29 For the initial reactions of law enforcement, see Jacobus tenBroek et al., Prejudice, War, and 

the Constitution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954), p. 298; Stetson Conn, “Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast,” in Stetson Conn, Rose E. Engelman, and Byron Fairchild, 

Guarding the United States and Its Outposts, U.S. Army in World War II (Washington, D.C.: Office 
44 NISEI LINGUISTS

fear, thousands of Issei burned or buried their personal papers, books, or family 

heirlooms, anything the local authorities might consider suspicious. Typical of the 

arrests was Yasuyuki Mizutari, a Japanese-language school principal and kendo

fencing instructor in Hilo, Hawaii. His oldest son, Yukitaka Terry Mizutari, had 

been inducted on 12 November and was taking basic training at Schofield Barracks. The elder Mizutari was shipped to a detention center on the mainland; his 

son remained at Schofield Barracks.30

The wave of arrests did not defuse public anger directed against persons of 

Japanese descent living in America. The question of their loyalty, citizens or not, 

emerged with renewed virulence and became linked with the search for answers 

to the disaster. Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox flew to Hawaii and declared on 

15 December, “I think the most effective Fifth Column work of the entire war was 

done in Hawaii with the possible exception of Norway,” which the German Army 

had invaded in April 1940. He urged that all Japanese be removed from Oahu to 

one of the smaller Hawaiian Islands.

At the Fourth Army Intelligence School, classes continued with a grim new 

determination. Aiso considered canceling his wedding; but Captain Dickey counseled him: “John, this is going to be a long war. A man has to get married sometime.” Aiso despaired how he, a Japanese American, could travel to Los Angeles. 

Dickey had an answer for that also. He drew up official orders so Aiso could travel 

to Los Angeles for “recruiting purposes.” With a knowing look he added, “If you 

decide to get married on your leisure time, that’s your business.” 31

Weckerling and Dickey knew that the Army needed their Nisei students more 

than ever. Weckerling was determined to protect his students and instructors alike 

from the wave of anger and suspicion. He had come to know these Nisei well, and 

he respected and trusted them. In late December the Military Intelligence Division 

requested his assessment of the loyalty of the Nisei soldiers in the school, telling 

him to “make exhaustive studies on the subject utilizing some Japanese of known 

loyalty.” They wanted to know: “What is the loyalty of the soldier of Japanese 

extraction? How much can he be depended upon? Can he be entrusted with tasks 

other than general infantry or non-combatant services? Is he a liability in the army 

today and would it be far better to discharge him and not use him at all?” 32

On New Year’s Eve Weckerling sat down to compose his reply. The three 

weeks since Pearl Harbor had been perfectly awful for his students and himself. 

Worst of all was the students’ agony. Since his own arrival at Fourth Army in 

of the Chief of Military History, 1964), p. 116; “ABC List” and “Internment Camps,” in Encyclopedia of Japanese American History, rev. ed., ed. Brian Niiya (New York: Facts on File, 2001). Roger 

Daniels gives the figure 3,000 in “The Forced Migrations of West Coast Japanese Americans, 

1942–1946: A Quantitative Note,” in Japanese Americans: From Relocation to Redress, rev. ed., 

ed. Roger Daniels et al. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991), pp. 72–74. 30 Yukitaka Mizutari was later transferred to the MIS. He was killed in action in New Guinea 

in June 1944 and posthumously awarded the Silver Star. 31 Hosokawa, Nisei, p. 96. 32 Ltr, Weckerling to Dusenbury, 31 December 1941.
FOURTH ARMY INTELLIGENCE SCHOOL 45

September, he wrote, he had made an “exhaustive study” of Japanese-American 

soldiers, a study that was “practical rather than academic,” while rushing to establish the school. As for the loyalty of the Nisei soldiers, he answered emphatically 

in the affirmative. Based on personal interviews and “close supervision of, and 

association with,” the Nisei students, “as well as I could judge, I believe all to be 

loyal Americans, anxious and willing to serve in any task in the armed forces.” 33

But larger forces were at work. In late January 1942 Supreme Court Justice 

Owen J. Roberts released a report that implied that the Japanese attack may have 

been aided by a fifth column. Two weeks later Walter Lippmann published a widely 

read article entitled “The Fifth Column on the West Coast,” declaring that “the 

Pacific Coast is in imminent danger of a combined attack from within and without.” 34 Some private employers and state and local governments dismissed their 

Japanese American employees. On 9 February the War Department sent the Western Defense Command a telegram: “You are hereby directed to suspend all civilian 

employees of Japanese ancestry in your establishments, . . . and to refuse to employ 

any such person hereafter until further orders. . . . All passes and badges shall be 

removed from such employees and they shall be barred from the post, camp, or 

station until further notice.” The Western Defense Command agreed, but asked for 

an exception for their Nisei instructors: “Graduates of this school will provide only 

available personnel for interpreters, translators and interrogators in Japanese language. Continued operation of school extremely desirable. School cannot continue 

present operations without Japanese civilian instructors.” On 16 February the War 

Department agreed to allow Fourth Army to keep its instructors.35

Public pressure on West Coast military and civilian leaders to do something 

about the Japanese population became unbearable. General DeWitt, who had visited the school before the attack on Pearl Harbor, decided that nothing short of 

complete removal of all persons of Japanese ancestry, including the Nisei soldiers 

under his command, would adequately protect the region. On 19 February President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing military 

commanders to designate military areas “from which any or all persons may be 

excluded.” The provost marshal general, responsible for internal security, sent the 

head of the Aliens Division, Lt. Col. Karl R. Bendetsen, to the Western Defense 

Command to plan and supervise the evacuation of all persons of Japanese ancestry 

from the West Coast.36

33 Ibid. 34 Quote from Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans

(Boston: Little, Brown, 1989), p. 388. 35 Folder 5, Entry 147, RG 407/360, NARA. Memo, The Adjutant General’s Office (TAGO) to 

CG, Western Defense Command, et al., 9 Feb 42, sub: Civilian Employees of Japanese Ancestry 

(AG 291.2), Misc Class Material for 1942, Far Eastern Br, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, 

NARA. 36 For the Army’s involvement in the evacuation decision, see Stetson Conn, “Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast,” in Conn, Engelman, and Fairchild, Guarding the United States, pp. 

115–49. The War Department (WD) published the Western Defense Command (WDC) history of 

the evacuation in 1943 as Final Report: Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast, 1942 (Wash-
46 NISEI LINGUISTS

By March the Western Defense 

Command began removing over 110,000 

Japanese civilians from their mainland 

homes and packing them into temporary assembly centers at fairgrounds 

or racetracks. Contractors began hasty 

construction of ten “war relocation centers” in remote inland areas. The War 

Department had no interest in becoming 

the caretaker for such a large displaced 

population, so the federal government 

established the War Relocation Authority (WRA) to administer these camps 

to which all evacuees were transported 

that summer and autumn.37

For persons of Japanese ancestry in 

Hawaii, the situation was quite different. The commanding general declared 

martial law on 7 December, which historian Gary Okihiro considers “fundamentally an anti-Japanese act,” one 

that “had been planned and was subsequently executed specifically to contain the 

‘Japanese problem.’” Over a thousand subversion suspects were rounded up and 

interned. Navy Secretary Knox urged the Army to remove all Japanese from the 

Hawaiian Islands, or at least from Oahu, where they numbered about 118,000, 

over one-third of the population. Army officials dragged their feet; the size of 

the affected group, combined with the acute lack of shipping, made such a move 

ington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1943). Final Report caused controversy even within the 

War Department and should be used with caution in its claims of “military necessity.” Peter Irons, 

Justice at War: The Story of the Japanese American Internment Cases (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 206–18. See also Forrest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall, 4 vols. (New York: 

Viking, 1963–1987), 3: 139–47. For more recent discussions, see Roger Daniels, Prisoners without 

Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993); Greg Robinson, 

By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans (Cambridge, Mass.: 

Harvard University Press, 2001). 37 The appropriate term for these camps remains a matter of controversy. The WRA called 

them war relocation centers; however, many people today consider “relocation” a dangerous 

euphemism. During the war, government officials sometimes referred to them as concentration 

camps, a term that later became associated with the Nazi extermination camps. The Department 

of Justice established internment camps for enemy aliens and diplomatic personnel; many people 

today use that term to refer both to the camps established by the War Relocation Authority and to 

those established by the Department of Justice. Wherever possible, I simply use the term camps 

for the WRA centers, as most Japanese Americans did (and still do). For further discussion, see 

“Assembly Centers,” “Concentration Camps,” and “Internment Camps” in Encyclopedia of Japanese American History.

The San Francisco Examiner

announces the imminent removal 

from the West Coast of all Japanese 

Americans.
FOURTH ARMY INTELLIGENCE SCHOOL 47

impossible.38 In fact, about 2,000 Nisei soldiers were helping to guard Hawaii’s 

beaches and critical facilities. 

Their commanders remained wary. The Nisei ROTC cadets who had been 

mobilized on 7 December with the Territorial Guard were suddenly dismissed on 

19 January 1942. The Nisei requested to be allowed to serve in some other capacity: “Hawaii is our home; the United States our country. We know but one loyalty 

and that is to the Stars and Stripes. We wish to do our part as loyal Americans in 

every way possible and we hereby offer ourselves for whatever service you may 

see fit to use us.” The Army relented and organized them into a labor service 

unit. The 169 Nisei called themselves the Varsity Victory Volunteers and for the 

next year performed construction projects and general labor on the islands for the 

Army engineers.39

The threat of a Japanese attack on Midway finally provoked Army authorities 

to action. On 5 June more than 1,400 Nisei soldiers from two National Guard regiments were shipped to the mainland. Sgt. Hoichi Kubo, who had seen the Japanese 

planes attack Wheeler Field, went along, as did Pvt. Terry Mizutari, whose father 

had been arrested. The Hawaiians moved by rail to Camp McCoy, Wisconsin, 

where they began training as the 100th Infantry Battalion (Separate).40

On the mainland, many Nisei rushed to enlist after the Pearl Harbor attack. 

Many were turned away, but some were successful. In Nebraska, Ben Kuroki 

asked his Issei father, a potato farmer, what he should do. His father replied, 

“Enlist in the Army, Ben. America is your country. You fight for it.” Ben and his 

brother drove 150 miles to the nearest recruiting station but were turned away. A 

few weeks later a new recruiting station opened at North Platte, and there Kuroki 

was enlisted into the Air Corps.41 In Washington, Spady A. Koyama promised his 

mother he would not enlist until after the Christmas holidays. In early January 

1942 he marched into a recruiting station. When the recruiters turned him away, 

38 Conn, “Japanese Evacuation,” pp. 206–14; Gary Y. Okihiro, Cane Fires: The Anti-Japanese Movement in Hawaii, 1865–1945 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991), pp. 195–252. 

Quote from p. 209. 39 Yutaka Nakahata and Ralph Toyota, “Varsity Victory Volunteers: A Social Movement,” 

Social Process in Hawaii (November 1943): 29–35; Murphy, Ambassadors in Arms, pp. 52–54; 

Franklin S. Odo, No Sword To Bury: Japanese Americans in Hawai’i during World War II (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004); Ted T. Tsukiyama, in We Remember Pearl Harbor: Honolulu Civilians Recall the War Years, 1941–1945, ed. Lawrence R. Rodriggs (Newark, Calif.: Communications Concepts, ca. 1991), pp. 243–56. 40 Murphy, Ambassadors in Arms, pp. 59–72; Masayo Umezawa Duus, Unlikely Liberators: 

The Men of the 100th and 442nd (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987), pp. 11–23. 41 Ben Kuroki earned two Distinguished Flying Crosses while flying over Europe as a B–24 

gunner; he later flew missions against Japan. Ralph G. Martin, Boy from Nebraska: The Story of 

Ben Kuroki (New York: Harper & Row Brothers, 1946); “Ben Kuroki, American,” Time (7 February 1944): 76–77; Hosokawa, Nisei, p. 227. Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy later recalled 

that in the first few weeks after the attack many Nisei wrote to the War Department requesting to 

serve. John J. McCloy, “Speech at Japanese American Dinner for Dillon S. Myer, [WRA Director],” 22 May 46; John J. McCloy Papers, Amherst College, Amherst, Mass.
48 NISEI LINGUISTS

he threatened to give their names to the local newspaper. Only then did they relent; 

he was sworn in on 8 January.42

Another Nisei, Dye Ogata, enlisted at Helena, Montana, in February. He had 

studied in Japan from 1938 to 1940 and spoke excellent Japanese. After enlisting, 

he heard about the language school from a friend and wrote directly to Captain 

Dickey, who offered him a space at the school.43 Frank Tadakazu Hachiya, a 21-

year-old college student from Hood River, Oregon, was inducted on 7 January. 

Hachiya had been born and raised in Oregon; but when his father inherited the 

family farm in Japan, his parents took him there and enrolled him in school. When 

his father brought him back to Oregon in February 1940, his mother and younger 

brother stayed behind in Japan. Hachiya completed high school and enrolled in a 

local college. In the autumn of 1941 he wrote a freshman essay:

I really now think and believe that living in Japan four years has done me one great good. 

The appreciation of America or the love of one’s country. Now I don’t mean I don’t like 

Japan, but will never get so that I like her as well as America. As I was born and reared 

here, I am an American, though I was born of Japanese parents. . . . I read where some 

people stated that they did not fully appreciate their country until they traveled abroad. 

And I, too, after living across the sea, realize it now.

When asked about his mother and little brother still in Japan, he replied, “The 

only way I can help them is to aid in freeing Japan of the military party.” 44

In the first few weeks after Pearl Harbor, each Selective Service board made 

its own decisions. In Hawaii, local boards stopped inducting Nisei at once. Some 

boards on the mainland, particularly in the interior, continued to accept Nisei to 

fill their rapidly expanding quotas. In January the director of Selective Service, 

Brig. Gen. Lewis B. Hershey, publicly declared his intent to continue drafting 

Nisei and highlighted the “pressing need for solidarity.” 45

Confusion still reigned as to whether the Army would accept the Nisei. On 16 

February one division commander on his own authority discharged all Nisei under 

his command to the Enlisted Reserve.46 The Selective Service headquarters protested, but the War Department declined to overrule the local commander. Soon 

42 Interv, author with Spady A. Koyama, 2 Nov 87; Spady A. Koyama, MISNorCal Bio. 43 Interv, author with Dye Ogata, 30 Oct 87; Dye Ogata, MISNorCal Bio. 44 Hachiya later served with the MIS; he was killed in action on Leyte in January 1945 and 

received the Silver Star posthumously. His teacher later published his essay. Martha F. McKeown, 

“Frank Hachiya: He Was an American at Birth—And at Death,” Sunday Oregonian, 20 May 45. 

Lyn Crost, Honor by Fire: Japanese Americans at War in Europe and the Pacific (Novato, Calif.: 

Presidio Press, 1994), pp. 207–08, cites wording that differs slightly from that in McKeown’s own 

notes for her remarks at Hachiya’s funeral on 11 September 1948. 45 Pacific Citizen, Jan 42, p. 3. For example, Hiro Nishimura was drafted in February 1942. Hiro 

Nishimura, Trials and Triumphs of the Nikkei (Mercer Island, Wash.: Fukuda Publishers, 1993), 

p. 51. 46 Selective Service System, Special Groups, Special Monograph no. 10 (Washington, D.C.: 

Selective Service System, 1953), p. 117.
FOURTH ARMY INTELLIGENCE SCHOOL 49

after the evacuation was approved, the War Department directed that all Nisei 

soldiers be shipped out of the Western Defense Command. The Nisei soldiers were 

removed from their units; collected at Fort Lewis, Fort Ord, and other camps; and 

then shipped to army service commands in the interior. Fort Lewis alone shipped 

almost four hundred.47

At the end of March the War Department notified Selective Service that it 

would no longer accept “for service with the armed forces, Japanese or persons 

of Japanese extraction, regardless of citizenship status or other factors.” On 30 

March Selective Service headquarters sent out a confidential telegram to all state 

directors “to the effect that no more registrants of Japanese extraction would be 

accepted by the Army for induction. Local boards were therefore to discontinue 

deliveries for such purpose.” The local boards reclassified all Nisei registrants and 

placed them into the category that seemed to best fit their circumstances, IV–C, 

or “enemy aliens.” This was especially galling to the Nisei, who were citizens and 

certainly not the enemy. They considered the designation a personal insult, but 

under the circumstances they had little choice.48

Another obstacle arose in early 1942, when the War Department issued a new 

directive that no Japanese American soldiers were to be sent overseas. Weckerling 

later remarked that “the implementation of this policy would have vitiated the only 

feasible plan to provide qualified interpreters and translators for the Pacific theatre 

and would have thoroughly frustrated the efforts of the field intelligence agencies.” Colonel Pettigrew in the Military Intelligence Division obtained a special 

exemption for the students at the Fourth Army Intelligence School. What was the 

point of giving them the training if they could not be sent overseas? 49

47 Stanley L. Falk and Warren M. Tsuneishi, eds., MIS in the War against Japan (Washington, D.C.: Japanese American Veterans Association, 1995), pp. 134–35. For discussions 

between December 1941 and March 1942 of what to do with Nisei soldiers on the mainland, see 

Enemy Aliens File, Box 23, General Robert C. Richardson, Jr., Papers, Hoover Institution Archives, 

Stanford University. Richardson was then commanding the Northern California Sector and U.S. 

Army VII Corps. 48 Selective Service System, Selective Service as the Tide of War Turns, Third Report of the 

Director of Selective Service, 1943–1944 (Washington, D.C.: Selective Service System, 1945), pp. 

241–43; Selective Service System, Special Groups, p. 117. Col. Pettigrew reported in November 

1942 that “their induction and enlistment was stopped March 31, 1942.” Murphy, Ambassadors in 

Arms, p. 108. On 14 September Selective Service headquarters finally issued a clear directive that 

mandated the use of Class IV–C for all registrants who were “not acceptable to the armed forces 

because of nationality or ancestry.” Selective Service System, Special Groups, p. 118.

In his office files, Assistant Secretary of War McCloy, who oversaw all Japanese American 

issues, kept all documents dealing with Japanese Americans, including those serving in the Army, 

under the file label “Enemy Aliens.” See Ser. 8, McCloy Papers.

Official publications of the Selective Service System identified categories by Roman numeral 

and letter, such as IV–C. Some later authors have used an Arabic numeral and letter, such as 4–C. 

I have used the former. George Q. Flynn, The Draft, 1940–1973 (Lawrence: University Press of 

Kansas, 1993). 49 Weckerling, “Japanese Americans Play Vital Role.”
50 NISEI LINGUISTS

“Shikata Ga Nai,” December 1941–May 1942

At Crissy Field, the students and instructors plunged into their work and 

reached deep inside themselves for the spirit to go on. John Aiso later recalled 

those hours: “Seldom in history has a generation of young men been so confronted 

with the necessity of self-examination, self-restraint, self-discipline, moral courage, and intellectual honesty. We asked ourselves . . . what is the meaning of loyalty measured by legal, political, and moral criteria? Where lies the proper choice 

between rational decision and heartbreaking human affections?” 50 How could 

they go on, with such an uncertain future? They found the answer in the traditional Japanese phrase, “Shikata ga nai.” (It cannot be helped.) With quiet resolution they buckled down to their studies with an intensity that would have surprised 

their Japanese-language schoolteachers in quieter days.

San Francisco was now a city at war. At night the windows were blacked out 

and troop convoys slipped out silently under the Golden Gate Bridge. The Nisei 

went into town less and less often. One evening, as two of the instructors were 

driving off the Presidio, a nervous young guard at the gate stopped their car. With 

his .45-caliber pistol drawn, he ordered them out of the car with their hands in the 

air. He then directed them to place their identification cards on the ground and step 

back. Only when he verified that they were indeed War Department civilians did 

he allow them to proceed. Incidents of this sort had a chilling effect.51

In the classrooms, the instructors knew their mission but were uncertain as to 

the ultimate purpose. Weckerling could not describe the duties of their graduates, 

because he himself did not know. He could only tell them that “it was vaguely 

connected with usage of Japanese in connection with American military operations in the Pacific.” 52 They only knew that the course had to be intensified. They 

introduced some new subjects, such as so ̄sho, the difficult “grass writing” that 

turned kanji characters into mysterious scratchings.53 About fifteen students “were 

relieved because of their inability to learn Japanese or their failure to receive a 

favorable loyalty recommendation.” 54

While the instructors continued to teach their classes, Weckerling found more 

instructors. When the local authorities shut down all Japanese-language newspapers, he hired two former reporters, Thomas N. Tanimoto and Tsutomu “Paul” 

Tekawa. Satoshi “Bud” Nagase, formerly a California-based reporter for the Do ̄mei

50 Aiso, speech to veterans’ reunion, 6 Sep 64, author’s files. 51 Interv, Haller with Kihara, 19 Jul 94, p. 27. 52 “Training History,” ann. 1, p. 5. 53 Some accounts claim that originally the course was designed to be twelve months but was 

shortened to six after Pearl Harbor. Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 36, 44; Thomas Sakamoto, 

“Original Japanese Student Reflects on MISLS Language Training,” DLIFLC Globe (December 

1996): 12. The evidence does not support this claim. One key document calls for a six-month 

course. Memo, Col. Rufus S. Bratton to Asst C/S [Assistant Chief of Staff], G–2, 23 Jun 41, sub: 

Intelligence School Fourth Army, Security-Class Gen Corresp, 1926–1946, Far Eastern Br, Ofc of 

the Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, NARA. 54 “Training History,” p. 2.
FOURTH ARMY INTELLIGENCE SCHOOL 51

radio news service, would teach a course on how to read Japanese kana radio 

messages. Toshio G. Tsukahira, another Kibei, had graduated the University of 

California at Los Angeles with a bachelor’s degree in history and political science 

and a master’s in history.55 Tadao Yamada, a graduate of Meiji University, would 

develop a course on Japanese geography. After a short while, another one of the 

new instructors was dropped for lack of language proficiency. Although he had 

graduated from an American university and had made a short trip to Japan, he had 

not studied the language well enough to teach it.56 Security officers also removed 

Bud Nagase, the former radio reporter, because of suspicions about his previous 

employment.57 Weckerling built a solid group of eight civilian Nisei instructors. 

All were U.S. citizens with excellent Japanese-language skills and university graduates committed to preparing their students to serve in the war against Japan.

Weckerling knew that Nisei linguists alone could not meet the needs of future 

battlefields. Even before the war began, the Military Intelligence Division recognized that “In time of war, in many cases, officers will obtain better results in 

the interrogation of prisoners than enlisted personnel.” With few Japanese-speaking officers and no plans to commission the Nisei enlisted men, the War Department had to train more. The Military Intelligence Division declared that “efforts 

should be initiated immediately for the use of every qualified Regular, Reserve, 

or National Guard officer who can be released from his present assignment for the 

course in the Japanese language.” The first step was “to determine the capacity of 

officers who claim a knowledge of the Japanese language” and assign them to the 

course.58 After Pearl Harbor, the Military Intelligence Division concluded that a 

Caucasian officer had to lead each team of Nisei sent to the field.59

In the highly charged atmosphere of suspicion, Weckerling foresaw that white 

commanders might have difficulty entrusting their Nisei soldiers with sensitive 

intelligence tasks, such as interrogating prisoners and translating captured documents on the battlefield:

Despite my confidence in the loyalty of the enlisted students enrolled in the Intelligence School, I fully realize that, when the course is completed and the students assigned 

as translators, interpreters or interrogators at division, corps and army headquarters, 

many commanders will look upon these men with suspicion, whether justified or not. I

can fully sympathize with the feelings of such commanders, because the translator will be 

in a prime position to do great harm in the event that he is, as a matter of fact, disloyal. In 

the absence of white officers or soldiers, with at least a smattering of Japanese, in a position to check their actions, the G–2 will be at their mercy.

55 Falk and Tsuneishi, MIS in the War against Japan, pp. 9–10, 130–31. 56 “Training History,” ann. 1, p. 4; Grassick, Fourth Army Intelligence School, pp. 14–21. 57 Nagase was later rehired; he then enlisted in the Army, rose to master sergeant, and won 

appointment as a warrant officer in 1945. “Training History,” ann. 4, Intelligence Section, p. 2. 58 Draft Memo, MID to AG [Adjutant General], Fourth Army, 2 Dec 41, sub: Fourth Army 

Intelligence School, Trng Grp, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, NARA. 59 Kai E. Rasmussen, speech, DLIFLC, Monterey, Calif., 25 Jun 77, printed in DLIFLC Forum

(November 1977).
52 NISEI LINGUISTS

It is for this reason that I have been so anxious to enroll white Americans, particularly 

officers, in the school. Upon their graduation such personnel, of unquestioned loyalty, will 

be available to assign to the headquarters of divisions, corps and army. Their presence 

there would serve to check the actions of the Japanese translators, and relieve commanders of their apprehensions on being double-crossed by the latter. 60

The War Department looked for white officers to serve as team leaders over 

the Nisei, and this policy remained in effect until almost the end of the war. Beginning in December, eighteen National Guard and Reserve officers “drifted in at odd 

times.” Some showed promise, but most did not. One had listed on his personnel 

questionnaire that he had studied Japanese. Upon closer examination, he admitted that his exposure was limited to six weeks of classes, one hour per week, at 

the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). Two Chinese American reserve 

officers were sent to the school, but they spoke Cantonese, not Japanese.61

Of all these officers, only two graduated with their class. Capt. David W. 

Swift, son of an English teacher at Tokyo Imperial University, had been born and 

raised in Japan. Since 1933 he had worked as a customs inspector in the Port of 

San Francisco and was a captain in the Military Intelligence Reserve. After Pearl 

Harbor, Fourth Army loaned him for a time to Naval Intelligence for “locating 

certain citizens of Japanese ancestry.” He was then sent to Southern California for 

censorship duties. On 28 December the 45-year-old reservist was ordered to the 

Presidio of San Francisco for a refresher course in Japanese.62

Capt. John A. Burden, a 41-year-old medical doctor, came from Hawaii. Burden had been born in Japan, where his American parents had both been teachers. 

He grew up with Japanese playmates and spoke the Tokyo dialect better than many 

Japanese. When he graduated from medical school during the Depression, there 

was little work to be found even for doctors, so he joined the Medical Reserve 

Corps, where he could earn $250 each summer on active duty. He soon found a 

job as a plantation doctor on Maui, where he served the predominantly Japanese 

work force. In January 1942 he received orders to the Presidio of San Francisco for 

a refresher language course.63

60 Ltr, Weckerling to Dusenbury, 31 December 1941. 61 “Training History,” ann. 1, pp. 1–3. Two Caucasian officers, Burden and Swift, graduated 

from Crissy Field. Six others continued on to Camp Savage. Headquarters Western Defense Command and Fourth Army, Special Orders no. 127, 7 May 42, “Training History,” ann. 10, Personnel 

Procurement Office, encl. 4. The Chinese American reserve officers were 1st Lt. Robert F. Pang and 

2d Lt. Won Loy Chan. One Nisei reserve officer, 2d Lt. Roy M. Hirano, also arrived at the school 

during this period. 62 David W. Swift, Sr., Ninety Li a Day, ed. David W. Swift, Jr., Social Life Monographs, vol. 69 

(Taipei: Chinese Association for Folklore, 1975), pp. 270–73.

63 Interv, author with John A. Burden, 5 Dec 94; Burden autobiographical notes, author’s files; 

Interv, Loni Ding et al. with John A. Burden, 30 Sep 86, NJAHS; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, 

pp. 85–86; Arnold T. Hiura, “John Alfred Burden,” Hawaii Herald, 2 Jul 93; Ted T. Tsukiyama, 

“Dr. Alfred J. [sic] Burden, Col.,” in Secret Valor: M.I.S. Personnel, World War II Pacific Theater, 

Pre–Pearl Harbor to Sept. 8, 1951, ed. Ted T. Tsukiyama et al. (Honolulu: Military Intelligence 
FOURTH ARMY INTELLIGENCE SCHOOL 53

Second Lt. Lawrence P. Dowd had lived in Japan for three years and had studied the language. He had earned his master’s degree in Oriental Studies from the 

University of Hawaii in 1938 and was teaching at the University of Washington.64

The school’s leaders looked high and low for Caucasian students. When Major 

Dickey visited Fort Bragg, North Carolina, he interviewed Pvt. Faubion Bowers, 

a Julliard graduate who taught music at Hosei University before the war. Dickey 

welcomed him with the Japanese greeting, “Ohayo ̄ gozai masu.” (“Good morning.”) Bowers “immediately answered in astonishment, rather homesick for the 

language and the country I had come to love.” 65

Other Caucasians who claimed to speak Japanese rushed to Washington, 

D.C., to apply for direct commissions on the basis of their language skills. The 

War Department commissioned some and sent them straight to Crissy Field for a 

refresher course. Many proved utterly incompetent in the language and caused considerable trouble for their instructors. One reserve major from Hawaii could speak 

some “pidgin” Japanese but didn’t take his studies very seriously. An instructor 

finally chewed him out. “Don’t talk to me like that,” the student protested, “I’m 

a major.” The instructor responded in heavily accented English, but his meaning 

was clear: “I don care you major, you general—I am shibirian [civilian]!” The 

major was soon removed from the course.66

The evacuation of all persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast made 

the school’s location untenable. But where could they go, and who would be in 

charge? Colonel Weckerling stepped up to become G–2 for the Western Defense 

Command on 12 March, leaving Captain Rasmussen in charge of the school. Rasmussen was soon scouting for a new site. He considered moving the school to Salt 

Lake City, Utah, still inside the boundaries of the Western Defense Command but 

outside the exclusion zone.67 At the same time, the Army was looking for places to 

send the evacuees. On 7 April Lt. Col. Karl R. Bendetson from the Western Defense 

Command and Milton Eisenhower, newly appointed director of the War Relocation Authority, met in Salt Lake City with representatives of ten western states to 

discuss possible sites for relocation centers. The response was overwhelmingly 

hostile. Almost no one was willing to accept these Japanese Americans, whether 

citizens or resident aliens. If the War Department wanted to move the Japanese 

population away from the coast, most governors felt strongly that they should not 

Service Veterans Club of Hawaii, 1993), pp. 52–54. See also Dr. John A. Burden Papers, Hoover 

Institution. 64 Dowd remained at the school for the rest of the war as adjutant. Grassick, Fourth Army Intelligence School, p. 12. 65 Falk and Tsuneishi, MIS in the War against Japan, pp. 11–12, 94. 66 Swift, Ninety Li a Day, p. 272. 67 Memo, MID to Army Chief of Staff, 3 Apr 42, sub: Japanese Language School (352.11), Trng 

Grp, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, NARA.
54 NISEI LINGUISTS

be burdened with them. In consequence the War Relocation Authority selected ten 

sites, most on government property, such as Indian reservations.68

Since Salt Lake City was out of the question as a site for the language school, 

Rasmussen traveled to the Seventh Corps Area in the upper Midwest, where he 

met the governor of Minnesota, Harold E. Stassen. Stassen was eager to help the 

war effort, but his state had only one Army base, Fort Snelling in Minneapolis–St. 

Paul. The busy reception center was already filled to capacity. Stassen suggested 

a former Civilian Conservation Corps camp near the small town of Savage, about 

a dozen miles from Fort Snelling. The state still used the camp as a home for 

indigent men, but he offered to remove them. Stassen assured Rasmussen that 

all Minnesotans would accept the Nisei soldiers, since the state had no history of 

prejudice toward “Orientals.” (The 1940 census counted only fifty-one residents of 

Japanese descent in the entire state.) Rasmussen later said the area “not only had 

to have room physically, but room in the people’s hearts.” The War Department 

directed the Seventh Corps Area on 7 April to provide facilities for the school, and 

Rasmussen hurried back to San Francisco to prepare for the move.69

With the change of location came a change of command alignment. Before the 

war began, the War Department directed the Western Defense Command to establish the school because the Military Intelligence Division could not do so itself. 

By the spring of 1942 the division had expanded and had its own training branch 

to supervise both the language school and the new Military Intelligence Training 

Center, which opened at Camp Ritchie, Maryland, in June 1942. Consequently, the 

language school would report directly to the General Staff, not to General Headquarters (GHQ) or the Western Defense Command.70

Another reason to move the school was to facilitate its expansion. Many more 

graduates would be needed. In the six months after the Pearl Harbor attack, Weckerling and his officers recruited another 150 Nisei, over twice as many as they 

had selected for the first class. This feat was all the more remarkable because the 

Selective Service System stopped accepting Nisei after February 1942 and Fourth 

68 War Relocation Authority, WRA: A Story of Human Conservation (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1946), pp. 28–30; Conn, “Japanese Evacuation,” pp. 141–42; Hosokawa, 

Nisei, pp. 338–39.

69 Theodore C. Blegen, Minnesota: A History of the State (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1963), pp. 539–49. Stassen was an anti-isolationist Republican. In March 1942 he 

obtained a naval reserve commission; in April 1943 he stepped down to become a naval aide to 

Admiral William F. Halsey. Current Biography 1948 (New York: Wilson, 1948). In October 1945 

Rasmussen told Minneapolis reporters how he selected Camp Savage. “Minnesota-Trained Nisei 

Act as Pacific ‘Eyes, Ears’ for U.S.,” Minneapolis Star-Journal, 22 Oct 45; “Snelling’s Jap Language School Proves Army Opposition Wrong,” Minneapolis Morning Tribune, 23 Oct 45. See also 

Kihara’s comments in Interv, Haller with Kihara, 19 Jul 94, pp. 23–24. Memo, Adjutant General 

to Assistant Chief of Staff (ACS), G–2, 7 Apr 42, sub: Japanese Language School (352), Trng Grp, 

Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, NARA. 70 For intelligence schools during World War II, see Federal Records of World War II, 2 vols. 

(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1951), 2: 142–45; John P. Finnegan and Romana 

Danysh, Military Intelligence, Army Lineage Series (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1998), pp. 66–68.
FOURTH ARMY INTELLIGENCE SCHOOL 55

Army removed all Nisei soldiers from the West Coast. Rasmussen and Dickey 

frantically combed the Army camps in January and February 1942, before the 

Nisei soldiers were removed. 

At Fort Ord, Dickey interviewed Pfc. Richard Kaoru Hayashi from Stockton, 

California. Hayashi’s eleven years in Japanese-language classes made him a good 

candidate, but soon after the interview all Nisei soldiers were shipped under guard 

from Fort Ord to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Two weeks later Hayashi was transferred to Camp Crowder, Missouri. In May he was ordered to Camp Savage.71

Dickey also interviewed Pvt. Satsuki Fred Tanakatsubo of Sacramento, California, at Fort Lewis, where the Nisei were pulling kitchen police and garbage 

details. Tanakatsubo refused to volunteer for language training and walked out of 

the interview, “since I felt the anger of being kicked around and I was not motivated to serve my obligation for this country in any shape or form.” He also was 

shipped to Camp Crowder but a few months later received orders to Camp Savage, 

“though none of us knew why.” 72

In March 1942 Pfc. Roy T. Uyehata of Gilroy, California, was shipped with the 

other Nisei from Fort Ord to Camp Wolters, Texas, where they were assigned to 

garbage details, replacing the prisoners from the post stockade in the unpleasant 

job. In May he too was ordered to Camp Savage.73

Just as Rasmussen and Dickey had discovered the previous summer, most 

Nisei had meager Japanese-language skills. In search of language-qualified Nisei, 

Rasmussen even visited some of the temporary assembly centers. At the Puyallup 

Fairgrounds in Washington State, he interviewed Seattle-born Bill Hosokawa, a 

graduate of the University of Washington who had spent 1938–1941 as a journalist in the Far East. “I thought I could boast a fair speaking knowledge of the 

language,” Hosokawa later recalled, “but he quickly proved me completely inadequate in other respects.” He remembered how the colonel ended the interview 

“with ill-concealed disgust,” saying, “Hosokawa, you’d make a helluva Jap.” 74

By the summer of 1942 Rasmussen and his officers would feel that they had 

exhausted the available pool of Japanese-speaking Nisei. Without authorization 

to recruit Nisei directly from the new internment camps, there would be no more 

Japanese linguists available. The War Department would have to meet the growing requirements in some other way.

In the spring of 1942 some Army commanders were removing Nisei soldiers 

and others were begging for Japanese linguists for their units deploying to the 

South Pacific. The first request came on 28 March, when the Military Intelligence 

Division sent an urgent radiogram to the Fourth Army G–2: “A soldier [from] your 

71 Richard Kaoru Hayashi, MISNorCal Bio. 72 Satsuki Fred Tanakatsubo, MISNorCal Bio. 73 Interv, author with Roy T. Uyehata, 16 Nov 87; Roy T. Uyehata, MISNorCal Bio. 74 Bill Hosokawa, “Our Own Japanese in the Pacific War,” American Legion Magazine (July 

1964): 45. See also Bill Hosokawa, “The Uprooting of Seattle,” in Daniels et al., Japanese Americans: From Relocation to Redress, pp. 18–20. Hosokawa was in the Puyallup assembly center from 

May to August 1942.
56 NISEI LINGUISTS

intelligence school of Japanese ancestry is needed to be sent with a task force to 

the Pacific area. Recommend name[,] organization[,] rank.” 75 On 3 April MID 

offered the 37th Division a language team composed of “one officer (white) and 

5 enlisted men (American citizens of Japanese ancestry) who will have finished a 

specialized course in military Japanese, interrogation and translation of Japanese 

documents.” 76 On 7 April the War Department lifted the overseas ban for Nisei 

“whose loyalty is attested to by the Commanding Officer of the school after suitable investigation.” Shortly afterward the school sent one of the best Kibei students, Masanori Minamoto, straight to the South Pacific, where he joined the 102d 

Infantry on Bora Bora.77

On 1 May the Fourth Army Intelligence School held a small graduation ceremony. About forty Nisei graduated, along with two Caucasian reserve officers, 

Swift and Burden. Because of the shortage of instructors, the best ten students 

were held back as instructors. Within days all others were on their way to overseas 

assignments.78

During these difficult months, over 100,000 persons of Japanese ancestry on 

the West Coast were being forced from their homes, including the families of all 

the Nisei students and instructors. In the last weeks before graduation there was 

“total confusion and disaster,” one of the instructors recalled, with “total chaos” 

for Japanese communities up and down the coast.79 Families were trying to sell 

their furniture and cars, close their shops, and put their property in storage. Fourth 

Army ordered all Japanese in San Francisco to report to collection centers in early 

May, just days after the school’s graduation, for transport to the assembly center 

at Tanforan Racetrack. 

All this upheaval caused considerable confusion and frustration. One Issei 

farmer whose Nisei son was serving in the Army told a reporter: “They took my 

boy to the army, and now they take my other children to a concentration camp.” 

A Nisei soldier told another reporter: “They are evacuating all the Japanese from 

the Coast and even trying to take away our citizenship. I don’t know why I am in 

75 Radiogram, Kroner, MID, to ACS, G–2, Fourth Army, 28 Mar 42, Restricted, Secret and 

Confidential Msgs—Outgoing, Security-Class Gen Corresp, 1926–1946, Far Eastern Br, Ofc of the 

Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, NARA. 76 Memo, MID to ACS, G–2, 37th Division, 3 Apr 42, sub: Japanese Interrogators and Translators (350.03), Trng Grp, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, NARA. 77 Memo, Adjutant General to ACS, G–2, 7 Apr 42, sub: Japanese Language School (352), Trng 

Grp, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, NARA. See also Interv, author with Kaneko, 23 Aug 95. 

Harrington incorrectly identifies Kiyoshi Kaye Sakamoto as an early graduate, perhaps confusing 

him with Minamoto. Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 31, 70–71; Swift, “First Class,” pp. 273–75. 

Some sources give Minamoto’s first assignment as Tongatabu. 78 Sources differ on the number of Nisei graduates, but most researchers agree on 40 as most 

likely. MISLS Album lists 40 Japanese names (p. 125), although the text says 43, not counting the 

2 Caucasian officers (p. 9). “Training History” says 36 (p. 2), probably omitting the 10 held over 

as instructors. A few pages later (p. 16) a table says 45. “Training History,” ann. 1, p. 5, para. 6, 

says 45. Swift, who has conducted the most detailed research, can identify only 40. Swift, “First 

Class.” 79 Interv, Haller with Kihara, 19 Jul 94, pp. 22–23, 26–27.
FOURTH ARMY INTELLIGENCE SCHOOL 57

the Army. I want to see democracy as it is supposed to be, but this is getting just 

as bad as Hitler.” Another Nisei soldier was taking basic training when one of his 

tent mates, an Italian American, told him: “If they did that to my family, I wouldn’t 

serve in this god-damn army.” 80

Meanwhile, the Navy was having its own problems training Caucasian officer 

candidates in Japanese at Harvard and Berkeley. After Pearl Harbor, Navy commanders began begging for linguists, so the Office of Naval Intelligence began 

planning to double its language training program. But the expansion would take 

time. The Marine Corps demanded Japanese linguists, but the Office of Naval 

Intelligence responded that all the students were already earmarked for naval 

assignments. The best they could offer was sixty linguists from the class that 

would graduate in June 1943, more than a year away.81

80 Alexander H. Leighton, The Governing of Men: General Principles and Recommendations 

Based on Experience at a Japanese Relocation Camp (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 

1945), p. 27; Moffett Ishikawa, in Harrington Papers. 81 For the Navy language programs, see “Reminiscences of Rear Admiral Arthur H. McCollum, 

U.S. Navy Retired,” 2 vols., Unpubl Ms, 1970–1971; Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), 

A Nisei soldier on leave from Camp Leonard Wood, Missouri, has returned to 

California to help his mother prepare for removal.
58 NISEI LINGUISTS

In February 1942 Lt. Comdr. Albert E. Hindmarsh and Glenn W. Shaw traveled to Berkeley and Cambridge to inspect their two contract programs. At the 

University of California they were pleased with Florence Walne’s classes. But 

at Harvard, despite the onset of war, Serge Elisséeff frustrated any attempts to 

change his teaching methods. The officers complained of “a continuing reluctance 

to recognize the practical needs of the Naval Service and constant underhanded 

criticism of the whole idea of intensified training because it did not conform to the 

usual academic set-up as exemplified in the leisurely and highly theoretical teaching of Professor Elisséeff.” 82

Deciding to put all his eggs in one basket, Hindmarsh sent the next batch of 

forty-seven students to the University of California, where they arrived on 22 

February. Walne quickly hired additional instructors, including some Korean 

Americans who spoke Japanese with a distinctive Korean accent (Korea had been 

under Japanese rule since 1910), and pressed forward with her practical, rapid-fire 

program. When the University of Washington closed its Japanese department that 

spring, she absorbed three of the instructors.83

The Navy’s program in Berkeley faced the same problem as the Army’s at 

Crissy Field. Though the students were Caucasian, many of their instructors were 

Nisei. When the Western Defense Command announced the evacuation of Japanese from the West Coast, the Office of Naval Intelligence first requested through 

the War Department Military Intelligence Division to allow their school to move 

a short distance, “as close as possible to Berkeley,” so the University of California 

could continue to operate the program. By this point Walne had eight Nisei teachers on staff and the school was continuing to expand. That spring Hindmarsh and 

Shaw recruited over 150 more Caucasian students and Walne identified 20 more 

Japanese Americans as instructors.84 But Fourth Army insisted that no person of 

Japanese ancestry could remain in the exclusion areas, even for important defense 

work. Thus, at the end of May, Hindmarsh visited the University of Colorado at 

Boulder. The university already had a Naval ROTC program, and a few weeks 

earlier Colorado’s governor had been the only western governor to agree to accept 

“School of Oriental Languages,” Unpubl Ms. Both at Naval Historical Center, Washington, D.C. 82 Office of the CNO, “School of Oriental Languages,” p. 13. The two programs differed in cost 

as well: Harvard charged the Navy $900 per year per student, the University of California $600. 

The Navy sent no more students to Harvard and let the contract expire in September 1942. 83 Ibid. “Reminiscences of Rear Admiral Arthur H. McCollum,” p. 286. Several students who 

studied Japanese at Berkeley in 1941–1942, such as Otis Cary, Donald Keene, and William T. De 

Bary, later became leading Japan scholars. See Otis Cary, ed., From a Ruined Empire: Letters—

Japan, China, Korea 1945–46 (New York: Kodansha, 1975); Donald Keene, On Familiar Terms: A

Journey across Cultures (New York: Kodansha, 1994), pp. 14–20. 84 Memo, Vice CNO to Bureau of Naval Personnel, 21 May 42, sub: Transfer of Navy Japanese 

Language Course out of Military Area No. 1 to Military Area No. 2, California, in Scott E. Nadler, 

The Evolution of Foreign Language Training in the Armed Forces (Washington, D.C.: Defense 

Language Institute, 1972), pp. 123–24. This states that eight of the eleven instructors were Japanese, as does a telegram from OP–16–F–2 dated 28 May 1942 (p. 121); “American Born Japanese 

Teach at Navy School,” Pacific Citizen, 9 Jul 42, p. 2.
FOURTH ARMY INTELLIGENCE SCHOOL 59

Japanese evacuees. The university president immediately agreed to accept the 

Navy school. On 23 June the students and staff moved to Colorado. The next group 

of 153 students arrived at Boulder on 1 July.85

Another government agency, William J. Donovan’s Coordinator of Information (predecessor of the Office of Strategic Services), ran into similar problems. In 

May Donovan appealed to the Secretary of War for permission to keep six Nisei 

in San Francisco as translators and announcers for radio broadcasts directed at 

Japan. Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy rejected his appeal: “In concluding against exemptions, General DeWitt has removed his own Japanese-language 

school to the interior. He feels that language school teachers and Japaneselanguage broadcast translators can function as effectively behind the coastal frontier as they do in San Francisco or elsewhere along the coast.” 86

Disasters at Home and Overseas, Spring 1942

The world had changed dramatically since the Nisei began their classes. America was at war. The military and naval forces of Imperial Japan ranged at will to 

the south, east, and west, capturing the colonial possessions of Britain, France, the 

Netherlands, and the United States. Singapore, the linchpin of British defenses in 

the Far East, fell on 15 February. On 23 February President Franklin D. Roosevelt 

gave his first wartime “fireside chat” to the nation and recalled the Continental 

Army’s dark days at Valley Forge. On the same day, as if to underscore the threat, 

a Japanese submarine shelled an oil refinery at Santa Barbara, California. 

The Japanese seemed to be winning on all fronts as starving Filipino and 

American defenders of Bataan surrendered on 9 April. The two Nisei who had 

been sent from Hawaii to Manila one year earlier, Sgts. Arthur S. Komori and 

Richard M. Sakakida, fought valiantly on Bataan and then were transferred to 

Corregidor, where they translated captured documents, interrogated prisoners, 

and monitored radio transmissions. On 13 April Komori was evacuated by air 

to Australia, but Sakakida remained behind. When Corregidor surrendered on 6 

May, he fell into Japanese hands.87

85 Office of the CNO, “School of Oriental Languages,” pp. 12–14; “Reminiscences of Rear Admiral Arthur H. McCollum,” pp. 285–89, 458; “American Born Japanese Teach at Navy School.” 86 Ltr, John J. McCloy to William J. Donovan, 14 May 1942, reprinted in American Concentration Camps: A Documentary History of the Relocation and Incarceration of Japanese Americans, 

1941–1945, 9 vols., ed. Roger Daniels (New York: Garland, 1989), vol. 5. See also Ltr, McCloy to 

Donovan, 23 May 1942, in which McCloy states “we are moving our own Japanese school to Denver.” X-OSS, Class Ref Subj File, 1940–1947, Ofc of the Asst Sec of War, RG 107, NARA. 87 Ann Bray, “Undercover Nisei,” in Military Intelligence: Its Heroes and Legends (Arlington 

Hall Station, Va.: U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, 1987), pp. 34–37; Duval A. 

Edwards, Spy Catchers of the U.S. Army in the War with Japan (Gig Harbor, Wash.: Red Apple 

Publishing, 1994), pp. 51–54; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 65–67; Richard M. Sakakida and 

Wayne S. Kiyosaki, A Spy in Their Midst: The World War II Struggle of a Japanese American Hero

(Lanham, Md.: Madison Books, 1995), pp. 67–115.
60 NISEI LINGUISTS

The Nisei who graduated from the Fourth Army Intelligence School in May 

1942 faced a situation very different from six months earlier. Now their families were confined in guarded assembly centers. Many brothers and buddies with 

whom they had enlisted were pulling kitchen police and garbage details in far-off 

Army posts in the Midwest. The graduates quietly said their farewells, and about 

two dozen shipped off to points unknown.

Shortly after the graduation, the staff, instructors, and remaining graduates 

packed up and set out for Minnesota, most by automobile. Eleven officers, twentyfour enlisted men, and eight civilian instructors made the trip (some enlisted men 

traveled by train). The civilian instructors were allowed to bring their families, so 

John Aiso brought his wife of five months. Each automobile carrying Nisei was 

accompanied by a Caucasian officer for their protection.88 A few weeks later the 

Western Defense Command declared to the public that all Nisei soldiers had been 

removed from the West Coast, “cautioning citizens to be on the alert for Japanese 

persons wearing U.S. Army uniforms in the Pacific Coast combat zone. General 

DeWitt noted that by then all American-born Japanese in the U.S. Army had been 

removed from the Western Defense Command and the Fourth Army and transferred to interior posts.” 89 The Matson liner SS Maui slipped into port in Oakland, California, on 12 June, bearing the 1,400 Nisei of the Hawaiian Provisional 

Infantry Battalion. They were hurried onto blacked-out trains and spirited away to 

Camp McCoy, Wisconsin, with no public notice.

. . .

By June 1942 there was little cause for hope for Americans of Japanese ancestry. On the mainland, 117,000 people languished in the assembly centers awaiting 

transport to the camps. In Hawaii, only a few hundred were detained, but all others 

were placed under surveillance. With the exception of the 169 Varsity Victory Volunteers, all civilians of Japanese ancestry were barred from the war effort; though 

they remained a significant portion of the local labor force. 

Two other bright spots remained, as yet out of the public eye. First, at Camp 

McCoy, the Nisei soldiers in the newly designated 100th Infantry Battalion began 

training to fight, not as a labor service unit, as they had feared, but as combat infantrymen. Second, at Camp Savage, 150 Nisei began Japanese-language classes in 

June. The Military Intelligence Service’s Nisei were all citizens, and their loyalty 

had been carefully investigated. However, the question remained how well they 

would fight against the Japanese. Eventual success in the war against Japan and in 

their acceptance into the mainstream of American society hung in the balance.

88 HQ, Western Defense Command and Fourth Army, Special Orders no. 127, 7 May 42, in 

“Training History,” ann. 10, encl. 4.

89 “Nisei Soldiers Removed from Western Zone,” Pacific Citizen, 11 Jun 42.
3

MIS Nisei Pioneers, 

May 1942–February 1943

Beginning in May 1942, Nisei graduates of the Fourth Army Intelligence 

School served in the early campaigns against Japanese forces from Alaska to Guadalcanal to Papua New Guinea. Until then, using Nisei as interpreters and translators against the Japanese was an untested concept. However, the initial results 

were so positive the War Department quickly increased the size of the school. 

Furthermore, the War Department decided to allow Nisei volunteers to serve in 

two all-Nisei combat units, the 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442d Regimental 

Combat Team (RCT), which saw action in Italy and France from 1943 to 1945.

On 1 May 1942, the Fourth Army Intelligence School held its first graduation ceremony at Crissy Field for forty Nisei enlisted men and two reserve officers who had completed the six-month course in Japanese. When the class began, 

their country was at peace. Now America was at war, and San Francisco was still 

blacked out as a precaution against air raids. The city’s several thousand individuals of Japanese ancestry were waiting for the Western Defense Command to 

remove them to a temporary assembly area at the Tanforan racetrack. 

The Nisei graduates did not know whether they would be sent to Tanforan or 

somewhere else. From December 1941 to May 1942, America had suffered a string 

of overseas disasters unprecedented in the nation’s history. The Nisei’s families 

faced an equally unprecedented series of disasters, culminating in their wholesale removal from the coast. What would be the fate of Nisei already in uniform? 

Would the Army place them in special camps or labor service units, or would they 

get a chance to prove themselves? If they turned their thoughts from their families 
62 NISEI LINGUISTS

to the world situation, there was still little to reassure them. Several weeks before 

graduation, one of their fellow students, Masanori Minamoto, shipped out and had 

not been heard from since. Shortly after graduation, orders arrived for most of the 

class; they boarded transports for destinations unknown.

In the Philippines, even America’s best-known soldier, General Douglas 

MacArthur, could not hold back the Japanese onslaught. His air forces had been 

destroyed on the ground. The American and Filipino defenders of Bataan had surrendered in April; those on Corregidor would soon follow. The British, French, 

and Dutch empires had folded like houses of cards. Japanese forces threatened 

India and Australia and pressed toward U.S. territories in the Aleutian and Hawaiian island chains. Lt. Col. James H. Doolittle and Army Air Corps fliers had 

just staged a daring raid on Japanese cities on 18 April. Japanese retaliation was 

expected at any moment somewhere in Hawaii, Alaska, or the West Coast.

In the weeks ahead, America would narrowly win its first victories in the 

Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway. In both cases, a handful of Navy intelligence specialists would use their ingenuity to help turn the tide. These intelligence victories were won with only a handful of Japanese linguists, none of them 

Japanese Americans. 

American commanders were desperate for reliable information on the enemy’s 

next moves. Where would he strike next? What forces would he bring to bear? The 

Fourth Army Intelligence School’s graduates, men who could help answer those 

questions, would amount to more than half of all Japanese linguists in the Army 

and Navy. They were ready to go wherever the need was greatest.

During the last weeks before graduation, staff officers in the Far Eastern 

Branch of the Military Intelligence Division (MID) allocated the precious graduates. Lt. Col. Moses W. Pettigrew offered the Nisei to various interested headquarters. In April MID offered one Caucasian language officer and five Nisei enlisted 

men to the 37th Division preparing for deployment to the South Pacific. MID 

assured the division, “All enlisted men have been checked for loyalty, and all come 

from families having no close relatives in Japan, and it is believed that they will be 

found both useful and trustworthy.”1

MID was leery of promising too much, since it had barely three dozen graduates to dispatch. Of the fifty-eight Nisei selected for training, only forty completed the course. Caucasian students had fared even worse: Several dozen from 

the Regular Army, Officers’ Reserve Corps, and National Guard came to Crissy 

Field claiming some knowledge of the language; but only two finished the course 

that spring. When the Western Defense Command ordered all Japanese removed 

from the West Coast, the school had to relocate. With ten graduates held back as 

enlisted instructors, only thirty Nisei remained available for field duty.

1 Ltr, MID to Assistant Chief of Staff (ACS), G–2, 37th Div, 3 Apr 42, sub: Japanese Interrogators and Translators, MID 350.03, Trng Grp, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, Record Group (RG) 165, 

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
MIS NISEI PIONEERS 63

Colonel Pettigrew and his Far Eastern Branch made tough choices based on 

their appreciation of the strategic situation in May 1942. No Nisei deployed to 

Hawaii, where the threat was greatest. Instead, they went to Alaska, Australia, 

and the South Pacific. Five Nisei went to the Alaska Defense Command. A Caucasian officer with eight Nisei went to Australia, where MacArthur was establishing 

General Headquarters (GHQ), Southwest Pacific Area. MID sent the rest to the 

South Pacific: an officer and three Nisei to Fiji with the 37th Infantry Division and 

six Nisei to New Caledonia. Their job was to help stop Japanese forces from cutting the tenuous lifeline from the United States to Australia and New Zealand.2

The shortage of Japanese-language specialists in the United States remained 

critical. Life magazine claimed in September 1942 that fewer than 100 Caucasians 

in America could speak or read Japanese. The author asserted: “One of the most 

troublesome war shortages faced by the U.S. since Pearl Harbor has been the acute 

lack of non-Japanese American citizens who understand the Japanese language. 

Various Government agencies have been combing the country for months trying 

to find men and women qualified to serve as interpreters, code-room assistants 

and censors. The results of this hunt have been depressing.” Counting individuals 

“with full command of the language,” the author reported that “the most optimistic estimates from Washington put the number at less than 100 persons.” This 

number obviously did not include Americans of Japanese ancestry.3 The outbreak 

of war precipitated a flood of popular literature about Japan that often stressed 

the difficulty of the language. “Our difficulties in [understanding the Japanese 

Army],” one such book declared, “are greatly increased by the inscrutable Jap 

language which, to all intents and purposes, denies us access to the Japanese 

military literature.”4

Intelligence in Hawaii: Pearl Harbor to Midway

After the Crissy Field graduation, none of the Nisei linguists deployed to the 

point of greatest danger—Hawaii. In fact, in May 1942 the Hawaiian Department 

was planning to send away most of its Nisei soldiers. Army and Navy intelligence 

officers in Hawaii had worked out a division of effort: The Navy would defend 

against further external attack, while the Army would counter any internal threat 

of espionage or sabotage. Naval intelligence thus would focus on the Japanese 

fleet, while Army intelligence would focus on the local Japanese population. Neither requested Nisei for language work.

2

 Unless otherwise indicated, assignment information is based on Military Intelligence Service 

Language School (MISLS), Disposition of Graduates, Trng Grp, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, RG

165, NARA. 3 Francis S. Wickware, “The Japanese Language,” Life (7 September 1942): 58–65. See also the 

letters in response published in the 28 September issue. 4 Wickware, “Japanese Language”; Lt. Col. Paul W. Thompson et al., How the Jap Army Fights

(Washington, D.C.: Infantry Journal Press, 1942).
64 NISEI LINGUISTS

Naval intelligence in Hawaii included a small signals intelligence capability, 

the Combat Intelligence Unit under Cmdr. Joseph J. Rochefort. Later renamed the 

Fleet Radio Unit, Pacific (FRUPAC), this unit was already working in the secret 

world of communications intelligence.5 Both Rochefort and Lt. Cmdr. Edwin T. 

Layton, the Pacific Fleet intelligence officer, had previously studied in Tokyo as 

language attachés. Rochefort already had several naval officers in FRUPAC who 

could read Japanese messages, though the volume of intercepted messages was 

still low. Rochefort sent individual language officers to accompany early aircraftcarrier raids against Japanese naval bases, beginning with the raid on Kwajalein in 

the Marshall Islands on 1 February 1942. The 14th Naval District intelligence officer had one trusted Nisei on staff, Hawaii-born Douglas T. Wada, who worked in 

counterintelligence; but the Navy did not use him for combat intelligence. Among 

naval intelligence personnel were five Caucasian language officers who had been 

withdrawn from Tokyo in November 1941. More language officers were in training on the mainland, but the first would not arrive in Hawaii until February 1943, 

fourteen months after the Pearl Harbor attack.6

Army leaders in Hawaii were more inclined to trust the Hawaii Japanese, 

especially the Nisei. This may have been due in part to their positive experiences 

with Nisei soldiers drafted in Hawaii since 1940. Even before that, in the 1920s 

and 1930s, many Nisei boys trained in the ROTC program at McKinley High 

School in Honolulu and many others earned reserve commissions through the 

ROTC at the University of Hawaii. The Hawaiian Department G–2 employed one 

Nisei, Gero Iwai, in counterintelligence. Immediately after the start of the war, 

Selective Service boards in Hawaii suspended inductions of Nisei. By that point 

the Hawaiian Department already had 2,000 Nisei in uniform. After the attack, 

local commanders deployed their soldiers, including the Nisei, to guard landing 

sites and critical public facilities. However, when sufficient reinforcements arrived 

from the mainland over the next few months, the Hawaiian Department shipped 

more than 1,400 Nisei soldiers to the mainland on 5 June 1942 to form the 100th 

5 ACS for Intelligence, Commander in Chief, Pacific Ocean Area, Rpt of Intelligence Activities 

in the Pacific Ocean Areas, 15 Oct 45. Alan H. Bath, Tracking the Axis Enemy: The Triumph of 

Anglo-American Naval Intelligence (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998); W. J. Holmes, 

Double-Edged Secrets: U.S. Naval Intelligence Operations in the Pacific during World War II

(Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1979); Edwin T. Layton, “And I Was There”: Pearl Harbor 

and Midway—Breaking the Secrets (New York: William Morrow, 1985); Ronald Lewin, The American Magic: Codes, Ciphers and the Defeat of Japan (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1982); Frederick D. Parker, A Priceless Advantage: U.S. Navy Communications Intelligence and the Battles 

of Coral Sea, Midway, and the Aleutians, United States Cryptologic History, ser. IV, World War II

(Fort Meade, Md.: National Security Agency, 1993), vol. 5; John Prados, Combined Fleet Decoded: 

The Secret History of American Intelligence and the Japanese Navy in World War II (New York: 

Random House, 1995), pp. 223–335; Edward Van Der Rhoer, Deadly Magic: A Personal Account 

of Communications Intelligence in World War II in the Pacific (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 

1978); John Winton, Ultra in the Pacific: How Breaking Japanese Codes & Cyphers Affected Naval 

Operations against Japan, 1941–45 (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1993). 6 Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets, pp. 36–37, 57–58; Prados, Combined Fleet Decoded, 

pp. 287–88.
MIS NISEI PIONEERS 65

Infantry Battalion (Separate). The Nisei soldiers who remained in Hawaii worked 

in engineer and other noncombat units.

For more than a year after the Pearl Harbor attack, Army and Navy intelligence officers in Hawaii struggled to meet growing demands for Japanese-language work without using the thousands of Nisei citizens on the islands. When the 

Imperial Japanese Navy struck at Midway in June, FRUPAC played a critical role 

in the narrow victory with its brilliant cryptographers and a handful of Japanese 

linguists, none of them Nisei. During the battle, the U.S. Navy captured about 

thirty Japanese sailors and aviators whom Caucasian language officers interrogated.7 Shortly afterward the Navy organized the Intelligence Center Pacific 

Ocean Areas, which included some Caucasian Japanese linguists but no Nisei.

Intelligence in Alaska: Defending the Aleutian Islands

The Western Defense Command, which directly controlled the Fourth Army 

Intelligence School, was an active theater of war. In the spring of 1942 Lt. Gen. 

John L. DeWitt and his staff were planning two major operations: the removal 

of all Japanese Americans from the West Coast and the defense of Alaska. The 

Western Defense Command requested five Nisei for the Alaska Defense Command. On 12 May Sgt. Yoshio Hotta led four other Nisei to Anchorage; from 

there, they dispersed to other bases in Alaska and the Aleutians. In early June a 

Japanese naval task force approached the Aleutians, and on 3 and 4 June Japanese 

aircraft raided Dutch Harbor, killing forty-three American soldiers and sailors. 

At least one Nisei linguist, Henry Suyehiro, witnessed the attack but was unhurt. 

One week later U.S. Navy reconnaissance aircraft discovered that the Japanese 

had landed on the fog-bound islands of Attu and Kiska, much farther to the west 

along the Aleutian chain. 

The five Nisei sat out the next few months in Alaska, where their major task 

was keeping warm. They had no prisoners to interrogate and few documents to 

translate, including those confiscated from the handful of Japanese settlers in the 

region. Throughout the autumn and winter the Nisei waited for an enemy who 

never came. A few weeks later the Americans located a Japanese Zero fighter plane 

that had crash-landed near Dutch Harbor and called on Sergeant Hotta to help 

investigate the wreckage.8 Meanwhile, the Western Defense Command removed 

all civilians of Japanese ancestry from Alaska, 230 in all, and about 900 Aleuts. 

American offensive operations had to wait until the following spring to drive the 

7 Prados, Combined Fleet Decoded, pp. 328, 495; Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets, pp. 122–23. 8 Henry Suyehiro, in David W. Swift, Jr., ed., “First Class,” Unpubl Ms, 2000, copy in author’s 

files; Brian Garfield, The Thousand Mile War: World War II in Alaska and the Aleutians (Garden 

City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969), pp. 41–42; James S. Russell, “A Zero Is Found Bottom Up in a Bog,” 

in The Pacific War Remembered, ed. John T. Mason (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1986), 

pp. 108–11; Jim Rearden, Cracking the Zero Mystery (Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole, 1990); John 

Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936–1945 (New York: 

Random House, 1970), p. 499.
66 NISEI LINGUISTS

Japanese from American soil. American reinforcements continued to pour into the 

region, including fifteen more Nisei enlisted graduates who arrived in December 

1942 and January 1943 with three Caucasian language officers.

Intelligence in the South Pacific Area: The Guadalcanal Campaign

In the spring of 1942 the South Pacific was the point of greatest risk for the 

Allied cause, as the United States struggled to keep open the lines of communication with Australia and New Zealand. MID sent some of the first Nisei graduates 

to this region and to Australia. Naval intelligence officers were groping in the 

dark, hoping somehow to provide advance warning of the next Japanese attack. 

From aerial reconnaissance covering thousands of square miles of open ocean, 

they tracked the Imperial Japanese Navy. They gathered information about possible landing sites from travel literature and by interviewing former residents. They 

established a tenuous network of “coast watchers,” Australian and New Zealand 

civilians who had worked in the region before the war. They relied on naval intelligence in Hawaii for radio intelligence. In May the Japanese landed forces on 

Tulagi and Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands and began constructing airfields. 

This was the advance the Allies had feared. American commanders began planning for a counteroffensive.

In April 1942 the Fourth Army Intelligence School sent the first Nisei, Masanori Minamoto, to the South Pacific. Minamoto, who had spent many years in 

Japan before the war, went to the 102d Infantry (Bobcat Task Force) at Bora Bora. 

(Map 2) He found little in the way of any intelligence setup and little language 

work to do, with no prisoners to interrogate and no captured documents to translate. With no officer to give him assignments, he was detailed to drive a truck.9

After graduation, Sgt. Mac N. Nagata led five other Nisei to the South Pacific, 

departing San Francisco on 7 May. They joined the Americal Division at Noumea, 

New Caledonia, on 10 June. The colonial French port was rapidly becoming the 

hub of U.S. military operations in the region. In July the Commander, South Pacific 

(COMSOPAC), established his headquarters there. The sergeant who picked up 

the Nisei at the dock told them that the truck had to remain covered because their 

presence in New Caledonia had to remain secret. At first the Nisei had little to 

do except pull guard duty around division headquarters and watch the American 

movies each week. They translated occasional Japanese letters, magazines, and 

books confiscated from the handful of Japanese residents in the region. Their first 

prisoner was a downed Japanese pilot in June. That autumn Admiral William 

F. Halsey summoned two Nisei to interrogate six downed Japanese pilots. Their 

9 Joseph D. Harrington, Yankee Samurai: The Secret Role of Nisei in America’s Pacific Victory

(Detroit: Pettigrew Enterprises, 1979), pp. 31, 70–71; The Pacific War and Peace: Americans of 

Japanese Ancestry in Military Intelligence Service, 1941 to 1952 (San Francisco: Military Intelligence Service Association of Northern California/National Japanese American Historical Society, 

1991), p. 17. Harrington mistakes K. K. Sakamoto for Minamoto; Tateshi Miyasaki recalls that 

Minamoto was on Tongatabu.
MAP 2









X X

25

X X X

XIV

X X X

I

X X

41

X X

32

X X

7 Aust

X X

37

I I I

102

I I I

147

COMSOPAC

USAFISPA

X X

Americal

SWPA GHQ

ATIS

X X

2

X X

1

CENTRAL PACIFIC AREA

SOUTHWEST PACIFIC AREA

SOUTH PACIFIC AREA

Milne Bay

A U S T R A L I A

NORTH EAST

NEW GUINEA

PA P U A

150Υ 140Υ 160Υ 170Υ 180Υ 170Υ 160Υ 150Υ

10Υ

EQUATOR

10Υ

20Υ

150Υ 160Υ 170Υ 170Υ 160Υ 180Υ

10Υ

EQUATOR

10Υ

Buna

Noumea

Suva

Brisbane

Rockhampton

M A R I A N A

I S L A N D S

Guam

C A R O L I N E I S L A N D S

Truk

M A R S H A L L I S L A

N D S

G I L B E R T I S L A N D S P H O E N I X

I S L A N D S

T O N G A

I S L A N D S

S A M O A I S L A N D S

F I J I

I S L A N D S

N E W

C A L E D O N I A

N E W

H E B R I D E S

E L L I C E I S L A N D S

Johnston

N E W G U I N E A

Guadalcanal

Makin

Tongatabu

Bora Bora

S O L O M O N  I S L A N D S

BISMARCK 

ARCHIPELAGO

C

O

O

K I S L A N D S

S

O

C I E T Y I S L A N D S

May 1942–February 1943

OPERATIONS

SOUTH AND SOUTHWEST PACIFIC AREAS

Battle Site



 Statute Miles

200 0 400 600 800 20Υ 10Υ Equator
68 NISEI LINGUISTS

faces were badly burned, and only two could open their mouths enough to speak. 

The Nisei questioned the injured pilots but could find out only one or two of their 

names. Those who could talk would only whisper, “Kill me.” Halsey was disappointed and unleashed his fury on the Nisei: “Goddamn you bastards; what in the 

goddamn hell did the government send you to school for?”10

The three Nisei assigned to the 37th Division had considerable trouble linking 

with their unit. The division was stationed at Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, 

when the Nisei’s orders arrived, so they took a train from San Francisco to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where a friendly military policeman gave them a ride to 

the post. When the Nisei arrived, the division had already left for the West Coast, 

so the Nisei were arrested for being absent without leave. The next day they convinced the authorities of their identities and took a train back to San Francisco, 

where they caught up with the division just in time to board the SS President 

Coolidge, departing on 25 May for the long, zigzag voyage to Fiji.11

Capt. John A. Burden, one of the first two Caucasian graduates of the school, 

accompanied the three Nisei overseas. Having been born in Japan, Burden spoke 

excellent Japanese.12 In Fiji, as in New Caledonia, the linguists found no prisoners 

to interrogate and no captured documents to translate. Burden became the division counterintelligence officer and used the Nisei and ten other soldiers to help 

monitor the main telephone switchboard. He also assigned the Nisei to monitor 

Japanese shortwave-radio news broadcasts.13

At this point, Army and Navy intelligence officers were desperate for any 

scraps of information about the enemy. In August two submarines carried a 

marine raiding party to Makin in the Central Pacific to uncover Japanese intentions. Among the raiders who lost their lives in the effort was their Japaneselanguage officer, Capt. Gerald P. Holtom, a marine who had been born in Japan. 

The raiders returned to Hawaii with large quantities of captured documents, which

10 Ltr, Roy Kawashiri to Joseph Harrington, 7 December 1977, Kawashiri File, Joseph D. Harrington Papers, National Japanese Historical Society (NJAHS), San Francisco, Calif.; Harrington, 

Yankee Samurai, pp. 31, 108–09; Ltr, Isao Kusuda to Joseph Harrington, [1977?], Harrington 

Papers; Shigeru Yamashita, Biography, Military Intelligence Service Club of Northern California 

(this and similar biographies hereafter cited as MISNorCal Bios). Jim Masaru Ariyasu, in Swift, 

“First Class,” p. 12. 11 Tateshi Miyasaki, MISNorCal Bio. 12 Intervs, Joseph Harrington with John Burden, 11 Dec 77, Harrington Papers; Loni Ding, 

Eric Saul, and Shigeya Kihara with John Burden, 30 Sep 86, NJAHS; author with John Burden, 

5 Dec 94. John Burden autobiography, Unpubl Ms, 1992, copy in author’s files; Arnold T. Hiura, 

“MIS Profile: John Alfred Burden,” Hawaii Herald, 2 Jul 93; Ted T. Tsukiyama, “Dr. Alfred J. [sic] 

Burden, Col.: MIS Pioneer,” in Ted T. Tsukiyama et al., eds., Secret Valor: M.I.S. Personnel, World 

War II Pacific Theater, Pre–Pearl Harbor to Sept. 8, 1951 (Honolulu: Military Intelligence Service 

Veterans Club of Hawaii, 1993), pp. 52–55; Lyn Crost, Honor by Fire: Japanese Americans at War 

in Europe and the Pacific (Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1994), pp. 47–53; John Burden Papers, 

Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif. 13 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 85–86; Miyasaki, MISNorCal Bio; Duval A. Edwards, Spy 

Catchers of the U.S. Army in the War with Japan (Gig Harbor, Wash.: Red Apple Publishing, 1994), 

pp. 59–60.
MIS NISEI PIONEERS 69

Caucasian language officers eagerly translated and studied. Capt. Ellis M. Zacharias, U.S. Navy, deputy director of Naval Intelligence, later called this “the first 

major haul as far as enemy documents were concerned.” The materials included 

“plans, charts and battle orders, including one top-secret map which revealed the 

exact air defenses of all Japanese Pacific islands, the strength of the air forces 

stationed on them, their radius, methods of alert, types of planes used—and above 

all, operational plans for any future emergency.”14

On 7 August the 1st Marine Division landed on Tulagi and Guadalcanal in the 

Solomon Islands. At the time the marines had only a handful of Japanese-speaking officers. A few officers and enlisted marines had taken a six-month course at 

San Diego, but they had no Nisei linguists. In any event, the marines took few 

prisoners on Guadalcanal and got little useful information from the ones they 

did.15 Their unwillingness to take prisoners was reinforced early in the battle, on 

12 August, when the division intelligence officer, Lt. Col. Frank B. Goettge, led a 

patrol behind Japanese lines. The Japanese ambushed the patrol, and survivors told 

of watching Japanese soldiers execute the wounded marines they had left behind. 

The story was widely told among American military personnel, who believed that 

it proved Japanese treachery.16 This racial hatred soon spread to most Americans 

in the Pacific Theater.17 Goettge died in the ambush, as did a marine language 

officer, 1st Lt. Ralph Cory. Until a just few months before, Cory had worked in 

OP–20–G, Navy signals intelligence, in Washington and thus was familiar with 

recent American cryptologic successes. Only a desperate shortage of linguists 

might explain why the marines allowed such an important intelligence officer to 

accompany a high-risk combat patrol. His capture might have alerted the Japanese 

that the Americans were reading their highest level diplomatic messages.18

Back in New Caledonia, the six Nisei supported the marines from a distance. 

They translated documents captured at the front, but the information was often 

14 Ellis M. Zacharias, Secret Missions: The Story of an Intelligence Officer (New York: G. P. 

Putnam’s Sons, 1946), p. 318. 15 Prados, Combined Fleet Decoded, pp. 377–78. In October 1942 a Navy language officer was 

assigned to a mobile radio intelligence unit at Henderson Field on Guadalcanal. The Navy may have 

used two Japanese-speaking Korean Americans to help with the language work on Guadalcanal. 

Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans (Boston: Little, 

Brown, 1989), p. 366. 16 For the impact of the Goettge incident, see George McMillan, The Old Breed: A History of 

the First Marine Division in World War II (Washington, D.C.: Infantry Journal Press, 1949), pp. 

52–56; William Manchester, Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War (New York: Dell, 

1980), pp. 219–20; E. B. Sledge, With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa (New York: Oxford 

University Press, 1990), pp. 33–34.

17 For racism during the Pacific War, see John W. Dower, War without Mercy (New York: Pantheon, 1986). For more recent interpretations, see Eric Bergerud, Touched with Fire: The Land 

War in the South Pacific (New York: Penguin, 1996), pp. 403–25; John A. Lynn, Battle: A History 

of Combat and Culture (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2003), pp. 219–80; Peter Schrijvers, The 

GI War against Japan: American Soldiers in Asia and the Pacific during World War II (New York: 

New York University Press, 2002), ch. 9. 18 Lewin, American Magic, p. 123.
70 NISEI LINGUISTS

long out of date. Nevertheless, their commanders valued the Nisei’s work. MID 

directed the school to send out more graduates as early as possible. From September through November the school sent out six more Nisei and several more Caucasian officers. The Nisei translated documents, diaries, and letters. Most contained 

little of intelligence value, but some revealed a wealth of information. On Tulagi, 

the marines found a list of call signs and code names of all Imperial Japanese 

Navy ships and air bases. This was flown to Noumea, where the Nisei worked 

24-hour shifts for several days to translate. Shigeru Yamashita, who had been born 

in California but had lived in Japan from age three to nineteen, considered the task 

a personal challenge: “Even though there were no officers bearing down on [the 

Nisei], they were determined to show their country that loyalty and honor were an 

integral part of the fabric they were made of and taking away their outer freedom 

didn’t change that. They were acutely aware that the translation of this Japanese 

Navy book would be a significant triumph to their country and . . . to them as Japanese Americans as well.”19

Some documents went immediately to Hawaii, where graduates from the 

Navy language school in Boulder, Colorado, translated them. Among the first of 

the Boulder graduates to arrive in Hawaii was Ens. Donald Keene, who noticed 

“a box filled with malodorous little books...and was informed that these were 

diaries taken from the bodies of dead Japanese soldiers and sailors. The odor 

was caused by the dried blood with which many of the diaries were stained.” He 

related that he “gingerly selected a diary without any noticeable bloodstains, and 

began to read.” 20

In October the Americal Division sent an infantry regiment to reinforce the 

marines on Guadalcanal. The rest of the division followed in November, but the 

six Nisei stayed behind at COMSOPAC headquarters.21 Meanwhile, in Fiji, Burden and his three Nisei continued to monitor the telephones and had no chance 

to help with the fight in Guadalcanal. At one point Takashi and Takeo Kubo 

interrogated a downed Japanese pilot; another time they interrogated a captured 

eighteen-year-old Japanese submariner.22 This might have been the fate of all the 

Nisei, far from the action and relegated to lower level duties. It seemed that the 

war was passing them by. 

Even Burden was feeling left out. One evening while pulling telephone duty, 

he overheard a message from Guadalcanal highlighting the urgent need for a 

19 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 112; Yamashita, MISNorCal Bio; Kawashiri File, Harrington Papers; Ltr, Kusuda to Harrington, Harrington Papers; Ariyasu, in Swift, “First Class,” p. 

7. Shigeru Yamashita, in Swift, “First Class,” p. 1. These may have been the materials recovered 

from the submarine I–1, sunk near Guadalcanal on 29 January 1943. See Richard B. Frank, Guadalcanal (New York: Random House, 1990), pp. 575–76 and note; Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets, 

pp. 124–25; Prados, Combined Fleet Decoded, pp. 400–402. 20 Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets, pp. 123–24; Donald Keene, On Familiar Terms: A Journey 

across Cultures (New York: Kodansha, 1994), pp. 22–23. 21 Yamashita, MISNorCal Bio. 22 Pacific War and Peace, p. 32.
MIS NISEI PIONEERS 71

language officer. The next morning he went back to his room, packed his bag, and 

told his roommate he was going to Guadalcanal. But the call did not come. A few 

nights later he overheard a similar message, but still no orders came. One day in 

December Admiral Halsey visited the 37th Division headquarters. The division 

G–2 commented, “I understand you are looking for a Japanese language officer.” 

Halsey replied, “They are driving me crazy for one, but I don’t know where to find 

one.” The G–2 introduced Burden to Halsey, who shook Burden’s hand and told 

him to pack his bag and catch the next flight to New Caledonia. Burden arrived on 

Guadalcanal two days later.23

On Guadalcanal, Burden found two marine officers and five enlisted men 

working as interrogators. Only one had any real proficiency in Japanese. The others had taken a short class in Japanese in San Diego but were ineffective with prisoners or documents. “They would talk nothing but Japanese among themselves 

and thought they were pretty good,” Burden later recalled. When he first arrived 

he assigned some prisoners to them for interrogation. At the end of the day they 

turned in a sheet of paper for each prisoner with only the prisoner’s name and 

rank. “You talked to them for over two hours!” he exclaimed. “Is that all you got 

out of them?” The marines just responded, “They didn’t know much.” Finally, one 

admitted the truth: “They talked so much and so fast we couldn’t understand what 

they were saying.” Burden sent the interrogators back to the marines.24

The 25th Infantry Division joined the Americal Division to launch an offensive on 17 December. Burden noted reluctance on the part of many soldiers to take 

prisoners, just as the marines before them. Officers and enlisted men shared the 

attitude, as he later put it, that “the only good Jap is a dead Jap.” Burden heard of 

one regimental commander who censured his men for bringing in prisoners, saying, “Don’t bother to take prisoners, shoot the sons of bitches!” 

Several times Burden heard from a front-line unit that had taken a prisoner; 

later he would learn that the prisoner had “died” en route to the rear. He was concerned for practical as well as ethical reasons. American soldiers appeared to have 

“no appreciation for the value of the information obtainable from prisoners or 

documents. . . . As a result documents were scattered and destroyed in the search 

for souvenirs.” Burden frequently lectured commanders and units about the intelligence value of prisoners and documents and convinced the corps commander to 

offer a three-day pass and a serving of ice cream as rewards for bringing in live 

23 See sources on Burden cited above. Many years later Burden recalled that this meeting was 

with Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, not Admiral Halsey, and took place in October, not early December. Nimitz indeed visited Noumea in October, but Burden’s after-action report clearly stated that 

Burden arrived on Guadalcanal in early December 1942, only a short time after his encounter with 

the senior naval officer. Nimitz apparently did not visit the South Pacific in late November or early 

December. 24 This account of Burden’s experiences on Guadalcanal from December 1942 until February 1943 is based primarily on John A. Burden, “The Work of the Language Section, Including a 

Summary of the Work Conducted on Guadalcanal and a Tentative Plan for the Future Conduct of 

Japanese Language Work in the South Pacific Area,” 22 Jul 43, Folder 3, Burden Papers.
72 NISEI LINGUISTS

prisoners. As the American offensive gathered momentum, over 200 prisoners 

had arrived at the stockade; Burden’s small crew of marine interrogators began to 

work around the clock. Contrary to popular belief, they found the prisoners cooperative. Some would even obtain information from their fellow prisoners when 

they did not know the answer to a specific question.

Along with prisoners came a harvest of captured documents, an “astonishing . . . amount of information.” Burden reported: “The Japanese seem to have a 

mania for putting things down on paper and hanging on to old documents. . . . disposition of troops, distribution of artillery units, casualties following engagements, 

hospital records, and numerous other points were found in large numbers.” 25

25 Ibid. The Burden Papers contain copies of several translations.

Captain Burden (center) makes a broadcast to urge Japanese soldiers to surrender.
MIS NISEI PIONEERS 73

Burden also used his language skill to encourage Japanese soldiers to surrender. The first, mass-produced, surrender leaflets used on Guadalcanal, prepared 

and printed in the United States, had little effect on Japanese soldiers. Burden 

made up his own leaflets on the spot to explain the hopelessness of their situation 

and to instruct them to approach American lines during certain hours, unarmed 

with their hands raised. One day, while Burden was looking through captured 

Japanese diaries, an entry caught his eye: “Went up to battalion headquarters to 

look at the surrender leaflets,” the unknown Japanese soldier had written. “The 

handwriting was terrible!” Burden was amused to discover that his doctor’s handwriting was no better in Japanese than English.26

Psychological warfare remained an important tool of war. Early in 1943, when 

the 25th Infantry Division faced determined Japanese resistance in the Gifu strong 

point, the division commander, Maj. Gen. J. Lawton Collins, summoned Burden 

to his command post on 15 January. He told him: “You said the Japanese would 

surrender if we could reassure them they would not be killed. Here is your chance 

to prove that. You can have broadcast equipment and we will give them two days 

to come out.” Burden set up a loudspeaker and began to broadcast, but heavy rain 

and thick foliage weakened its power. 

By the end of the third day, only thirteen Japanese soldiers had responded. 

Burden begged for one more day, but Collins refused: “That’s not the way we fight 

a war—they were given an ultimatum, and the shelling starts tomorrow.” The next 

day Burden watched in horror as the American artillery blasted the Japanese position. Most of the prisoners taken over the next two weeks were deafened and shellshocked. Burden recommended repeating the experiment and equipping language 

sections with portable public address systems.27

Burden’s experiences on Guadalcanal convinced him that doing translation 

and interrogation work far to the rear was not effective. He estimated that it took 

between three to six weeks for information to get back to Guadalcanal. Several 

times, he later wrote, “documents having important tactical information were 

overlooked and sent to Noumea, and the information from them was not received 

until after it had lost its value.” 28 Burden pushed to bring his Nisei to Guadalcanal, 

where they would be more useful. He encountered great resistance based in large 

part on “a general distrust of all persons of Japanese extraction, . . . the result of 

the National hysteria which resulted following the attack on Pearl Harbor.” When 

American soldiers first met the Nisei, they commonly thought they were Chinese 

26 Burden autobiography. 27 Burden, “Work of the Language Section,” pp. 12–13; Burden autobiography; Harrington, 

Yankee Samurai, p. 111; John Miller, jr., Guadalcanal: The First Offensive (Washington, D.C.: 

Department of the Army Historical Division, 1949), pp. 298–99. Burden was injured soon afterward in the crash of a liaison aircraft while disseminating leaflets. He was awarded the Silver Star 

for his service on Guadalcanal. 28 Burden, “Work of the Language Section,” p. 2. 
74 NISEI LINGUISTS

Americans. “What small amount of prejudice that still exists,” he wrote, “is wiped 

out as soon as the individuals become acquainted with the Nisei.” 29

Burden finally appealed directly to the XIV Corps commander, Maj. Gen. 

Alexander M. Patch, who gave his permission to send the Nisei into the forward 

area. Burden arranged for the three Nisei languishing on Fiji with the 37th Infantry Division to fly to New Caledonia. A fellow officer told Burden he had seen a 

Nisei soldier driving a jeep on Tonga. Burden guessed that the soldier must be 

Masanori Minamoto, so he brought him up as well. In January 1943 a fresh team 

of ten Nisei straight from the school arrived in New Caledonia.

As the American offensive gained strength, the flow of prisoners and documents grew rapidly. Two Nisei flew on 15 January to join the 2d Marine Division on Guadalcanal, where they met a marine sergeant “struggling with a pile of 

Japanese documents.” As the Nisei began combing through the documents, one 

recalled, “the very first one that we worked on, a ‘Jackpot,’ was a thick bounded 

document (handwritten with brush), a ‘Japanese General Staff Operational Plan: 

and Directives for the Combined Japanese Forces in the South Pacific Area.’. . .

It was really a very ‘hot’ item.” 30 Burden brought forward four more Nisei, who 

joined the XIV Corps language section on Guadalcanal on 22 January.31 When 

the fighting ended in February 1943, the Americans held more than 300 prisoners 

and thousands of captured documents. Now that the fighting had ceased, Burden 

began to let his Nisei interrogate the prisoners. On 13 February another language 

officer arrived at XIV Corps with five more Nisei.32

Just as the battle for Guadalcanal was ending, dozens more Nisei graduates 

arrived in the South Pacific. Lt. Col. Frederick P. Munson arrived in New Caledonia shortly before Christmas with six more Nisei under Sgt. Tetsuo Hayashida 

of California. Munson had been among the diplomatic personnel exchanged on 

the SS Gripsholm. He took charge of the combat intelligence center in Noumea. 

The Nisei were assigned to Headquarters, U.S. Army Forces, in the South Pacific 

Area.33 In January 1943 twenty more Nisei arrived, all graduates of the December 

1942 class at Camp Savage. Ten each went to the 37th and 43d Infantry Divisions. 

Meanwhile, Burden and his small team transferred to the 25th Infantry Division.

29 Ibid., p. 14. 30 Ltr, Joe J. Yoshiwara to Roy Uyehata, 18 February 1993. His partner was Makoto Sakamoto. 

A few days later two more Nisei joined them. Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 132. Yoshiwara 

recalls flying to Guadalcanal on 15 January 1943, the date reflected on his award of the Bronze Star 

Medal. The cited document may have been “Japanese Army-Navy Central Agreement Concerning 

South Pacific Area Operations, with Supplement,” 4 Jan 43, in Louis Morton, Strategy and Command: The First Two Years, U.S. Army in World War II (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of 

Military History, 1962), app. G, pp. 624–26. 31 Burden, “Work of the Language Section,” and Burden autobiography; Harrington, Yankee 

Samurai, p. 89; Miyasaki, MISNorCal Bio; Yamashita, MISNorCal Bio. Roy Kawashiri says three 

Nisei eventually went to Guadalcanal, but he did not. Ltr, Kawashiri to Harrington, 7 December 

1977. 32 Roy T. Uyehata, MISNorCal Bio. 33 Interv, Frederick P. Munson, 5 Mar 75, Frederick P. Munson Papers, Hoover Institution 

Archives; Tetsuo Hayashia, MISNorCal Bio.
MIS NISEI PIONEERS 75

The experiences of the MIS Nisei in the South Pacific replayed in other campaigns for the rest of the war. Commanders initially restricted the first to arrive 

from the combat zone. Only when their Caucasian language officer insisted could 

a few go forward to support the front-line units. Only then could they finally show 

the full range of their abilities. 

By early 1943 enough Nisei were available for other tasks. Thirteenth Air 

Force began using interrogations of captured Japanese pilots to modify American 

aerial tactics.34 Burden proudly wrote to the school that he was “glad to say that 

those who opposed the use of Nisei the most are now their most enthusiastic advocates.” At first General Patch, who had commanded the Americal Division and 

then the XIV Corps, strongly opposed using the Nisei. According to a later report, 

when the first group arrived at his command, he “remarked that he didn’t want any 

Japs” and only “begrudgingly tolerated them through a campaign.” By the end of 

the campaign “he thought so much of them that he used to go personally to the 

transports and welcome each group as they came off the gangplank.” 35

With the Nisei’s help, the Army learned some valuable language lessons from 

the Guadalcanal Campaign. Combat intelligence had to flow upward as forward 

34 Wesley F. Craven and James L. Cate, eds., The Army Air Forces in World War II, 7 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950), 4: 215. 35 “Nisei Linguists—Eyes and Ears of Allied Pacific Forces,” Trng Grp, Ofc of the Dir of Intel 

G–2, RG 165, NARA. This appears to be a draft of the MISLS press release of 22 October 1945. 

Japanese Evacuation Research Study (JERS), pt. 2, sec. 2, reel 20, frame 0037, Bancroft Library, 

University of California, Berkeley. Patch’s remarks were toned down in the final version. Patch later 

commanded Seventh Army and expressed pride in the 442d RCT that served under him in 1944. 

Crost, Honor by Fire, pp. 53, 237.

G–2 Section, XIV Corps, February 1943. In front row, beginning fourth from left:

Shigeru Yamashita, Terno Odow, Roy T. Uyehata, and Isao Kusuda.
76 NISEI LINGUISTS

units grappled with the enemy. Without front-line intelligence, units could only 

blunder into the enemy. Commanders needed intelligence specialists who could 

interrogate prisoners and translate documents quickly and accurately. The Nisei 

learned that it was better to sort through captured documents quickly, rather than 

translate every one. They became adept at scanning large numbers of documents 

and picking out significant information that they could quickly translate into idiomatic English and proper American military terminology.

The Army also learned that its prewar doctrine of questioning a prisoner 

through an interpreter was impractical. In theory, an interpreter could simply 

relay questions and answers between an intelligence officer and a prisoner. However, the regimental S–2 or division G–2 seldom had time to interrogate prisoners 

in person.

The Nisei learned to use their knowledge of Japanese culture and psychology 

to elicit information through indirect questioning. They discovered that compassionate treatment worked wonders. Their captives, expecting torture and death, 

were at first astonished, then grateful. Any recalcitrant prisoner needed only to 

hear that authorities would notify his family through the International Committee 

of the Red Cross that he had been captured alive. The implied disgrace could usually convince him to cooperate.36

The Nisei also learned that American soldiers and marines needed constant 

reminders of the importance of bringing in prisoners and captured documents. 

Japanese soldiers, contrary to common belief, were worth more alive than dead. 

Tactical psychological warfare had great potential. In most cases, Japanese 

soldiers would fight to the death rather than face capture. But when the situation 

was clearly hopeless and the message properly communicated, at least some would 

respond to surrender appeals.

When the fighting was over, Burden used captured documents and interrogation 

reports to compile a history of the campaign from the Japanese point of view. This 

gave American commanders unique insights into Japanese military psychology.37

Most important of all, the Nisei had demonstrated that they could be trusted 

to work near the front lines. Commanders and intelligence officers came to rely on 

the intelligence that only the Nisei could provide, as close to the front as possible. 

Other Japanese linguists were too few or too unskilled to provide the quality and 

timeliness of combat intelligence that ground commanders desperately needed.

36 Maj. Sherwood F. “Pappy” Moran, a marine language officer on Guadalcanal, had lived in 

Japan and spoke excellent Japanese. Hit the Beach: Your Marine Corps in Action (New York: Wm. 

H. Wise, 1948), p. 53. His interrogation methods were later taught at the Military Intelligence 

Training Center, Camp Ritchie, Maryland. Division Intelligence Section, HQ, 1st Marine Division, Suggestions for Japanese Interpreters Based on Work in the Field, 17 Jul 43, at http://mysite.

verizon.net/vze6kt7j/, last accessed 12 Feb 06. See also Stephen Budiansky, “Truth Extraction,” 

Atlantic Monthly (June 2005): 32–35. Ulrich Straus, The Anguish of Surrender: Japanese POWs of 

World War II (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003). 37 HQ, XIV Corps, Ofc of the ACS, G–2, “Enemy Operations on Guadalcanal (August 7, 1942 

to February 9, 1943),” 24 Apr 43, Folder 2, Burden Papers. However, see Miller, Guadalcanal, comment in bibliographic note, p. 379.
MIS NISEI PIONEERS 77

These lessons circulated in various ways. From Guadalcanal, Burden wrote 

letters to the language school commandant, Col. Kai E. Rasmussen. The Medical 

Reserve doctor and the Regular Army officer had a deep mutual respect, perhaps 

because they were both outsiders. Burden, raised in Japan, had not set foot on 

American soil until he was sixteen, Rasmussen, born in Denmark, not until he was 

twenty. One went to medical school; the other joined the Army and won appointment to West Point. They shared a fluency in Japanese, an appreciation of the 

Nisei, and a commitment to defeat the common enemy. Burden prepared a report 

on the work of the XIV Corps language section in July 1943 and lectured to corps 

intelligence personnel. A few months later he returned to the language school to 

lecture on his experiences. Through these formal and informal channels, the work 

of the pioneering Nisei became known throughout the Army.38

During the Guadalcanal Campaign, the Nisei’s direct contributions remained 

limited and usually confined to the tactical level. Even then, they mostly helped 

regiment, division, and corps commanders to know what was happening to their 

immediate front. Higher level commanders in New Caledonia and Hawaii relied 

on other sources such as radio intercepts, coast watchers, and aerial reconnaissance to determine Japanese movements, strengths, and intentions. But even these 

sources could miss important stories. For example, in February 1943 the Japanese 

evacuated their remaining troops from Guadalcanal without detection.39

After the fighting on Guadalcanal concluded, Burden visited Australia to see 

how Nisei were employed in the Southwest Pacific Area. He was impressed by 

what he saw at I Corps and General MacArthur’s headquarters. MacArthur’s headquarters had already established a single agency to control all language work in 

the theater. Burden recommended that linguists in both theaters combine into one 

super agency under the Southwest Pacific Command. But intertheater cooperation 

proved impossible at this stage. Nevertheless, in Australia, Burden witnessed a 

method of using the Nisei that contrasted sharply with their piecemeal employment in the South Pacific.40

Intelligence in the Southwest Pacific Area: The Allied Translator and 

Interpreter Section

General MacArthur arrived in Australia in March 1942 to establish his new 

command, the Southwest Pacific Area. His chief intelligence officer, Brig. Gen. 

Charles A. Willoughby, began building a joint U.S.-Australian intelligence architecture that would support MacArthur’s plans to halt the Japanese in New Guinea, 

drive them back, and eventually liberate the Philippines.41 In April the first such 

38 Burden, “Work of the Language Section,” and lecture notes, Folder 3, Burden Papers. 39 John Prados, “US Intelligence and the Japanese Evacuation of Guadalcanal, 1943,” Intelligence and National Security 10 (April 1995): 294–305. 40 Burden, “Work of the Language Section,” pp. 15–21. 41 A Brief History of the G–2 Section, GHQ, SWPA and Affiliated Units, Intelligence Series 

(Tokyo: Far East Command, 1948).
78 NISEI LINGUISTS

organization, the Central Bureau, was formed in Brisbane to break into Japanese 

codes. Over the next few months Willoughby organized other intelligence organizations, including the Allied Geographical Section for terrain intelligence, an 

Order of Battle Section to collate information on enemy units, and the Allied Intelligence Bureau to support resistance movements behind Japanese lines. These theater intelligence agencies grew to surpass in size anything the Army or Navy had 

established in the South Pacific.

In the early months of the war the Allies had lost many experienced intelligence personnel with the fall of Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Netherlands East 

Indies. Nevertheless, they could draw upon considerable Australian intelligence 

experience against the Germans and Italians in North Africa. The Australians 

were certainly aware of the need for Japanese linguists. In 1940 the Royal Australian Army Censorship School in Melbourne began Japanese-language training under Capt. John V. Shelton, a White Russian and superb Japanese linguist 

who had graduated from Waseda University in Tokyo. In early 1941 Australia’s 

Eastern Command established a small Japanese-language intelligence section in 

Sydney. The Royal Australian Navy could find only one language-qualified civil 

servant at the time. In Melbourne, in January 1942 the Royal Australian Air Force 

established a prisoner of war section and the Royal Australian Army headquarters 

established a translation center. The Australian Army linguists later moved up to 

Australian Advance Land Headquarters in Brisbane. In early September the Australians established the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre at the 

Indooroopilly Racetrack in Brisbane.42

On 19 June 1942, Capt. David W. Swift arrived in Brisbane with eight Nisei 

led by S.Sgt. Gary Tsuneo Kadani, a Kibei from California. Swift, Kadani, and 

the other Nisei were all Crissy Field graduates. Swift had jaundice from his yellow 

fever inoculation at the port of embarkation, so he was hospitalized immediately 

upon arrival. Kadani took charge of the team, which proceeded to Melbourne for 

assignment to the American counterintelligence officer, Col. Elliott R. Thorpe. 

They began counterintelligence training and studied Malay, the lingua franca of 

the Netherlands East Indies.43

42 John Shelton, speech to Army Forces Far East Intelligence School, 1953, transcript in author’s 

files. Shelton was born Ivan Shalfeieff, son of the last Imperial Russian military attaché in Tokyo 

and a Japanese mother. He changed his name upon arrival in Australia in 1940. George Kiyoshi 

[Yamashiro] Sankey, “Areya, Koreye [This and That],” p. 38, Unpubl autobiography, excerpted in 

Hawaii Pacific Press (1 Dec 94): 56; General Headquarters, Far East Command, Operations of the 

Allied Translator and Interpreter Section, GHQ, SWPA, Intelligence Series, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Far East 

Command, 1948), pp. 3–4, 59 (hereafter cited as ATIS History); Colin Funch, Linguists in Uniform: The Japanese Experience (Australia: Japanese Studies Centre, Monash University, 2003). 

Grant K. Goodman, America’s Japan: The First Year, 1945–1946 (New York: Fordham University 

Press, 2005), p. 52. 43 David W. Swift, Sr., Ninety Li a Day, ed. David W. Swift, Jr., Social Life Monographs, vol. 69 

(Taipei: Chinese Association for Folklore, 1975), pp. 273–76; Gary Tsuneo Kadani, in Swift, “First 

Class”; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 70, 73, 86; Funch, Linguists in Uniform, pp. 78–80.
MIS NISEI PIONEERS 79

Meanwhile, the Japanese continued their southward advance. On 26 August 

a Japanese naval landing force attacked the Australians and Americans guarding Milne Bay on the eastern tip of Papua. While repelling the attack, the Allies 

there captured their first Japanese documents, including a copy of the Japanese 

operations order. Although naval and air battles had been raging in the region for 

several months, only when the opposing ground forces made contact did the flow 

of captured documents and prisoners of war begin.44

On 19 September General Willoughby replaced the Australian Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre in Brisbane with an American-led organization, the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS), “to co-ordinate and 

expedite the translation of captured enemy documents and prompt collation and 

distribution of the results.”45 Willoughby canvassed Australia for Japanese linguists: “There was nothing there, except a handful of scholarly Orientalists in Universities and some people with business experience in Japan.”46 The Australians 

sent fourteen officers and three enlisted men. The Americans contributed Swift 

and the eight Nisei. Willoughby named the military attaché to Australia, Lt. Col. 

Karl F. Baldwin, as coordinator. A board of three language officers (the Australian 

Shelton, the American Swift, and Lt. Donald Bartlett, U.S. Navy Reserve) tested 

the language proficiency of the first Nisei on 3 September. Six passed, but two were 

rated “ineffective” for their poor English skills, a common problem for Kibei.47

Baldwin organized ATIS into four units parallel to the major components 

of MacArthur’s command: all the Nisei were assigned to GHQ; other sections 

included Allied Naval Forces, Allied Land Forces, and Allied Air Forces. All were 

housed near the Indooroopilly Racetrack in Tighnabruaich, a mansion suitable 

for barracks and office space. A few months later the Nisei enlisted men moved 

into tents at Camp Chelmer, across the Brisbane River. In the first month ATIS

processed over 1,000 documents, translated and distributed 90 documents, and 

interrogated 7 prisoners.

On 6 October Col. Sidney F. Mashbir replaced Baldwin as the ATIS coordinator. Mashbir had begun his military intelligence career in 1916 and went to Tokyo 

as a language attaché before leaving active duty in 1923. He was recalled to active 

service after the outbreak of war; but, like many World War I veterans, he was too 

old for field service. After Mashbir spent eight months in Washington, the War 

Department G–2, Maj. Gen. George V. Strong, sent him to Australia to “head up 

44 ATIS History, p. 11. 45 Memo, GHQ, South West Pacific Area (SWPA), sub: Directive Covering the Organization, 

Co-ordination and Operation of Allied Translator & Interpreter Section, 19 Sep 42, reproduced in 

ATIS History, app. 2. 46 Charles A. Willoughby, “The Language Problem in War,” in “Corregidor to the Yalu: MacArthur’s Intelligence Service: 1941–1951,” p. 190, Unpubl Ms, Box 3, Charles A. Willoughby Papers 

(copies from Gettysburg College), RG 23B, MacArthur Memorial, Library and Archives, Norfolk, 

Va.47 ATIS History; Sidney F. Mashbir, I Was an American Spy (New York: Vantage, 1953); Swift, 

Ninety Li a Day, pp. 273–93; Memo, ATIS, sub: Analysis of Linguistic Requirements, 27 Jun 44, 

author’s files.
80 NISEI LINGUISTS

the language work at GHQ.” When he arrived, ATIS “was a small—less than forty 

men—but polyglot unit, composed of Australian, Canadian and British army, air 

and navy men; Chinese, White Russians, East Indies Netherlanders and a handful of Americans. . . .We were a potpourri, not an organization.” He immediately 

reorganized ATIS into functional sections, including a translation section headed 

by Shelton and an examination section for interrogating prisoners of war. Swift 

remained the officer in charge of all Nisei personnel.48

Three other American Nisei in Brisbane were assigned to other duties. One 

was Sgt. Arthur S. Komori, recruited by the Hawaiian Department before the war 

and sent to infiltrate the Japanese community in Manila. He had escaped Corregidor in April 1942 on one of the last flights. (His colleague, Sgt. Richard Sakakida, 

had remained behind and became a prisoner when the island fortress fell in May.) 

For several months after his arrival in Australia, Komori conducted routine counterintelligence tasks before being assigned to ATIS as the senior American noncommissioned officer from September until December 1942. He passed on the lessons he had learned fighting the Japanese in the Philippines.49 Clarence Yamagata, 

an American Nisei who had been practicing law in Manila before the war, had left 

Corregidor on the same airplane as Komori. Yamagata joined the Central Bureau 

as a civilian employee and the only Nisei assigned to this code-breaking organization.50 A third Nisei then in Australia, Yoshikazu Yamada, had been serving as an 

Army Air Corps medic at Del Monte Airfield in the southern Philippines. He had 

been studying chemistry at the University of Michigan when he was drafted in 

1941 and assigned to the Philippines. In April 1942 he fell off a truck and injured 

his back. Evacuated to Australia, he spent two months recuperating in a U.S. Army 

hospital in Melbourne before being reassigned, first to the Japanese-language section in Allied Air Forces Headquarters, then to ATIS in September.51

These first few Japanese-language personnel, including the ten Nisei enlisted 

men from the school, began to work on the documents now starting to stream 

south from the battlefront. “Clotted with blood and body fat, they had been taken 

48 ATIS History, p. 2; Mashbir, I Was an American Spy, pp. 219–24; Interv, D. Clayton James 

with Mashbir, 1 Sep 71, RG 49, MacArthur Memorial. 49 Memo, Komori to OIC [Officer in Charge], sub: The Philippine Theater of War, 1 Jul 42; 

Interv, Ann Bray with Arthur S. Komori, 1955; Interv, Joseph D. Harrington with Arthur S. Komori 

(notes), 10 Dec 77; all in Harrington Papers. Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor, pp. 34–35. Komori told 

an interviewer in 1955 that during his first months in Australia he conducted counterintelligence 

investigations; Bray and Harrington later claimed that he was assigned as a vehicle driver. He may 

have done both. 50 Clarence S. Yamagata, resume, 10 Feb 78, Harrington Papers; The Quiet Heroes of the Southwest Pacific Theater: An Oral History of the Men and Women of CBB and FRUMEL (Fort Meade, 

Md.: National Security Agency, 1996), p. 50. Yamagata was commissioned in the Signal Corps in 

July 1944. 51 Yoshikazu Yamada, MISNorCal Bio; Yoshikazu Yamada, “My Wartime Experiences,” in 

Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor, pp. 84–85; Yoshikazu Yamada, “A Nisei in World War II,” reprinted 

in John Aiso and the M.I.S.: Japanese-American Soldiers in the Military Intelligence Service, 

World War II, ed. Tad Ichinokuchi (Los Angeles: Military Intelligence Service Club of Southern 

California, 1988), pp. 138–39.
MIS NISEI PIONEERS 81

in New Guinea and flown to Brisbane,” Mashbir recalled. “Australian Lt. Shelton 

read them aloud [while] our group made notes.” The first prisoners of war arrived 

in Brisbane on 30 September. Corporal Kadani interrogated the first as Mashbir 

listened via a hidden microphone. ATIS released its first spot report on 1 November. By 27 December Allied units fighting in New Guinea had sent back 1,100 

Japanese documents. ATIS completed 293 pages of translation in November, 601 

pages in December, and 581 pages in January 1943.52 Mashbir’s top priority was 

to support the Australian and American forces in contact with the enemy and to 

assist the language teams that were soon assigned to regiments, divisions, and 

corps. ATIS also produced reports. The first one, on military service in Japan, 

was dated 31 December 1942. In January and February 1943 ATIS issued research 

reports on topics such as Japanese aircraft recognition, task force organization, 

shell identification, and landing craft armor.53

Other intelligence agencies were organized in Australia. In April 1942 Seventh 

Fleet, MacArthur’s naval command, established a combined U.S.-British-Australian radio intelligence center, later renamed Fleet Radio Unit, Melbourne, or FRUMEL. In November 1942 Navy Capt. Arthur H. McCollum became the Seventh 

Fleet intelligence officer and established a combat intelligence center. McCollum, 

the son of a Baptist missionary, had been born in Japan. He was a former Japaneselanguage attaché and had served as head of the Far Eastern Section in the Office of 

Naval Intelligence from 1939 until 1942; there, he had helped establish the Navy’s 

Japanese-language training program for officers.54

Nisei language teams were soon committed to forward units. In the autumn 

of 1942, the U.S. I Corps headquarters arrived in Australia under the command of 

Maj. Gen. Robert L. Eichelberger. A group of fourteen Nisei under M.Sgt. Arthur 

K. Ushiro arrived in November and was assigned to the corps under two Caucasian 

lieutenants. The Nisei were the top students from Camp Savage and had needed 

only ninety days of training.55 Upon arrival in Australia, T3g. Phil Ishio recalled, 

52 ATIS History, p. 11; Sidney F. Mashbir, “I Was an American Spy,” Saturday Evening Post

(10 April 1948): 28; “Analysis of Linguistic Requirements,” Exhibit G. (Copies of early ATIS spot 

reports, nos. 1–194, can be found in RG 3, MacArthur Memorial.) ATIS History, p. 15; Harrington, 

Yankee Samurai, p. 109. ATIS Pub no. 6, “The Exploitation of Japanese Documents,” 14 Dec 44 

(included in ATIS History at tab 5, documentary appendix), states the Allies captured 268 documents at Kokoda and 1,349 at Buna. 53 ATIS reports can be found in the Gordon W. Prange Collection, University of Maryland; 

MacArthur Memorial; “P” File (Security-Class Intel Reference Publications), ACS (G–2), Intel, 

RG 165, NARA, and the Combined Arms Research Library, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. A nearly 

complete set is available on microfiche as Wartime Translations of Seized Japanese Documents: 

Allied Translator and Interpreter Section Reports, 1942–1946 (Bethesda, Md.: Congressional Information Service, 1988). For a convenient listing of selected publications, see ATIS History, app. 9. 54 “Reminiscences of Rear Admiral Arthur H. McCollum,” in The Pacific War Remembered, ed. 

John T. Mason (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1986), pp. 146–55; Prados, Combined Fleet 

Decoded, pp. 420–24; Edward J. Drea, MacArthur’s Ultra: Codebreaking and the War against 

Japan, 1942–1945 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992), pp. 15–16. 55 Interv, Sheryl Narahara with Tarao “Pat” Neishi, 1992, NJAHS; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 44–45, 100. Ushiro changed his surname to Castle during the war.
82 NISEI LINGUISTS

the corps G–2 “asked each of us individually whether we could read, speak, and 

write the Japanese language.” Ishio, who had been born and raised in Salt Lake 

City, Utah, had studied economics for three years at Waseda University in Tokyo. 

“It was all we could do to keep from laughing out loud,” he recalled. “After all, 

we were the special class, the elite at Camp Savage.” They were further discouraged when they were demoted by one grade. At that time, enlisted men assigned 

to a new command could have their ranks adjusted depending upon the table of 

organization. The I Corps reduced all the Nisei from technician, third grade, to 

technician, fourth grade, with a predictable impact on their morale.56

Papua New Guinea, October 1942–February 1943

American ground combat units joined the fight for Papua New Guinea in 

October. Nisei enlisted men and Caucasian language officers were assigned to 

Headquarters, New Guinea Forces; I Corps; the Australian 7th Infantry Division; 

the U.S. 32d Division; and each American infantry regiment. At first, Allied tactical and operational intelligence was poor and radio intelligence was little help. 

Allied units frequently did not discover Japanese strong points until they stumbled 

upon them in the dense New Guinea jungle. When they succeeded in pinpointing Japanese locations, they frequently erred in their estimates of the enemy’s 

strength. Accurate and timely combat intelligence became precious and promised 

to save many Allied lives.57

The Nisei “were never allowed forward of regimental command posts, for 

had they been captured they undoubtedly would have been tortured.” However, 

in the close-in jungle fighting, division and regimental command posts were often 

within range of Japanese gunners and snipers. Ishio went forward from I Corps 

headquarters to visit a Nisei assigned to an infantry regiment near Buna and was 

shocked at front-line conditions. “When I called out his name, he crawled out of 

a vine-covered hut, unshaven and in dirty fatigues. If I had not known that he 

was one of us, I would have taken him for a Japanese soldier.” Ishio himself had 

a “close shave” when a Japanese shell landed near his foxhole, collapsing the hole 

on top of him.58

56 Stanley L. Falk and Warren M. Tsuneishi, eds., MIS in the War against Japan (Washington, 

D.C.: Japanese American Veterans Association, 1995), p. 27. See also Interv, author with Sunao 

Phil Ishio, 18 Apr 95; S. [Phil] Ishio, “The Nisei Contribution to the Allied Victory in the Pacific,” 

American Intelligence Journal (Spring/Summer 1995): 59–67. On enlisted promotion policies, see 

Ernest F. Fischer, Jr., Guardians of the Republic: History of the Noncommissioned Officer Corps of 

the U.S. Army (New York: Ballantine, 1994), ch. 14. 57 Radio intelligence from Central Bureau contributed little to the Papua Campaign from September 1942 to January 1943, according to Drea, MacArthur’s Ultra, pp. 48–60. 58 G–2 Rpt, ann. 2, Report of the Commanding General, Buna Forces, on the Buna Campaign, 

Dec. 1, 1942–Jan. 25, 1943, p. 58; “Nisei Officer [Phil Ishio] Lauds U.S. Army Spirit,” Salt Lake 

Tribune, Apr 45, reprinted in War Relocation Authority, Nisei in the War against Japan (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Interior, 1945); Falk and Tsuneishi, MIS in the War against Japan, pp. 
MIS NISEI PIONEERS 83

After crossing the imposing Owen Stanley mountain range, the U.S. 32d and 

Australian 7th Infantry Divisions launched a slogging offensive against Japanese positions around Buna-Gona in mid-November. The fighting was bitter and 

exhausting, and many soldiers fell victim to disease in the malarial swamps. On 

15 December T3g. James M. Tsumura became the first Nisei linguist to receive the 

Combat Infantryman Badge.59

In December ATIS sent two Nisei to join two Australian language officers 

already assigned to the Australian 7th Division. At first the Australians took few 

prisoners. When the Nisei offered three bottles of Coca Cola for each prisoner, 

more began to arrive. One day the Australians intercepted a Japanese messenger; 

from the papers he was carrying the Nisei discovered that the Japanese were planning to raid a battery of the Royal Australian Field Artillery. The battery got the 

28–29; “Japanese with U.S. Army [Fred Nishitsuji] in [New] Guinea Has Bodyguard,” United Press 

International, 25 Nov 42, in Seattle Times, 21 Dec 42. 59 ATIS History, app. 2; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 101.

S. Phil Ishio and Arthur K. Ushiro (second and third from left) interrogate a 

Japanese prisoner in Papua New Guinea, early 1943.
84 NISEI LINGUISTS

alert just in time to repel the attack. This incident persuaded the Australians of the 

Nisei’s value.60

A few weeks later another Nisei with the Australians learned from another 

captured Japanese messenger that 200 Japanese soldiers had withdrawn from a 

pocket to the Australian front the previous night. The division attacked through 

the area and cleared the roadblock within six hours of the interrogation. Two days 

later another wounded prisoner disclosed to a Nisei the existence of a previously 

unknown strong point. “He gave a detailed disposition of enemy troops and automatic weapons covering the approaches along the Soputa Track, the exact position 

of the enemy headquarters within the perimeter, and the enemy strength as well 

as the exact locations of all land mines planted on the track.” The Nisei passed on 

this information, and the division adjusted its plan of attack. At dawn, just hours 

after receiving the fresh intelligence, Australian and American units captured the 

position with minimal losses.61

The U.S. 163d Infantry with three Nisei joined the Australian 7th Infantry Division in early January 1943.62 Lt. George E. Aurell, who had been raised in Japan and 

had served as American vice consul in Yokohama, led a team of three other Nisei 

to I Corps headquarters in Port Moresby on 14 November. They soon moved to the 

Buna-Gona area, closer to the action. At first the Nisei saw few captured documents 

and even fewer prisoners, many of whom turned out to be not Japanese soldiers at 

all, but rather Korean laborers. Ishio went through the first batch of documents, 

including many diaries, and “listed all of the military units mentioned in them 

along with pertinent intelligence information on each.” He recalled that “the order 

of battle officer was very excited by what I had compiled, saying that mine was the 

first report on any order of battle data that he had seen.” 63

As in the South Pacific, the ATIS language personnel in Brisbane were frustrated by the delays in bringing prisoners and documents back from the combat 

zone hundreds of air miles away. On 31 December Colonel Mashbir requested 

permission to establish an advance echelon to provide translation and interrogations closer to the front lines. Four weeks later he sent six officers and three Nisei 

to Headquarters, New Guinea Force. They arrived in Port Moresby on 28 January 

and completed their first translation and interrogation reports on 13 February.64 By 

this time Allied forces had crushed Japanese resistance at Buna-Gona. 

The Nisei had proven their value to tactical commanders. Eichelberger’s G–2 

praised them: “Throughout the campaign these American Japanese soldiers were 

60 ATIS History, p. 44; Willoughby, “Language Problem in War,” p. 193; Harrington, Yankee 

Samurai, p. 110. 61 ATIS History, p. 45; Willoughby, “Language Problem in War,” pp. 193–94. 62 Interv, Narahara with Neishi, 1992. 63 Falk and Tsuneishi, MIS in the War against Japan, pp. 28–29; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, 

pp. 110, 182; “Aurell, George,” in G. J. A. O’Toole, ed., The Encyclopedia of American Intelligence 

and Espionage (New York: Facts on File, 1988). The two Aurell brothers, George and Paul, both 

served as language officers in the Southwest Pacific. 64 ATIS History, p. 24.
MIS NISEI PIONEERS 85

completely loyal, cheerful and competent. Their work, without exception, was 

excellent.” 65 Eichelberger himself had become an avid reader of translations of 

captured Japanese diaries, which gave him a better sense of his opponents than 

any other sort of intelligence report.66

At the conclusion of this first clash of armies in the Southwest Pacific, General 

Willoughby asked the Military Intelligence Division to send him as many Nisei 

linguists as possible. MacArthur’s chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Richard K. Sutherland, 

concurred in Willoughby’s request. “He was slightly amused when I asked for a 

thousand to clean the barrel,” Willoughby later wrote; “however, we had no reason 

ever to regret this decision.” MID replied that it could provide a thousand Nisei “of 

high-school and university caliber,” since “other services would not touch them in 

quantities without time-consuming security screening.” 67

War Department Decision To Form a Nisei Combat Unit

As the first Nisei linguists went into action against the Japanese in the summer 

and autumn of 1942, in Washington, leaders were making decisions that would 

have lasting consequences for all Japanese Americans, including whether to allow 

Nisei to serve in combat units. Brig. Gen. John Weckerling later wrote that “the 

impetus behind the organization of the two Nisei combat units [100th Infantry Battalion and 442d RCT] stemmed from the interpreter and translator problem.” 68

In the spring of 1942 Colonel Pettigrew in the Military Intelligence Division first suggested organizing a Nisei combat unit. According to Weckerling, 

Pettigrew “pursued his plans determinedly” through the rest of that year.69 Milton 

65 G–2 Rpt, Buna Forces, p. 58. 66 For example, see Robert L. Eichelberger, Our Jungle Road to Tokyo (New York: Viking, 

1950), pp. 53–56; Jay Luvaas, ed., Dear Miss Em: General Eichelberger’s War in the Pacific, 1942–

1945 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1972), pp. 108–19. 67 Willoughby, “Language Problem in War,” p. 190. Willoughby sent his request to the MID 

in March 1943. The War Department Operations Division set the SWPA requirement at about 400 

Nisei. Memo, OPD, 2 Jul 43, sub: Future Requirements for Japanese Speaking Personnel, 350.03, 

Trng Grp, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, NARA. 68 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. 69 Stuart Portner, “The Japanese-American Combat Team,” Military Affairs (Fall 1943): 158–

62; Masayo Umezawa Duus, Unlikely Liberators: The Men of the 100th and 442nd (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987), pp. 50–58; Bill Hosokawa, Nisei: The Quiet Americans (New York: 

William Morrow, 1969), pp. 359–69; Mike Masaoka, They Call Me Moses Masaoka: An American 

Saga (New York: William Morrow, 1987), pp. 105–38; Thomas D. Murphy, Ambassadors in Arms

(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1954), pp. 104–12; Personal Justice Denied: Report of the 

Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), pp. 185–91; Ted T. Tsukiyama, “The Origins of the 442nd,” in Go For Broke, 

1943–1993 (Honolulu: n.p., 1993), pp. 11–15. Key documents are collected in Roger Daniels, ed., 

American Concentration Camps: A Documentary History of the Relocation and Incarceration of 

Japanese Americans, 1941–1945, 9 vols. (New York: Garland, 1989), vol. 9. Weckerling, “Japanese 

Americans Play Vital Role.”
86 NISEI LINGUISTS

S. Eisenhower, the director of the War Relocation Authority from March to June 

1942, took a broader approach and urged the War Department to reverse its decision and allow American-born Nisei to be eligible for Selective Service. On 18 

May he wrote to Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy to plead the Nisei’s 

case. McCloy forwarded his letter to Milton’s older brother, Maj. Gen. Dwight D. 

Eisenhower, then serving in the War Department Operations Division. “I have felt 

for some time,” McCloy added, “that it might be well to use our American citizen 

Japanese soldiers in an area where they could be employed against the Germans. I

believe that we could count on these soldiers to give a good account of themselves 

against the Germans.” 70

In July the War Department General Staff formed a committee to consider the 

question. Col. Rufus S. Bratton and Colonel Pettigrew of the Far Eastern Branch 

recommended that the Army form a division of Japanese-American soldiers, and 

Pettigrew boldly asked for the honor of commanding the unit. “I have consistently believed and advocated that the overwhelming majority of the Nisei are 

unquestionably loyal,” he wrote, “and that they would make the finest type of combat soldiers.” The Western Defense Command and other army major commands 

were less enthusiastic than Bratton and Pettigrew. General DeWitt had already 

ordered the removal of all Nisei soldiers from his command and was removing 

over 110,000 persons of Japanese ancestry into camps. In September the committee concluded that the War Department should not use Nisei soldiers because of 

a “universal distrust” of them. The only exception would be for the intelligence 

work they were already doing.71

The Far Eastern Branch lobbied to overturn the board’s recommendation with 

the help of overseas commands, the War Relocation Authority, and the Office of 

War Information. Supportive letters arrived from Alaska and the South Pacific, 

“the only two places in which [the Nisei] have had a chance to engage in action 

against the Japanese,” Pettigrew pointed out. “While it may be argued that these 

recommendations are only straws, this Division believes that they are extremely 

important indications as to what may be expected of the entire group in question.” 72 From the South Pacific came a radiogram: “Prisoners of war are being 

interrogated [and] many captured documents are being translated. . . . interpreters 

70 Memo, McCloy to Eisenhower, 20 May 42, Folder: D. D. Eisenhower, Box WD1, ser. 8; War 

Department (WD), John J. McCloy Papers, Amherst College Archives, Amherst, Mass. 71 “The Military Utilization of United States Citizens of Japanese Ancestry,” 14 Sep 42 (291.2), 

WD G–1 Decimal Files, RG 165, NARA. Ltr, Pettigrew to McCloy, sub: Key Personnel, Nisei 

Division, 17 Nov 42, ASW 020 ASW 014.311 W.D.C.: Segregation—Japs, Ofc of the Asst Sec of 

War, RG 107, NARA. Pettigrew was not selected to command the 442d RCT but remained in the 

Military Intelligence Division for the duration. John Weckerling may have been considered for 

command, but he remained the G–2 of Western Defense Command until after Attu and Kiska, 

when he transferred to the MID and was promoted to brigadier general. 72 Memo, Pettigrew for WD Gen Staff, G–2, sub: Documents Dealing with Americans of Japanese Ancestry (hereafter referred to as Nisei), 10 Oct 42, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, 

NARA.
MIS NISEI PIONEERS 87

from the intelligence school are performing valuable services.” 73 The coordinator 

of the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section in Australia wrote to ask MID to 

send more Nisei.74 The Hawaiian Department G–2, Col. Kendall J. Fielder, “came 

to Washington and spent several weeks helping to convince high officials in the 

War Department that a change of policy was important and badly wanted by many 

Hawaiians of Japanese lineage.” 75 The director of the Office of War Information, 

Elmer Davis, appealed directly to President Franklin D. Roosevelt to allow Nisei 

enlistments. Milton Eisenhower’s successor at the War Relocation Authority, Dillon Myer, continued to push for Nisei enlistments.76

In October 1942 the naval district intelligence officer for Southern California, 

Comdr. Kenneth D. Ringle, published an article in Harper’s Monthly defending the 

Nisei against charges of disloyalty.77 In November the Japanese American Citizens 

League appealed to the War Department to allow Nisei to serve and to reinstate 

their eligibility for Selective Service. The organization’s national secretary, Mike 

Masaoka, affirmed: “I have come to the inescapable conclusion that this matter 

of Selective Service is the cornerstone of our future in this country. . . .When the 

war is won, and we attempt to find our way back into normal society, one question 

which we cannot avoid will be, ‘Say, Buddy, what did you do in the war?’ If we 

cannot answer that we, with them, fought for the victory which is ours, our chance 

for success and acceptance will be small.” 78

The War Department already had several long-serving segregated units for 

African Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Filipinos and established several more 

during 1942. The Office of War Information saw propaganda value in having combat units of different nationalities. Thus during 1942 the War Department organized the 1st Filipino Infantry in California and battalion-size units of Norwegians, 

Austrians, and Greeks. In November 1942 Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson 

complained to Roosevelt about this pressure for special units, rather than integrating ethnic groups into the ranks, citing the need for “encouraging Americanization in the Army.” Roosevelt agreed that “formation of such Battalions should be 

73 Memo, MID (908) to MISLS, sub: Paraphrased Extract from Radiogram, 25 Aug 42, “R 

(Confidential) Reference,” Box 86, Class Ref Sub Files, 1940–1947, Ofc of the Asst Sec of War, RG

107, NARA. 74 Memo, Colonel Pettigrew to Captain Zacharias, 18 Nov 42, Far Eastern Br, Security-Class 

Gen Corresp, 1926–1946, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, NARA. 75 Dillon S. Myer, Uprooted Americans: The Japanese Americans and the War Relocation 

Authority during World War II (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1971), p. 146. Fielder played 

an important role in gaining War Department acceptance for the Nisei. After the war, he assisted in 

the first scholarly study of Nisei soldiers in World War II. Murphy, Ambassadors in Arms, acknowledgments, pp. 51, 105. 76 Murphy, Ambassadors in Arms, pp. 105–06. 77 [K. D. Ringle], “The Japanese in America,” Harper’s Monthly (October 1942): 489–97; Jacobus tenBroek et al., Prejudice, War, and the Constitution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 

1954), pp. 298–99. 78 Bill Hosokawa, JACL in Quest of Justice: The History of the Japanese American Citizens 

League (New York: William Morrow, 1982), p. 199; Masaoka, They Call Me Moses Masaoka, 

pp. 120–21.
88 NISEI LINGUISTS

strictly limited to cases where political advantages are to be gained,” but refused 

to stop the practice, saying, “I must be the one to determine political advantages 

if any.” 79

At the end of November War Department leaders decided to form a Nisei regimental combat team, and the White House concurred.80 With the November elections past and a new front opened in North Africa, the Roosevelt administration 

could afford to be less concerned about anti-Japanese hysteria in California. The 

public announcement came in late January 1943, and the White House released 

a widely publicized endorsement: “No loyal citizen of the United States should 

be denied the democratic right to exercise the responsibilities of his citizenship, 

regardless of his ancestry. The principle on which this country was founded and by 

which it has always been governed is that Americanism is a matter of the heart and 

mind; Americanism is not, and never was, a matter of race or ancestry.” 81

The first Nisei volunteers for the 442d RCT reported to Camp Shelby, Mississippi, for training in April 1943. The Nisei pioneers who began fighting in the 

Pacific almost one year earlier could take some credit for convincing the War 

Department to form this unit. The first graduates from Crissy Field convinced 

their Caucasian officers of their loyalty and effectiveness. “They were the test 

case,” language school officials would announce at the war’s end.82

The MIS Nisei and their Caucasian officers in turn convinced War Department leaders, the Office of War Information, the War Relocation Authority, and 

finally President Roosevelt, of the value of allowing Nisei to serve their country. They were fighting alongside American and Australian soldiers and marines, 

using their language skills to provide combat intelligence to front-line commanders. On Guadalcanal and New Guinea, they faced harsh battlefield conditions to 

lift the veil of ignorance that had plagued Allied commanders in the early months 

of the war. They exposed themselves to snipers, booby traps, artillery and mortar 

fire, and air attacks to help overcome fierce Japanese resistance. They had proven 

their loyalty, if anyone had lingering doubts.

The initial campaigns proved that the available numbers of Caucasian Japanesespeakers could not handle the volume of language work once ground units 

made contact, and it simply took too long to train new linguists to an adequate 

79 Memo, Franklin D. Roosevelt for Henry L. Stimson, 17 Nov 42, WD Folder 2–42, Roosevelt Library, in frame 82, reel 3, Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians 

(CWRIC) Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. For correspondence about 

ethnic units, see Marshall File, ser. 8, McCloy Papers. 80 On 20 November 1942, The Adjutant General instructed all Army commands to report all 

Nisei soldiers by name. Boxes 280–82, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, NARA. For an interpretation that stresses propaganda value, see T. Fujitani, “The Reischauer Memo: Mr. Moto, Hirohito, 

and Japanese American Soldiers,” Critical Asian Studies 33, no. 3 (2001): 379–402. 81 See entry for 1 February 1943 in The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 

13 vols., comp. Samuel I. Rosenman (New York: Random House, 1938–1950); Greg Robinson, By 

Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 163–76. 82 WD Press Release, 22 Oct 45.
MIS NISEI PIONEERS 89

level of proficiency. In contrast, many of these early Nisei were Kibei, having 

spent several years living in and attending school in Japan. Their knowledge of 

the Japanese language, as well as the culture and people, was priceless. Once 

Allied soldiers saw the value of capturing prisoners, they brought them in by the 

hundreds. These prisoners, treated with compassion, willingly gave their Nisei 

interrogators an astonishing amount of useful information. Captured documents 

proved even more valuable. The Nisei used these documents to re-create the workings of the Japanese armed forces in a way no other form of intelligence could. In 

the Southwest Pacific, a new organization had been invented, the Allied Translator 

and Interpreter Section, which could support the forces in contact and simultaneously support the theater commander with flexible and timely language and analytical support.

In April 1943 Captain Burden wrote from Guadalcanal to Camp Savage asking for a surgeon’s position with the 442d RCT and urging that the unit be sent to 

the Pacific: “I just wish that they would bring them out this way and give them a 

chance to really clear the name of the Nisei. They would do it. However they will 

do plenty good work on the other side [in Europe] I’m sure.” The commandant forwarded the letter to MID, which sent it on to Assistant Secretary of War McCloy.83

In 1944 the 442d RCT deployed to the Mediterranean, not the Pacific, and fought 

there with distinction. Little did the Nisei in that unit realize that their opportunity 

to serve came from the little-heralded achievements of the first MIS Nisei in fighting against the Japanese in the Pacific.

83 Memo, Asst Sec of War to Chief, Far Eastern Unit, MIS, 19 May 43, Trng Grp, Ofc of the Dir 

of Intel G–2, RG 165, NARA.

4

Camp Savage, 1942–1943

In May 1942 the Fourth Army Intelligence School dispatched its first graduates to Alaska and the Pacific, vacated the hangar at Crissy Field, and moved to 

Camp Savage, Minnesota. The school would need to reestablish itself in the new 

location, recruit more students and instructors, and train thousands of new linguists to meet the expanding needs of America’s field commanders.

That same spring and summer the Western Defense Command was removing 

over 110,000 men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast 

into hastily constructed camps in the interior. (See Map 3.) The contradiction 

between the military necessity for Japanese speakers and widespread suspicion of 

anyone of Japanese ancestry was clear and for most Nisei students intensely personal. Shortly after graduation Cpl. Tsuneo Gary Kadani drove south to Salinas, 

where his parents were housed at the Salinas Rodeo Grounds:

This was the saddest day of my life: [the] trip to Salinas to say farewell to my parents. . . .

I wasn’t supposed to be there; they wouldn’t let me into the camp. . . . My parents were 

sleeping in a horse stall! It smelled so bad they couldn’t sleep, so my mother asked me to 

get all the Clorox I could find. And when she was asking me, my sister-in-laws and friends 

also asked, “Ah, Kadani-san, can you get some for me?” I . . . bought dozens of bottles of 

Clorox—they were only about nine cents a bottle in those days, 1942. I loaded them in the 

back of my Chevrolet trunk. I went back to the rodeo grounds and gave them to the people 

waiting at the gate. Then I went back to the Presidio after saying goodbye to everybody. 

And that was the saddest day of my life.1

1 Kadani, in David W. Swift, Jr., ed., “First Class,” Unpubl Ms, 2000, copy in author’s files.
Manzanar

Gila River

Poston

Tule Lake

Minidoka

Heart Mountain

Granada

Topaz

U T A H

A R I Z O N A

N E W M E X I C O

C O L O R A D O

W Y O M I N G

N O R T H D A K O T A

S O U T H D A K O T A 

N E B R A S K A

K A N S A S

I D A H O

O R E G O N

W A S H I N G T O N

M O N T A N A

C A L I F O R N I A

N E V A D A

T E X A S

O K L A H O 

C A N 

M E X I C O

WAR RELOCATION CENTERS

1942–1946

MAP 3
Rohwer

Jerome

M I N N E S O T A

W I S C O N S I N

M A

I O W A

O H I O

G E O R G I A

K E N T U C K Y

V I R G I N I A

W E S T

V I R G I N I A

A L A B A M A

L O U I S I A N A

M I S S I S S I P P I

T E N N E S S E E

N O R T H C A R O L I N A

S O U T H

C A R O L I N A

I L L I N O I S

I N D I A N A

M I S S O U R I

A R K A N S A S

CONNECTICUT

MASSACHUSETTS

MARYLAND

N E W J E R S E Y

D E L AWA R E

P E N N S Y L V A N I A

N E W Y O R K

VERMONT

M A I N E

NEW 

HAMPSHIRE

RHODE ISLAND

A D A
94 NISEI LINGUISTS

Kadani soon sailed from San Francisco for Australia, where he arrived six 

weeks later.

In the days ahead the school’s challenges would be to overcome these doubts 

of Nisei loyalty and to produce skilled military linguists needed to win the war 

against Japan. First the school had to relocate. In mid-May the eight civilian instructors, ten graduate-instructors, and a handful of other students and staff drove in 

private automobiles eastward out of the exclusion zone. The civilian instructors 

had permission to bring their wives to spare them internment. A Caucasian officer 

accompanied each carload in case there might be some trouble carrying Japanese 

Americans beyond the reach of the relocation orders. Together they drove through 

the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains then deep into the Midwest, far from the 

West Coast exclusion areas.2

On 25 May 1942, they arrived at Fort Snelling, on the outskirts of Minneapolis. 

Their destination was ten miles down the road in a cluster of wooden buildings nestled under pine trees. Built in the early 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps, 

Camp Savage lay along a railroad line and state highway one-half mile from the 

Minnesota River. This would become the school’s home for the next two years.3

The 132-acre post enjoyed several advantages. It was isolated and quiet, good 

for security and for studying. It already contained a few dozen simple, one-story 

wooden buildings that would become barracks and classrooms. The Nisei soldiers 

and civilian instructors could remain inconspicuous, yet the post was close to Fort 

Snelling, a busy reception center with a capacity of more than 3,000 men. The 

twin cities of Minneapolis–St. Paul were convenient for off-duty recreation.4

 Like 

the rest of America, Minnesota was still reeling from the war’s opening months. A 

company of the Minnesota National Guard had been captured on Bataan; nevertheless, Minnesota had no history of anti-Asian prejudice. In 1940 the census counted 

only fifty-one persons of Japanese ancestry in the whole state.5 State officials were 

2 HQ, Western Defense Command (WDC) and Fourth Army, Special Orders no. 127, 7 May 

42, in MISLS, “Training History of the Military Intelligence Service Language School,” ann. 10, 

Personnel Procurement Office, encl 4, Unpubl Ms, 1946, U.S. Army Center of Military History 

(CMH), and Gen Records, 1943–1945, Military Intelligence [Service] Language School, Fort Snelling, Minn., Records of the Army Staff, Record Group (RG) 319, National Archives and Records 

Administration (NARA); “Army School at Savage To Teach Jap Language,” Minneapolis Morning 

Tribune, 26 May 42. 3

 Shunji Hamano, “Rocky Mountain MIS Veterans Club Autobiographies,” pp. 16–19, Unpubl 

Ms, ed. Kent T. Yoritomo, [1989], author’s files (this and similar biographies hereafter cited as 

Rocky Mountain Bios). Intervs, Dan Tompkins with Yoshio G. Kanegai, 11 Oct 94, and author with 

Yoshio G. Kanegai, 16 Sep 96. Pete Nakao, in The Saga of the MIS, videotaped presentation, Los 

Angeles, 11 Mar 89; Intervs, author with Kan Tagami, 7 Dec 94, and with Roy T. Uyehata, 16 Nov 

87; Roy T. Uyehata, Biography, Military Intelligence Service Club of Northern California (this and 

similar biographies hereafter cited as MISNorCal Bios). 4

 The basic sources for Camp Savage are “Training History” with annexes and MISLS Album

(Minneapolis: Military Intelligence Service Language School, 1946). 5

 Theodore C. Blegen, Minnesota: A History of the State (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1963), pp. 521–49. Savage was too small to appear in Minnesota: A State Guide, American Guide Series (New York: Hastings House, 1954).
CAMP SAVAGE, 1942–1943 95

“extremely cooperative in arranging for this camp,” Lt. Col. Kai E. Rasmussen 

told local reporters, “and we hope the public will show the men every courtesy 

due American soldiers.” For his part, he assured them that “if anything untoward 

occurs, officers of course will have to see that proper protection is provided.” The 

Minneapolis Morning Tribune urged local residents to “extend a cordial welcome 

to this unique army encampment.” 6 In time Minneapolis–St. Paul would become a 

haven for the Nisei soldiers and other Japanese Americans from the West Coast.

About 150 additional Nisei soldiers collected that spring from Army camps 

in the South and Midwest joined the small group from Crissy Field. Together they 

turned Camp Savage into a proper Army post. In recent years the state had used 

the camp to house indigents. White rocks at the entrance spelled out “Homeless 

6 “Army School at Savage,” with editorial. The school’s relocation to Minnesota was also mentioned in the Pacific Citizen, 2 Jul 42, which reported a small number of Nisei were “teaching the 

Japanese language to intelligence officers, studying and analyzing Japanese propaganda, making 

use of specialized training and aptitude so that the United Nations may emerge victorious.” The 

next issue mentioned a Nisei soldier who was “attending the Army’s intelligence school at Savage, 

Minnesota.” “Evacuee Drowns in Kings River,” Pacific Citizen, 9 Jul 42, p. 1.

Camp Savage, Minnesota, autumn 1942. The road and rail lines to Minneapolis 

are visible at top.
96 NISEI LINGUISTS

Men’s Camp,” to the wry amusement of the first Nisei who arrived there. The previous occupants had left the place filthy; inside the buildings, the soldiers found 

garbage and human waste everywhere. They dragged straw mattresses into the 

open air and set fire to them, then scrubbed the buildings from top to bottom.

Some of the new students arrived angry and demoralized. After Pearl Harbor, 

they had been mistrusted, disarmed, and shipped from one post to another without 

explanation. Their families had been evicted and placed into internment camps. 

Some did not even learn they had been selected for Japanese-language training 

until they arrived.

One disgruntled Nisei, Sgt. George Kanegai, had been a high school football 

player in Gardena, California. Drafted in March 1941, by June 1942 he was ready 

for a fight. When he arrived, a corporal assigned him to a work detail, but Kanegai 

refused. “You’re not going to get me to pull grass, when you got these guys sitting 

around the office doing nothing,” he said. “Get their asses out there. . . . I earned 

my stripes and I’m not about to go out there and do menial jobs when you’ve got 

these guys in your office sitting on their butt.” A compromise put Kanegai in 

charge of the detail as befitted his rank as a noncommissioned officer.7

Most of the new students were ready to learn the Japanese language, but many 

already knew the language very well. Sunao Phil Ishio, a Kibei, was born in Berkeley, California, and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. After one year at the University 

of Utah, he went to Japan in 1939 to study economics at Waseda University in 

Tokyo. In 1941 he returned to finish his degree at Utah but was soon drafted. After 

Pearl Harbor, he was transferred to several Army posts before being selected for 

Camp Savage. Placed in an accelerated class, he graduated in only three months.8

For leadership the school had two Caucasian officers who had come out of 

the prewar language attaché program. The commandant, Rasmussen, had studied Japanese in Tokyo for four years, during which “he had only scratched the 

surface,” he later told a reporter. “I’d say if a man stayed at it about 28 years 

he might be rated pretty fair.” 9 He was a dedicated and capable Regular Army 

officer who would stand by the Nisei through the worst of times. Maj. Joseph K. 

Dickey, another former language attaché and Military Academy graduate as well 

as a native Minnesotan, became assistant commandant.10

Colonel Rasmussen sympathized with the Nisei’s plight after Pearl Harbor:

In the emergency which had naturally arisen the abrupt manner in which they were 

removed from various organizations to which they had been originally assigned . . . and 

7

 Intervs, Tompkins with Kanegai, 11 Oct 94, and author with Kanegai, 16 Sep 96. 8

 Interv, author with Sunao P. Ishio, 18 Apr 95; Stanley L. Falk and Warren M. Tsuneishi, eds., 

MIS in the War against Japan (Washington, D.C.: Japanese American Veterans Association, 1995), 

pp. 26–31, 102–03. 9 “Army School at Savage.” 10 See also “Training History,” ann. 1, Academic Training, para. 4–j, p. 12. “In Memoriam: Kai 

E. Rasmussen, 1902–1988,” memorial service booklet, 1988.
CAMP SAVAGE, 1942–1943 97

re-assigned to non-combat units had left them bewildered and skeptical of their future as 

individuals and as a minority group. 

Then, too, the evacuation of their families from their homes to War Relocation Centers 

created a confusion of thoughts within each individual. Their morale was at this time at a 

low point, because their minds were confused by the complexities of the position in which 

they found themselves. Question after question arose in their minds either imaginarily 

created by rumors or by misinterpretation of the necessary restrictive measures that the 

particular situation imposed upon them.

When upon subsequent assignment to the Military Intelligence Service Language 

School the individuals concerned were not at first amenable to their assignment. However, 

after a few months of pursuing the course of study and training, and the careful application of discipline by the School Staff, the confusion of their minds brought on by previous 

conditions slowly dispelled itself.11

On Monday, 1 June 1942, classes began with 160 Nisei and thirty Caucasian 

students.12 Eighteen Nisei instructors (eight civilians and ten enlisted men) taught 

the classes using the curriculum developed at Crissy Field based on the Naganuma 

readers. Until tables and chairs could be procured, the students sat on the floor.13

The course work was hard and the instructors demanding. The instructors were 

almost as inexperienced as the students, so students and instructors often worked 

late into the night. After lights out, many students pored over their textbooks and 

flashcards in the latrines, where the lights remained on all night. Because the 

school now reported directly to the Military Intelligence Service and was no longer part of Fourth Army, on 26 June the War Department renamed it the Military 

Intelligence Service Language School (MISLS).14

11 Memo, MISLS for Brig. Gen. Hayes A. Kroner, 25 May 43, sub: Publicity in Regard Activities of American Soldiers of Japanese Descent in the Army of the United States (352), Office of the 

Assistant Secretary of War, RG 107, NARA. 12 Sources vary for the number of students that began with the first Savage class. “Training 

History,” table, p. 16, reports 22 officers (2 Nisei, 18 Caucasians, 2 Chinese Americans) and 160 

enlisted men (149 Nisei, 10 Caucasians, 1 Chinese American). “Training History,” ann. 1, para. 

6–2, p. 6, reports 9 officers and 174 enlisted men (no separate figures by race). “Training History,” 

ann. 10, Personnel Procurement, sec. IV, p. 3, reports 12 officers (Caucasian) and 200 enlisted men 

(192 Nisei and 8 Caucasians). Other sources report 200 students. MISLS Album, p. 10, and “A History of the Military Intelligence Division, 7 December 1941–2 September 1945,” p. 225, Unpubl 

Ms, n.d., CMH. The higher figures may include overhead personnel or students who reported after 

1 June 1942. The figures reported in “Training History” seem the most reliable. One former student remembers that about 360 Nisei were selected but only 160 passed the background checks. 

Hamano, Rocky Mountain Bio, p. 16. 13 Ronald Chagami, “Tidbits from the MISLS Instructor Corps,” in Sempai Gumi, ed. Richard 

S. Oguro (Honolulu: MIS Veterans of Hawaii, [1981]), p. 35. 14 Memos, The Adjutant General’s Office (TAGO) to CG, Seventh Corps Area, 22 May 42, 

sub: Constitution and Activation of Military Intelligence Service Japanese Intelligence School (AG

352), and Chief, MIS, to TAG, 26 Jun 42, sub: Redesignation of Miltary Intelligence Service Japanese Intelligence School (MID 352), both in Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, War Department (WD) 

Gen and Special Staffs, RG 165, NARA. On 25 May 1942, MID renamed the school the Military 

Intelligence Service Japanese Intelligence School. However, on 26 June the name changed again 
98 NISEI LINGUISTS

Soon after the beginning of classes came encouraging news that the U.S. Navy 

had defeated the Japanese Navy at Midway on 4–5 June. As American and Australian forces took the offensive in the Solomon Islands and New Guinea, field 

commanders demanded more Japanese linguists. On 8 September the school 

graduated a special class of fourteen Nisei after just ten weeks of training. Twelve 

of them were Kibei, including Ishio. Led by two Caucasian officers and M.Sgt. 

Arthur Katsuyoshi Ushiro, the team accompanied the I Corps staff to Australia.15

Later that autumn six more Nisei went to the South Pacific before graduation. By 

the end of 1942 the Joint Chiefs of Staff had sent ten Army and two Marine divisions to the Pacific. They would need more Japanese linguists as fast as the school 

could produce them.

John F. Aiso as Technical Director

Although Caucasian officers remained in control of the school, a senior civilian Nisei ran its day-to-day operations. Colonel Rasmussen was the commandant, 

but John Aiso as the technical director set the tone for students and instructors 

alike. The school was similar to the Japanese-language schools that many Nisei 

had attended before the war, with two key differences. First, the U.S. Army, not 

Japanese community leaders, operated the school. Second, Nisei, not Issei, served 

as the principal and instructors. Aiso had been named senior instructor in October 

1941 at Crissy Field. By the time the school arrived in Minnesota, the 32-year-old 

lawyer was the leader of the Nisei staff and worked well with Rasmussen. Rasmussen handled the school’s relations with the War Department, while Aiso ruled 

over the school’s internal affairs with an iron hand.16

When Nisei students arrived at Camp Savage, they were sometimes surprised 

to see Aiso. Those from Southern California had heard about him as they were 

growing up. Aiso had struggled during the 1920s to overcome racial prejudice 

in the public schools and made the front pages of the Japanese American press. 

to the Military Intelligence Service Language School. The first name was mentioned in “Training 

History,” pp. 5–6, and “History of the Military Intelligence Division,” p. 225. 15 Joseph D. Harrington, Yankee Samurai: The Secret Role of Nisei in America’s Pacific Victory

(Detroit: Pettigrew Enterprises, 1979), pp. 44–45, 83–84; Interv, author with Ishio, 18 Apr 95; Falk 

and Tsuneishi, MIS in the War against Japan, pp. 27–28; “Training History,” ann. 1, para. 6–2, p. 

6; Interv, Sheryl Narahara with Torao “Pat” Neishi, 1992, National Japanese American Historical 

Society (NJAHS), San Francisco, Calif.; Thomas Masaharu Takata, diary, Joseph D. Harrington 

Papers, NJAHS. The fourteen Nisei included twelve members of the special class and two graduates from Crissy Field. Two other special class graduates stayed back as instructors. The officers 

were John Anderton and George Aurell. 16 John F. Aiso, “Observations of a California Nisei,” Interv with Marc Landy, University of 

California at Los Angeles, 1971; Loni Ding and Eric Saul with John F. Aiso, 1986, NJAHS; author 

with John F. Aiso, 30 Oct 87; Kiyoshi Yano, “Participating in the Mainstream of American Life 

amidst Drawback of Racial Prejudice and Discrimination,” in John Aiso and the M.I.S.: JapaneseAmerican Soldiers in the Military Intelligence Service, World War II, ed. Tad Ichinokuchi (Los 

Angeles: Military Intelligence Service Club of Southern California, 1988), pp. 4–32.
CAMP SAVAGE, 1942–1943 99

“Wherever the Japanese newspapers went, the story of John F. Aiso’s victories 

also went.” One Nisei remembered how his mother admonished him to “study 

intensively like John Aiso and become a great orator and bring honor to the thenbudding Japanese American community.”17 Aiso was drafted in early 1941.

At Camp Savage, he delivered a stern message to each incoming class: “You 

were brought here to [study],” a student summarized, “and if you don’t [study] 

according to our expectation, we know where your parents are!” Another student 

recalled how in June 1942 Aiso warned incoming students not to protest or strike: 

“Whatever you do here will have a reaction against your parents. . . .You have 

direct relation to your parents, your brothers and sisters.”18

Aiso had lived in the limelight all his life as an exemplary Nisei and held the 

other Nisei to the same high standards he set for himself. He had a brilliant mind 

honed by years of hard study. He was steeped in the American political tradition 

and fond of quoting Abraham Lincoln.19 The Nisei of his generation “had ‘talked 

to Lincoln’ as often as he prayed to his God,” he later remarked, “because the railsplitter knew what it was like to be born and raised in a rural shack as so many of 

the older Nisei were.” 20 In Aiso’s mind the Nisei’s American heritage did not have 

to conflict with their Japanese heritage. Instead he urged them to “live like the 

cherry trees in our nation’s capital; of Japanese origin and symbol of its knightly 

lore, but taking root into the richness of American soil enhancing with beauty in 

their season the Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials.” 21

The removal of Japanese from the West Coast may have shaken Aiso’s faith, 

but he responded characteristically by working even harder. Nevertheless, the anti17 Tad Ichinokuchi, “John Aiso and the MIS,” in Ichinokuchi, John Aiso and the M.I.S., pp. 

1–3. Carey McWilliams described the young Aiso as “a brilliant Nisei” in Prejudice: JapaneseAmericans: Symbol of Racial Intolerance (Boston: Little, Brown, 1944), p. 101. See also Bill 

Hosokawa, Nisei: The Quiet Americans (New York: William Morrow, 1969), pp. 167–68. See also 

ch. 1, note 20. 18 Ltr, Joe Yoshiwara to Roy Uyehata, 18 February 1993, author’s files; Harrington, Yankee 

Samurai, pp. 65, 144; Interv, author with Tagami, 7 Dec 94. During the same period, the commanding officer of the 100th Infantry Battalion at Camp McCoy gave similar lectures to his Nisei 

soldiers: “Isn’t this the most important time of your life? Every one of you is being watched. Don’t 

forget that the future of your families rests on your shoulders.” Masayo U. Duus, Unlikely Liberators: The Men of the 100th and 442nd (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987), p. 27.

Camp McCoy was also the site for a Department of Justice internment camp. One scholar asserts 

“that both the Japanese American internees and the soldiers were prisoners of the state, incarcerated at Camp McCoy during a time in which the dominant racial order threatened to dehumanize 

these men” (emphasis in original). Peggy Choy, “Racial Order and Contestation: Asian American 

Internees and Soldiers at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin, 1942–1943,” in Asian Americans: Comparative and Global Perspectives, ed. Shirley Hune et al. (Pullman: Washington State University Press, 

1991), pp. 87–102. 19 Aiso, remarks, 1985, cited in Ichinokuchi, John Aiso and the M.I.S., pp. 5, 28. When he ran for 

student body president of his junior high school in 1922, he quoted Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address 

(p. 5). 20 John F. Aiso, remarks at Arlington National Cemetery, 2 Jun 63, reprinted in “Tributes to 

Japanese American Military Service in World War II,” Congressional Record (11 Jun 63), p. 7. 21 John F. Aiso, speech to MIS Veteran’s Reunion, Honolulu, Hawaii, 6 Sep 64.
100 NISEI LINGUISTS

Japanese prejudice of the war’s first year provoked him to write a letter to California Attorney General Earl Warren, who was running for governor in the autumn 

of 1942. As attorney general, Warren had played a key role in the evacuation and 

declared he did not want the Japanese to return after the war. Aiso wrote to say 

that “I thought, at heart, he was a very religious man,” he recalled. “I wanted him 

to know that some of us so-called ‘Japs’ were in the United States Army. I felt that 

after the war was over he would change his mind and let us come back.”22

The Nisei, citizens by birth, responded in various ways to the tragic situation. 

Two-thirds were still minors and went with their families into the camps. Many 

men of military age chose to stay in the camps to keep their families together. 

Some became embittered and angry. A handful even sought legal remedies, but 

the federal courts rejected their cases. Aiso offered a different path: proving Nisei 

loyalty through dedicated military service. In the face of overwhelming prejudice, 

Aiso urged the Nisei to study their Japanese heritage and learn the language of the 

hated enemy—and their own parents. He infused the school with his ethics of hard 

study, patriotism in the face of prejudice, and self-discipline. Many saw him as a 

stern, unbending taskmaster. The school’s official history praised his “firm direction,” but one student many years later recalled him as having been “pompous, 

officious, and conceited.” Only years after the war did Aiso admit to having been 

a “martinet” and to having overlooked “personal comfort and welfare.” 23

One of the first to run afoul of Aiso, Sergeant Kanegai, had also come from 

Southern California but had a very different outlook. Upset about the government’s treatment of the Japanese (his family was interned at a camp in Manzanar, 

California), Kanegai first refused a work detail, then refused to study. Eventually 

he was dropped from the class. However, because of Kanegai’s rank, the post commander named him acting first sergeant without clearing it with Aiso. Aiso would 

not tolerate this challenge to his authority over the other Nisei. Kanegai, whose 

new wife was expecting their first child, soon received orders for Australia. He 

22 Aiso, “Observations of a California Nisei,” p. 106. After the war Aiso resumed his law practice in Los Angeles; in 1953 Governor Warren appointed him to the municipal court of Los Angeles, making him the first Nisei to serve in the state judiciary on the mainland. When Warren became 

Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, many Nisei felt he was unrepentant for his role in the 

evacuation. However, Aiso urged the Nisei “to respect [Warren’s] reluctance and display a little 

magnanimity” and argued “it would serve no purpose to press him further.” Hosokawa, Nisei: The 

Quiet Americans, p. 494. 23 “Training History,” ann. 1, para. 5, p. 4; Aiso, speech, 6 Sep 64; Faubion Bowers, personal 

communication to author, 1999. Gene Uratsu, a student and enlisted instructor at Crissy Field and 

Camp Savage, recalled that “the autocratic Director was known as ‘Der Hitler’ among the students 

and instructors.” Uratsu later referred to himself as having been “young, foolish, and reckless.” He 

added, “As I assumed more and more responsible positions in the army [as a career officer after the 

war], I began to realize how difficult it must have been for Aiso to run the school under extreme 

wartime pressure. I guess somebody had to be the son-of-a-bitch.” Gene Masaji Uratsu, MISNorCal Bio. See also similar comments about Aiso and the school by WO Gerald Kobayashi to a War 

Relocation Authority (WRA) field worker in January 1944. Memo, 2 Jan 44, sub: Free Association: 

Army and Registration, Milwaukee, Wis.; Microfilm, frame 552, reel 84, sec. 15, pt. 2, Japanese 

Evacuation Research Study, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
CAMP SAVAGE, 1942–1943 101

departed in early 1943 in charge of a group of nongraduating Nisei. They were 

sent to the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section as “overhead”: clerks, cooks, 

and supply personnel.24

During 1942–1943 Aiso was the senior Nisei in government service; and as 

time went on he brought in other older Nisei who could serve as a stabilizing influence on the younger Nisei. Some were too old for active duty but still able to render 

valuable stateside service. In March 1943 Capt. Walter T. Tsukamoto, a 38-yearold Sacramento lawyer, was assigned as the school’s staff judge advocate. Before 

the war, Tsukamoto had served as president of the Japanese American Citizens 

League (JACL) from 1938 to 1940 and held a reserve commission.25 From Hawaii 

came Masaji Marumoto, thirty-seven, a Honolulu attorney and Harvard Law 

School graduate. After the war broke out, Marumoto helped form the Emergency 

Service Committee as a liaison between law enforcement officials in Hawaii and 

the Japanese community. He had tried to enlist in early 1943 but could not pass the 

physical exam. A few months later he joined MISLS and soon became a master 

sergeant and Aiso’s personal clerk.26

Aiso’s stern philosophy and personal example were a blend of Japanese and 

American characteristics. All his life he had studied hard, and he expected his students to do the same. Respect and self-discipline were essential, and education was 

the key to future success. He was profoundly aware of the gravity of the Nisei’s 

position. He knew full well how they were being treated with suspicion and that 

the evacuation had swept away two generations of toil by the Nisei and their Issei 

parents. He responded by bearing down harder to prove his loyalty. At Camp Savage, the War Department allowed the Nisei to serve. Perhaps in time the Military 

Intelligence Service (MIS) Nisei could redeem all Japanese Americans and restore 

them to a place of honor.

Aiso also knew that the MIS Nisei would face a special challenge in fighting 

against Japan. When the War Department considered forming a Nisei combat unit 

24 Intervs, Tompkins with Kanegai, 11 Oct 94, and author with Kanegai, 16 Sep 96; Saga of the 

MIS. Kanegai became first sergeant for the Nisei assigned to ATIS and later earned a commission 

through officer candidate school. 25 MISLS Album, p. 66; “Training History,” ann. 15a, Legal Assistance; Bill Hosokawa, JACL 

in Quest of Justice: The History of the Japanese American Citizens League (New York: William 

Morrow, 1982), pp. 104–07. 26 Interv notes, Joseph D. Harrington with Masaji Marumoto, 1973, Harrington Papers; Duus, 

Unlikely Liberators, p. 62; Aiso, “Observations of a California Nisei,” p. 75; Masaji Marumoto, 

“Okinawa Revisited: A Look at Past, Future,” Honolulu Star Bulletin & Advertiser, 14 Feb 71. In 

May 1944 Rasmussen nominated Marumoto for the Judge Advocate General Department officer 

candidate school. Marumoto was commissioned in May 1945 and served in the occupation of Okinawa. After the war he was appointed a justice of the Hawaii Territorial Supreme Court. Another 

Emergency Service Committee leader, Dr. Katsumi Kometani, went to Italy in 1944 with the 442d 

RCT as the regimental “morale officer.” Duus, Unlikely Liberators, p. 29; Thomas D. Murphy, 

Ambassadors in Arms (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1954), pp. 66–67; “Emergency Service Committee,” in Encyclopedia of Japanese American History, rev. ed., ed. Brian Niiya (New 

York: Facts on File, 2001); Tom Coffman, The Island Edge of America: A Political History of 

Hawaii (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003), pp. 63–65.
102 NISEI LINGUISTS

in the autumn of 1942, Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy recommended 

such a unit but wrote to the Secretary of War, “We need not use them against members of their own race, but we could use them for many useful purposes.” 27 The 

Secretary of War agreed to forming the 442d Regimental Combat Team (RCT) 

but employing it only “in a theater where it will not be fighting Japanese troops.”

General George C. Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, later gave a similar reason for 

sending the 100th Infantry Battalion and 442d RCT to Italy: “I knew that it was 

quite unwise and quite unfair to send them to the Southwest Pacific where they 

would be in contact with their own people.” 28 Whether from concern about their 

personal feelings or from lingering doubts about their loyalty, War Department 

leaders acknowledged that sending Nisei to fight Japanese soldiers would be placing a special burden on them.

MIS Nisei, especially those who still had friends or family living in Japan, felt 

this burden acutely. “It was the AJA in the MIS who faced and answered the greatest challenge to his generation,” Aiso later declared. “Are Americans of Japanese 

ancestry loyal enough to fight in the defense of America directly against their own 

kith and kin?” 29 “There were certain instances,” he later admitted, of students 

who expressed hesitancy to fight against the Japanese. But this did not keep them 

from their duty.30

Recruiting Students, June–December 1942

As the new students began class at Camp Savage, school officials looked for 

hundreds more for future classes. “The greatest problem which faced [the school] 

after its removal to Savage,” declared the school’s official history after the war, 

“was the recruitment of adequate numbers of students for the school to carry an 

expanded program.” 31 School officials knew that those with no previous exposure 

to the Japanese language required at least a year and often longer to reach a useful level of proficiency. The MIS did not have that kind of time. The government 

had placed the largest pool of potential students, Nisei of military age on the West 

27 Ltr, John J. McCloy to Henry L. Stimson, 15 October 1942, Folder: Stimson, Box WD1, Ser. 

8, McCloy Papers, Amherst College, Amherst, Mass. Quote cited in Murphy, Ambassadors in 

Arms, pp. 106–07. Forrest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall, 4 vols. (New York: Viking, 1963–1987), 

3: 147. 28 Memo, WDGS [War Department General Staff] G–3 for Chief of Staff, 16 Dec 42, sub: Organization of a Military Unit To Be Composed of American Citizens of Japanese Descent (WDGCT

320), copy in Drawer 1600, Research File, Microfilm reel 300, item 4523, George C. Marshall 

Research Library, Lexington, Va. 29 Aiso, speech, 6 Sep 64. See also similar comments in 1985, cited in Ichinokuchi, John Aiso 

and the M.I.S., pp. 29–30. 30 Aiso, “Observations of a California Nisei.” In response to the interviewer’s question in 1970 

about the Nisei’s hesitancy to fight against the Japanese, he commented: “I think the time is not ripe 

for me to answer this question in its full ramifications.” 31 WD Press Release, 22 Oct 45. Japanese Evacuation Research Study (JERS), pt. 2, sec. 2, reel 

20, frame 0037, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
CAMP SAVAGE, 1942–1943 103

Coast, behind barbed wire. One year earlier, before Pearl Harbor, school officials 

had screened 1,300 Nisei to select the first fifty-eight students. In the first half of 

1942 they had selected another 150. (See Table 1.) By that summer all other Nisei 

soldiers on the West Coast had been transferred to interior posts or discharged.

Despite these difficult conditions, Colonel Rasmussen was able to recruit the 

first class at Camp Savage; but the school’s future looked bleak. The Military 

Intelligence Division directed Rasmussen to recruit twice as many Nisei for yet 

another class to begin in December. More than 1,000 remained in mainland Army 

posts, and about 400 had been discharged to the Enlisted Reserve Corps.32 Rasmussen checked and rechecked these Nisei, finding some whom previous searches 

had overlooked. By September Rasmussen had selected another 150 Nisei for the 

school, well short of the number required. The school even accepted Nisei over 

the normal enlistment age. In Tule Lake, they enlisted a veteran of the First World 

War, John M. Tanikawa, age forty-one. In 1918 he had served in France with the 

American Expeditionary Forces and had earned the Purple Heart and Croix de 

Guerre.33 The recruiters occasionally found Caucasian soldiers such as Joseph J. 

Milanowski, who had studied Japanese at the University of Washington.34 But 

Caucasians who could speak Japanese were rare. 

To meet his requirements Rasmussen would have to recruit Nisei from behind 

barbed wire. In July the Military Intelligence Division obtained permission for 

Rasmussen to recruit students from the assembly and relocation centers and he 

wrote to Fourth Army and all center directors to describe the characteristics he 

was seeking: “A fair amount of fluency in the spoken Japanese; possession of an 

elementary knowledge of written Japanese, preferably, however, the capacity of 

reading newspapers; a good scholastic background in English and Japanese. In 

respect to this requirement it has been found here at the school that the best students usually are Chu ̄gakko ̄ [middle school] graduates with subsequent secondary 

American schooling.” 35 He was granted access to the camps, and on 6 August he 

interviewed ninety Nisei at Manzanar.36

32 Memo, Pettigrew to McCloy, 17 Dec 42, sub: Nisei Division (ASW 342.18), RG 107, NARA. 33 “45-Year-Old Nisei Veteran Reenlists for Duty in Japan,” Pacific Citizen, 27 Apr 46; WD 

Press Release, 22 Oct 45; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 114. 34 Interv, author with Joseph J. Milanowski, 30 Oct 87; Joseph J. Milanowski, “Camp Savage 

Memories,” MIS Northwest Newsletter (April 1986), reprinted in Ichinokuchi, John Aiso and the 

M.I.S., pp. 54–58. 35 Ltr, Kai E. Rasmussen to WRA Center Directors, 13 July 1942, reprinted in Roger Daniels, 

ed., American Concentration Camps: A Documentary History of the Relocation and Incarceration 

of Japanese Americans, 1941–1945, 9 vols. (New York: Garland, 1989), vol. 9. Colonel Bendetsen, a 

key planner in the evacuation, noted on his file copy: “Rasmussen should not have addressed center 

managers directly—his action in so doing is irregular.” 36 Karl G. Yoneda, Ganbatte: Sixty-Year Struggle of a Kibei Worker (Los Angeles: Asian 

American Studies Center, University of California at Los Angeles, 1983). For other sources on 

recruiting in the camps in the summer and autumn of 1942, see “Training History,” ann. 10; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 105–06, 113–19.
Table 1—Summary of Student Personnel for MISLS Academic Terms

November 1941–February 1944a

 Academic Students Students 

 Term Entered Relievedb Students Graduated

Officer Enlisted Officer Enlisted Officer Date Enlisted Date

Presidioc 18d 60 4 15 2 1 May 42 45 1 May 42

(4th Army) (6 AEA) 

 (2 ACA) 

Jun 42 22e 160 0 4 22 1 Dec 42 149 1 Dec 42

 (18 AEA) (10 AEA) 6 18 Jun 43

 (2 ACA) (1 ACA) 1 2 Feb 43

 156

Dec 42 22 442 10 46 2 19 Apr 43 2 16 Jan 43

 1 24 Apr 43 2 23 Mar 43

 9 18 Jun 43 61 10 Apr 43

 12 1 15 Apr 43

 1 30 May 43

 329 18 Jun 43

 396

Jul 43 22f 733 12 76 8 15 Jan 44 357 15 Jan 44

 (20 AEA) (53 AEA) 2 25 Mar 44 238 25 Mar 44

 (2 ACA) (50 ACA) 10 51 10 Aug 44

 2 29 Sep 44

 9 18 Nov 44

 657

Feb 44 7 683 1 140 1 10 Jun 44 5 25 Mar 44

 (14 AEA) 4 10 Aug 44 8 19 May 44

 (1 ACA) (18 ACA) 1 29 Sep 44 89 10 Aug 44

 6 1 23 Aug 44

 4 7 Sep 44

 10 29 Sep 44

 1 9 Oct 44

 1 10 Oct 44

 379 18 Nov 44

 45 17 Feb 45

 543

Feb 44 3 107 0 0 3 10 Aug 44 107 10 Aug 44

OCS (2 AEA) 

 (1 ACA) 

ACA American of Chinese Ancestry

AEA American of European Ancestry

Source: MISLS, “Training History of the Military Intelligence Service Language School,” pp. 16–18, Unpubl Ms, 1946, U.S. 

Army Center of Military History (CMH).

Notes

a All Americans of Japanese Ancestry unless otherwise indicated. Figures are from existing available records, and slight inaccuracies are unavoidable.

b Includes those relieved for special assignment, academic reasons, CDD (Certificate of Disability for Discharge), etc.

c Numbers for Presidio Class are approximate.

d Twelve officers transferred to the first class at Camp Savage in June 1942.

e Twelve officers formerly from Presidio.

f Number does not include ten Marine officers; does not include nine officers and seven enlisted men of the Canadian Army.
CAMP SAVAGE, 1942–1943 105

Once identified, how could these Nisei enlist in the Army? In March 1942 

the War Department had declared all Nisei “unacceptable for service.” The War 

Department G–2, Maj. Gen. George V. Strong, took the question directly to General Marshall on 31 August, recommending that the Army enlist 350 Nisei from 

the camps. Marshall agreed, and the recruiting proceeded as planned.37 On 3 

October Colonel Rasmussen wrote to the War Relocation Authority, requesting 

“approximately 250 Nisei and Kibei for use in the Military Intelligence Service.” 38

The volunteers most highly sought were Kibei who had proficiency in both Japanese and English and could pass a loyalty investigation.

The requirements frustrated some Nisei who wanted to enlist. When Dillon 

S. Myer, the director of the War Relocation Authority, visited the camp in Gila 

37 Memo, Strong to Chief of Staff, 31 Aug 42, sub: Enlistment of Americans of Japanese Ancestry (MID 327.31), WD G–1 Decimal File (291.2), RG 165, NARA. 38 Ltr, Kai E. Rasmussen to Acting Regional Director, WRA, 3 October 1942, RG 210, 

NARA.

Nisei in Granada (Amache) Camp, Colorado, volunteering for the Military 

Intelligence Service, 12 December 1942
106 NISEI LINGUISTS

River, Arizona, that autumn, he overheard a conversation between two young 

Nisei: “One of them asked the other, ‘Are you going to join the army?’ The other 

boy replied ‘Hell no! Nobody but a damned Kibei can get into this man’s army.’” 

Myer related this story to Assistant Secretary of War McCloy “to help prove our 

point that many Nisei wanted very badly to have the opportunity to demonstrate 

their loyalty.” He recalled that McCloy “was impressed and promised to redouble 

his efforts to secure a change in policy.” 39

When Rasmussen’s recruiters visited the camps in November, they could not 

have come at a worse time. The atmosphere in the camps had moved from initial shock at the forced relocation to seething anger at the indefinite incarceration. Hostility and resistance appeared in the form of threats and violence against 

suspected informants and supporters of the camp administration. In November 

and December violence erupted in Poston and Manzanar. The recruiters often 

conducted interviews at night so potential recruits could evade watchful eyes. In 

November two Nisei instructors from Camp Savage went to Poston and smuggled 

out eight Nisei volunteers at night during a campwide strike.40 Fourteen more were 

selected from Manzanar. 

Volunteers inside some camps were threatened or beaten. Some Issei parents 

were so angered at the thought of their sons’ volunteering to fight against Japan 

that they disowned them. To make matters worse, rumors spread that the War 

Department was using Japanese-speaking Nisei as spies inside the camps. Nevertheless, recruiters interviewed 439 Nisei in the camps that autumn and selected 66 

for language training.41

Some volunteered for the MIS primarily to escape camp. “To be perfectly honest about it, I felt I was in a rut and just decaying in camp,” Shoso Nomura recalled 

of his months in Gila River: “It wasn’t a normal society like, as you expect just to 

be able to go into business or further your education. Those opportunities were all 

lost.” He volunteered for MIS that November.42 Some Issei parents supported their 

sons’ decision to enlist. “Wars were just a short period in a man’s life,” Marshall 

M. Sumida’s father told him. “The question of being a Japanese or American was 

a difficult one. What he considered important was that a man be a man—and do 

whatever a man must do.”43

39 Dillon S. Myer, Uprooted Americans: The Japanese Americans and the War Relocation 

Authority during World War II (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1971), pp. 145–46. 40 Interv, author with Roy T. Takai, 30 Oct 87; Pat Nagano, MISNorCal Bio. Harrington, Yankee 

Samurai, p. 114. See also Elaine B. Yoneda, in Only What We Could Carry: The Japanese American Internment Experience, ed. Lawson Fusao Inada (Berkeley, Calif.: Heyday Books, 2000), pp. 

164–70. Yoneda was married to Karl Yoneda, one of the Nisei recruited from Manzanar for MISLS

in November 1942. 41 Masaharu Ano, “Loyal Linguists: Nisei of World War II Learned Japanese in Minnesota,” 

Minnesota History 45, no. 7 (Fall 1977): 279–80; Daisuke Kitagawa, Issei and Nisei: The Internment Years (New York: Seabury Press, 1967), pp. 109–11; “Training History,” ann. 10, p. 4. 42 Interv, author with Shoso Nomura, 10 Sep 96. 43 Ano, “Loyal Linguists,” p. 280.
CAMP SAVAGE, 1942–1943 107

Shortly afterward, the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service (FBIS) sent 

recruiters into the camps to look for Japanese-speaking Nisei. “Unfortunately, Colonel Rasmussen . . .visited all the projects about six weeks ago and did an excellent 

job of cream skimming,” complained the agency’s recuiter. “He has taken literally 

dozens of the best people and left very few.” The recruiters interviewed 174 people 

in the camps; they considered only twenty-two well qualified. Of these, FBIS was 

able to hire only four.44

Another valuable source of students was the Hawaii Nisei soldiers transferred 

to Camp McCoy, Wisconsin, in June 1942.45 The 100th Infantry Battalion contained many Kibei, but many could not speak English very well. Late in 1942 Lt. 

Col. Joseph K. Dickey and Akira Oshida, a civilian instructor, visited McCoy. Of 

the 1,400 Nisei stationed there, only ninety-two passed the screening test; about 

sixty were selected for the school.46 Many did not want to leave their friends. 

Hoichi Kubo objected strongly. Drafted in 1941, he had witnessed the Japanese air raid on Wheeler Field on 7 December 1941. His two grandfathers had both 

fought for Japan against Russia in 1904–1905, and he felt it was now his turn to 

fight for America. He wanted to fight, not sit at a desk. He deliberately failed the 

language test, even though his Japanese was excellent. But school officials saw 

through his ruse and selected him.47

Terry Mizutari was also selected, even though his father, a Japanese-language 

school principal and kendo instructor, was interned in the Department of Justice 

camp in Crystal City, Texas. Mizutari was a typical Hawaii Nisei, outgoing and 

popular. He played the ukulele and harmonica and thanks to his father was excellent in kendo. 

Another Hawaii Nisei was Thomas Kiyoshi Tsubota, a platoon sergeant. Tsubota graduated from Waseda and Meiji Universities in Tokyo before returning to 

Hawaii, where he was drafted before the war. He was one of two Nisei soldiers 

who had spotted a beached Japanese midget submarine the day after the Pearl 

Harbor attack. He tried to refuse language training to stay with his friends but was 

selected anyway.48

The class that began on 15 December 1942 was composed of 444 Nisei, a mix 

of prewar draftees, volunteers from the camps, and Hawaii Nisei from the 100th 

Infantry Battalion. Many were over thirty, older than the Army usually enlisted. 

School officials had identified virtually every available potential student. Rasmus44 Stephen C. Mercado, “FBIS against the Axis, 1941–1945,” Studies in Intelligence 11 (Fall/

Winter 2001). 45 Murphy, Ambassadors in Arms, pp. 73–90; Duus, Unlikely Liberators, pp. 24–39; Harrington, 

Yankee Samurai, pp. 120, 123–24. The 100th Infantry Battalion was transferred to Camp Shelby 

in January 1943 and then to the Mediterranean Theater in August. The MIS did not recruit Nisei 

directly from Hawaii until the summer of 1943. 46 Sources vary on the number selected. See Oguro, Sempai Gumi, pp. iii, 158–76. 47 Interv, author with Hoichi Kubo, 30 Oct 87; Hoichi Kubo, MISNorCal Bio. 48 Oguro, Sempai Gumi, p. 21; Ted T. Tsukiyama et al., eds., Secret Valor: M.I.S. Personnel, 

World War II Pacific Theater, Pre–Pearl Harbor to Sept. 8, 1951 (Honolulu: Military Intelligence 

Service Veterans Club of Hawaii, 1993), p. 69.
108 NISEI LINGUISTS

sen appealed directly to Nisei leaders on the mainland for their support. On 22 

November he addressed a national conference of the Japanese American Citizens 

League held in Salt Lake City, Utah:

I want you to know that I believe the whole future of the Nisei lies with two groups—the 

JACL and the Nisei in the armed services. We must assure the rest of the country that you 

are not just Americans, but that you are superlative Americans, contributing more to the 

war effort at higher cost. . . . Let’s forget about justice and confront conditions and find out 

how we can best improve and meet them. Keep improving your lot, and this can be done 

only with unselfish efforts. Upon your shoulders rests the success of your cause.49

The Nisei leaders at the conference came out strongly for the resumption of 

Selective Service. Two months later, in January 1943, the War Department called 

for volunteers for the 442d RCT. Hundreds were quietly diverted to the Military 

Intelligence Service.

Teaching and Learning at Camp Savage

Before the war most Americans regarded the Japanese language as notoriously 

difficult to learn, almost a secret weapon in itself. “The complexities of the Japanese language,” Col. John Weckerling later wrote, “are almost beyond occidental 

comprehension.” 50 For most Nisei it was not much easier. Based on the three-year 

Naganuma program that the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo had used before the war, the 

school improvised a curriculum crammed into six months. Its key feature was 

intensive study. The students at Camp Savage remained under tremendous pressure for academic performance and found the course exhausting and frustrating. 

After lights-out, the duty officer patrolled the latrines to prevent the students from 

staying up all night to cram for exams. (Many did anyway.) The instructors “were 

not handicapped by pre-conceived habits of leisurely peacetime teaching,” according to the school’s official history, “and did not tolerate student inefficiency on the 

plea that Japanese was ‘a very difficult language.’” 51

Added to military and academic discipline was a cultural factor, the high 

value that Japanese families placed on education. Students were to respect, honor, 

and obey their teachers. Each day the students attended seven hours of classes 

with two hours of mandatory evening study. Saturday mornings were reserved 

for weekly examinations. “They really meant business,” a Hawaii Nisei recalled. 

“Boy, did they give it to us. No fool around kind.” 52 School officials noticed “a rise 

49 Suppl no. 37, JACL Special Emergency National Conference, 17–24 Nov 42, frame 173, reel 

84, sec. 14, pt. 2, Japanese Evacuation Research Study, Bancroft Library. 50 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. 51 “Training History,” p. 4. 52 “Masao ‘Harold’ Onishi: Former Instructor Shares Memories,” Hawaii Herald, 2 Jul 93.
CAMP SAVAGE, 1942–1943 109

in the need for eyeglasses. . . .The reading of the intricate and involved characters 

running up and down the page instead of across the page as in English seems to 

put a strain on the eyes and the optic nerve. If it is continued for a protracted length 

of time and under poor lights, its damaging effects are pronounced.” 53

The instructors soon realized that classes had to start from the very beginning 

and had to provide more than mere refresher training. Some students advanced 

faster than others, so the instructors developed a classification examination to 

divide the students into sections by ability.54 The instructors gradually improved 

upon and supplemented the Naganuma readers and other materials.55 In addition 

to language instruction, special topics ranged from Japanese culture and history 

to military terminology. For example, during 1942 Aiso wrote a lecture on “Racial 

Characteristics of the Japanese”; Shigeya Kihara wrote on “History of Japan” and 

“Institutional Factors in Japanese Militarism”; and Toshio G. Tsukahira wrote on 

“Japanese Militarism, Past and Present.” 56 The school also exposed the students 

to Japanese films, large quantities of which the U.S. government had seized when 

53 “Training History,” ann. 1, para. 6, pp. 3–4. 54 Ibid., para. 9–8, p. 6. 55 Sample textbooks in Box 290, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, WD Gen and Special Staffs, RG

165, NARA. 56 “Training History,” ann. 1, contains a thorough description of the curriculum as it evolved 

during the war. Background lectures: “Training History,” ann. 1, para. 10c., pp. 11–12. See also 

other annexes to “Training History” and administrative memos in Box 321, Ofc of the Dir of Intel 

G–2, WD Gen and Special Staffs, RG 165, NARA. 

Shoji Takimoto teaching Japanese tactics at Camp Savage
110 NISEI LINGUISTS

the war began. As the war went on, the curriculum continued to evolve. Beginning 

with the December 1942 class, the instructors laid new stress on heigo, or military 

Japanese; in a few cases instructors tailored the course for special classes.57

School officials tried to balance military training with the language instruction. On Wednesday afternoons the director of military training sent the students 

on conditioning marches across the Minnesota countryside. Other military training and orientation programs were conducted during the week and occasionally on 

weekends. “But whatever were the ratings of the military training program on the 

popularity poll,” the student album later acknowledged, “it was devised to keep 

the men as sharp physically as they would have to be linguistically.” Instructors 

resented the time taken away from language instruction, which they felt “demoralized the students by diversity of command and [gave] those directing the training very little opportunity for coordination and integration. The military training 

tended to encroach on the academic training in disregard of the primary mission 

of the school.” 58

Responding to the needs of field commanders, the school added special instruction in prisoner of war interrogation. At first the instructors recommended harsh, 

aggressive interrogation techniques. “The students loved this approach,” Kihara 

recalled, especially when the teacher played the “prisoner” and the students gleefully practiced shouting at him in Japanese: “Stupid! Don’t lie! If you don’t talk, 

we’ll beat you!” 59 However, as time went on, reports from the field indicated that 

compassion and kind treatment tended to work better.

The school expanded its physical plant, adding a theater, a gymnasium, and 

other buildings to the Spartan CCC facilities. During the winter of 1942–1943, 

one student wrote directly to the War Department Inspector General, “stating his 

grievances of inadequate living quarters and sanitation facilities (showers, toilet bowls, and urinals) as well as other inadequacies.” 60 Students and staff alike 

complained about the drafty camp buildings that proved no match for the Minnesota winters. That winter the thermometer fell to 40 degrees below zero, quite an 

ordeal for the Nisei from California and Hawaii. In the classrooms and barracks, 

those too close to the coal stoves were too hot, those too far away too cold. It was 

the first time many Nisei had seen snow.61

In spite of poor facilities, the students found a camaraderie and group identity at Camp Savage that had been sorely lacking since the war began. Like sol57 MISLS Album, p. 10; “Training History,” ann. 1, para. 4–c3. 58 MISLS Album, p. 69; “Training History,” ann. 1, para. 4–j, pp. 11–12. See also student paper, 

“Specialized Intelligence Personnel,” 21 Jun 46, N–13775, U.S. Army Command and General Staff 

College, Fort Leavenworth, Kans. For other Army schools, see William R. Keast, “Service Schools 

of the Army Ground Forces,” in The Procurement and Training of Ground Combat Troops, ed. 

Robert R. Palmer et al. (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, Historical Division, 1948), 

pp. 241–319. 59 Shigeya Kihara, in Unsung Heroes: The Military Intelligence Service, Past-Present-Future

(Seattle: MIS-Northwest Association, 1996), p. 64. 60 Richard Kaoru Hayashi, MISNorCal Bio, p. 5. 61 Ichinokuchi, John Aiso and the M.I.S., p. 60; Oguro, Sempai Gumi, p. 138.
Temporary barracks at Camp Savage

Student outside barracks at Camp Savage. Minnesota’s harsh winters came as a 

shock to Nisei from the West Coast and Hawaii.
112 NISEI LINGUISTS

diers everywhere, at Camp Savage, the 

Nisei met old friends and made many 

new ones. In 1943 T.Sgt. Chris Ishii 

captured the school’s spirit in a humorous logo. A graphic artist with Disney 

Studios before the war, he designed a 

buck-toothed Minnesota gopher wearing an Indian war bonnet. Although the 

gopher was the mascot of the University of Minnesota, no one could fail to 

notice the satirical reference to the caricature of the Japanese enemy.62

While the Nisei students enjoyed 

making fun of themselves, they also 

fought hard against the demonized 

image of the Japanese race that prevailed in wartime America. They considered the word “Jap” a racial slur. 

The JACL instead promoted a more 

dignified term: American of Japanese 

Ancestry. In 1943, when the 100th Infantry Battalion arrived at Camp Shelby, 

a staff officer asked the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Farrant L. Turner, “Did 

you get your Japs here all right?” Turner was said to have replied, “Sir, my men 

are not ‘Japs.’ That is a term of opprobrium we use for the enemy. My troops 

are Americans of Japanese ancestry serving in the American Army.” In far-off 

Brisbane, Australia, M.Sgt. George Kanegai thought he heard an Australian officer address a group of American Nisei as Japs and took offense until someone 

explained that the officer was just trying to be friendly by asking them, “Where 

are you chaps from?” 63

In Minnesota, the Nisei were pleased to find that local civilians viewed them 

simply as American soldiers far from home. On Saturday afternoons generous 

locals waited outside the gates to Camp Savage and as the Nisei left post on weekend pass invited them home to dinner. The Twin Cities offered all the attractions 

of a Midwestern metropolitan area for their off-duty time, even a few Chinese restaurants that served familiar fare. On weekends, hundreds of Nisei descended on 

Minneapolis–St. Paul to enjoy the Red Cross, YMCA, movie theaters, restaurants, 

62 MISLS Album, cover, p. 37. The album’s art editor, M.Sgt. Tom Okamoto, had also worked at 

Disney before the war. MISLS Album, p. 84. The students wore a simple MISLS shoulder patch. The 

gopher remained an unofficial logo. In the 1990s MIS veterans groups stopped using the logo at the 

request of some Native Americans, who felt it perpetuated an offensive stereotype. 63 Murphy, Ambassadors in Arms, pp. 91, 121; Interv, author with Kanegai, 16 Sep 96. The Hollywood film about the 442d RCT, Go For Broke, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1951, made a similar point 

about the Nisei’s sensitivity to the slur.

Military Intelligence Service 

Language School emblem
CAMP SAVAGE, 1942–1943 113

and bars. In June 1943 the Young Women’s Christian Association opened a special 

USO in Minneapolis for the Nisei soldiers.64

On occasion the Midwesterners were not sure what to make of the Nisei. Some 

bartenders mistook them for Native Americans and refused to serve them, because 

some states prohibited serving alcohol to Native Americans.65 In another instance 

of mistaken identity, while on a recruiting trip to Camp Shelby, civilian instructor Shigeya Kihara encountered a tall, distinguished-looking stranger on the train 

platform in Hattiesburg, Mississippi: “I commanded the Marine Guard at the U.S. 

Embassy in Peking many years ago. I have a great admiration for the Chinese 

people,” said the stranger, who added, “We’re going to beat the hell out of the Japs, 

aren’t we?” Kihara responded tactfully, “Yes, sir!” 66

As the War Relocation Authority began to allow Nisei to leave the internment 

camps in 1943, Nisei women began to appear in Minneapolis–St. Paul in increas64 Ichinokuchi, John Aiso and the M.I.S., pp. 48–53. In the 1970s former Nisei students presented a Japanese garden to Minnesota in recognition of the people’s generosity. Michael Albert, 

“The Japanese,” in They Chose Minnesota: A Survey of the State’s Ethnic Groups, ed. June D. Holmquist (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1981), p. 568. The United Service Organization 

(USO) operated hundreds of service clubs in the States and overseas. 65 “Masao ‘Harold’ Onishi: Former Instructor Shares Memories”; Spady Koyama, in Ichinokuchi, John Aiso and the M.I.S., p. 165. 66 Shigeya Kihara, “MIS Recruiting at Camp Shelby,” in Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor, p. 58.

Barracks poker, Camp Savage
114 NISEI LINGUISTS

ing numbers to seek jobs or schooling. Though the University of Minnesota could 

not accept Nisei students because of its large ROTC program, several other area 

colleges did accept them. By the end of the war, according to one report, “only 

Chicago had more Nisei students than the Twin Cities area.” 67

A number of Nisei students and instructors got married while stationed at 

Camp Savage. In the spring of 1943 Pat Nagano, a student from Morro Bay, California, visited a former college roommate studying at the University of Michigan. 

There he met Atsuko Ono, a Nisei from Fresno, California. They became engaged, 

Nagano recalled, “with the understanding that marriage would be deferred until I

got back from duty overseas.” Upon graduation Nagano was surprised to be held 

back as an enlisted instructor. His fiancée reminded him of his promise and, he 

recalled, “had all the arguments on her side.” They were married in Chicago in 

November 1943.68

A more unpleasant aspect of life at the school was the constant surveillance for 

possible disloyalty. The Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) kept close watch on the 

Nisei. Each was subject to a background investigation, which led to some being 

dropped from class. Others had to stay after graduation until their investigation 

could be completed. The school commandant sometimes had to overrule other 

government agencies when they denied security clearances to his students “merely 

because their parents now living in the United States had been born in Japan, or 

the person being investigated had visited Japan for a few months at a very early 

age, or he had deposited a small amount of money in a Japanese bank several years 

prior to the declaration of war.” 69 On at least one occasion a student was denied 

a security clearance because his Issei father had requested repatriation to Japan 

rather than remain in an internment camp.70

Inside the school, students and staff alike cooperated with the CIC’s countersubversive program. This program recruited secret informants on the basis of one 

for every thirty soldiers throughout the Army. At Camp Savage, each barrack had 

two or three informants who reported secretly to the school’s intelligence officer, 

Capt. Laurence P. Dowd. According to the school’s official history, “this system 

worked very effectively and resulted in recommendations for relief and reassignment of several men.” 71 In one case an informant’s report followed a graduate all 

the way to New Caledonia, where the startled Nisei was called on the carpet for 

an unguarded remark he had made months earlier in the shower room at Camp 

67 Albert, “The Japanese,” p. 560. 68 Pat Nagano, MISNorCal Bio. 69 “Training History,” ann. 4, Intelligence Section, p. 1; John P. Finnegan and Romana Danysh, 

Military Intelligence, Army Lineage Series (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1998), pp. 72–76. The CIC also conducted close surveillance of other minority groups, such 

as African Americans, considered potential targets for German, Japanese, and Communist subversion. See Ulysses Lee, The Employment of Negro Troops (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of 

Military History, 1966), pp. 361–62. 70 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 85. 71 “Training History,” ann. 4. Laurence P. Dowd remained on the MISLS staff throughout the 

war. The MISLS Album gives his first name incorrectly.
CAMP SAVAGE, 1942–1943 115

Savage. In early 1944 Captain Dowd called a student to account for writing a letter that mentioned poor student morale and called some of the Caucasian officers 

“unfit for regular duty.” 72 Caucasian team leaders were secretly instructed to keep 

an eye on their Nisei enlisted men while overseas to make sure they were translating and interpreting accurately and not providing misleading or false information.73 In overseas theaters, the CIC maintained an active surveillance program 

directed at all soldiers, including the Nisei.74

The Army’s entire countersubversive program came under sharp criticism in 

1943, and by year’s end the War Department shut down the program within the 

continental United States and sharply reduced the Counter Intelligence Corps. In 

1944 the War Department transferred most of its stateside functions to the Office 

of the Provost Marshal General. However, for the rest of the war, MISLS maintained its own surveillance program “to the extent that a few well-known and 

highly trusted enlisted men [were] asked to render confidential reports on any men 

who might come to their attention as not being suitable material for the school.” 75

During 1943 about one student in ten was relieved for academic and nonacademic 

causes, some because of these background checks.76

Nevertheless, Rasmussen and his staff remained firm believers in the loyalty 

of their Nisei students and stood up to other government agencies on their behalf. 

In 1944 the school decided to send T5g. Terry Takeshi Doi overseas. Doi had 

been born in America, but his Issei parents took him to Japan at an early age. 

After schooling he was conscripted into the Imperial Japanese Army. After his 

discharge he returned home to California. According to U.S. law, by serving in 

the armed forces of a foreign state he had forfeited his citizenship. Nevertheless, 

MISLS accepted him. After graduation in the spring of 1943, he stayed at the 

school for another year. Finally, on 26 July 1944, he appeared before a U.S. district 

judge in St. Paul to apply for naturalization. “He wanted to meet the Japanese in 

combat,” he told the judge, “so he could prove his loyalty to America.” A Canadian woman refused naturalization at the same time, saying, “How can I be sworn 

in as an American citizen alongside a man who belonged to an army that’s now 

killing our boys?” The judge took a different view. He reinstated Doi as a citizen 

72 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 85; Hisashi Kubota, MISNorCal Bio, pp. 27–28. Kubota 

later served on Peleliu and Saipan and after the war worked as a chemist in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. 73 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 62–63. Harrington’s disclosure that Caucasian officers were 

instructed to keep watch over the Nisei enlisted men aroused controversy among MIS veterans. 

James Oda, “John Aiso and the MIS,” Pacific Citizen, 1 Jan 89, reprinted in James Oda, Secret 

Embedded in Magic Cables (Northridge, Calif.: J. Oda, 1993), pp. 119–24. 74 Elliott R. Thorpe, East Wind, Rain: An Intimate Account of an Intelligence Officer in the 

Pacific, 1939–49 (Boston: Gambit, 1969); Duval A. Edwards, Spy Catchers of the U.S. Army in the 

War with Japan (Gig Harbor, Wash.: Red Apple Publishing, 1994). 75 “Training History,” ann. 4, p. 9. 76 Some Nisei with unfavorable security determinations were reassigned to the 442d RCT. 

Pfc. George Gushiken, twenty-five, was removed from the top class for security reasons in October 1942. He later joined the 442d RCT and was killed in action in France on 7 November 1944. 

Hamano, Rocky Mountain Bio, p. 17.
116 NISEI LINGUISTS

and postponed the woman’s case to a later date. Local newspapers reported the 

incident approvingly.77

Civilian instructors made up the core faculty. The eight original instructors 

from Crissy Field grew to twenty over the next two years.78 Many, such as Yutaka 

Munakata, an electrical engineer hired in December 1942, were recruited from 

the camps. They averaged fifteen classroom hours per week and spent many additional hours grading tests and developing lessons. Aiso drew the civilian instructors close to him. They lived and worked together closely and kept separate from 

the enlisted instructors. The civilian instructors and their families formed a small, 

close-knit social group in a cluster of temporary wooden quarters known as Camp 

7.79 As the school expanded, civilian Nisei took over key jobs. When Aiso was 

commissioned in 1944 and appointed director of academic training, his closest associate, Paul T. Tekawa, a Kibei, replaced him as technical director. Akira 

Oshida became director of the Research and Liaison Section. Munakata became 

director of the Translation Section. Tsukahira became chair of the special division 

for students not of Japanese ancestry.

The faculty came mostly from the mainland, which caused some friction 

with Nisei from Hawaii. Moreover, while the Navy’s school at Boulder used Nisei 

women as instructors, MISLS did not allow women instructors “because of inadequate administrative facilities,” according to the school’s official history, and 

“because it was believed that Military Japanese could best be taught by men.” 80

In early 1944 Lt. Col. Moses W. Pettigrew in the Military Intelligence Division 

proposed to commission nine instructors and the school held a selection board for 

that purpose. But the War Department approved only one, Aiso, who received a 

direct commission to major in October 1944. At war’s end the school’s official history lamented that the Army had not commissioned more:

Problems of discipline among the student body would have been automatically solved. 

It would have added immeasurably to the prestige, dignity, and authority of the faculty. 

The instruction would have reflected this in increasing effectiveness and suasion. Classes 

77 WD Press Release, 22 Oct 45; and “Flayed by Skater, Doi ‘Proved Loyalty,’” St. Paul Dispatch, 24 Oct 45; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 276. Doi later served on Iwo Jima and earned 

the Silver Star. School officials helped other students obtain citizenship, including Ulrich Straus, 

a German Jew who had learned Japanese while his family lived in Tokyo from 1933 to 1940. 

Ulrich Straus, The Anguish of Surrender: Japanese POWs of World War II (Seattle: University of 

Washington Press, 2003), pp. x–xi; Falk and Tsuneishi, MIS in the War against Japan, pp. 76–78, 

125–26; “Training History,” ann. 10, sec. IV (2). 78 All civilian instructors were Nisei except for Richard N. McKinnon, who was born in Japan 

to a Caucasian father and a Japanese mother. MISLS Album, pp. 47, 135. After the war he earned his 

Ph.D. in Japanese literature and joined the faculty of the University of Washington. 79 MISLS Album, p. 39. 80 “Training History,” p. 14. MISLS may have tried to recruit Nisei women as instructors in early 

1943, but none was hired. Brenda L. Moore, Serving Our Country: Japanese American Women in 

the Military during World War II (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2003), p. 92. 

Shortly after the war’s end, MISLS retained three graduates of the Women’s Army Corps class as 

enlisted instructors.
CAMP SAVAGE, 1942–1943 117

would always be characterized by the authority and compulsion of a military formation. 

Absences from or tardiness to class, poor performance, malingering would carry the seriousness of a dereliction of duty.81

To increase his cadre, Aiso retained many of the top students, as well as a 

few World War I veterans too old for overseas service.82 He held over ten enlisted 

graduates from Crissy Field to be enlisted instructors and added a few more from 

each class. By the summer of 1944 their number had grown to several dozen. Most 

would have preferred overseas service, but the burgeoning enrollment gave school 

officials little choice.83

The need for new instructors intensified as instructors went to other assignments. In the summer of 1943 two Crissy Field graduates, S.Sgts. Thomas T. Sakamoto and Gene Uratsu, requested overseas assignment after a year as enlisted 

instructors. They got their wish and in September led sixty graduates to Australia. Within months Sakamoto was serving with the 1st Cavalry Division in 

the Admiralty Islands and Uratsu with the 158th RCT in New Guinea. By 1944 

Aiso allowed other long-time enlisted instructors to go. In January 1944, M.Sgt. 

Joe Y. Masuda, a Crissy Field graduate, led a team to Vint Hill Farms, Virginia, 

for signals intelligence work. A few months later M.Sgt. Morio Nishita, another 

81 “Training History,” ann. 1, para. 4–e, p. 5; Memo, Lt. Col. A. W. Stuart to Chief, Personnel 

Br, MIS, 18 Feb 44, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, WD Gen and Special Staffs, RG 165, NARA. 82 MISLS Album, p. 96 (photo). 83 Intervs, author with Thomas Sakamoto, 16 Nov 87, and with Arthur M. Kaneko, 23 Aug 95; 

Takashi Matsui, “Teaching at the Military Intelligence Service Language School,” in Falk and Tsuneishi, MIS in the War against Japan, pp. 4–8, 108–09; MISLS Album, pp. 46–47 (photo).

Faculty at Camp Savage, early 1943. Second row, starting seventh from left:

Dickey, Rasmussen, and Aiso.
118 NISEI LINGUISTS

Crissy Field graduate, replaced him. Kan Tagami, a November 1942 graduate who 

remained as an instructor for almost two years, left in July 1944 to join the 124th 

Cavalry in Burma. In September 1944 MISLS sent nine instructors to help set up 

the Pacific Military Intelligence Research Section (PACMIRS), a document-translation center in Maryland.

Through hard work and experience the instructors gradually learned how to 

teach Japanese. “None of us had any prior teaching experience, nor did we receive 

any kind of training on the artful management of teaching,” Uratsu recalled. “I did 

not have the slightest idea how to conduct class at the beginning. . . . After several 

months of painful trials and tribulations, I blossomed into some sort of teacher or 

facsimile thereof. A life of a teacher was not a bed of roses. . . . I ruefully discovered that life was much easier to be a student than a teacher.” 84

The instructors had a firsthand knowledge of Japanese language and culture 

virtually unavailable anywhere else in the United States. S.Sgt. Takashi Matsui, 

a Kibei student in the first Savage class, had completed eleven years of schooling in Japan followed by the University of Washington. When he graduated from 

MISLS in December 1942, he was promoted to staff sergeant and stayed on as an 

instructor.85 The instructors came to scorn those whose knowledge of Japanese 

84 Uratsu, MISNorCal Bio, p. 2. 85 Falk and Tsuneishi, MIS in the War against Japan, pp. 4–8, 108–09.

Top Class at Camp Savage, ca. 1943
CAMP SAVAGE, 1942–1943 119

was purely aesthetic or theoretical, such as Harold G. Henderson, an “Orientalist” 

on the faculty of Columbia University who had been active in the Japan Society, 

published translations of haiku poetry, and in 1943 published a handbook of Japanese grammar. When the 54-year-old Orientalist came to Camp Savage to give a 

lecture, his poor accent amused the Nisei faculty. Rasmussen appointed him director of academic training for a time, but he departed for Australia in mid-1944.86

During the school’s stay at Camp Savage, change was constant, most visibly 

in the construction of barracks, classrooms, and other facilities. Key personnel 

changed as well. The assistant commandant, Colonel Dickey, who had helped select 

the first Nisei students in 1941, transferred to Chungking in 1943 as G–2 of U.S. 

Army Forces in China under Lt. Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell.87 Lt. Col. Archibald W. 

Stuart, one of Americans who had been repatriated from Japan on the Gripsholm

in 1942, replaced him.

In June 1943 Aiso completely reorganized the school. He divided it by ability 

(upper, middle, and lower) and formed two nonteaching sections: the Translation 

Section and the Military Research and Liaison Section.88 In August he formed a 

special division for late-arriving students from Camp Shelby and for non-Nisei 

students. In January 1944 Aiso again reorganized the school, eliminating the 

ability groupings and forming four separate divisions. Under Yutaka Munakata 

the Translation Section became a graduate pool for Nisei waiting for assignment. 

(Munakata had formed the original section in November 1942.) As time went 

on, his students translated a variety of technical materials. While waiting for 

their orders (for weeks or sometimes months), the recent graduates labored over 

translating captured documents, partly for their intelligence value and partly to 

stay in practice.89

86 Harold G. Henderson, The Bamboo Broom: An Introduction to Japanese Haiku (Boston: 

Houghton Mifflin, 1934); Harold G. Henderson, Handbook of Japanese Grammar (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1943). Henderson’s grammar was used at MISLS. “Training History,” ann. 1, para. 

10c., pp. 14, 18. The MISLS Album lists Maj. Leon [sic] Henderson as director of academic training 

(p. 136), but he is otherwise unmentioned in the album or the official history. His departure in 1944 

probably allowed Rasmussen to commission Aiso for the vacant position. See also “Former Academic Director Now General MacArthur Education Officer,” Yaban Gogai, Nov 45, p. 11. Kihara, 

personal communication to author, 1999; James Oda, “John Aiso and the MIS,” Pacific Citizen, 

23–30 Dec 88, reprinted in Oda, Secret Embedded, pp. 119–24. After the war Henderson served as 

president of the Society of Japanese Studies and the Japan Society. 87 MISLS Album, p. 22 (photo reversed). 88 Ibid., p. 10; “Training History,” ann. 1, para. 9d, p. 9. See also ann. 6, History of J.O.B. [Japanese Order of Battle], Research & Field Liaison Section, p. 13. MID apparently did not give MISLS

a written mission statement until March 1944. Memo, ACS, G–2, to Commandant, MISLS, 22 Mar 

44, sub: Policy Directive, Military Intelligence Service Language School, Ofc of the Dir of Intel 

G–2, WD Gen and Special Staffs, RG 165, NARA. For a summary of Rasmussen’s expectations 

for the school as of April 1943, see Colonel Rasmussen, 29 Apr 43, Addenda for: Projects Contemplated at MIS Language School, Savage, Minnesota, during the Period May 1–August 1, 1943, Ofc 

of the Dir of Intel G–2, WD Gen and Special Staffs, RG 165, NARA. 89 “Training History,” ann. 13, Translation Section.
120 NISEI LINGUISTS

As the war continued, feedback from the field became more important than 

ever. Based on suggestions from the field, the school placed more stress on Japanese military terminology and authentic materials. English-language intelligence 

reports and “beautiful translations,” the official history said, “are of no value to us 

except as reference.” The history continued: “What we need most are the Japanese 

terms in Kanji. The original documents in Japanese are the very life and sustenance of our courses. The Army and Navy Readers put out in Japan for sale to the 

children have been of greater value as a source of teaching material than all the 

technical military translation we have stacked in our library.” 90

In August 1943 the school organized a Military Research and Liaison Section 

under Akira Oshida (later renamed the Japanese Order of Battle Section) to collect these sorts of materials.91 That summer Capt. John A. Burden sent the school 

“three sacks of documents, diaries, and one bundle of maps” from the Solomon 

Islands. Colonel Rasmussen wrote back gratefully, saying “the maps are of particularly great interest to us here, as the Japanese terminology of various geographical locations is now being taught here in great detail.” 92 Burden returned to 

the United States that autumn to give a course of lectures at the school.93 M.Sgt. 

Arthur S. Komori, who had worked in the Counter Intelligence Corps, flew from 

Australia to visit the school for several weeks in late December 1943.94

Munakata encouraged the graduates to write back to the school about their 

experiences overseas, and by 1944 he was receiving a steady stream of letters from 

the field.95 Wartime censorship prevented the Nisei from being very specific, but 

they commented freely on what had benefited them at the school. Some even found 

ways to ship back to the school captured Japanese documents, weapons, and other 

materials for classroom use. The school’s official history commented at war’s end 

that these letters “made it possible to revise, expand, or eliminate certain parts 

of the curriculum.” The history concluded with the recommendation that “any 

similar schools set up in the future be given access to captured documents while 

they are still recent, to official reports and to the expertise of observers fresh from 

the combat area. It is also recommended that liaison officers be sent out into the 

field from time to time to determine the language training needs of the theater or 

theaters of operations on the spot.” 96

In early 1944 Colonel Rasmussen himself toured the Pacific to observe what 

his graduates were doing. In April he visited Bougainville, where a Nisei language 

90 Ibid., ann. 1, para. 4–g. 91 Ibid., ann. 6. 92 Ltr, Kai E. Rasmussen to John A. Burden, 10 August 1943, Box 1, John A. Burden Papers, 

Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif. 93 Burden Papers, Hoover Institution Archives. Burden also smuggled a barrel of captured Japanese shoyu (soy sauce), which was hard to find in wartime Minnesota, for the instructors. 94 Interv, Ann Bray with Arthur S. Komori, 1955, copy in Arthur S. Komori File, Harrington 

Papers; newspaper clipping, ca. Feb 44, author’s files. 95 Munakata preserved these letters, which can be found in the Harrington Papers. “Training 

History,” p. 31. 96 “Training History,” p. 37.
CAMP SAVAGE, 1942–1943 121

team had just helped XIV Corps defeat the final Japanese assault. He also visited 

the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section in Australia.97

In 1943 a new problem threatened to interrupt the shipment of graduates overseas. The first students at Crissy Field all had completed basic training in 1941, 

before they joined the school. After graduation they were ready for immediate 

deployment overseas. In 1942 the school began enlisting Nisei directly from the 

camps with no previous military training. Upon graduation the school rushed some 

overseas with no additional training.98 For example, Harry Fukuhara, twenty-two, 

a Kibei from Seattle, volunteered for MISLS from the Gila River camp in November 1942. He had graduated from a Japanese high school and was an excellent Japanese-speaker. He graduated from MISLS in April 1943 and was rushed straight 

to Australia and then on to New Guinea with I Corps headquarters with no basic 

military training.99

To alleviate this problem, in July the school sent 127 graduates to Camp Shelby 

for eight weeks of basic training. At Camp Shelby, the 442d RCT had already been 

training for several months. The Savage graduates were designated Company S, 

and the training officers and NCOs came from the 442d RCT. By now the trainees 

were all technical sergeants (technicians, 5th grade), not privates, and they were 

in poor physical shape after six months in the classroom. For eight weeks they 

learned how to be soldiers. The training was physically grueling in the summer 

heat: The linguists clambered over obstacle courses and made twenty-mile forced 

marches under the watchful eyes of the 442d RCT sergeants and training officers.100 When they returned to Camp Savage in September, the first sixty went to 

Australia at once, the first large shipment in six months.

97 Ltr, General Douglas MacArthur to Chief of Staff, 8 September 1943, sub: Allied Translator and Interpreter Section. This requested that a senior officer of MISLS be sent to the theater for 

liaison: “Specific problems which require discussion include the best type of training for translators 

and interpreters who are to be used in this theater.” Interv, author with Roy T. Uyehata, 16 Nov 87; 

Uyehata, MISNorCal Bio, reprinted in World War II Reminiscences, ed. John H. Roush, Jr. (San 

Rafael, Calif.: Reserve Officers Association of the United States, 1995), pp. 257–60. Rasmussen’s 

trip observations are summarized in “History and Description of the Military Intelligence Service 

Language School,” pp. 32–33, Unpubl Ms, Military Intelligence Language School, Fort Snelling, 

Mich., Gen Records, 1943–1945, Records of the Army Staff, RG 319, NARA. 98 This was also true of some Caucasian officer candidates from the program at the University 

of Michigan (see below), such as Benjamin H. Hazard, who had studied Japanese for four years at 

the University of California at Los Angeles followed by six months at Michigan. After six more 

months at Camp Savage, he was commissioned and sent to the Central Pacific in early 1944 with no 

further military training. Hazard, remarks at San José State University, 18 Mar 00. 99 Intervs, John P. Finnegan with Harry K. Fukuhara, 5 Jun 90, U.S. Army Intelligence and 

Security Command, Fort Belvoir, Va., and Eric Saul and Loni Ding with Harry K. Fukuhara, 7 Jan 

86, NJAHS; “US Officer Feared Worst for Family Living in Japan,” San Francisco Chronicle, 5 

Aug 95; Falk and Tsuneishi, MIS in the War against Japan, pp. 97–98. Fukuhara received a direct 

commission in 1945; he retired in 1971 as a colonel without ever having received basic combat 

training. 100 “Training History,” ann. 1, para. 6–3, p. 7; Orville C. Shirey, Americans: The Story of the 

442d Combat Team (Washington, D.C.: Infantry Journal Press, 1946), p. 21. For personal accounts, 

see Nob Yamashita, “Fighting My Ancestors: The Autobiography of a Nisei,” p. 5, Unpubl Ms, n.d.; 
122 NISEI LINGUISTS

Graduates of later classes went to eight weeks of basic training at infantry 

replacement training centers at Camp Blanding, Florida; Fort McClellan, Alabama; and Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. The resumption of Selective Service 

for the Nisei in early 1944 alleviated the recruitment problem. Henceforth MISLS

could recruit from soldiers who had completed basic training. Thus the school’s 

graduates could deploy overseas immediately without additional training. As the 

war continued, the War Department lengthened basic combat training to seventeen 

weeks. But the Military Intelligence Division successfully argued that its students 

were urgently needed in the field and required only eight weeks of basic training.

Colonel Rasmussen and Director Aiso built a unique military language school 

that melded civilian and enlisted instructors, created an intensive curriculum, and 

trained a diverse student body to meet field commanders’ urgent needs for Japanese 

linguists. From its humble beginnings in 1941, MISLS had grown into a dynamic 

language school that graduated hundreds of Nisei soldier-linguists each year. 

Forming Language Teams

After each group of students completed training, the school’s leaders formed 

the graduates into teams to meet the requirements of field commanders. The process began when different theaters and headquarters requested Japanese-language 

personnel. These requests would flow into the Military Intelligence Division, 

where the Training Branch controlled school operations. This office, which never 

num­bered more than four officers, also oversaw the Military Intelligence Training 

Center at Camp Ritchie, Maryland.101 From time to time the division would send 

MISLS a message that field commanders required a certain number of graduates. 

Aiso would then convene his closest advisers to handpick men for each team. 

The selection committee was usually composed of Aiso, Munakata, Oshida, 

and Tekawa.102

Graduates normally received a thirty-day furlough before going overseas. 

Some waited for months for assignment. Others were rushed overseas without 

delay. Students from the mainland could visit their parents in the camps or brothers and sisters who had been released for employment or schooling elsewhere in 

the country.103 In the summer of 1943, when Roy T. Takai graduated from MISLS, 

he traveled to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where his father, a Sacramento furniture 

Interv, author with Takai, 30 Oct 87. The Navy did not require its Caucasian students at Boulder to 

complete basic combat training. 101 Trng Br Admin Records: Boxes 280–325, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, WD Gen and Special 

Staffs, RG 165, NARA. “Disposition of Graduates,” the working list of MISLS assignments is in 

Box 287. 102 “Training History,” ann. 2, Admin Section. 103 Uratsu, MISNorCal Bio. Before April 1943 Nisei soldiers may have been restricted from 

visiting the four camps located within the WDC.
CAMP SAVAGE, 1942–1943 123

store owner, was in a Department of Justice camp. Takai was not allowed inside 

the camp and instead had to talk to his father through the barbed-wire fence.104

The Western Defense Command did not allow any Nisei soldiers to enter the 

exclusion zone until April 1943. When two students, Satsuki Fred Tanakatsubo 

and Mamoru Noji, applied to see their parents in Tule Lake in November 1942, 

permission was denied. In protest Tanakatsubo refused to take the final exam; 

nevertheless, he was assigned to the 7th Infantry Division for the assault on Attu 

in May 1943. Noji joined the 43d Infantry Division in the Solomon Islands.105 In 

January 1943, when Sergeant Kanegai was waiting to go overseas, he requested 

permission to visit his father and family in Manzanar, where there had been rioting 

only a few weeks before. The officer refused, saying, “If I let you go, you’ll never 

come back.” Kanegai protested, but the officer stood his ground: “The machine 

guns are pointing inward. When you go there you’re going to notice that and you’re 

going to get bitter. They are going to be wearing the same uniform, and you’re not 

going to like it.”106

As the teams traveled by train from Fort Snelling to the port of embarkation, 

usually San Francisco or Los Angeles, they would occasionally be confused for 

Japanese prisoners of war. When Kanegai’s team arrived at Angel Island in San 

Francisco Bay in January 1943, a suspicious Army officer asked, “Where’d ya 

learn your English?” Kanegai replied, “Hell, I’m from California.”107

During 1942 the school sent out graduates in small groups as they became 

available. By 1943 the Military Intelligence Division fixed the team organization 

at ten Nisei and one officer. Usually led by a technical sergeant, teams included 

three each of translators, interpreters, and interrogators. School officials put 

together Kibei strong in Japanese and other Nisei strong in English.108 Later in 

the war, teams sometimes included Nisei veterans reassigned from other theaters. 

Until 1944 the War Department deployed teams to each combat division and separate regiment, as well as corps and army headquarters. Each division received 

a team of ten Nisei led by a Caucasian officer. During the first half of 1944 the 

War Department sent to the Central and Southwest Pacific Areas seven new divisions. After that, no fresh combat units deployed there; but the demand for Nisei 

linguists to serve with different headquarters and for other special requirements 

continued unabated.109 Soon after the language school arrived at Camp Savage, 

it dispatched a group of fourteen Nisei and three Caucasian officers who left in 

104 Roy T. Takai, MISNorCal Bio. In contrast, when Yoshiaki Fujitani visited the same Santa Fe 

camp in 1944, his father was allowed to leave the barbed-wire compound for the meeting. Yoshiaki 

Fujitani, “Kuni no On: Gratitude to My Country,” in Japanese Eyes, American Heart: Personal 

Reflections of Hawaii’s World War II Nisei Soldiers (Honolulu: Tendai Educational Foundation, 

1998), pp. 98–99. 105 Satsuki Fred Tanakatsubo, MISNorCal Bio. 106 Interv, author with Kanegai, 16 Sep 96. 107 Saga of the MIS; Interv, author with Kanegai, 16 Sep 96. 108 “Training History,” ann. 2, pp. 3–7. 109 The last division sent to the Pacific was the 96th Infantry Division, which arrived in Hawaii 

in July 1944 and fought on Leyte in October.
124 NISEI LINGUISTS

August 1942 with only three months of training. This group was divided between 

the Southwest Pacific and the South Pacific. When the remainder of the first Camp 

Savage class graduated in December 1942, it was parceled out to the three active 

theaters of war: 26 to the Southwest Pacific, 26 to the South Pacific, and 15 to 

Alaska (approximately). (Chart 1)

The largest customer was General Douglas MacArthur’s command, the 

Southwest Pacific Area. In June 1942 Capt. David Swift had led the first eight 

Crissy Field graduates to Australia. Another fourteen Nisei arrived with I Corps 

in September. In January 1943 twenty-six more left for Australia. Not satisfied, 

MacArthur’s headquarters demanded forty more Nisei as soon as possible. These 

demands from the field presented school officials with difficult choices. They had 

to balance the demands with the need to retain instructors for future school expansion. In this case, they decided to hold back the first two sections, which eventually 

provided 27 enlisted instructors. Sections 3 and 4, forty graduates in all, graduated 

Chart 1—Disposition of Enlisted Nisei MISLS Graduates, 1942–1944

ADC Alaska Defense Command

SOPAC South Pacific

SWPA Southwest Pacific Area

CBI China-Burma-India

POA Pacific Ocean Areas

AAF Army Air Forces

CONUS Continental United States

Source: Military Intelligence Service Language School, Disposition of Graduates, Trng Grp, Ofc of the Dir of 

Intel G–2, RG 165, NA.

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

ADC SOPAC SWPA CBI POA AAF CONUS

1944

1943

1942
CAMP SAVAGE, 1942–1943 125

on 10 April after four months of instruction and rushed to the Southwest Pacific.110

The school sent seventy more in January 1944. By the summer of 1944 MISLS had 

sent about 300 Nisei to the Southwest Pacific.

The South Pacific took graduates as well. Captain Burden led the first team 

to the theater in June 1942. By March 1943 the school had sent another thirtysix Nisei. By January 1944 over fifty Nisei graduates were serving in the South 

Pacific. However, as the war moved away from the region, the South Pacific Area 

was dissolved later that year and the Nisei linguists were reassigned.

The Alaska Defense Command took five graduates from the first class at Crissy 

Field in May 1942. After that, the school sent thirty-five more Nisei, with the last 

group leaving in July 1943 in time for the invasion of Kiska. The Alaska campaign effectively ended by the autumn of 1943, and most of the Nisei came back 

to the school. Some were reassigned to the South Pacific, while others remained 

as instructors.

In the Central Pacific, the island-hopping campaign did not begin until November 1943, when the 2d Marine Division assaulted Tarawa and the Army’s 27th 

Infantry Division assaulted Makin. The 7th Infantry Division prepared to assault 

Kwajalein in January 1944. MISLS sent twenty Nisei in the summer of 1943 

for the two Army divisions. After that, requirements grew by leaps and bounds. 

During 1944 the school sent 181 more Nisei to the Central Pacific, including the 

translation annex of the Joint Intelligence Center Pacific Ocean Areas formed in 

early 1944.

Although the War Department did not commit major ground forces to China 

or Burma, in November 1942 MISLS sent one graduate, Lt. Won-Loy Chan, a Chinese American, to serve as a liaison officer for General Stilwell.111 In the spring 

of 1943 MISLS sent Maj. Sheldon M. Covell and ten Nisei to the Air Intelligence 

School at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and from there to India. In July MISLS sent 

ten more Nisei directly to New Delhi. In August the Joint Chiefs of Staff committed to provide American air and ground support to the British campaign to 

recapture Burma. 

In August the school received a special requirement for fourteen enlisted men 

to form a special team to support the first American ground force for Southeast 

Asia, Project Galahad (later known as Merrill’s Marauders). For the team chief 

Rasmussen selected 1st Lt. William A. Laffin, born in Japan to an American father 

and Japanese mother. He grew up in Japan and was repatriated to the United States 

in 1942 on the Gripsholm. He accepted an Army commission and went to MISLS. 

Akiji Yoshimura recalled that Laffin “began asking me rather personal questions 

about the state of my health, marital status, language proficiency, interests, etc.” 

Soon after, “he offered the opportunity to volunteer for a secret and hazardous 

110 “Training History,” ann. 1, para. 6–2, p. 6. Interv, author with Harry T. Kubo, 11 Sep 96; 

Saga of the MIS. These teams were assigned one each to the 32d and 41st Infantry Divisions and 

two to Sixth Army Headquarters. 111 Won-Loy Chan, Burma: The Untold Story (Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1986).
126 NISEI LINGUISTS

mission.” Howard Furumoto recalled that Colonel Rasmussen told them only that 

it would hazardous and the unit was expected to take 70 percent casualties. “To a 

man, everyone said, Yes.”112 Chosen as team sergeant was S.Sgt. Edward Mitsukado, a court reporter in Honolulu before the war who had come to Savage by way 

of the 100th Infantry Battalion at Camp McCoy.

In November 1943 the Army Air Forces requested one Nisei to help the 1st Air 

Commando Group intercept Japanese radio transmissions. Shojiro Tom Taketa, 

twenty-two, was selected. Born and raised near Sacramento, California, Taketa 

was a junior college graduate who had volunteered for MISLS from Tule Lake.113

Dozens more Nisei were assigned to the Southeast Asia Translation and Interrogation Center in New Delhi. By early 1944 Assistant Commandant Dickey, as well 

as Majors Burden and Swift (the only two Caucasian graduates of the first class), 

were all in China. 

When the Office of War Information (OWI) launched a psychological warfare program in the China-Burma-India Theater in 1943, MISLS organized a special ten-man team that included journalists, artists, and men with labor-organizing experience. Chris Ishii, the graphic artist who designed the MISLS gopher 

emblem, was selected. Also selected was Kenny Yasui, a 1935 graduate of Waseda 

University in Japan, as well as Karl Yoneda, a 38-year-old Kibei. Yoneda had been 

born in Southern California but raised in Japan. While attending high school in 

Hiroshima in the early 1920s, he had become a passionate Marxist. In 1926 he 

returned to Los Angeles, joined the Communist Party (changing his name from 

Gozo to Karl), and became a journalist and labor organizer. He was stunned when 

the Communist Party of the United States of America suspended its few Japanese 

American members after Pearl Harbor. But this hardly dampened his ardor to fight 

fascism. In November 1942 he volunteered from Manzanar for MISLS, where he 

excelled in the classroom and was the honor graduate in June 1943. He was held 

back at first as an enlisted instructor because, Colonel Rasmussen told him, “it’s 

our policy not to send a known Communist overseas.” But then Rasmussen placed 

him on the OWI team.114

Also selected for the OWI team was another labor activist, Koji Ariyoshi, 

twenty-nine. He had been raised on a Hawaiian coffee farm and in the late 1930s 

112 Akiji Yoshimura, “Fourteen Nisei and the Marauders,” Pacific Citizen, 25 Dec 59, reprinted 

in MISNorCal Bios; Oguro, Sempai Gumi, pp. 85–96; Ichinokuchi, John Aiso and the M.I.S., pp. 

85–94. Interv, author with Howard Furumoto, 8 Dec 94; “A Kibei in the Burma Jungle,” Hawaii 

Herald, 6 Nov 81, reprinted in Oguro, Sempai Gumi, pp. 97–105; Thomas Tsubota, “From the 100th 

Battalion to Merrill’s Marauders,” in Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor, p. 69. 113 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 167, 224–25; “Volunteer from Relocation Camp Reported 

Fighting in Burma in First U.S. Air Commando Unit,” Pacific Citizen, 22 Apr 44; Tom Taketa File, 

Harrington Papers. 114 Karl G. Yoneda, Ganbatte; “Yoneda, Karl Goso,” in Japanese American History, pp. 362–

63; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 142; Yoneda, in Saga of the MIS. Several members of the 

OWI team later received field commissions, but Yoneda was told his paperwork was lost. Another 

MISLS student, James Oda, also recalls being investigated while at the school for his progressive 

political activities.
CAMP SAVAGE, 1942–1943 127

drifted to San Francisco, where he became a militant member of the San Francisco longshoreman’s union under Harry Bridges, the famous leader of the 1934 

longshoreman’s strike.115 By the summer of 1944 MISLS had sent 150 Nisei graduates to the China-Burma-India Theater for Project Galahad, the Office of War 

Information, the Army Air Forces, and other assignments.

Another specialized team was formed for the 11th Airborne Division. Although 

the division needed only ten Nisei, the school selected twenty-five volunteers for 

airborne training, thinking that more than half would wash out. The team leader, 

T.Sgt. Charles Tatsuda, had been born and raised in Alaska and graduated from the 

University of Washington. In February 1944 he led his large team to Fort Benning, 

Georgia, where they had four weeks of tough physical conditioning culminating in 

115 Koji Ariyoshi, From Kona to Yenan: The Political Memoirs of Koji Ariyoshi, ed. Alice M. 

Beechert and Edward D. Beechert (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2000); Hugh Deane, ed., 

Remembering Koji Ariyoshi: An American GI in Yenan (Los Angeles: U.S.-China Peoples Friendship Association, 1978); Koji Ariyoshi, “Let Truth Live in Action,” Hawaii Herald, 11 Nov 71, 

reprinted in Oguro, Sempai Gumi, pp. 223–34; “Ariyoshi, Koji,” in Japanese American History. 

James Oda, a Nisei Leftist journalist and labor activist, remained for the duration of the war at 

MISLS, where he taught a course on propaganda writing.

Colonel Rasmussen at Camp Savage with five Nisei who had just graduated from 

airborne training. The five were sent to the 11th Airborne Division.
128 NISEI LINGUISTS

five jumps. One Nisei weighed only ninety pounds, and his buddies joked that they 

had to put rocks in his pack so his parachute would open. In the end twenty-three 

Nisei pinned on jump wings.116

One of the new paratroopers, Mitsuo Usui, who had volunteered from the 

camp in Amache, traveled to Colorado to visit his father there before going overseas. When he walked into the camp, his starched uniform and smartly bloused 

boots left the school children awestruck. But his Issei father was not impressed: 

“You, stupid son. First you volunteered, then you went into the paratroops. You’re 

sure sticking your neck out,” his father told him. “But as you go, I say, give them 

hell and come back fighting.”117

When all the team members returned from their furloughs in September 1944, 

Tatsuda led eleven to join the 11th Airborne Division in New Guinea. Usui led the 

116 “Training Branch File, Paratroops,” Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, WD Gen and Special Staffs, 

RG 165, NARA. See also “Pfc. Bud Tsuyuki Now Member of Parachute Troops,” Pacific Citizen, 4 

Mar 44; “23 Nisei Soldiers Qualify for Army’s Paratroop Unit,” Pacific Citizen, 27 May 44; MISLS

Album, p. 52 (photo). Jim Mita and Mitsuo Usui, both in Saga of the MIS; Interv, author with Mits 

Usui, 9 Sep 96; George T. Ito, “Linguist-Paratroopers,” The Voice of the Angels (July 1996); Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 186 (photo), 202–03. MISLS Album says twenty-four Nisei attended 

airborne training (p. 10). In December 1943 the War Department activated another segregated 

airborne unit, the 555th Parachute Company, composed of African American soldiers. This was 

later expanded to a battalion. 117 Ano, “Loyal Linguists,” p. 280.

Kazuo Yoshida (left) and Clarence Ota visit the Heart Mountain camp in April 

1944, after graduating from the language school and airborne training.
CAMP SAVAGE, 1942–1943 129

others to Hawaii, where they joined Tenth Army headquarters for the invasion of 

Okinawa.118

In January 1944 the Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) asked for Nisei to do 

translation work near Washington, D.C. In response, enlisted instructor M.Sgt. Joe 

Y. Masuda led a team of twenty-five to Vint Hill Farms, Virginia. However, SIS

security officers screened out Masuda and half the group. The school quickly sent 

out replacements and in June sent yet another thirty Nisei to Vint Hill Farms.

Also in January the A–2 of Army Air Forces demanded sixty graduates to 

help intercept radio traffic from Japanese aircraft. Air Staff planners requested at 

least 275 enlisted men for new units called “radio squadrons, mobile,” including 

“as many Caucasians as possible.” MISLS responded by sending 109 Nisei graduates over the next six months. Many attended voice intercept training at Camp 

Pinedale in Fresno, California, before joining the squadrons in the Pacific.119

Senior War Department leaders well understood the importance of these 

teams and showed their appreciation as often as they could. General Strong, the 

War Department G–2, visited Camp Savage to speak to the more than 300 graduating Nisei on 18 June 1943. He had served in Japan as early as 1908, and the 

school used his book on so ̄sho, or “grass writing” script. After Pearl Harbor, General Marshall had called him to Washington to take over the Military Intelligence 

Division. Strong addressed the Nisei with an “inspiring speech” and wished them 

“great success.”120 Joseph C. Grew, the former ambassador to Tokyo, visited more 

than once. “The importance of such visits as these to the students, who for reasons 

of wartime security had to do their jobs out of the spotlight of publicity and who 

nevertheless needed to be impressed with the essentiality of those jobs, cannot be 

calculated,” the school’s history later commented.121

Another key leader in Washington was the school’s founder, Colonel Weckerling. In September 1943 Weckerling was called from the Western Defense Command to become Strong’s deputy for Intelligence and acting chief of the MIS, 

where he could watch over his creation behind the scenes. The most senior War 

Department civilian official to take an active interest in the school was Assistant 

Secretary of War McCloy. McCloy’s portfolio encompassed two issues that intersected with the MIS Nisei, intelligence and ethnic minorities. Throughout the war 

he was the War Department’s point man for Japanese American issues such as the 

118 Interv, author with Usui, 9 Sep 96; Saga of the MIS. Neither team made any combat jumps. 119 Memo, Enlisted Br, Ofc, Asst Ch of Air Staff, Pers, HQ, Army Air Forces, to Asst Ch of 

Staff, G–2, 8 Jan 44, sub: Transfer and Assignment to the Army Air Forces of Enlisted Men Qualified in Speaking and/or Translating the Japanese Language, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, WD 

Gen and Special Staffs, RG 165, NARA. “Army Announces U.S. Soldiers of Japanese Ancestry 

Assigned to Central California Camp,” Pacific Citizen, 26 Aug 44. 120 Strong’s speech was used for recruiting in the camps. “An Appeal,” “Training History,” ann. 

10, encl 10. 121 MISLS Album, p. 11. See also the photographs on pp. 18 and 52.
130 NISEI LINGUISTS

West Coast evacuation in 1942 and forming the 442d RCT in 1943, as well as all 

issues relating to African Americans.122

Forming language teams led to another sore point for the Nisei students. The 

Military Intelligence Division wanted an officer to lead each team, but the War 

Department would not award direct commissions to the Nisei graduates. Instead 

Caucasian officers, when available, were appointed to lead the teams. The first two 

Caucasian officers who graduated from Crissy Field in May 1942 each led a team 

into the Pacific. Because no more Caucasian officers were available, a third team 

went to Alaska under a Nisei sergeant. Three more Caucasian officers graduated 

with the special class in September, and the first large group of officers with seventeen Caucasians and two Chinese Americans graduated in December. During 

all of 1943 the school produced only twelve more Caucasian officer graduates.123

(See Table 1.)

One solution was to commission Caucasian enlisted students. In the autumn 

of 1942 Rasmussen secured direct commissions for Charles H. Fogg and Faubion 

Bowers; both went overseas as second lieutenants. “I was the first person in the 

United States Army,” Bowers later recalled, “who was ever commissioned on the 

basis of linguistic ability.”124 But Rasmussen and the Nisei instructors knew well 

that few Caucasian students could keep up with the Nisei in class. To meet this 

shortcoming, Rasmussen organized a preparatory course for Caucasian officer 

candidates that began in January 1943 at the University of Michigan.

This discrimination rankled the Nisei. From their point of view, the War 

Department did not trust them enough to grant them commissions as second lieutenants. It was especially grating for the college Nisei, who felt they met all the 

qualifications for commissioning but one—race. Their chances for commission 

diminished further when the War Department sharply reduced overall officer 

accessions after 1942.125

One day in the autumn of 1942 the Nisei were attending a lecture-demonstration on interrogation techniques. At one point the instructor suggested, “If the 

prisoner is a sergeant, borrow lieutenant bars and put them on so as to outrank 

the prisoner.” Roy Yoshio Ashizawa, a cocky 23-year-old from San Francisco, 

yelled out from the back of the hall: “Give us the bars!” “A hush fell over those 

assembled,” Ashizawa recalled. “One could hear a pin drop.” Aiso hurried out 

of the building and returned a few minutes later with Rasmussen, who told the 

122 Kai Bird, The Chairman: John J. McCloy, The Making of the American Establishment (New 

York: Simon & Schuster, 1992); Alan Brinkley, “Minister without Portfolio,” Harper’s (February 

1983): 31–46; Thomas P. Wolf, “McCloy, John Jay, Jr.,” in American National Biography, ed. John 

A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). 123 See Maj. William P. Jones Papers, Oberlin College, Ohio. 124 Falk and Tsuneishi, MIS in the War against Japan, pp. 11–13. Interv, D. Clayton James 

with Faubion Bowers, 18 Jul 71, D. Clayton James Collection, MacArthur Memorial, Library and 

Archives, Norfolk, Va. 125 Palmer et al., Procurement and Training of Ground Combat Troops, pp. 104–30; Samuel A. 

Stouffer et al., The American Soldier, vol. 1, Adjustment during Army Life (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1949), ch. 6.
CAMP SAVAGE, 1942–1943 131

students “in his Danish accent”: “I am goink to Vashington zis Zunday to zee 

about r-r-ratings for you boys.” Some time later Rasmussen announced only that 

graduates would be promoted to technician, 5th grade; no lieutenant’s bars were 

forthcoming.126

In May 1943 Rasmussen raised the issue with McCloy and asked for authority 

to commission a small number of Nisei from each class. McCloy concurred, as did 

General Strong; but Rasmussen’s initiative went no further.127 Rasmussen floated 

the idea again in February 1944 with Strong’s successor, Maj. Gen. Clayton Bissell, and requested commissions for Aiso and his top civilian instructors. As a 

result, Aiso was awarded his direct commission to major in October 1944. There 

were still no commissions for Nisei students, even for top graduates.128

Rasmussen was not able to obtain direct commissions for the Nisei graduates. However, by the autumn of 1944 he obtained quotas for selected Nisei at the 

officer candidate school (OCS). In October 1944 nine Nisei graduates, including 

three Merrill’s Marauders veterans, attended OCS at Fort Benning, Georgia. Most 

Caucasian graduates of language training were routinely awarded commissions 

without having to attend officer candidate school.129

. . .

In the first year at Camp Savage, Colonel Rasmussen and his administrators 

had built perhaps the largest Japanese-language school ever organized in America. 

The Nisei staff and instructors recruited hundreds of prospective students, mostly 

Nisei, drilled them in an intensive language training program, and formed them 

into balanced teams to meet the insatiable demands of field commanders. The MIS

Nisei who served overseas carried with them the imprint not only of the training 

they had received, but also of the school’s spirit.

126 When Ashizawa graduated in December 1942, he was sent to Alaska, where he remained for 

the next two-and-a-half years. Roy Y. Ashizawa, MISNorCal Bio, p. 4. 127 Memo, Brig. Gen. Hayes A. Kroner to McCloy, 10 May 43, ASW 352, Army Schools and 

Colleges, Class Ref Sub Files, 1940–1947, Ofc of the Asst Sec of War, RG 107, NARA. Memo, Lt. 

Col. A. W. Stuart to Ch, Pers Br, MIS, 18 Feb 44, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, WD Gen and Special 

Staffs, RG 165, NARA. Aiso recalled that the school tried twice to obtain commissions for civilian 

and enlisted instructors before he received his. Ichinokuchi, John Aiso and the M.I.S., p. 17. 128 Ichinokuchi, John Aiso and the M.I.S., p. 17. Aiso later credited Bissell with authorizing commissions for many MIS Nisei by the war’s end. Aiso, “Observations of a California Nisei,” p. 77. 129 Interv, author with Wallace S. Amioka, 8 Dec 94. Several other MIS Nisei earned commissions through the American officer candidate school in Australia. One Nisei from the 100th Infantry Battalion may have been selected for OCS in August 1943, but he went overseas with his unit 

before he could attend. Murphy, Ambassadors in Arms, p. 117.

5

Camp Savage, 1943–1944

Recruiting Students, 1943–1944

War Department policy toward Nisei enlistment took a dramatic turn in January 1943, when the War Department announced the formation of an all-volunteer 

Nisei combat unit, the 442d Regimental Combat Team (RCT). The War Department did not mention that many of the volunteers would be assigned not to the 

442d RCT but to the Military Intelligence Service (MIS). Hawaii Nisei greeted the 

announcement with great enthusiasm. War Department planners hoped for 1,500 

volunteers, but 10,000 rushed to enlist. Grown men wept when turned away for 

medical reasons or age. The Hawaiian Department raised the quota to 2,500, the 

maximum local authorities would allow given Hawaii’s manpower shortage, and 

agreed to permit 20 percent of Nisei soldiers serving in noncombat units in Hawaii 

to volunteer. Eventually 2,686 Hawaii Nisei enlisted and sailed for the mainland 

with great fanfare on 4 April 1943.1

In the mainland camps, the story was quite different. For months the War Relocation Authority (WRA) had been discussing how to grant selected individuals 

“leave clearance” to leave the camps for work or education, so long as they did not 

return to the West Coast. At the same time, the War Department needed a way to 

screen Nisei men in the camps for military service. Thus each adult inmate would 

register by means of a four-page questionnaire about his background, education, 

1

 Thomas D. Murphy, Ambassadors in Arms (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1954), pp. 

110–12; Masayo Umezawa Duus, Unlikely Liberators: The Men of the 100th and 442nd (Honolulu: 

University of Hawaii Press, 1987), pp. 58–62; Franklin S. Odo, No Sword To Bury: Japanese Americans in Hawai’i during World War II (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004), pp. 222–28.
134 NISEI LINGUISTS

activities, and the like. A joint Army-Navy-FBI board would review the questionnaires and decide who was eligible for leave or military service. The Military Intelligence Service Language School (MISLS) provided ten senior Nisei sergeants to 

assist the War Department teams in conducting the registration.

When the camps erupted in anger and confusion, the War Relocation Authority and War Department were caught by surprise. Emotions that had been building 

since the beginning of the evacuation boiled over in tense public meetings and 

demonstrations inside the camps. Much of the anger focused on the last two questions on the questionnaire:

27. Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty, 

wherever ordered?

28. Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully 

defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear 

any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, or any other foreign government, power, or organization?2

These questions were addressed to every adult male, regardless of citizenship 

or age. How should a 50-year-old Issei answer number 27? Would a simple “no” 

be interpreted as disloyal? How should a citizen Nisei answer number 28? Would 

a simple “yes” mean an admission that he had once held allegiance to the Japanese 

emperor? What would happen if parents and their children gave different answers?

The camps were thrown into turmoil. “Terrified parents of draft-age youths,” 

an observer later related, “immediately saw the entire proceeding as part of a plot 

to rob them of the only earthly possession left to them—their precious, obedient, 

gently brought-up sons, on whom they had pinned all their hopes and dreams.” 3

“People walked the roads, tears streaming down their troubled faces, silent and 

suffering,” a Nisei woman recalled. “The little apartments were not big enough 

for the tremendous battle that waged in practically every room.”4 One Issei father 

composed a dignified haiku to express his inner turmoil:

Son joined the army

Walked great distance

Alone in the sagebrush5

2

 Three slightly different questionnaires were administered. The questions above appeared on 

Selective Service Form DSS 304a (1–23–43) for male citizens. Jacobus tenBroek et al., Prejudice, 

War, and the Constitution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954), pp. 149–50. 3 Michi Weglyn, Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps (New 

York: Morrow Quill, 1976), p. 141. 4 Quote from Ibid. An extensive literature exists on the registration crisis. See Bill Hosokawa, 

Nisei: The Quiet Americans (New York: William Morrow, 1969), pp. 359–78; Personal Justice 

Denied: Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (Seattle: 

University of Washington Press, 1997), pp. 191–97.

5

 Sho Nakashima, untitled poem translated from the Japanese, in Only What We Could Carry: 

The Japanese American Internment Experience, ed. Lawson F. Inada (Berkeley, Calif.: Heyday 

Books, 2000), p. 178.
CAMP SAVAGE, 1943–1944 135

The War Department’s Bureau of Public Relations played a key role in managing the resulting crisis, led by veteran newsman Lt. Col. S. L. A. Marshall. Marshall scrambled to coordinate the registration and cope with all the problems. He 

would come to remember that time as “the roughest I had ever spent in the army, 

and far more trying than combat. I was dealing with mass hysteria, with thousands 

of sadly hurt people.” 6 The ten Nisei sergeants from MISLS were thrown into the 

thick of the turmoil. All ten received commendations that read: “Your assignment, 

no doubt, at times was very difficult and trying and required you to exercise the 

utmost of your ability in understanding and judgement [sic] in working towards 

the objective of your team’s mission.” 7

The recruiters had little success. Of the Nisei men in the camps, 28 percent 

answered “no” to both questions. Only 6 percent, or 1,181 male citizens of military 

age in the camps, volunteered. Of these, 805 were accepted. Most joined the volunteers from Hawaii in Camp Shelby to begin basic training in April.8

 Despite the 

turmoil, MISLS recruited several hundred more students from the camps, as the 

War Department gave the language school highest priority for Nisei recruits. More 

Nisei men were eligible than in the previous year, because in November 1942 

Congress had lowered the minimum age for military service from twenty-one to 

eighteen. MISLS recruiters returned to the camps more than once in 1943.

Although the language school had priority, the preferences of the Nisei themselves affected its ability to bring in new recruits. Few Nisei wanted to prove their 

loyalty by volunteering for what they perceived to be a desk job. If they were going 

to fight, they wanted to fight as infantrymen. They wanted to carry rifles, not dictionaries. For more than a year, Nisei could volunteer only for intelligence. Now 

they could join a combat outfit. Others told recruiters that their parents refused to 

allow them to volunteer. Going against their parents’ wishes was impossible. However, they told the recruiters, if the War Department reinstated Selective Service 

for the Nisei, it would be a different matter.

Robert K. Sakai, twenty-three, volunteered from a camp. A University of 

California student when the war broke out, Sakai had been evacuated to the camp 

in Poston, Arizona, where he was married in October 1942. In March 1943 he 

volunteered for the Military Intelligence Service (MIS). In June he and his bride 

6

 S. L. A. Marshall, Bringing Up the Rear: A Memoir, ed. Cate Marshall (San Rafael, Calif.: 

Presidio Press, 1979), pp. 53–54; Joseph D. Harrington, Yankee Samurai: The Secret Role of Nisei 

in America’s Pacific Victory (Detroit: Pettigrew Enterprises, 1979), pp. 95–98. Marshall subsequently visited the 442d RCT at Camp Shelby and later encountered MIS Nisei on Makin Island. 

See The Capture of Makin, 20–24 November 1943 (Washington, D.C.: War Department, Historical 

Division, 1946), p. 121. 7 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 97. 8 War Relocation Authority, WRA: A Story of Human Conservation (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1946), pp. 57, 202; tenBroek et al., Prejudice, War, and the Constitution, 

p. 168. The figure 805 includes all volunteers accepted for service from camps before Selective 

Service resumed in January 1944. See also Robert W. O’Brien, The College Nisei (New York: Arno 

Press, 1978), pp. 92–108. No camp exceeded 9.9 percent for the rate of induction of eligible male 

citizens; the median was 4.8 percent.
136 NISEI LINGUISTS

were released from camp; with $200 collected from friends and family, they took 

a train to Minneapolis and found a tiny apartment. Sakai’s draft board in Berkeley 

delayed his paperwork, so he was not officially enlisted until September; by that 

time the couple had almost exhausted their funds. Their first child arrived a few 

weeks later.9

The enlistment of Nisei volunteers and an expanded leave clearance program 

for Nisei to leave the camps for employment as well as education necessitated a 

new agency to administer loyalty reviews. The War Department set up the Japanese American Joint Board in Washington under Assistant Secretary of War John 

J. McCloy’s direct control. Representatives of the War Relocation Authority, FBI, 

Military Intelligence Division (MID), Provost Marshal General, and the Office of 

Naval Intelligence checked each questionnaire and other information about each 

detainee. The board eventually accumulated investigative files on 50,000 Japanese 

Americans.10 On 1 July 1943, the MID Counter Intelligence Group established a 

Japanese Section “devoted to the solution of all intelligence problems concerning 

military personnel of Japanese ancestry within the Army.”11 The War Department 

directed the Hawaiian Department to establish a similar program. In May 1944 the 

interagency board and Counter Intelligence Group were consolidated under the 

Office of the Provost Marshal General as the Japanese American Branch, which 

moved to San Francisco in December 1944 to prepare for the return of Japanese 

Americans to their homes on the West Coast.

Determined to add Nisei to the war effort, the War Department took pains to 

counter the perception of disloyalty. The War Department’s press release of 28 January 1943, under the headline, “Loyal Americans of Japanese Ancestry To Compose Special Unit in Army,” used the word loyal or loyalty four times in a 300-word 

statement. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s letter of 1 February drafted by the 

Office of War Information used the word loyal six times in four paragraphs.

Lt. Gen. John L. DeWitt on the West Coast remained a staunch advocate of 

exclusion. Public opinion supported his stance, as evidenced by the November 1942 

election of Earl Warren as governor of California. In April 1943, as the 442d RCT

9 Robert K. Sakai, “From Relocation Camp to Military Service,” in Japanese Eyes, American 

Heart (Honolulu: Tendai Educational Foundation, 1998), pp. 121–34, 429–30. After the war, Sakai 

earned his Ph.D. in Asian history from Harvard and became professor of history at the University 

of Hawaii. 10 Japanese-American Branch, Office of the Provost Marshal General, “History of Japanese 

Program, 20 January 1943 to 1 September 1945,” Unpubl Ms, n.d., U.S. Army Center of Military 

History (CMH) files; Office of the Provost Marshal General, “World War II: A Brief History,” pp. 

289–310, Unpubl Ms, n.d., CMH files; tenBroek et al., Prejudice, War, and the Constitution, pp. 

142–60; Personal Justice Denied, pp. 197–204. From January 1943 until May 1944, the board’s 

executive secretary reported directly to McCloy. Memo, McCloy, 17 May 44, Folder: Adjutant 

General, Box WD1, Ser. 8: War Department, John J. McCloy Papers, Amherst College Archives, 

Amherst, Mass. 11 Office of the Provost Marshal General, “History of Military Clearance Program (Screening 

of Alien Japanese and Japanese American Citizens for Military Service),” p. 23, Unpubl Ms, n.d., 

CMH files; Office of the Provost Marshal General, “World War II,” pp. 247–88.
CAMP SAVAGE, 1943–1944 137

began training, a congressional committee called DeWitt to justify the removal and 

exclusion. Newspapers reported his blunt testimony, which made clear his underlying rationale: “A Jap’s a Jap. They are a dangerous element, whether loyal or not. 

There is no way to determine their loyalty. . . . It makes no difference whether he 

is an American; theoretically he is still a Japanese and you can’t change him . . . by 

giving him a piece of paper.”12

DeWitt’s unrepentant remarks aroused a storm of controversy inside and outside the camps. At Camp Savage, students and staff alike were stunned, recalling 

that originally the school had been established within DeWitt’s own headquarters.13 Dan Nakatsu, a Hawaii Nisei who came to Camp Savage from the 442d 

RCT in July 1943, spoke for many when he recalled: “These stinging words of 

contempt were seared into the minds of Nisei in uniform and became symbolic of 

the racial hate and prejudice they would have to overcome” [emphasis in original]. 

The saying, “‘We’ll have to make him eat those words,’” Nakatsu wrote, “was not 

an uncommon thought as the Nisei went overseas, to Europe and the Pacific.”14

Assistant Secretary of War McCloy worked to undercut DeWitt. A few weeks 

after DeWitt made his remarks, McCloy sent his executive officer and Col. Kai E. 

Rasmussen to speak to a Senate committee investigating the camps. Rasmussen 

was introduced as “an organization commander who has had [Nisei soldiers] for 2 

years; he knows them better than any officer in the United States Army.” Rasmussen assured the senators, “Their record for loyalty, in my opinion, is unquestioned.” 

He did admit that he had found it necessary to separate 4–5 percent of the Nisei 

students. “Of the people who came to me from the camps, some of them were sullen and surly. After a couple months of Army treatment, they started straightening 

up. After 3 or 4 months, I considered them enthusiastic; they had regained their 

sense of perspective, and were well-conducted loyal soldiers.”15

12 Los Angeles Times, 14, 19 Apr 43, cited in Allan R. Bosworth, America’s Concentration 

Camps (New York: Bantam, 1968), p. 166. See also Carey McWilliams, Prejudice: JapaneseAmericans, Symbol of Racial Intolerance (Boston: Little, Brown, 1944), p. 251. The phrase “A 

Jap’s a Jap” does not appear in the transcript of DeWitt’s testimony but was apparently made in a 

separate press conference and widely reported at the time. McWilliams, Prejudice, p. 116; Personal 

Justice Denied, pp. 221–22. 13 The draft of the MISLS Press Release at the end of the war noted that the Nisei students 

were “stunned” at DeWitt’s remarks, but the phrase was removed from the version released on 22 

October 1945. Compare draft Press Release, sec. 2, p. 3, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, Record Group 

(RG) 165, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), p. 5, and final Press Release, 

Japanese Evacuation Research Study (JERS), pt. 2, sec. 2, reel 20, frame 0037, Bancroft Library, 

University of California, Berkeley.

14 Tad Ichinokuchi, ed., John Aiso and the M.I.S.: Japanese-American Soldiers in the Military 

Intelligence Service, World War II (Los Angeles: Military Intelligence Service Club of Southern 

California, 1988), p. 83. 15 U.S. Senate, Committee on Military Affairs, Japanese War Relocation Centers: Report of the 

Subcommittee on Japanese War Relocation Centers to the Committee on Military Affairs (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1943), pp. 13–14; also quoted in Galen M. Fisher, “What 

Race-Baiting Costs America,” The Christian Century (8 September 1943).
138 NISEI LINGUISTS

With the decision to accept volunteers for the 442d RCT, MISLS began recruiting from Hawaii. In March 1943 the assistant commandant, Lt. Col. Archibald W. 

Stuart, flew to Hawaii to screen the volunteers. There, he met with Col. Kendall 

J. Fielder, the G–2 for Headquarters, Army Forces Pacific Ocean Areas, and other 

officials who supported using Nisei in intelligence work.16 Because the Military 

Intelligence Service could waive physical and age limitations, it could enlist Nisei 

previously rejected for military service. The MISLS recruiters signed about 250 

Nisei, or about 10 percent of the March 1943 volunteers from Hawaii.17 One recruit, 

Honolulu attorney Yoshio Shitabata, thirty-four, who had tried unsuccessfully for 

the 442d RCT, now told a reporter, “I welcomed this opportunity to get into the 

fight.” Others had served in the Varsity Victory Volunteers.18 A few fathers and 

sons enlisted together, like Benjamin M. Tashiro, forty-five, an attorney and World 

War I veteran who signed up with his seventeen-year-old son.19

Two Hawaii Nisei had experience in broadcasting. Another volunteer, Masao 

H. Onishi, twenty-five, had worked as a Japanese-language radio announcer. 

When he heard the Army was looking for Nisei who could speak Japanese, he took 

a written language exam, “just like in Japanese school. I liked Japanese so much 

I passed the test with flying colors.” 20 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.” 21

Takejiro Higa, twenty, had been born in Hawaii but had been raised by relatives in Okinawa from age two to sixteen. His English-language skills were minimal, but he volunteered nonetheless, despite what he later recalled as “terrific 

16 Andrew Lind, Hawaii’s Japanese: An Experiment in Democracy (Princeton: Princeton 

University Press, 1946); John A. Rademaker, These Are Americans: The Japanese Americans in 

Hawaii in World War II (Palo Alto, Calif.: Pacific Books, 1951). 17 Accounts vary from 243 to 270 for the Nisei selected for MISLS from Hawaii at this time. 

MISLS, “Training History of the Military Intelligence Service Language School,” ann. 10, Personnel Procurement Office, encl 4, Unpubl Ms, 1946, in CMH files, reports about 250 (p. 6). Lind, 

Hawaii’s Japanese, p. 155, reports that a total of 600 students were selected in June and November 

1943. 18 Odo, No Sword To Bury; Yutaka Nakahata and Ralph Toyota, “Varsity Victory Volunteers: A 

Social Movement,” Social Process in Hawaii 8 (November 1943): 29–35; Lind, Hawaii’s Japanese, 

pp. 128–67. 19 John F. Aiso, “Observations of a California Nisei,” Interv with Marc Landy, University of 

California at Los Angeles, 1971, pp. 74–75. 20 “Masao ‘Harold’ Onishi: Former Instructor Shares Memories,” Hawaii Herald, 2 Jul 93. 21 “243 Inducted Here into Interpreter Unit,” Honolulu Advertiser, 14 Jun 43; “Japanese Translator List Issued by Army,” Honolulu Advertiser, 3 Jul 43.
CAMP SAVAGE, 1943–1944 139

turmoil, psychologically,” to think he might come face-to-face with someone he 

knew, a relative or classmate.22

On 12 June 1943, the Army held a ceremony at Schofield Barracks for the 243 

Hawaii Nisei chosen for language training. They left Honolulu for the mainland 

three days later on a Matson liner, the SS Lurline. This group made up half the 

class that started at Camp Savage in July 1943. The Hawaii Nisei, most of whom 

had never visited the mainland, brought a special flavor to the language school. 

However, tensions quickly arose between Hawaii and mainland Nisei. The Hawaii 

Nisei considered the mainlanders too quiet and reserved, calling them kotonks. 

The mainlanders considered the Hawaii Nisei too boisterous and quick to fight, 

calling them Buddhaheads. These tensions had diverse sources, ranging from the 

Hawaii Nisei’s pidgin English to their cocky self-confidence. Most mainlanders 

had grown up in quite different circumstances and had suffered the internment 

experience.23

The Hawaii Nisei made a different impression on the local Minnesotans as 

well. On their first weekend pass, some of the Hawaii Nisei went into a Minneapolis restaurant and ordered sashimi, a Japanese delicacy. Once they explained to the 

chef that they really did want thinly sliced raw fish, he complied. The following 

Monday school officials ordered them to stop ordering the delicacy, explaining 

that freshwater fish might harbor parasites.24

In November 1943 MISLS sent five Hawaii Nisei back to the islands for 

another recruiting trip, led by T.Sgt. Edwin I. Kawahara of Waipahu, Oahu. The 

team’s star recruiter was Masaji Marumoto. The Honolulu attorney had enlisted in 

June 1943, telling a reporter, “In volunteering for active duty as an interpreter and 

translator, every young patriotic American of Japanese ancestry can make an individual contribution of loyalty and skill to America.” 25 Before that, Marumoto had 

served as a confidential liaison between the Japanese community and law enforcement. When Kawahara returned in Hawaii in November, Army intelligence officers asked him to help interrogate some prisoners of war held there. Also held in a 

nearby compound were hundreds of Japanese Issei whom authorities had detained 

after the Pearl Harbor attack. One, whom Kawahara recognized as the principal of 

his Japanese-language school, had languished behind barbed wire for two years. 

Kawahara obtained the man’s release, saying “he was an ally, not an enemy,” who 

should be given credit for the “numerous qualified Japanese-language specialists 

22 “Takejiro Higa: An Okinawan Caught in the Battle of Okinawa,” Hawaii Herald, 2 Jul 93, 

p. A–24; Interv, author with Takejiro Higa, 7 Dec 94. 23 Murphy, Ambassadors in Arms, pp. 113–16; Tamotsu Shibutani, The Derelicts of Company K: A Sociological Study of Demoralization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 

pp. 81–83. 24 “Masao ‘Harold’ Onishi.” 25 “More Volunteers for Active Duty as Interpreters and Translators Sought by Army” and 

“Service Station Manager and Taxi Driver Volunteer,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, [15 Nov 43?].
140 NISEI LINGUISTS

from Hawaii” now serving in the MIS.

26 On 3 January 1944, the Army swore in 

over 300 Hawaii Nisei for language training, including sixty students at the University of Hawaii.27

Although Army and Navy intelligence agencies in Hawaii needed Japanese 

linguists, they were unwilling to use Nisei in more than a limited capacity. Neither the local Army, Navy, nor Admiral Chester W. Nimitz’s Pacific Ocean Areas 

headquarters used Nisei in any significant intelligence capacity until much time 

had passed. Not until the spring of 1944 did the Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific 

Ocean Areas, accept a group of Nisei as translators.28

Now that the Nisei could volunteer for the 442d RCT, language school recruiters encountered a new form of reluctance to join. Many Nisei were interested only 

in combat duty, not in some “rear echelon” job as a translator. However, the Military Intelligence Service had top priority over all Japanese American manpower 

and even authorized the school to choose students from the volunteers in training 

for the 442d RCT at Camp Shelby, Mississippi. In July 1943 Colonel Rasmussen 

personally led the recruiting team to Mississippi accompanied by civilian instructors Shigeya Kihara and Tetsuo Imagawa.

Some Nisei at Camp Shelby resisted the recruiters. Hawaii Nisei Daniel 

Inouye, nineteen, passed the qualifying exam but pleaded with the Nisei recruiting 

sergeant not to force him into language training. He was allowed to stay with his 

friends in the 442d RCT. Another Hawaii Nisei, Ted T. Tsukiyama, twenty-three, 

had been a student at the University of Hawaii when the war broke out. Like the 

other ROTC cadets, he was called into the Hawaii Territorial Guard. When the Territorial Guard dismissed all Nisei, he helped form the Varsity Victory Volunteers. 

In March 1943 he volunteered for the 442d RCT. When the MISLS recruiters came 

to Camp Shelby, he “purposely flunked the test they gave me because I didn’t want 

to leave my group,” Tsukiyama recalled; “but they took me anyway.” The MISLS

laid claim to about 250 Nisei, nearly 10 percent of the 442d RCT’s strength; the 

class from Camp Shelby was activated at Camp Savage on 23 August.29

26 Ted T. Tsukiyama et al., eds., Secret Valor: M.I.S. Personnel, World War II Pacific Theater, Pre–Pearl Harbor to Sept. 8, 1951 (Honolulu: Military Intelligence Service Veterans Club of 

Hawaii, 1993), pp. 59–60. 27 Sources vary on the number recruited on this trip. “Training History,” ann. 10, sec. IV, p. 7, 

says about 340; other sources range from 280 to 330. Ltr, Masao Tanino to Joseph Harrington, 24 

March 1978, in Ishizo Tanimura File, Joseph D. Harrington Papers, National Japanese Historical 

Society (NJAHS), San Francisco, Calif. 28 During the war, an unknown number of Hawaii Nisei worked for the Army, Navy, and FBI

in counterintelligence and censorship activities to monitor the Japanese population in Hawaii; but 

little is known about this group. 29 Ted T. Tsukiyama, in We Remember Pearl Harbor: Honolulu Civilians Recall the War Years, 

1941–1945, ed. Lawrence R. Rodriggs (Newark, Calif.: Communications Concepts, ca. 1991), pp. 

243–56; Daniel K. Inouye, Journey to Washington (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967), 

pp. 92–93. The regimental history does not mention this recruitment. Orville Shirey, Americans

(Washington, D.C.: Infantry Journal Press, 1946), pp. 20–21. The movie version, Go For Broke, 

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1951, alludes briefly to MISLS recruitment at Camp Shelby.
CAMP SAVAGE, 1943–1944 141

The Military Intelligence Service was not the only military agency recruiting from Camp Shelby. In November 1943 the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) 

sent Daniel C. Buchanan, the OSS Japan desk officer.30 Looking for men of high 

intelligence and athletic ability, he selected four Nisei lieutenants and fifty enlisted 

men. Of these, four officers and twenty enlisted men were selected in January 

1944, among them 1st Lt. Ralph T. Yempuku, a University of Hawaii graduate and 

athletic instructor. The OSS was willing to overlook the fact that his entire family, 

including three brothers, was living in Japan. All the officers and ten enlisted men 

completed the OSS training program, which included communications training, a 

special Japanese-language course at MISLS, and commando training on Catalina 

Island off the California coast. In October 1944 they flew to India.31

Recruitment of Nisei for the Military Intelligence Service remained a challenge. In June 1943 the MISLS sent Nisei sergeants back into the internment camps 

to seek new students, instructing them to spread “a true and undistorted picture 

of the school.” 32 School officials prepared a pamphlet in English and Japanese, 

“An Appeal to All Americans of Japanese Ancestry and Their Parents,” which 

explained to the Issei parents that MISLS was not a “spy school.” 33

Nisei soldiers continued to endure suspicion and hostility despite positive news 

coverage of the 442d RCT. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt made a grand 

tour across the country in April 1943 to visit military bases and defense plants, 

he stopped at Fort Riley, Kansas. On the day of his visit, Easter Sunday, the post 

commander confined all Nisei soldiers, about two hundred, to their barracks. The 

Nisei were outraged, but they could do little. The following year at Fort McClellan, 

Alabama, Nisei recruits undergoing basic training complained of discrimination 

30 Anthony C. Brown, ed., The Secret War Report of the OSS (New York: Berkley Publishing, 

1976), pp. 111–13, 119–33. See also the documents in Commission on Wartime Relocation and 

Internment of Civilians (CWRIC) Papers, reel 1, frame 816, and reel 4, frames 745–46, Bancroft 

Library. Buchanan was an authority on Eastern religions and had authored a study on a major 

Shinto deity. Daniel C. Buchanan, Inari: Its Origin, Development, and Nature (Tokyo: Asiatic 

Society of Japan, 1935).

31 Shirey, Americans; Rademaker, These Are Americans, p. 68; Tomi Kaizawa Knaefler, Our 

House Divided: Seven Japanese American Families in World War II (Honolulu: University of 

Hawaii Press, 1991), pp. 88–95; “Ralph Yempuku,” Hawaii Herald, 2 Jul 93, p. A–27; Ralph Yempuku, “OSS Detachment 101, CBI Theater,” in Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor, p. 75; Interv, Andrew 

Cox with Ralph Yempuku, n.d., author’s files; Fumio Kido, Biography, Military Intelligence Service 

Club of Northern California (this and similar biographies hereafter cited as MISNorCal Bios).

James Y. Tanabe was also recruited directly from Camp Shelby in 1943. After completing training in counterintelligence at Havre de Grace, Maryland, and in signals intelligence at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, in September 1943 he was shipped to the South Pacific, where he served as a 

warrant officer with the Australian Army and the U.S. Marine Corps in tactical signals intelligence, 

translating, and interpreting. Stanley L. Falk and Warren M. Tsuneishi, eds., MIS in the War against 

Japan (Washington, D.C.: Japanese American Veterans Association of Washington, D.C., 1995), 

pp. 32–33, 127–28. 32 MISLS Ltr, 21 June 1943, in Gene Uratsu File, Harrington Papers. 33 “An Appeal to All Americans of Japanese Ancestry and Their Parents,” 23 Jun 43, and Press 

Release, 2 Jul 43, in “Training History,” ann. 10, p. 6, encls. 10, 11. See also reel 20, sec. 2, pt. 2, 

frames 35–36, 49, JERS, Bancroft Library.
142 NISEI LINGUISTS

and harassment. Finally, on 20 March 1944, more than two dozen refused an order 

to report for training. Twenty-eight were eventually court-martialed.34

The existence of the 442d RCT at Camp Shelby had a noticeable effect on 

student morale at Camp Savage. For some Nisei, the risk of being sent to the 

infantry spurred them to study harder. (One former student remembers that John 

Aiso threatened to transfer him to the 442d RCT unless he improved his grades.)35

Other students wanted nothing better than a transfer. T.Sgt. Sadao S. Munemori, a 

Kibei from Los Angeles, enlisted for language training from Manzanar in November 1942. When the 442d RCT was formed, he repeatedly asked for a transfer. At 

first Aiso refused and assigned him to menial jobs. But Munemori persisted and 

finally got his wish, taking a reduction in grade from technical sergeant to private, 

first class. He accompanied the 442d RCT to Italy and France, where he fought in 

an infantry squad for ten months. On 5 April 1945, during the final assault on the 

German defenses in northern Italy, he threw himself onto a German hand grenade 

to protect two comrades. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor as 

the only member of the 442d RCT to be so honored at the time.36

From time to time the Army would send Chinese Americans to the MISLS for 

Japanese-language training. The first class at Crissy Field included two Chinese 

American reserve lieutenants, Won-Loy Chan and Robert F. Pang. Officers in the 

Military Intelligence Service hoped that their knowledge of written Chinese would 

help them learn Japanese kanji. In January 1943 MISLS began planning for more 

Chinese American students. The special class began in July 1943 with fifty-two 

students, but the experiment was not judged successful. The school’s official history noted “that although a knowledge of the Chinese was some aid in assimilation 

of the Japanese, it also carried with it . . . great psychological obstacles which in the 

case of most of the [Chinese American] students whose scholastic ability was generally low made it very difficult if not impossible.” Eventually, most were placed 

into separate sections. Fewer than half graduated with their Nisei classmates, and 

34 McCloy directed the War Department Inspector General to investigate the Fort Riley incident 

and on 23 September 1943 expressed his displeasure to the War Department G–3: Folder Assistant 

Secretary of War (ASW) 342.18, “Enlistment, J. A. (Divisions),” Ofc of the ASW, RG 107, NARA; 

McWilliams, Prejudice, p. 218; Shibutani, Derelicts of Company K, pp. 96–97; Loni Ding, prod., 

The Color of Honor, documentary film, Vox Productions, 1987; James Omura, “Japanese American 

Journalism during World War II,” Frontiers of Asian American Studies, ed. Gail M. Nomura et al. 

(Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1989), pp. 71–77. After the war, President Harry S. 

Truman pardoned the Fort McClellan rebels.

35 Akira Nakamura, MISNorCal Bio. Nakamura responded by studying harder, “to prove he 

was not malingering.” He graduated in December 1944, “after nine months of gruesome studying 

and training,” and served on Okinawa. 36 War Department Bureau of Public Relations, Press Release, “Japanese-American Awarded 

Medal of Honor Posthumously,” 17 Mar 46; “Nation’s Highest Honor Given Japanese American 

Who Gave Life To Save Comrades in Italy” and Editorial, Pacific Citizen, 16 Mar 46; Hosokawa, 

Nisei: The Quiet Americans, pp. 412–13. In 2000 President William J. Clinton awarded the Medal 

of Honor to twenty other soldiers of the 100th Infantry Battalion and 442d RCT by upgrading their 

previous awards of the Distinguished Service Cross and Silver Star.
CAMP SAVAGE, 1943–1944 143

some required up to twelve additional months before they could graduate.37 The 

February 1944 class included nineteen more Chinese Americans.38

Another source of Japanese speakers was the 9,000 Korean immigrants and 

their families living in Hawaii and the West Coast when war broke out. Most 

educated Koreans spoke Japanese because Korea had been under Japanese occupation since 1910. Before the war the U.S. government treated Korean immigrants 

as Japanese nationals; but after Pearl Harbor, the United States quickly reversed 

its position. Korean immigrants became a small but important source of Japanese 

speakers for the Army and Navy.39

Using Korean Americans as military linguists or even as instructors had 

some shortcomings. Korean immigrants often spoke Japanese with a distinct 

accent, and many Nisei exhibited the traditional Japanese disdain for Koreans and 

the Korean language. The Nisei instructors at MISLS were amused to hear the 

Korean-accented Japanese sometimes used by Caucasian officers who had begun 

their studies at Berkeley, Boulder, or Michigan with Korean instructors. Nevertheless, in the spring of 1943 the MISLS began recruiting Korean American students through Korean community groups in Hawaii and the mainland. The exiled 

Korean nationalist leader Syngman Rhee nominated sixty Korean Americans to 

serve in the OSS, but he urged the War Department not to place Korean American students in classes with Japanese American instructors. “The enmity that the 

Koreans feel for the Japanese and vice versa,” he wrote, “is so ingrained that it is 

beyond their control.”40 By the summer of 1943 two Korean American officers 

and ten enlisted men were studying Japanese at Camp Savage. In 1944 MISLS

provided seven Korean American graduates for Army Air Forces mobile radio 

squadrons.

Nisei women, many of whom spoke excellent Japanese, offered another source 

of students. As soon as the War Department allowed male Nisei to volunteer, the 

director of the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), Col. Oveta C. Hobby, asked Assistant Secretary McCloy to allow Nisei women to volunteer. McCloy told her there 

was “no reason it could not be done” and agreed to look into the matter. In March 

1943 Hobby sent recruiting teams to the camps, hoping to find 500 women volunteers. Her teams were just as disappointed as those looking for Nisei men. Most 

Issei parents were reluctant to give up their sons; they resisted even more allowing 

their daughters to serve.41

37 “Training History,” para. 6–4, p. 8, and ann. 10, sec. IV.(6). 38 The February 1944 class included Lim P. Lee, who had been born in Hong Kong. When he 

was eight months old, his parents brought him to San Francisco. He served as postmaster of San 

Francisco from 1967 to 1980. Thomas W. Chinn, Bridging the Pacific: San Francisco Chinatown 

and Its People (San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of America, 1989), pp. 258–60. 39 Memo, The Adjutant General to CG Army Ground Forces (AGF), 23 Apr 42, sub: Soldiers of 

Korean Parentage, AG 014.311, Folder: AGF 291.2, Races (Restricted), Rcds of HQ AGF, RG 337, 

NARA. Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore, pp. 363–67. 40 “Training History,” ann. 10, sec. IV, p. 6. 41 McCloy Diary, 16 Jan 43, File “1943: III–11, Enemy Aliens,” Ser. 2, WD Diaries, McCloy 

Papers; Mattie E. Treadwell, The Women’s Army Corps, U.S. Army in World War II (Washing-
144 NISEI LINGUISTS

When MISLS recruiters visited the camps in 1943, Nisei women expressed 

an interest in attending the language school. Indeed, many of their brothers were 

already serving in the 442d RCT or the MIS. When Eleanor Roosevelt visited the 

Gila River camp in April 1943, some Nisei women approached her to ask how they 

could join the WAC. A recruiter from MISLS took the next step: “Knowing that 

their chances were remote at that time, yet curious to check on their qualifications, 

I [gave] several of them examinations, and each one passed with flying colors. 

They were better qualified for this school than many of the boys we accepted.” 

In the spring of 1943 MISLS recruiters accepted several Nisei women as civilian 

translators for the Army Map Service in Cleveland, Ohio, after a two-week orientation at Camp Savage. Sergeant Kawahara made a recruiting trip to Hawaii in 

October 1943 and reported that “a number of inquiries were received from women 

of Japanese ancestry in regard to their acceptability as interpreters. They indicated 

a keen awareness of the important part they could play and were very anxious to 

be accepted for service in the [Women’s Army Corps]. In many cases the inquiries 

were from college graduates, for the most part engaged in teaching or employed in 

business firms.” Many Nisei men could remember how the girls had often outperformed the boys in Japanese-language schools before the war.42

The War Department dragged its feet, so this enthusiasm among some Nisei 

women did not immediately translate into many volunteers. Not until November 

1943 did the War Department finally allow Nisei women to enlist, and then “only 

thirteen could be obtained in the first six months of enlistment, and negligible 

numbers thereafter.”43 At Camp Savage, school officials remained reluctant to 

accept women either as instructors or as students. In February 1944 Maj. Gen. 

Clayton Bissell directed the MISLS to look into accepting women. More than a 

year was to pass before the first Nisei women began training in May 1945.44

ton, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1954), p. 589; Brenda L. Moore, Serving Our 

Country: Japanese American Women in the Military during World War II (New Brunswick, N.J.: 

Rutgers University Press, 2003). 42 MISLS, Memorandum on the Question of Nisei WACS, 8 Jun 44, “Training History,” ann. 

10, sec. IV.3, pp. 1–5, and encl. 55. Eleanor Roosevelt, “To Undo a Mistake Is Always Harder 

Than Not To Create One Originally,” [May 1943], printed in Jeffery F. Burton et al., Confinement 

and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites, Publications in 

Anthropology 74 (Tucson: Western Archeological and Conservation Center, National Park Service, 

1999), pp. 19–24. According to Misao Sakamoto, a group of Hawaii Nisei women wrote to Colonel 

Rasmussen sometime in 1943 to ask for permission to enlist. They received no reply. Misao Sakamoto, personal communication to author, 19 Oct 94. 43 Treadwell, Women’s Army Corps, p. 435. One Nisei woman who enlisted earlier, Yaye Furutani (Herman), enlisted in the WAC at Fort Bliss in 1942 while studying at the University of Texas; 

she was not inducted until November 1944. Yaye F. Herman, “The WAC-MIS Experience,” in 

Unsung Heroes: The Military Intelligence Service, Past-Present-Future (Seattle: MIS-Northwest 

Association, 1996), pp. 5–8. 44 Ltr, Lt. Col. A. W. Stuart to Personnel Branch, MIS, 18 February 1944, Ofc of the Dir of 

Intel G–2, RG 165, NARA. “Training History,” ann. 10, contains materials on WAC students, as 

does reel 84, sec. 14, pt. 2, frames 00542–, JERS, Bancroft Library. “History of Military Clearance 

Program,” pp. 23–29.
CAMP SAVAGE, 1943–1944 145

The Canadian government became interested in Japanese-language training 

as the war progressed. Canada had lost two battalions with the fall of Hong Kong 

in December 1941, and a joint U.S.-Canadian force had assaulted Kiska in the 

Aleutians in August 1943. Beyond that, Canada’s commitment to the war against 

Japan was strictly limited until the defeat of Nazi Germany. However, in 1943 the 

Canadian government sent nine officers and seven enlisted men to the MISLS.

45

Several thousand Japanese immigrants and Nisei had lived in British Columbia 

before the war. After Pearl Harbor, the Canadian government had interned them 

and did not allow them in the armed forces. Canada took longer than the United 

States to decide to trust its Nisei for sensitive military service.

MISLS continued to find new students and assemble them into classes at 

Camp Savage. The class that began in February 1944 was the largest ever, with 

651 Nisei students. But these increased numbers came at a cost. The new students 

on average did not look as promising as their predecessors. The better-qualified 

Nisei had already been either selected or definitively rejected for military service. 

Many of the new students had only turned eighteen the previous year. Though the 

MISLS extended the course length from six to nine months beginning with this 

class, the washout rate rose from 10 to 20 percent. Some of the nongraduates were 

assigned to language duties nonetheless, working with military police on prisoner 

of war processing teams.46

Over the winter of 1943–1944 the combat losses in the 100th Infantry Battalion 

in Italy became a heavy drain on Nisei manpower. The human cost of the war was 

affecting the Japanese American community as never before. The 100th Infantry 

Battalion entered combat near Salerno in September 1943 and a few months later 

joined the bruising fight for Monte Cassino. It was beginning to look like it was 

a “suicide battalion” after all. By January 1944 the 100th Infantry Battalion had 

lost more than 580 casualties, including 142 killed or missing. This was over 40 

percent of its assigned strength. Because the battalion was racially segregated, the 

Army could not use regular replacements and voluntary enlistments alone could 

not fill the demand. In January the 442d RCT, still at Camp Shelby, was levied for 

ten officers and 165 enlisted men as immediate replacements.47

The War Department and the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) both 

came to the conclusion that restoring eligibility for Selective Service was the logical next step. President Roosevelt had declared that “no loyal citizen of the United 

States should be denied the democratic right to exercise the responsibility of his 

citizenship.” The JACL actively lobbied for the move. In the autumn of 1943 General DeWitt stepped down from the Western Defense Command, removing another 

stubborn opponent to Nisei service. On 18 November 1943, the War Department 

45 “Training History,” p. 16; MISLS Album (Minneapolis: Military Intelligence Service Language School, 1946), p. 10. 46 Attrition rates computed from table of graduates in “Training History,” ann. 1, Academic 

Training, para. 6–5, pp. 12–13.

47 Shirey, Americans, p. 26; Office of the Provost Marshal General, “World War II: A Brief History”; “History of Military Clearance Program,” pp. 265–67.
146 NISEI LINGUISTS

formally changed its stance. After more than a year classified as IV–C, enemy 

aliens, Nisei became eligible for Selective Service.48

Selective Service proved a less than perfect process of bringing Nisei into the 

Army. Each Nisei still required special War Department approval before a local 

board could induct him. Often the Nisei were far removed from their local boards. 

For example, what if a Nisei had first registered in Los Angeles in 1941, was evacuated to Manzanar in 1942, and then left camp in 1943 for a job in Chicago? 

Moreover, some local boards in California may have stalled or tried to thwart the 

process. All this resulted in months-long delays in inducting Nisei. In Hawaii, the 

process was somewhat simpler but still slow. From the point at which the MISLS

selected a Nisei to attend language training, the MIS took up to six months to get 

him through the clearance process and inducted. The first Nisei selectees were not 

inducted until July. They then had to attend eight weeks of basic training before 

arriving at the language school.49

The resumption of Selective Service caused another unexpected crisis in the 

mainland camps, similar to the registration crisis of early 1943. Some Nisei, still 

angry at the forced incarceration of themselves and their families, considered conscription the last straw. The government was denying them their constitutional 

rights: now that same government wanted to induct them against their will. Hundreds decided to resist the draft; eventually 265 were tried and convicted. But 

most Nisei willingly accepted the call to service.50

The resumption of Selective Service made a large difference for the MISLS. 

It stimulated a flood of applications from Nisei who would rather volunteer for 

language training than wait for the draft and automatic assignment to the 442d 

RCT.

51 The school no longer had to recruit from the camps or wait for volunteers. 

As more Nisei were drafted, the school could have its pick of the Nisei soldiers in 

basic training. By the summer of 1944 the problem of numbers was on the way to 

being solved.

48 Selective Service reinstated the induction of Japanese Americans on 13 December 1943. 

“Training History,” ann. 10, sec. IV.D., p. 10. Selective Service headquarters amended Local Board 

Memorandum no. 179 on 14 January 1944, but Nisei still had to be reviewed and reclassified on 

a case-by-case basis. Selective Service System, Selective Service as the Tide of War Turns, Third 

Report of the Director of Selective Service, 1943–1944 (Washington, D.C.: Selective Service System, 1945), pp. 241–43; Special Groups, Special Monograph no. 10, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: 

Selective Service System, 1953), 1: 113–42. The slow loosening of restrictions from 1943 to 1946 

can be traced in the bulletins and policy directives collected in Special Groups, vol. 2. See especially Local Board Release nos. 112 and 179, with changes. The War Department did not drop the 

requirement for preclearance of Nisei selectees until 4 March 1946 (p. 23). 49 “Training History,” ann. 10, sec. IV.D., p. 12. 50 Eric L. Muller, Free To Die for Their Country: The Story of the Japanese American Draft 

Resisters in World War II (Chicago: University Press of Chicago, 2001). In 1947 President Truman 

pardoned all individuals convicted of violating the Selective Service Act during the war, but reconciliation within the Japanese American community was long in coming. See also the novel by John 

Okada, No-No Boy (Rutherford, Vt.: Tuttle, 1957). 51 “Training History,” ann. 10, sec. IV.D., pp. 10–11.
CAMP SAVAGE, 1943–1944 147

Army Intensive Japanese Language School, University of Michigan, 

1942–1944

At the outset of the war the Military Intelligence Division had established a 

strict policy: whenever possible, enlisted MIS Nisei would serve under Caucasian 

language officers. “The main purpose of this,” Colonel Rasmussen recalled, “was 

to have an unmistakably Caucasian officer associated with Oriental faces in order 

not to have some trigger-happy G.I. pop a gun.” 52 The difficulty with this policy 

was that the War Department did not have enough Japanese-speaking Caucasians. 

The few language attachés trained before the war were already in critical assignments or were too senior to serve as team leaders. Before the war Rasmussen had 

begun searching for Caucasian officers and enlisted men who spoke Japanese. 

Dozens of National Guard and Reserve officers, some of whom had experience in 

Japan before the war, had come to the school after Pearl Harbor. Two graduated in 

May 1942 and eighteen more in December. It later became more difficult to find 

Caucasian men who could keep up in class, not to mention those with any experience with the Japanese language.53

The War Department might have chosen to activate Nisei reserve officers, 

graduates of prewar ROTC commissioning programs at the University of Hawaii 

and elsewhere. A handful were already serving with the 100th Infantry Battalion, 

but the War Department declined to call up other Nisei reserve officers until the 

formation of the 442d RCT. Or the War Department might have awarded direct 

commissions to Nisei enlisted men for the language teams. Given the prejudice 

against Japanese Americans, even American-born Nisei, the War Department was 

not ready for this step. In fact, when Rasmussen began recruiting Nisei from the 

camps in the midst of the evacuations in the autumn of 1942, he told WRA officials that “all successful applicants will hold non-commissioned officers rank.” 

But he made War Department policy clear: “None of these men will be commissioned into the Service as officers, however.” 54

Rasmussen was left with little choice but to find Caucasians able to learn Japanese. The Office of Naval Intelligence already had a year’s head start, having 

begun recruiting Caucasian students in the summer of 1941. Rasmussen decided 

to begin a similar Army program. Most Caucasians needed a one-year preparatory course before attending regular classes at Camp Savage. To establish this, 

Rasmussen selected Professor Joseph K. Yamagiwa, a Japanese-language instruc52 Kai E. Rasmussen, speech, Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC), 

Monterey, Calif., 25 Jun 77, printed in DLIFLC Forum (November 1977). 53 The War Department encountered difficulties in procuring junior officers of all types in 

1942–1943. In early 1943 it cut back on the number of soldiers sent to officer candidate schools. See 

Robert R. Palmer and William R. Keast, “The Procurement of Officers,” and William R. Keast, 

“The Training of Officer Candidates,” in The Procurement and Training of Ground Combat Troops, 

ed. Robert R. Palmer et al. (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, Historical Division, 1948), 

pp. 87–163, 321–64. 54 Ltr, Kai E. Rasmussen to E. M. Rowalt, 3 October 1942, Rcds of the WRA, RG 210, NARA.
148 NISEI LINGUISTS

tor at the University of Michigan who had recently published a textbook of modern conversational Japanese. Rasmussen signed a contract with the university and 

appointed Yamagiwa as educational director. The university agreed to accept 150 

students for forty-nine weeks of instruction to begin on 5 January 1943. Yamagiwa 

agreed to use the Naganuma readers, supplemented by his own textbook.55

Rasmussen then selected twenty-one instructors. The University of Michigan, 

unlike the MISLS, was free to hire Issei and women. Like the MISLS instructors, 

few had any previous teaching experience. Most came directly from the camps and 

were housed together with their families in a former fraternity house near campus. “At first some did not dare even to go to a church, let alone a movie theatre,” 

Yamagiwa wrote. “The work in Ann Arbor was new, and the duties heavy. The 

staff room was small. As others joined the staff, with stories of their experiences 

in various assembly centers and in the WRA camps, some assumed for a time a 

certain cautiousness in their dealings with people in and around the campus.” 56

Finding qualified students offered an even greater challenge. Rasmussen 

sought college men of the highest caliber and contacted the national headquarters 

of Phi Beta Kappa. The academic honor society had already provided the Navy 

with hundreds of member names, but they gave more names to Rasmussen. Some, 

referred to as “BIJ,” had been born in Japan. Others had taken Japanese-language 

classes or simply had demonstrated academic potential.57 The Army recruited 

from Yale Law School a student who had attended a few sessions of an introductory Japanese course and was surprised to be accepted. “We are counting on you 

Phi Betes,” the recruiting officer explained, “not to let us down.” 58

55 Joseph K. Yamagiwa, Modern Conversational Japanese (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1942); 

“Army Japanese Language School,” p. 2; Joseph K. Yamagiwa, “The Japanese Language Programs at the University of Michigan during World War II,” ch. 2, Unpubl Ms, 1946, Ann Arbor, 

Mich.; “Training History,” pp. 11–12; Robert J. Matthew, Language and Area Studies in the Armed 

Services: Their Future Significance (Washington, D.C.: American Council on Education, 1947), 

pp. 43–52. 56 Yamagiwa, “Japanese Language Programs,” p. 44. Nisuke Mitsumori, an Issei instructor at 

Michigan, was a World War I veteran who had been wounded in France. Eileen Sunada Sarasohn, 

ed., The Issei: Portrait of a Pioneer, An Oral History (Palo Alto, Calif.: Pacific Books, 1983), 

pp. 285–86. 57 Donald M. Richardson, “Random Recollections of the Second Class, AIJLS [Army Intensive 

Japanese Language School],” Unpubl Ms, Sep 88, author’s files; John A. Rappin, “Non-Nikkei 

MIS,” and Allen H. Meyer, “MIS: Non-Nikkei,” in Unsung Heroes, pp. 9–14, 97–104; “Scholars 

in Uniform,” Ann Arbor Observer (August 1990): 2–7; Herbert Passin, Encounter with Japan (San 

Francisco: Kodansha, 1982). Passin, a professor of social anthropology at Northwestern University, became an AIJLS student in May 1944. Grant K. Goodman, America’s Japan: The First Year, 

1945–1946 (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005), pp. 9–17. Goodman became an AIJLS

student in May 1943. See also the papers of Irwin Hersey, Alfred H. Marks, and George H. Marshall, U.S. Army Military History Institute (MHI), Carlisle Barracks, Pa. 58 Frank L. Hammond, Ltr to Editor, The Key Reporter (Spring 1992); Samuel J. Jacobs, Ltr to 

Editor, The Key Reporter (Autumn 1999): 9–10. Rasmussen also recruited two African American 

college students.
CAMP SAVAGE, 1943–1944 149

On 5 January 1943, the first classes began for the Army Intensive Japanese 

Language Course (later renamed the Army Intensive Japanese Language School). 

Students were in class twenty-four hours a week, followed by supervised study 

halls. Each section had seven or eight students. The university granted thirty 

semester hours of credit for the course and conferred bachelor’s degrees on those 

who had sufficient credits from another school. Yamagiwa made a special point of 

showing Japanese movies. These movies, typically costume dramas of the Samurai style popular in Japan during the 1930s, were “extremely valuable in showing 

the social contexts in which particular language forms are used,” Yamagiwa wrote. 

“The value of movies in increasing knowledge as to customs and institutions cannot be overstressed.” 59 The students plunged into their studies. It felt strange to 

be attending language classes on a university campus while their friends were 

serving overseas, but they knew their time would come. Meanwhile, the academic 

pressures were intense.60

59 Yamagiwa, “Japanese Language Programs,” p. 23. 60 Several students attempted suicide; some succeeded. Goodman, America’s Japan, p. 21. The 

Royal Australian Air Force’s Japanese-language program experienced a similar problem among 

its students: “There were not many of us, yet two had essayed suicide, one successfully, and two 

others had gone insane.” The War Department removed five students in April 1944 for what it 

A Nisei instructor (left) teaches Caucasian students at the Army Intensive 

Japanese Language School, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1943.
150 NISEI LINGUISTS

The demand for Caucasian team leaders was also intense. As the first class 

was under way, Rasmussen decided that he could not wait for the year-long course 

to finish. In May 1943 he directed Yamagiwa to pick his best students for accelerated training. The top forty graduated after six months, on 19 June 1943, and went 

straight to Camp Savage to begin training at the MISLS, where they graduated in 

January 1944. Their classmates at Michigan graduated on schedule in late 1943 

and reported to Camp Savage in February 1944. From that point on, all students 

stayed for the entire twelve-month course, followed by six months at the MISLS. 

These students became eligible for commissions upon completion of their MISLS

training, except for a few who already had commissions before entering the program. Meanwhile, in early 1943 Rasmussen identified the next 150 Caucasians, 

as well as another 16 instructors, for another class that began on 24 May. In July 

the school also admitted sixteen Canadian students, nine of them officers. New 

classes began in January 1944, May 1944, January 1945, and May 1945, each class 

having 150–200 students. The faculty grew to about fifty Issei and Nisei. By the 

end of the war, Yamagiwa and his instructors had graduated 789 Caucasian students as language team leaders for the Nisei.

Navy Japanese Language School, University of Colorado at Boulder, 

1942–1944

While the War Department was establishing a special Japanese-language 

training program for Caucasian officer candidates, the Office of Naval Intelligence 

continued at the University of Colorado at Boulder its program founded in the 

autumn of 1941 at Harvard and the University of California. On 1 July 1942, 153 

Caucasian students arrived at the Navy School of Oriental Languages in Boulder, where they joined sixty-seven students who had started at the University of 

California.61

Cmdr. Albert E. Hindmarsh and Professor Florence Walne based the program 

on the Naganuma readers. Up to 150 Japanese Americans, many recruited directly 

from the camps, served as instructors under Assistant Director Susumu Nakamura, 

who had taught Japanese at the University of California before the war. Because 

the instructors were employees of the University of Colorado, the school was free 

termed “effeminacy which leads to open suspicion.” Ltr, 25 March 1944, Folder: Trng B4 Files, 

MISLS—Gen, 1945, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, NARA. 61 “Reminiscences of Rear Admiral Arthur H. McCollum, U.S. Navy Retired,” 2 vols., Unpubl 

Ms, 1970–1971, Naval Historical Center, Washington, D.C.; Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, “School of Oriental Languages,” Unpubl Ms, Naval Historical Center, Washington, D.C. 

The first contract between the Navy Department and the University of Colorado, dated 1 July 

1942, is reproduced in Scott E. Nadler, The Evolution of Foreign Language Training in the Armed 

Forces (Washington, D.C.: Defense Language Institute, 1972), pp. 103–04, 115–20. See also the 

U.S. Navy Japanese Language School Project and Roger Pineau Papers at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
CAMP SAVAGE, 1943–1944 151

to hire women as well as men.62 Students were in class fourteen hours a week for 

fourteen months, and the course demanded extensive memorization. Each section 

had no more than four or five students to allow for practicing conversational skills. 

In December 1942 Hindmarsh boasted:

A large number of competent educators have characterized the course as having revolutionized the practical teaching of foreign languages in the United States. . . . It is a fact 

that today . . . the Navy standards of efficiency, practical fluency, and competency in the 

teaching and study of the Japanese language are approached in no university in this 

country and possibly nowhere in the world outside Japan. This evaluation is based on the 

experience of hard-boiled observers both within the course and in the use of the products 

of our course.63

Hindmarsh believed that the quality of students was key to the program’s success. He insisted upon college men who had been born in Japan, had studied Japanese or Chinese for at least six months, or showed exceptional academic talent. Phi 

Beta Kappa nominated many of them.64 Hindmarsh’s vigorous recruiting caused 

some friction with Army recruiters in the autumn of 1942. “It seems clear that the 

Army Representative is deliberately staging rallies in each and every city to which 

I am going, and that these rallies are arranged so as to precede my arrival by four 

or five days,” Hindmarsh complained, “Considerable pressure is being brought to 

bear on the students, particularly the first rate students.” Rasmussen denied the 

charges but added that he felt “that in view of the common War Aim it might be 

well to propose a merger of Personnel Selection Boards for the purpose of future 

canvassing.” Separate recruiting continued nevertheless.65

The Navy program continued to grow. By the end of 1942 there were 300 

students in training. In 1943 Hindmarsh began to recruit college women as well; 

in June and July he interviewed 600 women nationwide. By the end of the year 

about seventy female students had enrolled as WAVES (Women Accepted for 

Volunteer Emergency Service). Over the winter of 1943–1944 the Royal Navy 

sent ten junior officers. During 1943 the school added courses in Russian, Malay, 

62 “American Born Japanese Teach at Navy School,” Pacific Citizen, 9 Jul 42, p. 2; D. Daté 

and Dick Inokuchi Files, Harrington Papers; Jessica Arntson, “Journey to Boulder: The Japanese 

American Instructors of the Navy Japanese Language School, 1942–1946,” Master’s Thesis, University of Colorado, [2003?]; Pauline S. McAlpine, Diary of a Missionary (Decatur, Ga.: Presbyterian Church in America, 1986). McAlpine and her husband were Japanese instructors who followed 

the school from Berkeley to Boulder and then to Stillwater, Oklahoma, in 1945. Another instructor, 

Ensho Ashikaga, restarted the Japanese-language program at the University of California at Berkeley after the war. 63 Memo, Hindmarsh to Dir of Naval Intel, 24 Dec 42, in “School of Oriental Languages,” 

pp. 15–18 (quote from p. 18). 64 The Key Reporter announced the program in its winter 1942–1943 issue. In the summer of 

1943 the same newsletter published a firsthand description of the course, reprinted in The Key 

Reporter (Autumn 1991): 2. 65 “School of Oriental Languages,” p. 15. See the exchange of correspondence in Box 291, Ofc 

of the Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, NARA.
152 NISEI LINGUISTS

and Chinese (Mandarin and several other dialects) and changed its name to the 

Navy School of Oriental Languages. By August 1944 the school had produced 

about 600 graduates.66 The tremendous pressure took its toll on students and staff 

alike: ill health forced Florence Walne to resign in September 1944.67

Most graduates were commissioned in the Naval Reserve and shipped directly 

to the Pacific. The Marine Corps sent ten graduates to Camp Savage for followon training in the summer of 1943, but this was an exception. From early 1943 

Boulder graduates began to pour into the Pacific. The first group of twenty arrived 

in Hawaii in February 1943. During the battle for Attu in May 1943, some were 

assigned to Army units, where they commanded enlisted Nisei linguists. Others 

served at the Naval Communications Intelligence Center in Washington, D.C. The 

“Boulder Boys” had a very different experience from that of the Army Nisei.68

Other Japanese-Language Programs, 1942–1944

To place in perspective the Army’s programs at Camp Savage and the University of Michigan and the Navy’s program at the University of Colorado, it is 

useful to examine other Japanese-language programs in the United States during 

the war. (See Map 4.) Several other military organizations, government agencies, 

and universities started or expanded their Japanese and Far Eastern programs; 

all competed for instructors and students. Assistant Secretary McCloy expressed 

his dismay to the War Department G–3 in June 1943: “At the present time there 

appears to be several agencies e.g. Military Intelligence, Signal Corps, Provost 

Marshal General’s department, and Army Specialist Training Division, who are 

either now interested in or planning to become engaged in Japanese language.” 

He called for “some overall agency [to] have the responsibility for co-ordinating 

the requirements of the various War Department agencies in this matter.” This 

66 “School of Oriental Languages,” p. 22. One WAVES student was Helen Craig (McCullough), 

a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of California. After the war, she served in the Allied 

Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS) from 1946 to 1950, earned her doctorate, and returned 

to the University of California as a professor of Japanese literature. See University of California: In Memoriam, 1998, http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/uchistory/archives_exhibits/in_memoriam/, 

accessed 27 Feb 04. 67 Florence Walne married Samuel T. Farquhar in December 1944; she never regained her health 

and died on 14 October 1946. See Name Index, Farquhar, Florence Walne, University of California: In Memoriam, 1946, http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/uchistory/archives_exhibits/in_memoriam/, 

accessed 27 Feb 04. 68 Roger V. Dingman, “Language at War: U.S. Marine Corps Japanese Language Officers in 

the Pacific War,” Journal of Military History 68 (July 2004): 853–83; Pedro Loureiro, “‘Boulder Boys’: Naval Japanese Language School Graduates,” in New Interpretations in Naval History, ed. Randy C. Balano and Craig Symonds (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2001), pp. 

366–88. Several went on to academic careers as Japan specialists. Otis Cary, ed., From a Ruined 

Empire: Letters—Japan, China, Korea 1945–46 (San Francisco: Kodansha, 1975); Donald Keene, 

On Familiar Terms (New York: Kodansha, 1994). Two wrote novels of their wartime experiences. 

John Ashmead, The Mountain and the Feather (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961); Kenneth Lamott, 

The Stockade (Boston: Little, Brown, 1952).
CAMP SAVAGE, 1943–1944 153

responsibility fell to the War Department G–3 Organization and Training Division, but the task was hopeless.69

Before the war Japanese-language instruction was rare in the United States, 

apart from community-based Japanese-language schools in Hawaii and on the 

West Coast. Only a few universities offered Japanese, most often for the study of 

Japanese art and literature. A linguistic scholar complained in 1943:

Most learning of Oriental languages has been disfigured by bad teaching and bad implements of instruction. . . . Most grammars and other paraphernalia of studying an Oriental 

language have been written by persons without the slightest technical linguistic competence. . . .Without proper analysis and implements, instruction in a language, particularly 

one which offers at every step the widest departures from the student’s own linguistic 

experience, cannot but be inefficient, time-consuming, and impractical.70

Before the war a handful of scholars had set out to overcome these problems. 

The American Council of Learned Societies established the Intensive Language 

Program in the spring of 1941 at eighteen universities. Within a year the program had grown to 700 students and twenty-six languages, including several 

never before taught in the United States. For most languages the instructors had to 

develop entirely new curricular materials.71 This program was designed to produce 

students with conversational skills through rapid and intense training based on the 

theories of anthropologists and scientific linguists such as Franz Boas, Edward 

Sapir, and Leonard Bloomfield. After the outbreak of war, publishers brought out a 

flood of textbooks, dictionaries, and readers for Japanese, some developed through 

the Intensive Language Program, most reprints of older materials. Few were written with any regard to modern pedagogy or military requirements.72

In the autumn of 1942 the leaders of American higher education prevailed upon 

President Roosevelt to use their campuses for military training programs. The 

Navy responded with the V–12 precommissioning program. The Army Ground 

Forces protested this as drain of skilled manpower, for the program eventually 

diverted 150,000 high-test-score enlisted men to college campuses across the 

nation.73 The War Department’s Military Government Division urged the inclu69 Memo, Exec Asst to ASW to ACS, G–3, 16 Jun 43, Class Ref Sub Files, 1940–1947, Ofc of 

the ASW, RG 107, NARA. 70 Mortimer Graves, “Intensive Language Study,” Far Eastern Survey (22 March 1943): 

63–64. 71 Paul F. Angiolillo, Armed Forces’ Foreign Language Teaching: Critical Evaluation and 

Implications (New York: Vanni, 1947), pp. 15–29; William G. Moulton, “Linguistics and Language Teaching in the United States, 1940–1960,” in Trends in European and American Linguistics, 1930–1960, ed. Christine Mohrmann, Alf Sommerfelt, and Joshua Whatmough (Utrecht, 

Netherlands: Spectrum, 1963), pp. 82–109. 72 Mortimer Graves, “Wartime Instruction in Far Eastern Languages,” Far Eastern Survey (27 

March 1946): 92–93. 73 Louis E. Keefer, Scholars in Foxholes: The Story of the Army Specialized Training Program 

in World War II (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1988); Louis E. Keefer, “Birth and Death of the Army 

Specialized Training Program,” Army History (Winter 1995): 1–7; V. R. Cardozier, Colleges and 
University of Colorado

Boulder

Canadian Army Language School

Vancouver

Cam

Camp Elliott

U T A H

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156 NISEI LINGUISTS

sion of foreign-area and language training, and the Office of the Provost Marshal 

General developed requirements for language and area studies for up to 2,000 

soldiers. The Military Government Division then persuaded Army Specialized 

Training Program (ASTP) organizers to include the Foreign Area and Language 

Program. Other War Department branches added their needs; before long, stated 

foreign-language requirements had jumped to 15,000 soldiers.74

In the spring and summer of 1943, fifty-five colleges and universities set up 

ASTP programs in thirty-four languages, often with only a few weeks’ notice. 

(The Navy’s V–12 program never included foreign languages.) In some cases, the 

students didn’t know what language they were to study until they arrived on campus. For example, in June 1943 the Army sent 125 enlisted men to the University 

of Washington for European language and area studies. “Two days before the official start of the program,” wrote the program’s director, “we learned that we were 

not to teach a European but an entirely Far Eastern program, with training in Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, and Korean languages and areas.” This, he commented, 

“was a serious handicap in the organization of the staff and the development of 

the material.” 75 In all, twelve universities eventually offered ASTP programs in 

Japanese-language and area studies.76

In most cases the Japanese ASTP courses built upon small, prewar Japaneselanguage programs at these schools. At the University of Michigan, beginning in 

October 1943, Professor Yamagiwa operated a Japanese ASTP program alongside 

the Army Japanese Language School.77 He hired nineteen additional instructors 

just for the ASTP. Eventually, the Michigan program trained 264 ASTP students 

in addition to the 975 students in the Army Japanese Language School.

Normally, faculty members called scientific linguists directed ASTP courses. 

The director was assisted by native speakers called drillmasters or informants. For 

example, the University of Minnesota used as a scientific linguist Ganna M. SyroBoyarsky, a woman of Danish-Russian heritage who had been educated in Japan. 

Several Nisei drillmasters assisted her.78

Across America, colleges and universities scrambled to design and provide 

language instruction. One of the program’s founders later commented that the 

ASTP language program “was beset by all the difficulties and inefficiencies which 

Universities in World War II (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1993). The War Department established 

a junior version of ASTP, called the Army Specialized Training Reserve Program (ASTRP), for 

youths under age eighteen. 74 Frederick B. Agard et al., A Survey of Language Classes in the Army Specialized Training 

Program (New York: Commission on Trends in Education, Modern Language Association, 1944); 

Angiolillo, Armed Forces’ Foreign Language Teaching; Matthew, Language and Area Studies; 

Mario A. Pei, Languages for War and Peace, 2d ed. (New York: Vanni, 1945). 75 Franz H. Michael, “Civilians and Soldiers Study Pacific,” Far Eastern Survey (23 August 

1944): 158–61. 76 Matthew, Language and Area Studies, pp. 177–78. 77 Yamagiwa, “Japanese Language Programs.” 78 “She Teaches GIs To Say It in Japanese [Ganna M. Syro-Boyarsky],” unidentified newspaper 

clipping, [1943?].
CAMP SAVAGE, 1943–1944 157

armies and navies are able to devise; selection and assignment troubles kept morale 

low. . . .The Army and Navy programs were afflicted with all the ills that arise 

from hasty improvisation, paucity of trained personnel, lack of teaching materials, 

divided direction, and red tape.” 79

Before the program finished its first year, the War Department terminated it. 

Most language and area study courses were cancelled by March 1944, and the 

students were sent off to become individual replacements. The War Department 

made little effort to assign foreign-language graduates to duty positions requiring 

these languages. Indeed, at that point in the war the U.S. government had little 

need of military government specialists, the training of which was the ostensible 

purpose of the ASTP language and area studies program. Only a few students 

subsequently transferred to the Army Japanese-language course at the University of Michigan and from there to the MISLS. Enlisted students who had been 

promised commissions found themselves in combat units with neither stripes nor 

commissions, serving under sergeants with much less education.80 Over 1,400 

soldiers who had been studying Italian went to work with former Italian prisoners 

of war. The Signal Corps took 1,357 students of several languages. The MIS took 

568 former students of all languages. However, of those who had studied Japanese 

few ever went on to use the language. According to one report, the Army sent to 

Normandy “infantrymen who had been beautifully trained to speak Japanese.” 81

One student who had spent nine months studying Japanese at the University of 

Minnesota later admitted, “about the only recognizable residual is the fact that I

can say in Japanese, ‘Which is faster, the street car or the bus?’ Nothing else.” 82

Some ASTP graduates did go into appropriate intelligence assignments; but overall, the program contributed little toward the Army’s pressing requirement for 

Japanese linguists.83

The Army Service Forces took a different approach. Instead of establishing full-time instruction, it produced and disseminated self-study materials and 

dictionaries in forty languages through its Information and Education Division. 

The pocket-size Japanese phrase books and handbooks were published in the 

79 Graves, “Wartime Instruction,” p. 93. 80 Keefer, “Birth and Death,” describes the broken promise of commissions for ASTP graduates: “Even fifty years later, many former ASTPers harbor the feeling that the Army lied to them 

about their futures” (p. 4). 81 “Science Comes to Languages,” Fortune (August 1944): 135, cited in Angiolillo, Armed 

Forces’ Foreign Language Teaching, p. 166. 82 Keefer, “Birth and Death,” p. 113. Another student who attended the ASTP Japanese program 

at the University of Michigan in 1943–1944 was assigned directly to the Signal Intelligence Service 

at Arlington Hall. Bill Leary, World War II questionnaire, MHI. 83 The ASTP was the first federal experiment with a national program for foreign language 

and area studies and had significant impact on language-teaching methods after the war. Not until 

the National Defense Education Act of 1958 did the federal government again provide funding 

and direction on this scale to American colleges and universities for foreign language and area 

studies.
158 NISEI LINGUISTS

spring of 1943.84 In a similar effort, the U.S. Armed Forces Institute in Madison, Wisconsin, produced a series of innovative self-study language guides that 

used simple textbooks and phonograph records. The Japanese basic course for the 

Armed Forces Institute was written by Yale Professor Bernard Bloch, a scientific 

linguist who had no previous experience with the Japanese language, together 

with Eleanor H. Jorden.85

The OSS also had Japanese-language requirements and sent a team of Nisei 

to MISLS for language training in 1944. These Nisei were handpicked from soldiers in training with the 442d RCT at Camp Shelby. For its morale operations 

propaganda unit, the OSS also recruited other Nisei and even Issei with excellent language skills, including some whom the War Department had previously 

deemed unacceptable. As the OSS planned for expanded operations against Japan 

in 1945, it established six-month courses in Japanese and Korean at the University 

of Pennsylvania.86

As the Army’s signals intelligence effort against Japan expanded, the Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) needed Japanese linguists to translate the growing 

volume of radio message traffic but remained reluctant to use Nisei. In early 1943 

the SIS recruited Edwin O. Reischauer from Harvard to set up a small Japaneselanguage school at Arlington Hall for Caucasian officers.87

In addition to the MISLS, the War Department G–2 operated the Military 

Intelligence Training Center at Camp Ritchie, Maryland, for general intelligence 

training. This center provided Japanese-language classes, some taught by T5g. 

Frances Nichols, WAC. Nichols was born and raised in Japan, where her father 

served as the Episcopal bishop of Kyoto from 1926 to 1940.88

Many universities established their own programs in Far Eastern languages 

and area studies in addition to the various military programs. The University of 

Washington reported over 1,500 students enrolled in Far Eastern courses during the 

1943–1944 academic years.89 However, none of these military or civilian Japaneselanguage programs approached MISLS in size or effectiveness. To the contrary, 

each new program drained off resources such as skilled instructors and qualified 

students at a time when the Army and Navy needed to concentrate their efforts.

84 Technical Manual (TM) 30–275, Japanese Phrase Book (Washington, D.C.: War Department, 1943); TM 30–341, Japanese: A Guide to the Spoken Language (Washington, D.C.: War 

Department, 1943). 85 Bernard Bloch and Eleanor H. Jorden, Spoken Japanese, 2 vols. (Silver Spring, Md.: United 

States Armed Forces Institute/Linguistic Society of America, 1945–1946). See also “Nisei Girls 

Teach Japanese Language [Yale],” Pacific Citizen, 9 Sep 44. 86 Anthony C. Brown, Secret War Report, p. 132. 87 Edwin O. Reischauer, My Life Between Japan and America (New York: Harper & Row, 

1986), pp. 91–101. 88 Nichols was the daughter of Shirley H. Nichols. MISLS, Memo on the Question of Nisei 

WACS, 8 Jun 44, “Training History,” ann. 10, encl. 55; Ltr, Maj. Paul F. Rusch to Lt. Col. Mathewson, sub: American Born Japanese WACS & Caucasians Born in Japan, 13 October 1945, 091–

300.6, Gen Corresp, 1944–1945, OCCIO, G–2, GHQ Southwest Pacific Area, RG 338, NARA. 89 Michael, “Civilians and Soldiers Study Pacific.”
CAMP SAVAGE, 1943–1944 159

Military government training occasionally included Japanese-language instruction because Army and Navy planners could see the need for language-trained 

personnel to help occupy Japanese-held territories and eventually Japan proper. 

Anthropologist John F. Embree, who had done field work in rural Japan before the 

war, declared, “It is essential that military government officers for Asia acquire a 

thorough grounding in Japanese language, culture and history.” 90

The Navy Department established the Navy School of Military Government 

and Administration at Columbia University in the summer of 1942. The students, 

commissioned directly from civilian life, studied the lands and peoples of the 

Pacific. During the nine-month course, students took 480 hours of conversational 

Malay, Japanese, or Chinese. Several hundred naval officers graduated from the 

course. In October 1944 the Navy established an abbreviated course at Princeton 

University that shortened the program and eliminated all language instruction.91

At the University of Virginia in 1942, the War Department established a similar school, the School of Military Government, to train staff officers. Hugh Borton, a Japan expert at Harvard, advised on the school’s Far Eastern curriculum.92

To train junior military government personnel, the Provost Marshal General set up 

Civil Affairs Training Schools (CATS) at ten universities in the autumn of 1943. 

Six universities conducted training for the Far Eastern area, including conversational Chinese or Japanese.93 Their students were commissioned directly from 

civilian life and tended to be older than the ASTP students and already established in their professions or businesses. The different universities hired Nisei to 

conduct the language instruction. The language curriculum followed that of the 

ASTP but for a shorter period. At the University of Michigan, in August 1944 

Professor Yamagiwa established a CATS Japanese-language program alongside 

the earlier MISLS officer candidate course begun in January 1943 and the ASTP 

course begun in October 1943. One observer praised the CATS language instruction and deemed it “a thoroughly excellent program in which another thousand 

Americans acquired a useful competence in Japanese.” In his opinion, “certainly 

no such groups ever learned more Japanese in six months.” 94 However, assessing the success of the various Japanese-language programs is difficult, especially 

90 John F. Embree, “Military Occupation of Japan,” Far Eastern Survey (20 September 1944): 

173–76. 91 Matthew, Language and Area Studies, pp. 27–42, 91–99. One of the Nisei instructors at 

Columbia was Miya S. Kikuchi. Eriko Yamamoto, “Miya Sannomiya Kikuchi: A Pioneer Nisei 

Woman’s Life and Identity,” Amerasia Journal 23, no. 3 (1997): 73–101. 92 Hugh Borton wrote several works on Japan, including Japan Since 1931: Its Political and 

Social Developments (New York: Institute for Pacific Relations, 1940). 93 Ofc of the Provost Marshal General, “World War II: A Brief History,” pt. 5, pp. 642–710. Universities that taught the Far Eastern curriculum were Chicago, Harvard, Michigan, Northwestern, 

Stanford, and Yale. 94 Graves, “Wartime Instruction,” p. 93. In addition, the Civil Affairs Holding and Staging 

Area at Fort Ord and the Presidio of Monterey used several Nisei MISLS graduates for Japaneselanguage training in 1944–1945.
160 NISEI LINGUISTS

since many students never used the language and were demobilized or reassigned 

at the end of the war. 

Other commands established Japanese programs as needed. In June 1942 the 

Marine Corps mobilized two University of Oregon faculty members, Harold J. 

Noble and Paul S. Dull, both Marine Corps Reserve officers, to start a program at 

Camp Elliott in southern California for the 2d Marine Division.95 They established 

the three-month Enlisted Marine Japanese Language School that continued even 

after the 2d Marine Division left for the South Pacific. In 1944 the school moved 

to Camp Pendleton and graduated over 150 marines. 

Marine commanders were desperate for Japanese linguists, so much so that 

they sometimes made mistakes. When the 29th Marines sailed from San Diego in 

1944, the regiment directed that all officers and staff noncoms receive Japanese 

training while embarked. The instructor was a marine who had grown up among 

the Nisei in southern California and claimed to speak Japanese. For weeks as they 

crossed the ocean he taught simple phrases and characters to his shipmates. When 

the regiment arrived in Guadalcanal and began to take Japanese prisoners of war, 

the instructor tried to interrogate some but had little success. On one occasion, his 

regimental commanding officer observed while he questioned a prisoner. When the 

instructor could extract no useful information, he explained that the prisoner was 

afraid to speak because he knew they were U.S. marines. Incidences of this sort 

went on for several more months. Finally, when his regiment went to Okinawa, he 

complained of a back injury and was evacuated to a hospital ship. There, a Navy 

language officer (a Boulder graduate) overheard his story and at last exposed him 

as a charlatan. He had invented the whole affair, including the phrases and madeup characters that the marines had so diligently memorized.96

Other Allied governments also needed Japanese-language expertise. In Southeast Asia, British Commonwealth forces urgently needed Japanese linguists. 

Before the war the Royal Army and Navy had trained a small number of language 

officers through the British embassy in Tokyo, just as the Americans did. When 

the war broke out many of these officers fell into Japanese hands in Tokyo, Hong 

Kong, and Singapore. In London, before the war the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) taught Japanese to small numbers of scholars; but with the 

collapse of the British Empire in the Far East, something more had to be done. The 

school began a new class in May 1942 with thirty schoolboys age seventeen and 

95 Before the war, Harold J. Noble published “Recent Administration in Korea,” Amerasia (April 

1941): 84–90. See also Ltr to Editor, Capt. Harold J. Noble, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Life (28 

September 1942): 11; Roger Pineau, “WW II Japanese Language Schools for Marines,” Unpubl Ms, 

1990, Roger Pineau Papers, Japanese Language School Project, Archives, University of Colorado at 

Boulder Libraries; and materials Calvin W. Dunbar provided to the author. 96 This story was recounted by William Manchester, who served in the regimental intelligence 

and reconnaissance platoon. William Manchester, “The Man Who Could Speak Japanese,” American Heritage (December 1975): 36–39, 91–95; William Manchester, Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War (New York: Dell, 1980), pp. 163–64.
CAMP SAVAGE, 1943–1944 161

eighteen. Twenty-eight completed the course in October 1943.97 Other classes followed, usually taught by Japanese citizens who had stayed in Britain and by Canadian Nisei. The courses were generally fifteen months long. At first, classes for 

translators and interrogators were taught separately, but by June 1944 they were 

combined when the school started a new general-purpose course for ninety-two 

servicemen. During the war about 277 students completed full-length courses; 

another 371 completed specialized or refresher courses.

At Bletchley Park, the Government Communications Headquarters, counterpart to the U.S. Army’s Signal Intelligence Service, was concerned about the slow 

pace of the SOAS courses and established its own Japanese-language courses at 

Bedford in February 1942. These were directed by two Japanese speakers: a senior 

Royal Army cryptographer, Col. John Tiltman, and a retired Royal Navy officer, 

Capt. Oswald Tuck.98

Other British Commonwealth nations started their own Japanese-language 

programs. The Australian Army established a school in Melbourne as early as 

1940 and the Royal Australian Air Forces in Sydney in 1944. British authorities in 

India conducted Japanese-language training in Karachi.99 As Canada began planning to enter the war against Japan, the Canadian Army set up its own Japaneselanguage school in early 1945 for Canadians of Japanese ancestry.

The Pacific War led to a profusion of Japanese-language programs in the 

United States and elsewhere. The MISLS trained the largest number of military 

linguists, who often worked alongside or under graduates of the other programs. 

Throughout the war the school’s Nisei graduates proved indispensable in meeting 

the urgent language requirements.

. . .

By the summer of 1944 the MISLS had outgrown Camp Savage. From November 1941 to August 1944, about 1,300 Nisei enlisted men and about 200 Caucasian 

officers graduated. More than 550 others were in training, and another 630 were 

expected for classes to start in August and September. John Aiso directed a faculty 

of twenty-seven civilian and sixty-five enlisted instructors. The reception center 

at nearby Fort Snelling had closed, and Colonel Rasmussen decided to move his 

school onto the post. Because War Department planners expected the war with 

Japan to last at least two more years, it made good sense to move the school onto 

a permanent post that offered room for further expansion.

97 Sadao Oba, The “Japanese” War, trans. Anne Kaneko (Sandgate, U.K.: Japan Library, 

1995). 98 Alan Stripp, Codebreaker in the Far East (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 

3–12, 139–44. Tuck had served before the war as the British assistant naval attaché in Tokyo. 99 Interv, author with Henry Kuwabara, 12 Sep 96; Henry Kuwabara, “Japanese-Burmese 

Beauty,” in John Aiso and the M.I.S., p. 171. The Karachi intelligence school apparently used several Japanese nationals as instructors.
162 NISEI LINGUISTS

Despite the MISLS’s size, it remained unknown to most Americans. The call 

for Japanese American volunteers in early 1943 garnered much public interest. 

By 1944, when Nisei soldiers entered combat in Italy, most Americans knew that 

Japanese American soldiers were fighting with the U.S. Army. In fact, the War 

Department, Office of War Information, and War Relocation Authority collaborated to publicize the exploits of the 442d Regimental Combat Team.100 In May 

1943 Assistant Secretary McCloy questioned whether this publicity might extend 

to Nisei in the Military Intelligence Service, but Rasmussen argued against it.101

“A limited amount concerning the activities could be divulged to the public,” he 

suggested, “but not to any degree by which his present value to the Army would 

be lessened in the intelligence field.”

The value of the language graduates lie[s] in not disclosing their present activity as a part 

of the Army Combat Intelligence. . . . If the enemy learns to what degree that training in 

Japanese Intelligence is being conducted there is no question that their present means of 

communicating, writing, issuance of orders, and other phases of Japanese combat strategy 

would be changed from the written Japanese . . . to some other form so as not to give any 

indication of their moves. It goes without saying that the value of the captured Japanese 

material lies in the information acquired by translation and in insight into their training 

and strategy.

Rasmussen proposed that “the disciplinary record, War Bond subscription, 

Red Cross participation, high morale, and recreation activities” at Camp Savage 

were suitable topics for press coverage but that “no publicity regarding the training program or the course of study pursued at the Military Intelligence Service 

Language School be considered as material for publicity.” The War Department 

G–2, Maj. Gen. George V. Strong, agreed, and McCloy yielded. The Adjutant 

General issued a confidential action notice to all Army commands on 14 August 

1943, directing that “all necessary steps be taken to prevent publicity regarding 

Intelligence Personnel of Japanese extraction, the Military Intelligence Service 

Language Schools [sic], the assignment of graduates thereof or the type of work 

carried on by them.” All photographs showing the school and its graduates were 

henceforth classified confidential.102

Henceforth the school and its graduates received little public notice until war’s 

end, although the blackout was far from total. Time mentioned in December 1943 

100 Murphy, Ambassadors in Arms, pp. 196–202; Patricia A. Curtin, “Press Coverage of the 

442nd Regimental Combat Team (Separate-Nisei): A Case Study in Agenda Building,” American 

Journalism Review 12, no. 3 (Summer 1995): 225–41. 101 Memo, MISLS for General Kroner, sub: Publicity in Regard [to] Activities of American 

Soldiers of Japanese Descent in the Army of the United States, 25 May 43 (352), Ofc of the ASW, 

RG 107, NARA.

102 Memo, McCloy for Gen Kroner, 8 Jun 43 (ASW 352), Class Ref Sub Files, 1940–1947, Ofc of 

the ASW, RG 107, NARA; Memo, The Adjutant General’s Office (TAGO), sub: Publicity Regarding Intelligence Personnel of Japanese Extraction, 14 Aug 43, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, 

NARA. See related correspondence in CWRIC Papers, reel 6, frame 485.
CAMP SAVAGE, 1943–1944 163

that “hundreds [of Nisei] serve in Military Intelligence in the South Pacific.” In 

the summer of 1944 California journalist Carey McWilliams published an exposé 

of the government’s treatment of Japanese Americans. He mentioned in passing: 

“Some [Nisei] have served as intelligence officers in the Southwest Pacific with 

distinction and courage. . . . Several hundred Nisei are with the British and American forces in India as intelligence officers. . . . [Lt. Col.] Karl Gould has described 

the Nisei as playing an ‘indispensable role in the war’ as interpreters.”103 The 

Pacific Citizen on occasion mentioned individual soldiers serving in the Pacific, 

as did the Honolulu newspapers. On 12 August 1944, the Pacific Citizen revealed 

that six Nisei had won the Bronze Star during the battle for Saipan but gave no 

specifics.104 These brief notices received little attention. Consequently, during the 

war and for many years after, Americans learned little about the Nisei who used 

their language skills to fight against Japan.

103 “Race: Inquisition in Los Angeles,” Time (20 December 1943); McWilliams, Prejudice, p. 

287. Gould was the MISLS director of personnel procurement in 1942–1943. McWilliams also 

briefly mentioned Nisei fighting in the Pacific in a network radio broadcast. Pacific Citizen, 5 Aug 

44, p. 5. The Washington Post published an editorial in September 1944 to urge the closing of 

the internment camps and complained: “There has been virtually complete silence from the War 

Department concerning the valor of the Nisei in the Far East. We believe their story should be 

told—not merely in Hawaii, whence many of them entered the Army, but here in the continental 

United States, where some Americans still have to learn that devotion to democracy is not an inherited characteristic.” In April 1945 the War Relocation Authority distributed a compilation of news 

stories about the MIS Nisei. War Relocation Authority, Nisei in the War against Japan (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Interior, 1945). 104 “Six Nisei Soldiers Win Citation on Saipan,” Pacific Citizen, 12 Aug 44.

6

MIS Nisei in the Campaigns of 1943

The year 1943 marked the turning point in the war between the United States 

and Japan. The Allies halted and then reversed Japanese advances in the Aleutian 

Islands, the Central Pacific, the Solomon Islands, and Papua New Guinea. Scores 

of Nisei linguists served in these campaigns. Other Nisei were in training for 

combat in Europe with the 100th Infantry Battalion and 442d Regimental Combat 

Team (RCT), partly because of the contributions of the Military Intelligence Service (MIS) Nisei in earlier stages of the war. American commanders in the Pacific 

were requesting hundreds more Nisei linguists. The War Department G–2, Maj. 

Gen. George V. Strong, visited the Military Intelligence Service Language School 

(MISLS) in June 1943 to thank the students and staff for their contributions. By 

that time the school had already graduated 552 Nisei enlisted men and thirty-four 

Caucasian officers.

Nisei linguists added important elements to the overall intelligence picture. 

Allied commanders had access to a wide variety of intelligence, such as communications intelligence, aerial photography, submarine reconnaissance, and reports 

from coast watchers. However, when Allied soldiers and marines clashed with 

Japanese forces in ground combat, intelligence requirements shifted rapidly. Tactical information then became critical: commanders wanted to know the enemy’s 

location, strength, and plans. Good battlefield intelligence could make the difference between victory and defeat and between high casualties and easy victory. 

During 1943 the Nisei played an important role, especially at the tactical level.
166 NISEI LINGUISTS

The Aleutians

In the North Pacific, Japanese soldiers had dug into the tundra of the Aleutian 

Islands. Since June 1942 soldiers and sailors from Japan and America had faced 

off in that dismal island chain. Through the difficult winter of 1942–1943, the 

U.S. Army Alaska Defense Command and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers prepared for renewed fighting while the Eleventh Air Force and U.S. Navy patrolled 

the sea and sky.

The Military Intelligence Division (MID) rushed five Nisei graduates of the 

first language class to Alaska in May 1942. In December 1942 another five arrived 

with a Caucasian language officer. With other theaters clamoring for the Nisei, MID 

could spare no more. By early 1943 the Army had sent altogether nearly 100,000 

soldiers to the region, of whom barely ten could understand the Japanese language. 

Gaining intelligence about the Japanese forces was especially difficult in the Aleutians. Commanders relied mostly on radio intelligence and photoreconnaissance. 

During the first half of 1943, radio intercepts from the area were decrypted and 

translated in Hawaii or Washington, where Nisei were not employed. Photoreconnaissance was unreliable because of poor weather conditions. The Nisei had no 

prisoners of war to interrogate or captured documents to translate. Some Nisei did 

translate letters that a Japanese immigrant family in Seward, Alaska, had received 

from relatives in Japan before the war.1

For the American counterstroke in the Aleutians, the Army’s main strike force 

was the 7th Infantry Division. The division’s language team of ten Nisei and two 

Caucasian officers traveled by rail from Minnesota to Seattle, then onward by ship 

to Anchorage. Upon arrival the team learned that the 7th Division was still completing its training in California. So the team retraced its steps to Seattle and from 

there went south to Fort Ord, where it finally found the division. The 7th Infantry 

Division departed San Francisco in April 1943 with its assigned Nisei language 

team.2 Over 10,000 U.S. soldiers sailed to Attu, where 3,000 Japanese soldiers 

waited. Like the other American soldiers, the Nisei prepared themselves for their 

introduction to battle. (Map 5) Unlike the others, the Nisei feared that their fellow soldiers would mistake them for the enemy. Most Nisei had bodyguards. T5g. 

Satsuki Fred Tanakatsubo took a direct approach, telling his Caucasian comrades, 

“Take a good look, and remember me, because I’m going in with you!” 3

1 Joseph D. Harrington, Yankee Samurai: The Secret Role of Nisei in America’s Pacific Victory

(Detroit: Pettigrew Enterprises, 1979), p. 87. 2 Nobuo Furuiye, Pete Nakao, and Don C. Oka, in The Saga of the MIS, videotaped presentation, Los Angeles, 11 Mar 89; Don C. Oka, Biography, Military Intelligence Service Club of Northern California (this and similar biographies hereafter cited as MISNorCal Bios); Nobuo Furuiye, 

“Rocky Mountain MIS Veterans Club Autobiographies,” pp. 12–15, Unpubl Ms, ed. Kent T. Yoritomo, [1989], author’s files (this and similar biographies hereafter cited as Rocky Mountain Bios). 

The 7th Infantry Division removed hundreds of Nisei from its ranks in March 1942 and sent them 

to inland posts. 3 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 146–47 (emphasis in original). Weckerling reported that 

some Nisei were assigned to accompany the Attu landing force but noted cryptically that they 
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168 NISEI LINGUISTS

Shortly before the landing on fog-bound Attu, several Navy language officers, 

recent graduates of the Navy school in Boulder, Colorado, were assigned as team 

leaders for the Nisei. The Nisei were unhappy to serve under them, judging the 

officers’ language proficiency inferior to that of most Nisei, especially the Kibei. 

Moreover, the officers had commissions; the Nisei did not and were quick to see 

this as evidence of racial prejudice. In March 1943 two Navy language officers, 

Donald Keene and Otis Cary, were assigned to the 7th Infantry Division. The 

Nisei resented them, Keene recalled, because they “had been informed that the 

Navy interpreters and translators were all incompetent.” Keene and Cary “felt 

obliged to prove that this was not true” and earned the trust of their Nisei team 

members. Not all Navy language officers were as successful. When one Navy 

language officer on Attu ordered a Nisei enlisted man to dig a foxhole for him, 

the Nisei refused. The officer threatened a court-martial, but the Nisei merely told 

him, “Dig your own foxhole!”4

“were not allowed to accompany the convoy because it was feared that reception [of the Nisei?] 

aboard ship might disclose location of the force.” Col. John Weckerling, “Report of Attu Operation 

between 2 May and 15 May, 1943,” 11 Jun 43, para. 12, Records of Fourth U.S. Army and Western Defense Command, Record Group (RG) 338, National Archives and Records Administration 

(NARA). 4 Donald Keene, On Familiar Terms: A Journey across Cultures (New York: Kodansha, 1994), 

pp. 27; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 146.

Interrogation, Aleutians, by Edward R. Laning, 1943
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1943 169

The 11 May landing was followed by nineteen days’ fighting in the 

damp and bitter cold against stubborn 

Japanese resistance. During the same 

period 275,000 German and Italian soldiers surrendered in North Africa; in 

contrast, only twenty-eight Japanese 

soldiers surrendered on Attu. About 

sixteen MIS linguists served on the 

island during the fighting, interrogating prisoners and translating captured 

documents. Their work was stressful 

and exhausting. Some entered caves to 

persuade enemy soldiers to surrender. 

Others prepared psychological warfare 

leaflets, which the team leader dropped 

from a small airplane. Some remained 

aboard ship to monitor Japanese radio 

transmissions.5

The Nisei and their language officers showed great bravery. Lt. Gordon S. Jorgensen, S.Sgt. Yasuo Sam 

Umetani, and S.Sgt. George T. Hayashida crawled into caves looking for 

Japanese survivors. “All I had was a flashlight and a .45,” Hayashida recalled, 

“so when about ten [Japanese] agreed to surrender after prolonged discussions, I

breathed a lot easier.” The experience of combat could be nightmarish. One evening S.Sgt. Shigeo Ito and a language officer sought shelter under some large 

rocks only to find the bodies of three Japanese soldiers, which they pushed aside 

before lying down to sleep. Through the night Ito worried that the dead Japanese 

would come alive and kill them. “It was a long night with fear,” he recalled, “and 

never thought I [would] come out alive.” The next day he conducted his first interrogation on a Japanese soldier whose buttocks had been shot away; the wound was 

crawling with maggots. “I though about the Camp Savage training and I put all my 

effort and technology [sic], but didn’t work,” Ito recalled. “I couldn’t get any information from him. I failed badly.” Umetani translated the diary of a Japanese Army 

5 “Japanese-American [Sgt. Nakao] Fought Nips on Attu,” Denver Post, 13 Oct 43; “Commanding General Reveals Japanese Americans Took Part in Capture of Kwajalein Atoll,” Pacific Citizen, 

4 Mar 44; “Notes on the Japanese—From Their Documents,” in Military Intelligence Division, 

Intelligence Bulletin 2, no. 2 (October 1943): 52–60; Sylvia K. Kobayashi, “I Remember What I

Want To Forget,” in Alaska at War, 1941–1945: The Forgotten War Remembered, ed. Fern Chandonnet (Anchorage: Alaska at War Committee, 1995), pp. 285–88; Otis Hays, Jr., Alaska’s Hidden 

Wars: Secret Campaigns on the North Pacific Rim (Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2004).

Nisei soldier (left) questioning 

Japanese prisoners, Attu, May 1943
170 NISEI LINGUISTS

doctor who described killing his patients who were too weak to kill themselves. 

The Nisei “wept bitterly” as he translated the tragic document.6

On the night of 29 May the remaining Japanese soldiers, many armed only 

with bayonets or hand grenades, threw themselves on American lines in a suicidal 

rush. They poured through the American positions and penetrated into the rear 

areas, where they rushed through a field hospital, killing many of the wounded 

Americans in their beds. T4g. Kunihiro Pete Nakao avoided certain death by rolling under his bed just in time. When the surviving Japanese attackers were finally 

surrounded, they committed collective suicide with hand grenades. That marked 

the end of the battle. Americans were left stunned at the ferocity of the Japanese 

attack and the Japanese willingness to fight to the death.7 In less than three weeks 

of fighting, over 500 American soldiers had died; 3,000 more were out of action 

from wounds, trench foot, or illness.

The Army and Navy began preparations at once for the next assault on the 

island of Kiska. This time the Allies would employ twice as many troops, including 5,500 Canadian soldiers. The U.S. and Royal Canadian Armies had formed the 

1st Special Service Force the previous summer: Kiska would be its first test. The 

War Department sent two more teams of twenty Nisei with two officers, giving 

local commanders about forty Nisei to support the assault. One Colorado Nisei, 

Nobuo Furuiye, the first MIS Nisei to be attached to the Canadian Army, served 

with the Canadian Grenadiers.8

As the assault date approached, the Nisei prepared for action; some were 

assigned to monitor Japanese radio transmissions at Kiska.9 The first assault waves 

landed on 15 August to find the island empty.10 Allied intelligence had failed to 

detect the Japanese withdrawal from the island two weeks earlier. However, the 

Nisei did not come away empty-handed. The Japanese had abandoned large stocks 

of equipment and supplies on the island; the Nisei were happy to seize Japanese 

rations, including large sacks of rice, cans of bamboo shoots, and kegs of soy 

sauce, all in short supply through U.S. Army commissary channels.11

6 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 145–47; Joseph D. Harrington, “Yankee Samurai,” Ex-CBI

Roundup (February 1979): 13; Shigeo Ito, MISNorCal Bio; Brian Garfield, The Thousand Mile 

War: World War II in Alaska and the Aleutians (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969), p. 252. 7 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 147; The Pacific War and Peace: Americans of Japanese 

Ancestry in Military Intelligence Service, 1941 to 1952 (San Francisco: Military Intelligence Service Association of Northern California/National Japanese American Historical Society, 1991), 

p. 28; Keene, On Familiar Terms, pp. 28–29. 8 Furuiye, Rocky Mountain Bio, pp. 12–15; Yoshio Morita, “The Kiska Campaign,” in Secret 

Valor: M.I.S. Personnel, World War II Pacific Theater, Pre–Pearl Harbor to Sept. 8, 1951, ed. Ted T. 

Tsukiyama et al. (Honolulu: Military Intelligence Service Veterans Club of Hawaii, 1993), p. 63. 9 Nobuo Furuiye monitored Japanese radio transmissions near Kiska shortly before the invasion. Furuiye, Rocky Mountain Bio, p. 12. However, Roy Y. Ashizawa claims that the Army did 

not begin intercepting Japanese communications in the Aleutians until after the Attu and Kiska 

landings. Roy Y. Ashizawa, MISNorCal Bio, pp. 7–8. 10 Galen R. Perras, Stepping Stones to Nowhere: The Aleutian Islands, Alaska, and American 

Military Strategy, 1867–1945 (Toronto: UBC Press, 2003), pp. 151–57. 11 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 157–58.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1943 171

The MIS Nisei in the Aleutian Islands Campaign made a good impression 

on their fellow soldiers. In the serious business of close combat, they had proved 

their worth. “In the beginning the Caucasian boys were somewhat reserved,” one 

newspaper reported, “but a couple of good ‘bull’ sessions broke the ice completely, 

and they have become warm buddies ever since.” One veteran of the Aleutians 

wrote a California newspaper to protest the continuing prejudice against Japanese 

Americans at home:

We have gone into battle with loyal Americans of Japanese ancestry and they have acquitted themselves with honor and glory. Imagine the risk such a man takes when he volunteers and joins the army. Not only must he be careful of enemy fire, but he must take 

caution that he is not mistaken by his own troops as an enemy. We soldiers glory in the 

fact that these Japanese boys are with us giving their full measure of devotion, while their 

brothers and sisters, in some cases, are in relocation camps.12

12 “Nisei Veterans from Aleutians Visit Center,” Pacific Citizen, 20 Nov 43, p. 3; Capt. Ralph 

T. Lui, Ltr to the Editor, Sacramento Bee, 14 Jan 44, reprinted in War Relocation Authority, What 

We’re Fighting For (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, 1944), pp. 10–11.

Umetani (left) and Cpl. George Sadaji Tsukichi, Kiska, August 1943
172 NISEI LINGUISTS

After the Kiska landings, the Nisei interrogated the remaining prisoners from 

Attu and translated captured documents. As the months dragged on, they made an 

uneasy truce with the Navy language officers. Conversely, the weather remained 

a constant hazard. In the winter of 1943–1944 on Kiska, an avalanche smashed 

into the Quonset hut in which T4g. Hiromu Bill Wada was living. Two of the ten 

soldiers sleeping inside were killed, but Wada crawled out unharmed.13

The Joint Chiefs of Staff shelved plans for further offensive action in the 

North Pacific, and the War Department dissolved the Alaska Theater. Most Nisei 

in Alaska were reassigned between October 1943 and January 1944, with several 

becoming instructors at Camp Savage. In 1944 the school deployed eleven Alaska 

veterans to the South Pacific and five to Hawaii, environments very different from 

Alaska. By March 1944 only about ten Nisei remained in Alaska and by late 1944 

only two, both of whom remained until the end of the war.14 Despite the absence 

of a single consolidated intelligence center and despite the friction with the Navy’s 

Boulder graduates, the Nisei showed their worth in developing intelligence from 

prisoners, captured documents, and tactical radio intercepts. The lessons learned 

in the Aleutians would be repeated many times over in other parts of the Pacific.

South Pacific Area

Other MIS Nisei were serving under Admiral William F. Halsey in the South 

Pacific. When the battle for Guadalcanal ended, U.S. Army Forces in the South 

Pacific Area (USAFISPA) had over thirty MIS Nisei, most of them concentrated 

in Noumea on New Caledonia. They had gained valuable combat experience in 

January and February 1943, interrogating Japanese prisoners and translating piles 

of captured documents. The new year would give many more the chance to experience combat, first on New Georgia, then on Vella Lavella and Bougainville.(Map 

6) Col. Frederick P. Munson, the army attaché in Tokyo who was repatriated in 

1942, was the officer in charge of the Combat Intelligence Center in Noumea.15

Noumea was also headquarters for the Thirteenth Air Force, which established 

an air combat intelligence center that combined technical intelligence, interrogation, and interpretation.16 In early 1943 the Army Air Forces asked for Japanese 

linguists. In January 1943 MISLS sent 10 Nisei to the Thirteenth Air Force, 10 

to the Fifth Air Force in the Southwest Pacific, and 10 four months later to the 

Tenth AirForce in India. S.Sgt. Shunji Hamano, twenty-nine, led the Thirteenth 

13 Bill Wada, MISNorCal Bio, p. 4; MISLS Album (Minneapolis: Military Intelligence Service 

Language School, 1946), pp. 106–07; Richard S. Oguro, ed., Sempai Gumi (Honolulu: MIS Veterans of Hawaii, ca. 1981), pp. xx–xxvii; Pacific War and Peace, pp. 27–29. 14 Bill Wada, “My Two Year Experiences,” Unpubl Ms, n.d., author’s files. 15 Interv, D. Clayton James with Frederick P. Munson, 3 Jul 71, RG 49, MacArthur Memorial, 

Library and Archives, Norfolk, Va. 16 John F. Kreis ed., Piercing the Fog: Intelligence and Army Air Forces Operations in World 

War II (Washington, D.C.: Air Force History and Museums Program, 1996), p. 256.
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174 NISEI LINGUISTS

Air Force team. He was born in Los Angeles but had spent eight years attending 

school in Japan.17

The Nisei still did not have the acceptance of some of their fellow Americans, who regarded them with suspicion. One Nisei remembered bitterly how he 

required a marine escort for each trip to the latrine. But Susumu Toyoda remembered how the Nisei from the Combat Intelligence Center often swam at the same 

beach as Admiral Halsey. “The admiral would always stop and say, how’s the 

weather, boys,” Toyoda recalled. “We’d say wonderful, Admiral, come and join us. 

He was such a friendly person.” Halsey was often accompanied to the beach by his 

aide, Harold Stassen, now a Navy Reserve lieutenant and the former governor of 

Minnesota who in 1942 had offered the language school a new home.18

The Nisei could not avoid suspicions even in a combat theater. In early 1943 

Colonel Munson questioned Sgt. Tetsuo Hayashida about a remark Hayashida had 

made while attending MISLS: “Did you make the statement while you were taking 

a shower back at Camp Savage in Minnesota that if you had the choice of bearing 

arms or not bearing arms against the Japanese, that you would prefer not to?” The 

astonished Nisei told Munson that although he respected and admired Japanese 

culture, if called upon he would certainly be willing to bear arms against them. 

Munson decided not to pursue the matter further.19

This constant scrutiny, combined with the geographical distance from home, 

made the Nisei feel very isolated. Furthermore, most of their families were in 

relocation camps, which made communication with them slow and difficult. 

When Sgt. Joe J. Yoshiwara returned to Noumea from Guadalcanal in February 

1943, a colonel informed him that his mother had died three months earlier in the 

Amache relocation camp. His commander offered to let him return, but Yoshiwara 

declined.20 The strain overwhelmed one Nisei when discouraging letters arrived 

from his family in the relocation camp at Tule Lake, California. According to one 

report, the unidentified Nisei “requested relief from duty, based on his own belief 

that he could not support the war effort. . . . He was relieved and was returned to 

the United States.” 21 Most endured as best they could.

In June 1943 Halsey struck the Japanese at New Georgia with the 43d Infantry Division, supported by ten Nisei under Capt. Eugene A. Wright. In the thick 

jungle, the Japanese fought savagely from well-hidden positions. During the night 

of 17–18, July a Japanese counterattack overran the division command post where 

17 Hamano recalled that his team was first assigned to Army Air Forces headquarters in Hawaii, 

but upon arrival they were redirected to the South Pacific. Shunji Hamano, Rocky Mountain Bio, 

pp. 16–19. 18 Ltr, Roy T. Uyehata, 21 October 1990, author’s files; Interv, author with Susumu Toyoda, 12 

Sep 96.

19 Tetsuo Hayashida, MISNorCal Bio; MISLS, “Training History of the Military Intelligence 

Service Language School,” ann. 4, Intelligence Section, p. 2, Unpubl Ms, 1946, U.S. Army Center 

of Military History (CMH). 20 Ltr, Joe J. Yoshiwara to Roy Uyehata, 18 February 1993. 21 “History and Description of the Military Intelligence Service Language School,” [May 1944], 

p. 32, Gen Rcds, 1943–1945, Military Intelligence [Service] Language School, RG 319, NARA.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1943 175

the language team was located. Sgt. Shigeo Yasutake from Gardena, California, 

survived only by crouching low in his foxhole, where the land crabs kept him 

company. At that moment, he recalled, he was “thankful for those mean Regular 

sergeants of the 7th Division,” where he had received his basic training before the 

war, “who made me dig a foxhole deep!” 22

After two weeks the division was nearly combat ineffective, so Halsey sent in 

elements of the 37th and 25th Infantry Divisions. With the new units came another 

Nisei team led by two Caucasian lieutenants and S.Sgt. Kazuo Komoto, who 

remembered it as the “toughest fighting in the world.” After a week with no sleep 

he “climbed out of his foxhole behind the front lines to rest.” As he was standing 

in the open with several other Americans, a Japanese sniper opened fire with a 

machine gun, shattering his knee. He was evacuated to a hospital ship, where his 

commanding general presented him with the Purple Heart, the first awarded to an 

MIS Nisei. While recovering from his wound he visited his parents interned in 

the Gila River camp in Arizona.23 In the closing days of the battle Capt. John A. 

Burden accompanied a patrol to intercept the withdrawing enemy. The Americans 

could not halt the Japanese evacuation; but when they swept into the abandoned 

Japanese headquarters, Burden found a large number of valuable documents the 

Japanese had abandoned in their haste.24

The bitter fighting gave rise to many myths about the fighting capacity of the 

Japanese soldiers, often enlarging upon the stories from Guadalcanal. The American soldiers found it easy to exaggerate their enemy. The language teams tried to 

dispel beliefs that, for instance, many Japanese soldiers could speak English and 

they had mysterious powers to infiltrate and attack at night. After the battle, Captain Wright and another language officer, Lt. Michael Mitchell, a prewar newspaperman in Osaka, Japan, wrote an article entitled “The Jap Is Not Mysterious!” 

that was published in the Infantry Journal.

25

The Allies found themselves guarding increasing numbers of Japanese prisoners of war (POWs). The United States transferred more than 850 POWs from the 

Solomon Islands to New Zealand in 1942–1943. The prisoners went to a camp at 

Featherston, about forty miles northeast of Wellington. On 25 February 1943, about 

22 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 159–60. 23 Ibid., pp. 150, 160, 300; “Japanese Tells of Pacific War at Rivers [Gila River] Camp,” Baltimore Sun, 20 Nov 43, reprinted in War Relocation Authority, Nisei in the War against Japan

(Washington, D.C.: Department of the Interior, April 1945), p. 12; photo, Pacific Citizen, 8 Jan 44; 

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. 

Komoto recovered from his wounds and served with the 11th Airborne Division in the Philippines. 

Harrington places him later in Burma with the Mars Task Force. Harrington, Yankee Samurai, 

p. 231. 24 John Burden autobiography, pp. 16–17, Unpubl Ms, 1992, copy in author’s files. 25 Capt. Eugene A. Wright and Lt. Michael Mitchell, “The Jap Is Not Mysterious!” Infantry 

Journal (December 1943): 12–15; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 87. The New York Times, 29 

Aug 43, mentioned Wright’s work as a language officer; the Army Service Forces published his 

photograph in the weekly news map for 9 August 1943.
176 NISEI LINGUISTS

250 Japanese prisoners at Featherston rioted and attacked their guards. The New 

Zealanders responded with fire, killing forty-eight Japanese POWs and wounding 

another seventy-four. One guard died, and another six were injured.26

The American soldiers were eager for souvenirs and had to be persuaded of 

the value of submitting captured documents and equipment to the intelligence section. After the fighting had ended, some Nisei exploited this desire for souvenirs 

and fabricated Japanese flags to sell to the gullible soldiers.27

The next move in the Solomons was Vella Lavella, where the 25th Infantry 

Division landed in August. Burden led ten Nisei including his right-hand man 

from Guadalcanal, Tateshi Miyasaki. By now they knew the routine: translating 

captured documents, interrogating the few prisoners captured alive, and trying to 

piece together the enemy’s intentions. After several weeks the 3d New Zealand 

Division took over and continued to mop up the remaining Japanese defenders. 

Burden took several Nisei to the unit for language support. One day while in camp 

with the New Zealanders, Miyasaki was bending over a cooking fire stripped to 

the waist. Hearing a noise, he straightened up to see two or three New Zealand 

soldiers pointing their rifles at him. “I’m an American, don’t shoot!” he yelled. At 

just that moment Burden returned. “He’s okay,” he said, “He’s with me.” 28

By the end of 1943 about eighty Nisei were serving in the South Pacific. Since 

the first had arrived in May 1942 they had made many important contributions 

in combat operations and would prove their value again on Bougainville. By late 

1943 many Nisei and their leaders had been overseas in the South Pacific for a 

year or more. Captain Burden returned to the language school in Minnesota for 

a number of weeks. Several Nisei were given the chance to earn commissions. 

In August 1943 Sgt. Richard Kaoru Hayashi interrogated a Japanese sailor who 

disclosed that he had been on the submarine I–17 that had shelled oil storage tanks 

near Santa Barbara, California, in February 1942. The Office of Naval Intelligence 

expressed great interest in this special prisoner, so Hayashi escorted him to the 

United States. Instead of returning to the South Pacific, Hayashi was sent to Fort 

Benning, Georgia, for officer candidate school. In March 1944 he was commissioned and sent to the 442d RCT in Italy, thus becoming the first Nisei to fight 

in both the Pacific and Europe. T3g. Takeo Kubo also went to Fort Benning for 

officer candidate school in the summer of 1943 but was unable to complete the 

course due to recurring malaria attacks. He was reassigned to the 442d RCT at 

26 Colin Funch, Linguists in Uniform: The Japanese Experience (Australia: Monash University, 

2003), pp. 181–83; Ulrich Straus, The Anguish of Surrender: Japanese POWs of World War II

(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003). 27 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 161. Sample combat intelligence documents from the South 

Pacific can be found in the Judge Eugene A. Wright Papers, National Japanese American Historical Society (NJAHS), San Francisco, Calif., and the John A. Burden Papers, Hoover Institution 

Archives, Stanford University, Calif. 28 Tateshi Miyasaki, in David W. Swift, Jr., ed. “First Class,” Unpubl Ms, 2000, copy in author’s 

files; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 189–90; Burden autobiography, p. 16–A.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1943 177

Camp Shelby, Mississippi, and later the language school at Fort Snelling.29 Sergeant Yasutake, who had survived the attack on his division command post, was 

offered a battlefield commission or stateside officer candidate school. He chose 

officer candidate school, thinking “it would get me out of the muck and the dirt for 

at least a year, anyhow.” 30

Navajo Code Talkers

At the same time the Nisei served in the South Pacific, the U.S. Marine Corps 

employed another ethnic minority, Navajo Indians, whose story has many parallels. Two months after the Pearl Harbor attack, Philip Johnston approached Marine 

29 Richard K. Hayashi, MISNorCal Bio; Richard Hayashi Collection, NJAHS; Masayo Umezawa 

Duus, Unlikely Liberators: The Men of the 100th and 442nd (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 

1987), pp. 191; Takeo Kubo, in Swift, “First Class.” 30 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 159; “Nisei Soldier Commended for Pacific Action,” Pacific 

Citizen, 28 Oct 44, p. 1.

Burden and two Nisei with the 25th Infantry Division question a Japanese 

prisoner, Vella Lavella, September 1943.
178 NISEI LINGUISTS

officials in San Diego with a suggestion. Johnston was a Caucasian who, having 

been raised on a Navajo reservation, spoke the difficult language and was devoted 

to their language and culture. He proposed that the Marine Corps recruit and train 

young Navajo men to serve as radio operators. They could communicate with 

each other in their native tongue, which few non-Navajos had mastered. During 

the war, 45,000 American Indians served in all branches of the military. For many 

the war presented an opportunity to show their patriotism and prove their warrior 

spirit; four received the Medal of Honor.31

The Marine Corps recruited twenty-nine Navajo volunteers from the reservation in April 1942. The men took basic training and then learned a modified 

version of their language that used over 400 common Navajo words to represent 

military terms and letters of the alphabet. That autumn twenty-seven graduates 

joined the 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal; two others remained behind as 

instructors for subsequent classes. 

The Code Talkers sent and received messages over unencrypted voice radio 

nets, using this natural “code” to prevent the Japanese from eavesdropping. The 

Code Talkers were trained both as marines and in this special language. Like the 

Nisei, they had to speak passable English as well as their own language; moreover, 

the Marine Corps insisted on at least a tenth-grade education. Their service was 

kept secret from their families. To most Caucasian Americans, the Navajo, like the 

Nisei, “looked like the enemy” and risked being mistaken for Japanese and killed 

by their fellow Americans. Like the Nisei, they often had Caucasian bodyguards 

and were warned not to let themselves be captured. 

At the beginning of the war one Navajo soldier (not a Code Talker) was captured on Bataan, where he was a member of the 200th Coast Artillery from the 

New Mexico National Guard. After the war he described how he had convinced 

his Japanese captors only with great difficulty that he was not an American Nisei. 

They eventually brought him to Japan and made him listen to intercepted Code 

Talker radio transmissions. He told his disappointed captors that he understood a 

few of the words but not their meanings.32

On Guadalcanal, the Code Talkers proved highly successful, so the Marine 

Corps expanded the program. By August 1943, 191 Navajo were serving as Code 

Talkers. In contrast, the Army apparently did not use American Indians in this 

way in the Pacific, nor did it borrow any from the Marine Corps. The Army did 

31 Margaret T. Bixler, Winds of Freedom: The Story of the Navajo Code Talkers of World War II

(Darien, Conn.: Two Bytes Publishing, 1992); Goode Davis, Jr., “Proud Tradition of the Marines’ 

Navajo Code Talkers,” Marine Corps League (Spring 1990): 16–26; Lynn Escue, “Coded Contributions: Navajo Talkers and the Pacific War,” History Today (July 1991); Adam Jevec, “Semper 

Fidelis, Code Talkers,” Prologue 33, no. 4 (Winter 2001); Bruce Watson, “Navajo Code Talkers: A 

Few Good Men,” Smithsonian (August 1993): 34–43. The public first became aware of the Code 

Talkers in the 1970s, about the same time as the MIS Nisei became more widely recognized. 32 Davis, “Proud Tradition,” p. 25; Escue, “Coded Contributions,” p. 18; Watson, “Navajo Code 

Talkers,” p. 39.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1943 179

later use smaller numbers of Choctaw and Comanche soldiers in a similar way in 

the European Theater.

Marine units began to include the Navajo radiomen in every operation, and the 

Navajo often worked at the battalion and regiment levels. Their usefulness came at 

a price. Two Code Talkers died on New Britain and three on Bougainville. Eventually more than 400 Navajo served as Code Talkers. Ten were killed in action. Like 

the Nisei, many of the Navajo families were confined to government-controlled 

reservations. The Code Talkers nevertheless used their language skills, which had 

set them apart from the white mainstream in civilian life, to help defeat the Japanese in battle.

Southwest Pacific Area

In the Southwest Pacific Area, the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section 

(ATIS) grew during 1943 from 5 officers and 22 Nisei enlisted men to 12 officers 

and 149 Nisei. Of all MISLS graduates sent overseas during 1943, the Southwest 

Pacific received the lion’s share, about 40 percent.33 The handful of Nisei who 

fought at Buna-Gona passed on their combat-tested techniques for translation 

and interrogation to each fresh group of Nisei. Australian “Diggers” and American GIs began to push Imperial Japanese forces back up the 1,500-mile New 

Guinea coast, fighting tough campaigns in the mountains, swamps, and jungles. 

Fifth Air Force fought to dominate the air, while intelligence officers worked 

night and day to achieve dominance over their dangerous foe. Teams of Nisei 

linguists accompanied each American and Australian division into battle, while 

others stayed in the rear to process the expanding torrent of captured documents 

and prisoners of war.

In Australia, Col. Sidney F. Mashbir had built ATIS at the Indooroopilly Racetrack on the outskirts of Brisbane, a provincial town on Australia’s northeast coast. 

Mashbir was an ardent believer in the Nisei. He lamented the “war hysteria” that 

was affecting all Japanese Americans and told them he regarded their plight to be 

“as difficult as that of the Jews in Germany.” He reminded them that “almost without exception, you are volunteers, [and] that you are doing a brave, courageous, 

and patriotic thing in volunteering for this service.” 34 The Nisei repaid his trust 

with devoted service.

The senior Nisei under Mashbir, M.Sgt. Gary Tsuneo Kadani, had arrived 

in June 1942 with the original group. In February 1943 M.Sgt. George Kanegai 

brought nine more Nisei from Camp Savage to serve as support staff for the base 

camp. These Nisei were not MISLS graduates but had been sent overseas to serve 

as clerks, cooks, and supply personnel. Kadani had already developed a good 

33 General Headquarters, Far East Command, Operations of the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section, GHQ, SWPA, Intelligence Series, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Far East Command, 1948), pp. 3–4, 

59 (hereafter cited as ATIS History), pp. 7–8; MISLS, Disposition of Graduates, Training Grp, Ofc 

of the Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, NARA. 34 Sidney F. Mashbir, I Was an American Spy (New York: Vantage, 1953), p. 243.
180 NISEI LINGUISTS

working relationship with Mashbir since September 1942, so he continued as the 

operations sergeant. Kanegai became first sergeant in charge of support functions 

such as mess and supply.35

To house the anticipated new personnel, in January 1943 ATIS established 

Camp Chelmer across the Brisbane River. The first ten pyramid tents were erected 

to hold 120 enlisted men.36 On 4 March a new group of twenty-six Nisei linguists 

arrived from the school. The team leader, T.Sgt. Torao George Ichikawa, had been 

stationed at Fort Ord, California, when the war broke out. Also accompanying the 

group were two Caucasian lieutenants, Faubion Bowers and Paul Aurell, both having learned Japanese in Japan.37 The new group was quickly indoctrinated into the 

ATIS way of doing business, a pattern repeated many times over in the months to 

come as MISLS sent evermore graduates to ATIS. 

Nisei linguists learned and taught valuable lessons through their experiences 

in the Southwest Pacific Area. They learned firsthand that kindness and respect 

shown to Japanese prisoners yielded the best results during interrogations. Nisei 

learned to persuade American soldiers of the value of taking prisoners alive and 

turning over captured documents to intelligence personnel. They also learned that 

American and Australian commanders did not automatically accept them. “In 

the beginning, the Australians, like our own Navy, were loath to accept them at 

all,” Mashbir recalled, “so I simply had to get tough about it and told the Aussies 

it was Nisei or nothing. There just weren’t enough Caucasians capable of doing 

Intelligence work with the Australian division to go around.” 38 Once the Nisei 

demonstrated what they could do—when an interrogation disclosed an impending attack or a translated map revealed enemy artillery positions—commanders 

quickly realized the Nisei were their most valuable source of reliable intelligence 

on the front lines.

ATIS became a more American organization as it grew, though a few Australian and other Commonwealth personnel remained, such as Maj. John V. Shelton 

of the Australian Imperial Forces. The Australian government also detailed many 

women to accomplish nonlinguist duties in ATIS. They served with the Women’s 

Australian Air Force, Australian Women’s Army Service, and the Women’s Royal 

Australian Naval Service. However, the core group of translators and interpreters 

remained the American Nisei enlisted men.

The Nisei came to enjoy life in Australia, certainly as compared to conditions 

closer to the front lines, and settled down to become part of the local community. They worked hard during the day, especially during active campaigns when 

boxes and crates of captured documents would pour in. Off-duty Nisei enjoyed 

35 Interv, author with Yoshio George Kanegai, 13 Sep 96. 36 ATIS History; Mashbir, I Was an American Spy, pp. 177–88; David W. Swift, Sr., Ninety Li 

a Day, ed. David W. Swift, Jr., Social Life Monographs, vol. 69 (Taipei: Chinese Association for 

Folklore, 1975), pp. 276–91. 37 Stanley L. Falk and Warren M. Tsuneishi, eds., MIS in the War against Japan (Washington, 

D.C.: Japanese American Veterans Association, 1995), pp. 11–13, 94–95. 38 Mashbir, I Was an American Spy, p. 247.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1943 181

wartime Brisbane, which quickly became a soldiers’ town. Local Australians 

treated the American Nisei with little prejudice: They saw the Nisei as “Yanks,” 

not as Japanese. The Nisei spent their paychecks in local pubs and on weekend 

trips into town. A favorite spot was the Chinese restaurant incongruously named 

the Roma Cafe.39

At Camp Chelmer, the card games became legendary. One night in the spring 

of 1943, T.Sgt. George H. Goda lost a poker hand. One of his teammates, T.Sgt. 

Tarno H. Fudenna, commented that Goda had made a stupid move. Goda lost his 

temper, and Fudenna soon regretted his rash remark. The next morning ATIS

received an urgent request for a single linguist to work at a remote airstrip in New 

Guinea. Fudenna found himself on the next plane out and would not see Brisbane 

again for six months.40

As more documents from the battlefront in New Guinea flowed into ATIS, it 

became apparent that Mashbir did not have enough translators to prepare a complete translation of every document. In July 1943 he established a scanning subsection with three officers and six enlisted men, some of his best translators, to 

scan the piles of documents and extract the most important information. Especially valuable were those who could read so ̄sho, the abbreviated grass writing that 

few but Kibei could decipher.41

During 1943 Mashbir became concerned that later Nisei graduates of the 

language school were not as proficient. “I was distressed to find that only a few 

were actually expert, and that as many as twenty-five percent out of every shipment were utterly unusable.” He complained of “a steady diminution in the quality 

of the source of material, inasmuch as an ever decreasing percentage of effective linguists is reaching this theater.” When sixty Nisei arrived in June 1943 for 

Sixth Army, Mashbir established a training section under Maj. David Swift, who 

directed a course “in forward interrogation and in the methods of using captured 

documents to aid prisoner examination.”42

Some Nisei, especially Kibei like T4g. Harry K. Fukuhara, arrived with excellent language skills. Fukuhara had been born in Seattle in 1920. When his father 

died in 1933, his mother took her children back to her home in Hiroshima, where 

he attended a commercial high school. Fukuhara returned alone to the United 

States in 1938 to attend college. His mother remained in Hiroshima, as did three 

of his brothers who all later served in the Imperial Japanese Army.43

39 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 94–95, 199–200; Edward J. Drea, “‘Great Patience Is 

Needed’: America Encounters Australia, 1942,” War & Society (May 1993): 21–51. 40 Tarno H. Fudenna, MISNorCal Bio. For the ATIS card games, see Interv, author with Kanegai, 

13 Sep 96; Gene Masaji Uratsu, MISNorCal Bio. 41 ATIS History, p. 12; Mashbir, I Was an American Spy, pp. 259–60. 42 Mashbir, I Was an American Spy, pp. 224–25; Memo, ATIS, sub: Analysis of Linguistic 

Requirements, 27 Jun 44, author’s files; ATIS History, pp. 21–22. 43 Intervs, Eric Saul and Loni Ding with Harry K. Fukuhara, 7 Jan 86, NJAHS, and John P. 

Finnegan with Harry K. Fukuhara, 5 Jun 90, U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, Fort 

Belvoir, Va.; Falk and Tsuneishi, MIS in the War against Japan, pp. 97–98.
182 NISEI LINGUISTS

During 1943 arriving Nisei sometimes were assigned directly to individual 

divisions, corps, or Sixth Army headquarters. Mashbir fought to gain operational 

control over these teams. “The attached personnel were subject to withdrawal by 

their parent organizations without notice, a situation which caused considerable 

disruption in the development and organization of ATIS.”44 As 1943 went on, 

Mashbir gained control of the incoming teams so he could assign the Nisei as he 

saw fit. In this way he established a system for providing effective language support at all levels of each operation. The key to success, in his view, was “the pooling, to the extent permissible by circumstances, of all linguistic resources.”45

Mashbir came to appreciate the Nisei and to understand their commitment 

and concerns. He soon learned of their unhappiness over the lack of promotions. 

Some even complained that commissions promised upon graduation from language training had never materialized. ATIS had no table of organization, thus the 

War Department would not allow Mashbir to promote or commission his soldiers. 

“At the end of two years and the conclusion of ten tough operations, not a single 

man had been promoted even one grade, solely because there were no legal vacancies.” However, in August 1943 he found a way to promote three Nisei to warrant 

officer, telling them, “We couldn’t get you 2d lieutenant bars but we’ll get you warrant officers first and then we’ll see what we can do after you get your warrant.” 

Gary T. Kadani and Steve S. Yamamoto had come to Australia with the first group 

of Nisei; Sunao P. Ishio had come a few months later and served at Buna-Gona. 

Mashbir soon obtained quotas for the Nisei to attend the Army’s officer candidate 

school at Camp Columbia outside Brisbane. The first Nisei graduates of this program received commissions in early 1944.46

ATIS began producing important intelligence reports and established in July 

1943 a separate Production Section for editorial and printing work. During the 

year ATIS produced over 2,000 interrogation reports and translations of about 

seventy enemy publications, such as a Japanese manual on landing operations, 

the 1940 national census of Japan, and a Japanese analysis of American combat 

operations on Guadalcanal.47 ATIS also published information bulletins, later designated research reports, on a wide variety of topics. These included such things as 

a profile of the Asahi Steel Works in Osaka, a description of Japanese booby traps, 

44 ATIS History, p. 7. 45 Ibid., p. 2. 46 Mashbir, I Was an American Spy, p. 222; “Intelligence Men Recount WW II Projects at 

Reunion,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 2 Sep 68; James Oda, in Pacific Citizen, 23–30 Dec 88, p. E–3; 

Interv, author with S. Phil Ishio, 18 Apr 95. All three Nisei warrant officers received commissions 

in early 1944. 47 ATIS History, pp. 20–21. Major ATIS publications are listed in ATIS History, app. IX. Copies are available at the National Archives, the MacArthur Memorial, and the University of Maryland. For an almost complete set, see The History of Intelligence Activities under General Douglas 

MacArthur, 1942–50, The Intelligence Series, G–2–USAFFE–SWPA–AFPAC–FEC–SCAP, S1657, 

8 microfilm rolls (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1984). The Japanese report on Guadalcanal was reprinted in John Miller, jr., Guadalcanal: The First Offensive (Washington, D.C.: 

Department of the Army, Historical Division, 1949), pp. 365–68.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1943 183

and an analysis of Japanese military psychology. Mashbir took a special interest in 

gathering evidence on Japanese’s decision for war and subsequent war crimes.48

During 1943 ATIS examined over 200 Japanese prisoners. Many were held in 

Camp Gaythorne, a POW compound on the outskirts of Brisbane. Several talked 

freely with the Americans, in part because the Imperial Japanese Army had never 

indoctrinated them in what to do if captured. Major Shelton personally handled 

one Japanese soldier whom the Australians captured in March 1943. The prisoner 

was a superior private in an artillery unit and had a photographic memory. He also 

was resentful that he had not been promoted to the Japanese equivalent of warrant 

officer. Over the next two years ATIS generated more than two dozen interrogation reports based on the variety of information he freely provided.49

Other prisoners were less helpful. Once during an interrogation in the autumn 

of 1943, Sergeant Yamamoto caught a prisoner in a lie. When Yamamoto confronted him, the prisoner “started telling the truth, which included a lot of useful 

information.” Yamamoto, one of the Nisei just promoted to warrant officer, then 

took a few days’ leave in Brisbane. Upon his return, he learned that the Japanese 

prisoner had committed suicide. He had left Yamamoto a note saying he thought 

the Nisei “was angry with him, and that made him so ashamed that he had to kill 

himself.” 50

In the spring of 1943 ATIS scored a coup that demonstrated that the Nisei 

could produce valuable strategic intelligence. Fifth Air Force was interdicting Japanese reinforcements and resupply for their forces in New Guinea. In March 1943 

the Fifth Air Force, tipped off by Ultra, ambushed and destroyed a Japanese convoy ferrying troops to Lae on New Guinea’s north coast in what became known 

as the Battle of the Bismarck Sea.51 Several days later Allied troops discovered 

an abandoned lifeboat with a trunk of documents. Among these was the Japanese 

Army list, a register of every officer in the Imperial Japanese Army with unit of 

assignment as of 15 October 1942.

Since the war began, Allied intelligence specialists had been painstakingly 

piecing together the order of battle for the Japanese Army using prewar data. The 

Nisei’s efforts yielded information about Japanese units the Allies encountered 

in Singapore, the Philippines, Guadalcanal, and New Guinea. Now intelligence 

officers could reconstruct every unit from company level to army headquarters. 

Given an officer’s name, an American interrogator could deduce a prisoner’s unit. 

A team of twenty Nisei and Caucasian linguists worked nonstop for weeks on the 

40,000 names. The translation was tricky work because Japanese family names 

48 Mashbir, I Was an American Spy, pp. 234–37. 49 ATIS History, p. 46; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 149. 50 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 155; Steve S. Yamamoto, in Swift, “First Class,” pp. 5–6; 

Ulrich Straus, The Anguish of Surrender: Japanese POWs of World War II (Seattle: University of 

Washington Press, 2004). 51 Ronald Lewin, The American Magic: Codes, Ciphers and the Defeat of Japan (New York: 

Farrar Straus Giroux, 1982), pp. 185–87; Edward J. Drea, MacArthur’s Ultra: Codebreaking and 

the War against Japan, 1942–1945 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992), pp. 61–74.
184 NISEI LINGUISTS

often can be rendered in more than one way. When the 683-page translation was 

published in May 1943, it was the first detailed, reliable profile of the Japanese 

Army in more than two years.52

Brig. Gen. Charles A. Willoughby kept direct control over the list and established a separate section in his headquarters for its exploitation. He sent an urgent 

request to MISLS for its best available translator. The language school sent M.Sgt. 

Taro Yoshihashi, a Kibei who had lived in Japan for five years as a teenager. Before 

the war, he had returned to the United States and earned a degree in psychology 

from the University of California at Los Angeles. In late May 1943 he left Minnesota for Brisbane, where he arrived in early June. He set to work at once maintaining the card file based on the officer list, together with Sgt. Ken Omura from 

Seattle. The order of battle section became one of the workhorses of intelligence 

in the theater for the rest of the war. In Washington, the Military Intelligence Division established a similar section to collate this data. Four Nisei were assigned to 

the Pentagon, the first Japanese Americans allowed into the new building since 

the War Department had moved in. For the remainder of the war, each time Allied 

soldiers captured an updated list, Yoshihashi and his counterparts in the Pentagon 

translated it and painstakingly updated their card files.53

Another organization in Willoughby’s growing intelligence empire, Central 

Bureau, attacked Japanese radio traffic from its location at the Ascot Racetrack, 

five miles east of Brisbane. In the early months of the war Central Bureau required 

little translation work and used ATIS Nisei only sporadically. Clarence Yamagata, 

a Nisei civilian attorney who had been evacuated from the Philippines, was the 

only Nisei working for Central Bureau. Although the bureau succeeded in breaking into the Japanese Army’s water transport code by April 1943, for the rest of the 

year it had little message traffic to translate.54

Fifth Air Force established its own network of radio intercept stations by early 

1943 to provide advance warning of Japanese air attacks. One of these stations 

was the 138th Signal Radio Intercept Company with the Fifth Air Force advance 

headquarters near Port Moresby, New Guinea. The Australians operated a radio 

intercept station in Stuart Creek on Australia’s northeast coast.55 Air intelligence 

52 ATIS Publication no. 2 (May 43); ATIS History, p. 45; Willoughby, “The Language Problem 

in War,” p. 194; Drea, MacArthur’s Ultra, pp. 22, 73–74; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 133–34, 

151–52. Intervs, author with Taro Yoshihashi, 22 Aug 95; author with Sunao P. Ishio, 18 Apr 95; D. 

Clayton James with Sidney F. Mashbir, 1 Sep 71, pp. 12–17, RG 49, MacArthur Memorial. George 

K. Sankey, Areya, Koreya (This and That). Extracts reprinted in ATIS History, tab I, doc. app., 

pt. 1; Reports of General MacArthur, 4 vols., U.S. Army in World War II (Washington, D.C.: U.S. 

Army Center of Military History, 1994), 1: 112. See also S. Phil Ishio, “The Nisei Contribution 

to the Allied Victory in the Pacific,” American Intelligence Journal (Spring/Summer 1995): 64; 

George Sankey, in Saga of the MIS. 53 Interv, author with Taro Yoshihashi, 22 Aug 95. 54 Drea, MacArthur’s Ultra, pp. 61–93; ATIS History, pp. 64–65. 55 Kreis, Piercing the Fog, pp. 57–109; Roger Pineau, “The Death of Admiral Yamamoto,” 

Naval Intelligence Professionals Quarterly (Fall 1994): 1–5; Jack Bleakley, The Eavesdroppers

(Canberra: AGPS Press, 1991). 
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1943 185

officers developed an elaborate system to track Japanese aircraft. By one account, 

“when a Japanese pilot took off, intercept specialists listened to his radio call, 

recorded his aircraft’s number, checked the aircraft’s type and history of normal 

use (for example, it might be a transport that ordinarily flew between Rabaul and 

New Guinea), and predicted with good accuracy its probable destination and time 

of arrival.” This information then could be checked against a card file of every 

Japanese aircraft in the region.56

The Army Air Forces also gained valuable information from “crash intelligence” from downed Japanese aircraft. According to one story, air intelligence 

officers estimated the production rate for Mitsubishi bombers by noting the serial 

numbers on the toilet seats. To translate the data plates and written materials found 

in the wreckage, at first Fifth Air Force borrowed Caucasian linguists from the 

Royal Australian Air Force and the British Army.57 In January 1943 Fifth Air 

Force requested its own Nisei. In early April ten Nisei arrived from the United 

States led by Sergeant Goda, a Kibei who had two years of college in the United 

States.58 Soon after their arrival, Fifth Air Force called for one to join the 138th 

Signal Radio Intercept Company at Seven Mile Strip on New Guinea. This was 

the request that led Goda to send the hapless Sergeant Fudenna to New Guinea 

the morning after their poker game. Fudenna was a Kibei who had grown up in 

Irvington, California. He had been in the Army since before Pearl Harbor and had 

graduated from the language school in one of the top sections.59

By this point in the war Nisei did not usually have access to the most sensitive 

Ultra radio intelligence. However, they were allowed to monitor tactical frequencies such as those used for air-to-ground communications. The Japanese also sent 

some radio transmissions in a simple kana code, which American operators could 

write down and then have translated. On 13 April 1943, Army and Navy intercept 

stations in Hawaii and the West Coast picked up a Japanese message in the highlevel JN–25 naval code. The large number of addressees attracted the code breakers’ attention. Within hours they had most of the message decoded and translated. 

It told them that the commander of the Japanese Combined Fleet Command would 

56 Kreis, Piercing the Fog, pp. 247–96 (quote from p. 261). 57 Mashbir, cited in “Intelligence Men Recount WW II Projects at Reunion,” Honolulu StarBulletin (2 September 1968); Kreis, Piercing the Fog, p. 122; Funch, Linguists in Uniform, 

pp. 112–22. 58 Walter Tanaka, MISNorCal Bio; Walter Tanaka, “Interrogation Experiences,” in World War 

II Reminiscences, ed. John H. Roush, Jr. (San Rafael, Calif.: Reserve Officers Association of the 

United States, 1995), pp. 193–95. 59 Harold Fudenna, “Harold Fudenna’s Involvement in the Death of Admiral Yamamoto,” MISNorCal Bio; Ltr, Walter Tanaka to Lyn Crost, 25 September 1993, copy in author’s files; Lyn Crost, 

Honor by Fire: Japanese Americans at War in Europe and the Pacific (Novato, Calif.: Presidio 

Press, 1994), pp. 54–56. Fudenna refers incorrectly to Seventeen Mile Strip. For Seven Mile Strip, 

see George C. Kenney, General Kenney Reports: A Personal History of the Pacific War (New York: 

Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1949). Fudenna also refers to First Radio Squadron, 138th Signal Corps; 

this was probably the 138th Signal Radio Intercept Company, which became the 1st Radio Squadron Mobile in August 1943. Kreis, Piercing the Fog, p. 258.
186 NISEI LINGUISTS

make an inspection tour of the South Pacific a few days hence. Admiral Isoroku 

Yamamoto was the planner of the Pearl Harbor attack and one of Japan’s greatest 

wartime leaders. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz approved a plan to exploit the message and eliminate his Japanese counterpart.60

News of the intercepted message flashed around intelligence centers in the 

Pacific and Washington. Analysts worked feverishly to verify its authenticity and 

gather more information. Some even speculated that it might be a trap.61 As might 

be expected, Yamamoto’s impending visit to the South Pacific sparked a flurry 

of new messages on Japanese radio nets. Because Japanese operational security 

practices tended to be poor and some messages were in less secure codes, Allied 

listeners intercepted and decrypted some messages.

The 138th Signal Radio Intercept Company at Seven Mile Strip intercepted 

one of these messages. Fudenna, the lone Nisei, translated one of these messages 

and passed it to his superiors. On the morning of 18 April the deputy commander 

of Fifth Air Force, Brig. Gen. Ennis Whitehead, spoke directly to Fudenna by 

telephone and asked him to verify the accuracy of his translation: “The sound that 

you hear,” Fudenna recalled the general saying, “is coming from the P–38 fighter 

planes on Guadalcanal that are revving their engines prior to takeoff on a mission 

of intercepting and downing Admiral Yamamoto’s plane over southern Bougainville.” Whitehead asked the Nisei if his message had given any indication it might 

be a trap. Fudenna replied that it looked perfectly legitimate. Whitehead told him 

that if the mission failed “due to an error in the translated message,” he would 

hold Fudenna personally accountable. Later that day American fliers successfully ambushed Yamamoto’s flight and destroyed his aircraft, killing the admiral. 

Whitehead visited Fudenna’s tent to congratulate him for his role in the action.62

60 Roger Pineau, “The Code Break,” in Lightning over Bougainville: The Yamamoto Mission 

Reconsidered, ed R. Cargill Hall (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), pp. 

40–46; Pineau, “Death of Admiral Yamamoto”; Bleakley, Eavesdroppers, pp. 91–97; W. J. Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets: U.S. Naval Intelligence Operations in the Pacific during World War 

II (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1979), pp. 135–36; David Kahn, The Codebreakers: The 

Story of Secret Writing, rev. ed. (New York: Scribner, 1996), pp. 595–601; Lewin, American Magic, 

pp. 187–91; John Prados, Combined Fleet Decoded: The Secret History of American Intelligence 

and the Japanese Navy In World War II (New York: Random House, 1995), pp. 459–62. 61 In John Ashmead’s novel about Navy language officers, his protagonist interrogates a captured Japanese Navy officer in Hawaii about Yamamoto’s habits and punctuality. John Ashmead, 

The Mountain and the Feather (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961), pp. 62–68, 73–84. 62 Fudenna, “Harold Fudenna’s Involvement,” MISNorCal Bio. Fifth Air Force played little or 

no role in this incident. The 138th Signal Radio Intercept Company may have confirmed information already obtained from other sources. A Navy language officer, Otis Cary, commented 

in November 1945 that “every man in every radio intelligence outfit from Noumea to Washington claimed himself responsible for Admiral Yamamoto’s death.” Otis Cary, ed., From a Ruined 

Empire: Letters—Japan, China, Korea 1945–46 (San Francisco: Kodansha International, 1984), p. 

185. Some writers have ascribed a more prominent role to Fudenna than the facts support. See, for 

example, America’s Superb Secret Human Weapon in World War II (San Francisco, Calif.: Presidio 

Army Museum, 1981); “The Military Intelligence Service: A Brief History,” in Hawaii Herald, 2 
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1943 187

The Southwest Pacific was an infantryman’s war: American and Australian 

soldiers waged a two-year campaign along 1,500 miles of New Guinea’s northern 

coast. Small patrols and isolated detachments fought the enemy, the terrain, and 

the climate with equal tenacity.63 In February 1943 ATIS established an advance 

echelon with the Australian headquarters of New Guinea Force at Maples, New 

Guinea, with six language officers and three enlisted men. During the year this 

grew to nineteen officer and enlisted linguists.64

The Sixth Army headquarters, renamed Alamo Force, received two officers 

and twenty Nisei and launched its first offensive in June, landing regimental combat teams on Woodlark and Kiriwina Islands. At the same time, the 41st Infantry 

Division landed at Nassau Bay. Nisei accompanied the Allied units along the 

jungle tracks, doing on-the-spot translations and interrogations of the few prisoners. T3g. Albert Y. Tamura became the first Nisei awarded the Combat Infantry 

Badge for his service with the 41st Infantry Division in September 1943.65 Some 

Nisei served with the Australians; Sergeant Kadani left Brisbane to support the 

Australian Army high in the Owen Stanley Mountains. In September 1943 Nisei 

accompanied American and Australian soldiers in landings near Lae on New 

Guinea’s north coast. M.Sgt. Arthur K. Ushiro was attached to the 25th Australian Brigade. The Stanford University graduate had excelled at Camp Savage and 

had been with the group that started ATIS. T3g. Kazuhiko “Rocky” Yamada, 

a veteran of Buna with the 32d Division, and two other Nisei were assigned to 

the 9th Australian Division at Finschhafen. All three received Australian commendations. When the 3d Australian Division attacked Salamaua, the Diggers 

were armed with a Nisei translation of a captured Japanese map that showed the 

enemy’s entire scheme of defense. During the battle, Nisei interrogated a Japanese prisoner and tricked him into thinking the town had already been captured. 

As a result, “13 important air targets in Salamaua were pinpointed and attacked 

by Allied aircraft within 24 hours.” 66

S.Sgt. Kazuo Kozaki also landed near Lae with the 9th Australian Division. 

Born in Salt Lake City, he was a Kibei and graduate of the first class at Crissy Field. 

Just before he landed, a flight of Japanese aircraft strafed the assault waves, killing 

over a hundred Australian and American soldiers and sailors. Kozaki hit the deck 

Jul 93, pp. A–1, A–10, A–12; Mitzi Matsui in Unsung Heroes: The Military Intelligence Service, 

Past, Present, Future (Seattle: MIS-Northwest Association, 1996), p. xiii. 63 For studies of soldiers’ experiences, see Eric Bergerud, Touched by Fire: The Land War in the 

South Pacific (New York: Penguin, 1996); Gerald F. Linderman, The World Within War: America’s 

Combat Experience in World War II (New York: Free Press, 1997); Peter Schrijivers, The GI War 

Against Japan: American Soldiers in Asia and the Pacific during World War II (New York: New 

York University Press, 2002). 64 ATIS History, pp. 24–26. 65 Interv, Sheryl Narahara with Torao “Pat” Neishi, 1992, NJAHS. 66 ATIS History, pp. 24–26, 46; David Dexter, Australia in the War of 1939–1945, ser. 1, vol. 

6, The New Guinea Offensives (Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1961), p. 478; Harrington, 

Yankee Samurai, p. 163; Harrington, “Yankee Samurai,” p. 13. For the 9th Australian Division 

commendations, see ATIS History, app. 12.
188 NISEI LINGUISTS

but was slightly wounded on the buttocks. “I didn’t want anyone to know where I

was wounded,” he later recalled. After three days the pain became unbearable and 

he finally sought medical treatment. He was evacuated to an American field hospital in Milne Bay. Upon Kozaki’s return to ATIS, General Willoughby presented 

him with the Silver Star, a first for the ATIS Nisei, which boosted morale considerably. From Camp Savage, where Kozaki had served as an enlisted instructor, the 

chief instructor, John Aiso, sent him a sympathy note about his wound. Kozaki 

treasured Aiso’s note more than the Silver Star: “I kept that letter all through the 

New Guinea campaigns.” 67

During the Lae Campaign, Allied forces captured a record 1,562 Japanese documents. So large was the haul that ATIS was able to compile a complete history 

of the Japanese garrison from captured documents.68 The Nisei proved once again 

their value and bravery while serving close to the front lines. Commanders and 

their intelligence officers quickly recognized the value of the intelligence the Nisei 

could provide, which could often spell the difference between victory and defeat.

In addition to the hazards and strains of battle, the Nisei continually risked 

falling victim to mistaken identity. Fudenna had an unpleasant reminder of this 

vulnerability in the spring of 1943 at the hands of some New Guinea natives. 

After the downing of Yamamoto’s plane, Fudenna remained near Port Moresby 

for several more months. One day he and three comrades borrowed a vehicle for 

an excursion to a native village. When the villagers noticed Fudenna’s Japanese 

features, they seized him despite the protests of his Caucasian comrades. At that 

time the Australians were offering a reward for any Japanese stragglers, and the 

natives were eager to collect. Fudenna was rescued only by the timely arrival of 

an armed Australian patrol. The Australian sergeant freed Fudenna and told him: 

“Get your bloody arse out of here before you get into more trouble.” Fudenna and 

his comrades complied in great haste.69

The U.S. Army had almost taken over Australia; by December 1943 the country was bursting with more than 300,000 Yanks. The U.S. Army employed 50,000 

Australian civilians in construction, transportation, and other war-related duties. 

The Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) protected this huge logistical base from 

espionage, subversion, and criminal activity. Col. Elliott R. Thorpe, G–2, U.S. 

Army Services of Supply, commanded the Southwest Pacific Area CIC.70 Thorpe 

67 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 155–56; Mashbir, I Was an American Spy, pp. 240–41; 

“Army Silver Star Decoration Given to Nisei Soldier,” Pacific Citizen, 29 Jan 44, p. 1; Kazuo 

Kozaki, in Swift, “First Class,” pp. 13, 31–43; Faubion Bowers, in Falk and Tsuneishi, MIS in the 

War against Japan, p. 13. Kozaki was the first Nisei awarded the Silver Star in World War II; Nisei 

with the 100th Infantry Battalion in Italy began receiving the Silver Star a few weeks later. 68 “The Exploitation of Japanese Documents,” ATIS Publication no. 6, 14 Dec 44, in ATIS History, app. 5; ATIS History, p. 46. 69 Fudenna, MISNorCal Bio. 70 Operations of the Counter Intelligence Corps in the Southwest Pacific Area, Intelligence 

Series, vol. 8 (Tokyo: Far East Command, 1950); Elliott R. Thorpe, East Wind, Rain: An Intimate 

Account of an Intelligence Officer in the Pacific, 1939–49 (Boston: Gambit, 1969), pp. 87–129; 

Interv, Lt. Col. J. H. Griffin with Elliott R. Thorpe, 1981, U.S. Army Military History Institute; 
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1943 189

used carefully selected agents from ethnic minority groups to monitor and investigate American soldiers from these groups. As early as July 1942 two African 

American CIC agents arrived to help detect possible subversives among the thousands of African American service troops pouring into Australia.71

Thorpe already had one Nisei assigned to his command, Sgt. Arthur S. Komori, 

who served in a variety of assignments. In the autumn of 1942 he helped Colonel 

Mashbir set up ATIS in Brisbane, passing on to the Nisei newcomers his hard-won 

combat experience on Bataan. He conducted security and loyalty investigations 

and for a time even worked with aborigines in Australia’s Northern Territory to aid 

in rescuing downed Allied aviators. At least one other Nisei worked with Komori 

in the CIC, Hawaii-born William T. Hiraoka, who arrived in Australia in December 1942.72

By the end of 1943 General Douglas MacArthur had built up a powerful fighting force in the Southwest Pacific Area. He had about 150 Nisei serving in the 

intelligence field, counting those serving with Allied fighting units and those serving in ATIS. MacArthur would need many more MIS Nisei for his unfolding campaign. In the first half of 1944 the Southwest Pacific Theater would add five new 

American divisions, each of which would go into combat with a team of MIS Nisei 

from ATIS. These Nisei brought skill, courage, and an understanding of their Japanese opponents. For example, in October 1943 M.Sgt. Thomas S. Kadomoto, a 

Kibei, brought a shipment of sixty Nisei from Minnesota to Brisbane. Kadomoto 

had been born in Phoenix, Arizona. When he was twelve years old his parents 

took the family to Japan. By the time Kadomoto arrived in Australia, his younger 

brother, who had remained in Japan, was serving in the Japanese Army.73

Dramatic breakthroughs such as the downing of Admiral Yamamoto and 

finding the Japanese Army list were rare. More often intelligence involved piecing together a picture of the enemy from many fragments of information. During 

1943 ATIS developed the basic techniques and procedures for language work 

used during the rest of the war. The Nisei learned how to extract intelligence from 

prisoners of war and from captured documents of all descriptions. Just as important, ATIS had developed ways of sifting through this mountain of information 

and passing it to commanders in sufficient time for them to act on it. Mashbir 

and his staff understood the value of a centralized language center that could use 

Duval A. Edwards, Spy Catchers of the U.S. Army in the War with Japan (Gig Harbor, Wash.: Red 

Apple Publishing, 1994), pp. 61–74, 103–08. 71 Edwards, Spy Catchers, p. 73. 72 Interv, Ann Bray with Arthur S. Komori, 1955; Ann Bray, “Undercover Nisei,” in Military 

Intelligence: Its Heroes and Legends (Arlington Hall Station, Va.: U.S. Army Intelligence and 

Security Command, 1987), pp. 29–45; “Lone Hawaii Survivor of Bataan Epic Described 11th Hour 

Escape,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 17, 18 Apr 44, and Pacific Citizen, 13 May 44. Two Hawaii Nisei, 

William T. Hiraoka and George Kiyoshi Yamashiro (Sankey), may have joined the CIC in Australia as early as December 1942. Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 245. Yamashiro was soon reassigned to ATIS. George Kiyoshi [Yamashiro] Sankey, “Areya, Koreye [This and That],” Unpubl 

autobiography. 73 Folder, Tom Kadomoto, in Joseph D. Harrington Papers, NJAHS.
190 NISEI LINGUISTS

the Nisei to best advantage. The skill, bravery, and loyalty of these Nisei soldiers 

made possible many Allied victories on the battlefields of New Guinea and the 

Southwest Pacific.

Central Pacific Area

The situation was quite different in the Central Pacific, where communications 

intelligence provided Admiral Nimitz the most useful information on the Japanese 

Combined Fleet. American soldiers and marines did not meet the Japanese enemy 

in ground combat until November 1943, when Nimitz began his island-hopping 

campaign with amphibious assaults in the Gilbert Islands on Tarawa and Makin. 

Submarine and air reconnaissance provided little information on these islands. 

Nimitz’s senior intelligence officer later described his challenge: “It is no exaggeration to say that for each person who had visited Tarawa prior to the war and 

was able to provide fragmentary intelligence of this tiny island, the intelligence 

officer in the European Theater would probably find a million persons who had 

visited the Normandy beaches and could provide intelligence thereof.” 74

Until Nimitz’s forces began to meet their Japanese opponents on the ground, 

the amount of Japanese-language work to be done was limited. For the Japanese 

radio messages intercepted in 1942 and 1943 and the few prisoners and documents 

captured, the dozen or so Caucasian language officers in Hawaii were sufficient. 

During 1942 American forces in the Central Pacific captured only forty-nine Japanese sailors.75 In February 1943 the first twenty graduates of the Navy language 

school in Boulder, Colorado, arrived in Hawaii.

Intelligence organizations in the Central Pacific grew rapidly during the first 

two years of the war. The Radio Intelligence Section, later renamed the Fleet 

Radio Unit, Pacific (FRUPAC), handled decoding and translating Japanese radio 

communications. The Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Areas, analyzed intelligence from all sources including aerial photography and geographic intelligence.76

In September 1943 the center was renamed the Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific 

Ocean Areas (JICPOA). Brig. Gen. Joseph J. Twitty, the officer in charge who also 

served as Nimitz’s J–2, had been a language attaché in Tokyo and was a topographic engineer.77 JICPOA handled most language work from its location at Pearl 

74 Ltr, Joseph W. Twitty to Chief, Historical Section, Far East Command, 2 February 1948, copy 

in Folder 1, Box 17, RG–23, Willoughby Papers, MacArthur Memorial. 75 Prados, Combined Fleet Decoded, p. 496. 76 Report of Intelligence Activities in the Pacific Ocean Areas (Pearl Harbor: Assistant Chief 

of Staff for Intelligence, 1945); Wyman H. Packard, A Century of U.S. Naval Intelligence (Washington, D.C.: Office of Naval Intelligence/Naval Historical Center, 1996), pp. 396–402; Holmes, 

Double-Edged Secrets, pp. 120–21; Holmes, “Naval Intelligence in the War against Japan, 1941–

45: The View from Pearl Harbor,” in New Aspects of Naval History, ed. Craig L. Symonds et al. 

(Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1981), pp. 351–57; Edwin T. Layton, “And I Was There!”: 

Pearl Harbor and Midway—Breaking the Secrets (New York: William Morrow, 1985). 77 Report of Intelligence Activities; Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets, pp. 115, 145–46. In John Ashmead’s novel, JICPOA became “JOKEPOA” and General Twitty became General “Waddleman.”
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1943 191

Harbor, but sometimes Navy language officers deployed for specific operations, 

such as for Guadalcanal and the Aleutians. One Navy language officer spent eight 

months on Guadalcanal monitoring plain-text Japanese radio traffic.78

Military authorities in Hawaii remained concerned about the Japanese population in the islands. The Hawaiian Department commanding general had declared 

martial law on 7 December 1941; this remained in effect for three more years. 

Though the Army rejected calls for large-scale removal of Japanese from Hawaii 

as from the West Coast, about 1,450 Japanese aliens and American citizens of 

Japanese ancestry were interned. The Japanese remained critical to the local economy in Hawaii, where they constituted one-third of the labor force. The Navy took 

a firm stand and refused to allow persons of Japanese ancestry, even American 

citizens, to work on Navy bases. In contrast, Army officials led by Col. Kendall J. 

Fielder, the Hawaiian Department G–2, took a more positive approach and encouraged the cooperation of the local Japanese community. When 1,400 Nisei soldiers 

from the 298th and 299th Infantries were transferred to the mainland in June 1942, 

several hundred remained with service units and as civilian laborers in the Varsity 

Victory Volunteers. In January 1943, when the War Department announced the 

formation of a special combat unit of Japanese American volunteers, a wave of 

patriotism swept through Japanese communities in Hawaii. Ten thousand Nisei 

volunteered, of whom the Army accepted almost three thousand to form the 442d 

Regimental Combat Team. Other Nisei soldiers stayed back to form the 1399th 

Engineer Battalion, and the language school at Camp Savage began to recruit 

Nisei in Hawaii.

Suspicions of the Hawaii Japanese continued even as the 100th Infantry Battalion and 442d RCT went into combat in Italy and France. Those inclined to distrust 

the Nisei pointed out that in Italy the Nisei were fighting against Caucasians. The 

real test would be if the Nisei had to fight against “their own kind” in the Pacific. 

These critics did not know that the MIS Nisei were already doing just that.79

In 1943 Admiral Nimitz began his offensive drive with one marine division 

and two Army divisions. The 2d Marine Division attacked Tarawa in November, 

while the 27th Infantry Division was assigned to take Makin Atoll. The 7th Infantry Division, rebuilding after the Aleutian Islands Campaign, would be ready for 

its next battle by early 1944. In July 1943 U.S. Army Middle Pacific requested 

two teams of ten Nisei linguists each for the two Army divisions assigned for the 

coming campaigns. Twenty Nisei from Minnesota arrived in Hawaii in late September.80 For some, like Sergeant Kubo, it was a homecoming. Kubo had been on 

78 Packard, A Century of U.S. Naval Intelligence, p. 409. Ashmead’s novel mentions that a Navy 

language officer killed himself on Guadalcanal during this time, but the author does not know if he 

based this on an actual incident. 79 Thomas D. Murphy, Ambassadors in Arms (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1954), 

pp. 191–202. 80 U.S. Army Forces Middle Pacific (and Predecessor Commands), History of G–2 Section, 

7 December 1941–2 September 1945, ch. 5, “Prisoner of War Interrogation & Translation Section,” 

pp. 208–23, Richardson Papers, Hoover Institution Archives; Interv, author with Hoichi Bob Kubo, 
192 NISEI LINGUISTS

active duty at Wheeler Field when the Japanese attacked in December 1941. He 

had gone to the mainland with the 100th Infantry Battalion and was recruited for 

the language school. For Nisei from the mainland, sailing to Hawaii was also laden 

with significance. T4g. Frank T. Hachiya, a 23-year old Kibei from Hood River, 

Oregon, told a friend just before leaving for Hawaii: “You know, we’ll be fighting 

two wars out there—one against the Japanese, and the other against prejudice.” 81

On 20 November 1943, the 2d Marine Division assaulted Tarawa. In four days 

of savage fighting, the marines defeated the island’s Japanese defenders at a terrible cost of 1,085 marines killed. Thousands of wounded marines filled the hospitals in Hawaii. Only seventeen Japanese survived, along with 129 Korean laborers.82 The marines used no Nisei linguists during the battle, but JICPOA did assign 

a team of intelligence specialists that included one Caucasian language officer 

who conducted interrogations and translated captured documents. The marines 

who fought on Tarawa often overlooked captured documents as a source of intelligence. “Souvenir-hunters destroyed or ‘liberated’ more intelligence material than 

the [intelligence] teams could collect,” one observer reported. “One sailor picked 

up a Japanese code book as a souvenir. That code remained in use in the Marshalls for several weeks after Tarawa fell, but much to [American code breakers’] 

disgust, it had been superseded by the time the code book was discovered in a 

barracks inspection back at Pearl Harbor.” Several months later JICPOA sent Sgt. 

Nobuo Furuiye, a Colorado-born Nisei, to Tarawa “to observe and evaluate the 

evidence from documents and other items.” 83

The 27th Infantry Division landed on Makin on the same day the marines 

assaulted Tarawa, 20 November 1943. The 165th Infantry conducted the assault; 

Sgt. Nobue D. Kishiue led the regiment’s three-man language team ashore with 

the assault waves. The Nisei scrambled down cargo nets to the rolling deck of 

a landing craft. When the landing craft ran aground a hundred yards from the 

beach, Kishiue and his team waded ashore through chest-deep water in full field 

gear while under enemy fire. On the first day they found no prisoners, only some 

Korean laborers. They did find some valuable documents at an enemy command 

30 Oct 87; Nobuo D. Kishiue, “Island Hopping from Makin to Saipan to Okinawa,” in Falk and 

Tsuneishi, MIS in the War against Japan, pp. 49–53; Nobuo D. Kishiue, MISNorCal Bio. 81 Harrington, “Yankee Samurai,” p. 20. 82 When Charles Lindbergh visited Tarawa on 30 August 1944, he heard the story that a U.S. 

Navy officer had spared Japanese prisoners who could speak English but killed the rest. Charles A. 

Lindbergh, The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970), pp. 914–15. 83 Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets, pp. 150–51; Furuiye, Rocky Mountain Bio, p. 13. Harrington 

claims Frank Hachiya served on Tarawa, but this is unlikely. Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 170. 

John F. Aiso also suggested that Nisei may have served on Tarawa, perhaps based on Harrington’s 

writings. Aiso’s 1979 speech, reprinted in Pacific Citizen (December 1980), and in Oguro, Sempai 

Gumi, p. lxxxiv. Novelist John Ashmead describes a Navy language officer on Tarawa. Ashmead, 

The Mountain and the Feather, pp. 141–55.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1943 193

post, but little else.84 On the fourth day Cpl. Hoichi Kubo accompanied field historian Lt. Col. S. L. A. Marshall to the forward units in a jeep. As they drove down a 

sandy road, rifle fire erupted from the shrubbery less than twenty-five yards away 

and the driver gunned the engine. From the back seat Kubo cried out, “I’m hit!” 

The driver raced through the ambush, and Marshall turned around in his seat to 

ask, “Where are you hit?” Kubo grinned: “I’m all right. Nothing happened. I just 

wanted to make him move faster.” 85

When the battle had concluded, the division G–2 was very pleased with the 

Nisei: “We would have been twice as blind as we were on these islands without the 

Nisei. Without a doubt, our Nisei have saved many, many American lives.” 86 The 

Nisei linguists had proven their worth in the Central Pacific as they had earlier in 

the South Pacific and Southwest Pacific. The 27th Infantry Division awarded to the 

three Nisei who fought on Makin the Combat Infantryman Badge.87

With the assaults on Tarawa and Makin, Admiral Nimitz’s command had 

finally launched an offensive in the Central Pacific characterized by intense 

ground combat on a chain of heavily defended islands. That meant a large increase 

in captured documents and prisoners of war, some 500 during 1943 alone.88 However, the Central Pacific still lagged behind other theaters in the use of Nisei. By 

the end of 1943 only 20 Nisei were serving in the theater, compared to over 100 in 

the South Pacific and 150 in the Southwest Pacific. Many more Nisei would serve 

in the Central Pacific in the months ahead.

. . .

In early 1944 Col. Kai E. Rasmussen made his first inspection tour of the 

Pacific to observe how his graduates were performing. On Bougainville and elsewhere, he expressed his personal appreciation to the Nisei. His pride was well 

justified. It was “his considered opinion,” he reported, “that graduates are contributing materially to the successful conduct of the war; their work is indispensable 

and cannot be done successfully by any other known agency.” He reported that 

the Nisei were “being used very widely; units making use of them include the 

U.S. Army and Navy, Marine Corps, Australian, New Zealand and British units, 

84 Kishiue, in Falk and Tsuneishi, MIS in the War against Japan, pp. 49–53; Kishiue, MISNorCal Bio. 85 S. L. A. Marshall, Bringing Up the Rear: A Memoir, ed. Cate Marshall (San Rafael, Calif.: 

Presidio Press, 1979), p. 72. 86 Lt. Col. Van Antwerp, cited in “Use of Nisei Saved GI Lives in Pacific,” Pacific Citizen, 29 

Sep 45; MISLS Album, p. 115; Weckerling, “Japanese Americans Play Vital Role.” Van Antwerp’s 

comments referred to Makin as well as later 27th Infantry Division operations on Saipan and 

Okinawa. 87 Kishiue, MISNorCal Bio; Kishiue, in Falk and Tsuneishi, MIS in the War against Japan, p. 

51. The awards took eleven months to process, apparently because the Nisei were administratively 

assigned to division headquarters rather than the assault elements. 88 Prados, Combined Fleet Decoded, p. 496.
194 NISEI LINGUISTS

and such quasi-military organizations as [the Office of War Information] and [the 

Office of Strategic Services], etc.” 89

The campaigns of the first two years of the war had proven the value of the 

MIS Nisei. Rasmussen returned to Minnesota determined to increase the supply 

by any means necessary. Poor utilization of Nisei in some areas compounded the 

problem of insufficient numbers. The Army had entered the war with no organization or doctrine for the use of translators and interpreters and precious few ideas 

about how to recruit and train them in numbers sufficient to meet urgent combat 

requirements. In addition, the Nisei often had to overcome prejudice and stereotypes before they could prove their worth. Rasmussen was critical of most theaters 

in this regard. “It is a necessity for the efficient operation of personnel sent from 

Camp Savage,” he reported, “that units which make use of them accept and trust 

them.” He further reported that “with the exception of the Southwest Pacific, full 

capabilities of this personnel are not generally realized and, in many ways, their 

use represents amateurish efforts compared to professional standards achieved in 

the Southwest Pacific.” The services would have to learn how better to employ 

the Nisei if they did not want to see the fighting degenerate into bloody slugging 

matches such as took place on Tarawa.90

In the first three months of 1944 the language school would graduate another 

565 Nisei, more than doubling the number available for overseas service. Rasmussen was doing all he could to increase the supply of qualified Nisei. Theater commanders and their intelligence officers had to learn how best to use them in future 

campaigns. The Nisei were indeed indispensable.

89 “History and Description of the Military Intelligence Service Language School,” [May 

1944], p. 32, Unpubl Ms, 1943–1945, General Records, Military Intelligence [Service] Language 

School, RG 319, NARA; Pacific War and Peace, p. 33; Roy Uyehata, in Roush, World War II Reminiscences, pp. 257–60. 90 “History and Description,” pp. 32–33.
7

MIS Nisei Serving in the 

Continental United States, 

1943–1945

Not all graduates of the Military Intelligence Service Language School served 

overseas. Many served in stateside intelligence assignments in out-of-the-way 

places such as Byron Hot Springs, California; Camp Ritchie, Maryland; and Vint 

Hill Farms, Virginia, using their language skills to help defeat Japan. (See Map 7.) 

During the early campaigns the greatest need was for linguists with frontline units 

and the theaters of operation. After 1943 these theater-level intelligence efforts 

were increasingly supplemented by national-level capabilities. In 1943–1944, 

intelligence centers sprang up in the continental United States to handle prisoners 

of war, translation, psychological warfare, signals intelligence, and miscellaneous 

tasks that required Japanese-language skills. Nisei were assigned to a broad range 

of these duties. Some assignments, such as technical translations and guarding 

Japanese prisoners of war, were valuable but routine. Others, such as translating 

signal intercepts or writing propaganda, were more sensitive and required greater 

skill. In the racially charged atmosphere of wartime America, Nisei soldiers serving in the United States continued to encounter prejudice and suspicion despite 

their citizenship and military service. The War Department continued to exclude 

them from its most sensitive operations and planning, such as signals intelligence. 

Nevertheless, the MIS Nisei who served in stateside intelligence assignments 

made important contributions to the war effort.
MITU

Fort Hoo

Angel Island

Byron Hot Springs

Tracy

II Armored Corps Training Center

Civil Affairs Staging Area

Presidio of Monterey

MITU

Camp Roberts

U T A H

A R I Z O N A

N E W M E X I C O

C O L O R A D O

W Y O M I N G

N O R T H D A K O T A

S O U T H D A K O T A

N E B R A S K A

K A N S A S

I D A H O

O R E G O N

W A S H I N G T O N

M O N T A N A

C A L I F O R N I A

N E V A D A

T E X A S

O K L A H O 

C A N 

M E X I C O

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE SERVICE

NISEI LINGUIST LOCATIONS

1942–1945

MAP 7
POW Camp

Fort Custer

POW Camp

Camp Clarinda

od

Army Map Service

Cleveland

War Department G-2

Pacific Order of Battle Section

FBIS

OSS/MO-FE

Office of War Information

Office of Naval Intelligence

Washington Document Center

Washington, DC

MITU

Fort Meade

Signal Intelligence Service

Vint Hill Farms

PACMIRS

Camp Ritchie

Manhattan Project

New York

Camp Shelby

MISLS

Fort Snelling

1944–1946

MISLS

Camp Savage

1942–1944 POW Camp

Camp McCoy

M I N N E S O T A

W I S C O N S I N 

M A

I O W A

O H I O

G E O R G I A

K E N T U C K Y

V I R G I N I A

W E S T

V I R G I N I A

A L A B A M A

L O U I S I A N A

M I S S I S S I P P I

T E N N E S S E E

N O R T H C A R O L I N A

S O U T H

C A R O L I N A

I L L I N O I S

I N D I A N A

M I S S O U R I

A R K A N S A S

CONNECTICUT

MASSACHUSETTS

MARYLAND

N E W J E R S E Y

D E L AWA R E

P E N N S Y L V A N I A

N E W Y O R K

VERMONT

M A I N E

NEW 

HAMPSHIRE

RHODE ISLAND

A D A
198 NISEI LINGUISTS

The Military Intelligence Division after Pearl Harbor

The War Department’s intelligence programs grew rapidly after Pearl Harbor. 

Although the War Department initially directed attention toward the North African landings and the subsequent campaigns in the Mediterranean and Northwestern Europe, the G–2 with its Far Eastern Branch did not completely neglect Japan.1

In March 1942 Chief of Staff George C. Marshall selected Maj. Gen. George V. 

Strong, the Army’s most senior Japan specialist, as assistant chief of staff for intelligence. Strong was a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy. He had traveled to 

the Far East to observe Japan’s victory over Russia and returned to Tokyo in 1908 

as a language attaché. In 1938 he succeeded Marshall as chief of the War Plans 

Division. According to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who served with Strong 

on the General Staff, he possessed “a keen mind, a driving energy, and ruthless 

determination.” 2

In the spring of 1942 Strong reorganized the G–2 staff into the Military 

Intelligence Division (MID) and a much larger field operating arm, the Military 

Intelligence Service (MIS). Included in the MIS were all intelligence personnel 

under direct War Department control rather than organic to specific units such 

as divisions and regiments.3 The Far Eastern Section grew quickly under Col. 

Rufus S. Bratton, who had been its chief since 1937. Bratton was a graduate of 

the U.S. Military Academy. He had served three tours in Japan and spoke the 

language fluently. Other Japanese-language officers in the section included Col. 

Thomas J. Betts, Col. Moses W. Pettigrew, and Lt. Col. Carlisle C. Dusenbury. 

The section also oversaw assignments of language-qualified officers.4 The Far 

Eastern Branch itself produced little strategic, operational, or tactical intelligence 

in the early years; most was instead supplied by the combat theaters. However, 

1 Ronald H. Spector, Eagle against the Sun (New York: Free Press, 1985), pp. 445–77; James D. 

Marchio, “Days of Future Past: Joint Intelligence in World War II,” Joint Force Quarterly (Spring 

1996): 116–23. 2 Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1948), pp. 

33–34; “George V. Strong” (obituary), Assembly (January 1947). While studying Japanese, Strong 

published a kanji handbook: Common Chinese-Japanese Characters (Yokohama, Japan: Kelly and 

Walsh, [1911]). 3 John P. Finnegan and Romana Danysh, Military Intelligence, Army Lineage Series (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1998), pp. 61–84; “A History of the Military 

Intelligence Division, 7 December 1941–2 September 1945,” Unpubl Ms, 1946 (hereafter cited as 

MID History), U.S. Army Center of Military History (CMH) files; Bruce W. Bidwell, “History of 

the Military Intelligence Division, Department of the Army General Staff,” Unpubl Ms, 1959–1961, 

CMH files; Otto L. Nelson, Jr., National Security and the General Staff (Washington, D.C.: Infantry Journal Press, 1946), pp. 521–35. 4 Bruce W. Bidwell, History of the Military Intelligence Division, Department of the Army General Staff: 1775–1941 (Frederick, Md.: University Publications of America, 1986), pp. 435–36, 454. 

For prewar list of forty-six officers with varying degrees of language proficiency, see Plans & 

Training Branch, MID, “Japanese: R.A. Officers with Knowledge of Language,” 27 Mar 41, Far 

Eastern Br, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, Record Group (RG) 165, National Archives and Records 

Administration (NARA).
MIS NISEI SERVING IN THE CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES 199

the branch did coordinate with the British, who were gaining valuable intelligence in Southeast Asia.5

Headquarters, Army Air Forces, in Washington had its own air intelligence 

staff. The Assistant Chief of Air Staff, Intelligence, or A–2, requested Nisei from 

the War Department G–2 as needed. In 1943 the A–2 requested some for technical air intelligence teams that were assigned to each numbered air force in the 

Pacific. In the summer of 1944 the Military Intelligence Service Language School 

(MISLS) sent ten more to work at the joint Army-Navy Technical Air Intelligence 

Center at Bolling Field in Anacostia, D.C.6 The A–2 also wanted Nisei for tactical 

radio intercept duties. Beginning in February 1944, the Army Air Forces sent dozens of MISLS graduates to signals training at MacDill Field, Florida. The Nisei 

then joined mobile radio squadrons and were deployed to the Pacific.

The Office of Naval Intelligence had its own Far Eastern Section (OP–16–F) 

with a handful of Japanese-language officers under Cmdr. Arthur H. McCollum. In 

June 1942 Capt. Ellis M. Zacharias, a former Japanese-language attaché, became 

deputy director of Naval Intelligence.7

The Army and Navy, with their shortages of Japanese-language personnel, 

both turned to unlikely sources. In August 1942 the Swedish liner Gripsholm

arrived in New York carrying over 2,000 Western diplomatic personnel and other 

civilians repatriated from Japan, including the staffs of the American and Canadian embassies in Tokyo.8

 Army and Navy intelligence officers had met them in 

Rio de Janeiro for debriefings. Several individuals proved of immediate value and 

gave a great boost to the American intelligence effort. Col. Frederick P. Munson, 

the Army attaché in Tokyo and a Japanese linguist, was sent to the South Pacific 

5 Richard J. Aldrich, Intelligence and the War against Japan: Britain, America and the Politics 

of Secret Service (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Alan H. Bath, Tracking the 

Axis Enemy: The Triumph of Anglo-American Naval Intelligence (Lawrence: University Press of 

Kansas, 1998). 6 John F. Kreis, “Planning the Defeat of Japan: The A–2 in Washington, 1943–1945,” in Piercing the Fog: Intelligence and Army Air Forces Operations in World War II, ed. John F. Kreis (Washington, D.C.: Air Force History and Museums Program, 1996), pp. 349–92; Joseph D. Harrington, 

Yankee Samurai: The Secret Role of Nisei in America’s Pacific Victory (Detroit: Pettigrew Enterprises, 1979), p. 236. 7 “Office of Naval Intelligence,” United States Naval Administration in World War II, 16 parts 

in 4 vols., Unpubl Ms, n.d., U.S. Naval Historical Center, Washington, D.C.; Wyman H. Packard, A

Century of U.S. Naval Intelligence (Washington, D.C.: Office of Naval Intelligence/Naval Historical Center, 1996); John Prados, Combined Fleet Decoded: The Secret History of American Intelligence and the Japanese Navy in World War II (New York: Random House, 1995); “Reminiscences 

of Rear Admiral Arthur H. McCollum, U.S. Navy Retired,” 2 vols., Unpubl Ms, 1970–1971, Naval 

Historical Center, Washington, D.C.; Ellis M. Zacharias, Secret Missions: The Story of an Intelligence Officer (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1946), pp. 285–316; Jeffery M. Dorwart, Conflict 

of Duty: The U.S. Navy’s Intelligence Dilemma, 1919–1945 (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 

1983), pp. 172–227. 8 Max Hill, Exchange Ship (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1942); P. Scott Corbett, Quiet Passages: The Exchange of Civilians between the United States and Japan during the Second World 

War (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1987).
200 NISEI LINGUISTS

in December 1942 to serve as Admiral Halsey’s G–2. Capt. Henri H. SmithHutton, the naval attaché and a Japanese linguist, took over Admiral Ernest J. 

King’s Operational Information Section. Claude Buss, the senior American Foreign Service officer in Manila and a Chinese linguist who while interned had 

taught himself to read some Japanese, took over the San Francisco branch of 

the Office of War Information.9 Among the civilians was William Laffin, whose 

American father was a Ford Motor Company executive and mother was Japanese. 

Laffin accepted a commission and went to Camp Savage. He later led a team of 

Nisei with Merrill’s Marauders in Burma. Lt. Col. Archibald W. Stuart became the 

language school’s assistant commandant. The Signal Intelligence Service asked 

Harold E. Zaugg, son of a missionary, “to do some language work for them.” 

James Hamasaki, a Nisei who had been an employee of the American embassy 

in Tokyo, took a civilian job in the Pentagon. Another former embassy employee, 

Mary Ogawa, a Nisei from Idaho, also went to work in Washington, D.C. In her 

off-duty time she volunteered at the USO, where she met her future husband, Sgt. 

Roger S. Obata, a Nisei from British Columbia serving in the Canadian Army 

and stationed at Camp Ritchie, Maryland.10 An Army officer who returned on the 

Gripsholm wrote a study of Japanese land-combat operations through June 1942 

based entirely on Japanese newspaper accounts he had read in confinement. “From 

competent observers who had returned to the United States on the first trip of the 

exchange ship Gripsholm, and from other intelligence sources,” Zacharias later 

recalled, “we had put together a fairly accurate picture of the trend inside Japan.” 11

These repatriated personnel were a windfall for Army and Navy intelligence, but 

they were also an indication of how desperate the military services had become 

for Japanese linguists.

Commanders in theaters of operations used MIS Nisei from 1942 onward for 

POW interrogation and document translation. In the continental United States, 

the War Department did not begin using MIS Nisei for intelligence duties until 

at least mid-1943. Naval Intelligence was even slower to begin using the Nisei.12

Signals intelligence efforts against Japan in the early years used the limited number of Caucasian linguists. During the first two years it seemed that U.S.-based 

 9 “Reminiscences of Rear Admiral Arthur H. McCollum,” 2: 448–53; Interv, Frederick P. 

Munson, in Munson Papers, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University, Calif.; Interv, Henri 

H. Smith-Hutton, Smith-Hutton Papers, Hoover Institution Archives. 10 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 129–30, 147; MISLS Album (Minneapolis: Military Intelligence Service Language School, 1946), p. 45; Harold E. Zaugg, Sensei, the Ultra American: From 

Missionary Teacher to Wartime Translator (Manhattan, Kans.: Sunflower University Press, 1995), 

pp. 109, 115; Roy Ito, We Went to War (Stittsville, Ontario: Canada’s Wings, 1984), p. 252. 11 Japanese Land Operations (From Japanese Sources), December 8, 1941, to June 8, 1942, 

MIS Campaign Study no. 3 (Washington, D.C.: War Department Military Intelligence Service, 

1942); Zacharias, Secret Missions, p. 321; “Tokyo Raid, Gripsholm Interviews,” HRC Geog V 

Japan 384.5, Archives, U.S. Army Center of Military History. 12 One author concludes that the Navy similarly declined to use African American sailors in 

intelligence roles “because of their alleged ties to Japanese espionage.” Dorwart, Conflict of Duty, 

p. 188.
MIS NISEI SERVING IN THE CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES 201

intelligence efforts against Japan would carry on without those American soldiers 

best suited to the work. However, by 1943 these restrictive policies slowly began 

to change.

Pacific Order of Battle Section

The first Nisei to enter the War Department’s recently completed headquarters 

building, the Pentagon, in the spring of 1943 were T.Sgt. Arthur Masaoki Kaneko 

and Pvt. Terry Takeshi Doi. The War Department was interested in interrogation 

methods, so the MISLS assistant commandant, Lt. Col. Joseph K. Dickey, brought 

the two Nisei to Washington. They stayed with his parents near Dupont Circle. 

The three staged demonstrations for War Department staff officers. Dickey asked 

questions and Kaneko translated them into Japanese while Doi played the part of a 

Japanese prisoner. Kaneko graduated in the first class at Crissy Field and became 

an enlisted instructor at Camp Savage. Born in 1912 in Riverside, California, he 

lost his parents when he was eight, so he was sent to live with relatives in Japan. He 

returned to California in 1930 to finish his education and was studying architecture 

at Los Angeles Junior College when he was drafted in early 1941. Though Doi had 

been born in the United States, he went to Japan as a child. He had been drafted 

into the Japanese Army, so he certainly had a firsthand knowledge of Japanese 

Army weapons, tactics, and fighting spirit. Doi “looked like a Japanese,” recalled 

Kaneko, “I mean very strong and short, powerful looking, mean looking guy.”13

These occasional demonstrations in the Pentagon and the Military Intelligence Training Center at Camp Ritchie, Maryland, soon gave way to long-term 

assignments for Nisei in the nation’s capital, beginning with order of battle intelligence on Japanese units that officers in the Far Eastern Branch compiled from field 

reports. The goal was to piece together a detailed portrait of the Imperial Japanese 

Army. The painstaking work involved gathering and collating thousands of bits of 

information from battlefronts, Allies, signals intelligence, and all other sources. 

By early 1943 G–2 was publishing a weekly bulletin on Japanese order of battle 

and hosting periodic joint and inter-Allied conferences on the topic.

When American soldiers in New Guinea discovered the Japanese Army list 

with 40,000 officers’ names in March 1943, the Order of Battle Section realized 

that it was now possible to build a comprehensive profile of the Japanese Army 

with greater accuracy than ever before. MacArthur’s intelligence staff sent a photostatic copy with a preliminary translation to Washington.14 When the list reached 

the War Department G–2, Colonel Pettigrew, by then chief of the Far Eastern 

Branch, and Lt. Col. Eric H. F. Svensson, Jr., another Japanese linguist, had been 

working alone, often late into the night, to assemble order of battle information. 

13 Interv, author with Arthur M. Kaneko, 23 Aug 95; Arthur M. Kaneko, in David W. Swift, Jr., 

ed., “First Class,” p. 15, Unpubl Ms, 2000, copy in author’s files. Kaneko’s parents both had been 

born in the United States, so he was technically a Sansei, or third generation, not a Nisei. 14 ATIS Publication no. 2 (May 1943).
202 NISEI LINGUISTS

At first Pettigrew requested and was denied additional Japanese linguists and typists.15 In June 1943 the G–2 held an Allied conference on Japanese order of battle 

in Washington, “attended by representatives from Washington, London, India, 

Chungking, Ottawa, Melbourne, and Brisbane.” Allied intelligence staffs eagerly 

exchanged whatever scraps of information they could find about Japanese units in 

Burma, China, and the South Pacific.16 Pettigrew could see that his office urgently 

needed additional staff to cope with the increasing amount of information. In July 

he requested help directly from the language school at Camp Savage.

In response the school sent T.Sgt. Jimmie M. Matsumura, a Kibei graduate of 

the first class at Crissy Field and then an enlisted instructor, together with three 

recent Nisei graduates. They quickly tackled the task of translating and filing the 

growing mountain of intelligence data. They carefully recorded names on index 

cards that eventually filled fourteen file drawers. Over the next two years, every 

time Allied troops captured new editions of the officer list or similar information, 

the Nisei updated their files. Often the names arrived from the field transliterated 

into ro ̄maji, so the Nisei had to figure out what the original kanji characters were. 

They also did other occasional translations for the War Department.17

At times the Nisei felt out of place in the Pentagon. One day someone noticed 

them at a coffee stand and asked if they were Indians. “That’s right,” Sgt. Kazuo 

E. Yamane, a Hawaii-born Nisei and graduate of Waseda University in Japan, 

replied. “What tribe?” asked the soldier. “Osaka,” said Yamane, giving the name 

of Japan’s second largest city. The Nisei enjoyed a good laugh at the Caucasian 

soldier’s expense.18

In the autumn of 1943 Matsumura returned to the school and was replaced 

by M.Sgt. George M. Koshi, a Kibei from Colorado. He had attended school in 

Japan from age six to sixteen and upon his return to the United States had earned 

his bachelor’s degree and then a law degree from the University of Denver. His 

draft board called him in March 1942, and he was sent to Camp Savage, where 

he became an instructor. The lawyer turned master sergeant took over the order 

of battle files, which became known as Koshi’s files. A few weeks later the school 

sent six more Nisei on six months’ temporary duty to assist.19

15 James L. Gilbert and John P. Finnegan, eds., U.S. Army Signals Intelligence in World War 

II: A Documentary History, U.S. Army in World War II (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of 

Military History, 1993), p. 125; MID History, pp. 187–88. 16 Japanese Order of Battle Bulletin no. 24 (1 July 1943); MID History, p. 191. The second conference was held in June 1944. Japanese Order of Battle Bulletin no. 73 (12 July 1944). 17 Interv, author with Kazuo E. Yamane, 8 Dec 94; Ted T. Tsukiyama et al., eds., Secret Valor: 

M.I.S. Personnel, World War II Pacific Theater, Pre–Pearl Harbor to Sept. 8, 1951 (Honolulu: 

Military Intelligence Service Veterans Club of Hawaii, 1993), pp. 104–05; Steve Lum, “ Kazuo 

Yamane’s Key Discovery,” Hawaii Herald, 2 Jul 93; Richard S. Oguro, ed., Sempai Gumi (Honolulu: MIS Veterans of Hawaii, [1981]), pp. 106–13; Matsumura, in Swift, “First Class”; Harrington, 

Yankee Samurai, pp. 151–52. 18 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 147–48. 19 Unsung Heroes: The Military Intelligence Service, Past, Present, Future (Seattle: MISNorthwest Association, 1996), pp. 25, 40–41; Richard Ishimoto, Harrington Papers, National 
MIS NISEI SERVING IN THE CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES 203

The Order of Battle Section opened the doors to a broader use of the Nisei 

in sensitive intelligence assignments. They may also have contributed to ending 

the exclusion policy and closing the wartime camps. In February 1944 Roosevelt 

placed the War Relocation Authority under the Department of the Interior, headed 

by Harold L. Ickes, a prominent New Dealer and an outspoken critic of the camps. 

Sometime over the winter of 1943–1944 he met with the Nisei serving in the Pentagon; Richard Ishimoto called this “the proudest moment of my six months duty 

at the Pentagon.” In the spring of 1944 Ickes pressed the Roosevelt administration 

to reverse its exclusion policy. He wrote Roosevelt on 2 June, asking him to end 

the exclusion orders and close the camps. In November Roosevelt was reelected to 

an unprecedented fourth term, and in December the Supreme Court ruled against 

continued incarceration. Only then did Roosevelt agree to Ickes’ request.20

Prisoner of War Interrogation

Americans took few prisoners of war in the Pacific compared to Allied forces 

fighting in Europe and North Africa. “It will be a long time before you hear of the 

surrender of a hundred thousand Japs as you have heard about the surrender of 

German and Italian troops,” the I Corps commanding general, Lt. Gen. Robert L. 

Eichelberger, told a group of junior officers in Australia soon after the Axis surrenders in Tunisia. “The enemy you are going to meet is one you can count on fighting 

to the last.” 21 In any event, most prisoners that the Americans did capture on Papua 

New Guinea and in the Solomons were transferred to Australia and New Zealand. 

As late as June 1943, America held only 62 Japanese prisoners. Six months later 

the number had risen to 297, of whom 116 were moved to the continental United 

States.22 The only prisoners whom the Americans sent to Hawaii and the mainland 

Japanese American Historical Society (NJAHS), San Francisco, Calif.; Oguro, Sempai Gumi, p. 

57; Security-Classified Promotion and Transfer Lists of the Japanese Army, 1942–1945, RG 165, 

NARA. 20 Oguro, Sempai Gumi, p. 57. Ishimoto was assigned to the Pentagon from about November 

1943 until about April 1944. On Ickes and the internment camps, see Jacobus tenBroek et al., Prejudice, War, and the Constitution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954), pp. 171–73; Greg 

Robinson, By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans (Cambridge, 

Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001); T. H. Watkins, Righteous Pilgrim: The Life and Times of 

Harold L. Ickes, 1874–1952 (New York: Henry Holt, 1990), pp. 790–96; Michi Weglyn, Years of 

Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps (New York: Morrow Quill, 1976), pp. 

218–24, 316. Ickes’ letter can be found in Bill Hosokawa, JACL in Quest of Justice: The History of 

the Japanese American Citizens League (New York: William Morrow, 1982), pp. 252–53. 21 Robert L. Eichelberger, Our Jungle Road to Tokyo (New York: Viking, 1950), p. 73. Many 

authors have observed how few Japanese surrendered to American troops. Eric Bergerud, Touched 

with Fire: The Land War in the South Pacific (New York: Penguin, 1996), pp. 403–25; John W. 

Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon, 1986), pp. 

33–73; Gerald F. Linderman, The World within War: America’s Combat Experience in World War 

II (New York: Free Press, 1997), pp. 143–84.

22 Arnold Krammer, “Japanese Prisoners of War in America,” Pacific Historical Review (February 1983): 67–91; George G. Lewis, History of Prisoner of War Utilization by the United States 
204 NISEI LINGUISTS

were those with high intelligence value, such as Lt. Kazuo Sakamaki, commander 

of the midget submarine captured in Hawaii after the Pearl Harbor attack. He was 

interrogated at Fort Shafter and sent to the mainland in February 1942.23

Japanese prisoners of war were brought into the United States through Angel 

Island in San Francisco Bay. Before the war, Angel Island had served as an immigration station for Chinese and Japanese immigrants. By the time the Japanese 

prisoners arrived there, any tactical intelligence they may have once possessed had 

grown stale, but they could still provide useful information. The Military Intelligence Service established two secret interrogation centers in the United States 

for strategic interrogations, one in Fort Hunt, Virginia, south of Washington, D.C., 

and the other a two-hour drive east of San Francisco near Tracy, California. Fourteen miles outside this small town, the Military Intelligence Service took over a 

resort hotel at Byron Hot Springs. Technicians installed hidden microphones in 

the prisoners’ rooms and listening stations in the basement. The center opened in 

December 1942 with a capacity of forty-four prisoners. The intended guests were 

originally German and Italian prisoners of war; but Japanese prisoners, brought 

from Angel Island specifically for interrogation, came to predominate. The hotel 

was air-conditioned, a real advantage in California’s hot central valley, and had 

amenities such as indoor swimming pools, tennis courts, a golf course, and mud 

baths. The American soldiers ate in the formal dining rooms and watched movies 

every night, but otherwise the work was so relentless they had little time to enjoy 

the hotel’s other facilities.24

In the autumn of 1942 the G–2 directed the language school to send two Japanese interpreters. Because the Western Defense Command would not allow any 

persons of Japanese ancestry, even Nisei soldiers, into the region, the school sent 

two Caucasian linguists in December and two more the following March. One of 

these, T.Sgt. Dempster P. Dirks, had grown up in Southern California and had 

many Nisei friends. “Being of German heritage,” he later wrote, “my family experienced prejudice during World War I—but considerably less probably than that 

Army, 1776–1945 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1955); S. P. MacKenzie, “The 

Treatment of Prisoners of War in World War II,” Journal of Social History 66, no. 3 (September 

1994): 487–520; Ulrich Straus, The Anguish of Surrender: Japanese POWs of World War II (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003). 23 Kazuo Sakamaki, I Attacked Pearl Harbor, trans. Toru Matsumoto (New York: Young Men’s 

Christian Association Press, 1949). Sakamaki’s memoir is a rare first-person narrative in English 

by a Japanese prisoner of war. 24 Lt. Col. Thomas C. Van Cleve, “Report on the Activities of Two Agencies of the CPM Branch, 

MIS, G–2, WDGS, the Interrogation Section, Fort Hunt, Virginia, Tracy, California, and the MISX Section, Fort Hunt, Virginia, 1 Aug 42–1 Aug 45,” pp. 72–76, Unpubl Ms, n.d., copy in Combined Arms Research Library, Ft. Leavenworth, Kans.; MID History, pp. 99–107; “Office of Naval 

Intelligence,” pp. 868–73; “Secret Center at Byron Hot Springs for Quizzing Japs, Germans Told,” 

Stockton Record, 10 Jul 47; Captured Personnel and Materiel Branch-Misc-y, P.W. Camp Tracy, 

P.O. Box 651, RG 165, NARA, cited in Krammer, “Japanese Prisoners of War in America”; David 

W. Swift, Ninety Li a Day, ed. David W. Swift, Jr., Social Life Monographs, vol. 69 (Taipei: Chinese 

Association for Folklore, 1975), p. 293.
MIS NISEI SERVING IN THE CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES 205

shown Nikkei [Japanese Americans] during World War II.” After college he had 

traveled around the Far East working odd jobs such as playing the Wurlitzer organ 

in a Tokyo department store. Along the way he had picked up some of the Japanese-language. He had been hoping to go to officer candidate school when selected 

in 1941 for the language school at Crissy Field. “Don’t worry,” the assistant commandant told him, “because when you finish here, you’ll be at least a captain—

probably a major.” Byron Hot Springs was his first assignment after graduation. 

“It was an interesting routine at the ‘hotel,’” he recalled, with “twenty-four hour 

auditory surveillance of our ‘guests.’ When we weren’t listening to the guests, we 

were monitoring Do ̄mei News.” 25

In April 1943 the War Department directed the Western Defense Command to 

allow Nisei soldiers to travel into and through the exclusion zone.26 MISLS at once 

sent five Nisei to Byron Hot Springs, where they interrogated up to 175 prisoners 

each month. “It was touch-and-go in human relationships,” recalled Ben I. Yamamoto, “and the day and night strain of interrogating people, then spending many 

hours reporting what they’d said, then repeating the process over and over again 

finally got to me.” After a year at Byron Hot Springs, Yamamoto requested an 

overseas assignment.27 Eventually, the Nisei were allowed to visit San Francisco 

on pass. At first they stayed in a small hotel in Chinatown, escorted by a husky 

Caucasian military policeman to forestall any incidents. One evening some of the 

Nisei were relaxing in a cocktail lounge when a Caucasian approached and bought 

them a round of drinks. “You’re not fooling me,” he said. “I had some good Japanese friends.” There were no incidents.28

The number of Japanese prisoners of war held in the United States rose gradually; by December 1944 it had reached 2,629. The language school sent twenty-five 

25 Dempster Dirks, “Autobiography,” in MIS Club of Southern California Newsletter, 1992; 

Stanley L. Falk and Warren M. Tsuneishi, eds., MIS in the War against Japan (Washington, D.C.: 

Japanese American Veterans Association, 1995), pp. 16–18, 95–96. Dirks remained a sergeant for 

the rest of the war. 26 On 15 April 1943, General Marshall personally ordered the policy change to allow 2,700 

Nisei volunteers to transit California from Hawaii en route to Camp Shelby, Mississippi, to form the 

442d RCT. The War Department (WD) General Staff compiled a summary of DeWitt’s resistance 

on this issue: “Dossier on General John L. DeWitt, August 22, 1942–April 29, 1943,” in American 

Concentration Camps: A Documentary History of the Relocation and Incarceration of Japanese 

Americans, 1941–1945, ed. Roger Daniels, 10 vols. (New York: Garland, 1989), vol. 7. 27 Yamamoto, in Oguro, Sempai Gumi, pp. 67–69; Japanese Eyes, American Heart: Personal 

Reflections of Hawaii’s World War II Nisei Soldiers (Honolulu: Tendai Educational Foundation, 

1998), pp. 178–79; Yamamoto, in Harrington Papers; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 277; Roy T. 

Terada, in “Rocky Mountain MIS Veterans Club Autobiographies,” pp. 62–63, Unpubl Ms, ed. Kent 

T. Yoritomo, [1989], author’s files (this and similar biographies hereafter cited as Rocky Mountain 

Bios); Roy T. Terada, Biography, Military Intelligence Service Club of Northern California (this 

and similar biographies hereafter cited as MISNorCal Bios). Yamamoto was reassigned overseas 

and served with the Marine Corps on Iwo Jima. 28 Ben I. Yamamoto, in Oguro, Sempai Gumi, pp. 67–77 (quote on p. 69). Terada recalls that 

Nisei soldiers in San Francisco on pass were “restricted to designated hotels and private residences.” 

Yoritomo, Rocky Mountain Bio, p. 63.
206 NISEI LINGUISTS

other Nisei to Byron Hot Springs for longer or shorter periods. In 1944 alone they 

interrogated 1,077 Japanese prisoners confined there, sometimes searching for 

specific pieces of information. For example, in March 1945 Army Ground Forces 

sent a list of twenty-one questions for interrogators to ask “in connection with 

Intelligence Exploitation of the Philippines.” 29

On occasion, special prisoners were brought to Byron Hot Springs immediately after capture. In December 1944 American soldiers captured a Japanese soldier on Leyte who was familiar with the firebomb balloons the Japanese had just 

begun launching against the Pacific Northwest. Sgt. Kay I. Kitagawa escorted him 

to Byron Hot Springs for a detailed debriefing. Before the war Kitagawa had been 

a student at nearby Stanford University.30

Sometimes the Japanese prisoners arrived in large groups. For example, in 

March 1944 Haruo Sazaki escorted a group of 200 Japanese prisoners from New 

Caledonia to San Francisco. The Army held the growing numbers of Japanese prisoners of war at Camp Clarinda, Iowa; Fort Custer, Michigan; and Camp McCoy, 

Wisconsin. Each camp was operated by a military police POW-processing company. MISLS sent almost 100 Nisei to help administer these camps, selecting those 

who were better interrogators than translators. By August 1945 the number of 

Japanese prisoners being held in the United States reached 5,413, including 407 

on Angel Island; 2,762 at Camp McCoy; and 1,055 at Camp Clarinda. Other Nisei 

joined military police POW-processing companies being sent overseas.31

The morale of the Japanese prisoners was a constant concern. A Japanese 

Navy commander captured at Midway attempted suicide upon arrival at Angel 

Island in July 1942. As the war went on and Japan’s setbacks became clearer, the 

morale of the Japanese prisoners sank even lower. The Nisei who helped guard 

them became increasingly concerned, because the prisoners often stated to their 

captors that they could never return to Japan and face disgrace. “The Japanese 

POWs accumulated at the end of this war in the United States will create a problem 

which the United States must face,” wrote T3g. Harold Nishimura, assigned to 

the 7th Infantry Division on Leyte, to Col. Kai E. Rasmussen in December 1944. 

“Steps should be taken to prevent them from committing mass suicides and putting them in a mood so that they will return to Japan. I suggest that we should send 

men with strong characters and an understanding of Japanese psychology to talk 

to them regularly at all Japanese POW camps, to stress upon them of their useful29 Memo, Chief, Captured Personnel and Material Branch, to C.O., P.O. Box 651, Tracy, Calif., 

sub: Japanese Information Desired by the Army Ground Forces, 6 Mar 45, Security Class Gen Corresp, 1926–1946, Far Eastern Br, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, NARA. 30 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 12, 349; Kay I. Kitagawa, in Harrington Papers; Kay I. 

Kitagawa Papers, Hoover Institution Archives. 31 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 145, 160; “Nisei Interpreter [Cpl. Yukio Kajiyama] at PW 

Camp [Camp Clarinda],” Pacific Citizen, 14 Apr 45. Haruo Sazaki had an unusual career for a Nisei 

soldier. Drafted in California before Pearl Harbor, he was transferred to the Midwest. In 1943 he 

was assigned to a military police POW-processing company at Fort Custer and deployed with his 

unit to the South Pacific. Only after he returned in March 1944 as escort for this POW shipment was 

he enrolled in MISLS. Sazaki, in Harrington Papers.
MIS NISEI SERVING IN THE CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES 207

ness to their country after the war.” Similarly, Lieutenant Sakamaki, the Japanese 

submarine commander, visited Japanese POW camps to lecture his fellow prisoners not to kill themselves. By serving as interrogators and camp staff, these Nisei 

served the war effort and humanitarian ends as well.32

Psychological Warfare

America’s first strategic propaganda broadcast to the Japanese people was sent 

from a shortwave radio transmitter in San Francisco on 10 February 1942. The 

broadcast, “Japan against Japan,” was sponsored by the Coordinator of Information under William J. Donovan and was written and delivered by Yasuo Kuniyoshi, a Japan-born artist who had lived and worked in New York since 1910 and 

had volunteered his services to the fight against Japanese imperialism. He later 

made posters for the Office of War Information (OWI).33 Meanwhile, on Bataan, 

tactical psychological warfare was being employed by two Nisei, Sgt. Richard M. 

Sakakida and Sgt. Arthur S. Komori. They wrote surrender appeals by hand and 

inserted them in short pipes, then used a crude slingshot to deliver their messages 

to attacking Japanese soldiers.34

These early psychological warfare efforts paid few dividends at first. There 

was no evidence that anyone actually received Kuniyoshi’s broadcast. On Bataan, 

Sakakida recalled, the Japanese soldiers replied with more shells. But Kuniyoshi’s 

efforts were the humble beginnings of what would grow into a major effort to 

influence Japanese soldiers, civilians, and government leaders. As the war progressed, the military services and other agencies gradually increased their efforts 

to persuade. Field commanders used portable loudspeakers and dropped leaflets 

from aircraft (the slingshot method was not repeated) to deliver tactical psychological warfare messages. The MIS Nisei, often paired with prisoners of war, played 

an important role in tactical efforts. At the national level, the military services and 

other government agencies developed a program of strategic psychological warfare they hoped would undercut Japanese morale and thus shorten the war. They 

learned that individuals were needed who could read, write, and speak Japanese 

32 James W. Hamilton and William J. Bolce, Jr., Gateway to Victory (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1946), pp. 145–56; Ltr, T3g. Harold Nishimura to Col. Kai Rasmussen, 15 

December 1944, Trng Grp, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, NARA; Sakamaki, I Attacked Pearl 

Harbor, pp. 86–106; Krammer, “Japanese Prisoners of War in America,” p. 87. 33 Larry Tajiri, “Nisei USA,” Pacific Citizen, 9 Jul 42; Japanese American Citizens League, 

“They Work for Victory,” Unpubl Ms, 1945, JACL, San Francisco, Calif; “Kuniyoshi, Yasuo,” in 

Encyclopedia of Japanese American History, rev. ed. (New York: Facts on File, 2001); “Kuniyoshi, 

Yasuo,” Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement 5: 1951–1955 (New York: C. Scribner’s 

Sons, 1977).

34 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 66; Diane L. Hamm, Military Intelligence: Its Heroes and 

Legends (Arlington Hall Station, Va.: U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, 1987), p. 

35; Richard Sakakida and Wayne S. Kiyosaki, A Spy in Their Midst: The World War II Struggle of 

a Japanese American Hero (Lanham, Md.: Madison Books, 1995), pp. 85–86.
208 NISEI LINGUISTS

convincingly. They often used Issei and Japanese prisoners of war as native speakers, but MIS Nisei often helped supervised the work.35

MIS Nisei played a much smaller role in strategic psychological warfare. When 

the Western Defense Command ordered the removal of all individuals of Japanese 

ancestry from the West Coast, the Coordinator of Information already had six 

Nisei employees in its San Francisco office. Donovan appealed to the secretary of 

war to let them remain, but the War Department refused. Assistant Secretary of 

War John J. McCloy reminded Donovan that the War Department was removing 

its own Japanese-language school from the Presidio of San Francisco. The Western Defense Command felt “that language school teachers and Japanese language 

broadcast translators,” according to McCloy, “can function as effectively behind 

the coastal frontier as they do in San Francisco or elsewhere along the coast.” 36

In June 1942 OWI took over responsibility for strategic propaganda from 

Donovan and continued to use civilian Nisei to make radio broadcasts to Japan 

from the United States. China scholar Owen Lattimore became head of the Overseas Operations Branch, and George Taylor became chief of the Pacific Division. 

According to OWI official Archibald MacLeish, the agency could only find three 

white Americans other than the Nisei “with full command of the language.” OWI

did find some Korean immigrants who spoke Japanese and were glad to assist in 

the fight against Japan.37 The San Francisco office continued to broadcast, even 

without its Nisei employees. Claude Buss, the Foreign Service officer whom the 

Japanese interned in Manila and later repatriated, headed the office. By the spring 

of 1944 OWI was broadcasting news and commentary in Japanese and twentythree other Asia-Pacific languages using eleven powerful transmitters along the 

West Coast. Radio programs were written in San Francisco and translated into 

Japanese in Denver by a team of twenty-one Nisei under Takehiko Yoshihashi. 

After the Western Defense Command finally allowed persons of Japanese ancestry to return to the West Coast, OWI posted Nisei employees to San Francisco and 

35 Allison B. Gilmore, You Can’t Fight Tanks with Bayonets: Psychological Warfare against the 

Japanese Army in the Southwest Pacific (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998); Clayton D. 

Laurie, “The Ultimate Dilemma of Psychological Warfare in the Pacific: Enemies Who Don’t Surrender and GIs Who Don’t Take Prisoners,” in The U.S. Army and World War II: Selected Papers 

from the Army’s Commemorative Conferences, ed. Judith L. Bellafaire, U.S. Army in World War 

II (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1998), pp. 383–403; Stanley Sandler, 

Cease Resistance, It’s Good for You: A History of U.S. Army Combat Psychological Operations

(Fort Bragg, N.C.: U.S. Army Special Operations Command, 1996), pp. 164–231; Eleanor A. Sparagana, “The Conduct and Consequences of Psychological Warfare: American Psychological Warfare Operations in the War against Japan, 1941–1945,” Ph.D. Diss., Brandeis University, 1990. 36 Ltr, McCloy to Donovan, 14 May 1942, reprinted in Daniels, American Concentration 

Camps, vol. 5. 37 Allan M. Winkler, The Politics of Propaganda: The Office of War Information, 1942–1945

(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1978); Francis S. Wickware, “The Japanese Language,” 

Life (7 September 1942).
MIS NISEI SERVING IN THE CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES 209

Portland in February 1945. By the spring of 1945 OWI employed twenty-one Nisei 

civilians who broadcast nine hours per day from San Francisco.38

In its attempt to recruit Nisei employees, OWI sometimes clashed with the 

War Department G–2, which fiercely protected its own Nisei linguists. However, 

the G–2 allowed its language school to give OWI occasional help with translation, research, and broadcasting.39 When OWI sent psychological warfare teams to 

the China-Burma-India Theater in early 1944, MIS agreed to provide some Nisei 

language teams and later provided teams for the Philippines. For these teams, the 

language school selected Nisei students with backgrounds in newspapers, broadcasting, and commercial art, such as Chris Ishii, who had worked at Disney as a 

cartoonist and had designed the MISLS emblem. The school also selected Nisei 

with leftist political backgrounds, such as Koji Ariyoshi and Karl G. Yoneda. The 

school commandant, Colonel Rasmussen, told Yoneda that the Army was aware 

of his Communist affiliations, such as his having been editor of the official organ 

of the Japanese section of the American Communist Party, but that “his services 

were needed and appreciated.” Yoneda was soon on his way to Burma.40

In contrast, OWI was not allowed to operate freely in the Central or Southwest 

Pacific. In July 1944 the OWI director accompanied President Roosevelt to Hawaii 

and requested access personally from Admiral Nimitz and General MacArthur. 

Soon after, OWI was able to establish a small office in Hawaii for the Pacific 

Ocean Areas but was never allowed into the Southwest Pacific Area.41

That summer OWI hired a Nisei in Hawaii, Paul Toda, who had been born 

in Hawaii but had spent many years growing up and attending school in Japan. 

He was deeply committed to the struggle against Japanese militarism. When 

the Army called for Nisei volunteers in January 1943, he and his two brothers 

answered. His brothers were accepted, but he was rejected on physical grounds. 

When OWI began hiring, he joined right away. Other Hawaii Nisei soon joined 

the OWI in Honolulu.42

38 “War and Words—S.F. Office,” S.F. News, 13 Apr 44, p. 11; “Civilian Nisei Specialists Aid 

Psychological War in Pacific,” Pacific Citizen, 10 Feb 45; “Nisei Aid Psychological Warfare in 

Pacific,” Pacific Citizen, 7 Apr 45; “OWI-MG [Military Government] Cooperation Is Told: Claude 

Buss, Famed Diplomat, Speaks at CASA,” CASALOG, 16 May 45, p. 1; JACL, “They Work for Victory”; John F. Shelley, Speech, 11 Jun 63, Congressional Record, copy in author’s files. Takehiko 

Yoshihashi also coauthored with Serge Elisséeff and Edwin O. Reischauer, Elementary Japanese 

for College Students (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1941). 39 Memo, MISLS, 29 Apr 43, Trng Grp, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, NARA. 40 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 105–06, 142; Karl G. Yoneda, Ganbatte: Sixty-Year Struggle of a Kibei Worker (Los Angeles: Asian American Studies Center, University of California at 

Los Angeles, 1983); Hugh Deane, ed., Remembering Koji Ariyoshi: An American GI in Yenan (Los 

Angeles: U.S.-China Peoples Friendship Association, 1978); Koji Ariyoshi, From Kona to Yenan: 

The Political Memoirs of Koji Ariyoshi, ed. Alice M. Beechert and Edward D. Beechert (Honolulu: 

University of Hawaii Press, 2000).

41 Zacharias, Secret Missions, p. 328. 42 Bradford Smith, Americans from Japan (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1948), p. 321.
210 NISEI LINGUISTS

In Washington, OWI had already recruited a Harvard psychiatrist, Dr. Alexander H. Leighton, to head the Foreign Morale Analysis Division. Leighton had 

spent more than a year in the Poston, Arizona, camp studying how persons of 

Japanese ancestry responded to the stress of incarceration.43 OWI also sponsored 

other research into Japanese psychology. In June 1944 OWI recruited Ruth Benedict to prepare a study of the “Japanese mind.” The pioneering cultural anthropologist used Issei as her research subjects for the study, which she published at war’s 

end as The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. Similar studies were commissioned by 

other organizations such as the Smithsonian Institution, which published a booklet 

by anthropologist John Embree in January 1943.44 Book publishers released many 

old and new titles, such as a revised edition of a cultural history by a leading Western scholar, Sir George Sansom.45

The War Department played a coordinating role in strategic psychological warfare against Japan. In October 1942 the G–2 established the Psychological Warfare 

Branch, which designed and distributed several Japanese-language leaflets; but 

the G–2 abolished the branch a few months later. After that, the G–2 worked with 

the Psychological Warfare Committee of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In November 

1943 the G–2 established the Propaganda Branch, but this section did not produce 

its own leaflets or radio broadcasts. Instead, it coordinated with the Navy, State, 

Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other agencies. OWI teams produced tactical materials in 

the field. The Office of Naval Intelligence had its own psychological warfare staff, 

OP–16–W, but this office concentrated on the German Navy, not the Japanese.46

The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Morale Operations Branch established 

a Far Eastern Section in 1943 under Maj. Herbert S. Little, a Seattle lawyer who 

had lived in the Far East before the war. He visited the camps and in less than a 

year had recruited about fifty-five men. Two-thirds of the recruits were Issei, and 

most of the Nisei had lived in Japan, so they had excellent native-speaker language 

proficiency. Because the Army already had been scouring the camps for skilled 

Japanese-speakers, the OSS found mostly men who were over age or otherwise 

43 Alexander H. Leighton, The Governing of Men: General Principles and Recommendations 

Based on Experience at a Japanese Relocation Camp (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 

1945); Brian Masaru Hayashi, Democratizing the Enemy: The Japanese American Internment

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 24. 44 Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture (New 

York: Houghton Mifflin, 1946); Peter T. Suzuki, “Ruth Benedict, Robert Hashima and The Chrysanthemum and the Sword,” Research: Contributions to Interdisciplinary Anthropology 3 (1985): 

55–69; John Embree, The Japanese, Smithsonian Institution War Background Studies no. 7 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1943). Before the war, Embree had written the first study of 

Japanese life by a Western anthropologist. John Embree, Suye Mura: A Japanese Village (Chicago: 

University of Chicago Press, 1939). For the wartime role of social scientists and the study of the 

Japanese national character, see Alexander H. Leighton, Human Relations in a Changing World

(New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1949); Dower, War without Mercy, pp. 118–46. 45 George Sansom, A Short Cultural History of Japan, rev. ed. (New York: Appleton-Century, 

1943). 46 MID History, pp. 305–07; Sandler, Cease Resistance, pp. 45–55; Zacharias, Secret Missions, 

pp. 302–16.
MIS NISEI SERVING IN THE CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES 211

unsuited for military service. Because the OSS was more willing than the War 

Department to enlist men with left-wing political backgrounds, at least 5 had been 

Communist Party members before the war, 10 or more had been active members 

of front organizations, and at least 6 had been union organizers.47 These Issei 

and Nisei began producing print propaganda and simulated Japanese materials in 

1944 from offices in New York City and Washington, D.C.; but they soon began 

to lobby to be deployed to the Far East. In April 1945 some of them moved to San 

Francisco, where they produced radio programs that were recorded on disks and 

flown to Saipan for broadcast to Japan.

The War Department G–2 was usually successful in resisting OSS requests 

for its Nisei linguists already in uniform, but in January 1944 MISLS did assign 

four recent graduates to OSS headquarters in Washington. When MISLS recruited 

fifty Nisei women for language training, the OSS diverted four to work in Washington. Unable to obtain enough Issei and Nisei for its propaganda work, the OSS

contracted with the University of Pennsylvania in January 1945 for a six-month 

course in Japanese-language and area studies for Caucasian personnel.48

The OSS Research and Analysis Section also used Issei and Nisei along with 

several Caucasian experts on Japan. While not as extensive as the OSS Research 

and Analysis efforts directed toward Central Europe, this branch nevertheless produced some impressive results, foremost among them a series of research reports 

and area handbooks on Japan. This section produced 8 reports on Japan in 1942, 8 

in 1943, about 40 in 1944, and many more in 1945.49

The U.S. government also listened to Japanese radio broadcasts. In 1941 the 

Federal Communications Commission established the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service (FBIS), which monitored radio from foreign countries, including the 

Do ̄mei shortwave news broadcasts that the Japanese government sent to overseas 

47 Howard Schonberger, “Dilemmas of Loyalty: Japanese Americans and the Psychological 

Warfare Campaigns of the Office of Strategic Services, 1943–45,” Amerasia Journal 16, no. 1 

(1990): 21–38; Anthony C. Brown, ed., The Secret War Report of the OSS (New York: Berkley Publishing, 1976), pp. 106–10; Simon Morioka, “Japanese Americans in the Service of their Country,” 

Master of Arts Diss., Selwyn College, University of Cambridge, 1998, pp. 48–65. Among them was 

Issei artist Jun Atsushi Iwamatsu (pen name Taro Yashima). “Iwamatsu, Jun Atsushi,” in Encyclopedia of Japanese American History; Leonard Rifas, “Taro Yashima: Pictures and Propaganda,” 

Nikkei Heritage (Spring 2002): 15. 48 Morioka, “Japanese Americans in the Service of their Country,” pp. 52–54; Mattie E. 

Treadwell, The Women’s Army Corps, U.S. Army in World War II (Washington, D.C.: Office of the 

Chief of Military History, 1954), p. 589; Brown, Secret War Report, p. 132. 49 Army Service Forces Manual M–354, Civil Affairs Handbook: Japan, 8 vols. (Washington, 

D.C.: Army Service Forces, 1944–1945). See also A Guide to O.S.S./State Department Intelligence 

and Research Reports, I, Japan and Its Occupied Territories During World War II (Washington, 

D.C.: University Publications of America, 1977). Selected reports are available in Makoto Iokibe, 

ed., “The Occupation of Japan: U.S. Planning Documents, 1942–1945,” Microfiche, Congressional 

Information Service, 1987, Bethesda, Md. See also Peter T. Suzuki, “Analyses of Japanese Films in 

Wartime Washington,” Asian Profile 23, no. 5 (1995): 371–80.
212 NISEI LINGUISTS

Japanese.50 These were translated into English and distributed to the top levels of 

the American government. FBIS senior staff included Dr. Chitoshi Yanaga from 

the University of California, Satoru Sugimura from Hawaii, and several Caucasians who had lived in Japan for extended periods. FBIS opened an office in Portland, Oregon, in 1941 and an office in San Francisco in 1942. However, most FBIS

employees of Japanese ancestry stayed in Denver, where they monitored Japanese 

government broadcasts to its own people about the progress of the war. During 

1944 a few Nisei were allowed to work for FBIS in Hawaii and Portland.51 By the 

end of the war over fifty Nisei worked in the Portland office alone.

As American forces advanced in the Pacific, psychological warfare agencies moved closer to Japan to broadcast from locations such as Saipan, Guam, 

Manila, and mainland China. OSS Morale Operations had long hoped to operate 

closer to Japan. On 1 June 1945, it sent half its Issei and Nisei staff, twenty-seven 

in all, by troopship to India. They arrived outside Calcutta on 9 July. Five proceeded to Kunming, China, and the others were waiting for air transport when 

the war ended.52

After the capture of Saipan in July 1944, the Honolulu OWI set up a forward 

detachment there, including civilian Nisei Paul Toda, who volunteered for the 

assignment: “On Saipan he made himself invaluable as an interpreter in dealing 

with Japanese prisoners of war, as translator, as odd job man,” his supervisor later 

wrote. “Nothing was too arduous or too menial for him.” 53

In the Philippines, in February 1945 MacArthur allowed OWI to begin propaganda broadcasts from Manila. Brig. Gen. Bonner F. Fellers, chief of the Southwest Pacific Area Psychological Warfare Board, called a conference to develop 

a coordinated plan for psychological warfare against Japan. Beginning in March 

1945, the Psychological Warfare Board prepared and disseminated a newsletter, 

the Rakkasan [Parachute] News, for Japanese soldiers and the home islands. This 

weekly publication, written by Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS) 

Nisei with the help of Japanese prisoners of war, was widely read by Japanese 

troops in the final months of the war.54

In March 1945 Fellers asked ATIS for two Nisei to make radio broadcasts 

directly to the Japanese home islands. The ATIS executive officer assembled the 

Nisei, explained that they were looking for individuals with broadcast experience, 

and asked for volunteers. Much to his consternation, no one stepped forward. Col. 

50 The Foreign Broadcast Monitoring Service was renamed the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence 

Service in July 1942 and the Foreign Broadcast Information Service in 1946. Stephen Greene, 

“Nisei: Ears for the Government,” Common Ground 7 (Autumn 1946): 17–20; Stephen C. Mercado, 

“FBIS against the Axis, 1941–1945,” Studies in Intelligence (Fall/Winter 2001). MISLS also monitored Japanese shortwave radio for training purposes. 51 Japanese American Citizens League, “They Work for Victory.” 52 Schonberger, “Dilemmas of Loyalty.” 53 Smith, Americans from Japan, p. 321. 54 Sandler, Cease Resistance, pp. 208–10; Gilmore, You Can’t Fight Tanks with Bayonets, 

pp. 109–11, 142, 157–58, 170–72.
MIS NISEI SERVING IN THE CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES 213

Sidney F. Mashbir then spoke to the Nisei himself: “This is an extremely dangerous thing to ask any Nisei to do. . . . I know that should your names become known 

dire vengeance will be wreaked upon your relatives in Japan. Not only that, but 

you will be the first Nisei to arrive in Manila and the Filipino guerrillas may mistake you for Japanese in disguise and kill you. Therefore this job calls not only 

for ability and intelligence but nerve.” Still no one volunteered. Lt. Gary Tsuneo 

Kadani finally explained that the Nisei were hesitant only “because none of us feels 

himself worthy or competent to carry out so important a mission, and none is so 

boastful or immodest as to believe that he is worthy of such a job.” Instead Kadani 

selected ten candidates, of whom two were chosen: S.Sgt. Clifford P. Konno and 

Sgt. John Masuda. They became the first Nisei soldiers to enter Manila, where 

according to Mashbir “their services were outstanding.” The Psychological Warfare Board soon requested additional Nisei, so in June 1945 MISLS sent M.Sgt. 

Masao Harold Onishi directly from Minnesota to Manila. Before the war, Onishi 

had worked as a Japanese-language announcer for KGMB in Hawaii.55

55 Sidney F. Mashbir, I Was an American Spy (New York: Vantage, 1953), pp. 244–46; “Masao 

‘Harold’ Onishi,” Hawaii Herald, 2 Jul 93, pp. A–16 to A–17; Yaban Gogai, Sep–Oct 45, p. 5.

Students at Fort Snelling monitor Japanese shortwave news broadcasts as part of 

their training.
214 NISEI LINGUISTS

In February 1945 Captain Zacharias proposed a direct radio appeal to Japanese Army and Navy commanders. In early March the Office of Naval Intelligence 

brought him back to Washington, where he was assigned to the Psychological 

Warfare Branch (OP–16–W). There, he drew up a strategic psychological operations plan and in May 1945 began a series of broadcasts to Japan’s top leadership, 

calling himself “an official spokesman.” 56

Other influential Americans urged the Roosevelt administration to use psychological warfare in hopes of averting a costly invasion of Japan. In April 1945 

the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Elbert D. Thomas 

(D-Utah), wrote to the president’s chief of staff, Admiral William D. Leahy, urging such a campaign. Thomas spoke with authority, having served as a missionary 

in Japan and being the only member of the House or Senate who could read and 

speak the Japanese language. Leahy referred the senator to Captain Zacharias, 

whose plans were already well under way.57

ATIS began its own broadcasts to Japan on 19 July 1945, when Colonel Mashbir addressed a series of personal broadcasts directly to the Japanese people using 

OWI’s facilities in Manila.58 Japan was thus receiving radio broadcasts from several American agencies: OSS Morale Operations, the Office of War Information, 

the Office of Naval Intelligence (under Captain Zacharias), and ATIS (under Colonel Mashbir). Some of these agencies used social scientists to study the Japanese 

national character in search of exploitable vulnerabilities, assisted by a few civilian Issei and Nisei, but the Nisei role was generally circumscribed. Army field 

commanders used MIS Nisei in tactical psychological warfare. However, this pool 

of knowledge and talent was scarcely tapped. In any event, it is unclear whether 

the psychological warfare campaign against Japan had much effect.

Signals Intelligence

The Army and Navy developed impressive capabilities, codenamed Magic, 

one of the most closely held secrets of the war, to intercept Japanese radio communications, including Japanese diplomatic message traffic. The U.S. Army Signal 

Intelligence Service (SIS) located its code-breaking activities at Arlington Hall on 

56 Zacharias, Secret Missions, pp. 319–89, 399–424; Ellis M. Zacharias, “Eighteen Words That 

Bagged Japan,” The Saturday Evening Post (17 November 1945): 17, 117–20; Ellis M. Zacharias, 

“How We Bungled the Japanese Surrender,” Look (6 June 1950): 12–21. See also Ladislas Farago, 

Burn after Reading (New York: Pinnacle Books, 1961), and the review of Zacharias’ book by his 

former colleague, Stephan T. Possony, in Infantry Journal (March 1947): 83–86. For later assessments, see Gar Alperovitz, The Decision To Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth (New York: Knopf, 1995), pp. 40–41, 394–404; William Craig, The Fall of Japan (New 

York: Dial Press, 1967), pp. 37–40; Richard B. Frank, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese 

Empire (New York: Random House, 1999), pp. 220–21, 231–32; Winkler, Politics of Propaganda, 

pp. 136–48. 57 Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement Five, 1951–1955 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1977); Zacharias, Secret Missions, pp. 346–47. 58 Mashbir, I Was an American Spy, pp. 281–82, 337–46, 354–68.
MIS NISEI SERVING IN THE CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES 215

the outskirts of Washington, D.C., with an intercept station and technical training 

school at Vint Hill Farms near Warrenton, Virginia.59 The Office of Naval Intelligence’s counterpart to the SIS, OP–20–G, was at the Mount Vernon Academy in 

Washington, D.C.60 To translate intercepted Japanese material, both organizations 

used language officers and Caucasian civilians such as Harold E. Zaugg, repatriated from Japan in 1942, and Virginia Aderholdt, a former teacher in Japan.61

“Translation was the bottleneck of the Magic production line,” historian David 

Kahn has written of the early years of the war. “Interpreters of Japanese were even 

scarcer than expert cryptanalysts. Security precluded employing Nisei or any but 

the most trustworthy Americans.” 62

Japanese radio messages, when decrypted, came in ro ̄maji syllables, rather 

than kanji characters. Ro ̄maji was easier to translate than kanji in some ways. In 

other ways it was more difficult, because one ro ̄maji syllable could refer to more 

than one Japanese word. Context would determine a word’s intended meaning. As 

Commander McCollum explained: “The so-called translator in this type of stuff 

almost has to be a cryptographer himself. You understand that these things come 

out in the form of syllables, and it is how you group your syllables that you make 

your words. There is no punctuation. Now without the Chinese ideograph [kanji] 

to read from, it is most difficult to group these things together. That is, any two 

sounds grouped together to make a word may mean a variety of things.” 63

The problem of finding translators “was most acute in the case of Japanese, 

both because a knowledge of Japanese is rare in this country and because the volume of material to be translated was so great,” SIS reported. “The only recourse 

was to train personnel from the very beginning.” 64 SIS recruited the director of 

Japanese studies at Harvard University, Edwin O. Reischauer, in 1943 to find and 

train more Japanese translators. Assistant Secretary of War McCloy personally 

contacted the president of Harvard University to obtain Reischauer’s services. 

Reischauer set up a Japanese-language school at Arlington Hall that eventually 

59 Carl Boyd, Hitler’s Japanese Confidant: General Oshima Hiroshi and Magic Intelligence, 

1941–1945 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993); Gilbert and Finnegan, U.S. Army Signals 

Intelligence in World War II; David Kahn, The Codebreakers (New York: Signet, 1973); Ronald 

Lewin, The American Magic: Codes, Ciphers, and the Defeat of Japan (New York: Farrar Straus 

Giroux, 1982); Donal J. Sexton, Jr., comp., Signals Intelligence in World War II: A Research Guide

(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996); Ronald H. Spector, ed., Listening to the Enemy: Key 

Documents on the Role of Communications Intelligence in the War with Japan (Wilmington, Del.: 

Scholarly Resources Inc., 1988). 60 W. J. Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets: U.S. Naval Intelligence Operations in the Pacific during World War II (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1979); Edwin T. Layton, “And I Was 

There”: Pearl Harbor and Midway—Breaking the Secrets (New York: William Morrow, 1985); 

Prados, Combined Fleet Decoded; Edward Van Der Rhoer, Deadly Magic: A Personal Account of 

Communications Intelligence in World War II in the Pacific (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 

1978). 61 Zaugg, Sensei, pp. 109, 115. 62 Kahn, The Codebreakers, p. 27. 63 Quote from Ibid. 64 Quote from Gilbert and Finnegan, U.S. Army Signals Intelligence in World War II, p. 89.
216 NISEI LINGUISTS

trained 428 Caucasians. He received a direct commission to major in September 

1943 and worked for the rest of the war as the liaison officer between SIS Special 

Branch and Arlington Hall.65

In the early years the available number of translators proved adequate to the 

task. However, when the volume of intercepted messages grew in 1944, they 

became overwhelmed. In January 1944 Australian soldiers discovered a set of 

Japanese codebooks on New Guinea that were photographed and sent to Arlington Hall. In the month before the Australians found the codebooks, Arlington 

Hall decrypted fewer than 2,000 Japanese Army messages. Two months later SIS

decrypted more than 36,000. Soon 200,000 Japanese messages were waiting to be 

decrypted and translated.66 The crisis apparently overcame previous SIS concerns 

about using Nisei for such sensitive work. On 27 January 1944, the SIS requested 

twenty-five Nisei from MISLS. School officials assembled a team under M.Sgt. 

Joe Yuzuru Masuda, a Kibei graduate of Crissy Field and an enlisted instructor. 

Only when their train left Minneapolis did the Nisei learn they were destined not 

for the Pacific, but for “some signal outfit in Virginia.” Upon arrival at Vint Hill 

Farms Station, they were assigned to Detachment B–1–V, 2d Signal Service Battalion. At first their new commander, Maj. Gordon T. Fish, acted gruffly, as if he 

“detested being in command of a bunch of ‘Japs.’” The Nisei learned that his eldest 

son had died while a prisoner of the Japanese in the Philippines. For his part, the 

major soon learned that the Nisei were Americans, not “Japs.” 67 The Nisei got an 

even frostier reception from security officers, who insisted that any Nisei who had 

ever visited Japan or had relatives living there could not stay at Vint Hill Farms. 

Fourteen Nisei, including Sergeant Masuda, returned to Camp Savage. The school 

sent replacements under M.Sgt. Morio Nishita, another Crissy Field graduate and 

enlisted instructor. Despite the rocky start, Major Fish came to respect the Nisei, 

one of whom remembered him as “a gentleman, scholar, and a soldier who truly 

loved his men.” In the spring of 1945 he sent two Nisei to the Signal Corps officer 

candidate school at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey.68

In June 1944 the school sent thirty more Nisei to Vint Hill. Altogether fifty 

Nisei were crammed into a poorly ventilated and -lighted building where they 

struggled with thousands of intercepted messages. The SIS gradually allowed the 

65 Edwin O. Reischauer, My Life between Japan and America (New York: Harper & Row, 

1986), pp. 91–101; Gilbert and Finnegan, U.S. Army Signals Intelligence in World War II, pp. 89, 

122; David Mead, “The Breaking of the Japanese Army Administrative Code,” Cryptologia (July 

1994): 199. Reischauer went on to a distinguished career after the war and served as ambassador to 

Japan from 1961 to 1966. 66 Edward J. Drea, MacArthur’s Ultra: Codebreaking and the War against Japan, 1942–1945

(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992), p. 93; Gilbert and Finnegan, U.S. Army Signals 

Intelligence in World War II, p. 64. 67 Ltr, Naomitsu Kitsuwa to Joseph Harrington, n.d. [1978], in Harrington Papers. Major Fish’s 

son was probably Pvt. Robert L. Fish, who died in the Philippines on 20 February 1943. 68 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 218, 267, 330; Mitsuo Mansho, in Tsukiyama et al., Secret 

Valor, pp. 106–07; Morio Nishita, MISNorCal Bio; Shigeo Shiraishi, in Tsukiyama et al., Secret 

Valor, p. 108.
MIS NISEI SERVING IN THE CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES 217

Nisei to try their hand at cryptanalysis, even though they had no special training 

for this line of work. The messages were mostly “commercial, industrial, or diplomatic communications,” Mitsuo Mansho recalled. One message when translated 

mentioned a shipment of a mysterious “S X ore.” Soon after, a brigadier general 

visited to compliment their work and singled out a particular message which had 

been relayed immediately to American submarines on patrol. Mansho later came 

to suspect that the interdicted shipment had been uranium ore.69

For more than a year the Nisei endured cramped and uncomfortable conditions at Vint Hill Farms, and their morale was often low. “Those of us who were 

unfortunate enough to have been assigned were short-changed by the military,” 

one recalled. “We didn’t expect to be pampered. Least the military could have 

done was to be fair with us.” 70 They could see that Vint Hill Farms was clearly a 

sideshow to the main effort at Arlington Hall, where the Nisei were not allowed. 

During 1944 MISLS sent sixteen Caucasian officers to work at Arlington Hall, but 

not one Nisei.

69 Mansho, in Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor, p. 107. This may have been a reference to the solvent extraction (SX) method of separating uranium. 70 Ltr, Kitsuwa to Harrington, [1978]. See also Ltr, Tatsuji Machida to Yutaka Munakata, 7 

March 1945, requesting reassignment, Harrington Papers.

Edward K. Kawamoto and other Nisei with the U.S. Army Signal Intelligence 

Service, Vint Hill Farms, Maryland
218 NISEI LINGUISTS

As the war progressed, other Nisei were assigned to tactical signals intelligence. The Army Air Forces assigned Nisei to its mobile radio squadrons. In 

January 1945 twenty-four Nisei were assigned to the 3795th Signal Intelligence 

Detachment, an experimental unit at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. In July another 

twenty-four were assigned to the 4029th Signal Intelligence Service Detachment 

(Type C) at the Eastern Signal Corps Training Center, also at Fort Monmouth.71

By war’s end some 10,000 personnel were working in the Army’s signal intelligence effort and 6,000 in the Navy’s. Of these, perhaps a hundred were Nisei. 

Persistent suspicions of the Nisei prohibited their working in signals intelligence 

in more than a limited capacity.

Pacific Military Intelligence Research Section

Although Nisei were kept out of most signals intelligence work, translating 

captured documents was considered much less sensitive. The Nisei had proven 

valuable for translating captured documents near the front lines ever since the 

earliest campaigns. As Allied forces drew closer to Japan, the flow of captured 

documents threatened to overwhelm intelligence organizations. By the summer 

of 1944 the volume of documents being captured could be measured in tons. Field 

commanders established translation centers in each theater: ATIS in the Southwest Pacific; the Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Areas (JICPOA), in the 

Central Pacific; the Southeast Asia Translator and Interrogation Center (SEATIC) 

in Southeast Asia; and the Sino Translation and Interrogation Center (SINTIC) in 

China. Even these could not keep pace. Many captured documents had little or no 

immediate value to theater commanders. The documents may have been routine 

or highly technical or may have had value only for strategic planning. Yet until 

late in the war the War Department had no translation section under its direct 

control. The small number of Nisei in the War Department G–2 Pacific Order of 

Battle Section could handle only occasional translation work. In June 1943 Colonel Rasmussen established a Translation Section under Yutaka Munakata using 

the fluctuating pool of graduates awaiting assignment at the school, but they did 

translations more for training value than for actual intelligence requirements.72

Maj. Gen. Clayton Bissell, who became the War Department G–2 in February 

1944, felt that the War Department should have its own translation center. He knew 

that the Allies had the Military Intelligence Research Section (MIRS) in London, 

a joint translation center for German-language materials. In August 1944 he asked 

for Nisei translators to establish a similar center for Japanese-language transla71 See Steve Sugano, Rocky Mountain Bio, pp. 57–58; Steve Sugano, MISNorCal Bio. 72 MISLS, Addenda for: Projects Contemplated at MIS Language School, Savage, Minnesota, 

during the Period May 1–August 1, 1943, 29 Apr 43, Trng Grp, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, 

NARA; MISLS, “Training History of the Military Intelligence Service Language School,” ann. 13, 

Translation Section, Unpubl Ms, 1946, CMH files; MISLS Album, p. 75.
MIS NISEI SERVING IN THE CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES 219

tion.73 On 6 September 1944, Maj. Sidney F. Gronich, who had helped establish 

MIRS in London, drove up to Camp Ritchie, Maryland, from Washington with 

five Nisei from the order of battle team to open the Pacific Military Intelligence 

Research Section (PACMIRS). MISLS sent seven Caucasian officers and twentyfour Nisei, including nine former instructors.74

Camp Ritchie was a small National Guard post nestled in the Blue Ridge 

Mountains two hours from Washington. In the summer of 1942 the War Department G–2 established the Military Intelligence Training Center there. The post 

provided a secure location where Nisei soldiers would be less conspicuous than 

in wartime Washington. The Nisei set up in a dilapidated warehouse that until 

recently had housed Italian prisoners of war. Capt. Lardner W. Moore was placed 

in charge of the translation work. Many of the Nisei were disappointed with stateside duty in a remote location. Gronich addressed their concerns forthrightly at 

the first meeting: “A great deal is going to be expected of you. You’ll be asked to 

work far beyond your rank. Some of you certainly deserve commissions, all of 

73 MISLS memo, 18 Feb 44; After-Action Report, Pacific Military Intelligence Research Section (PACMIRS), sub: History and Organization of PACMIRS, Camp Ritchie, Maryland, 6 September 1944–14 August 1945; “History and Operation MIRS London and Washington Branches, 1 

May 1943–14 July 1945,” pp. 175–96, Unpubl Ms, n.d.; MID History. 74 Unsung Heroes, pp. 23–26; Falk and Tsuneishi, MIS in the War against Japan, pp. 9–10, 30–

31. Intervs, author with S. Phil Ishio, 18 Apr 95; with Arthur M. Kaneko, 25 Aug 95; with Joseph 

Milanowski, 30 Oct 87; with Yamane, 8 Dec 94. See also Eugene A. Wright Papers, NJAHS.

Recent graduates at Fort Snelling worked in the translation pool while waiting for 

assignment.
220 NISEI LINGUISTS

you higher rankings. I wish I could give you what you deserve. I cannot. I’m in no 

position to do so. But this isn’t going to keep me from asking you to do what I feel 

each of you is capable of doing.” 75

At first PACMIRS was an extension of the order of battle section in the Pentagon. Several of the first Nisei to arrive from MISLS attended a four-week Pacific 

Order of Battle course in the Pentagon, where Major Reischauer’s lectures on 

the history of Japan were especially popular.76 However, General Bissell visited 

Camp Ritchie in October and issued new guidance: he wanted document translation, not order of battle work. With this revised mission PACMIRS went to work 

on 14 October.

That autumn intelligence requirements for the war against Japan began to 

change in significant ways. To support the strategic bombing campaign, the Army 

Air Forces needed intelligence on Japanese factories, railroads, and ports. The first 

B–29 raid against Japan was launched in June 1944 from bases in China; when 

American forces captured the Marianas, the XXI Bomber Command began building up forces there. However, existing intelligence on strategic, economic, and 

industrial targets was poor. On 1 November 1944, a lone B–29 flew over Tokyo on 

the first photoreconnaissance mission over the Japanese home islands.77

At Camp Ritchie, the Nisei settled down to their work. Sergeant Yamane, 

who had been in the Army since before Pearl Harbor, took a weekend pass to 

New York City to be married. When he returned, he found that PACMIRS had 

received some crates of Japanese documents, marked “no military significance,” 

captured on Saipan several months earlier and sent to the Military Intelligence 

Training Center for training purposes. When Yamane began going through the 

crates in early December, one of the first documents he pulled out was a thick 

mimeographed item, “File of Proceedings of 1944 Liaison Conference of Chiefs 

of Ordnance Departments.” This was the record of a meeting of top Japanese staff 

officers in May 1944 in Tokyo to review their country’s munitions stocks and procurement programs. The document included inventories and statistical tables of all 

major weapons and munitions.78 Yamane recognized the document’s significance 

75 Quote from Pat Nagano, MISNorCal Bio. 76 MID History, pp. 190–92; Records of the MIS Far East Intel School (Pacific Order of Battle 

School), RG 165, NARA. Reischauer published his lectures as Edwin O. Reischauer, Japan: Past 

and Present (New York: Knopf, 1946). See preface to Edwin O. Reischauer, Japan: The Story of a 

Nation, 3d ed. (New York: Knopf, 1981); Reischauer, My Life, p. 103. 77 Kreis, Piercing the Fog, pp. 335–38, 364–71; U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, Summary 

Report (Pacific War) (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, 1946), pp. 112, 117; Kenneth P. Werrell, Blankets of Fire: U.S. Bombers over Japan during World War II (Washington, 

D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996), pp. 102, 128–29. 78 Interv, author with Yamane, 8 Dec 94; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 234–35; Kazuo E. 

Yamane, “World War II Experiences, Pentagon-Paris-Berlin,” in Oguro, Sempai Gumi, pp. 106–13; 

Loni Ding, prod., The Color of Honor, documentary film, Vox Productions, 1987; 100th Infantry 

Battalion, “Remembrances,” Unpubl Brochure, 100th Infantry Battalion 50th Anniversary Celebration, 1942–1992, 1992, pp. 171–72; Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor, pp. 104–05; “Kazuo Yamane’s 

Key Discovery,” Hawaii Herald, 2 Jul 93, pp. A–19 to A–20.
MIS NISEI SERVING IN THE CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES 221

and showed it to his superiors at once. Colonel Gronich responded by canceling all 

furloughs and assigning his best Nisei to translate it. Each day a staff car delivered 

that day’s translations directly to the Pentagon. The full translation was published 

on 7 December 1944 as PACMIRS Special Report No. 1. The PACMIRS Nisei had 

hit a home run on their first at-bat.79

The volume of translation work raised issues of interagency coordination. 

Which service or agency should set translation priorities? Would PACMIRS give 

equal priority to documents of interest to the Navy and the Army Air Forces? In 

December 1944 representatives of the U.S. Army and Navy, British War Office, 

Australian and Canadian Armies, and the various Allied commands assembled 

in Washington for a Japanese document conference. After two weeks of discussion, they agreed to establish a new office to coordinate the flow of documents 

and establish priorities. As a result the Office of Naval Intelligence established the 

Washington Document Center in February 1945. Under the new procedures, all 

captured Japanese documents arriving in the United States were first processed by 

the center, which would review them and assign the translation either to PACMIRS

or to the Far Eastern Branch of the Office of Naval Intelligence. The Office of Naval 

Intelligence borrowed several Nisei from PACMIRS to start its operation.80

Over the winter of 1944–1945 a sprinkling of combat veterans, including Caucasian team leaders such as Eugene Wright, John Anderton, and Lachlan Sinclair, 

was assigned to Camp Ritchie. Others found themselves assigned to PACMIRS by 

chance. For example, in March 1945 General Joseph W. Stilwell happened to visit 

Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where he noticed a Chinese American who had served on his 

staff in Burma. Capt. Won-Loy Chan, a graduate of Stanford University and later 

of MISLS, had spent twenty-three months in the China-Burma-India Theater as an 

intelligence officer. Stilwell greeted Chan with characteristic bluntness: “Charlie, 

what the hell are you doing here?” Chan began to explain, but Stilwell would not 

listen. “You don’t belong here, Charlie,” he said. Shortly afterward Chan received 

orders for PACMIRS, where he became the liaison officer with the center’s translation customers.81 Another returning veteran was Lt. S. Phil Ishio, who came to 

PACMIRS in June 1945 after two-and-a-half years in the Southwest Pacific.82 The 

British and Canadian armies gave PACMIRS some of their best Japanese linguists. 

Canadian Nisei came to PACMIRS as translators when the Canadian Army began 

to train a few in 1945.83 The chief of the translation group was a British officer, Lt. 

79 “Proceedings of Conference, Japanese Chiefs of Ordnance, Tokyo, May 1944,” PACMIRS

Special Rpt no. 1, 7 Dec 44; Willoughby, “The Character of Military Intelligence,” pt. 2, pp. 196–97, 

in Folder 4, Box 3, Willoughby Papers, RG 23–B, MacArthur Memorial, Norfolk, Va. PACMIRS

translations and reports can be found in the War Department G–2 Library (“P” File), Security Class 

Intel Ref Pubs, RG 165, NARA. See also Wright Papers, NJAHS. 80 “Washington Document Center,” pt. 8, in “Office of Naval Intelligence,” pp. 894–99. Twentythree boxes of WDC translations can be found in the records of the Chief of Naval Operations, RG

38, NARA. 81 Won-Loy Chan, Burma: The Untold Story (Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1986), p. 115. 82 Interv, author with Ishio, 18 Apr 95. 83 Ito, We Went to War, pp. 250–54.
222 NISEI LINGUISTS

Col. P. Pender-Cudlip, who had studied Japanese in London at the School of Oriental Studies and had been assigned as a language attaché in Tokyo from 1936 to 

1939. He had then served with British Army intelligence in Singapore until it fell 

in 1942. This multinational group of talented Japanese linguists produced a steady 

flow of translations. In addition to translations of individual documents, they produced bulletins and reports on special topics and did special work as required, all 

of which was distributed to Allied headquarters.

Some PACMIRS Nisei later attended officer candidate school. Arthur M. 

Kaneko went to the infantry officer candidate school at Fort Benning, Georgia, 

in December 1944.84 After his return in April 1945 as a new second lieutenant, 

whenever he served as officer of the day he took special pleasure in inspecting the 

prisoner of war officers’ mess, where the German generals had to rise to attention 

each time he entered the room.85

Other Nisei found the routine wearing, and they chafed under their Caucasian 

officers. When Pat Nagano returned in July 1945 after a six-month absence, he 

noticed a distinct change in tone. Gronich, who had been promoted to colonel and 

was popular with the Nisei, had been transferred; and the Nisei felt they were no 

longer as trusted as before. In the early days they had been allowed to scan the 

documents to assess their intelligence value. Now they had to prepare word-forword translations of every document the officers assigned to them.86 The drudgery 

of translating dense technical materials took its toll on morale. In addition, the longer they worked, the more they resented their subordinate status. M.Sgt. George 

M. Koshi, a Nisei attorney who had worked in the Pentagon Order of Battle Section since 1943 and then at PACMIRS, wrote to a friend at MISLS: “We ought to 

be accustomed to working with Caucasian officers, by now, but when they head 

us only because they are Caucasians it really gets me down.” 87 Many PACMIRS

Nisei felt their contributions to the war effort were minimal at best. As the war 

dragged on they felt increasingly discouraged.

The Manhattan Project

In June 1943 the Military Intelligence Division’s New York City branch 

requested Nisei for a special assignment. In August MISLS sent two Kibei, T4g. 

Kiyoshi Hirano and S.Sgt. Yutaka Namba.88 Hirano had lived for eleven years in 

84 Interv, author with Kaneko, 25 Aug 95. 85 See also Eugene Wright in The Color of Honor, Loni Ding, prod., and Fifty Years of Silence, 

Sheryl K. Narahara, prod. (San Francisco: Military Intelligence Service Club of Northern California/National Japanese American Historical Society, 1992); Arthur Kaneko in Harrington Papers. 86 Nagano, “Lost Glory,” MISNorCal Bio. 87 Ltr, George M. Koshi, 16 September 1945, Harrington Papers. 88 “Training History,” ann. 2, p. 9; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 148, 152–54; Ltr, Kiyoshi Hirano to Lyn Crost Stern, 12 October 1992; Lyn Crost, Honor by Fire: Japanese Americans 

at War in Europe and the Pacific (Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1994), pp. 285–87; The Pacific 

War and Peace: Americans of Japanese Ancestry in Military Intelligence Service, 1941 to 1952

(San Francisco: Military Intelligence Service Association of Northern California/National Japa-
MIS NISEI SERVING IN THE CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES 223

Japan, where he had graduated from high school with a teacher’s certificate and 

had briefly taught school. Namba had lived in Japan and attended Meiji University. 

The two were assigned to the Morale Services Division of Army Service Forces, 

which published Yank Magazine. They worked on the nineteenth floor of an office 

building on Broadway in downtown Manhattan. Over the autumn and winter of 

1943–1944, they prepared a Japanese-English dictionary, some language textbooks, and other miscellaneous translation work. At some point, probably early in 

1944, a high-ranking Army officer interviewed Hirano and Namba in the Rockefeller Center. They were then instructed to report to an unmarked office upstairs 

from the Fulton Fish Market, where they were put to work translating Japanese 

technical documents and scientific papers on nuclear physics. Their supervisors 

stressed the need for absolute secrecy. The two Nisei did not even tell each other 

what they were working on. Hirano translated the confiscated New York branch 

office files of two Japanese businesses, Mitsui and Company and the Ogura Petroleum Company. The technical translation work was difficult, and “he was told to 

try to identify certain types and shapes of metals he’d never heard of before,” as 

well as translate documents on metallurgy and polymerization. “Often it took a 

whole day of research to identify a single word,” he recalled.89

Not until August 1945 did they learn that they had worked in support of the 

Manhattan Project, a closely guarded secret of the war effort and, like signals 

intelligence, protected by multiple layers of security. In the autumn of 1943 the 

director, Brig. Gen. Leslie R. Groves, pushed for better intelligence about German 

and Japanese atomic weapons programs. That December he sent the Alsos Mission, a scientific and technical intelligence team, to Italy. After the war, Americans 

learned that Japan’s nuclear program was dwarfed by America’s, but during the 

war Groves was concerned and asked his staff for any intelligence on possible 

Japanese developments.90 The MIS Nisei played a small, indirect part in this effort 

by translating scientific, technical, and commercial documents that shed light on 

Japan’s capabilities.91

nese American Historical Society, 1991), p. 21. Army Service Forces produced Japanese-language 

training materials such as TMs 30–341, 30–541, and 30–641. Hirano returned to MISLS in August 

1944. In April 1945 MISLS sent three more Nisei to the New York Branch Office, Information and 

Education Division, Army Service Forces, for ninety days’ temporary duty. 89 Unsung Heroes, p. 27. Pacific War and Peace comments that “both men were never directly 

involved in the development and testing of the atomic bomb.” The records of Japanese trading 

companies and banks seized in the United States at the start of the war can be found in the records 

of the Office of Alien Property Custodian, RG 131, NARA. 90 Vincent C. Jones, Manhattan: The Army and the Atomic Bomb (Washington, D.C.: U.S. 

Army Center of Military History, 1985), pp. 280–91; John W. Dower, “‘NI’ and ‘F’: Japan’s Wartime Atomic Bomb Research,” in Japan in War & Peace: Selected Essays (New York: New Press, 

1993), pp. 55–100. 91 Kaoru Inouye, another MIS Nisei, learned after the war that one of his professors at the 

University of California, where he had majored in chemistry before the war, had requested him for 

the Manhattan Project. However, the War Department G–2 would not release him from his MIS

assignment. Kaoru Inouye, MISNorCal Bio.
224 NISEI LINGUISTS

Army Map Service

The Army also needed maps for the war against Japan. From the outset the 

Army Map Service relied on maps and atlases from the Library of Congress and 

university collections, as well as maps captured during the fighting. When the 

war began, they sought to recruit individuals who could translate the thousands of 

place names on the Japanese maps; but they found that the pool of qualified translators was almost exhausted. In January 1943 the Army Map Service approached 

MISLS and requested MIS Nisei for translating work. Assistant Secretary McCloy 

personally approved the assignment of three MIS Nisei; school officials helped 

the Army Map Service select twenty civilians, many of them Nisei women from 

the camps. All were sent to Cleveland, Ohio, in May 1943 for this painstaking but 

important work.92

II Armored Corps Training Center

Another unusual assignment was teaching basic Japanese to the 1st Filipino 

Infantry, which activated in April 1942 with Filipino agricultural workers stranded 

in the United States when the war broke out. In the summer of 1943 the II Armored 

Corps established a special training center at Fort Ord and the Presidio of Monterey, California, to teach commando skills to selected Filipino officers and men. 

At that time the Western Defense Command did not allow persons of Japanese 

ancestry on the West Coast. Furthermore, hatred of the Japanese ran high in Filipino communities in the United States, so Nisei instructors would probably not 

have been acceptable to the Filipino troops. MISLS sent two Caucasian graduates 

to teach simple Japanese phrases and a few kanji characters.

In the spring of 1944 the War Department G–2, General Bissell, visited Monterey and met with the instructors. One of them, T.Sgt. Dempster P. Dirks, commented that foreign languages were better taught during times of peace, not in the 

midst of war. Furthermore, in his opinion the Presidio of Monterey would make an 

excellent setting for such a school. “I [wouldn’t] put these buildings back in mothballs, this is an ideal location,” Dirks suggested. “It’s away from urban centers and 

relatively secluded. Operate in peacetime and teach several different languages.” 

The general’s response is not recorded, but Dirks proved prescient. After the war’s 

end, MISLS moved to the Presidio of Monterey and expanded to train military 

linguists in dozens of languages for the postwar era.93

92 Ltr, Col. William P. Scobey to Commander, Army Map Service, 19 February 1943, Class 

Ref-Sub File, 1940–1947, Ofc of Asst Sec of War, RG 107, NARA; “Training History,” ann. 10, sec. 

IV(5); Blanche D. Coll et al., The Corps of Engineers: Troops and Equipment (Washington, D.C.: 

Office of the Chief of Military History, 1958), pp. 438–63; Office of the Chief Engineer, General 

Headquarters, Army Forces, Pacific, Engineers of the Southwest Pacific, vol. 3 (Washington, D.C.: 

Government Printing Office, 1950), pp. 75–78, 120–22, 199–201, apps.

93 Dempster P. Dirks, in MIS Club of Southern California Newsletter, 1992. MISLS moved from 

Fort Snelling to the Presidio of Monterey in June 1946, was renamed the Army Language School in 

1947, and later became the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC).
MIS NISEI SERVING IN THE CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES 225

Preparing for Military Government

As the war progressed, the United States developed plans for the occupation of 

Japan.94 Although key policy issues such as the future status of the emperor were 

left unresolved, it was clear that military government over any Japanese territory 

would require a large number of Japanese-speaking personnel. In August 1943 the 

senior Army commander in Hawaii suggested using Nisei for occupation duties. 

“It occurred to me that a plan might be evolved to use many of these people in 

the rehabilitation and rule of Japan, once that country has been conquered,” Lt. 

Gen. Robert C. Richardson wrote to McCloy. Could we not place educated Nisei, 

he suggested, “in minor key positions in Japan after the victory, with the thought 

of democratizing the people from which they sprang? This would serve a double 

purpose. It would assist materially in the Westernization of the Japanese, as these 

men would form a bridge between the mentality of their ancestors and modern 

American mentality and manners. Secondly, it would form an honorable outlet to 

educated American Japanese.”95 The War Department did not take up his proposal. 

In April 1944, when the Civil Affairs Division projected its requirements for 1,000 

Japanese-speakers for the occupation, not even this high figure convinced planners to turn to the Nisei.96

Joseph C. Grew, former ambassador to Japan, consulted with Nisei leaders and visited MISLS several times. In September 1943, when Assistant Secretary McCloy asked him about using Nisei in the occupation of Japan, Grew 

responded with enthusiasm. John F. Aiso later remarked that the Nisei “had a 

great friend in Ambassador Grew.” 97 Grew solicited Aiso’s views about postwar 

Japan. In response, Aiso and his staff prepared a “blueprint study which publicly 

proposed such matters as the preservation of the emperor system, the agricultural land reform laws, and rewriting the Japanese constitution to eliminate the 

military’s direct access to the throne and to guarantee the fundamental rights of 

the individual.”98 These proposals coincided with Grew’s own thinking, and he 

arranged for Aiso to speak before a public forum in Chicago in November 1943 

on “International Problems after the War.” “The problem of Japan in the post-war

94 Hugh Borton, American Presurrender Planning for Postwar Japan (New York: East Asian 

Institute, Columbia University, 1967); Eiji Takemae, Inside GHQ: The Allied Occupation of Japan 

and Its Legacy (New York: Continuum, 2002), pp. 201–14. 95 Ltr, Robert C. Richardson to John J. McCloy, 13 August 1943, Robert C. Richardson Papers, 

Box 21, Hoover Institution Archives. 96 Memo, WD G–1 for Chief of Staff, sub: Assignment of Citizens of Japanese Ancestry, 3 Apr 

44, Tab E, Decimal 291.2, “Japanese,” 1 Mar–Aug 44, WD G–1 Decimal Files, RG 165, NARA. 97 Memo, Scobey for CS, 16 Sep 43, sub: Training of Loyal Japanese Americans for Civil Affairs 

Duties, in Folder: Scobey, Class Ref Sub Files, 1940–1947, Office of the Assistant Secretary of War 

(ASW), RG 107, NARA; John F. Aiso, “Observations of a California Nisei,” Interv by Marc Landy, 

University of California at Los Angeles, 1971, pp. 79–80.

98 John F. Aiso, Remarks to Military Intelligence Service Veterans’ Reunion, Honolulu, 

6 Sep 64.
226 NISEI LINGUISTS

world is beset with difficulties,” explained the panel moderator while introducing 

Aiso. “Its solution needs all the wisdom we can muster. One source of knowledge, 

too often overlooked, is our native Americans of Japanese ancestry. Many are in 

the Army.”99 Aiso presented what he called “a few modest observations upon the 

reconstruction of Japan.” His remarks, coordinated with the War Department Public Relations Office, called for ridding Japan of “insane militarism” but warned 

against abolishing the emperor system. He spelled out a reform agenda for Japan’s 

constitution and legal, taxation, and education systems. He cautiously did not spell 

out any particular role for the Nisei. However, he boldly declared that “notwithstanding false reports from irresponsible quarters, the loss of our homes and the 

loss of economic security through compulsory war-time evacuation, our faith in 

America remains unshaken.” Following this speech, Aiso apparently played no 

further role in postwar planning.100

In December 1943 the War Department took its first steps to train military 

government personnel for the “Asiatic theater.” Language training loomed large in 

their worries. “[I]t is infinitely more important in a program for the Far East than 

for the Mediterranean-European theaters that recruitment and training for occupation be initiated well in advance of the event,” warned one planning memorandum. “Familiarity in America with European languages and backgrounds, while 

not widespread, is nonetheless considerable; acquaintance with Far Eastern languages, institutions and points of view is practically nonexistent. Furthermore, the 

difficulties of imparting useful language and other relevant knowledge of the Far 

East are many times those of similar preparation for European areas.” The memorandum, which did not mention the Nisei, asserted that “six months of intensive 

work in conversational Japanese is a bare minimum of useful instruction.”101

The Office of the Provost Marshal General established Civil Affairs Training 

Schools at ten universities in 1944 and that July established a program at the University of Chicago to train Issei and Nisei civilians to become Japanese-language 

“informants,” or language teachers. The Civil Affairs Division hoped to find 150 

instructors but found only twenty-six who eventually taught introductory Japa99 New York Herald Tribune, 18 Nov 43, pp. 18, 20; Tad Ichinokuchi, ed. John Aiso and the 

M.I.S.: Japanese-American Soldiers in the Military Intelligence Service, World War II (Los Angeles: Military Intelligence Service Club of Southern California, 1988), pp. 19–23. 100 John F. Aiso, “Japan’s Military System Must Be Crushed: Domestic and Economic Reforms 

Necessary,” Vital Speeches of the Day (15 December 1943): 136–38; New York Herald Tribune, 

18 Nov 43, pp. 18, 20; cited in John Aiso and the M.I.S., pp. 19–23; Aiso, Speech, 6 Sep 64; Aiso, 

Speech, 12 Nov 66, printed in Hokubei Mainichi, n.d.; Interv, Aiso, 1970, pp. 79–80; Interv notes, 

Joseph Harrington with Aiso, 3 Jan 78. Aiso later made similar comments on the cost of the evacuation. Yaban Gogai, Dec 45. 101 Cited in Harry L. Coles and Albert K. Weinberg, Civil Affairs: Soldiers Become Governors

(Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1964), pp. 83–94. See also the call for 

language-qualified occupation personnel by anthropologist John Embree, “Military Occupation of 

Japan,” Far Eastern Survey (20 September 1944).
MIS NISEI SERVING IN THE CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES 227

nese to hundreds of military government officers.102 The Navy established its own 

military government training programs at Columbia and Princeton.

In July 1944 the Civil Affairs Division established the Civil Affairs Holding 

and Staging Area (CASA) at Fort Ord, California.103 In July 1944 five MIS Nisei 

were assigned to provide language instruction under 1st Lt. Suyeki Okumura, a 

Nisei lawyer, and M.Sgt. Paul Jun Sakai, a University of Washington graduate 

who had served with the 9th Infantry Division in North Africa in 1942–1943, 

before coming to MISLS as a language student.104 The Nisei had no textbooks, so 

they improvised. They taught elementary Japanese phrases two hours per day, ten 

hours per week to the mostly junior Army and Navy officers. Some had received 

several months of Japanese instruction, but most had no previous exposure.

In December 1944 almost 1,000 more personnel arrived, bringing CASA’s 

total strength to 1,124 and forcing the agency to relocate to the Presidio of Monterey in February 1945. MISLS sent seventeen more Nisei as instructors in January and ten more in April. In June 1945 another 234 officers arrived. In July CASA 

added Chinese-language classes in anticipation of landings on the coast of China. 

Capt. Quan H. Yuen, a Chinese American and the only officer to graduate from 

the MISLS Chinese course, taught the classes. CASA personnel also researched 

various aspects of Japanese government, economy, and society in preparation 

for the occupation. In February 1945 the Office of Strategic Services assigned a 

detachment of about sixteen professionals, many of whom were experts on Japan. 

They helped write various research reports and civil affairs manuals at the prefecture level.105 By the summer of 1945 more than thirty MIS Nisei were training 

military government personnel in Monterey for the occupation of Japan. Others 

were training for occupation censorship duties at Fort Mason, San Francisco. 

Nine Nisei began a civil censorship training course in February 1945 and another 

twenty-five in July.

102 History of Military Government Training: Operations of Japanese Informants Training 

School, File 4–4, MI, 46/1–1, vol. 2, CMH. 103 “History of the Civil Affairs Holding and Staging Area, Fort Ord and Presidio of Monterey, 

California,” Unpubl Ms, 1945, DLIFLC, Monterey, California; “Military Governors for Japan: 

Army Specialists Trained at Monterey,” Monterey Herald, 17 Sep 45, p. 7; Arnold G. Fisch, Jr., 

Military Government in the Ryukyu Islands, 1945–1950, U.S. Army in World War II (Washington, 

D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1988), pp. 15–19; Dorothy E. Richard, United States 

Naval Administration of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, 3 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Office 

of the Chief of Naval Operations, 1957), 1: 54–61. 104 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 12, 105. Sakai was not removed from his unit after Pearl 

Harbor, as were many other Nisei, and he sailed with the 9th Infantry Division for the invasion of 

North Africa in November 1942. 105 “History of the Civil Affairs Holding and Staging Area,” pp. 150–164.
228 NISEI LINGUISTS

Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force

During the war, Japan maintained close diplomatic and commercial ties with 

Nazi Germany, which gave the Allies another valuable source of intelligence 

about both countries. For example, the Allies routinely intercepted the diplomatic 

cables of the Japanese ambassador to Berlin, General Hiroshi O ̄shima, yielding 

invaluable insights into the Nazi high command. In the autumn of 1944, as Allied 

ground forces drew closer to Germany’s borders, the War Department G–2 was 

eager to pick up any further intelligence from Japanese diplomats and businessmen in Central Europe.106

In case the Nazi government should suddenly surrender or collapse, General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force 

(SHAEF) developed contingency plans for Operation Eclipse, a short-notice airborne assault on Berlin by the First Allied Airborne Army. In October 1944 PACMIRS alerted three MIS Nisei for possible deployment to Europe but shelved these 

plans when Allied forces stalled at Germany’s border and the Germans launched 

a fierce counterattack in the Ardennes.107 Not until January 1945 did Eisenhower’s 

G–2 call for Japanese-language personnel. PACMIRS then sent three Nisei under 

Maj. John M. White, an experienced team leader and veteran of the Aleutians, and 

M.Sgt. Kazuo E. Yamane, who had discovered the Japanese Army ordnance plan. 

The four departed New York aboard a C–54. Upon arrival at Versailles on about 

12 February they were assigned to the SHAEF G–2 Far Eastern Intelligence Section in the Trianon Palace Hotel, where SHAEF had its headquarters. At first the 

Nisei were told they would join a British commando unit to be inserted into Berlin 

ahead of the Russians. When this mission was scrubbed, the Nisei settled in with 

little to do other than visit Paris on pass. Otherwise, they waited in Versailles for 

the war to end.108

In the waning days of the war the Japanese embassy staff moved to Bad Gastein, a remote Austrian ski resort. When the German surrender finally came in 

May 1945, the 101st Airborne Division soon arrived and requisitioned the hotel 

in which the diplomats were staying. At first the diplomats refused to be evicted, 

106 Boyd, Hitler’s Japanese Confidant; “Japanese in Europe as of 1 December 1944,” 15 Jan 45, 

HRC Geog V Japan 201—Who’s Who, CMH files. 107 Kazuo E. Yamane, “World War II Experiences, Pentagon-Paris-Berlin,” in Oguro, Sempai 

Gumi, pp. 106–13; Interv, author with Yamane, 8 Dec 94; Pat Nagano, “Lost Glory,” MISNorCal 

Bio; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 271–73, 330–31. For Operation Eclipse, see Cornelius Ryan, 

The Last Battle (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966), pp. 119–25. 108 In some versions, for example, in Oguro, Sempai Gumi, pp. 112–13, Yamane claims his 

team deployed in October 1944. However, in the same account he says the German attack in the 

Ardennes (16 December 1944) had occurred “only a few weeks before our arrival.” Pat Nagano 

recalled they left the United States shortly after 4 February 1945. Yamane’s discharge certificate 

states he arrived in Europe on 12 February 1945; his certificate of appreciation from the SHAEF 

G–2 dates his assignment from 14 February 1945. Thus the February date appears more plausible. 

Pacific War and Peace, p. 69, repeats Yamane’s error, as does Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor, p. 105, 

and Crost, Honor by Fire, p. 283.
MIS NISEI SERVING IN THE CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES 229

but by coincidence the division commander, Maj. Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, had 

studied Japanese in Tokyo before the war as a language attaché. He appeared at 

the hotel and personally evicted the diplomats in their own language. The three 

MIS Nisei eventually helped guard these diplomats and other Japanese personnel. 

In July two of the Nisei escorted thirty-three Japanese diplomats to New York on 

board an ocean liner. The third, Yamane, returned soon afterward.109

Military Intelligence Training Units

During the first three years of the war the MIS Nisei proved their worth in 

combat and stateside sensitive intelligence assignments. With the invasion of 

Japan not far away, War Department leaders knew they would need even more 

Nisei in the MIS. However, during the winter and spring of 1945, war weariness was spreading throughout the United States. The Battle of Okinawa came 

as a sobering reminder of the high casualties certain to come with the invasion of 

Japan. It was an especially difficult time for individuals of Japanese ancestry in the 

United States. In December 1944 the government announced plans to allow them 

to return to the West Coast, but many local communities remained bitterly hostile. 

By one count, anti-Japanese bigotry sparked more than forty incidents of violence 

or intimidation on the West Coast in the first six months of 1945.110

Meanwhile, the casualty lists from the 442d Regimental Combat Team (RCT) 

were read with great sorrow in Japanese communities in Hawaii and on the mainland. In October–November 1944 the unit suffered over 1,400 casualties in six 

weeks in the Vosges Mountains. In April 1945 the unit returned to Italy and suffered over 1,000 casualties in just four weeks. The replacements coming to the unit 

were no longer volunteers, but younger Nisei draftees. Morale among the Nisei 

draftees in stateside training bases was poor. At Fort Meade, Maryland, several 

thousand waited for shipment overseas as individual replacements for the 442d 

RCT. Their morale began to show signs of deterioration as early as April 1945. 

When the war in Europe ended in May they were no longer needed as infantry 

replacements, so they just waited. In June MISLS selected 500 to begin Japaneselanguage training. But, at Fort Snelling, their morale only fell lower.111 The lack 

of promotions and commissions was a common complaint, even though by early 

1945 a few Nisei had received commissions through officer candidate schools and 

through battlefield commissions in both Europe and the Pacific. Nisei serving with 

109 “Nisei Sergeants Escort Captured Japan Diplomats,” Pacific Citizen, 14 Jul 45; Nagano, 

MISNorCal Bio; Boyd, Hitler’s Japanese Confidant, pp. 176–77. PACMIRS translated some Japanese documents captured in Europe. PACMIRS Limited Duty Accession Lists no. 1 (20 Jun 45) 

through 17 (27 Jul 45), “Summaries of Documents Bearing on the War in the Pacific Received by 

PACMIRS from the European Theater,” Security Class Intel Ref Pubs, RG 165, NARA. 110 Paul R. Spickard, Japanese Americans: The Formation and Transformations of an Ethnic 

Group (New York: Twayne, 1996), p. 127. 111 Tamotsu Shibutani, The Derelicts of Company K: A Sociological Study of Demoralization

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), pp. 101–68.
230 NISEI LINGUISTS

other war agencies sometimes felt even worse. One Nisei assigned to the Office 

of Strategic Services in Washington, D.C., complained in a letter to a friend about 

prejudice, low pay, and security restrictions compared to conditions in the Army. 

“My past experience with the Army proves that the Army units including G–2 does 

not prejudice nisei due to heritage, or at least, many restrictions have been modified.” In July 1945 he requested a discharge or transfer, declaring “I would rather 

fight and die under the rule where no prejudice or discrimination is practised.”112

At this difficult time for the Nisei the War Department assigned them a new 

task, to pose as Japanese soldiers and train other American troops preparing for 

the invasion of Japan. The War Department faced an unprecedented challenge 

in 1945: redeploying millions of soldiers from Europe to the Pacific. The War 

Department wanted troops to receive an orientation on the characteristics of Imperial Japanese Army soldiers, because as a War Department press release explained 

it, “fighting the Japanese is different from fighting Germans.” The War Department G–2 provided the training literature, including items such as a training circular on Japanese “character and training,” written by Col. Charles N. Hunter of 

Merrill’s Marauders. Army Ground Forces included an orientation on Japanese 

tactics, techniques, and weapons to be taught by Military Intelligence Training 

Units (MITUs) at three bases: Fort Meade, Maryland; Camp Hood, Texas; and 

Camp Roberts, California. Several MIS Nisei would be assigned to each MITU

to demonstrate Japanese tactics and equipment by dressing up in Japanese Army 

uniforms, a task many Nisei found especially humiliating.113

The War Department had used Nisei soldiers to simulate Japanese soldiers at 

least once before. In October 1942 the War Department had selected two Nisei officers and twenty-six Nisei enlisted men from the 100th Infantry Battalion at Camp 

McCoy and sent them to Cat Island, Mississippi. The experiment was intended to 

determine if military dogs could be trained to sniff out Japanese soldiers in a subtropical field environment. The Nisei were shocked to learn they were to be guinea 

pigs. However, to the Nisei’s relief, the dogs could not tell the difference between 

Nisei and soldiers of other races. Cat Island turned out to be easy duty; after six 

months the Hawaii-born Nisei rejoined the battalion and regaled their comrades 

with tales of the excellent fishing in the Gulf of Mexico.114

112 Quote from Morioka, “Japanese Americans in the Service of their Country,” p. 54. 113 WD Press Release, 5 May 45, cited in John C. Sparrow, History of Personnel Demobilization 

in the United States Army, Department of the Army Pamphlet 20–210 (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, 1952), pp. 306–10; Robert R. Palmer et al., eds., The Procurement and Training 

of Ground Combat Troops (Washington, D.C.: Historical Division, Department of the Army, 1948), 

pp. 426–27, 623–47; WD Trng Circular 23, 28 May 45; “Soldiers Will Train GIs for Pacific War: 

Special Japanese American Training Teams Will Show Enemy Tactics to Troops,” Pacific Citizen, 

9 Jun 45, p. 1; “Special Nisei Teams Prepare GIs for Pacific War Conditions,” Pacific Citizen, 4 Aug 

45, p. 3; “‘Know Your Enemy’: MITU Shows the Way,” Fort Ord Panorama, 3 Aug 45, p. 5. 114 Thomas D. Murphy, Ambassadors in Arms (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1954), pp. 

79, 92–93; Masayo Umezawa Duus, Unlikely Liberators: The Men of the 100th and 442nd (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987), pp. 46–49; Raymond R. Nosaka, “Japanese Dog Bait,” in 

Japanese Eyes, American Heart, pp. 155–57; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 105. The Quarter-
MIS NISEI SERVING IN THE CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES 231

In the spring of 1945 the Military Intelligence Training Center organized several MITUs, the first six graduating in late June. Eventually, the center organized 

twenty-nine MITUs using over 300 Nisei. In April MISLS sent the first thirty-four 

Nisei to Camp Ritchie for this training. In mid-June another 149 Nisei arrived 

from the replacement depot at Fort Meade to be “Saipan Joes.”115 Sixty-five combat veterans came from the 442d Regimental Combat Team in Italy, among them 

Pfc. Jesse M. Hirata, who was uncooperative. He had been in uniform since before 

Pearl Harbor, had fought with the 100th Infantry Battalion through Italy and 

France and had been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. When he arrived 

at Camp Ritchie, “there was nothing to do except go to the movies and rent rowboats in the camp lake,” he recalled. “They put us on KP, but we refused to work. 

I guess we felt we did our part in the war. MPs came, and we were ready to fight 

them, so they did not touch us.”116

In July 1945 Yank magazine announced the orientation program, saying that 

American soldiers would learn about their new opponents through the eyes of an 

American Nisei named Joe: “How does it feel to be a member of the Jap armed 

forces? There’s a guy here named Joe who can tell you from personal experience. 

A native American of Japanese descent, Joe spent several years in college in Japan 

just before the war and belonged to the Jap ROTC. Talking to him here in Washington you get a good picture of how the Jap Army and Navy stack up.”117

MIS Nisei who were veterans of the war in the Pacific certainly had valuable 

insights to pass on, but most assigned to the MITUs were not Pacific veterans. 

The assignment raised uncomfortable issues. Many Nisei felt that playing Japanese soldiers was a humiliating reinforcement of racial stereotypes. After having 

fought hard to prove their loyalty, they asked themselves if the Army still thought 

of them as “Japanese” soldiers. “We were ordered to act the part of Japanese soldiers because we resembled them,” S.Sgt. Hiroshi Sakai recalled, “although some 

of us expressed dissatisfaction to play this type of role.”118 M.Sgt. George M. Koshi, 

assigned to PACMIRS but not to the MITUs, worried about the Nisei in these units. 

“Most of them seem to be as disillusioned as many of us were,” he wrote to a friend 

at Fort Snelling. “They were a little reluctant about talking [about] what is expected 

master Corps established a war-dog reception and training center on Cat Island, Mississippi, in 

April 1943 and shipped a small detachment of dogs and handlers to the Southwest Pacific around 

this time. Erna Risch and Chester L. Kieffer, The Quartermaster Corps: Organization, Supply, and 

Services, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1955), 2: 323–37. 115 Shibutani, Derelicts of Company K, pp. 172–79. 116 Jesse M. Hirata, in Japanese Eyes, pp. 54–68. Another Nisei remembers seeing Nisei practicing at Camp Ritchie with Japanese uniforms and rifles. He “always remembered that scene, 

wondering how the young men felt about acting out the role of the enemy.” Yoshiaki Fujitani, in 

Japanese Eyes, pp. 94–102. 117 “Serving the Emperor,” Yank (6 Jul 45): 16–17. 118 Hiroshi Sakai, in Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor, p. 103; S. Phil Ishio, in Unsung Heroes, 

pp. 27–28.
232 NISEI LINGUISTS

of them here, but I gathered that they are to be made into actors in the game of war. 

I presume that they will look pretty becoming in a different uniform.”119

When the Nisei in the 442d Regimental Combat Team learned how the MIS

Nisei were being used, they were very upset. Lyn Crost, a war correspondent covering the 442d RCT for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, took the team’s concerns to 

Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes, who had responsibility for the War Relocation Authority: “Many [Nisei] told me they would rather go back into combat—

anywhere—than have to dress up in Japanese uniforms and use Japanese weapons 

119 Ltr, George M. Koshi to Yutaka Munakata, 2 May 1945, in Harrington Papers.

Two Nisei with a Military Intelligence Training Unit demonstrate a Japanese 

machine gun at Fort Ord, July 1945.
MIS NISEI SERVING IN THE CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES 233

in this training program. . . .They believe the use of Nisei for such work—particularly when they are required to copy Japanese enemy troops to the exact detail of 

even dress—will only serve to increase racial antagonism.”120

The War Department G–2 defensively explained to Assistant Secretary of War 

McCloy that although Nisei would pretend to be Japanese soldiers, “one of the 

lessons” imparted by the training “is that Nisei in the American Army are Americans—as American as those of German, Italian, English or any other ancestry.” 

The G–2 assured McCloy that “those few Nisei who had no interest in this type of 

duty were relieved” and praised the Nisei for the “spirit” they were showing. The 

G–2 denied “that doubt and hatred would be engendered.” 121 A War Department 

spokesman pointed out to a Nisei newspaper correspondent “that the Japanese 

Americans [in the MITUs] were all volunteers because [the War Department] felt 

that it could not order these American citizens to play the distasteful role of the 

hated enemy.”122 The MITU training proceeded in July and August with Nisei 

playacting as Japanese soldiers before thousands of other American soldiers on 

bases across the country.

. . .

The MIS Nisei served in diverse noncombat roles, including those in the 

continental United States. Their role in the MITUs proved their versatility, even 

though they found it distasteful. Given the acute shortage of other Japanesespeaking Americans and the long time required for Japanese-language training, 

the MIS Nisei were invaluable in several fields, including prisoner of war operations, translation work, and strategic propaganda. They played a more indirect 

role in preparations for military government and for signals intelligence. Other 

civilian Issei and Nisei provided Japanese-language training. However, these 

stateside duties, although valuable, were not as important as serving overseas in 

the combat theaters to convince America of their loyalty. For many Nisei, being 

assigned to play Japanese soldiers was one more slap in the face and a reminder 

that even their wartime service had not changed their being perceived as more 

Japanese than American.

120 Crost, Honor by Fire, pp. 269–71. 121 Memo, Maj. Gen. Clayton Bissell to ASW, 24 Jul 45, sub: Use of Japanese-American Soldiers in Training, Trng Grp, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, NARA. 122 “Special Nisei Teams Prepare GIs for Pacific War Conditions,” Pacific Citizen, 4 Aug 45.

8

MIS Nisei in the 

Campaigns of 1944

As the year 1944 opened, the United States and its Allies were on the offensive 

in the Pacific. Two years after Pearl Harbor, America’s powerful land, sea, and 

air forces had seized the initiative and were driving toward the Japanese home 

islands. Allied intelligence capabilities matured rapidly to guide these campaigns. 

Japanese military dispositions and plans were becoming transparent to Allied 

commanders, who benefited from an ever-expanding torrent of intelligence. Every 

intelligence discipline—signals intelligence, aerial photography, coast watchers, 

guerrillas, captured documents, and prisoners of war—contributed to the overall 

picture. From the frontline rifle companies where the battle zone was measured 

in yards, up to MacArthur and Nimitz who reached across thousands of nautical 

miles, timely and accurate intelligence was the key to victory.

Nisei were integral to the intelligence effort. These onetime pioneers no longer had to prove themselves to skeptical or prejudiced Caucasian officers. During 

1944 their numbers more than doubled to a thousand, and their work influenced 

every campaign. “Each one was as valuable as an infantry company,” declared one 

intelligence officer in the China-Burma-India Theater.1 Some Nisei were already 

seasoned veterans in the South and Southwest Pacific Theaters. During 1944 some 

1 Col. Gaspare F. Blunda, in Boyd Sinclair, “Valuable as a Company of Men,” Ex-CBI Roundup

(November 1951): 7.
236 NISEI LINGUISTS

returned stateside as a result of wounds or illness; others were selected for officer 

candidate school (OCS). Several were killed in action.

Nevertheless, the Nisei still found themselves trapped within the distinctive 

race hatred that was the hallmark of the Pacific War. Their compassion toward 

captured Japanese prisoners, all too rare on the front lines, could be justified on 

pragmatic grounds. But it also stemmed from a deep appreciation of what they 

had in common with their prisoners. The Nisei could never forget that even though 

they were American soldiers they “looked like the enemy.”

By late 1943 the Combined Chiefs of Staff had approved a new plan for the 

defeat of Japan that called for three axes of attack: driving across the Central 

Pacific, pushing up from Southwest Asia toward the Philippines, and British Commonwealth forces in Southeast Asia recapturing Burma. America would meanwhile continue to support China and commence a long-range bombing campaign 

from bases in China and the Central Pacific.

South Pacific Area

The Solomon Islands Campaign moved north to Bougainville, where the 3d 

Marine Division landed at Empress Augusta Bay on 1 November 1943. The 37th 

Infantry Division followed a week later with their language team led by Capt. 

Gilbert B. Ayers and T3g. Dye Ogata. Ogata had been born in Washington State 

and grew up in Helena, Montana. He had taken over the team when its first leader 

was wounded on New Georgia. Japanese resistance on Bougainville at first was 

slight, but the American soldiers and marines were subjected to frequent attacks 

from the air. Shortly before sunrise on 16 November a Japanese bomb landed near 

Ogata, burying him in his own bunker. He clawed through the dirt to reach the 

surface. “Never worked faster in my life than I did for the next few moments,” he 

told a reporter a few months later. “It may have been three minutes or ten. I don’t 

know. All I knew was that the sky was up there somewhere and I was going to see 

it again before I gave up.” Later that day the division commander presented him 

with the Purple Heart.2

On 5 December 1943, Capt. William Fisher brought another team of six Nisei 

to Bougainville with the XIV Corps headquarters. They interrogated prisoners, 

translated captured documents, and lectured troops on the importance of turning 

in prisoners and documents to G–2. Nisei such as T3g. Shigeru Yamashita flew 

2 “2d STR OC Buried Alive by Jap’s Bomb,” Platoon Leader [1944]; Joseph D. Harrington, 

Yankee Samurai: The Secret Role of Nisei in America’s Pacific Victory (Detroit: Pettigrew Enterprises, 1979), pp. 167, 332; Interv, author with Dye Ogata, 30 Oct 87; Dye Ogata, Biography, Military Intelligence Service Club of Northern California (this and similar biographies hereafter cited 

as MISNorCal Bios). The Associated Press identified Ogata as “an Army specialist whose name 

and work are unmentionable because his job is an Army secret.” Los Angeles Times, 20 Nov 43. In 

December 1943 the 37th Division language team was replaced by Susumu Toyoda’s team. Interv, 

author with Susumu Toyoda, 12 Sep 96; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 173, 187–89. Ogata later 

attended officer candidate school at Fort Benning and was commissioned in December 1944.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1944 237

over Japanese positions in a light aircraft to broadcast surrender appeals over a 

loudspeaker.3 On 25 December the Americal Division language team arrived with 

several Nisei from the first class at Crissy Field who had been serving in the South 

Pacific since 1942. On 15 February the 3d New Zealand Division, accompanied by 

several more Nisei, seized the Green Islands near Bougainville.4

 (See Map 8.)

3 Jim Masaru Ariyasu, in David W. Swift, ed., “First Class,” p. 13, Unpubl Ms, Mar 00, copy 

in author’s files; Stanley Sandler, Cease Resistance, It’s Good for You: A History of U.S. Army 

Combat Psychological Operations (Fort Bragg, N.C.: U.S. Army Special Operations Command, 

1996), pp. 178–79. 4 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 183.

Ogata shows his teammates how he escaped after being buried, Bouganville, 

November 1943.
238 NISEI LINGUISTS

Nisei in the rear areas also faced hazards. One day Herb Maruyama, part of 

the XIV Corps language team, walked to a nearby river to wash his uniform and 

bathe, then walked back wearing only his skivvies and carrying his wet uniform 

over his arm. Before he could reach the safety of his tent he felt a bayonet at his 

back. Some American soldiers, mistaking him for a Japanese infiltrator, captured 

him and marched him straight to the prisoner of war stockade. When Captain 

Fisher, his commander, appeared at the stockade, he shouted: “Maruyama, what 

the hell are you doing?” and set him free at once.5

Also working at XIV Corps headquarters was Masami Tahira. Translating 

captured documents he found “enervating, and at times just stultifying—to put it 

plainly, tiresome, especially in the hot, tropical jungle. The humid surroundings 

were conducive to atrophy and debility.” One diary entry he translated described 

the execution of a captured American pilot by beheading with a samurai sword. 

From that point onward, he “always carried an extra .45 caliber automatic pistol 

bullet in my pocket,” Tahira recalled. “I saw to it that it didn’t get wet, that it was 

oiled, cleaned, and shiny at all times. I knew it would do its grisly duty when I

wanted it to.” 6

In late February 1944 the 37th Infantry Division language team interrogated a 

prisoner who warned them that the Japanese had planned an attack for Army Day, 

10 March.7 A few days later the Americal Division team translated a written order 

that identified 8 March as the attack date.8 By one account, “the official reports 

of the Americal Division disclose that it was the work of the language detachment that largely was responsible for the divisional commander knowing well in 

advance where and approximately at what time and in what strength the Japanese 

would attack the division along the Torokina River near Bougainville.” 9

On 8 March T3g. Roy T. Uyehata was conducting a routine interrogation in 

the XIV Corps stockade when the Japanese prisoner unexpectedly asked him, 

“How can I get off this island?” Uyehata replied that it might take a few days. “I

guess you know that you are going to be attacked at dawn of March 23,” the prisoner said. Uyehata remembered this was Shunki Koreisai, a special holiday for the 

worship of the imperial ancestors.10 He feigned indifference and told the prisoner 

that his commander already knew about it. But he quickly ended the session and 

5

 Interv, author with Toyoda, 12 Sep 96; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 190. 6 Masami Tahira, in Sempai Gumi, ed. Richard S. Oguro (Honolulu: MIS Veterans of Hawaii, 

ca. 1981), pp. xx–xxvii; The Pacific War and Peace: Americans of Japanese Ancestry in Military 

Intelligence Service, 1941 to 1952 (San Francisco: Military Intelligence Service Association of 

Northern California/National Japanese American Historical Society, 1991), pp. 139–45. 7

 Interv, author with Toyoda, 12 Sep 96; Susumu Toyoda, personal communication to author, 4 

Oct 96; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 188. 8 Mac Nobuo Nagata, in Swift, “First Class,” p. 10. 9 War Department (WD) Press Release, 22 Oct 45, Japanese Evacuation Research Study (JERS), 

pt. 2, sec. 2, reel 20, frame 0037, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. 10 Army intelligence officers already knew that “frequently Japanese military leaders choose 

festival or holiday dates to launch important attacks.” See “Festivals and Holidays,” Intelligence 

Bulletin 1, no. 3 (November 1942): 53–54.
�

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CENTRAL PACIFIC AREA

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ATIS Base

X X X X

SIXTH

Jun 44

ATIS Advance

X X X X

SIXTH

Feb 44

Darwin

Wewak

Finschhafen

Arawe

Buna

Aitape Hollandia

Port Moresby

Rabaul

Brisbane

Noumea

Palau

Islands Mindanao

C A R O L I N E I S L A N D S

Makin

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 Kusaie

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AI

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N E W G U I N E A S O L O M O N 

I S L A N D S

Bougainville

Admiralty Islands

B I S M A R C K 

A R C H I P E L A G O

Guadalcanal

November 1943–December 1944

OPERATIONS

SOUTH AND SOUTHWEST PACIFIC AREAS

Battle Site �

 Statute Miles

20° 10° Equator

600 400 200 0 800

MAP 8
240 NISEI LINGUISTS

rushed the news to Captain Fisher, who sent a more senior interrogator, T.Sgt. 

Hiroshi Matsuda, to confirm the tip from a different prisoner. They then took the 

information directly to the corps commander, Maj. Gen. Oscar W. Griswold, who 

put all troops on alert and cancelled the open-air movies scheduled that evening. 

That night Japanese artillery opened up on the American positions and the newly 

completed airfields. A ground attack followed the next day. For the next two weeks 

Japanese soldiers repeatedly threw themselves against the American defenses at 

a cost to themselves of 5,500 dead and 3,000 wounded. The American lines held, 

with only light casualties.11

American commanders eagerly exploited all possible sources of intelligence. 

Nisei provided important information, as did photographic and signals intelligence. 

For example, Central Bureau in Australia intercepted a message from the Japanese 

17th Army to Tokyo announcing plans for an attack on 22 March, which was 

passed to the American commander on Bougainville the day prior.12 The attack 

did not occur on schedule, but on 23 March soldiers of the 37th Infantry Division 

found “a blood-smeared tactical map of the enemy 23rd Regiment showing what 

their intentions were for that night.”13 These confirmed the warning Uyehata had 

provided two weeks earlier, and the division commander ordered a full alert. Sgt. 

Susumu Toyoda, the Nisei team chief, described what happened next:

Here was the prime opportunity to utilize the knowledge we acquired from the many 

months of study at MISLS. The language team worked feverishly to decode the vital message contained on the map. The initial interrogation was only the beginning of a multitude 

of “hot info” we were able to get.

On the map, we found the disposition of the troops and its future plans. It stated on 

the map that the regiment would commence attacking at 2000. Preliminary information 

was sent to all commanders concerned and overlays were made to follow. The switch 

board in the Signal Corps section was busier than the one operating at the New York 

Stock Exchange. The corps commanding general was informed of the hot news and he 

immediately ordered all corps, division and independent artilleries to point their guns at 

the location of the enemy. At 1945 the barrage started with all guns firing simultaneously. 

The barrage was one of the heaviest laid on any impact area in the South Pacific.14

The Japanese assault came that night, but the Americans were ready and 

restored their lines within hours. The next morning patrols swept through a 

shell-pocked moonscape. A Nisei interrogator learned what had happened from a 

wounded Japanese soldier found in a shell hole: “They were just about to leave the 

area for the jumping-off line. Tears came out of his eyes as he related the fear and 

awe, and also how bitter it was that he was unable to fire even one shot against the 

11 Stanley A. Frankel, The 37th Infantry Division in World War II (Washington, D.C.: Infantry 

Journal Press, 1948), pp. 125–69. 12 Ronald H. Spector, Eagle against the Sun (New York: Free Press, 1985), p. 456. 13 Susumu Toyoda, personal communication to author, 4 Oct 96. 14 MISLS Album (Minneapolis: Military Intelligence Service Language School, 1946), p. 103.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1944 241

Americans.” In despair he told the Nisei, “I came all the way from Kagoshima to 

fight the Americans, but you literally caught us with our pants down.”15

The Japanese defeat was complete, and the Nisei had played an important 

part. Uyehata and Matsuda were awarded the Bronze Star. After the battle Captain Fisher wrote his parents to ask them to visit Uyehata’s parents in the Poston 

camp. Fisher’s parents informed Uyehata’s parents that their son “had performed 

a very patriotic deed,” though they “were not permitted to state the nature” of his 

accomplishments. Uyehata was convinced that he had saved a thousand American lives.16 After the battle, Col. Kai E. Rasmussen visited Bougainville, where 

he met with the XIV Corps team and personally congratulated Uyehata on his 

achievement.17

Nisei sometimes made indirect contributions to signals intelligence. For example, among the prisoners captured on Bougainville was a Japanese Army radio 

operator. The Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) sent a captain to interrogate him, 

and Uyehata served as interpreter. The prisoner was familiar with the Japanese 

four-digit code, which American cryptographers had just begun to break. Even if 

the Americans could decipher the code, they had only limited success in matching 

the code groups to the specific words or units to which they corresponded. This 

prisoner had memorized the code groups for specific units. With Uyehata’s assistance, the SIS captain gained valuable insights into the Japanese code system.18

After the battle of Bougainville, thousands of Japanese soldiers remained at 

large in the Solomon Islands. When the 25th Regimental Combat Team (RCT), 

composed of African American soldiers, was attached to the Americal Division 

for mopping-up operations, Nisei sometimes joined it on patrol. Leaflet drops continued for many months. Two Nisei received the Soldier’s Medal for saving the 

life of a war correspondent who was being dragged out to sea by a riptide.19 A few 

months later soldiers from Australia and New Zealand took over and continued 

the tedious and dangerous work of patrolling and tracking down cut-off units. In 

October 1944 the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS) assigned two 

15 Ibid.; Interv, author with Toyoda, 12 Sep 96; John Miller, jr., Cartwheel: The Reduction of 

Rabaul, U.S. Army in World War II (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, 

1959), pp. 375–77. 16 Interv, author with Roy T. Uyehata, 16 Nov 87; Stanley L. Falk and Warren M. Tsuneishi, 

eds., MIS in the War against Japan (Washington, D.C.: Japanese American Veterans Association, 

1995), pp. 46–48; Roy T. Uyehata, in World War II Reminiscences, ed. John H. Roush, Jr. (San 

Rafael: California Department, Reserve Officers Association, 1995), pp. 257–60; Roy T. Uyehata, 

MISNorCal Bio; World War II Times (January, May 1988; January 1989). 17 Pacific War and Peace, p. 33; Uyehata, in World War II Reminiscences, pp. 259–60; Uyehata, 

MISNorCal Bio.

18 Roy T. Uyehata, “How We Broke the Japanese Four Digit Code,” World War II Times (May 

1988): 35. The four-digit army code was deciphered when a codebook was discovered in January 

1944, but Allied cryptographers still did not know what each code group denoted. See Edward J. 

Drea and Joseph E. Richard, “New Evidence on Breaking the Japanese Army Codes,” in Allied 

and Axis Signals Intelligence in World War II, ed. David Alvarez (London: Frank Cass, 1999), 

pp. 62–83; David Kahn, The Codebreakers (New York: Signet, 1973), p. 587. 19 Pacific Citizen, 29 Jun, 28 Oct 44.
242 NISEI LINGUISTS

Nisei to the Australian 1st Division on Bougainville, where they spent the next 

seven months working with the Australians in mopping up.20

The battle of Bougainville marked the end of the South Pacific as a separate theater. American air, ground, and naval forces were reassigned to the Southwest Pacific or Central Pacific Theater. Most Nisei went to the Southwest Pacific. 

Tateshi Miyasaki, who had served since June 1942 on Guadalcanal, New Georgia, 

and Vella Lavella, went back to Idaho on furlough in May 1944. As his first order 

of business he got married, then he visited his mother who had been hospitalized 

for major surgery. The Army then sent him to Camp Shelby for basic training 

with the 442d RCT. He was soon transferred to Fort Snelling, where he became a 

language instructor.21 Other Nisei from the South Pacific were selected for officer 

candidate school. Joe J. Yoshiwara and T. Hayashida were promoted to warrant 

officer. Masami Tahira volunteered for officer candidate school, in “any branch,” 

he recalled, “so long as I could get out of this hot and uncomfortable pest hole.” He 

was sent to the OCS in Brisbane in September 1944.22

Southwest Pacific Area

During 1943 General Douglas MacArthur’s forces in the Southwest Pacific 

turned back Japanese advances, but the Japanese were still formidable foes. Papua 

New Guinea stretched out more than a thousand miles with its thickly forested, rugged mountains and its malarial lowlands. In 1944 MacArthur skillfully exploited 

intelligence to wage a war of operational maneuver to wrest the initiative from the 

Japanese commanders and take daring leaps along New Guinea’s coast. The campaigns of 1944 sealed MacArthur’s reputation as a master of the operational art.

By 1944 MacArthur’s intelligence capabilities, including signals intelligence, 

aerial photography, translations, interrogation reports, and coast watchers and 

guerrillas operating in Japanese-controlled territory, had matured significantly. 

The largest single organization was ATIS in Brisbane. At the start of 1944 ATIS

was staffed by about 150 Nisei, together with scores of other American Army 

and Navy personnel, with some Australian and British personnel. The number of 

Nisei doubled in the first half of the year. During 1944 ATIS received and examined 4,000 prisoners of war and translated 6,000 documents. Its files bulged with 

20 Allison B. Gilmore, You Can’t Fight Tanks with Bayonets: Psychological Warfare against 

the Japanese Army in the Southwest Pacific (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), p. 70; 

Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 189–90; Interv, author with Toyoda, 12 Sep 96; Interv, author 

with Robert R. Kimura, 9 Sep 96; Kimura, unidentified clipping, MIS Club of Southern California newsletter; Robert R. Kimura, in The Saga of the MIS, videotaped presentation, Los Angeles, 

11 Mar 89; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 231; Kimura, Joseph D. Harrington Papers, National 

Japanese Historical Society (NJAHS), San Francisco, Calif. Kimura and Matsumoto received Australian commendations. General Headquarters, Far East Command, Operations of the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section, GHQ, SWPA, Intelligence Series (Tokyo, Far East Command, 1948) 

(hereafter cited as ATIS History) app. 12, Decorations, Awards, and Commendations. 21 Tateshi Miyasaki, in Swift, “First Class,” p. 5. 22 Masami Tahira, in Oguro, Sempai Gumi, p. 145.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1944 243

a staggering amount of data on every conceivable topic covering Japan’s armed 

forces, its soldiers, equipment, and tactics, patiently cross-indexed and updated 

by a devoted army of clerical workers and intelligence analysts. From its printing 

presses poured a steady stream of bulletins and technical reports, totaling more 

than a million pages per month by the autumn of 1944.

For each combat operation ATIS sent teams of enlisted Nisei led by Caucasian 

officers who worked at every level, regiment and division, corps and army, sharing 

the hardships of the frontline soldiers. Some fell ill with malaria, dysentery, and 

other hazards of the tropics; some were wounded or killed in action. In addition, 

the Nisei constantly risked being mistaken for the enemy and were again regularly 

assigned bodyguards. “I was bodyguard to an American of Japanese descent who 

was risking his life to act as an interpreter for us,” wrote a Caucasian soldier to 

Time in February 1944. “He was a target for both Jap and American bullets. . . .

I wish to God that some of the people at home who say: ‘Democracy is for the 

white race only’ could be made to go out and fight for it.” 23 Commanders had 

to ensure their troops were familiar with the Nisei. For example, when the 40th 

Infantry Division was preparing for the New Britain landing, Moffett M. Ishikawa from San Jose, California, would meet with different units and tell them, 

“Take a good look at me!” 24 Ironically, the first MIS Nisei to lose his life was not 

killed by enemy action or friendly fire. S.Sgt. Ken Omura, a Seattle Kibei who 

23 Ltr to the Editor, Time (14 February 1944), reprinted in War Relocation Authority (WRA), 

What We’re Fighting For (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, 1944), p. 7. 24 Moffett M. Ishikawa, “Humor in Uniform,” Reader’s Digest (June 1958): 155.

Allied Translator and Interpreter Section, Brisbane. The soldiers were 

photographed from the rear to prevent their identification in case of capture.
244 NISEI LINGUISTS

had served with ATIS since September 1942, drowned on 19 March 1944 in the 

Admiralties.25

Col. Sidney F. Mashbir was the animating spirit behind ATIS, assisted by a 

handful of skilled Caucasian linguists such as Maj. John V. Shelton, Australian 

Imperial Force (AIF), chief of the Translation Section, and Maj. John E. Anderton 

as executive officer. Senior Nisei included three warrant officers, Sunao Phil Ishio, 

Gary Tsuneo Kadani, and Steve Shizuma Yamamoto. M.Sgt. George Kanegai was 

first sergeant. Continued growth for ATIS brought more problems. Mashbir and 

his staff became concerned about the declining language skills of recent graduates 

from Camp Savage. Tests administered to each arriving group showed “a steady 

diminution in the quality of the source material, inasmuch as an ever decreasing percentage of effective linguists is reaching this theater. This would seem to 

indicate that US potential resources are almost exhausted and that rigid control 

and economy in the distribution of linguists is imperative.” 26 “When the linguists 

arrived from the Military Intelligence Language School,” Mashbir wrote in his 

memoirs, “I was distressed to find that only a few were actually expert, and that 

as many as twenty-five percent were utterly unusable.” 27 As a remedy he set up a 

training section for the incoming Nisei.

Japanese prisoners of war arrived in Australia in increasing numbers during 1944 as the tide of battle turned. They were interrogated by the Examination Section under Lt. Comdr. Samuel C. Bartlett, Jr., U.S. Naval Reserve, a Massachusetts district attorney who received the Legion of Merit on 14 July 1944 

for his work.28 But the Nisei brought more than cross-examination skills; they 

employed their knowledge of Japanese psychology and culture. Often, prisoners 

were interviewed multiple times; in this manner many were gradually won over 

to full cooperation.

Central Bureau was another intelligence organization that MacArthur relied 

upon heavily to guide his strategy. In 1942–1943 Central Bureau, working in 

cooperation with the Signal Intelligence Service at Arlington Hall, had struggled 

to extract intelligence from Japanese radio transmissions. In January 1944 Australian soldiers in New Guinea discovered a set of codebooks that retreating Japanese 

soldiers had buried. These codebooks were rushed to Brisbane and became crucial 

to breaking into Japanese Army code systems. From this point on, the trickle of 

signals intelligence became a flood.29 Translation in Central Bureau was handled 

25 “Relatives Informed of Death of Sgt. Omura in New Guinea,” Pacific Citizen, 1 Apr 44, p. 

1; Seattle Post Intelligencer (5 April 1944), reprinted in WRA, Nisei in the War against Japan

(Washington, D.C.: Department of the Interior, April 1945), p. 15; “Ken Omura, Ex-Seattleite, 

Drowned in New Guinea,” Seattle Times, 13 Apr 44, p. 17. His cousin, Bill Hosokawa, published a 

remembrance in the Pacific Citizen, 6 Jan 45. 26 ATIS, “Analysis of Linguistic Requirements,” Unpubl Ms, 27 Jun 44, copy in author’s files. 27 Sidney F. Mashbir, I Was an American Spy (New York: Vantage, 1953), pp. 224–25. 28 Ibid., pp. 226–30, 264–66. 29 Edward J. Drea, MacArthur’s Ultra: Codebreaking and the War against Japan, 1942–1945

(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992), pp. 91–93; The Quiet Heroes of the Southwest 
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1944 245

almost entirely by Caucasian linguists under Hugh Erskine, the son of missionary parents in Japan. Central Bureau occasionally borrowed Nisei from ATIS for 

“special translations,” but only one, Hawaii-born Clarence S. Yamagata, worked 

in Central Bureau full-time.30 Yamagata had graduated from the University of 

California at Los Angeles in 1927 and then completed law school. Unable to find 

work, he migrated to the Philippines and established a law practice in Manila, 

where his clients included the Japanese embassy. When war broke out he worked 

for the Philippine Department G–2 on Corregidor. Evacuated to Australia in April 

1942, he joined Central Bureau as a cryptographic technician and translator. In 

July 1944 he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Signal Corps.31

Other valuable intelligence came from the Philippine guerrillas. Under the 

direction of the Allied Information Bureau and later the Philippine Regional Section, thousands of Filipinos gathered information about the Japanese occupation 

forces and passed it to Australia through clandestine radio links and small liaison 

teams inserted by submarine. One important piece of intelligence arrived in Brisbane in the spring of 1944. On 31 March 1944, Adm. Mineichi Koga, commander of 

the Japanese Combined Fleet Command, flew with his chief of staff, Adm. Shigeru 

Fukudome, to Mindanao in the southern Philippines, where they encountered a 

storm and crashed at sea. Koga’s aircraft disappeared in the dark, but Fukudome’s 

splashed into the sea just off Cebu. Filipino fishermen plucked the admiral out of 

the water and delivered him and his briefcase to the local guerrillas.32 The local 

Japanese commander soon learned that the guerrillas were holding a high-ranking prisoner. He pursued them and threatened retaliation if the captive was not 

returned. The guerrilla commander, Lt. Col. John Cushing, an American mining engineer and reserve officer, radioed MacArthur’s headquarters, which sent 

a submarine to retrieve the documents. When the documents arrived in Australia 

in early May, the Americans photographed them and rushed them back to Cebu, 

where they were returned to the Japanese with Fukudome. The Japanese high command mistakenly concluded that the documents had not been compromised.

When Major Anderton at ATIS saw the documents, one in particular caught 

his eye. It had a red cover with a dark “Z” across the front. Dated 8 March 1944, 

the “Z-Plan” spelled out a new concept of operation for the Japanese Combined 

Fleet. It detailed all naval forces available and how they would be used in the next 

great showdown with the powerful American Navy. Colonel Mashbir assigned 

Pacific Theater: An Oral History of the Men and Women of CBB and FRUMEL (Fort Meade, Md.: 

National Security Agency, 1996); Drea and Richard, “New Evidence.” 30 ATIS History, p. 65. 31 Clarence S. Yamagata, Biographical Summary, Unpubl Ms, 10 Feb 78, in Box 11, Harrington 

Papers; Quiet Heroes, pp. 50–51; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 50–51; Richard Sakakida and 

Wayne S. Kiyosaki, A Spy in Their Midst: The World War II Struggle of a Japanese American Hero

(Lanham, Md.: Madison Books, 1995), pp. 61–64, 90–93. Central Bureau awarded Yamagata the 

Legion of Merit on 4 July 1945. No MIS Nisei received this award during the war. 32 John Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936–1945 (New 

York: Random House, 1970), pp. 478–81; Steven T. Smith, The Rescue (New York: John Wiley and 

Sons, 2001).
246 NISEI LINGUISTS

his top three Caucasian officers: Major Anderton, 1st Lt. Faubion Bowers, and Lt. 

Richard Bagnall, U.S. Navy. These officers prepared a rough translation and then 

brought in two Nisei, S.Sgt. Kiyoshi Yamashiro and T3g. Yoshikazu Yamada, 

to check their work. Mashbir personally turned the crank on the mimeograph 

machine to print twenty copies of the 22-page translation and sent a copy by air to 

Admiral Nimitz’s headquarters in Hawaii. The very next day Mashbir appointed 

Yamashiro and Yamada as warrant officers.33

When a copy of the ATIS translation arrived in Hawaii, the fleet intelligence 

officer, Capt. Edwin T. Layton, U.S. Navy, fleet intelligence officer, faulted the 

ATIS translation, which he said “had been translated by someone unfamiliar with 

Japanese naval terminology” and retranslated the document himself. A few days 

later Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Areas (JICPOA), printed the revised 

translation and distributed it to the fleet.34 On 15 June Admiral Nimitz struck at 

the heart of Japan’s defensive perimeter by attacking Saipan in the Marianas. As 

predicted in the captured Japanese plan, the Combined Fleet sallied into the open 

for the Battle of the Philippine Sea on 19–20 June. American naval commanders, 

in possession of the Japanese plans, inflicted a major defeat on Japanese naval 

power. The defeat was a blow from which Japan never recovered.35

Other captured documents proved useful. Major Anderton liked to tell the 

story, perhaps apocryphal, of an unusual document discovered on Guadalcanal 

which, when translated, turned out to be the schedule for a field brothel at Japanese 

headquarters at Rabaul. He claimed it even identified the separate hours and prices 

for officers and enlisted men. Fifth Air Force scheduled a strike for the time when 

the greatest number of senior officers would be visiting. After that, Anderton liked 

to say, “Japanese leadership at Rabaul was never the same.” 36

33 ATIS Limited Distribution Translation no. 4, “Z” Operation Orders, 23 May 1944. (For a 

convenient listing of selected publications, see ATIS History, app. 9.) See also Harrington, Yankee 

Samurai, pp. 190–91, 195–97; Memo, Yoshikazu Yamada to Harrington, 18 Mar 78, Harrington 

Papers; Ted T. Tsukiyama, “Deciphering the ‘Z-Plan,’” in Secret Valor: M.I.S. Personnel, World 

War II Pacific Theater, Pre–Pearl Harbor to Sept. 8, 1951, ed. Ted T. Tsukiyama et al. (Honolulu: 

Military Intelligence Service Veterans Club of Hawaii, 1993), pp. 55–57. 34 W. J. Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets: U.S. Naval Intelligence Operations in the Pacific during World War II (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1979), pp. 178–80; Edwin T. Layton, “And 

I Was There!”: Pearl Harbor and Midway—Breaking the Secrets (New York: William Morrow, 

1985), pp. 485–86; “Reminiscences of Rear Admiral Arthur H. McCollum,” in The Pacific War 

Remembered, ed. John T. Mason (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1986), pp.153–54; E. B. 

Potter, Nimitz (Annapolis, Md.: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 1976), pp. 295–96. 35 According to the official ATIS History, the Z-Plan “proved to be of exceptional value and 

probably considerably shortened the war” (p. 47). See also WD Press Release, 22 Oct 45; Pacific 

War and Peace, p. 43; Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor, pp. 55–57, 84–85; Michael Tsai, “The ‘Z 

Plan,’” Hawaii Herald, 2 Jul 93; Lyn Crost, Honor by Fire: Japanese Americans at War in Europe 

and the Pacific (Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1994), pp. 161–62. 36 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 228. Col. Elliott R. Thorpe, the Southwest Pacific Area 

(SWPA) chief of counterintelligence, relates a slightly different version. Elliott R. Thorpe, East 

Wind, Rain: An Intimate Account of an Intelligence Officer in the Pacific, 1939–49 (Boston: Gambit, 1969), p. 147.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1944 247

Brig. Gen. Charles A. Willoughby and Colonel Mashbir took a special interest 

in gathering information about Japanese war crimes. In April 1943 General Headquarters (GHQ) turned over to the theater counterintelligence officer “a large file 

of previously accumulated atrocity information.” In April 1944 ATIS interrogated 

a captured Japanese Army civilian employee who had served in the Philippines in 

1942–1943 and recorded in his diary details of atrocities and conditions the Allies 

had faced in Japanese prisoner of war camps. In July 1944 Willoughby established 

a War Crimes Investigation Board. Much of the evidence of Japanese war crimes 

came through the efforts of the ATIS Nisei.37

By 1944 the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) employed three Hawaii Nisei: 

the Bataan veteran M.Sgt. Arthur S. Komori, together with William T. Hiraoka 

and Sergeant Yamashiro. In March 1944 Komori was detailed to the Australian 

Department of Information, where he spent the next year monitoring Radio Tokyo 

and doing other translation work.38

The Allied air campaign in the Southwest Pacific drew upon expanding intelligence capabilities during 1944. The Fifth Air Force commander, Maj. Gen. George 

C. Kenney, was an avid consumer of ATIS reports, as well as “crash intelligence” 

from downed Japanese aircraft. Each crash site was investigated by special teams 

known as Air Technical Intelligence Units (ATIUs), later renamed Technical Air 

Intelligence Units (TAIUs). Nisei on the teams would translate data plates and 

documents found in the wreckage. The South Pacific Command formed a joint 

unit, Army-Navy Crash Intelligence, South Pacific Area, for the same purpose.39

Air commanders also realized the value of intercepting Japanese voice radio 

transmissions, and the Nisei played an important role in this. In 1943 the Army Air 

Forces developed a new unit, the “radio squadron, mobile,” to conduct radio direction-finding and voice intercept operations.40 In August 1943 the 1st Radio Squadron Mobile replaced the 138th Signal Radio Company on New Guinea in support 

of the Fifth Air Force. Not content to borrow Nisei from ATIS, in January 1944 

the Air Staff requested a large number of linguists to be assigned to these units. 

37 ATIS History, pp. 47, 64; ATIS Research Rpt no. 72, “Japanese Violations of the Laws of 

War,” 29 Apr 44; Mashbir, I Was an American Spy, pp. 234–37, 270; A Brief History of the G–2 Section, GHQ, SWPA and Affiliated Units, Intelligence Series (Tokyo: Far East Command, 1948), vol. 

8, p. 38. Charles A. Willoughby and John Chamberlain quote from the captured diary in MacArthur, 1941–1951 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1954), pp. 157–60. 38 Interv, Ann Bray with Arthur Komori, 1955; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 145, 245; 

Thorpe, East Wind, Rain, pp. 87–147; Duval A. Edwards, Spy Catchers of the U.S. Army in the 

War with Japan (Gig Harbor, Wash.: Red Apple Publishing, 1994), pp. 287–94; George Kiyoshi 

[Yamashiro] Sankey, “Areya, Koreye [This and That],” Unpubl Ms, excerpted in Hawaii Pacific 

Press (1 Dec 94): 56; George Sankey, MISNorCal Bio. 39 George C. Kenney, General Kenney Reports: A Personal History of the Pacific War (New 

York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1949). Kenney relied extensively on signals intelligence, which he 

could not mention in his memoirs. Michael J. Freeman, “Behind Enemy Lines!” Airpower (July 

1994), describes the air technical intelligence unit assigned to the Southwest Pacific Area. 40 John F. Kreis, ed., Piercing the Fog: Intelligence and Army Air Forces Operations in World 

War II (Washington, D.C.: Air Force History and Museums Program, 1996), pp. 361–63.
248 NISEI LINGUISTS

In response Camp Savage sent more than 200 Nisei for voice intercept training at 

MacDill Field, Florida. After four months the Nisei proceeded for advanced training to the Western Signal Aviation Unit Training Center at Camp Pinedale near 

Fresno, California, in the summer of 1944. They were among the first individuals 

of Japanese ancestry allowed to return to California since 1942. The exclusion 

orders were not lifted until December 1944.41

Twenty-five Nisei joined the 1st Radio Squadron Mobile at Hollandia on New 

Guinea in November 1944 and went into action in the Philippines in early 1945. 

Other Nisei joined the 7th Radio Squadron Mobile in the Markham Valley on New 

Guinea, which later moved to Morotai, an island in the Netherlands East Indies 

that could support airfields for the invasion of the Philippines. Other teams were 

assigned to the 6th Radio Squadron Mobile with the Tenth Air Force in ChinaBurma-India and the 8th Radio Squadron Mobile with the Twentieth Air Force 

on Guam. These Nisei provided valuable intelligence by listening in on Japanese 

pilots and air controllers as they conducted operations against Allied forces.42

The 1944 ground campaign in the Southwest Pacific was a series of daring 

landings on the New Guinea coast and the Bismarck Archipelago. In January 1944 

ATIS sent a forward detachment to Sixth Army headquarters then at Finschhafen, 

led by WO Steve S. Yamamoto. Over several months Yamamoto single-handedly 

interrogated 3,100 prisoners of war and was awarded the Silver Star.43 Each division was usually given six or seven Nisei for an operation. Other Nisei were sent 

on special missions. For example, in November 1943, when Sixth Army organized the Alamo Scouts, a special reconnaissance unit, they requested Nisei from 

ATIS.

44 Three volunteered; Richard Y. Hirata completed the rigorous training and 

went on to participate in several reconnaissance patrols in early 1944.45

Many Nisei actively sought combat duty, often for personal reasons. Colonel Mashbir told of “one of the less competent Nisei linguists” who repeatedly 

requested assignment to the front lines. Finally, the young Nisei showed Mashbir 

a letter from his Issei father, who was near death in an internment camp. Although 

the father was “a loyal subject of the Emperor,” he acknowledged that his son was 

an American citizen and owed a great debt to the country of his birth. “This is my 

41 Kreis, Piercing the Fog, pp. 130–31; “Army Announces U.S. Soldiers of Japanese Ancestry 

Assigned to Central California Camp,” Pacific Citizen, 26 Aug 44. One Nisei described his treatment by local civilians and his travels to Los Angeles. “Soldier Tells of Coast Experiences,” Pacific 

Citizen, 7 Oct 44. About fifty Nisei joined the 8th RSM at Camp Pinedale in September 1944. 8th 

RSM: The Story behind the Flying Eight-Ball (privately printed, 1946). 42 Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor, pp. 72–73, 77–81, 91; Ltrs, Ken Sekiguchi to Munakata, Harrington Papers, excerpted in Yaban Gogai, Aug 45; Ltr, Dempster P. Dirks to Roger Pineau, 11 

August 1982, Correspondence, Box 13, Harrington Papers; Interv, Dawn E. Duensing with Yoichi 

Kawano and with James Sasami Okada, in Americanism: A Matter of Mind and Heart, vol. 1, The 

Military Intelligence Service (Maui, Hawaii: Maui’s Sons and Daughters of the Nisei Veterans, 

2001). 43 Steve S. Yamamoto, in Swift, “First Class”; Sixth Army, General Orders No. 197, 18 Nov 44. 44 “Alamo Scouts,” Intelligence Bulletin (June 1946): 29–37. 45 Interv, author with Richard Y. Hirata, 10 Sep 96.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1944 249

dying command to you,” the old man had written. “As your father, I demand that 

to your death you be loyal to the United States; that you fight for the United States; 

and, if necessary, that you die for the United States.” At once Mashbir grasped the 

Nisei’s reason for requesting reassignment and gave his consent. “Within a very 

few days,” Mashbir wrote, the Nisei had “earned himself a combat decoration.”46

Other ATIS Nisei had ample opportunity to serve in combat. In December 

1943 MacArthur seized the western end of New Britain by landing the 1st Marine 

Division at Cape Gloucester and the 112th Cavalry RCT at Arawe. Seven Nisei 

served with the marine division under T.Sgt. Jerry Yoshito Shibata.47 The Japanese fought hard; but equally difficult were heavy rain and winds, deep swamps, 

46 Mashbir, I Was an American Spy, pp. 249–50. 47 Interv, U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command with Harry K. Fukuhara; ATIS History, app. 12; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 175. The 1st Marine Division G–2 staff included Maj. 

Sherwood Moran, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, a prewar missionary in Japan. Bernard C. Nalty, 

Teiho Chena, Ted T. Tsukiyama, Thomas S. Goto, and Mark M. Akisada (left to 

right) with the 6th Radio Squadron Mobile in northeast India, late 1944
250 NISEI LINGUISTS

and thick vegetation during four months in what the marines called the green 

inferno. One day on New Britain, one marine remarked to another: “I’ve been in a 

foxhole six months and I haven’t seen a Jap. I don’t know what one looks like.” The 

second marine, who happened to be serving as bodyguard for a Nisei interpreter, 

replied, “I’ll show you one for $5.” The first marine handed over the money, and 

the bodyguard introduced him to the Nisei.48

The 112th Cavalry RCT came ashore at Arawe in the face of stiff Japanese 

resistance and heavy air attacks. T.Sgt. Yukitaka Terry Mizutari led the language 

team. Born in Hilo, Hawaii, and educated in Hawaii and Japan, Mizutari was 

popular with the other Nisei. He could play the ukulele and was a kendo master 

and excellent artist. He led his team with skill and courage. “Come on you fools,” a 

teammate recalled hearing him mutter during a Japanese night attack on the command post. “You started this, and I am going to finish it.”49

Meanwhile, on New Guinea, the 126th RCT was sent ashore 175 miles along 

the coast at Saidor on 2 January 1944 with another Nisei language team.50

In January 1944 the Fifth Air Force noticed that the Japanese seemed to have 

abandoned Los Negros, an island several hundred miles west of Rabaul. Signals intelligence predicted over 4,000 Japanese on the island, but American airmen could find no trace of them. MacArthur decided to send elements of the 1st 

Cavalry Division for a reconnaissance in force. On 29 February the 1st Cavalry 

Brigade landed and soon discovered there indeed were thousands of Japanese on 

the island.51

ATIS sent Capt. Paul W. Aurell and S.Sgt. Thomas T. Sakamoto with the lead 

elements. The brigade commander later signed a commendation for Sakamoto, 

describing how he “promptly and correctly interpreted captured enemy maps and 

documents [and] he submitted valuable reports to me on enemy unit identifications, strength of units, commanders’ names, unit sectors, and the plans and 

intentions of enemy units.” 52 Sakamoto may even have saved the general’s life 

when American scouts detected some movement in tall grass about thirty yards 

from the brigade command post. The commanding general ordered Sakamoto to 

tell the Japanese to surrender. Sakamoto went forward with the task force S–2 

and called out, but the Japanese answered with grenades and rifle fire. When the 

American soldiers returned fire, eighteen Japanese soldiers were killed or committed suicide, including the commander of the Japanese battalion defending the 

Cape Gloucester: The Green Inferno (Washington, D.C.: Marine Corps Historical Center, 1994), 

p. 33. 48 “The Secrets Come out for Nisei Soldiers,” Los Angeles Times, 20 Jul 82. 49 For Mizutari’s actions on Arawe, see Howard I. Ogawa, “The Death of a Hero: This Is How 

Sgt. Mizutari Lived—And How He Died,” Pacific Citizen, 20 Jan 45. 50 Interv, author with Harry T. Kubo, 11 Sep 96. 51 Kenney, General Kenney Reports, pp. 358–61; Willoughby and Chamberlain, MacArthur, 

1941–1951, pp. 150–52; Drea, MacArthur’s Ultra, pp. 99–104. 52 HQ, 1st Cav Bde, Commendation of ATIS no. 21, 14 Jun 44, 342.18–353, Assistant Secretary 

of War, RG 107, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Washington, D.C.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1944 251

airdrome. On the commander’s body they found a copy of a field order for an 

attack on the American perimeter later that afternoon. The attack was thwarted, 

and Sakamoto was awarded the Bronze Star. The Chicago Tribune published the 

story and cited Sakamoto by name. Meanwhile, a copy of Sakamoto’s commendation arrived at the War Department G–2. Brig. Gen. John Weckerling forwarded 

it to Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy with the comment that it indicated “the continuing and commendable work performed by Nisei interrogators 

and translators who were trained at the Military Intelligence Service Language 

School at Camp Savage.” 53

53 Ltr, John Weckerling to John J. McCloy, 14 August 1944, with HQ, 1st Cav Bde, Commendation of ATIS no. 21, 14 Jun 44; ATIS History, p. 47; “California Japanese American Sergeant 

Cited for Action in Battle for Los Negros Island,” Pacific Citizen, 15 Apr 44; “Reveal Husband of 

Cleveland Japanese Saved U.S. General,” Cleveland Press (n.d.), reprinted in WRA, Nisei in the 

War against Japan, p. 11; The Admiralties: Operations of the 1st Cavalry Division (29 February–18 

May 1944) (Washington, D.C.: War Department, Historical Division, 1945), p. 37; Mashbir, I Was 

an American Spy, p. 260.

The 6th Infantry Division language team “captures” its team chief, Mizutari, in 

New Guinea, spring 1944. Harry K. Fukuhara is holding a captured Samurai 

sword.
252 NISEI LINGUISTS

In April 1944 MacArthur launched his boldest move yet, leaping hundreds of 

miles to bypass Japanese units along the New Guinea coast. Before the Japanese 

could recover, he pushed onward in July to reach New Guinea’s western tip at 

Sansapor. In 100 days American ground troops advanced 1,300 miles. MacArthur’s troops first landed at two weakly defended sites, Hollandia and Aitape.

Two divisions landed at Hollandia, each with a Nisei team. The team assigned 

to the 41st Infantry Division was led by two Caucasian officers and a senior Nisei, 

S.Sgt. John M. Tanikawa, A 42-year-old veteran of World War I, Tanikawa had 

served at Camp Savage as an instructor before requesting overseas duty.54 Victory 

came swiftly at Hollandia, and captured documents were measured by the ton. A 

prisoner of war compound was filled with several thousand Japanese soldiers, who 

were guarded by special military police units that included Nisei interpreters. Maj. 

Gen. Robert L. Eichelberger, the I Corps commander, often personally interrogated 

Japanese prisoners with Nisei interpreters.55 Sixth Army headquarters moved to 

Hollandia with the ATIS advance echelon, which included 41 officers and enlisted 

men. Several months later, in preparation for planned landings in the Philippines, 

ATIS sent an advance ATIS detachment to Hollandia, which grew into a miniature 

ATIS. By December 1944 it totaled 47 officers and 149 enlisted men.56

On 22 April 1944, the 163d RCT landed with a Nisei team to surprise the 

Japanese at Aitape. The landings at Hollandia and Aitape trapped thousands of 

Japanese soldiers, who turned to face the threat to their rear and fought their way 

back along the New Guinea coast. In July the Japanese launched desperate attacks 

along the Driniumor River. Weeks of fierce fighting resulted in the complete 

destruction of the Japanese forces. When Michael M. Miyatake joined the 112th 

Cavalry RCT to relieve another Nisei who had fallen ill, the appearance of the 

battlefield appalled him:

As we walked out of the area where the fighting had taken place, we had to step over 

hundreds of dead enemy bodies. Some were still grasping hand grenades, the pin already 

pulled. The slightest movement of a body could have set off an explosion at any moment.

The sight of blood-strewn bodies everywhere made me nauseated. I felt pity, then 

anger, and finally disgust to see so many young lives wasted. This was the first time I had 

witnessed the aftermath of combat. Walking through the area made me more determined 

than ever to get out of this mess alive and to let people know how pitiful and merciless the 

front could be.57

54 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 199. 55 Interv, author with Paul T. Bannai, 11 Sep 96; Jay Luvaas, ed., Dear Miss Em: General 

Eichelberger’s War in the Pacific, 1942–1945 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1972), pp. 108–

19, 122. Two language officers summarized the work of the 41st Infantry Division language teams 

at Hollandia in Ltr, James S. Mize and Robert L. Heilbroner to Colonel Rasmussen, 15 December 

1944, Trng Grp, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, NARA. See also Edwards, Spy Catchers, 

pp. 134–39. 56 ATIS History, pp. 27, 31, 34. 57 Japanese Eyes, American Heart: Personal Reflections of Hawaii’s World War II Nisei Soldiers (Honolulu: Tendai Educational Foundation, 1998), pp. 170–76.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1944 253

In May MacArthur pressed his advantage and landed more forces another 

hundred miles westward at Maffin Bay. After several days of tough fighting, GIs 

moved toward the high ground nicknamed Lone Tree Hill. The 6th Infantry Division went into action on 20 June, its initiation into combat. When the experienced 

Nisei team leader, T.Sgt. Harry K. Fukuhara, fell ill, Sergeant Mizutari took his 

place. Shortly after sundown on 23 June, the Japanese attacked toward the division 

command post where the Nisei worked. The fight became a wild melee, with bullets flying in all directions in the dark. The Nisei rolled out of their hammocks and 

grabbed their rifles. Mizutari took shelter behind a tree outside the intelligence 

tent, returned fire, and called on his teammates to do the same. As he rose to his 

knees to fire, he was hit in the chest. A teammate, Kiyoshi Fujimura, “felt something heavy fall on me. Realizing it was Terry, I sat up and cradled him in my arms 

all the while calling, ‘Terry, Terry!’ Then, I felt something warm on my hands and 

Fukuhara questions a wounded prisoner, Arawe, January 1944. 
254 NISEI LINGUISTS

in front of my body. I felt a hole about a half inch in diameter near his chest—it 

was much larger in his back. I kind of sensed that he was dead.58

Mizutari was the first Nisei to die in combat in the Pacific. The citation for 

the posthumous Silver Star described how, “fully realizing the danger involved in 

moving from his concealed position, he rushed to a more strategic but vulnerable 

position in order to defend the men serving under him, thereby sacrificing his 

life.” When Mizutari’s team returned to Australia, they took up a collection and 

purchased a plaque to send to his family with a letter from Colonel Mashbir: “His 

record serves to exemplify the great work of the Nisei for their country to which 

cause he has given his life.” In reporting Mizutari’s death, the Honolulu Advertiser

mentioned obliquely that his father was “at present on the mainland.” In fact, his 

father was being held at a Department of Justice internment camp.59

On 27 May 1944, the 41st Infantry Division landed on Biak Island, off the 

New Guinea coast. Allied intelligence had once again underestimated Japanese 

strength, and the fight degenerated into a bitter struggle as the Americans tried to 

destroy the Japanese defenders dug into deep caves. On the second day soldiers 

discovered a roster of officers and noncommissioned officers from the principal 

defending force, the 222d Infantry Regiment, which gave the attackers their first 

clear picture of the defending force.60 The Japanese repeatedly counterattacked and 

held their ground for more than six weeks, delaying MacArthur’s entire campaign. 

The Americans suffered about 400 killed in action and 2,000 wounded. Another 

423 soldiers were hospitalized for psychoneurosis, and 6,811 became combat ineffective from various diseases. The Japanese defenders suffered 4,800 killed in 

action and thirteen captured, only one of whom was a combat soldier.61

The fighting on Biak inflamed American racial hatred. One witness was the 

famed aviator Charles A. Lindbergh, who arrived on 21 July to spend three weeks 

with a Fifth Air Force fighter group on Biak. What he saw and heard sickened and 

depressed him. “Sitting in the security and relative luxury of our quarters,” he 

recorded in his journal, “I listen to American Army officers refer to these Japanese 

soldiers as ‘yellow sons of bitches.’ Their desire is to exterminate the Jap ruth58 Kiyo Fujimura, “He Died in My Arms,” in John Aiso and the M.I.S.: Japanese-American 

Soldiers in the Military Intelligence Service, World War II, ed. Tad Ichinokuchi (Los Angeles: Military Intelligence Club of Southern California, 1988), pp. 96–97; Interv, author with Hirata; Ogawa, 

“Death of a Hero.” In Swift, “First Class,” pp. 48–49, Kazuo Kozaki speculates that Mizutari may 

have been struck by friendly fire. 59 6th Inf Div, General Orders no. 28, 25 Jul 44; “Big Island’s Dead, Wounded of Battle Fronts 

Are Listed,” Honolulu Advertiser, 30 Jul 44, p. 9; WD Press Release, 22 Oct 45. The Defense 

Language Institute Foreign Language Center named an academic building in Mizutari’s honor in 

1980. 60 ATIS History, p. 47. 61 Robert L. Eichelberger, Our Jungle Road to Tokyo (New York: Viking, 1950), p. 153. The 

U.S. Army’s official history reports that 220 Japanese were taken prisoner, most of them after organized resistance had ceased. Robert Ross Smith, The Approach to the Philippines, U.S. Army in 

World War II (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1953), p. 392.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1944 255

lessly, even cruelly. I have not heard a word of respect or compassion spoken of our 

enemy since I came here.” 62

Despite the setback on Biak, MacArthur moved his forces to seize Noemfoor 

Island, Sansapor, and finally, in September, Morotai in the Moluccas, over 200 

miles west of New Guinea. Each time Nisei accompanied the landings to provide 

immediate tactical intelligence. Meanwhile, back at Hollandia and Brisbane, other 

Nisei worked to process the prisoners and captured documents. From January to 

September 1944 Allied forces had leapt over 1,300 miles and now held airfields 

within three hundred miles of the Philippines.

The dangerous work of clearing bypassed Japanese forces often fell to Australian units, which ATIS supported with Nisei language teams as well as the 

American units. “In the beginning, the Australians, like our own Navy, were loath 

to accept them at all,” Colonel Mashbir later remarked, “so I simply had to get 

tough about it and told the Aussies it was Nisei or nothing. There just weren’t 

enough Caucasians capable of doing intelligence work with the Australian divisions to go around.” 63 Australian forces awarded numerous commendations to 

the Nisei “Yanks.” However, by the end of 1944 American forces were moving 

to the Philippines and most Nisei assigned to Australian units returned to ATIS. 

The Australian director of Air Force Intelligence established a Japanese-language 

training program at Sydney University, where the first class of thirty-two Royal 

Australian Air Force enlisted students began training on 31 July 1944. The school’s 

commanding officer was Flying Officer Max Wiadrowski, a prewar high school 

teacher who had studied Japanese privately before the war and had been assigned 

for a time to ATIS.

64

Australia also assumed responsibility for most Japanese prisoners of war. By 

August 1944, 2,223 Japanese prisoners were in Australian custody, although they 

were outnumbered by almost 15,000 Italians and almost 1,600 Germans. Australia 

lacked sufficient linguists to supervise the Japanese prisoners. On 5 August 1944, 

1,104 Japanese prisoners staged a breakout from Cowra Prisoner of War Camp in 

New South Wales. It took Australian forces more than a week to crush the rebellion and capture the escapees, of whom 234 were killed. Four Australians also lost 

their lives. Major Shelton was rushed from ATIS to assist in the investigation.65

Off-duty Nisei found wartime Brisbane a welcoming place, much as they had 

Minneapolis–St. Paul. For Nisei who had served in the forward areas, Australia 

62 Charles A. Lindbergh, The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh (New York: Harcourt 

Brace Jovanovich, 1970), pp. 879–80; John W. Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the 

Pacific War (New York: Pantheon, 1986), pp. 69–71. 63 Mashbir, I Was an American Spy, p. 247; ATIS History, pp. 24–26; Interv, author with Yasuo 

Ace Fukai, 9 Sep 96. ATIS History, app. 12, lists twenty-four Australian commendations awarded 

to individual Nisei in 1944–1945. 64 Colin Funch, Linguists in Uniform: The Japanese Experience (Australia: Japanese Studies 

Centre, Monash University, 2003), pp. 31–33, 51–75. 65 Gavin Long, Australia in the War of 1939–1945, ser. 1, vol. 7, The Final Campaigns (Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1963), app. 5; Funch, Linguists in Uniform, pp. 126–30.
256 NISEI LINGUISTS

seemed like a paradise. They spent their dollars freely in local restaurants and 

taverns. A few managed to return home on leave. Kadani took the opportunity 

of a stateside furlough to marry his sweetheart. The newlyweds spent Christmas 

1944 with Kadani’s parents in the Poston camp and spent New Year’s with his 

bride’s parents in another camp, Gila River. In late 1943 Sergeant Komori returned 

to Hawaii, which he had not seen since before the war, and visited Camp Savage 

in Minnesota. However, he had found his true love in Australia. He married “an 

Aussie Chinese girl,” he recalled, “who was the first girl I had met in Australia in 

1942. I had all day to court her, for my [radio] monitoring duties were at night.” 

Tom Takata was hospitalized with malaria he had contracted in New Guinea. During his long recovery he fell in love with Sylvia Joyce Look You, the daughter of a 

Chinese doctor and an Australian woman. They married in August 1944.66

Two Nisei changed their names in Australia. California-born Arthur Katsuyoshi Ushiro changed his name to Arthur Robert Castle in April 1944 (shiro is the 

Japanese word for “castle”). He changed his name, he later explained, “because 

of the difficulty in spelling it and the desirability of ‘Anglicizing’ it because of his 

present military duties.” Yamashiro changed his last name to Sankey, a different 

reading of the characters of his family name.67

Another change for ATIS was the arrival of ninety American servicewomen 

from the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) in May or June 1944. Australian servicewomen had worked for ATIS in clerical and other support capacities since its 

beginning, but these were the first American women. Colonel Mashbir reported 

that their arrival hurt morale: “Here were men who had lived through the rigors 

of ten combat operations, who had lived under the most wretched and hazardous 

conditions, and who were still T–5s. Suddenly they were forced to accept a group 

of typists and stenographers in uniform, with the ranks of First Sergeant, Master 

Sergeant, and T–3s, practically all of whom were senior to every single combat 

soldier I had.” However, because the Australian government would not permit its 

servicewomen to leave the continent, the American forces had no choice but to 

accept the American WACs as the campaign moved forward.68

Most Nisei enlisted men saw no promotions, but at least a few received commissions starting in 1944. On 22 April 1944, Colonel Mashbir awarded commissions to the three Nisei warrant officers, Phil Ishio, Gary Kadani, and Steve Yamamoto. Later that year he sent several others to officer candidate school in Brisbane, 

66 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 198, 226; Interv, Bray with Komori, 1955. 67 “California Nisei Soldier [Ushiro] Seeks to Anglicize Name,” Pacific Citizen, 1 Apr 44, 

p. 1; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 145. Several thousand Japanese in Hawaii changed their given 

names during the war, but only a few changed their family name. Andrew Lind, Hawaii’s Japanese: An Experiment in Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1946), p. 143; Eileen H. 

Tamura, Americanization, Acculturalization, and Ethnic Identity: The Nisei Generation in Hawaii

(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), pp. 169–71. 68 Mashbir, I Was an American Spy, pp. 222–23; Mattie E. Treadwell, The Women’s Army Corps, 

U.S. Army in World War II (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1954), pp. 

410–23.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1944 257

which produced at least six more Nisei second lieutenants by early 1945. However, 

not until the summer of 1945 was the ATIS table of allowances increased. Until 

then, ATIS was authorized fewer than forty lieutenants, which included the Caucasian team leaders trained at the Army Intensive Japanese Language School.69

Another burden for the ATIS Nisei was that of secrecy. Mashbir insisted on 

tight security and impressed the need on all personnel for pragmatic reasons. Each 

document published by ATIS bore this warning:

Captured documents and prisoners of war are sources of intelligence which the enemy can 

deny by disciplinary instruction if he becomes aware of the fact that reliable information 

is being obtained therefrom. Special care must, therefore, be taken to ensure the secrecy 

of this document.70

Despite the secrecy, the Nisei were in great demand. ATIS grew from 150 

Nisei to 285 by the summer of 1944. In a June 1944 staff study, Mashbir requested 

266 more within six months. In August the theater sent a memorandum to the War 

Department G–2, saying, “The services of Nisei in the various phases of Japanese 

language work in this theater have proved invaluable.” However, Mashbir did not 

get all he requested. Eleven airborne-qualified Nisei arrived for the 11th Airborne 

Division that autumn, but no more Nisei arrived in the Southwest Pacific Theater 

until early 1945. Mashbir later complained that “we never succeeded in persuading anybody until just before the end of the war that that number would be needed, 

and, in fact, every request was turned down by higher authority.” 71

By the end of 1944 the Southwest Pacific Theater had developed an elaborate 

intelligence apparatus. The various intelligence disciplines were developed to a 

high degree and were staffed by thousands of military personnel. The resulting 

intelligence was disseminated, cross-referenced, and analyzed at all levels; combat commanders learned to rely on this intelligence for their tactical and operational plans. In much of this the ATIS Nisei played a vital role. “I am Mashbir’s 

69 ATIS History, app. 3; Mashbir, I Was an American Spy, p. 250; “Intelligence Men Recount 

WW II Projects at Reunion,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 2 Sep 68; Masami Tahira, in Oguro, Sempai 

Gumi, pp. 145–50. George Kanegai claims that in the spring of 1945 a commissioning board blackballed two Nisei who had anglicized their names. A board member told Kanegai, “Anybody who’s 

ashamed of their Japanese name should not be commissioned.” Interv, author with George Kanegai, 

13 Sep 96, p. 23.

70 ATIS History, p. 31; Mashbir, I Was an American Spy, pp. 237–38. In October 1945 Mashbir 

first revealed the existence of ATIS to the American press, calling it “a highly secret military organization.” “U.S. Army Reveals Work of Nisei in Pacific,” Pacific Citizen, 20 Oct 45, p. 1. 71 Mashbir, I Was an American Spy, p. 224. In his unpublished memoir, Willoughby later 

claimed “some credit” for “sponsoring” the Nisei and recalled requesting 1,000 (p. 190). He wrote 

that MacArthur’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Richard K. Sutherland, “readily agreed” but was “slightly 

amused” by the size of the request. “The Character of Military Intelligence,” pt. 2, p. 190, Willoughby Papers from Gettysburg College, RG–23B, MacArthur Memorial, Library and Archives, 

Norfolk, Va.; Memo, GHQ SWPA to WD G–2, 5 Aug 44, 342.18, Asst Sec War, RG 107, NARA.
258 NISEI LINGUISTS

most avid reader,” MacArthur once remarked. “In fact, I imagine I have read every 

word that he published.” 72

Central Pacific Area

The MIS Nisei who served in the Central Pacific fought a different kind of war. 

The theater featured predominantly naval battles waged in the air, on the surface, 

and under the sea to defeat the Japanese Combined Fleet and seize island strongholds to bring American power within striking distance of the Japanese home 

islands. For this Admiral Nimitz built up his intelligence staff to exploit multiple 

sources, especially intercepted naval radio communications. The centerpiece was 

JICPOA, an Army-Navy organization located in Makalapa near Nimitz’s headquarters at Pearl Harbor. Brig. Gen. Joseph J. Twitty, a prewar Japanese-language 

attaché, was in command. Communications intelligence was handled by the Fleet 

Radio Unit, Pacific (FRUPAC).73 Navy officials at all levels remained suspicious 

of all persons of Japanese ancestry, regardless of citizenship. For translators and 

interpreters the Navy relied upon Caucasian graduates of its language school at 

Boulder, Colorado. By early 1944 the JICPOA Translation Section had grown to 

over a hundred Navy language officers.74 Other Japanese-language tasks in the 

Pacific Ocean Areas were performed by psychological warfare specialists. Tactical commanders used leaflets and loudspeakers to encourage surrender, but the 

campaigns to date had yielded only a handful of Japanese prisoners of war. In 

March 1944 Nimitz allowed the Office of War Information to establish a small 

office in Honolulu to help JICPOA develop leaflets. In June 1944 Nimitz established his own psychological warfare section.75

The battles of 1944 would require sustained ground combat operations (Map 

9), and for this Nimitz needed more Army intelligence support. In the spring of 

1944 the War Department G–2 offered to provide MIS Nisei to Navy Intelligence. 

In April and May 1944 two groups totaling some fifty Nisei left Camp Savage for 

Hawaii. For the first group of seventeen Hawaii Nisei it was a homecoming. On 

10 May they began work on the top floor of a closed furniture store on Kapiolani 

72 Mashbir, I Was an American Spy, p. 240. 73 Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Areas, “Report of Intelligence Activities in the Pacific 

Ocean Areas,” 15 Oct 45 (hereafter cited as JICPOA History), copy in author’s files; Military Intelligence in the Pacific, 1942–1946: Bulletins of the Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Area, and the 

Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Area (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, S1661 [41 

microfilm rolls], 1984). See also John Ashmead, The Mountain and the Feather (Boston: Houghton 

Mifflin, 1961). 74 JICPOA History, pp. 40–45; W. J. Holmes, Doubled-Edged Secrets: U.S. Naval Intelligence 

Operations in the Pacific during World War II (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1979), pp. 

168–69. 75 Ellis M. Zacharias, Secret Missions: The Story of an Intelligence Officer (New York: G. P. 

Putnam’s Sons, 1946), pp. 323–24; Gilmore, You Can’t Fight Tanks with Bayonets, p. 17; JICPOA 

History, pp. 31–32.
CENTRAL PACIFIC AREA

SOUTHWEST PACIFIC AREA

�

��

�

�

��

P H I L I P P I N E

S E A

21 Jul

15 Sep

17 Sep

1 Feb

17 Feb

24 Jul

15 Jun

150° 140° 160° 170°

10°20°

EQUATOR

170° 160°

20°

10°

BONIN

ISLANDS

 Iwo Jima

M A R I A N A

IS L A N D S

Pagan

Saipan

Tinian

Rota

Guam

Ulithi

Yap

Peleliu

Angaur

PALAU ISLANDS

C A R O L I N E I S L A N D S

Wake

Eniwetok

Kwajalein

Maloelap

Makin

Tarawa

Ocean

G I L B E RT

IS L A N D S Nauru

Mili

Ponape

 Kusaie

Truk

M A R S H A L L

I S L A N D S

1944

OPERATIONS

CENTRAL PACIFIC AREA

Battle SiteLanding

�

 Statute Miles

20°

10° Equator

400 600 800 200 0

MAP 9
260 NISEI LINGUISTS

Boulevard in “what was then a rather forlorn section of the city.” 76 The annex 

had to be placed in Honolulu because the Navy would not relax its security rules 

against allowing Japanese on the base. Consequently, the Nisei lived and worked 

in this building, often taking their meals at a restaurant across the street because 

no mess hall was available to them.

The Translation Section was headed by Cmdr. John W. Steele, retired from the 

U.S. Navy. The JICPOA annex was headed by Maj. Glenn Brunner, U.S. Marine 

Corps Reserve, a Foreign Service officer who had served in Tokyo before the war; 

his executive officer, Maj. Lachlan M. Sinclair, had graduated from the first officer 

class at Camp Savage.77 The annex included 5 Navy officers, 5 Army officers, and 

the 50 Nisei enlisted men. The Nisei were divided into three teams, each under a 

Nisei veteran of the Aleutian Islands Campaign. One, Nobuo Furuiye, was born 

on a Colorado truck farm. After graduating from a Denver high school, he had 

spent two years attending middle school in Japan. He had enlisted in January 

1942 and served in Alaska. When he returned to the United States in late 1943, 

he was assured that he would not be sent overseas again. He made arrangements 

to have his fiancée released from the Jerome camp so they could be married in 

February 1944. Two months later he was sent to Hawaii and left his bride behind. 

The other two team leaders were Tadashi Ted Ogawa and Don C. Oka, both from 

the mainland and Aleutian veterans.78 The Nisei made the most of living in wartime Honolulu. Almost 40 percent of Hawaii’s prewar population was of Japanese 

descent. On weekends the Nisei soldiers could visit friends and relatives and were 

readily accepted into the local community. Ben I. Yamamoto had been born and 

raised in Pearl City and then trained at MISLS: “I couldn’t believe my good fortune. Hawaii, after two and a half years on the mainland! . . .This was a good deal, 

giving us a chance to visit my family in Pearl City and enjoy local food. I even got 

carried away and got married.” 79

The work included translating captured diaries, notebooks, and occasional 

technical documents. “There was something unreal about our lives,” wrote Donald 

Keene, a Boulder graduate assigned to the Translation Section. “We would spend 

most days translating diaries, letters, notebooks, and the like, but it was difficult 

to imagine that what we were doing was of any conceivable use to anybody. And 

76 Donald Keene, On Familiar Terms: A Journey across Cultures (New York: Kodansha, 1994), 

pp. 32–33. Keene was assigned to the JICPOA annex from September 1943 until March 1945. 77 George Inagaki, Harrington Papers. 78 Falk and Tsuneishi, MIS in the War against Japan, pp. 58–60, 99–100; “Rocky Mountain MIS

Veterans Club Autobiographies,” pp. 12–15, Unpubl Ms, ed. Kent T. Yoritomo, [1989], author’s files 

(this and similar biographies hereafter cited as Rocky Mountain Bios); Don C. Oka, MISNorCal 

Bio; Don C. Oka, in Saga of the MIS; Sam Isokane, “JICPOA Annex Story,” in Tsukiyama et al., 

Secret Valor, pp. 66–68. MIS Nisei in the Pacific Ocean Areas generally did not work in signals 

intelligence. However, Nobuo Furuiye reports having served for forty-five days in the autumn of 

1944 aboard a Navy cruiser for “radio intercept duty.” Falk and Tsuneishi, MIS in the War against 

Japan, p. 58. 79 Ben I. Yamamoto, in Oguro, Sempai Gumi, pp. 67–77; Japanese Eyes, American Heart, 

pp. 177–85.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1944 261

there was the irritation of being under a commanding officer whom we disliked.”80

Another Navy language officer recalled how the captured documents came in 

boxes that were “permeated with that strange rich odor which you later came to 

recognize as the odor of the dead. The worst documents were drycleaned, but the 

odor became part of [the section].” 81 Some Nisei specialized in hand-written so ̄sho

documents, but they sometimes handled printed materials as well. Oka’s section 

spent several months translating a multivolume Japanese industrial directory that 

the XXI Bomber Command later used to target B–29 raids on the Japanese home 

islands. The Nisei also helped interrogate prisoners of war on Oahu, many of whom 

turned out to be Korean laborers.82

Despite the useful work of the JICPOA Nisei, their leaders had a low regard 

for their skill. “These Nisei, like most Nisei, are much handicapped by lack of 

educational background for this type of work, which calls for initiative and judgment in addition to language experience,” Commander Steele told Comdr. Albert 

E. Hindmarsh, the director of the Navy’s language school at Boulder, in January 

1945. “In this group of 44 Nisei, only 1 had better than a high-school education. 

Consequently all the work of all Nisei has to be checked in detail by Boulder 

80 Keene, On Familiar Terms, p. 34. 81 Ashmead, The Mountain and the Feather, p. 319. 82 Gordon Cotler, “All in Favor Say ‘Hai,’” New Yorker (9 April 1949): 100, describes Cotler’s 

work with Japanese prisoners in Hawaii while assigned to JICPOA in the autumn of 1944. Cotler 

was a Caucasian graduate of the Army Intensive Japanese Language School and MISLS.

Nisei from the Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Areas, celebrating New 

Year’s, Honolulu, December 1944
262 NISEI LINGUISTS

boys. . . .That is why Nisei are always organized as teams.” Hindmarsh summarized the opinions of Navy intelligence officers in Hawaii toward the Nisei:

Almost unanimous is the view (all Navy circles and in Army groups who work directly 

with Boulder graduates) that Nisei are too often limited in their usefulness; generally they 

are short on English and/or Japanese, lack initiative and sense of responsibility, require 

constant checking in their work (both spoken and written), suffer psychological handicaps 

(many have asked to be kept out of advanced areas). There are a few notable exceptions to 

these criticisms, but in general the attitude is that the Nisei are “better than nothing.” 83

These dismissive attitudes were in stark contrast to the acceptance of the Nisei 

in the Southwest Pacific and may explain why the JICPOA annex never developed into anything like the highly praised Allied Translator and Interpreter Section. Army headquarters on Hawaii did not share the Navy’s low estimation of the 

Nisei. In addition to the volunteers for the 442d Regimental Combat Team and 

the Military Intelligence Service, 600 Nisei soldiers served in Hawaii with the 

1399th Engineer Battalion performing general construction work.84 Concerning 

their loyalty, the Hawaiian Department’s assistant chief of staff for intelligence, 

Col. Kendall J. Fielder, told a newspaper reporter in April 1944: “I have been in 

charge of military intelligence activities here since June 1941, and am in a position 

to know what has happened. There have been no known acts of sabotage, espionage, or fifth-column activities committed by the Japanese in Hawaii either on or 

subsequent to Dec. 7, 1941.” 85

Not all MIS Nisei serving in the Central Pacific spent the war in Honolulu. 

Some would prove themselves in combat. Until mid-1944 the War Department 

had sent most MIS Nisei to the South Pacific and Southwest Pacific, about 385, 

compared to only about 70 for the Central Pacific. After that the War Department 

sent few additional Nisei to the Southwest Pacific. Instead, from May 1944 thru 

April 1945, the War Department sent 160 Nisei to the Central Pacific. Most were 

assigned to divisions or corps, leaving the 50 JICPOA Nisei to continue their 

work unaided.

On 1 February 1944, soldiers and marines landed in the Marshall Islands. The 

Nisei taught them simple Japanese phrases such as, “Throw down your weapons,” 

“Sit down,” and “Where is your regiment?” They even “produced a live drama 

83 Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, “School of Oriental Languages,” pp. 30, 34, Unpubl 

Ms, Naval Historical Center, Washington, D.C. 84 These Nisei soldiers remained in Hawaii when the 100th Infantry Battalion departed in May 

1942 and were assigned to the 1st Battalion, 370th Engineer Special Service Regiment, which was 

redesignated the 1399th Engineer Construction Battalion on 21 March 1944. When Nisei eligibility for Selective Service was restored in 1944, the Army organized several other service units in 

Hawaii with Nisei soldiers. 85 “Japanese-Americans in Hawaii,” Honolulu Advertiser, 16 Apr 44. Colonel Fielder and Robert 

C. Shivers, head of the FBI’s Honolulu office, moderated the Navy’s hostility to the large Japanese 

population in Hawaii throughout the war. Tom Coffman, The Island Edge of America: A Political 

History of Hawaii (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003), pp. 59–102.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1944 263

showing the right and wrong ways of 

processing and interrogating Japanese 

prisoners.” 86 But the Americans took 

few prisoners alive. Before each assault, 

extensive naval gunfire and bombardment blasted the islands for days. When 

Mike Sakamoto went ashore on Eniwetok, he was staggered to see the island 

landscape littered with the ripped-apart 

bodies of its defenders. Moved to tears 

at his first vision of combat, he sang a 

Japanese song in their memory.87

The 7th Infantry Division faced 

stiff opposition when it assaulted Kwajalein, a major Japanese headquarters. A Caucasian soldier wrote to the 

San Francisco Chronicle praising the 

actions of a Nisei friend. He described 

how his friend had crawled into a slit 

trench armed only with a trench knife: 

“The enemy immediately started popping out of the other entrance with no 

desire to fight. From these prisoners our 

interpreter learned of more—but I think what I’ve told is sufficient. Just take it 

from this G.I. that our interpreters have plenty of nerve and their services are 

invaluable.” 88 The 7th Infantry Division’s commanding general boasted of the 

Nisei to a war correspondent. The resulting story, published in February 1944, 

was the first official confirmation that Nisei were fighting in the Pacific.89 After the 

battle the Nisei found large quantities of documents which they began to sort and 

translate. JICPOA sent several more Nisei to help with the enormous task, including T3g. Frank Tadakazu Hachiya, a Kibei from Hood River, Oregon. Hachiya 

spent the next five months on Kwajalein translating these materials. There, he 

met a fellow Oregonian, Monroe Sweetland, a small-town newspaper publisher. 

The two young men had much in common and enjoyed many long philosophical 

discussions. “There were bright tropical nights,” Sweetland recalled, “when we 

sat out to talk of Oregon.” Hachiya expressed his yearning “to return to ‘the most 

beautiful valley in the world.’ But he also knew what he was fighting for and he 

86 “Use of Nisei Saved GI Lives in Pacific,” Pacific Citizen, 29 Sep 45, p. 1. 87 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 182–83. 88 Glenn W. M’Donald, Ltr to the Editor, San Francisco Chronicle, 16 Sep 44, reprinted in 

WRA, What We’re Fighting For, pp. 20–21. 89 “General Reveals Japanese Americans Took Part in Capture of Kwajalein Atoll,” Pacific 

Citizen, 4 Mar 44.

Hachiya
264 NISEI LINGUISTS

knew especially well what he was fighting against—he understood both much better than most of us old-line Americans do.” 90

The next objective was the Marianas, an island group less than 1,500 miles 

from Japan. These included several islands needed as bases for future naval and 

air operations, such as the former U.S. naval station at Guam. Plans called for three 

Marine divisions and two Army divisions to seize Saipan, Tinian, and Guam. 

Saipan lay at the heart of the Japanese defenses, housing the Japanese 31st Army

headquarters and 32,000 troops. Tens of thousands of Japanese civilians also lived 

in the islands, so American forces would for the first time encounter a large Japanese noncombatant population.

After weeks of bombardment the marines churned ashore on Saipan on 15 

June 1944. In response, Japanese naval commanders carried out Operation A (AGO), based on the compromised Z-Plan. The Japanese Combined Fleet and the 

U.S. Navy met in the Western Pacific between the Marianas and the Philippines. 

In this great air and sea battle the available forces on each side totaled more than 

twice those engaged in the Battle of Midway two years before. The Battle of the 

Philippine Sea became the largest carrier battle of the war. In addition to the Japanese plan, the Americans had another vital advantage: Navy language officers 

eavesdropped on the Japanese air coordinator’s radio channel and guided American pilots to their targets. The result was the near-total destruction of Japanese 

naval air power, so great that the American pilots derisively called it the Great 

Marianas Turkey Shoot. When the battle ended, a staff officer on the flagship of 

Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, Commander, Central Pacific Force, suggested 

they shoot down the Japanese air coordinator as well. Capt. Arleigh A. Burke, U.S. 

Navy, chief of staff to the task force commander, vetoed the idea, saying, “You 

can’t shoot that man down. He’s done more good for the United States than any 

of us this day.” 91 Victory in the Marianas was now assured, but weeks of bitter 

ground fighting remained.

Assault elements of the 27th Infantry Division followed the marines ashore 

on 16 June, followed the next day by division headquarters and T.Sgt. Timothy 

T. Ohta’s language team. This was the language team’s third assault landing but 

the first for their new officer, 2d Lt. Benjamin H. Hazard, Jr. In preparation for 

the landing, the team held orientation classes on how to handle prisoners of war 

and the importance of captured documents. The division’s G–2 “walked into one 

90 Quoted in Martha F. McKeown, “Frank Hachiya: He Was American at Birth, and at Death,” 

Portland Oregonian, 20 May 45. 91 Ronald Lewin, The American Magic: Codes, Ciphers, and the Defeat of Japan (New York: 

Farrar Straus Giroux, 1982), pp. 255–56; “Reminiscences of Rear Admiral Arthur H. McCollum, 

U.S. Navy Retired,” 2 vols., pp. 616–19, Unpubl Ms, 1970–1971, Naval Historical Center, Washington, D.C.; Mason, Pacific War Remembered, pp. 153–54. See also the memoir by Spruance’s chief 

of staff, Carl J. Moore, “Command Decisions during the Battle of the Philippine Sea,” in Mason, 

Pacific War Remembered, pp. 209–15. For a balanced assessment of American foreknowledge of 

Japanese plans, see Smith, The Rescue, pp. 256–88.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1944 265

of these classes one day expecting to find 20 students; there were 120.” 92 After 

the battle started other Nisei came from the JICPOA annex to support the marine 

divisions. The marine units also had Caucasian language officers from Boulder. 

Each marine battalion had Caucasian enlisted language specialists, graduates of 

the six-month Japanese course at Camp Elliott, California. For three weeks the soldiers and marines fought for every square foot of Saipan. Nisei provided valuable 

tactical support by translating captured documents on the spot and interrogating 

captured Japanese. In a humorous incident in an otherwise desperate battle, T3g. 

Nobuo Dick Kishiue watched in amazement as a Japanese Zero touched down 

on the Aslito airfield shortly after the Americans captured it. The Japanese pilot 

was hauled before Kishiue for interrogation. “When I asked why he had landed at 

Aslito,” Kishiue recalled, “the pilot responded that he had taken off from Guam 

and thought the airfield was still in Japanese possession.” 93

Saipan was honeycombed with tunnels and caves, many of which contained 

desperate Japanese soldiers or frightened civilians. On 2 July T.Sgts. Ben Honda 

and George Matsui volunteered to enter some caves to encourage a large group of 

Japanese soldiers and civilians to surrender. Two Japanese soldiers attempted to 

use their weapons, and the accompanying American patrol promptly killed them. 

The two Nisei “succeeded in separating a large number of non-combatants from 

Japanese soldiers.” For this Honda and Matsui were awarded the Bronze Star.94

The team chief, Sergeant Ohta, faced a similar situation:

Word came in that a group of Japanese soldiers were holed up in a cave far down on a 

steep cliff facing the ocean. The sergeant was sent in a jeep, equipped with a loudspeaker, 

to the cliff but found that the jeep could not be brought close to the precipice.

He tried shouting but the surf below drowned out his voice. Finally he found a fragile 

cliff ladder and climbed down alone and disappeared under a ledge where he could not be 

given protection by the Americans. A Japanese officer came out of the cave with a drawn 

revolver. He talked with the sergeant for several minutes, then suddenly turned and threw 

himself into the sea and drowned. But Sergeant Tim [Ohta] prevailed on two enlisted men 

to follow him up the ladder and surrender. He was awarded the Silver Star.95

Sgt. Jack Tanimoto swam through the surf to another cave where nine civilians 

were hiding. The civilians were willing to come out, but the entrance was under 

Japanese fire. Tanimoto held off the Japanese soldiers with a Browning Automatic 

Rifle until all civilians escaped unharmed. He also received the Silver Star.96

The Americans also used tactical psychological warfare on Saipan, beginning 

with massive leaflet drops before the landings.97 These leaflets, supplied by the 

92 “Use of Nisei Saved GI Lives in Pacific.” 93 Falk and Tsuneishi, MIS in the War against Japan, p. 51. 94 Crost, Honor by Fire, pp. 168–69. 95 “Use of Nisei Saved GI Lives in Pacific.” 96 Ibid. 97 Zacharias, Secret Missions, pp. 324–25.
266 NISEI LINGUISTS

Office of War Information, were of limited effectiveness. After the battle T3g. 

Harold Nishimura wrote to the language school:

During the battle of Saipan I deeply felt the pressing need of suitable propaganda for 

certain situations. We had OWI’s booklets and leaflets as in my previous campaign [Kwajalein] but their inappropriateness and childish composition has touched their pride and 

stirred them to further resistance. . . . I maintain that those who write propaganda must 

have actual experience in the fields to grasp the essence of effective propaganda by actual 

contact with new prisoners and documents.98

For three weeks the Japanese defenders fought back. American casualties 

climbed to 20 percent of committed units. However, the defeat of the Japanese 

fleet made the Japanese situation on Saipan hopeless. On 4 or 5 July soldiers of the 

105th Infantry captured a Japanese Navy civilian.99 T4g. Hoichi Kubo questioned 

him and learned of plans for an attack on 6 July. On that day Kubo accompanied a 

98 Ltr, T3g. Harold Nishimura to Col. Kai Rasmussen, 15 December 1944, Trng Grp, Ofc of the 

Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, NARA. 99 Interv, author with Hoichi Kubo and Benjamin Hazard, 30 Oct 87; Kubo, in Japanese Eyes, 

American Heart, pp. 278–82.

Nisei interrogating Japanese prisoners, Saipan, July 1944
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1944 267

patrol and discovered a Japanese 

sailor hiding in a narrow concrete 

culvert. The sailor confirmed that 

the Japanese were planning an 

attack for that very night. He used 

the word gyokusai, which Kubo 

understood at once. More than a 

banzai attack, gyokusai meant “to 

smash the jewel,” an all-out battle of mutual annihilation. Kubo 

reported to his team leader, Lieutenant Hazard, who immediately 

sent the message up the chain of 

command so frontline units could 

be warned.100

Before sunrise the following 

morning 5,000 Japanese threw 

themselves against the 27th Infantry Division lines. Even with advance warning, the attack was devastating. Absorbing horrific casualties, the Japanese sliced through two battalions that together lost 

406 killed and 512 wounded. At the 105th Infantry, Kubo joined with headquarters 

personnel who all fought as riflemen. When the sun came up the next morning, over 

4,000 dead Japanese soldiers littered the battlefield. Quick action by the Nisei and 

their commanders had averted catastrophic American losses.101

Other linguists who were not Nisei also played a role on Saipan. Two days 

after the gyokusai, a marine enlisted linguist stumbled upon a small group of Japanese survivors of the attack. Pfc. Guy Gabaldon, a Mexican American, had been 

adopted into a Japanese family in Los Angeles and grew up among Nisei friends. 

When Gabaldon’s foster parents were interned in 1942, he enlisted in the Marine 

Corps and was eventually assigned to the 2d Marine Regiment intelligence section. The Japanese soldiers led him to a group of 800 Japanese soldiers and civilians hiding in caves, whom Gabaldon persuaded to surrender en mass. For this he 

was awarded the Silver Star.102

100 Philip A. Crowl, Campaign in the Marianas, U.S. Army in World War II (Washington, D.C.: 

Office of the Chief of Military History, 1960), pp. 256–57; Edmund G. Love, The 27th Infantry 

Division in World War II (Washington, D.C.: Infantry Journal Press, 1949), pp. 430–501; Holland 

M. Smith, Coral and Brass (New York: Scribners, 1949), pp. 194–95. 101 Hoichi Kubo, Military Bio, Unpubl Ms, author’s files; Interv, author with Kubo and Hazard, 

30 Oct 87; Hazard, personal communication to author, 22 Jan 97; Hazard, conference presentation, 

18 Mar 00. 102 The Marine Corps had sent Gabaldon to Camp Elliot, California, for Japanese-language 

training, but he was removed for disciplinary problems. His story came to public attention in 1960, 

when he was featured on the popular television program, This Is Your Life, followed by a Hollywood film, Hell to Eternity (Allied Artists, 1960). The Navy Department subsequently awarded 

Gabaldon the Navy Cross. Guy Gabaldon, Saipan: Suicide Island (Saipan: G. Gabaldon, 1990); 

Kubo comforts a child found alone in a 

field in Saipan.
268 NISEI LINGUISTS

Saipan was declared secure on 9 July, and JICPOA sent additional Nisei to help 

with the prisoners and captured documents. The marines also used three Hawaiiborn Korean Americans to help with the thousands of Korean laborers whom the 

Japanese had brought to the islands.103 Marine Maj. Gen. Holland M. Smith, the 

V Amphibious Corps commander, took a personal interest in the prisoners and 

captured documents. Through an interpreter Smith questioned captured Japanese 

officers and spoke with a captured Japanese medical officer about wounded prisoners. A captured Japanese officer told him firsthand of the suicide of Lt. Gen. 

Yoshitsugu Saito, who had ordered the gyokusai.

104

Thousands of Japanese soldiers and civilians remained at large on the island 

even after the island was declared secure. For many, suicide took the place of death 

on the battlefield. Several thousand Japanese soldiers, sailors, and civilians on the 

northern end of the island killed themselves with grenades or other weapons or by 

leaping off the cliffs onto the rocks and sea below at Marpi Point. The Americans 

tried to stop the slaughter using loudspeakers to encourage surrender; but many 

Japanese chose death, sometimes in full view of the Americans. On 17 July Chief 

of Naval Operations Adm. Ernest J. King visited Saipan with Admiral Nimitz. 

Marpi Point, King recalled, was “the spot where the crowning horror of Japanese 

lunacy had taken place, . . . an orgy of self-destruction.”105

On 26 July a patrol from the 105th Infantry was mopping up stragglers near 

Marpi Point when two Okinawan civilians crawled up over the sea cliff and 

approached with their hands raised. They told Kubo, who was accompanying the 

patrol, that they had escaped from a cave where Japanese soldiers were holding 

more than 100 civilians.106

Raul Morin, Among the Valiant (Alhambra, Calif.: Borden Publishing Co., 1966), pp. 232–33. Ronald Takaki lauds Gabaldon as “indeed a unique war hero—a Japanese-speaking, Mexican-American humanitarian soldier!” Ronald Takaki, Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in 

World War II (Boston: Little, Brown, 2000), pp. 232–33. 103 “Six Nisei Soldiers Win Citations on Saipan,” Pacific Citizen, 12 Aug 44; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 182–83; Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor, p. 82; “Navy Reveals Nisei ‘Agents’ Got 

Valuable Data for U.S.,” Pacific Citizen, 6 Oct 45. 104 Smith, Coral and Brass, pp. 5, 193, 198–99. 105 Ernest J. King and Walter M. Whitehill, Fleet Admiral King: A Naval Record (New York: 

Norton, 1952), p. 564. See also Haruko Taya Cook, “The Myth of the Saipan Suicides,” MHQ 7 

(Spring 1995): 12–19; Crowl, Campaign in the Marianas, pp. 264–65; Dower, War without Mercy, 

pp. 249, 298–99; Robert Sherrod, On to Westward: War in the Central Pacific (New York: Duell, 

Sloan and Pearce, 1945); Toland, Rising Sun, pp. 588–90. 106 Lt. Col. William M. Van Antwerp, 27th Infantry Division G–2, told Kubo’s story to various audiences in 1944–1946. Memo, Van Antwerp to CG, 27th Inf Div, sub: Recommendation 

for Award of Distinguished Service Cross, 16 Aug 44, U.S. Army Forces Pacific & Predecessor 

Commands, RG 338, NARA. This resulted in the award of the Distinguished Service Cross by HQ 

USAFPAC General Orders No. 52, 18 Oct 44, as well as some press coverage: “Hawaiian Nisei 

Sergeant First To Receive DSC for Heroism in Central Pacific War Zone,” Pacific Citizen, 13 Jan 

45. “Use of Nisei Saved GI Lives in Pacific” refers to Kubo by first name only. William M. Van 

Antwerp, “How Sergeant Kubo Won the DSC,” Infantry Journal (1946), gives the date of action 

as 23 July 1944.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1944 269

The platoon leader gave Kubo permission to talk to the soldiers. Kubo, armed 

only with a pistol and some K-rations, climbed a hundred feet down a rope. While 

the patrol waited above, he disappeared into the cave. Two hours later he emerged 

with an amazing story. He had conversed with the desperate soldiers in the cave 

and shared a meal with them, contributing his own rations. As they sat around a 

bubbling rice pot, he gained their confidence and appealed to their sense of honor, 

the bushido code. The Americans did not fight civilians, he told them, so they 

should release the civilians. “I do not come here to discuss that you give yourselves 

up,” he said. “I wish that you devote your considerations to releasing the civilians 

whom you are holding captive.” Kubo told them: “You are the sons of Japanese 

parents. You were born in Japan and fight for your country, Japan. I am also the 

son of Japanese parents but I was born in the United States. The United States is 

my country and I fight for it. The United States has honored me by making me 

a sergeant.” At this the Japanese soldiers bowed in respect (the highest ranking 

soldier present was a superior private). Furthermore, Kubo declared to them, his 

grandfathers had fought with the Imperial Japanese Army in the Russo-Japanese 

War in the famous 5th and 6th Divisions—better units than theirs, he added. He 

recited a classical Japanese proverb: “If I am filial, I cannot serve the emperor. If 

I serve the emperor, I cannot be filial.”107 This neatly explained his situation as a 

Nisei and his loyalty to America, the land of his birth.

Kubo told them that if they decided to release the civilians, they should come 

to the top of the cliff in two hours. With that he left the cave and climbed back up 

the cliff. Two hours later a small group appeared at the cliff top, soon followed by 

the others. In all, 9 soldiers and 122 civilians, including many women and children, surrendered. As the civilians climbed up, a shot rang out from a nearby cave 

and the American platoon leader fell dead. His body rolled over the cliff. Kubo 

“became mad with fury,” according to a newspaper account. “He lined the nine 

[Japanese soldiers] up and for 15 minutes verbally lashed them unmercifully.” He 

shouted:

Advocates for Americans of Japanese ancestry immediately recognized the potential value of 

Kubo’s story. A Chicago Times reporter described how Kubo had “proved the quality of his Americanism.” Keith Wheeler, “Sgt. Kubo Proves His Mettle in Danger,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin (February 1945). The War Relocation Authority placed Wheeler’s story on the first page of its collection 

of news clippings in April 1945. WRA, Nisei in the War against Japan.

Kubo’s own recollections include Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 207–10; Loni Ding, prod., 

The Color of Honor, documentary film, Vox Productions, 1987; Interv, author with Kubo and Hazard, 30 Oct 87; Crost, Honor by Fire, pp. 165–68; Kubo, “Military Biography,” excerpted in Japanese Eyes, American Heart, pp. 278–82. The incident is also depicted in “A More Perfect Union,” a 

permanent exhibit at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. 107 “Chu naran to hossureba Ko narazu. Ko naran to hossureba Chu narazu.” This saying is 

attributed to Taira Shigemori (1138–1179) during the civil wars of the later Heian period. Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 209–10; Yasuko I. Takezawa, Breaking the Silence: Redress and 

Japanese American Ethnicity (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995), p. 97.
270 NISEI LINGUISTS

“Someone shot that man who saved all of your lives! Is there not a samurai among you?” 

Driven to an emotional pitch himself, [he] finally incited such an emotional frenzy in the 

Japanese that they fought with each other to get down the cliff after the fallen US officer. 

And they fought with each other once again to bring his body back to the top.108

For his bravery, Kubo was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the highest 

award given to any Nisei in the Pacific Theater.

On Saipan, the Americans captured more than 1,700 Japanese soldiers, sailors, civilians, and Korean laborers, the largest number yet in the Central Pacific. 

There were so many that the Navy had to establish the rudiments of a military 

government. JICPOA could not supply enough Nisei interpreters, so the Army 

headquarters on Hawaii selected twenty Nisei then in basic training at Schofield 

Barracks (Selective Service had just resumed drafting Nisei) and flew them to 

Saipan with no further training.109

Because Saipan had been a major Japanese headquarters, the Americans also 

captured fifty tons of documents, a staggering volume. Dozens of Nisei and Caucasian linguists took weeks just to sift through the documents. Many documents 

were simply crated up and shipped to JICPOA, where tents had to be erected 

beside the main building to hold the rich intelligence harvest. From the files of the 

Imperial Japanese Navy Central Pacific Area Fleet Headquarters emerged a set of 

administrative orders that “contained a complete list of all vessels by classes, registries of vessels by home ports, statistical data and complement tables for all ships 

and the organization of divisions.” Navy intelligence officers eagerly snapped up 

Japanese navigation charts. Also discovered was a digest of Japanese naval air 

bases that “contained sketches of all the principal naval air bases in Japan and her 

various possessions.” When JICPOA could not handle the flow, the War Department quickly established a translation center, the Pacific Military Intelligence 

Research Section (PACMIRS) at Camp Ritchie, Maryland.110

Japan’s defeat in the Philippine Sea and the loss of Saipan had an immediate impact in both Tokyo and Washington. General Hideki Tojo and his cabinet 

resigned on 18 July. Shortly afterward President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with 

MacArthur and Nimitz in Hawaii to finalize the plans for Japan’s defeat.

To secure the Marianas, Nimitz seized Guam and the smaller island of Tinian. The III Amphibious Corps landed on Guam on 21 July to fight 18,500 Japanese defenders. Nisei teams went ashore with the 3d Marine Division and 1st 

Provisional Marine Brigade, backed by the 77th Infantry Division. Three weeks 

of fighting were required to eliminate Japanese resistance. As on Saipan, interpreters combed the islands to search out Japanese soldiers and civilians. They 

used the tools of tactical psychological warfare, leaflets and sound trucks, to 

108 “Use of Nisei Saved GI Lives in Pacific”; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 209–10; Japanese Eyes, American Heart, p. 282. 109 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 207; Smith, Coral and Brass, pp. 210–12. 110 JICPOA History, pp. 43–44; Zacharias, Secret Missions, pp. 319–20; Holmes, DoubledEdged Secrets, pp. 168–69, 194.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1944 271

induce surrenders. A marine correspondent noted that this: “amounted to a new 

relationship between ourselves and our enemy—an incongruous relationship that 

bewildered a lot of our men. . . .To most of the Marines, who were used to seeing a 

fanatical enemy that preferred death to surrender, our new policy was at first puzzling.” The marines outfitted an LCI landing craft with a public address system; 

for three days this “peace ship” sailed up and down Guam’s rugged coast with 

three captured Japanese prisoners of war appealing to their fellow countrymen to 

surrender. Patrolling continued on land and along the coast for months. The use 

of Japanese prisoners of war to make surrender broadcasts grew more common 

as the war continued.111

On 24 July the 2d and 4th Marine Divisions jumped the short distance from 

Saipan to Tinian, where they confronted 8,000 Japanese defenders. JICPOA Nisei 

joined the fight on D+4. Once the island was declared secure, Don Oka led a 

Nisei team to assist with civil administration. One team member, Raymond Shogo 

Nagata, met a prisoner who was a Nisei from Hawaii and knew some people in 

common. The prisoner had been caught in Japan when war began and was conscripted. He had been a classmate of Nagata’s sister in Hawaii; his brother-in-law 

had been Nagata’s classmate.112

As soon as shore facilities could be repaired, the U.S. Pacific Fleet moved back 

into Guam and Nimitz soon moved his advance headquarters there as well. Army 

engineers began building airfields on Saipan, Guam, and Tinian. For the first time 

the Americans had air bases for the very-long-range bomber, the B–29, within 

range of the Japanese home islands. The first B–29 arrived on 12 October, and the 

first air attack against Japan was launched from Saipan on 24 November.

One more island chain remained to be seized before the Allies reached the 

Philippines. On 15 September the 1st Marine Division stormed ashore on the 

largest island in the Palaus, Peleliu. T.Sgt. Donald S. Okubo and two other Nisei 

landed on Peleliu with the third wave. They interrogated the few Japanese soldiers 

who were taken alive. “I was much more worried about the marines shooting me 

than the Japs. You know how those marines are: if they see anyone who even looks 

like the enemy they fire. Whenever I was on patrol I had to be escorted by half 

111 Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., “Some Japs Surrender,” Infantry Journal (August 1945): 40–45; Alvin 

M. Josephy, Jr., The Long and the Short and the Tall: The Story of a Marine Combat Unit in the 

Pacific (New York: Knopf, 1946); Smith, Coral and Brass, pp. 221–22. Gordon Cotler described 

a similar incident in “Kobayashi,” The New Yorker (26 August 1950): 54–57. In the television 

comedy series, McHale’s Navy (1962–1966), the crew of the fictional PT–73 in the South Pacific 

included “Seaman Third Class Fuji Kobiaji, IJN,” a friendly Japanese prisoner of war played by 

Yoshio Yoda. 112 Isokane, “JICPOA Annex Story,” pp. 66–68. Isokane adds that the prisoner had been “sent to 

the battle to gain intelligence data.” After the war, Don Oka learned that his younger brother, Takeo 

Oka, who had been visiting Japan when war began, trained as a Japanese pilot and died during 

attacks on American forces in the Marianas. Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 211.
272 NISEI LINGUISTS

a dozen marines or I’d be a dead duck. Despite my Army uniform I was fired on 

several times.”113

The 321st Infantry soon reinforced the marines on Peleliu, followed a few 

weeks later by the 323d Infantry. Both regiments brought their Nisei interpreters. 

On 25 October one Nisei, T4g. Masao Abe, was calling to Japanese soldiers hidden 

in a cave when he was wounded in the thigh and evacuated. Japanese resistance on 

Peleliu did not end until 27 November.114

Six miles away, the 81st Infantry Division landed on Angaur on 17 September, two days after the marines hit Peleliu. Ten Nisei under S.Sgt. James T. Kai 

had joined the division in Hawaii after coming directly from the school. They 

were accompanied by Maj. Lachlan M. Sinclair, the JICPOA executive officer. 

The Nisei interrogated prisoners, translated documents, and tried to persuade 

Japanese soldiers to surrender. Two Nisei were assigned to each regiment and 

four at division headquarters. Each was assigned two bodyguards. However, 

“soon after the operation started,” the Army Ground Forces observer reported, 

“all Neisi [sic] were recalled to division CP since it was considered too hazardous 

to have them even as far forward as regiment. This worked well because [the] 

island was small.”115

T4g. Robert K. Sakai, a Nisei from Riverside, California, had been a senior at 

the University of California when the war broke out. At division headquarters, he 

recalled, “mailbags full of captured documents piled up for sorting and translation. Some required on-the-spot translation; others were for later translation, and 

still others were sent to Joint Intelligence [Center], Pacific Ocean Area in Honolulu for careful analysis.” He noticed that “if a Japanese prisoner was accosted by 

a Caucasian officer, even if the latter spoke fluent Japanese, the prisoner tended to 

freeze up, anticipating cruelty. If the captor had a Japanese face like himself, he 

visibly relaxed. Because of their brutally harsh training and the propaganda they 

had received about the cruelty of the Americans, Japanese prisoners were unprepared for considerate, humane treatment, which proved effective in interrogation.” 

Other prisoners considered themselves to be dead and “reborn” and became quite 

willing to cooperate.116 One day, while clearing caves, T4g. Shiuso Chojin saw 

113 “Honolulu Army Sergeant Storms Pacific Island Alone, Persuades Japanese Admiral To Surrender His Garrison,” Honolulu Advertiser, 5 Oct 45; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 218–22; 

Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor, pp. 64–65. 114 81st Infantry Division, “History of 313th Intelligence Service Organization,” Unpubl Ms, ca. 

1945, copy in author’s files; Robert K. Sakai, in Japanese Eyes, American Heart, pp. 121–34. One 

enlisted Marine linguist on Peleliu, Earl F. Ziemke, later served as a historian with the Office of the 

Chief of Military History. 115 “Observer’s Report on 81st Infantry Division, Stalemate Operation, 30 August–25 September 1944,” 2 October 1944, transmittal Ltr dtd 3 May 1945, 98–USFI–2.0, Box 1602, Entry 427, RG

407, NARA; William F. Aimone, “The Nisei and the CIC,” JAVA Newsletter, March/April 2003, pp. 

7–8. Major Sinclair later wrote to Colonel Rasmussen, seeking to be transferred from the JICPOA 

annex to a language team for an airborne unit. Ltr, Sinclair to Rasmussen, 10 December 1944, Trng 

Grp, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, NARA. 116 Sakai, in Japanese Eyes, American Heart, p. 130.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1944 273

another American soldier felled by a Japanese sniper. Chojin raced to him under 

fire, administered first aid, and helped drag him to safety. Chojin was awarded the 

Bronze Star for his heroism.

In just one year American forces in the Pacific Ocean Areas had driven over 

1,500 miles closer to Japan, had penetrated the Japanese outer defense perimeter, 

and had crippled Japan’s naval air power. American intelligence organizations 

were larger and more sophisticated than ever before, and MIS Nisei were now 

fighting with soldiers and marines in every campaign. However, racial hatred continued to fuel the conflict on both sides.

In January 1945 war correspondent Ernie Pyle arrived to cover the fighting 

in the Central Pacific. He had earned a reputation in Italy and France for honest 

reporting that reflected what the average soldier was thinking. In the Pacific, he 

sensed, Americans were fighting a different war; and this troubled him. He sensed 

that the average American’s attitude toward the Japanese was very different from 

his attitude toward the Germans. Most Americans had never met a Japanese person and held stereotypical ideas accumulated through a century of prejudice. Pyle 

was honest enough to admit similar feelings himself.

In Hawaii, Pyle was taken to see Japanese prisoners of war in a stockade. The 

prisoners, he wrote, “give me a creepy feeling,” as if not wholly human. He felt 

confused about the contradictory stories he was being told about the Japanese and 

worried about American efforts to analyze “the Jap psychology.” Their stubborn 

resistance on Saipan, their willingness to face certain death, the suicidal kamikaze pilots, all had further hardened American attitudes against the Japanese. Pyle 

detected a hatred unlike anything he had seen in Europe.117 For the MIS Nisei, 

this prejudice even as the tide was swinging in America’s favor continued to make 

things difficult as they fought for their country.

China-Burma-India Theater

In 1943 the Allies established a unified command, the South-East Asia Command, under Lord Louis Mountbatten. The United States established the ChinaBurma-India Theater under Lt. Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell to bolster the British Commonwealth forces there, as well as to provide support to the Chinese Nationalists.118

(See Map 10.) As in other theaters, intelligence was the key to victory. When Lt. 

Gen. William J. Slim took command of the British 14th Army in 1943, he complained, “We never made up for the lack of methodically collected intelligence or 

the intelligence organization which should have been available to us when the war 

117 Ernie Pyle, Ernie’s War, ed. David Nichols (New York: Random House, 1986), pp. 366–73; 

Dower, War without Mercy, pp. 78, 82. 118 Louis Allen, Burma: The Longest War, 1941–1945 (New York: St. Martin’s, 1985); Richard 

J. Aldrich, Intelligence and the War against Japan: Britain, America and the Politics of Secret 

Service (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
SEATIC

C H I N A 

I N D I A – B U R M A T H E A T E R

N

E

P

A

L

B H U T A N

U N I O N O F S O V I E T 

S O C I A L I S T R E P U B L I C S M O N G O L I A N P E O P 

( O U T E R M O 

I N D I A

C H I N 

B U R M A

T H A I L A N D

Lhasa

Calcutta

Ramgarh

Delhi

Ft. Hertz

Ledo

Dibrugarh

Myitkyina

Bhamo

Mandalay

Imphal

90°

100° 

80°

40°

80°

90°

20°

30°

C H I N A - B U R M A - I N D I A

AREA OF OPERATIONS

1944–1945

Route of 'The Hump'

Theater Boundary

0 150

Miles

MAP 10
SINTIC

DIXIE MISSION

A T H E A T E R

K

O

R

E

A

L E ' S R E P U B L I C

N G O L I A )

N A

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I N D O C H I N A

P H I L I P P I N E S H A I N A N

F O R M O S A

Hanoi

Kunming

Kweiyang

Chungking

Cheng-tu

Changsha

Heng-yang

Hankow

Kaifeng

Yenan

Tsingtao

Tientsin

Peiping Dairen

Port Arthur

Pusan

Nanking Shanghai

Tuhshan

Liuchow Canton

Hong Kong

Nanning

110°

120°

130

°

110°

120°

40°

130°

30°

20°
276 NISEI LINGUISTS

began.”119 American Nisei would play an important role in turning this around. For 

some, it would mean combat under the terrible conditions. For others, it meant the 

tedium of rear-area duties set amidst the fading splendor of British India.

The first MISLS graduate to arrive in India was not a Nisei, but a Chinese 

American, Lt. Won-Loy Chan. The Stanford graduate spoke Cantonese and had 

learned Japanese at Crissy Field and Camp Savage. In April 1943 he joined Stilwell’s headquarters as an intelligence officer.120 The State Department also sent 

political officers to the theater, among them John K. Emmerson, who had been 

assigned to the U.S. embassy in Tokyo in the 1930s and spoke Japanese. In July 

1943 T.Sgt. Harry Katsuto Andow led ten Nisei by sea from Camp Savage to New 

Delhi, where they were assigned to the Joint Army-Navy Intelligence Collection 

Agency.121 In October another team arrived by air under Lt. John D. McLaughlin 

and Sgt. Fusao Uchiyama, who had been recruited for MISLS from the 100th 

Infantry Battalion.122

Some Nisei were assigned to the British Commonwealth forces. Sgt. Roy T. 

Takai served with the British 4 Corps and 19th Division. Hiro Harold Nishimura 

served with the Indian 26th Division.123 T3g. Eiichi “Eddy” Sakauye rescued a British captain in an Indian division under enemy fire in April 1944 and was awarded 

the Silver Star.124 T4g. Henry Kuwabara served with the British 72d Infantry Brigade and was awarded the British Empire Medal.125 In January 1944 Takai and 

Hiroshi Osako were sent to support British forces in Central Assam. When the 

Japanese attacked in March, Commonwealth forces in Imphal and Kohima were 

cut off for several weeks along with the American Nisei. “Although I’ve only been 

in this enchanted land of India for six months,” Takai wrote to the Pacific Citizen, 

“I have already gotten a taste of war.” He described the mortar, machine gun, and 

rifle fire and air raids close to the front lines.126

Stilwell took command of combined American and Chinese forces for the 

attack into northern Burma. (Map 11) In late December 1943 two Nisei joined 

119 William J. Slim, Defeat into Victory: Battling Japan in Burma and India, 1942–1945 (London: Cassell, 1956), p. 221. One author disputes Slim’s negative assessment of signals intelligence. 

Alan Stripp, Codebreaker in the Far East (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 165–71. 

See also Douglas Ford, “‘A Conquerable Yet Resilient Foe’: British Perceptions of the Imperial 

Japanese Army’s Tactics on the India-Burma Front, September 1942 to Summer 1944,” Intelligence 

and National Security 18, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 65–90. 120 Won-Loy Chan, Burma: The Untold Story (Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1986). 121 Sinclair, “Valuable as a Company of Men”; Interv, author with Roy T. Takai, 30 Oct 87; Roy 

T. Takai, MISNorCal Bio. 122 Interv, author with Henry Kuwabara, 12 Sep 96. 123 Interv, author with Takai, 30 Oct 87; Takai, MISNorCal Bio; Hiro Nishimura, Trials and 

Triumphs of the Nikkei (Mercer Island, Wash.: Fukuda Publishers, 1993), pp. 68–70. 124 Sinclair, “Valuable as a Company of Men”; Ltr, Kimura to Munakata, 18 January 1945, Harrington Papers; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 140, 162, 249. 125 “Nisei Officer Given the British Empire Award,” Pacific Citizen, May 46; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 249, 344; Pacific War and Peace, p. 67. 126 “Letters from Servicemen,” Pacific Citizen, 3 Jun 44; Takai, MISNorCal Bio; Interv, author 

with Takai, 30 Oct 87; Fusao Uchiyama, Harrington Papers.
X X X

IV

X X X

IV

X X X

XV

X X X

NCAC

X X X X

Y FORCE

X X X

XXXIII

X X X X

FOURTEENTH X X X

XXXIII

X X X

XXXIII

I I I

5307

X

5332

OSS 101

21 Mar 45

4 Mar 45

4 Jan 45

1–3 May 45

29 Apr 45

22 Apr 45 2 May 45 1 Feb 45

22 Jan 45

4 Aug 44

Brahmaputra R

Chindwin R

Sittang R

Mekong R

Mekong R

Yangtze R

Salween R

B A Y

O F

B E N G A L

T I B E T

C H I N A

F R E N C H

I N D O C H I N A

T H A I L A N D

B H U T A N

Ledo Dibrugarh

Kunming

Fort Hertz

Nhpum Ga

Myitkyina

Kalewa

Bhamo

Indaw

Mandalay

Chittagong

Cox's Bazar

Toungoo Chiengmai

Akyab Magwe

Prome

Pegu

Moulmein

Rangoon

Meiktila

Lashio

Kohima

Imphal

0 200

Miles

BURMA

OPERATIONS

1944–1945

Allied Axis of Advance

Japanese Attack

Japanese Withdrawal

MAP 11
278 NISEI LINGUISTS

Lieutenant Chan in the G–2 section of the Northern Combat Area Command 

(NCAC). NCAC consisted of two Chinese divisions and a regiment-size American infantry unit, the 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional), which had arrived in 

India in October 1943. To command the unit Stilwell personally selected Brig. 

Gen. Frank D. Merrill, who had served as a language attaché in Tokyo before the 

war. Newsmen dubbed the unit Merrill’s Marauders.127

Merrill knew that his Marauders would be operating deep behind enemy 

lines and would need some Japanese-speakers. In January 1944 he walked into 

Emmerson’s office and began to reminisce about their days together in Tokyo. 

Warming to the subject, they began to sing familiar Japanese songs. “We stopped 

suddenly and Frank turned to me,” Emmerson recalled. “Come along! I’m leaving for a secret camp in central India. This will be a special operation into the 

Burma jungle. You’ll be great—to talk to the Japanese!”128 Emmerson agreed but 

stayed with the Marauders only briefly. Fortunately, the War Department G–2 had 

already anticipated the need. In September 1943 MISLS selected fourteen Nisei 

volunteers, half of whom were Kibei, headed by Capt. William A. Laffin, who was 

born and raised in Japan by a Japanese mother and American father. The Nisei 

leader was Sgt. Edward Hideo Mitsukado, a court reporter from Hawaii. Half of 

the team members were college graduates.129

Because the Marauders would be operating behind enemy lines, assignment 

was especially risky for the Nisei if they should be captured alive. Before they 

went into action Stilwell visited the unit and happened to spot Sgt. Henry Hiroharu Gosho.

“Are you Chinese?” he asked.

“No, sir,” replied Gosho.

“Are you Korean?”

“No, sir.”

“Are you Filipino?”

“No, sir.”

127 Merrill’s Marauders (February–May 1944), American Forces in Action (Washington, D.C.: 

Military Intelligence Division, War Department, 1945); James E. T. Hopkins, Spearhead: A Complete History of Merrill’s Marauder Rangers (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 

2000); Charles N. Hunter, Galahad (San Antonio, Tex.: Naylor, 1963); Charlton Ogburn, Jr., The 

Marauders, 2d ed. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1959). 128 John K. Emmerson, The Japanese Thread: A Life in the U.S. Foreign Service (New York: 

Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1978), p. 150. 129 Edgar Laytha, “Nisei,” CBI Roundup (14 September 1944): 3, reprinted in Pacific Citizen, 14 

Oct 44, p. 2; Sinclair, “Valuable as a Company of Men.” See also Crost, Honor by Fire, pp. 117–33; 

Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 184–85, 194–95, 201–02; Roland Kotani, “The Unsung Heroes: 

A Kibei in the Burma Jungle,” Hawaii Herald, 6 Nov 81, reprinted in Oguro, Sempai Gumi, pp. 

97–105; Thomas Tsubota, “From the 100th Battalion to Merrill’s Marauders,” in Tsukiyama et 

al., Secret Valor, p. 69; Akiji Yoshimura, “China-Burma-India: 14 Nisei and the Marauders (With 

Merrill’s Marauders),” Pacific Citizen, 25 Dec 56 [1959?], reprinted in Oguro, Sempai Gumi, pp. 

85–96, and in Ichinokuchi, John Aiso and the M.I.S., pp. 85–94; Akiji Yoshimura and Howard 

Furumoto, Ltrs to the Editor, The Burman News, Feb 88, pp. 3–4.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1944 279

“Don’t tell me you’re . . . ”

“Yes, sir.”

The general turned to a nearby officer and said, “Transfer that man to division 

headquarters and keep him there!” However, Gosho’s unit quietly ignored Stilwell’s order.130 So often did he come under fire that his buddies named him Horizontal Hank, because of the many times he had to throw himself on the ground.

Merrill’s Marauders entered combat in February 1944. The mountainous jungle was as much an enemy as the Japanese. Marching and fighting under harsh 

conditions without relief took a heavy toll on all soldiers, and scores of soldiers 

were evacuated for illness. At least four Nisei were evacuated for fever, exhaustion, or injury, one for a hernia from laboring under a heavy load.131 The Nisei also 

carried the burden of proving their loyalty. One told a reporter: “I had a terrible 

feeling when the first Jap I had shot collapsed and expired with a heartbreaking 

‘Banzai!’ on his lips, but my second shot came easy, the third even easier. I can’t 

tell you exactly how many I have shot. It is very difficult to know in the jungle 

where everything melts into the background.”132

Another Nisei with the unit was S.Sgt. Roy Hiroshi Matsumoto. Born near 

Los Angeles, he was a third-generation Japanese American, or Sansei, whose 

grandfather had immigrated to the United States. (He was, however, a member 

of the same age cohort as the Nisei generation.) Matsumoto had attended middle 

school in Japan before the war. His parents returned to Japan with his brothers and 

sisters but left Matsumoto in California to attend high school. In 1942 he had been 

interned in Jerome, Arkansas, where he volunteered for the Military Intelligence 

Service. In early March the Marauders discovered a Japanese telephone wire running through their position. Matsumoto climbed a tree and hooked up a field telephone to intercept the calls. He overheard a Japanese sergeant report that he had 

only three soldiers to guard an ammunition dump. The Americans attacked and 

destroyed the dump, and Matsumoto was later awarded the Legion of Merit.133

After marching and fighting through some of the toughest terrain in the 

world, the Marauders occupied blocking positions behind the veteran Japanese 

18th Division. The 2d Battalion dug in around the village of Nhpum Ga with 600 

men, including three Nisei. The Japanese surrounded the American battalion and 

attacked repeatedly for eleven days. So close were the Japanese that the Nisei could 

hear the Japanese officers shouting commands, which they quickly translated so 

the American soldiers could react in time. At night Matsumoto would crawl in front 

of American lines to eavesdrop on the Japanese soldiers. One night, he overheard 

preparations for a dawn attack, so he crawled back earlier than usual and made his 

report. The Americans quietly pulled back from their front lines in the dark and 

130 Emmerson, The Japanese Thread, pp. 160–61. 131 Tsubota, “From the 100th Battalion to Merrill’s Marauders,” p. 69; Yoshimura, in Oguro, 

Sempai Gumi, p. 93. 132 Laytha, “Nisei.” 133 Merrill’s Marauders, pp. 39–40, 115.
280 NISEI LINGUISTS

left their fighting positions booby 

trapped. When the Japanese attacked, 

the Americans caught them by surprise 

and cut them down. Japanese soldiers 

who fell into the American foxholes 

were killed by the booby traps. Just as 

the Japanese attack began to falter, Matsumoto stood up and shouted in his best 

command voice, “Susume! [Advance!]” 

The surviving Japanese leapt to their 

feet and rushed straight into the American fire. An American soldier called 

this “the all important outstanding contribution which I am convinced saved 

the lives of every man who survived the 

long tenacious defense of Nhpum Ga.” 

According to the official report, “Sergeant Matsumoto became a legendary character overnight.” The siege at 

Nhpum Ga was soon lifted.134

The Marauders were then sent to 

capture Myitkyina and its airfield from 

which the Japanese air forces threatened 

the airlift to China. Captain Laffin, now regimental S–2, led a Kachin patrol ahead 

of the main body to reconnoiter a route through sixty-five miles of mountainous 

jungle.135 Following Laffin’s reconnaissance party, the Marauders descended upon 

Myitkyina by surprise and on 17 May seized the airfield. Stilwell at once began 

to pour in reinforcements.136 On 18 May Laffin took to the air in an L–5 liaison 

aircraft to reconnoiter the Japanese positions. As the plane lifted off, a Japanese 

Zero suddenly appeared and shot it down within sight of the end of the airstrip. 

All on board were killed. The Nisei were stunned by the loss of their team leader. 

The news “came as a great shock to me,” recalled Akiji Yoshimura, “and the few 

minutes I was able to spend at his gravesite near the airstrip seemed a totally 

134 Maj. John M. Jones III, “Notes on Merrill Expedition, 1944,” Unpubl Ms, JICA/CBI/SEA 

Branch, 27 Sep 44, copy in author’s files; Merrill’s Marauders, p. 86; Charles F. Romanus and 

Riley Sunderland, Stilwell’s Command Problems, U.S. Army in World War II (Washington, D.C.: 

Office of the Chief of Military History, 1956), pp. 190–91; Warren T. Ventura, Ltr to Editor, The 

Burman News, May 90, p. 1; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 194; Roy Matsumoto, Ltr to Editor, 

The Burman News, Feb 91, p. 8; Roy H. Matsumoto, “With Merrill’s Marauders in Burma,” in Falk 

and Tsuneishi, MIS in the War against Japan, pp. 62–64, 110–11. 135 Merrill’s Marauders, pp. 98–101, 106. The Kachins were a northern hill tribe equally 

opposed to the Burmese lowlanders and the Japanese occupiers. 136 “Grads Aided in Saving Airfield,” Yaban Gogai, Sep–Oct 45, p. 6.

Herbert Y. Miyasaki (left) and Akiji 

Yoshimura with Merrill after the 

Battle of Nhpum Ga, 1 May 1944
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1944 281

inadequate tribute to a fine officer, leader and friend.”137 Team leadership fell to 

Sergeant Mitsukado.

The battle for the town lasted another eight weeks. Merrill’s Marauders paid 

a terrible price. Most of the original Marauders were medically evacuated by air, 

including General Merrill and several Nisei such as Sergeant Gosho. While recuperating, Gosho took the opportunity to write to his twelve-year-old sister in an 

internment camp:

Right now I’m in an American hospital recovering and recuperating from my third attack 

of malaria, double hernia and intestinal ulcer. We were in Burma for four months fighting 

the Japs in the jungles and mountainsides. I had walked 860 miles, climbed hills that you 

practically had to crawl up, crossed and recrossed rivers 49 times. It rains quite a bit in 

Burma, and at times I slept wet, wet all day for weeks at a time.

Gosho also shared his thoughts on the special situation of Americans of Japanese ancestry:

For your sake I would want you to enter a real American school and live the American 

way. The life you are leading now [in a camp] is not the thing for you. You must live in 

America—’cuz you are all America by heart. Dad and mother must realize this and they 

do know it deep down in their hearts. Yes, Japan is a country of the past—her history 

ended on Dec. 7, 1941.138

Other Nisei were flown into Myitkyina. In July the Office of War Information sent a tactical psychological warfare team to broadcast surrender messages 

to Japanese soldiers using leaflets and loudspeakers.139 One Nisei on the team, 

S.Sgt. Kenji Yasui, a Kibei from Los Angeles, learned to his distress that the 

Japanese division in the area came from Kyushu: It “was made up of men from 

the district where he had spent his youth. He expected momentarily to find his 

brother’s body. He met a boyhood friend from his parental village while interrogating prisoners, and from him learned that the brother had been transferred to 

another division.”140

As Japanese defenses crumbled, hundreds of Japanese soldiers attempted to 

flee across the Irrawaddy River. During mopping-up operations Yasui’s team spotted some Japanese soldiers hiding on an island in the stream. With three Caucasian 

soldiers Yasui swam out to the island to persuade them to surrender. When he 

reached the island he called to the Japanese soldiers to assemble. Impersonating a 

Japanese officer, Yasui declared he needed them for a “special mission.” Several 

137 Oguro, Sempai Gumi, p. 93; Frank Hawlett, “Heroic Death of Detroit Captain in Jungles of 

Burma Revealed,” United Press, 23 May 44, reprinted in Oguro, Sempai Gumi, pp. 31–32; Hopkins, 

Spearhead, p. 536. 138 “Nisei Writes Japan’s Epitaph,” Chicago Sun, 24 Sep 44, reprinted in Pacific Citizen, 21 Oct 

44, p. 2; also reprinted in WRA, Nisei in the War against Japan, p. 5. 139 Emmerson, The Japanese Thread, pp. 168–69. 140 Hosokawa, Nisei, p. 299.
282 NISEI LINGUISTS

Japanese soldiers emerged from hiding, but two resisted and were killed by the 

Americans; another killed himself with a hand grenade. Yasui “announced he was 

a colonel and made them line up and execute close order drill,” as John Emmerson 

described the scene. “Then he made them get in the river and swim across pushing 

a raft on which he stood with carbine aimed at them.” Yasui brought in thirteen 

prisoners and was later awarded the Silver Star.141

The Americans and Chinese forces finally captured Myitkyina on 3 August. 

A few days later Sgt. Grant Jiro Hirabayashi paid a visit to Captain Chan, assistant G–2 with the Myitkyina task force: “Captain, you aren’t going to believe this, 

but I’ve got about twenty female, I think Korean, POWs down at the center and I

need help.” These frightened young women were forced prostitutes, or “comfort 

women,” for the Japanese Army. The Nisei showed them photographs of Japanese 

officers, but they learned little of value because the women spoke little Japanese. 

The last evening before the women were flown out to India, the Nisei threw a 

small going-away party. The Nisei sang American, Japanese, and Hawaiian songs 

accompanied by a guitar. The Korean women responded by singing the Korean 

folksong, “Arirang.”142

Other Nisei in Burma served with Chinese units. While making surrender 

broadcasts from a liaison aircraft flying low over Japanese positions, S.Sgt. Frank 

T. Tokubo was twice shot down but landed safely in Chinese positions each time. 

On several occasions these Nisei were mistakenly captured by the Chinese, who 

had a deep hatred for the Japanese enemy. One Nisei captured by Chinese soldiers 

recalled that never in all his life had he talked so fast with sign language and wrote 

so many kanji to explain that they were minkuo (American) soldiers. He recalled 

that the shaken Nisei remained a pale green for the next three months or more.143

The fourteen Nisei with Merrill’s Marauders in particular impressed senior 

American officers, starting with General Merrill himself: “As for the value of the 

Nisei group, I couldn’t have gotten along without them. Probably few realize that 

these boys did everything that an infantryman normally does plus the extra work 

of translating, interrogating, etc., etc. Also, they were in a most unenviable position as to identity as almost everyone from the Japanese to the Chinese shot first 

and identified later.”144

Merrill’s comments were seconded by an observer from the Army Ground 

Forces who reported that the Nisei “have proven to be of great value to that organi141 Ltr, John Emmerson to Colonel Rasmussen, 20 August 1944, Box 303, Entry 208, RG 165, 

NARA; Laytha, “Nisei”; Interv, Ken Akune with Kenji Yasui, 17 Jan 89. 142 Chan, Burma, pp. 92–97; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 228, 241, 312. 143 WD Press Release, 22 Oct 45; Sinclair, “Valuable as a Company of Men,” p. 7; Harrington, 

Yankee Samurai, p. 242; “Sgt. Tokubo Reported Only Nisei Attached to Chinese Unit,” Pacific 

Citizen, Jun 46. 144 Sinclair, “Valuable as a Company of Men,” p. 7.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1944 283

zation. In every instance the men have been loyal and demonstrated great courage 

in carrying out their assignments.”145 The Marauders’ unit historian wrote:

Some of the most valuable men in our outfit were the Nisei Japanese interpreters not with 

battalion and regimental headquarters but with a platoon in contact on the perimeter. 

The Japs talk loudly sometimes before they attack. On several occasions the Japanese 

interpreters told us exactly what the Japs were shouting and enabled us to get set for an 

attack from a certain direction. Once an interpreter caused the Japs to attack into a trap 

by shouting orders to them.146

All fourteen were awarded the Combat Infantryman Badge and Presidential 

Unit Citation. Four were awarded field commissions by December, including team 

leader Sergeant Mitsukado, who wrote to a friend that he was the “most surprised 

soldier” in Burma. “Wearing the bars feels great but I miss the company of the boys 

who went through hell with me. They’re a great bunch.” Three others returned to 

the United States to attend officer candidate school.147

The Nisei assigned to Merrill’s Marauders also helped change the War Department’s prohibition of any public notice of Nisei serving in the Military Intelligence 

Service. In May 1944 the headquarters of U.S. Army Forces in the China-BurmaIndia Theater requested an exception to policy from the Bureau of Public Relations in Washington:

Does stop still remain on Japanese-Americans serving in this theater? Lifting ban 

would appear desirable for following reasons:

1st, Morale of Nisei serving here would be raised if public recognition given them;

2nd, Might encourage better treatment of loyal Nisei;

3rd, Propaganda value against Japs;

4th, Nisei themselves realize chances they take at front lines and we doubt that treatment if captured, would be worse.

We would not release details of their intelligence activities but rather heroic action on 

their part at front lines.148

The War Department agreed. In September S.Sgt. Edgar M. Laytha, a member of the OWI team, published an article in CBI Roundup detailing the exploits of 

the Nisei in Burma. The Pacific Citizen ran excerpts on its front page, naming the 

145 Lt. Col. M. G. Crombez, 8 May 44, included in Memo, Col. W. H. Wood, sub: Nisei, OPD, 9 

Jun 44, Trng Grp, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, NARA, reprinted in Tsukiyama et al., Secret 

Valor, pp. 15–16. 146 Jones, “Notes on the Merrill Expedition, 1944.” 147 “Eddie Mitsukado, In Burma, Receives Field Commission,” Honolulu Advertiser, 28 Jan 45, 

p. 4; “3 ‘Ears’ of Merrill’s Marauders Return to Fort Snelling as China-Burma Vets,” Minneapolis 

Morning Tribune, 11 Jan 45. 148 Radiogram, CG U.S. Army Forces, China, Burma, and India Rear Echelon, to War Department, 16 May 44, Class Ref Sub File, Asst Sec War, RG 107, NARA.
284 NISEI LINGUISTS

Nisei with Merrill’s Marauders and others serving in the theater.149 Kenji Yasui’s 

bravery in tricking Japanese soldiers into surrendering also received widespread 

press coverage, and he was touted as the “Baby Sergeant York.”150 These became 

the first Nisei heroes of the war with Japan.

This publicity appeared in the autumn of 1944, an important time for Japanese 

Americans back home. For months the Secretary of the Interior had been urging 

President Roosevelt to close the camps, and the Supreme Court was nearing a 

decision to overturn the military exclusion orders from the West Coast. The 442d 

Regimental Combat Team began receiving extensive press coverage when it was 

committed to combat in Italy in June, but many Americans were not yet convinced 

of Nisei loyalty. The Washington Post published an editorial in September urging 

the War Department to release more details about the Nisei in the Pacific: “Nisei 

soldiers have played a vital and dramatic role in our succession of victories over 

the Japanese in the coral islands and steaming jungles of the Pacific theater of 

operations. Their knowledge of the Japanese language has been invaluable.” The 

editorial acknowledged Hoichi Kubo’s heroism on Saipan, as well as that of the 

Merrill’s Marauders Nisei: “In Burma, according to men who have been their 

comrades there, the Nisei proved themselves particularly intrepid and helpful, 

venturing into the enemy lines and throwing them into confusion by speaking 

their language.”151

The Merrill’s Marauders Nisei became the best-known Nisei in the war against 

Japan. The War Relocation Authority used their story to impress other Americans with Nisei valor and loyalty. For example, in March 1945 the War Relocation 

Authority placed a story in the Seattle Times about Sergeant Gosho. The article 

cited a letter from a Caucasian sergeant:

The men of our platoon owe their lives to Sergt. Henry G[osho], a Japanese-American of Seattle. Hank (we call him Horizontal Hank because he’s been pinned down so 

many times by Jap machine-gun fire) guided the machine-gun fire on our side which 

killed every Jap on that side.

The boys who fought alongside Hank agree that they never have seen a more calm, 

cool and collected man under fire. He was always so eager to be where he could be of the 

most use and effectiveness and that was most always the hot spot.152

149 “Official Censorship Lifted on Participation of Nisei Soldiers on Burma Front against Japan,” 

Pacific Citizen, 7 Oct 44; Laytha, “Nisei,” p. 3; “Cite Japanese Americans on Burma Front,” Pacific 

Citizen, 7 Oct 44; “Nisei Soldiers Aid Allied Victories on Burma Front,” Pacific Citizen, 14 Oct 44, 

p. 2. Edgar M. Laytha, a journalist in the Far East before the war, wrote The March of Japan (New 

York: F. A. Stokes, 1936). He enlisted in April 1943, attended MISLS, and went to India with the 

OWI team. In the autumn of 1944 he parachuted into north Burma and disappeared. He was listed 

as missing in action. 150 Editorial in Twin Falls Times News, Oct 44, reprinted in WRA, Nisei in the War against 

Japan, p. 7. 151 WRA, Nisei in the War against Japan, p. 8. 152 “Seattle Nisei Saves Platoon of Marauders,” Seattle Times, 4 Mar 45, reprinted in WRA, 

Nisei in the War against Japan, p. 11; also cited in Emmerson, The Japanese Thread, p. 161.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1944 285

Another Caucasian soldier wrote:

We of the Merrill’s Marauders wish to boast of the Japanese-Americans fighting in 

our outfit and the swell job that they put up. . . . Many of the boys and myself especially, 

never knew a Japanese-American or what one was like—now we know and the Marauders 

want you to know that they are backing the nisei one hundred percent. It makes the boys 

and myself raging mad to read about movements against Japanese-Americans by some 4-

F’ers back home. We would dare them to say things like they have in front of us.153

Another unconventional American unit, Office of Strategic Services (OSS) 

Detachment 101, fought in Burma without such publicity. The detachment began 

operations in January 1943 from a base camp in Assam by organizing hill tribes 

to conduct reconnaissance, sabotage, and the rescue of downed airmen.154 Detachment 101 was the first element of the OSS to engage in combat operations against 

Japan, and for this it needed the language skills of the Nisei. OSS Director William J. Donovan was an early advocate for Nisei in the war effort and directed the 

recruitment of Nisei volunteers from Camp Shelby.155

OSS leaders in India did not wait for the Shelby Nisei but sought instead Nisei 

volunteers from the Southeast Asia Translation and Interrogation Center (SEATIC) 

and the Fourteenth Air Force. T5gs. Hideo Imai and Robert T. Honda volunteered 

in March 1944. Honda had served with Merrill’s Marauders until evacuated for illness. The two Nisei parachuted into northern Burma and lived for months with the 

Kachin Rangers. “It was a rugged existence,” Imai recalled. “We were supplied by 

air drops, food, books, clothes, ammunition, equipment. . . . Because of Jap agents 

among the tribes, we were forced to shift our command post continually. I had 

malaria several times and always suffered from dysentery.”156

After eight months two other Nisei serving in India volunteered to take their 

places. T3g. Shigeto Ken Mazawa and T5g. Charles Y. Matsunaka were inserted 

into the Burmese jungle for:

Working in areas behind enemy lines and doing both language and radio intercept 

work. These two volunteered without any hesitation and took their jumps in fine form 

although having had no previous training in parachute jumping whatsoever. The para153 Cited in Emmerson, The Japanese Thread, pp. 159–60. 154 Richard Dunlop, Behind Japanese Lines: With the OSS in Burma (Chicago: Rand-McNally, 

1979); William R. Peers and Dean Brelis, Behind the Burma Road (Boston: Little, Brown, 1963); 

James R. Ward, “The Activities of Detachment 101 of the OSS,” in The Secrets War: The Office of 

Strategic Services in World War II, ed. George C. Chalou (Washington, D.C.: National Archives 

and Records Administration, 1992), pp. 318–27; Mary Previte, “Tad Nagaki,” Ex-CBI Roundup

(June 2002). 155 Simon Morioka, “Japanese Americans in the Service of Their Country,” Ph.D. Diss., Selwyn 

College, University of Cambridge, 1998, pp. 50–51. 156 Sinclair, “Valuable as a Company of Men.”
286 NISEI LINGUISTS

trooper who gave them instructions and who accompanied them on their jump flight told 

me that when their turns came to jump, they took off themselves with “no assistance.” 157

In October 1944 the original team of fourteen Nisei volunteers from Camp 

Shelby under 1st Lt. Ralph T. Yempuku arrived in the theater and was split up 

among several OSS activities. Yempuku and several other Nisei flew into Myitkyina in December to join Detachment 101 for the coming offensive to drive the 

Japanese from Burma.158

Allied intelligence organizations in India expanded rapidly in size and capability. One historian has counted twelve Allied intelligence organizations operating in the Southeast Asia Command. Most had a need for Japanese-language 

expertise. In May 1944 the Joint Intelligence Collection Agency in New Delhi 

was replaced by SEATIC, which was “established in order to pool the resources 

of British and US linguists.” SEATIC was headed by Col. Allender Swift, a U.S. 

Army Japanese-language officer, and later by Col. Gaspare F. Blunda. SEATIC 

became the central pool for Nisei language personnel, similar to the Allied Translation and Interpreter Section in the Southwest Pacific.159

The British established a large prisoner of war compound near army headquarters at Red Fort in Old Delhi. This was also the location of Headquarters, 

Intelligence Bureau, and the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Center. 

Dozens of Nisei helped with the interrogations, which sometimes produced valuable information. S.Sgt. Frank T. Tokubo spent five weeks interrogating prisoners from Nagasaki to glean details about the Mitsubishi aircraft factory located 

there. Other language work was done by British soldiers who had graduated from 

the Japanese program at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London or 

trained at the British intelligence school in Karachi.160

In this theater, Nisei were not used in signals intelligence, which was directed 

by the Wireless Experimental Center in Delhi and supported by Bletchley Park in 

Great Britain. Nevertheless, these cryptographers had good success against Japanese radio codes and used Caucasian translators.161

Life in the rear areas was enjoyable for the “Jap-Yanks,” as the British called 

them, despite the difficult climate and the oppressive poverty. They came to enjoy 

157 Ibid.; WD Press Release, 22 Oct 45; Shigeto Mazawa, autobiography in Harrington Papers. 158 Ralph Yempuku, “OSS Detachment 101, CBI Theater,” in Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor, 

pp. 75–76; Tomi K. Knaefler, Our House Divided: Seven Japanese American Families in World 

War II (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991), pp. 88–95; Interv, Andrew Cox with Ralph 

Yempuku; Calvin Tottori, “The OSS Niseis in the China-Burma-India Theater,” 2d ed., Unpubl Ms, 

2001, copy in author’s files. 159 Sinclair, “Valuable as a Company of Men”; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 180–81, 215, 

217; Funch, Linguists in Uniform, pp. 154–56. 160 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 226; Aldrich, Intelligence and the War against Japan, pp. 

162, 167; Stripp, Codebreaker in the Far East, pp. 123–25, 139–44; Sadao Oba, The “Japanese” 

War, trans. Anne Kaneko (Sandgate, U.K.: Japan Library, 1995); Interv, author with Kuwabara, 12 

Sep 96.

161 Stripp, Codebreaker in the Far East, pp. 39–47.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1944 287

being served afternoon tea by houseboys and having their “kit” maintained by 

servants. They could visit tourist sites such as the Taj Mahal. They also witnessed 

the waning days of the British Empire and scenes of unimaginable suffering such 

as the 1943 Bengal famine.

In the China-Burma-India Theater, the Tenth Air Force provided air support. 

In the spring of 1943 Maj. Sheldon M. Covell led a team of ten Nisei to the Air 

Intelligence School in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and then onward to the Tenth 

Air Force. However, Tenth Air Force needed more Nisei trained in low-level radio 

intercept. In December 1943 the Tenth Air Force commanding general wrote General Henry H. Arnold, Commanding General, U.S. Army Air Forces, for help: 

“The Japanese are great talkers over the radio [while in flight], but unfortunately 

we have no way of knowing what they are saying.”162 In response, MISLS sent 

twenty-five Nisei to MacDill Field, Florida, for special training, and then to Camp 

Pinedale, California. They arrived in India in October 1944 and joined the 6th 

Radio Squadron Mobile in Assam in January 1945.163

One Nisei went to a special assignment with the 1st Air Commando, which 

used fighters, bombers, transports, gliders, liaison planes, and even helicopters to 

provide air support to Merrill’s Marauders, OSS Detachment 101, and the British 

long-range penetration groups known as the Chindits. Tom Shojiro Taketa was 

assigned early in 1944 and helped monitor Japanese radio communications.164

American Nisei played important roles in the China-Burma-India Theater, 

from SEATIC in Delhi to Merrill’s Marauders, OSS Detachment 101, and British 

and Chinese combat units. The senior officer commanding Nisei in the theater, 

Colonel Blunda, gave them the highest praise:

Each one was as valuable as an Infantry company, despite the fact they were not combat 

troops. Many allied soldiers returned safely to their homes because the Nisei lighted the 

darkness in front of them by interrogating prisoners and translating documents. The value 

of the Nisei was that they supplied the missing link—understanding of the shades of meaning of the Japanese language—between the enemy and British and U.S. intelligence.165

The intelligence picture in China was more complex than in Burma and India. 

American intelligence agencies included the Sino-American Cooperative Organization (SACO), the OSS, and the Army’s own theater G–2.166 American plans for 

offensive operations in China suffered a major setback in April 1944, when Japanese forces smashed deep into China with the Ichi-Go ̄ offensive. Chinese ground 

162 Quoted in Kreis, Piercing the Fog, p. 361. 163 Ted Tsukiyama, “Radio Intelligence in CBI,” in Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor, pp. 72–73; 

Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 245. 164 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 167, 224–25; “Jap-American Volunteer from Tule WRA 

Center Fights Nips in India,” Klamath Falls Herald and News, n.d.; “Taketa Wins Bronze Star,” 

Yaban Gogai, Sep–Oct 45, p. 4. 165 Sinclair, “Valuable as a Company of Men,” p. 7. 166 Yu Shen, “SACO Re-Examined: Sino American Intelligence Cooperation during World War 

II,” Intelligence and National Security 16, no. 4 (Winter 2001): 149.
288 NISEI LINGUISTS

troops were forced back throughout the country, and several American airfields 

were overrun. The Americans had no plans to commit ground troops on the Chinese mainland but clearly needed to bolster its intelligence capabilities. The G–2 

for U.S. Forces China in Chungking was Col. Joseph K. Dickey, who had helped 

Colonel Rasmussen set up the Fourth Army Intelligence School at Crissy Field. 

Dickey was “the only key officer of the former Stilwell staff whom I had retained,” 

wrote Lt. Gen. Albert C. Wedemeyer, who took command of American forces in 

China in October 1944, “and he had fully merited my confidence.” In the spring 

of 1944 Dickey brought several Nisei to Chungking to form the Sino Translation 

and Interrogation Center (SINTIC). He was later joined by Maj. John A. Burden, 

a veteran of language work in the South Pacific. In December 1944 Burden wrote 

Rasmussen for his assistance in setting up a language section in Chungking. As a 

result, eight Merrill’s Marauders veterans and several other Nisei were transferred 

there in early 1945.167

In the summer of 1944 General Stilwell sent a small observer mission to Chinese Communist headquarters in Yenan in northwest China.168 The first group 

arrived on 22 July. A second contingent on 7 August included Major Burden and 

T4g. George I. Nakamura, a quiet Nisei from southern California and at twenty 

years old the mission’s youngest member.169 The Dixie Mission, as it was called, 

was directed to gather intelligence about the common Japanese enemy, as well as 

about the Chinese Communists. The Communists had excellent sources for military and political intelligence about Japan. Yenan was refuge to the head of the 

Japan Communist Party, Susumu Okano (Sanzo ̄ Nosaka). Exiled Japanese Communist leaders regularly received copies of the Tokyo Asahi daily newspaper in 

Yenan within ten days of publication. They also collected hundreds of Japanese 

prisoners of war and had considerable success in developing effective propaganda 

techniques.

In September 1944 Nakamura was joined by T4g. Shoso Nomura. In October 

the Office of War Information sent a third Nisei, T4g. Koji Ariyoshi, who had been 

a labor organizer and member of the American Communist Party before the war. 

Ariyoshi used his political background to establish a rapport with the Chinese and 

Japanese Communist leaders and filed reports on propaganda techniques and the 

future policies of the Japan Communist Party. Okano invited Ariyoshi and John 

167 Albert C. Wedemeyer, Wedemeyer Reports! (New York: Henry Holt, 1958), p. 351; Ltr, John 

A. Burden to Kai Rasmussen, 15 December 1944, Trng Grp, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, 

NARA; Interv, author with John A. Burden, 5 Dec 94. 168 David D. Barrett, Dixie Mission: The United States Army Observer Group in Yenan, 1944, 

China Research Monographs no. 6 (Berkeley, Calif.: Center for Chinese Studies, 1970); Carolle J. 

Carter, Mission to Yenan: American Liaison with the Chinese Communists, 1944–1947 (Lexington: 

University Press of Kentucky, 1997); John Colling, The Spirit of Yenan: A Wartime Chapter of 

Sino-American Friendship (Hong Kong: API Press, 1991); Maochun Yu, OSS in China: Prelude to 

Cold War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). 169 Intervs, author with George Nakamura, 6 Dec 94; with Sho Nomura, 10 Sep 96; and with 

Tosh Uesato, 21 Aug 95. Sho Nomura, in Ichinokuchi, John Aiso and the M.I.S., pp. 106–24. After 

a month in Yenan, Burden returned to Chungking. Carter, Mission to Yenan, p. 155.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1944 289

Emmerson to address the Japanese Emancipation League on Pearl Harbor Day, 

7 December 1944. The two spoke about American democracy and freedom of 

speech. In particular Ariyoshi “told them about the nisei fighting for their country 

in spite of their Japanese ancestry.” Ariyoshi’s experiences in Yenan only reinforced his prewar political convictions. By his own testimony, “the main change 

was inside him. He came away a staunch partisan of the Chinese revolution.”170

All sides used psychological warfare in China and Southeast Asia. The Japanese stressed the anticolonial nature of their policies and fostered subversion 

among Indian troops serving under British officers. The British exploited the 

hatred of the Kachin hill tribes toward the lowland Burmese. The British and 

Americans sought to undermine the morale of Japanese soldiers in the region. In 

1943 the British Army hired the former owner of a Japanese-language print shop 

in San Francisco, Shigeki Oka, to print propaganda materials in Calcutta, such as 

the Gunjin Shimbun [Soldier News].

The Office of War Information opened branch offices in New Delhi in 1942 

and later in Bombay, Calcutta, and Karachi in India and Kunming and Chungking 

in China. In March 1944 nine Nisei arrived at the OWI compound in Ledo and 

at a tea plantation, Chota Powai, near Margherita. This marked a new phase in 

OWI’s efforts. The OWI Nisei included Karl Yoneda, a Communist Party member, and leftists such as Koji Ariyoshi. Other team members included Chris Ishii, 

the talented graphic artist who designed the MISLS “gopher” emblem; Clarke 

Kawakami, who had worked for the Do ̄mei news service and was the son of the 

distinguished Issei journalist K. K. Kawakami; and S.Sgt. Edgar M. Laytha, a 

writer for the Saturday Evening Post.

171 The Ledo team began developing propaganda materials, including Senjin Shimbun [Battlefront News]. At first the Caucasians wrote leaflets for the Nisei to translate into Japanese. “How can I translate 

that?” Yoneda protested. “The Japanese just don’t think that way!”172 Eventually, 

the Caucasian officers let the Nisei share in the drafting.

170 Emmerson, The Japanese Thread, p. 198; Koji Ariyoshi, From Kona to Yenan: The Political 

Memoirs of Koji Ariyoshi, ed. Alice M. Beechert and Edward D. Beechert (Honolulu: University 

of Hawaii Press, 2000); Hugh Deane, ed., Remembering Koji Ariyoshi (Los Angeles: U.S.-China 

Peoples Friendship Association, 1978). Ariyoshi’s OWI reports from November 1944 to January 

1945 were reprinted in U.S. Senate, Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal 

Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary, The Amerasia Papers: A Clue to the Catastrophe of China (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 

1970), vol. 2. 171 Eleanor A. Sparagana, “The Conduct and Consequences of Psychological Warfare: American Psychological Operations in the War against Japan, 1941–1945,” Ph.D. Diss., Brandeis University, 1990; Sandler, Cease Resistance, pp. 172–75; Emmerson, The Japanese Thread, p. 163; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 225–26, 249–50; Sinclair, “Valuable as a Company of Men”; Clarke 

Kawakami and Karl Yoneda, Harrington Papers. 172 MIS Archival Collection and Harrington Papers, NJAHS; “Karl Yoneda—U.S. Soldier,” 

Peoples’ World (27 November 1945); Karl G. Yoneda, “A Brief History of U.S. Asian Labor,” Political Affairs (September 1976); Karl G. Yoneda, Ganbatte: Sixty-Year Struggle of a Kibei Worker

(Los Angeles: Asian American Studies Center, University of California at Los Angeles, 1983).
290 NISEI LINGUISTS

After the fall of Myitkyina, scores of sick and wounded Japanese prisoners 

were flown to Ledo, where they were treated in the 20th General Hospital. Yoneda 

and the other OWI Nisei used the prisoners to develop more effective materials.173

The long-range goal was to formulate a strategic policy to induce the ultimate 

surrender of Japan. “The metamorphosis which occurs in the mind of a Japanese 

prisoner of war,” wrote Emmerson in August 1944, “suggests to us what may happen to the Japanese people.” He concluded, “If we deal circumspectly with the 

173 “Karl Yoneda—U.S. Soldier”; Emmerson, The Japanese Thread, pp. 171–76; “Use of Japanese Prisoners of War,” in A Psychological Warfare Casebook, ed. William E. Daugherty and 

Morris Janowitz (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1958), pp. 198–201, 201–11; “Spot Interrogation 

of 31 POWs, Myitkyina, 28 Jul–4 Aug 44,” copy in author’s files; U.S. Office of War Information, 

India Division, “Psychological Warfare Operations to October 26, 1944,” and U.S. Office of War 

Information, China Division, “Psychological Warfare Operations,” in Historical Section, ChinaBurma-India Theater, “History of the China-Burma-India Theater, 21 May 1942 to 25 October 

1945,” Unpubl Ms, U.S. Army Center of Military History.

Serving in Burma with the Office of War Information were Kenji Yasui (left) and 

Karl G. Yoneda (second from right), shown here displaying captured Japanese 

flags.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1944 291

Japanese people, we can hasten internal collapse and prepare them for the consequences of their defeat.”174

American forces prepared to renew the offensive in northern Burma in late 

1944. That summer the War Department sent from the United States two infantry 

regiments: the 475th Infantry, which absorbed the surviving Merrill’s Marauders 

veterans, and the 124th Cavalry, also an infantry regiment despite its designation. These were combined to form the 5332d Brigade (Provisional) and given 

the codename Mars Task Force. Dozens of Nisei, including some veterans of the 

Alaskan Theater, arrived to join these units and headquarters in the theater. Sgt. 

Kazuo Komoto led the 475th Infantry team, and Sgt. Kan Tagami led the 124th 

Cavalry team. When Toma Tasaki arrived in India that summer, two Marauder 

Nisei gave him some blunt advice: “Whatever you do, don’t volunteer for Burma. 

It’s rough.”175

In October the Allies moved into northern Burma. The Mars Task Force was 

committed to action in December, while Commonwealth forces attacked farther 

south. Lieutenant Yempuku’s OSS team renewed operations behind Japanese lines 

with the Kachin Rangers.176 By the end of 1944, about 135 Nisei were assigned to 

the theater and were making important contributions to all these efforts. Stilwell’s 

political adviser, Emmerson, wrote Colonel Rasmussen that summer to request 

more Nisei: “People are screaming for them.”177

Leyte

In October 1944 the American axes of advance from the Central and Southwest Pacific converged in the central Philippines on the island of Leyte. For the 

120 Nisei who served on Leyte, the battle would be their greatest test to date. By 

now some were combat veterans; a handful of them had been commissioned and 

were team leaders. Others were fresh from Camp Savage. Intelligence agencies, 

including ATIS in Brisbane and JICPOA in Hawaii, prepared for the return to the 

Philippines with photoreconnaissance of likely landing sites and detailed maps 

and special studies. Signals intelligence agencies in Australia, Hawaii, and Washington monitored Japanese communications for clues to troop dispositions and 

shipping. Philippine guerrillas provided vital intelligence. Intelligence agencies in 

the two theaters cooperated to an unprecedented degree.178

Leyte also became the first large-scale test of psychological warfare against 

Japan. ATIS amassed vast amounts of information through interrogations and 

174 Reprinted in Amerasia Papers, 2: 1747–49. 175 Toma Tasaki, “Mars Task Force,” in Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor, p. 70. 176 Yempuku, in Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor, pp. 75–76; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 

230–31, 242, 250; Pacific War and Peace, pp. 64–65; Interv, author with Kan Tagami, 7 Dec 94. 177 Ltr, John Emmerson to Kai Rasmussen, 20 August 1944. 178 Drea, MacArthur’s Ultra, pp. 152–79; Ltr, Col. Joseph J. Twitty to Chief, Historical Section, 

Far East Command, 2 February 1948, cited in A Brief History of G–2 Section, GHQ, SWPA, and 

Affiliated Units.
292 NISEI LINGUISTS

translations of captured letters and diaries, and Colonel Mashbir indulged in amateur speculations about Japanese psychology.179 In June 1944 MacArthur established the Psychological Warfare Branch under Brig. Gen. Bonner F. Fellers, who 

published the “Basic Military Plan for Psychological Warfare in the Southwest 

Pacific Area” on 2 August.180 Mashbir detailed a Nisei warrant officer to Fellers 

and put Major Anderton in charge of the ATIS Philippine Islands Research Section. The Psychological Warfare Branch posted teams with Nisei to Sixth Army 

and the two army corps. The teams brought preprinted leaflets and mobile printing 

presses and during ten weeks of fighting blanketed Leyte with 700,000 leaflets.181

On 20 October the Nisei language teams went ashore with the assault elements 

of four divisions and two corps.182 Maj. George Aurell led the Sixth Army team. 

His team sergeant, S.Sgt. Kazuo Kozaki, recalled: “We were kept busy all day 

and immediately. There were loads and loads of captured documents, although no 

prisoners were taken yet. I had to virtually wade through a pile of papers—operation orders, operation maps, manuals, magazines, books, paybooks, saving books, 

notebooks and diaries, handwritten or printed, official or private—to find out if 

there was any valuable information for our immediate use.”183

Some Nisei saw direct combat. When the Japanese counterattacked the 

7th Infantry Division, the Nisei “were a little bit heroic,” a Caucasian sergeant 

recalled. “They would climb on board a Japanese tank going by, knock on the 

things, converse in Japanese, and as soon as the door popped open, they’d drop a 

hand grenade—boom!”184

On 25 October two more Sixth Army language detachments arrived on board 

a landing ship, tank, led by two Nisei second lieutenants, Steve Yamamoto and 

Phil Ishio, who had both served in ATIS since September 1942. Before they could 

unload, a Japanese bomb struck amidships, killing twenty-five soldiers and sailors. Eighty others were wounded, including two Nisei sergeants, Spady Ayato 

179 Mashbir, I Was an American Spy, pp. 226–32, 272–77. 180 Gilmore, You Can’t Fight Tanks with Bayonets; Sandler, Cease Resistance; Clayton D. Laurie, “The Ultimate Dilemma of Psychological Warfare in the Pacific: Enemies Who Don’t Surrender and GIs Who Don’t Take Prisoners,” in The U.S. Army and World War II: Selected Papers 

from the Army’s Commemorative Conferences, ed. Judith L. Bellafaire, U.S. Army in World War II

(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1998). 181 ATIS History, pp. 22–23; Mashbir, I Was an American Spy, p. 270; Gilmore, You Can’t Fight 

Tanks with Bayonets, pp. 32–33, 154. The Philippine Islands Research Section was dissolved on 9 

October 1944. 182 Some sources report that Frank Hachiya parachuted into Leyte several weeks before the 

attack. Rep. Al Ullman, Congressional Record (11 Jun 63); Bill Hosokawa, Nisei: The Quiet Americans (New York: William Morrow, 1969), pp. 414–15; Oguro, Sempai Gumi, pp. 29–30. Taro Tsukahara told Joseph Harrington a similar story about Hachiya (Harrington Papers). I was unable to 

confirm this story, which seems unlikely. 183 Kozaki, in Swift, “First Class,” pp. 55–56. 184 Studs Terkel, “The Good War”: An Oral History of World War Two (New York: Pantheon, 

1984), p. 23. This incident may have occurred on 20–21 October near Dulag, Leyte. See M. Hamlin 

Cannon, Leyte: The Return to the Philippines, U.S. Army in World War II (Washington: Office of 

the Chief of Military History, 1954), p. 128.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1944 293

Koyama and Tsuneo “Cappy” Harada.185 Koyama awoke some hours later on a 

sandy beach, stretched out in a row of dead sailors who had been taken ashore for 

burial. He could not feel anything on his left side, so he reached over with his right 

hand before losing consciousness again: “This single act of leaving my arm on my 

chest when others on both sides of me were laid side by side with their arms at their 

sides did indeed attract attention. I heard someone call out to a nearby chaplain 

who hurried over to my side to ask for my religion.”

The chaplain reached for Koyama’s identification tags and asked, “Buddhist?” 

Koyama shook his head no. The chaplain looked down at the tag again and said, 

“Looks like a B, but I guess it’s a P,” and recited the 23d Psalm. Koyama passed 

out, but survived.186

The landings on Leyte provoked the Imperial Japanese Navy to seek a decisive engagement. This became one of the great sea battles of the war, the Battle 

of Leyte Gulf. The Combined Fleet followed the basic strategy laid down in the 

Z-Plan. However, “the complete Japanese plan for the defense of the Philippines 

also was made known through the work of the language specialists from the Military Intelligence Service Language School long before our forces had landed on 

Leyte.”187 In the greatest naval engagement of the war, the American Navy crushed 

the Japanese battle fleet, which never again posed a serious threat. In desperation 

the Japanese turned to a terrible new tactic, aerial kamikaze attacks, which had a 

devastating effect on U.S. vessels and sailors. For most Americans, the kamikazes 

only reinforced the image of Japanese as fanatical and determined to fight to the 

bitter end.

Imperial Japanese Army headquarters decided to make Leyte the decisive battle to halt the relentless American advance toward the home islands. Despite the 

naval defeat, they poured in reinforcements, more than tripling troop strength on 

the island. Meanwhile, monsoon rains, thirty-five inches in six weeks, drenched 

the island, soaking everything and delaying vital airfield construction. As the two 

sides rushed troops to Leyte, the intelligence battle became crucial. For once, signals intelligence was not all revealing. For example, within days of the American 

landing, the Japanese high command shipped the 1st Division from Manchuria to 

Leyte, which “passed unnoticed by American codebreakers.”188 The first inkling 

came on 2 November when the XXIV Corps language team translated a captured 

185 Phil Ishio, “The New Guinea and Philippine Campaigns,” in Falk and Tsuneishi, MIS in the 

War against Japan, p. 30. 186 Spady A. Koyama, MISNorCal Bio; Unsung Heroes: The Military Intelligence Service, 

Past-Present-Future (Seattle: MIS-Northwest Association, 1996), pp. 49–51; Harrington, Yankee 

Samurai, pp. 240–41; Interv, author with Spady A. Koyama, 2 Nov 87. Koyama was evacuated to 

his home state of Washington, where he spent twelve months in the hospital, and was medically 

discharged. In 1947 he returned to active duty and accepted a commission. He remained on active 

duty until 1970. 187 Adm. Thomas C. Kinkaid, in Reports of General MacArthur, 4 vols., U.S. Army in World 

War II (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1994), 1: 205; WD Press Release, 

22 Oct 45. 188 Drea, MacArthur’s Ultra, p. 169.
294 NISEI LINGUISTS

operations order “revealing that the entire Japanese 1st Division had landed on 

Leyte on November 1 and that a ‘grand offensive’ would commence about midNovember.”189 On 4 November Nisei translated a captured operations order, dated 

31 October, from the Japanese 16th Division.190

Nisei served at every level from regiment to Sixth Army, interrogating prisoners, translating captured documents, and using loudspeakers and leaflets to 

encourage surrenders. Most Nisei continued to serve under Caucasian officers, 

including some Navy Boulder graduates assigned to Army units. “It was hard for 

the Nisei interpreters” on Leyte, wrote Navy Lt. John Ashmead. “Only rarely did 

they become officers, and often enough their white officers knew less Japanese, 

certainly less spoken Japanese, than they did,” even though the Nisei sometimes 

used “feminine or archaic words for war,” having learned the language from their 

mothers and from Nisei instructors with no military experience.191

On 27 November the Japanese staged a daring airborne assault on the Buri 

airstrip; but the transport aircraft crashed, killing all the passengers. Nisei translated the documents found in the wreckage. A week later 350 Japanese paratroopers dropped out of the night sky in another attempt to capture the airstrip in a 

combined airborne/ground assault. The paratroopers sowed confusion by running 

up and down the strip using captured American weapons and allegedly shouting 

things such as “hello—where are your machine guns?” The attackers were finally 

tracked down and destroyed.192

Ishio, attached to Sixth Army headquarters, recalled:

I was awakened in the middle of the night and driven to the airfield to face the grim task of 

removing whatever documents could be found on the mangled and bloody bodies. A special light-proof tent had been put up for me to use. I spent the rest of the night translating 

the documents which I had picked up. It was extremely hot and close within the tent, and 

every sound outside seemed to be magnified ten-fold by my imagining that there would be 

a follow-up parachute drop. Actually, the orders which I translated called for another drop 

the next day, but this did not materialize.193

189 Ibid., p. 170. 190 ATIS History, p. 48; “The Character of Military Intelligence,” pt. 2, p. 195, in Folder 4, 

Box 3, Willoughby Papers, RG 23–B, MacArthur Memorial. For similar examples see Language 

Detachment Report, encl 7, ann. 2, Leyte Historical Report of the 24th Infantry Division Landing 

Team. 191 Ashmead, The Mountain and the Feather, p. 319. Ashmead served on Leyte with the 307th 

Headquarters Intelligence Detachment, assigned to XXIV Corps. 192 Cannon, Leyte, pp. 297–305; Stanley L. Falk, Decision at Leyte (New York: Norton, 1966), 

pp. 259–70. 193 Ishio, “The New Guinea and Philippine Campaigns,” in Falk and Tsuneishi, MIS in the War 

against Japan, p. 30; Interv, author with Tsuneishi, 22 Aug 95; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 

250; Tom Masui, in Harrington Papers. Kenney described the captured papers in General Kenney 

Reports, p. 485.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1944 295

The Americans held the Buri airstrip and pressed onward. The west coast port 

of Ormoc was captured by 10 December, cutting off further Japanese reinforcements. The Americans slowly squeezed the Japanese defenders, some of whom 

tried to escape to neighboring islands. The 77th Infantry Division language team 

led by T.Sgt. Shigeo Ito translated a document that told of a Japanese plan to move 

600 soldiers to Ponson Island in Ormoc Bay. The convoy was intercepted and 

destroyed.194

At first the Americans took few prisoners, despite the pleas of intelligence 

officers. The 24th Infantry Division language team urged commanders to indoctrinate their troops and to offer “inducements (rewards, passes, money, etc.) to 

men in the front lines to take live prisoners. Too often, a Jap is killed because he 

is a Jap, a policy with which it is hard to disagree on emotional grounds, but one 

leading to a curtailment of valuable intelligence.”195 As the tide turned, prisoner 

numbers began to climb. T3g. Harold Nishimura, a veteran of the Aleutians and 

Saipan, served on Leyte with the 7th Infantry Division and wrote Colonel Rasmussen at Fort Snelling on 15 December, “I can assure that the morale of the 

enemy has changed since the beginning of this Pacific war.”196 Some prisoners 

held information of strategic value, such as one captured on 7 December who “had 

some knowledge of the Japanese balloon bombs that were appearing on the western coast of the United States.”197 In mid-December American infantrymen broke 

remaining Japanese resistance in the Ormoc Valley. At the 1st Cavalry Division’s 

advance command post, the language team chief, Lt. William L. Dozier, interrogated prisoners of war nonstop for thirty-six hours. Sgt. Stanley S. Shimabukuro 

translated documents for fifty-one hours straight. The lieutenant praised Shimabukuro: “Captured letters and notebooks the hakujin [Caucasians] and Nisei could 

make no sense of, [Shimabukuro] could read,” wrote Dozier, “even though parts of 

words were obscured by rain, sweat or blood.”198 About 65,000 Japanese soldiers 

fought on Leyte, but fewer than 400 became prisoners of war in the first ten weeks 

of battle, many of those sick or wounded. Over the next four months 439 more 

were captured.

The American victory on Leyte was costly. American casualties in ground 

combat amounted to 3,500 killed and 12,000 wounded, with another 2,800 naval 

and air casualties. In Europe, the situation appeared more hopeful. In September the War Department announced plans for partial demobilization to follow 

194 Yaban Gogai, Dec 45, p. 3. 195 Language Detachment Report, encl 7, ann. 2, Leyte Historical Report of the 24th Infantry 

Division Landing Team. Sho ̄ hei O ̄oka served with the Japanese Army on nearby Mindoro, where 

he was taken prisoner in December 1944 or January 1945. He described his experiences in the novel 

Fires on the Plain (New York: Knopf, 1957), and memoir, Taken Captive: A Japanese POW’s Story, 

trans. and ed. Wayne P. Lammers (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1996). 196 Ltr, T3g. Harold Nishimura to Col. Kai Rasmussen, 15 December 1944, Trng Grp, Ofc of the 

Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, NARA. 197 ATIS History, p. 49. 198 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 255.
296 NISEI LINGUISTS

the defeat of Germany, but the defeat of Japan was not yet in sight. After three 

years American forces were not yet within striking distance of the Japanese home 

islands. They still had to take Luzon and major islands closer to Japan such as Iwo 

Jima and Okinawa. Every step was more costly than the last. The War Department 

estimated that two more years would be needed to break Japan’s military power 

and invade the Japanese home islands in 1946 or later, supported by large numbers 

of troops shifted from Europe to the Pacific.

The end of Japanese resistance on Leyte provided a respite for some Nisei. Sergeant Kozaki had served in the Southwest Pacific since the spring of 1943 and had 

earned the Purple Heart on New Guinea. He was serving on Leyte with the team 

assigned to Sixth Army headquarters, where he attended a New Year’s Eve dance 

party held by an African American regiment. As he walked in, “a couple of black 

soldiers came up to me, looking as if they were looking at a man from Mars.”

“You Japanee?” one of them kept on asking me, shaking his head incomprehensibly, 

“And in de American Army?” After getting my somewhat irritated confirmation, the two 

men burst out laughing, clapping their hands and chanting: “A Japanee boy in de American Army.” Soon dozens of black soldiers surrounded us, laughing and clapping their 

hands. . . . “Japanee boy! Japanee boy!” they chanted, dancing around me. They thought it 

was a huge joke. Perhaps it was. “Yeah, man! Yeah, man!” I shouted and started dancing 

with them.199

Frank Hachiya and the Hood River Incident

In late December 1944 American forces fanned out across Leyte to isolate 

and destroy small detachments of Japanese soldiers or persuade them to surrender. 

This process cost many additional American casualties.

On 30 December the 32d Infantry captured a prisoner and called for an interpreter. Frank Hachiya, acting team chief for the 7th Infantry Division, was slated 

to return to Hawaii but volunteered for one last combat mission. He had been born 

and raised in the farming community of Hood River, Oregon. Before the war his 

parents had sent him to Japan to attend Keio University in Tokyo. He returned to 

Oregon in 1941 for college but was drafted shortly after the war broke out. Even 

though his father was interned in the United States and his mother had remained 

in Japan, Hachiya volunteered for the language school. Earnest and articulate, he 

believed fervently in America and was eager to prove himself.

Hachiya hurried to the 32d Infantry’s command post and interrogated the prisoner; but on the return trip, even though he was escorted by an American patrol, 

he was shot in the abdomen. The New York Times described what happened next:

Private Hachiya, mortally wounded though he was, could not lie there. The battalion 

wanted the information he had gathered. He must get back. So he crawled, bleeding and 

in agony, out of the valley and up the hill, through the grass and the scrub and around the 

199 Kazuo Kozaki, in Swift, “First Class,” p. 61.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1944 297

merciful protection of little hillocks. He was dying when he finally reached his lines. He 

made his report while they bound his wound.200

The field surgeons operated at once, but the bullet had torn through his liver. Most 

of the men in his regiment volunteered to give him blood transfusions, but he 

expired on 3 January 1945.201

Hachiya’s death came to national attention at a critical moment for Americans 

of Japanese ancestry. On 17 December 1944, the War Department rescinded the 

exclusion orders that had kept Americans of Japanese ancestry away from the 

West Coast for over two years. The War Relocation Authority began to allow them 

to leave the camps for their homes, but the decision was not universally popular 

on the West Coast. Vigilante incidents were staged by people who did not want 

to see Japanese Americans return. On 29 November the American Legion post in 

Hood River, Hachiya’s hometown, removed sixteen Nisei names from the county 

“roll of honor.”

When Hachiya’s death was announced, readers across the country immediately linked him to the Hood River incident. Americans of all races were outraged. 

The Portland Oregonian took up the cause, and the national press gave the story 

wide circulation. Even the national headquarters of the American Legion applied 

pressure on the local post. The New York Times editorial, titled “Private Hachiya, 

American,” concluded: “Perhaps Private Hachiya never knew that the Legion post 

had dishonored him back home. Perhaps some day what is left of him may be 

brought back to this country for reburial among the honored dead.” 202 In April 

1945 the American Legion post reversed its stand and restored all names of Nisei 

servicemen from Hood River to the sign, this time including Frank Hachiya.203

200 “Private Hachiya, American,” New York Times, 17 Feb 45; Pacific Citizen, 2 Jun 45; “Snubbed 

Japanese Dies a Pacific Hero,” New York Times, 16 Feb 45; Howard M. Moss, Ltr quoted in Honolulu Star Bulletin, ca. Jan–Feb 45; “Japanese American Soldier from Hood River Posthumously 

Awarded Silver Star Medal,” Pacific Citizen, 5 May 45; Pacific Citizen, 2 Jun 45; Martha Ferguson 

McKeown, “Frank Hachiya: He Was American at Birth, and at Death,” Portland Oregonian, 20 

May 45; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 247–48; Oguro, Sempai Gumi, pp. 29–30.

Some have speculated that Hachiya was killed by American troops. See, for example, John F. 

Aiso, Speech at Twenty-fifth Reunion of MIS Nisei Veterans, 12 Nov 66; Hosokawa, Nisei, pp. 

414–15; Oguro, Sempai Gumi, pp. 29–30; Edwards, Spy Catchers, p. 70. His team leader, Lt. Howard M. Moss, in a personal communication to the author on 5 August 2004, denied he was killed 

by American soldiers. 201 The 7th Infantry Division posthumously awarded Hachiya the Silver Star. Some say he was 

recommended for the Distinguished Service Cross: Selective Service System, Special Groups, 

Special Monograph no. 10 (Washington, D.C.: Selective Service System, 1953), p. 141; Rep. Al 

Ullman (D-Oregon), Congressional Record (11 Jun 63); Hosokawa, Nisei, pp. 414–15; Oguro, Sempai Gumi, pp. 29–30. However, I have found no evidence for this. The Defense Language Institute 

Foreign Language Center named an academic building in his honor in 1980. 202 “Private Hachiya, American,” New York Times, 17 Feb 45; “Death of a Nisei,” Pacific Citizen, 17 Feb 45. Hachiya’s remains were later returned to Hood River, where he was reinterred with 

honors on 11 September 1948. 203 Richard L. Neuberger, “The Nisei Come Back to Hood River,” Saturday Review of Literature (10 August 1946), reprinted in Readers Digest (November 1946): 102–04. See also Alan K. 
298 NISEI LINGUISTS

The MIS Nisei had an impact far beyond the battlefield. Sergeant Hachiya’s 

loyal service, tragic death, and how these were interpreted back home served to 

demonstrate the broader significance of the contributions of the MIS Nisei. In 

Europe, the service of the 100th Infantry Battalion and 442d Regimental Combat 

Team demonstrated that the Nisei were prepared to fight and, if necessary, to die 

for their country. In the Pacific, the Nisei who fought against Japan showed a different dimension of loyalty. In the battle for acceptance at home, each was indeed 

“as valuable as an infantry company.”

Ota, “Symbol of Protest: Oregon War Hero Honored,” Portland Oregonian, May 80; Crost, Honor 

by Fire, pp. 205–08. Hachiya’s name was not listed on the roll of honor because he had enlisted 

from Portland, where he had been attending college.
9

Fort Snelling, 1944–1945

By the summer of 1944 the Military Intelligence Service Language School 

(MISLS) had outgrown the facilities at Camp Savage and had graduated 1,400 

soldiers, including 1,200 Nisei. In three years the school had grown from four 

instructors to more than ninety and from sixty students to 1,100, organized into 

fifty-two sections for the nine-month course. Col. Kai E. Rasmussen and a handful 

of other Caucasian officers headed the school; but the overwhelming majority of 

faculty, staff, and students was Nisei. At a time when the entire Japanese community on the West Coast had been forced into guarded camps and those in Hawaii 

remained under close surveillance, the War Department had organized a small 

group of Nisei to build the largest Japanese-language school in American history, 

an outstanding achievement of the Nisei generation.1

Three years into the war, the school faced increasing difficulties in recruiting 

enough qualified volunteers. The manpower solution came in January 1944 when 

the War Department reinstated Selective Service for the Nisei, primarily to meet 

requirements for combat replacements for the 100th Infantry Battalion and the 

442d Regimental Combat Team (RCT) but also to meet growing requirements for 

language training. In early 1944 Rasmussen toured the South Pacific and returned 

with a renewed sense of urgency to expand the school’s facilities.

1 For basic sources on MISLS during 1944–1945, see those cited in Chapter Four, including 

MISLS, “Training History of the Military Intelligence Service Language School,” Unpubl Ms, 

1946, U.S. Army Center of Military History (CMH), and MISLS Album (Minneapolis: Military 

Intelligence Service Language School, 1946).
300 NISEI LINGUISTS

An opportunity arose in 1944 when the Seventh Service Command closed 

the reception center at Fort Snelling. Since 1942 Fort Snelling had provided the 

language school with administrative and logistical support and billets for the overflow of students. Fort Snelling seemed more like the “real Army” to the Nisei compared to the wooden buildings at Camp Savage.2 The school held one last graduation ceremony at Camp Savage on 10 August 1944 and moved to Fort Snelling. 

Headquarters Company was awarded the Meritorious Service Unit Plaque for the 

move, but the civilian staff suffered at least one casualty when Technical Director 

John F. Aiso suffered a double hernia while moving his office.3 Classes resumed 

on 21 August with 832 students.

The school remained under the direct control of the War Department G–2, 

which reorganized in June 1944. The Military Intelligence Division (MID) retained 

planning and policy functions, while operating functions went to the Military 

Intelligence Service (MIS). Also in 1944 Col. John Weckerling was promoted 

to brigadier general and named Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence. 

From his new position he could once again watch over the school he had founded. 

His superior, Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence Maj. Gen. Clayton L. Bissell, took a personal interest in the school and visited Fort Snelling several times 

to speak at graduation ceremonies.4

Spirit of the School

Soon after the school moved to Fort Snelling, Stone S. Ishimaru, a Nisei photographer, captured the spirit of the school in a photo essay assignment for Life

magazine. Most telling was a photograph of a Nisei color guard on Fort Snelling’s 

historic parade ground. Ishimaru’s photographs portrayed Americans of Japanese 

ancestry standing proudly in the heart of America.5 The school’s spirit in 1944 

mirrored much of the Japanese American community. Much had changed since 

the dark days after Pearl Harbor. In Europe, the 100th Infantry Battalion and 442d 

2 Floyd E. Eller, “A Soldier Looks at History [Fort Snelling],” Minnesota History 24, no. 1 

(March 1943): 1–10; Steve Hall, Fort Snelling: Colossus of the Wilderness (St. Paul: Minnesota 

Historical Society Press, 1987). 3 Memo, MISLS, 27 Nov 44, with endorsements (approved 14 Dec 44). Headquarters Company 

was awarded a star for the subsequent six-month period, 27 November 1944–27 May 1945 (awarded 

9 June 1945). Department of the Army Pamphlet 672–1, 6 Jul 61. Tad Ichinokuchi, ed., John Aiso 

and the M.I.S.: Japanese-American Soldiers in the Military Intelligence Service, World War II (Los 

Angeles: Military Intelligence Club of Southern California, 1988), p. 23; Interv, author with John 

F. Aiso, 1987. 4 “A History of the Military Intelligence Division, 7 December 1941–2 September 1945,” Unpubl 

Ms, copy in CMH files; Bruce W. Bidwell, “History of the Military Intelligence Division, Department of the Army General Staff,” Unpubl Ms, 1959–1961, CMH files; Otto L. Nelson, Jr., National 

Security and the General Staff (Washington, D.C.: Infantry Journal Press, 1946), pp. 521–35. 5 Life did not publish the photos. Ishimaru later published them privately. Stone S. Ishimaru, 

Military Intelligence Service Language School, U.S. Army, Fort Snelling, Minnesota (Los Angeles: 

TecCom Production, 1991); Stone S. Ishimaru, Military Intelligence Service Language School, U.S. 

Army, Camp Savage, Minnesota (Los Angeles: MIS Club of Southern California, 1992).
FORT SNELLING, 1944–1945 301

RCT were winning public acclaim at such places as Cassino and Anzio. In October 1944 they were thrown into desperate battle in Southern France, where they 

suffered heavy casualties to liberate the “Lost Battalion.” That summer the War 

Department removed Lt. Gen. John L. DeWitt from the Western Defense Command, the last obstacle to lifting the exclusion orders banning persons of Japanese 

ancestry from the West Coast. Meanwhile, the War Relocation Authority (WRA) 

was placed under the Department of the Interior, headed by New Dealer Harold 

L. Ickes, known to be a critic of the evacuation. The War Relocation Authority 

continued its leave clearance program from the camps; by the end of 1944 about 

one-third of the evacuees had been released for jobs or schooling. In December 

Nisei color guard, Fort Snelling, August 1944
302 NISEI LINGUISTS

1944 the War Relocation Authority announced plans to close the camps and the 

U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the federal government had “no authority to subject 

citizens who are concededly loyal to its leave regulations.” 6 In Hawaii, the military governor lifted martial law in October 1944.

The driving force behind the school was Aiso, the 34-year-old Los Angeles 

Nisei attorney who directed day-to-day operations. Rasmussen was commandant, 

but the Nisei considered Aiso the true ko ̄cho ̄-sensei, or headmaster. To his closest 

colleagues he was a warm and inspirational leader; to others he was a demanding 

taskmaster. He believed the Nisei had a sacred mission:

Their common motivation was a burning desire to prove that a Nisei’s belief in and devotion to the ideas of freedom and American institutions were stronger than the fortuitous 

ties of racial affinity. His self-assigned overall mission was to prove for all time to come 

that judging one’s loyalty even in time of war on the basis of racial affinity and sympathetic affiliation alone was and is wrong. . . . And what better proof could he offer than to 

actively wage war directly against Japan.7

Rasmussen and the other Caucasian officers at the school held Aiso in high 

regard, as did other senior Army leaders and high government officials such as 

General Bissell and Joseph Grew, the former ambassador to Japan. Aiso returned 

the trust. “We are forever indebted to those who were in positions of leadership,” 

Aiso later remarked, “who had faith in the AJA’s [Americans of Japanese Ancestry] and without whose sponsorship we could never have had the chance to demonstrate our true qualities.” 8

Most younger Nisei students lacked Aiso’s idealistic vision and gave a mixed 

response to his leadership. Many of the younger Nisei, especially those from 

Hawaii, saw Aiso as unnecessarily harsh and unbending: “We revered the man, 

respected his intelligence, feared his opinions, sought his counsel, but like all great 

public figures he was loved by many and yet disliked by some.” The Nisei recognized in him a certain type of the older Nisei, conservative and accommodationist. 

Enlisted instructors often resented the cliquishness and special privileges of the 

civilian instructors, as well as Aiso’s authority. After the war Aiso acknowledged 

these sentiments and apologized that “my personal immaturity and the restrictions 

of the military framework forced upon me by my superiors left much to be desired 

in the area of your personal comfort and welfare” and recognized what he called 

“my war-time role as the martinet.” 9

6 Ex Parte Endo, 323 U.S. 283 (1944). 7 John F. Aiso, remarks at Arlington National Cemetery, 2 Jun 63, in “Tributes to Japanese 

American Military Service in World War II,” Congressional Record (11 Jun 63). 8 John F. Aiso, Speech to MIS Veteran’s Reunion, Honolulu, Hawaii, 6 Sep 64. 9

 Tad Ichinokuchi in John Aiso and the M.I.S., p. 2; Ltr, John F. Aiso to MIS Veterans of Hawaii, 

16 July 1962, in “MIS Reunion,” a booklet distributed at a veterans’ reunion in 1962; Aiso speech, 

6 Sep 64.
FORT SNELLING, 1944–1945 303

In the spring of 1944 Bissell visited the school and was surprised at 

the extent of Aiso’s authority over 

the faculty and students, even though 

Aiso was only a civilian. Bissell gave 

his support to commissions for the top 

civilians, but in the end only Aiso was 

commissioned. He pinned on major’s 

gold oak leaves on 18 October 1944 and 

was named to the military position of 

Director of Academic Training. Henceforth Aiso’s authority was unparalleled, 

although he noted that after his commissioning his relationship with Rasmussen “cooled off somewhat.”10

Commissions for other instructors 

remained a sore point for the civilian instructors, whose students grew 

increasingly unwilling to accept civilian authority in the classroom. A school 

study later recommended commissions 

for division chairmen and at least half 

the instructors: “Problems of discipline among the student body would have been automatically solved. It would 

have added immeasurably to the prestige, dignity, and authority of the faculty.”11

Accomplishing the school’s training mission grew ever more challenging as the 

war continued. The pioneering spirit of 1941 and 1942 had waned.

Rasmussen grew increasingly concerned about student morale. According to 

school officials, “Many of the Nisei at Fort Snelling have had to teach or study 

with anxious hearts. Many had relatives in Relocation Camps in the Western 

States. After the Japanese were permitted to return from the Relocation Camps 

to the West Coast, incidents that caused much anxiety occurred.” The Director of 

Personnel Procurement, Maj. Paul F. Rusch, recommended a Japanese Episcopalian minister, the Rev. Daisuke Kitagawa, whom he had known in Japan before 

the war. In July 1944 Rasmussen contacted Kitagawa who agreed to serve as the 

“unofficial civilian chaplain” to the Nisei soldiers at the school, working under the 

auspices of the Minneapolis Church Federation. Rasmussen also arranged religious services for the Buddhist students. The first service, held on 22 October 

10 Yaban Gogai, Nov 45; Kiyoshi Yano, “Participating in the Mainstream of American Life 

amidst Drawback of Racial Prejudice and Discrimination,” in John Aiso and the M.I.S., p. 17; John 

F. Aiso, “Observations of a California Nisei,” Interv by Marc Landy, University of California at 

Los Angeles, 1971. 11 “Training History,” ann. 1, Academic Training, para 4e., p. 5.

Colonel Rasmussen commissions 

Aiso as a major, October 1944.
304 NISEI LINGUISTS

1944 at Fort Snelling for fifty soldiers, was said to be the first Buddhist service 

ever held in an Army camp in the United States.12

Recruiting Students

More students came to the school than ever before. From December 1941 

to the end of 1943, roughly 1,100 Nisei started language training. During 1944 

the number of incoming students grew to 1,800. The number for 1945 was projected to reach 2,100. (See Table 2.) Actual school enrollment grew even faster 

as students for the nine-month course remained on the rolls longer.13 Volunteers 

alone could no longer meet the swelling demand for language training and combat replacements for the 442d RCT. As a result the War Department authorized 

the resumption of Selective Service in early 1944. Selective Service reclassified 

the Nisei from IV–C to I–A; local boards began calling them up, beginning on the 

mainland in January 1944 and in Hawaii in April 1944. However, the new selectees did not begin to arrive at the school at once. Due to another change of policy, 

they attended basic training before language training. Others were inducted into 

the Enlisted Reserve Corps and then called to active duty as needed by the language school. The resumption of Selective Service also prompted a new wave of 

Nisei volunteers.

In the internment camps, the resumption of Selective Service precipitated a 

crisis similar to the registration crisis of 1943. Many Nisei were outraged and 

asked themselves how the U.S. government could incarcerate loyal American citizens and then subject them to conscription. While thousands of Nisei accepted 

registration and induction, more than 300 refused and were convicted for violating 

the Selective Training and Service Act.14 This was a small number compared to 

the 50,000 conscientious objectors of all races jailed during the war, but most Nisei 

resisters cited the camps, not religious conviction, for their protest. A school report 

acknowledged a “resentment against relocation of their parents and discrimination against themselves.” Observers noted that some in the camps scorned those 

who volunteered for Japanese-language training. Reverend Kitagawa described 

how “the parents of many [Nisei students] were exceedingly unhappy, in fact profoundly disturbed, to see their sons wearing the U.S. uniform and, of all things, 

being trained as ‘spies’ (as they thought of the intelligence service) against their 

12 War Department (WD) Press Release, 22 Oct 45; Daisuke Kitagawa, Issei and Nisei: The 

Internment Years (New York: Seabury Press, 1967), pp. 163–66; “Buddhist Service Held Recently 

in U.S. Army Camp,” Pacific Citizen, 4 Nov 44. 13 “Training History,” ann. 10, Personnel Procurement Office, sec. IV.D., pp. 10, 15. 14 Eric L. Muller, Free To Die for Their Country: The Story of the Japanese American Draft 

Resisters in World War II (Chicago: University Press of Chicago, 2001); Frank F. Chuman, The 

Bamboo People: The Law and Japanese Americans (Chicago: Japanese American Citizens League, 

1981), pp. 252–61; “Draft Resistance,” in Encyclopedia of Japanese American History, rev. ed., ed. 

Brian Niiya (New York: Facts on File, 2001). In 1947 President Truman pardoned all World War II

draft resisters, including 265 Nisei.
FORT SNELLING, 1944–1945 305

own country, Japan. In various ways parents and the elders in the relocation centers were attempting to dissuade the Nisei from pursuing their training.”15

In Hawaii, the recruiting problems were different. Because of labor shortages 

on the islands, employers often pressured their employees not to volunteer. Recruiters from the language school used “personal contacts with employers, civic clubs, 

newspapers, radio stations, educators plus publicity campaigns in Hawaii [that] 

pointed out the vital need for linguists.”16 Between early 1944 and the summer 

of 1945, about 1,400 Nisei from the mainland and about 1,000 more from Hawaii 

were selected for language training.

Another source of Nisei students was 800 soldiers assigned to service units on 

the mainland. Many had been repeatedly screened by language school recruiters 

but had low aptitude or language skills. School recruiters rescreened these soldiers and accepted many the second or third time around. The school also turned 

to another small group, alien Japanese who had been born in Japan but had come 

to America at an early age. They were often identical to the Nisei in outlook and 

schooling and “thoroughly Americanized.” In early 1945 the War Department 

authorized the induction of alien Japanese volunteers.17 Despite the pressing need 

for infantry replacements, the Military Intelligence Division had priority over all 

Nisei and alien Japanese selectees.18

By 1944 Nisei students arriving at Fort Snelling were quite different from 

their older brothers who had trained at Crissy Field and Camp Savage. On average 

the new students were younger and had less knowledge of the Japanese language. 

The average age for Nisei students at Camp Savage had been 24.5; but at Fort 

Snelling, that average fell to 22.9 years. Recruiters noted that prospective students’ 

knowledge of kanji characters on average declined from 700 in 1943, to 300 in 

1944, and to only 200 in 1945. Mainland Nisei, or “kotonks,” had spent time in 

the internment camps where the use of the Japanese language was discouraged 

and language schools were forbidden. Hawaii Nisei, “Buddhaheads,” were cockier 

and less accepting of the discipline of Army life. Friction between the two groups 

continued. One day an enlisted instructor from Hawaii, M.Sgt. George K. Hironaka, was interrupted on the first day of class by “an energetic Hawaiian,” who 

asked him in pidgin: “Hey Sarge, you kinda talk like a kotonk, but you Hawaiian 

or wot?” Hironaka replied in perfect English, “Soldier, remember that regardless 

15 “Training History,” p. 19; Kitagawa, Issei and Nisei, p. 163. 16 “Training History,” p. 19. On Selective Service and manpower problems in Hawaii, see 

Gwenfread Allen, Hawaii’s War Years, 1941–1945 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1950). 17 “Training History,” ann. 10, sec. IV(2). 18 Ltr, Adjutant General (AG), sub: Training and Assignment of Soldiers of Japanese Descent, 

30 July 1944, Folder ASW 342.18, Enlistment, J. A. (Divisions), Formerly Security Class Corresp 

of John J. McCloy, 1941–1945, Record Group (RG) 107, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Ltr, AG, sub: Assignment of Americans of Japanese Ancestry, 16 June 1944, 

AGOC–E–B 210.31, Trng Grp, RG 165, NARA.
Table 2—Summary of Student Personnel for MISLS Academic Terms

August 1944–March 1946a

 Academic Students Students 

 Term Entered Relievedb Students Graduated

 Officer Enlisted Officer Enlisted Officer Date Enlisted Date

Aug 44 229 0 46 0 4 31 Jan 45

 34 17 Feb 45

 1 29 Mar 45

 1 5 May 45

 143 19 May 45

 183

Aug 44 11 113 0 4 11 17 Feb 45 109 17 Feb 45

OCS 

 Sep 44 0 278 0 66 0 1 29 Mar 45

 36 5 Apr 45

 1 12 Jun 45

 174 7 Jul 45

 212

Dec 44 2 659 0 69 1 23 Jun 45

 (1 AKA) 1 7 Jul 45 4 5 May 45

 2 2 26 Jun 45

 1 15 Jun 45

 69 7 Jul 45

 514 18 Aug 45

 590

Dec 44 7 54 6 21 1 7 Jul 45 8 5 Apr 45

Chinese 23 7 Jul 45

Division 2 23 Jul 45

 33

Feb 45 2 377 1 51 1 18 Aug 45 1 10 May 45

 (1 AEA) (1 ACA) 31 18 Aug 45

 (1 AKA) 5 25 Aug 45

 134 1 Sep 45

 155 29 Sep 45

 326

Mar 45 13 0 3 0 10 19 May 45

 Special 

Officers’ 

Class (2 ACA) 

Apr 45 36 5 2 8 Aug 45

 (17 AEA) 17 9 Aug 45

 12 29 Sep 45

 31

Apr 45 95 5 1 27 Aug 45

OCS 89 29 Sep 45

(AEA) 90

May 45 6 227 0 7 6 26 Oct 45 1 29 Aug 45

 11 1 Sep 45

 8 29 Sep 45

 200 26 Oct 45

 220
May 45 46 5 2 2 Nov 45

WAC (1 ACA) 39 16 Nov 45

 (2 AEA) 41

Jul 45 10 334 1 11 9 26 Oct 45 1 29 Sep 45

 285 26 Oct 45

 1 7 Jan 46

 36 2 Feb 46

 323

Jul 45 7 300 22 7 17 Nov 45 278 17 Nov 45

Oral 

 School (1 AKA) (2 AEA) 

Aug 45 13 171 7 86 6 15 Dec 45 85 15 Dec 45

OCS 

 Sep 45 2 586 2 57 112 26 Oct 45

 (1 AEA) 12 7 Jan 46

 12 12 Jan 46

 39 2 Feb 46

 354 9 Mar 46

 529

Oct 45 2 309 1 41 1 19 Jan 46 268 19 Jan 46

Oral 

 School (1 AEA) 

Nov 45 10 407 (Still in 

chool) 

Jan 46 13 283 (Still in 

 (5 AEA) School) 

 (1 Other) 

Mar 46 1 290 (Still in 

chool) 

ACA American of Chinese Ancestry

AEA American of European Ancestry

AKA American of Korean Ancestry

Source: MISLS, “Training History of the Military Intelligence Service Language School,” pp. 16–18, Unpubl Ms, 1946, U.S. 

Army Center of Military History (CMH).

Notes

a All Americans of Japanese Ancestry unless otherwise indicated. Figures are from existing available records, and slight inaccuracies are unavoidable.

b Includes those relieved for special assignment, academic reasons, CDD (Certificate of Disability for Discharge), etc.

Table 2—Summary of Student Personnel for MISLS Academic Terms

August 1944–March 1946a—Continued

 Academic Students Students 

 Term Entered Relievedb Students Graduated

 Officer Enlisted Officer Enlisted Officer Date Enlisted Date
308 NISEI LINGUISTS

of whether you are a ‘Buddhahead’ or ‘Kotonk,’ you’re a soldier in the U.S. Army 

fighting for the same cause.”19

The decline in maturity and language skills of Japanese American selectees 

resulted in a rising washout rate. The class that began in February 1944 at Camp 

Savage and then moved to Fort Snelling graduated in November with a 20 percent attrition rate. However, even the washouts were put to good use. “Many of 

those relieved were subsequently sent to Corps of Military Police to be trained for 

duty with PW Processing Teams.” Classes that began that autumn saw attrition 

rates rise to 24 percent.20 A postwar school report recommended higher admission 

requirements:

Wholesale and indiscriminate assignment of men to this school without regard to their 

background, inclination, and desire has tended to lower the over-all standard of the school 

and the graduate, to water the effectiveness of the instruction by dissipating the energies 

of the instructors, and to permit the entrance of undesirable elements thereby damaging 

the prestige of the school.21

Even the school’s graduates in the field became concerned about the new students. A former enlisted instructor expressed his concerns in a letter to Yutaka 

Munakata in May 1945: “Too bad the quality of the men had fallen so low and 

after they get out to the front they are not able to tackle the work assigned to them. 

I suppose all cannot be efficient bi-linguists, but at least I hope they will be able to 

accomplish something and keep up the reputation others have earned for us.” 22

School Operations

The school’s military leadership remained substantially as before. Rasmussen, 

the fatherly West Pointer, remained devoted to his Nisei students and treated them 

with respect. Col. Frank Hollingshead, a Coast Artillery officer like Rasmussen, 

became assistant commandant in 1944. The director of Personnel Procurement 

was Major Rusch, who had taught school in Tokyo for eighteen years. Maj. Fred 

B. Keller joined in 1944 as commander of the student battalion. In January 1945 

a Women’s Army Corps (WAC) officer, Capt. Jean Wiener, became the school’s 

19 “Training History,” ann. 10, sec. IV.D., p. 10; Masaharu Ano, “Loyal Linguists: Nisei of 

World War II Learned Japanese in Minnesota,” Minnesota History 45, no. 7 (Fall 1977): 279, 282; 

George K. Hironaka, “Memoirs of an MISLS Instructor,” in Secret Valor: M.I.S. Personnel, World 

War II Pacific Theater, Pre–Pearl Harbor to Sept. 8, 1951, ed. Ted T. Tsukiyama et al. (Honolulu: 

Military Intelligence Service Veterans Club of Hawaii, 1993), p. 61. 20 “Training History,” ann. 1, para. 6–6, p. 13. 21 Ibid., para. 4a, p. 1. Other Army schools complained about the declining quality of students 

after 1943. See Robert R. Palmer et al., eds. The Procurement and Training of Ground Combat 

Troops, U.S. Army in World War II (Washington, D.C.: Historical Division, Department of the 

Army, 1948), p. 272. 22 Ltr, George M. Koshi to Yutaka Munakata, 27 May 1945, in Joseph D. Harrington Papers, 

National Japanese Historical Society (NJAHS), San Francisco, Calif.
FORT SNELLING, 1944–1945 309

personnel officer. She earned the gratitude of the civilian instructors when she 

obtained pay for their months of overtime work retroactive to 1941.23

Aiso was assisted by several other West Coast Nisei who had worked together 

since 1941–1942. All were university graduates, and many had studied in Japan. 

Most lived with their wives near Fort Snelling and formed a close-knit group 

with Aiso at its center. Paul Tekawa, who replaced Aiso as technical director, had 

been a reporter for a Japanese-language newspaper. Yutaka Munakata, chief of 

the Translation Section, was an electrical engineer from the University of Washington. Shigeya Kihara had a master’s degree in international politics from the 

University of California. Akira Oshida, chief of the research section, had earned a 

business degree at Meiji University and had been the public relations director for 

the Japanese pavilion at the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition. The staff 

judge advocate was Capt. Walter T. Tsukamoto, the first Nisei to graduate from the 

Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California. Before the war he had 

been active in the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) and had served as 

national president from 1938 to 1940.

By 1944 the school had about thirty Nisei civilians on the faculty. Only four 

more were hired in 1944 and 1945. This small cadre worked together with top 

civilian administrators as a team. Few had any previous teaching experience. 

They learned under the watchful eyes of Aiso and his top assistants, working an 

average of fifteen classroom hours each week, plus other duties such as supervising study periods, grading exams, and developing new materials. According to a 

postwar report:

The faculty of the MISLS cannot be duplicated in the United States. With the many years 

of experience and training, there is not a more cohesive, effective, and wide awake unit to 

be found anywhere. Literally starting from scratch, the instructors have learned to teach 

the hard way, have perfected a system of training the thousands of linguists, and have 

worked out the administrative problem involved in a large institution such as this. The 

intelligence, ingenuity, and versatility of these instructors are the keystones of the successful language program.24

Top graduates, each handpicked by Aiso and his assistants, were held back as 

enlisted instructors to supplement the civilian faculty. Upon selection they were 

promoted to staff sergeant and within a few months to master sergeant. By the 

summer of 1945 their number had grown to over 100. During the war about 200 

Nisei served as enlisted instructors.

From every walk of life and from every nisei community in the U.S. and Hawaii, have 

come these soldier instructors. “Fogey” men and new recruits, the nisei, the kibei, and 

even the issei; all have come, learned and graduated from the MISLS. From these graduates the best have been selected to serve as instructors. Against the express desires of 

23 “Training History,” ann. 9, Personnel Office; MISLS Album, p. 67. 24 “Training History,” ann. 1, para. 3a.(2), p. 1.
310 NISEI LINGUISTS

many for assignments in the field and at the expense of Pacific theatre needs for these 

best qualified linguists, they were retained to help train others who were to follow in their 

footsteps.25

The school also used returning combat veterans such as 2d Lt. Dye Ogata, who 

had been language team chief for the 37th Infantry Division on Bougainville and 

then returned to the United States for officer candidate school (OCS). Upon commissioning, he was reassigned to MISLS. Other combat veterans, including some 

from the 100th Infantry Battalion and 442d Regimental Combat Team, visited 

the school to impart their field experiences.26 However, most instructors had neither commissions nor combat experience to discipline and motivate their students, 

which became increasingly difficult to do as the war continued. School regulations 

stressed that instructors were in complete charge and “any orders issued by them 

will be accepted as orders of the Commandant.”

In June 1945 the school selected thirty-three new enlisted instructors to 

handle the projected expansion of training. One of this group, Hitoshi G. “Ko” 

Sameshima, recalled that his fellow instructors as “a motley group of interesting, 

individualistic knowledgeable Nisei in the mid-20’s to mid-30’s age bracket.”

Most of the class members, though bilingual, possessed primary and native fluency in 

Nihongo (Japanese language), whereas I was among the minority whose forté was English. The Kibei without exception were aces in Nihongo and all class members were intellectually high caliber. The Kibei were also well bred in Japanese culture and philosophy 

and could quickly shift to their Japanese thinking cap, a valuable intelligence asset, so I

begrudgingly admitted.27

After the war many enlisted instructors distinguished themselves in other 

fields. Toshio George Tsukahira had a master’s degree in history from the University of California at Los Angeles; after the war he became the highest ranking Japanese American in the Foreign Service.28 Seattle-born S.Sgt. George Tsutakawa 

became perhaps the most distinguished Japanese American artist of his generation. Before the war he had attended the University of Washington School of Art. 

While stationed at Fort Snelling, he used his weekend passes to visit art museums 

25 Ibid., para 5a., p. 6. 26 MISLS Album, pp. 88, 93, 98. 27 Quote from Ko Sameshima, autobiography, 16 Apr 95, Unpubl Ms, Japanese American 

National Museum, Los Angeles, Calif.; Interv, author with Ko Sameshima, 10 Sep 96. 28 Stanley L. Falk and Warren M. Tsuneishi, eds., MIS in the War against Japan (Washington, 

D.C.: Japanese American Veterans Association, 1995), pp. 9–10, 130–31. Toshio George Tsukahira was the author of Postwar Development of Japanese Communist Strategy (Cambridge, Mass.: 

MIT Press, 1954), and Feudal Control in Tokugawa Japan: The Sankin Kotai System (Cambridge, 

Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966).
FORT SNELLING, 1944–1945 311

and galleries in Chicago, New York, and Boston. After the war he taught art at the 

University of Washington.29

The school sometimes found itself at odds with other government agencies 

over its skilled staff. For example, in 1944 the Office of the Provost Marshal General raised security objections to some of the civilian instructors. School officials 

were successful in fending off this bureaucratic attack: “The primary cause for 

objection to these men was the fact that they were kibei and had spent much time 

in Japan. Actually this was a great advantage in the efficient performance of their 

jobs. In addition they had been under surveillance for two or three years and no 

derogatory information had been compiled as to their loyalty.” The Military Intelligence Division sided with the school and in February 1945 gave the commandant 

“full authority to employ Japanese Americans despite adverse recommendation by 

the Office of the Provost Marshal General.” 30

In 1944 the top enlisted instructors became division chairmen and were promoted to warrant officers.31 Others were sent on special assignment. For example, 

in September 1944 the school sent nine enlisted instructors to the Pacific Military 

Intelligence Research Section at Camp Ritchie, Maryland.

New students arriving at Fort Snelling found a thriving school. Now housed 

in permanent facilities, the school had lost the air of harried improvising that had 

marked the converted aircraft hangar at Crissy Field and the former Civilian Conservation Camp at Camp Savage. The Nisei, especially those from Hawaii, were 

still surprised by the intense cold of the Minnesota winter. Not all incoming students could be accommodated in permanent barracks. Some were billeted in a 

temporary cantonment of poorly heated wooden huts. Ko Sameshima arrived from 

the Amache internment camp in December 1944. “It was especially morale shattering for me to be assigned quarters in a five-man tar-and-paper shack in a sector 

of rows of such shacks, lovingly referred to as ‘the Turkey Farm.’” His bunkmates 

were Hawaii Nisei, “my first close contact. . . . As friendly as I attempted and 

wanted to be, I was made to feel an alien; . . . the reception verged on hostility.” He 

was glad when he “moved out of the miserable environment of my quarters in the 

Turkey Farm shack” into permanent barracks. He excelled as a student and upon 

graduation was selected as an enlisted instructor.32

Despite the harsh winter weather, Minneapolis–St. Paul proved popular with 

the Nisei. The city offered plenty of opportunities for their off-duty time. A streetcar ran directly from Fort Snelling into downtown Minneapolis, where rail connections were good to Chicago and beyond. War Relocation Authority resettlement 

programs brought thousands of Japanese Americans to the Minneapolis–St. Paul 

metropolitan area. More than three hundred Nisei came from the camps to attend 

college in Minnesota. Job-placement agencies helped more than 1,000 Americans 

29 Martha Kingbury, George Tsutakawa (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1990), esp. 

pp. 46–47, 143. 30 “Training History,” ann. 4, Intelligence Section, pp. 8–9. 31 Ibid., ann. 1, para. 5, p. 3. During 1945 seven Nisei were appointed as warrant officers. 32 Sameshima, autobiography.
312 NISEI LINGUISTS

of Japanese ancestry from the internment camps find work, including many young 

women. The USO kept up an active schedule of activities that brought the Nisei 

men and women together, and the chapel at Fort Snelling celebrated many Nisei 

weddings, often shortly before the grooms left for overseas.33

In addition to language training, students at the school received military training from the student battalion, commanded by Major Keller. Military training 

included physical training, road marches, weapons qualification, and other sub33 The 1940 census counted thirty-seven persons of Japanese ancestry in Minneapolis–St. Paul. 

The 1950 census counted 905, which was a significant decline from the wartime peak. “A 1968 

survey of metropolitan Nisei revealed that fully 50% had been stationed at Camp Savage or Fort 

Snelling or had a family member there.” Michael Albert, “The Japanese,” in They Chose Minnesota: A Survey of the State’s Ethnic Groups, ed. June D. Holmquist (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical 

Society Press, 1981), pp. 558–71 (quote from p. 560); Bud Nakasone, “Japanese American Veterans 

of Minnesota,” in Unsung Heroes: The Military Intelligence Service, Past-Present-Future (Seattle: 

MIS-Northwest Association, 1996), pp. 105–06; Al Tsuchiya, “Synopsis of a Minnesotan,” Nikkei 

Heritage (Summer 2004): 16.

Temporary barracks known as the Turkey Farm 
FORT SNELLING, 1944–1945 313

jects.34 The battalion was also responsible for military discipline and routine supply and administrative functions. 

The Nisei chafed at the very presence of Caucasian officer candidates. These 

graduates of the University of Michigan language program took the same course 

as the Nisei but received commissions when they graduated. In contrast, Nisei students were promoted to technician, fifth grade, after four months at Fort Snelling 

and upon graduation were normally promoted to technician, fourth grade (equivalent to sergeant), or technician, third grade (equivalent to staff sergeant). The 

Nisei, who often had better language skills, deeply resented being placed under 

officers they felt had been commissioned for no reason other than their race.

In the autumn of 1944 the avenues for Nisei commissions opened up as small 

numbers of Nisei from the school were sent to officer candidate school and returned 

as second lieutenants. About twenty attended OCS at Fort Benning, Georgia, in 

October 1944, among them T.Sgt. Edwin I. Kawahara, an enlisted instructor from 

Hawaii. In mid-1945 the group was sent to the field as language team leaders.35

Beginning in 1944, officer candidates from the Michigan program were placed 

in a new division, Division E. The third MISLS OCS class started in August 1944 

with 11 officers and 113 officer candidates. The fourth class started in April 1945 

with 14 officers, 93 officer candidates, and for the first time 16 Nisei officers.

The curriculum constantly evolved during the war. The biggest change was 

extending the course from six to nine months, starting with the February 1944 

class. “The Snelling days were easier on studying,” reported the school’s album 

staff, “than the compressed training days at Savage.” 36 Although each class lasted 

longer, new classes started more frequently. Crissy Field and Camp Savage had 

started five classes in thirty months. In the twelve months between August 1944 

and July 1945, Fort Snelling started six regular classes and six classes for officer 

candidates and other special groups. By the summer of 1945 the school boasted 

125 classrooms.

In August 1944 the first Fort Snelling class started with 229 Nisei enlisted 

students and 124 Caucasian officer candidates. In September another class started 

with 278 Nisei enlisted men. In December the largest class ever, with 659 Nisei 

enlisted men, began. By the end of the year the school had 1,081 students in training. New classes started in February, May, and July 1945. In the twelve months 

from August 1944 to July 1945, 2,400 Nisei started classes, almost twice the total 

student input of the previous three years combined.

As the school grew, the curriculum matured. The textbook series remained 

the Naganuma Hyojun Nihongo Tokuhon, or standard Japanese readers, as modified by the MISLS instructors. These were “graded texts [which] begin with a 

primer and range through seven books which include selections from Japanese 

34 MISLS Album, pp. 69–73. 35 Fort Snelling Bulletin, Oct 44, cited in editorial, Pacific Citizen, 14 Oct 44; Pacific Citizen, 9 

Dec 44; “Training History,” ann. 1, para. 6–14, p. 40; Tsukiyama et al, Secret Valor, pp. 59–60. 36 MISLS Album, p. 74.
314 NISEI LINGUISTS

elementary and middle school texts, essays, magazine articles, plays and advanced 

material in literary and epistolary Japanese.” The curriculum also relied upon the 

four-volume heigo text prepared by the MISLS staff with its two-volume Heigo 

Tokuhon reader for military vocabulary. For reference the students carried the 

heavy Uyeda’s Daijiten dictionary.37

Students were placed in sections of twenty with one instructor in permanent 

charge, although they were taught by several different teachers each day. The daily 

schedule was built around six fifty-minute periods from 0730 to 1620. Instructors 

monitored compulsory study periods from 1900 to 2100 four nights each week, 

plus examinations on weekends.

The basic principles of instruction varied little:

1. “Provision of maximum number of supervised contact hours,” through “long and constant exposure to Japanese in every form,” to cram three to six years of college-level 

instruction into nine months of intensive study.

2. “Specialization in a narrow military field,” which increased over time. “The short time 

allotted . . . coupled with reports from the field indicating that the scope of the language 

requirements there were limited exclusively to a narrow military field made it expedient 

to concentrate on military Japanese.”

3. “Comprehension of the language and acquiring of fundamental technique.”

4. “Insistence on the use of every possible media of instruction: visual, aural, oral, and 

through practice.” This meant that “the students were deluged with Japanese every waking hour and through every means,” such as films, native speakers, captured documents, 

and radio monitoring.

5. “Constant evaluation, revision and change of the curriculum, and teaching methods,” 

because, as the faculty readily acknowledged, the school “was operated by amateurs.” 

Graduates serving overseas “were able to point out those subjects that had helped them, 

what their own deficiencies were and were also able to send in pertinent suggestions based 

upon changed conditions in the field.” 38

Akira Oshida established the Research and Liaison Section, which maintained 

a collection of captured Japanese documents and a museum of Japanese weapons 

and equipment. Over time he built up a collection of 2,000 documents and maps: 

“In translation classes the trainees worked with captured documents still marked 

by the mud and rain of Guadalcanal, New Guinea or Saipan.” Oshida worked hard 

to obtain current authentic Japanese materials from graduates in the field.39

Yutaka Munakata, head of the Translation Section, had been born in Washington but lived in Japan from ages three to twenty. He returned to Washington 

to attend an American high school and then the University of Washington, where 

he earned a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering. The Translation 

Section employed recent graduates while they waited for their assignments, so 

37 Ueda’s Daijiten, American ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1942); “Training History,” ann. 1, para. 10c, pp. 16–17. 38 “Training History,” pp. 21–25. 39 Ibid., ann. 6, History of J.O.B. [Japanese Order of Battle], and ann. 1, para. 4g., pp. 7–9.
FORT SNELLING, 1944–1945 315

Munakata became friendly with many of the students and asked them to keep in 

touch from overseas. As a result he received a steady stream of letters from the 

Southwest Pacific, Central Pacific, and China-Burma-India Theaters that included 

many valuable insights into how the Nisei were being employed in the field.40

In November 1944 Betty Hackett Uchiyama, wife of 2d Lt. Fusao Uchiyama, 

began publishing a mimeographed newsletter, called the Yaban Gogai, for the 

school’s graduates. Although the school was no longer at Camp Savage, the “Savage Extra” reached out to its graduates across the Pacific.41

The school began specialized training as it grew. For example, it established a 

radio shack “for training students to become expert clear text wireless interceptors 

and radio monitors of Japanese broadcasts and wireless stations.” Here, students 

learned to monitor Japanese news broadcasts in both ro ̄maji and kana. By mid1945 the section had grown to eleven men, all licensed amateur radio operators. 

They monitored Japanese broadcasts for training purposes; but they also recorded, 

translated, and forwarded them to the War Department.42 The school also established a propaganda writing course under James Oda, a prewar labor activist from 

California. The War Department knew of his left-wing background but allowed 

him to continue as an instructor.43

Since 1941 MISLS had taught only Japanese. The Military Intelligence Training Center at Camp Ritchie and other Army and Navy programs taught various 

other languages. In the autumn of 1944 MISLS established a Chinese language 

program, after other commands had established their own. That summer of 1944 

Admiral Chester W. Nimitz identified a requirement for Chinese linguists for an 

attack on Formosa or the South China coast. In response U.S. Army Forces Middle 

Pacific in Hawaii established a Chinese language training center. MISLS supplied two Chinese American instructors and some curricular materials. By June 

1945 the school in Hawaii was going strong with six officers and sixty enlisted 

trainees.44

MISLS had tried placing Chinese American soldiers in Japanese-language 

classes, beginning with fifty students in the summer of 1943 and twenty more a 

40 These letters can be found in the Harrington Papers. After the war Munakata remained on the 

staff of the language school, and after his death the Defense Language Institute named an academic 

building in his honor. 41 “Training History,” ann. 13, Translation Section, pp. 46–47. Yaban means “savage” or “barbarian”; gogai means “newspaper” or “extra.” A partial set of Yaban Gogai may be found in Japanese Evacuation Research Study (JERS) microfilm, pt. 2, sec. 15, reel 85, frames 0091–. 42 “Training History,” ann. 1, para. 10c.(4), p. 18, and ann. 11, Radio Section; MISLS Album, p. 

77; WD Press Release, 22 Oct 45; “Lid Off Radio Shack,” in Yaban Gogai, Dec 45. 43 “Training History,” ann. 1, para. 9h., p. 12, and para. 10c.(10), p. 21; James Oda, Heroic 

Struggles of Japanese Americans: Partisan Fighters from America’s Concentration Camps (Hollywood, Calif.: J. Oda, 1980); James Oda, Secret Embedded in Magic Cables: The Story of a 101-

Year-Old Japanese Communist Leader Who Served Japan, KGB, and CIA (Northridge, Calif.: J. 

Oda, 1993), pp. 116–18, 128–30. 44 U.S. Army Forces Middle Pacific (USAFMIDPAC), History of G–2 Section, pp. 23–24, 

Folder S–83, Trng Grp, RG 165, NARA; “Training History,” ann. 10, sec. IV(6).
316 NISEI LINGUISTS

few months later. However, most Chinese American students could not keep up 

with the Nisei. The school learned that the ability to read Chinese characters was 

of little use in learning to read Japanese kanji because any resemblance between 

the two languages was superficial. Furthermore, school officials were convinced 

that “the problems connected with” Chinese students’ studying Japanese “were 

primarily due to the low scholastic ability of the group.”45 Nevertheless, in 1944 

the Military Intelligence Division directed MISLS to begin Chinese-language 

training. In December 1944 the school organized a Chinese Division, which grew 

to seven officer and fifty-four enlisted students. (See Table 2.)However, the attrition rate was high, almost 40 percent. Only one officer and thirty-three enlisted 

men graduated in July 1945; in mid-August they were shipped to Calcutta for the 

China Theater.46

Nisei in the Women’s Army Corps

The Military Intelligence Division appeared reluctant to place Nisei women 

in language training. If the school’s graduates were to be used on the battlefield 

as translators and interpreters at regiment and division level, so the reasoning 

probably went, then women would have to be excluded. In late 1943 the Women’s 

Army Corps began recruiting Nisei but found few volunteers.47 In July 1944 the 

War Department approved the recruitment of 100 Nisei women for language training, but recruitment remained difficult. In September 1944 Col. Kendall Fielder, 

G–2 of U.S. Army Forces Middle Pacific, “expressed pessimism on the number 

of female linguists who could be induced to join the WACs in Hawaii. . . .The 

two major factors in opposition to Hawaiian women volunteering for the Army 

appeared to be: 1) Parental influence opposed the girls’ leaving the family. 2) 

Most boys did not approve of their sisters joining the WACs.” Despite the colonel’s 

pessimism, WAC recruiters enlisted twenty-six Nisei women in Hawaii and in 

January 1945 sent them to the mainland for training.48 Overall, school officials 

reported that “the response of the Nisei women to the WAC recruiting program 

has been poor.” Those with good language skills “are the so-called ‘Japanese’ or 

45 “Training History,” ann. 10, sec. IV(6). 46 See MISLS Album, p. 130. “Training History,” ann. 1, para. 6–3(4), pp. 7–11, and para. 6–

10(11), p. 15; ann. 5, Chinese Section; ann. 10, sec. IV(6). 47 Mattie E. Treadwell, The Women’s Army Corps, U.S. Army in World War II (Washington, 

D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1954); Brenda L. Moore, Serving Our Country: 

Japanese American Women in the Military during World War II (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers 

University Press, 2003); MISLS Album, pp. 90–91, 131; The Pacific War and Peace: Americans of 

Japanese Ancestry in Military Intelligence Service, 1941 to 1952 (San Francisco: Military Intelligence Service Association of Northern California/National Japanese American Historical Society, 

1991), pp. 22–23. “Training History,” pp. 14–15, 17, 19; ann. 1, para. 6–19, p. 17, para. 6–30, p. 20, 

and para. 9i., pp. 13–14; ann. 10. 48 Allen, Hawaii’s War Years, p. 291; “Training History,” ann. 10; Historical Section, Office of 

the Provost Marshal General, “Monograph on History of Military Clearance Program,” pp. 23–29, 

Unpubl Ms, CMH 4–4.1 AA.
FORT SNELLING, 1944–1945 317

conservative element,” and thus not interested in volunteering. Perhaps, they felt, 

a few might have worked as civil service employees.49

Nevertheless, the first Nisei WACs began reporting to the school in the autumn 

of 1944. They were assigned to the WAC detachment under Capt. Marian E. Nestor 

and initially worked in clerical positions on the school staff. On 28 May 1945, 

the first WAC class began with twenty-eight women students. As more women 

arrived, the class grew to forty-six.50 The Nisei WACs proved to be as diverse and 

as capable as the male Nisei; many were college graduates. Tamie Tsuchiyama 

49 “Training History,” ann. 1, para. 5c.(1), pp. 13–14. 50 “WACs in Third Month of School,” Yaban Gogai, Aug 45; Yaye Furutani Herman, “The 

WAC-MIS Experience,” in Unsung Heroes, pp. 5–8.

Women’s Army Corps students at choir practice, 1945
318 NISEI LINGUISTS

had been enrolled in the doctoral program in anthropology at the University of 

California when the war broke out. She worked as a field researcher for the Japanese Evacuation Research Study before enlisting in the Women’s Army Corps and 

being selected for language training.51 The WAC class even included one Caucasian, Sgt. Rhoda Knudten, who had been born in Japan of Lutheran missionary 

parents and had spent her entire life in Japan until coming to the United States to 

attend college.

The Nisei WACs turned out to be excellent students. Major Rusch reported: 

“Fully half of these women are qualified as secretaries and typists. The first ten 

of the class are extremely expert as translators and interpreters of Japanese and 

all of them are on par or a shade above par, in comparison with the Nisei male 

linguists. . . . (Japanese women linguists have always been more diligent than male 

students.)” 52

The school leadership remained unconvinced, and Army officials in Hawaii 

discouraged further recruiting efforts “unless the need for women was extremely 

urgent.” By the middle of 1945 school officials had concluded that all requirements for linguists could be filled by men. “In view of the fact that qualified male 

linguists were available, the interest in the WAC program subsided, and additional 

recruitment was abandoned. . . . It is believed that the time and energy spent in 

connection with WAC recruitment was unproductive and that far greater results 

could have been obtained had this effort been spent on the procurement of qualified male linguists.” 53

Graduate Assignments

The Military Intelligence Division centrally managed the assignment of MISLS

graduates, who remained in critically short supply throughout the war. The MID 

Training Branch worked closely with the MISLS staff to decide where to send the 

graduates; matching graduates to assignments remained problematic throughout 

the war. Field commanders always wanted more, but the War Department could 

fill only spaces identified on unit tables of organization. As far as War Department 

personnel managers were concerned, by 1944 all authorized linguist spaces were 

already filled. In fact, it appeared that all theaters were over strength by December 

1944. This caused a major reassessment of language requirements. In January 

1945 the General Bissell wrote “all War Department agencies whose plans envision the use of Japanese linguists,” requesting that they inform him “of the nature 

51 Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, The Politics of Field Work: Research in an American Concentration 

Camp (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1999), pp. 153–55. 52 Ltr, Maj. Paul F. Rusch to Lt. Col. Mathewson, 13 October 1945, 091–300.6 (= Decimal 200), 

G–2 OCCIO, Gen Corresp 1944–1945, GHQ SWPA/USAFPAC, RG 338, NARA. 53 “Training History,” ann. 10, sec. IV.(3), p. 5.
FORT SNELLING, 1944–1945 319

of such plans, the numbers and qualifications of linguists required with the best 

possible estimate of the dates on which such personnel will be required.” 54

The Navy Department reviewed its own language requirements at the same 

time. In January 1945 the head of the Boulder language school, Cmdr. A. E. Hindmarsh, flew to Hawaii to assess language officer requirements for the Central 

Pacific. Admiral Nimitz personally asked him for “all possible help” in obtaining 300 language officers for censorship duties during the occupation of Japan. 

The Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Areas, with 44 Nisei and 261 Boulder graduates, requested 200 additional Boulder graduates. Nimitz’ chief of military government complained that he had requested 400 Army Nisei but the War 

54 Memo, Trng Br to ACS, G–2, 12 Jan 45, MISLS Gen 1945, Trng Grp, RG 165, NARA; Ltr, 

ACS, G–2, to The Adjutant General, sub: Requirements for Officer and Enlisted Personnel Qualified as Japanese Linguists, 29 January 1945, File 291.2 Japs, 1–30 Jan 45, War Department G–1 

Decimal Files, RG 165, NARA.

Graduates board a train for the port of embarkation and overseas assignment.
320 NISEI LINGUISTS

Department had cut this to 100 and none had yet arrived. He asked for at least 

200 Navy language officers in the next eighteen months. Hindmarsh returned to 

the United States determined “to enroll [an] additional eight hundred Japaneselanguage officers between March and July 1945.” 55

While Army and Navy intelligence leaders in Washington looked at overall 

numbers, school officials at Fort Snelling built language teams tailored to each 

assignment. Teams assigned to an infantry division or corps usually had ten Nisei 

led by a staff sergeant as team leader, with six technicians, 4th class, and three 

technicians, 5th class. Whenever possible, each team included a balanced mix of 

Nisei strong in written Japanese, spoken Japanese, and the English language.

Assignment patterns shifted in 1944. By May of that year the Southwest 

Pacific Area had received its full allotment of Nisei linguists based on the number 

of divisions and corps headquarters. (Chart 2) The last combat division sent to 

that theater, the 11th Airborne Division, arrived in September 1944. In December 

1944 and January 1945 the school sent two large groups of forty Nisei each to the 

Central and Southwest Pacific areas. In April 1945 the school sent another group 

of seventy Nisei to New Delhi to support the Allied drive into Burma and Malaya. 

However, from the summer of 1944 until the spring of 1945, most MISLS graduates were assigned in the continental United States, from the Army Air Forces to 

prisoner of war camps, the Signal Intelligence Service, and the Pacific Military 

Intelligence Research Section.56

At the school, this shift in assignment patterns led to a dramatic increase over 

the winter of 1944–1945 in the number of graduates awaiting assignment. Graduates usually received a two-week furlough before shipping out but then often 

waited for months at Fort Snelling. From February 1945 onward, the graduate 

pool hovered between 250 and 400 students, who were assigned to the Translation 

Section to keep their skills fresh.57 In the spring of 1945 language requirements 

expanded rapidly as commanders prepared for the invasion of Japan. In May and 

June of 1945 the school sent 359 graduates to U.S. Army Forces Far East.

The school formed specialized teams as needed. In February 1945 the acting 

commandant, Colonel Hollingshead, asked 2d Lt. Wallace S. Amioka, a recent 

OCS graduate, if he would “be interested in leading a special team of Okinawadescent enlisted men who had requested that [he] lead them.” Amioka recalled, 

“Naturally I jumped at the chance.” 58 Another Nisei student, Thomas H. Ige, had 

suggested the special team. He had grown up in Hawaii in an Okinawan village 

55 Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, “School of Oriental Languages,” pp. 26–35, Unpubl 

Ms, Naval Historical Center, Washington, D.C. 56 Military Intelligence Service Language School, Disposition of Graduates, Training Grp, Ofc 

of the Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, NARA. 57 “Training History,” ann. 13. 58 Interv, author with Wallace S. Amioka, 8 Dec 94; Wallace S. Amioka, Biography, Military 

Intelligence Service Club of Northern California (this and similar biographies hereafter cited as 

MISNorCal Bios); Wallace S. Amioka, remarks for panel discussion, 30 Oct 91; Tsukiyama et al., 

Secret Valor, pp. 97–98.
FORT SNELLING, 1944–1945 321

and was fluent in the local dialect, very different from spoken Japanese. When 

the war began he had been a graduate student in economics at the University 

of Chicago and in March 1944 had enlisted for language training. After Camp 

Savage and basic training at Fort McClellan, he returned to Fort Snelling in January 1945. Observing how the war was drawing closer to Okinawa, he wrote the 

commandant to suggest that the school form a team of Okinawan-speakers. The 

commandant accepted and selected Amioka as team chief. The ten other members 

of the team were all Okinawans. Amioka, who did not speak the dialect, had to 

be tutored secretly by one of the Okinawans. The American assault on Okinawa 

began on 1 April 1945, and Amioka’s team deployed soon after.59

59 Joseph D. Harrington, Yankee Samurai: The Secret Role of Nisei in America’s Pacific Victory

(Detroit: Pettigrew Enterprises, 1979), pp. 285–86; Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor, pp. 97–100; 

Thomas H. Ige, Boy from Kahaluu: An Autobiography (Honolulu: Kin Cho Jin Kai, 1989), pp. 

78–80. Intervs, author with Amioka, 8 Dec 94, and with Thomas H. Ige, 5 Dec 94.

Chart 2—Disposition of Enlisted Nisei MISLS Graduates, 1942–1945

ADC Alaska Defense Command

SOPAC South Pacific

SWPA Southwest Pacific Area

CBI China-Burma-India

POA Pacific Ocean Areas

AAF Army Air Forces

CONUS Continental United States

Source: Military Intelligence Service Language School, Disposition of Graduates, Trng Grp, Ofc of the Dir of 

Intel G–2, RG 165, NA.

ADC SOPAC SWPA CBI POA AAF CONUS

Jul–Dec 45

Jan–Jun 45

1942–1944

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

1400

1600

1800
322 NISEI LINGUISTS

Other Japanese-Language Programs

Japanese-language programs for Caucasian personnel expanded alongside the 

MISLS program for Nisei soldiers. In the summer of 1944 the Army Japanese 

Language School at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor graduated its third 

class. New classes began in May 1944, January 1945, and May 1945. Joseph K. 

Yamagiwa, an assistant professor at the university, directed about forty-five Issei 

and Nisei instructors. The program provided a basic foundation in the language 

to prepare students for the regular MISLS course.60 Some students came to Ann 

Arbor from other Japanese-language programs in the Army Specialized Training 

Program (ASTP), which was terminated in 1944. Yamagiwa praised his students:

[They are] undoubtedly comprised of one of the best-selected units in the Army. High in 

their IQ and in the ratings received in the Army General Classification Tests, they are both 

proficient and articulate. Some are BIJ’s; they were either “born in Japan” or have “been in 

Japan.” In the [later] classes, a high percentage have come with extensive previous training amounting to as much as one year in various ASTP units. They consistently challenge 

the best efforts of the staff. Competition among the students is unusually keen.61

A few were already combat veterans. For example, Jacques Richardson started 

the ASTP Japanese class at Yale in early 1943 with 250 other students. When the 

ASTP was cancelled he was reassigned to an infantry division in France. He survived the fierce fighting in the Ardennes and managed to get himself reassigned to 

the Michigan program, where he resumed the study of Japanese in January 1945.62

Michigan classes began with the “oral-aural approach” and used only the spoken language for the first five or six weeks for “the fixing of pronunciation habits, 

the brute memorizing of phrases and sentences that are useful in everyday life, and 

the mimicking in unison of the pronunciation of instructors.” This was followed 

by training in grammatical forms and speech patterns and finally the development 

of fluency in speaking. The pressures on the students were intense.63

60 “Training History,” ann. 3, The Army Japanese Language School: A Preliminary Report on 

the Academic Program; Joseph K. Yamagiwa, “The Japanese Language Programs at the University 

of Michigan during World War II,” ch. 2, Unpubl Ms, 1946, Ann Arbor, Mich.; Grant K. Goodman, America’s Japan: The First Year, 1945–1946 (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005), 

pp. 10–11. 61 “Training History,” ann. 3, p. 9. 62 Jacques Richardson, in Harrington Papers. 63 “Training History,” ann. 3, pp. 56–73 (quote from p. 59); Donald M. Richardson, “Random 

Recollections of the Second Class, AIJLS [Army Intensive Japanese Language School],” Unpubl 

Ms, Sep 88, author’s files; Herbert Passin, Encounter with Japan (San Francisco: Kodansha, 1982). 

Lucian L. Rocke, Jr., reports that two students committed suicide during the time he attended 

the course. Lucian L. Rocke, Jr., in Harrington Papers. Goodman reports some suicides among 

Michigan graduates at Fort Snelling while he attended MISLS between August 1944 and February 

1945. Goodman, America’s Japan, p. 21. After the war some Michigan graduates became leading 

specialists in Japanese studies.
FORT SNELLING, 1944–1945 323

After graduation the officer candidates attended basic training and then 

reported to MISLS, which activated special OCS classes in February 1944, August 

1944, April 1945, and August 1945, each with about a hundred Michigan graduates. Unlike the Nisei, the Caucasian students wore an OCS patch on their left 

pockets. Upon graduation, MISLS convened a commissioning board and most 

were commissioned as second lieutenants.

Yamagiwa also supervised other programs at the University of Michigan with 

the help of his assistant, Hide Shohara. These included the ASTP East Asia Area 

and Language Program with nineteen language instructors and 264 students. 

When the ASTP program concluded in September 1944, most of the instructors 

continued with the Civil Affairs Training School Far Eastern Program (Japan), 

which started in August 1944 with between nine and fifteen language instructors 

and 343 students.

The Navy School of Oriental Languages, University of Colorado at Boulder, 

expanded its enrollment as the war continued. By mid-1944 it had already graduated 600 Navy and Marine Corps language officers and had hundreds more in 

training. These students were midshipmen upon starting the course and received 

commissions before graduation. Navy Commander Hindmarsh was the driving 

force behind the school, interviewing students, recruiting faculty, and coordinating with Navy officials for future requirements. When the founding academic 

director, Florence Walne, resigned in September 1944 for health reasons, Glenn W. 

Shaw became director. By 1945 the school grew to 240 faculty members. Unlike 

the Army school at Fort Snelling, the Navy school used many Issei as instructors. 

In addition to the Japanese program, the school taught classes in Chinese, Malay, 

and Russian.

Boulder graduates streamed into the Pacific Ocean Areas, with more than two 

hundred serving in the Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Areas, Translation 

Section and many others serving in active operations with the fleet and ashore. The 

translation work was tedious and exhausting, all the more so because “it was often 

difficult for them to discern any connection between their work and operations in 

progress,” naval intelligence officer Cmdr. W. J. Holmes noted. He appreciated 

these naval reservists who labored in obscurity. When senior naval officers complained of their “unmilitary attitude,” Holmes would respond: “Relax, we have 

always won our wars with a bunch of damned civilians in uniform anxious to get 

back to their own affairs, and we will win this one the same way.” 64

To meet expanding enrollment the Navy school opened a separate branch on 

15 June 1945 at Oklahoma A&M, Stillwater, Oklahoma, under Navy Capt. John 

H. Morrill and academic director James H. McAlpine, a former missionary in 

64 W. J. Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets: U.S. Naval Intelligence Operations in the Pacific during World War II (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1979), p. 169.
324 NISEI LINGUISTS

Japan who had taught at Boulder. Between June and August the Stillwater branch 

enrolled 700 students.65

The Marine Corps continued its own Japanese-language program for enlisted 

marines at Camp Elliott near San Diego, California. In December 1944 the school 

moved to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Although its graduates received only 

a few months’ familiarization with simple printed materials such as field orders, 

they served down to regiment level on Guam, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa.

The British government also needed to train Japanese-language specialists: 

many of its Japanese-language officers had been captured at the beginning of the 

war in Hong Kong and Singapore. In 1944 Commonwealth forces went on the 

offensive in Burma and needed more linguists than ever before. The School of 

Oriental and African Studies in London expanded its Japanese program and in 

June 1944 began the Services General Purpose course, an eighteen-month integrated course for translators and interrogators. New classes started in 1944 and 

1945 with a total of ninety-two students. The first class was scheduled to graduate 

in December 1945.66

The Canadian Army Language School, S–20, opened in Vancouver, British 

Columbia, in August 1943. At that time the Canadian government did not allow 

Nisei to serve in the armed forces and had evacuated 21,000 Japanese Canadians from British Columbia. The school’s officer in charge was an over-age major, 

Arthur P. McKenzie, who had been born to missionary parents in Tokyo in 1889. 

“When the Nisei first met [him],” one student recalled, “they sat dumbfounded, 

listening to the hakujin [white] officer speak in eloquent Japanese much superior 

to their own. He had a good sense of humor and spelled his name in Japanese 

characters—Asama Kenji.” 67

In early 1945 Canada began to prepare a special force for the invasion of 

Japan, and in January 1945 the Ottawa government authorized the enlistment of 

Nisei as translators and interrogators. Major Aiso visited the first Nisei group in 

basic training in Brantford, Ontario, and administered language tests to fifty-two, 

rating only a quarter as good or excellent. He reported that their caliber “would 

correspond roughly to and favourably with the calibre of the Nisei students who 

are now being received by the Military Intelligence Service Language School in 

the United States under the compulsory draft system. . . . It became evident during 

the Interviews, that these men are keenly anxious to become good soldiers, and to 

65 Pauline S. McAlpine, Diary of a Missionary (Decatur, Ga.: Presbyterian Church in America, 

1986). 66 Sadao Oba, The “Japanese” War, trans. Anne Kaneko (Sandgate, U.K.: Japan Library, 

1995). 67 Roy Ito, We Went to War: The Story of the Japanese Canadians Who Served during the First 

and Second World Wars (Stittsville, Ontario: Canada’s Wings, 1984), p. 214; Barry Broadfoot, 

Years of Sorrow, Years of Shame: The Story of the Japanese Canadians in World War II (Toronto: 

Doubleday, 1977); Patricia E. Roy, “The Soldiers Canada Didn’t Want: Her Chinese and Japanese 

Citizens,” Canadian Historical Review (September 1978): 341–58; Roy Ito Papers, NJAHS.
FORT SNELLING, 1944–1945 325

take whatever training may be necessary to increase their value as translators and 

interpreters.” 68 One Canadian Nisei remembered Major Aiso’s visit:

Major Aiso, stocky, trim, and neat in his American officers’ uniform, informed the Canadians of the enviable records established by the 100th Infantry Battalion from Hawaii 

and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. He described the Japanese language school at 

Fort Snelling and how the graduates were serving in many important positions in the US

Army. He complimented the Canadians on the smartness of the platoon on the parade 

ground and said that all eyes at National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa were watching 

them and pulling for them.69

In April 1945 Aiso sent two American Nisei lieutenants, Dye Ogata and Ted 

Kihara, to help as instructors. Both were veterans of the South Pacific and had 

recently completed officer candidate school. They spent several months at the 

Canadian school. Ogata requested permission to bring his Nisei wife to Vancouver, but the Canadian government refused until Colonel Rasmussen made a personal appeal.70

Major Aiso visited Vancouver with Maj. John E. Anderton in June 1945, by 

which time the school had grown to 105 faculty, students, and staff. They praised 

the efforts of the staff but remarked that “operations are conducted under certain 

obvious difficulties and with limited and inadequate facilities. On the whole, it is 

surprising that the school has been able to develop to its present state under such 

circumstances.” In July 1945 the first fifty Canadian Nisei arrived in Vancouver 

to join eighty Caucasian students already in training. The twelve-month course 

“was an extremely difficult one,” one Nisei recalled. “Nervous breakdowns among 

the candidates were not uncommon.” The top six Nisei joined the senior class, 

which had already been under way for nine months. In August they were assigned 

to a language team for the Canadian Army Pacific Force at Camp Breckinridge, 

Kentucky.71

Anderton toured other Allied language schools around the world to offer 

MISLS assistance. “It is considered essential,” he wrote, “that the training efforts 

of these schools be integrated by exchange of technical information and training 

aids.” His travels took him as far as Australia, where he visited the tiny Royal 

Australian Air Force Language School, which had only ten instructors, four of 

68 Ito, We Went to War, p. 209. 69 Ibid., p. 208. 70 Dye Ogata, personal communication to author, 30 Nov 91. Ogata and Kihara were joined by 

T.Sgt. T. Noguchi. Ito, We Went to War, p. 308. 71 Ltr, Aiso and Anderton to G.O.C.-in-C. [General Officer Commander in Chief], Pacific Command (thru Commandant, S–20), sub: Report in re Visit to S–20 J.L.S., Pacific Command, with 

Observations on the Training of Personnel for Special Duties in the Canadian Pacific Force and 

Elsewhere, 9 June 1945, Trng Grp, RG 165, NARA; Ito, We Went to War, p. 212. Stanley W. Dziuban, Military Relations between the United States and Canada, 1939–1945, U.S. Army in World 

War II (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1959), pp. 268–72. Canadians of 

Japanese ancestry were not permitted to return to British Columbia until 1949.
326 NISEI LINGUISTS

whom were on loan from ATIS. Nowhere else did he find a language school as 

large or efficient as MISLS at Fort Snelling, Minnesota.72

Training for the Invasion and Occupation

In early 1945 the War Department eased restrictions on publicity about the 

MIS Nisei. In January the War Department announced the award of the Distinguished Service Cross to Sgt. Hoichi Kubo for valor on Saipan the previous 

August. Other Nisei who fought with Merrill’s Marauders received extensive press 

coverage around the same time. In March the War Relocation Authority held a 

press conference to focus on the MIS Nisei. The resulting story in the Pacific Citizen was entitled “Role of Japanese Americans in Pacific War Disclosed.” In April 

the War Relocation Authority released a fifteen-page collection of news clippings, 

“Nisei in the War against Japan.” Although the details remained sketchy, the MIS

Nisei were no longer much of a secret.73

That spring the war in Europe was coming to a close. In April the Nisei were 

shocked by the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the only president many 

could remember. While he had sanctioned the Japanese evacuation from the West 

Coast, he had also given Nisei the chance to prove their loyalty by serving in the 

armed forces. That spring and summer Nisei soldiers’ families began leaving camp 

by the thousands to return to their former homes in the face of sporadic vigilante 

violence against their return. In June MISLS began granting special furloughs for 

students to assist their parents in leaving the camps.74

At Fort Snelling, more changes were coming as the school expanded and 

adapted to meet new demands. The school’s leaders traveled away from the school 

more than ever before. Colonel Rasmussen kept a busy travel schedule in the spring 

and summer of 1945, leaving Colonel Hollingshead as acting commandant. Major 

Aiso spent a month in Ottawa advising the Canadian Army.

In the Pacific Theater, field commanders still complained that they did not 

have enough Nisei linguists and that recent graduates lacked the proficiency of 

their predecessors. In May 1945 an Army Ground Forces observer criticized the 

quality of MISLS graduates on Okinawa: “The need is felt here for good Nisei 

officers with Nisei enlisted men. The Nisei try hard, but don’t seem to have the 

necessary military background to appreciate what tactical information is desired. 

72 Ltrs, Maj. John E. Anderton to MIS, sub: Visit to Royal Australian Air Force Language 

School, 10 July 1945; Maj. John E. Anderton to Deputy Director of Training, RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force], HQ, Melbourne, sub: Report in re Visit to Royal Australian Air Force Japanese 

Language School No. 3, School of Technical Training, Ultimo, Sydney, 12 July 1945. Both in Trng 

Grp, RG 165, NARA. 73 “Hawaiian Nisei Sergeant First To Receive DSC [Distinguished Service Cross] for Heroism in 

Central Pacific War Zone,” Pacific Citizen, 13 Jan 45; “Role of Japanese Americans in Pacific War 

Disclosed,” Pacific Citizen, 10 Mar 45; War Relocation Authority, Nisei in the War against Japan

(Washington, D.C.: Department of the Interior, 1945); “The Saga of ‘Horizontal Hank’ [Henry H. 

Gosho]: Seattle Nisei Fought Japanese in Burma’s Jungle Warfare,” Pacific Citizen, 19 May 45. 74 “Training History,” ann. 2, Admin Section, p. 7.
FORT SNELLING, 1944–1945 327

They don’t automatically get it, but have to be ‘kept on the track’ during interrogation by one of the G–2 officers.” 75

General Bissell, the War Department G–2, brushed aside such criticism: “The 

scarcity of qualified Japanese linguists is such that it is necessary to devote maximum time and effort to language instruction.” They all received infantry basic 

training and “a minimum amount of general intelligence training . . . during the 

language course.” He acknowledged that “this is insufficient to qualify the linguists 

to act independently as interrogators; but any further military training would be at 

the expense of language training, and the latter must be held paramount.” 76

That same spring, from Manila, Brig. Gen. Charles A. Willoughby requested 

1,106 linguists for the coming invasion of Japan and Col. Elliott R. Thorpe 

75 Memo, Clayton L. Bissell to Charles A. Willoughby, 9 Jul 45, Folder: Trng Br Files, MISLSGeneral, 1945, Trng Grp, RG 165, NARA. 76 Ibid.

Merrill’s Marauders veterans with Colonel Rasmussen, January 1945
328 NISEI LINGUISTS

requested 984 more for the Counter Intelligence Corps. Clearly, the school would 

have to accelerate the training process. One step was to reduce the course length 

from nine back to six months.77 Even this was insufficient to meet the growing 

demand, so the school reintroduced an oral language course. The school had tried 

this in 1943, but results had been unsatisfactory. This time, faced with declining 

quality of recruits and rising demand from the field, the school had no choice. On 

16 May 1945, Headquarters, U.S. Army Forces Pacific Ocean Area, requested permission to establish a language school in Hawaii that would have lower entrance 

requirements and less classroom time. In recent months this headquarters had 

recruited Nisei in Hawaii and sent them straight to Saipan and Okinawa with little 

or no language training.

On 31 May 1945, Colonel Rasmussen proposed instead that MISLS conduct 

a four-month oral language course. This started on 30 July as the Oral Language 

School with seven officers and 280 enlisted men, “from among men not qualifying 

for the regular course.”78 The minimum entrance requirement was “a conversational 

knowledge of the Japanese language, plus a slight knowledge of Kana.” The new 

program, designated as Division F, “was a radical departure from the fundamental 

ideas of the MISLS,” according to a postwar report, “where the emphasis was primarily on the training of men to work in the written Japanese and incidentally the 

oral linguist.”79 Many students for the Oral Language School came from a previously untapped source. Since the end of the war in Europe in May 1945, Nisei soldiers in the pipeline for the 442d RCT had been held in the replacement depot at Fort 

Meade, Maryland. In June over three hundred were selected for language training. 

They brought with them a smoldering resentment at their Army experience to date 

that was very different from that of the early 442d RCT volunteers. In the months to 

come they would become a source of discipline problems for the school.80

Other students came directly from the 442d RCT. When the War Department 

announced demobilization plans in September 1944, many Nisei in the 100th 

Infantry Battalion and the 442d RCT had enough points to return from overseas 

or be discharged. For example, 1st Lt. Masayuki “Spark” Matsunaga, a twicewounded member of the 100th Infantry Battalion, came to Fort Snelling in October 1944. He was assigned as student company commander but spent most of 

his time speaking to public groups throughout the Midwest on behalf of the War 

Relocation Agency about the exploits of the 442d RCT. Another returning veteran, 

2d Lt. Richard K. Hayashi, had attended the school as a student, served six months 

on a language team in the South Pacific, and then attended officer candidate school 

77 Memo, USAFFE [U.S. Army Forces Far East] G–2 to OCCIO, 18 Jun 45, Box G–1456, Gen 

Corresp, 1944–1945, 091–300.6, G–2 OCCIO, GHQ Southwest Pacific Area and U.S. Army Forces 

Pacific, RG 338, NARA; MID Memo 908 for Cmdt MISLS, 9 Jul 45, Trng Grp, RG 165, NARA. On 

the six-month course, see MISLS Album, p. 12; “Training History,” ann. 1, para. 9i., p. 14. 78 “Training History,” ann. 1, para. 9i(1), pp. 14–15; ann. 10, para. IV(7). 79 Ibid., ann. 1, para. 9i(2), pp. 14–15; ann. 10, p. 15. 80 Tamotsu Shibutani, The Derelicts of Company K: A Sociological Study of Demoralization

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978).
FORT SNELLING, 1944–1945 329

at Fort Benning. Upon commissioning, he was sent to the 442d RCT as a platoon 

leader. In May 1945 he was reassigned back to the language school.81 Only weeks 

after the end of the war in Europe, MISLS recruiters visited Italy and selected 

240 veterans from the 442d RCT who were granted forty-five days’ leave before 

reporting to Fort Snelling.82

Matsunaga returned to Hawaii in July 1945 for discharge and wrote back to 

friends at Fort Snelling:

I often wish I were back there with the school. Somehow the driving spirit of the school 

as a whole seems to have a lasting effect on one who has been in any way connected with 

the school. I have met and talked with many graduates of the school, here in Hawaii, and 

found that they all seem to look back to the assignment at Camp Savage and Fort Snelling 

as the “good ole days.” 83

By the summer of 1945 the single focus of the school was training more linguists for the expected invasion and occupation of Japan. By 31 July 1945, the 

school had graduated 2,078 Nisei and hundreds of Caucasians. Almost as many 

students, 1,863, were still in training. The Nisei had a special motivation in their 

studies: to prove their loyalty. In John Aiso’s words, “what better proof could 

[they] offer than to actively wage war directly against Japan.” 84 The Military Intelligence Service gave them the chance to do just that.

81 Richard K. Hayashi, MISNorCal Bio. 82 “Training History,” ann. 10, para. IV.E., p. 17; Thomas D. Murphy, Ambassadors in Arms

(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1954), p. 271; Lyn Crost, Honor by Fire: Japanese Americans at War in Europe and the Pacific (Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1994), p. 271. 83 Yaban Gogai, Nov 45, p. 9; Murphy, Ambassadors in Arms, p. 275; Richard Halloran, Warrior, Peacemaker, Poet, Patriot: A Portrait of Senator Spark M. Matsunaga (Honolulu: Watermark, 2002). Matsunaga won election to the Hawaii territorial legislature in 1954, U.S. House of 

Representatives in 1962, and U.S. Senate in 1976. 84 “Training History,” ann. 1, para. 6–22, pp. 17–18; Memo, MID 908 to G–1, 31 Jul 45, Trng 

Grp, RG 165, NARA; John F. Aiso, Speech to MIS Veteran’s Reunion, Honolulu, Hawaii, 6 Sep 64.

10

MIS Nisei in the Campaigns of 1945

As the year 1945 began, America had been at war for over three years. The 

U.S. Navy had already destroyed Japanese Navy and merchant fleet, and American 

bombers had begun an aerial campaign against Japan’s cities and military facilities. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers had been killed or isolated with 

no hope of reinforcement or resupply. The liberation of the Philippines was under 

way. In the coming months the Military Intelligence Service (MIS) Nisei would 

exhibit their bravery and skill in the largest land campaigns yet seen in the region. 

As their numbers swelled, they refined their techniques until they became indispensable. At the same time, they recognized that the war would inevitably culminate in a massive amphibious invasion of the Japanese home islands, the land of 

their parents’ birth.

By January 1945 the Military Intelligence Service Language School (MISLS) 

had already sent 1,050 Nisei graduates overseas. Two had died in action; several 

others had been severely wounded or died from nonbattle causes. One had been 

awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, dozens more the Silver Star and other 

decorations for valor. Nisei accompanied every Army and Marine division and 

corps, as well as Australian, New Zealand, British, and Chinese forces and served 

in rear-area intelligence centers in Hawaii, Australia, India, and the continental 

United States. War Department planners projected that the war would continue 

into 1946 and would draw upon forces redeployed from the European Theater 

after the expected defeat of Germany. In 1945 the MIS Nisei were to make their 

greatest contributions to victory.
332 NISEI LINGUISTS

Liberation of the Philippines

The battle for Leyte in the autumn of 1944 culminated in a stunning defeat for 

Japanese air, ground, and naval forces. General Douglas MacArthur’s dramatic 

success was guided by skillful intelligence. By early 1945 about 400 Nisei were 

assigned to the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS) under Col. Sidney 

F. Mashbir. Some of the Nisei had been overseas since 1942; more than a hundred had been reassigned to ATIS from the South Pacific. Mashbir now controlled 

all linguist assets in the Southwest Pacific Area. Advance ATIS was stationed 

in Hollandia with MacArthur’s headquarters; Base ATIS remained in Brisbane, 

where ATIS had been established in September 1942. Since then ATIS had perfected battle-tested procedures for the speedy processing of captured documents 

and prisoners of war and dissemination of the resulting intelligence.1

ATIS assigned more than a hundred Nisei for the liberation of Luzon, which 

began with landings at Lingayen Gulf, southwest of Baguio, on 9 January 1945. 

(Map 12) Most of the previous fighting in New Guinea, the Admiralties, and the 

Solomons had been at regiment level and below. Now, on Luzon, Sixth Army 

deployed two corps abreast for the drive to Manila while Eighth Army landed the 

11th Airborne Division south of the capital on 31 January. The campaign ultimately encompassed three corps headquarters and ten divisions. The MIS Nisei, a mixture of veterans and newcomers, performed the myriad tasks that had made them 

so valuable in earlier campaigns. They quickly translated captured documents to 

reveal Japanese plans and dispositions. One document captured on 19 January was 

a chart of Japanese radio frequencies that “was used by the I Corps signal officer 

to gain highly satisfactory results in the monitoring of Japanese radio communications.” Another language team correctly identified and translated the Japanese 

general operation order for the defense of Luzon.2

MIS Nisei were assigned down to regiment level. On 3 February, when the 

511th Parachute Infantry opened the main road to Manila from the south with 

a combat drop on Tagaytay Ridge, it was accompanied by the its four Nisei 

paratrooper-linguists.3

In three weeks the American units reached the outskirts of Manila, where 

Japanese defenders were determined to make the Americans fight block by block. 

Three American divisions that had become skilled in jungle warfare in the South 

1 “The Exploitation of Japanese Documents,” ATIS Publication no. 6, 14 Dec 44, in General 

Headquarters, Far East Command, Operations of the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section, 

GHQ, SWPA, Intelligence Series, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Far East Command, 1948) (hereafter cited as ATIS

History), app. 5. All U.S. Army personnel with ATIS were reassigned on 3 May 1944 to the Translator and Interpreter Service, U.S. Army Forces in the Far East. ATIS eliminated numerical designations for its advance echelons on 1 August 1944 but reinstated them on 18 April 1945, at which time 

division language teams were also given numerical designations. ATIS History, pp. 5, 28. 2

 Ibid., p. 48. 3

 George T. Ito, “Linguist-Paratroopers,” Voice of the Angels (July 1996); Joseph D. Harrington, 

Yankee Samurai: The Secret Role of Nisei in America’s Pacific Victory (Detroit: Pettigrew Enterprises, 1979), p. 263.
SWPA GHQ

ATIS

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N O R T H

B O R N E O

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P A N A Y

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M I N D A N A O

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334 NISEI LINGUISTS

Pacific now had to learn urban warfare 

in the rubble of a city that had once 

sheltered 800,000 inhabitants. Nisei 

linguists were in the thick of the fighting, often at risk of being mistaken for 

Japanese soldiers by vengeful Filipinos 

embittered by years of harsh occupation and atrocities. In these challenging 

times the Nisei often had to use their 

wits as well as their language skill. On 

4 February the 1st Cavalry Division 

liberated 3,500 civilian internees from 

Santo Tomas University, but Japanese 

soldiers held another 275 women and 

children hostage in one corner of the 

campus. Pvt. Kenji Uyesugi helped 

negotiate their release. Uyesugi, already 

a veteran of combat on Guam in support 

of the marines, found this a very different battlefield. The Japanese commander demanded safe passage in exchange 

for his hostages. The American commander reluctantly agreed, and Uyesugi 

stood aside as sixty-six Japanese soldiers marched away. The hostages were released as agreed.4

Other Nisei served in unfamiliar roles. Standing guard in Manila Bay was the 

island of Corregidor, which the Americans had to seize to open Manila’s harbor. 

Sixth Army assigned the task to the 503d Parachute Regimental Combat Team 

(RCT). T3g. Harry M. Akune had accompanied the regiment on an amphibious 

landing on Mindoro during the previous December, after which the regimental 

commander asked him if he would join them for the combat jump onto Corregidor. 

Although Akune had no airborne training, he agreed. “The paratroopers treated 

me so well I felt that I was already a member of that elite group.” Akune had time 

for only one practice jump, in which he injured his ankle. But he continued on 

the mission.5

4 Robert Ross Smith, Triumph in the Philippines, U.S. Army in World War II (Washington, 

D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1963), pp. 251–52; Harrington, Yankee Samurai,

p. 263; Wallace Moore, quoted in Pacific Citizen, 22 Dec 45, p. 5. Another Nisei, T3g. Bill Ishida, 

was awarded the Silver Star for fighting near Santo Tomas University. “Nisei Sergeant Decorated 

for Heroism in Battle for Manila,” Pacific Citizen, 2 Jan 46. 5 Jack Herzig, “Harry Akune’s WWII Accomplishments Recognized,” Hokubei Mainichi (9 

January 1996); Harry Akune, in James Oda, Secret Embedded in Magic Cables: The Story of a 

101-Year-Old Japanese Communist Leader who served Japan, KGB, and CIA (Northridge, Calif.: 

J. Oda, 1993), pp. 193–99; Akune presentation, in The Saga of the MIS, videotaped presentation, 

T4g. Henry Suzuki, Luzon, spring 

1945
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1945 335

On 16 February the 503d Parachute RCT surprised the Japanese defenders by 

jumping onto a small drop zone in a twenty-mile-an-hour wind that blew many 

troopers into the cliffs or off the island altogether, resulting in a 25 percent injury 

rate. When the time came, Akune jumped; but he landed badly and slid down an 

embankment. Bruised, shaken, and missing his carbine, he scrambled back up to 

the top of the hill, only to face “a whole line of guys, all pointing their guns at 

me!” Fortunately, one of them recognized Akune and they held their fire. Akune 

made his way to the command post and began translating the first documents 

captured. Within hours he was able to report two key pieces of intelligence: the 

Japanese commander had been killed as the assault began, and enemy strength 

was several times larger than expected. The Americans captured twenty Japanese 

soldiers, and Akune interrogated them as the battle continued. While he was interrogating one prisoner, the man attacked him. Fortunately, an American guard shot 

the prisoner and saved Akune’s life.6

Manila was declared secure on 4 March, but the fight for Luzon was far from 

won. General Tomoyuki Yamashita divided his forces: one group retreated into the 

mountains south and east of Manila, and the other moved into the island’s rugged 

north. Fighting continued for months. Meanwhile, the Americans began to build 

up a major logistical base in Luzon while assisting the Philippine people.

The Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) was responsible for security in the liberated areas and handling Japanese infiltrators and suspected war criminals. In 

February 1945 CIC headquarters requested three dozen Nisei, but as late as April 

1945 the 441st CIC Detachment still had only two, Arthur S. Komori and John 

Hiroshi Masuda. Komori recalled: “they had the chance of a lifetime to ‘hang’ 

Jap spies that were infiltrating Manila in civilian clothing. They were headed for 

sabotage, assassination of our leaders, and other subversive activities. I obtained 

many of their confessions and thus had the satisfaction of seeing them found guilty 

by court-martial.”

Komori had first come to Manila in April 1941 as an undercover agent with 

another Hawaii Nisei, Richard M. Sakakida. Their mission had been to infiltrate the city’s large Japanese civilian community for what was then called the 

Corps of Intelligence Police (CIP). Once war broke out, Komori was evacuated 

to Australia; but Sakakida and the rest of the CIP detachment fell into Japanese 

hands. Komori recalled:

Los Angeles, 11 Mar 89; Patrick K. O’Donnell, Into the Rising Sun (New York: Free Press, 2002), 

pp. 197–201. 6 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 263–65; Herzig, “Harry Akune’s WWII Accomplishments 

Recognized”; Saga of the MIS. Six Nisei, including George Kojima, were assigned to the 503d RCT

in early 1945 as combat replacements, not as language specialists. However, the regiment used three 

as interpreters, even though they were not MISLS graduates. Kojima was wounded on Negros and 

spent three years in hospitals. Joseph D. Harrington Papers, National Japanese Historical Society 

(NJAHS), San Francisco, Calif.; “Nisei Paratroops in Action in Pacific,” Pacific Citizen, 21 Jul 45.
336 NISEI LINGUISTS

After my escape, I wanted above all else to seek recognition for my “lost CIP.” As the 

lone escapee, I wanted to hasten the day of their liberation. I was particularly miserable 

concerning the fate of Sakakida. I imagined with horror many a night of the tortures he 

would undergo if captured, since according to the Jap concept he was a traitor. . . . I often 

harped on the point of Sakakida’s CIP mission and felt certain of his loyalty.

One CIC officer remarked that “Sakakida would be a more valuable man 

to him than would Gen. Yamashita, because of the knowledge Sakakida had of 

collaborationist activities in Manila.” For months after the liberation of Manila, 

Komori could find no trace of Sakakida.7

The U.S. Army liberated thousands of other American soldiers and civilian 

internees who along with tens of thousands of Filipino soldiers and civilians had 

spent the war under atrocious conditions. Many more had died before liberation. 

MacArthur was particularly shocked to learn of a massacre of nearly 150 American 

prisoners of war on Palawan in December 1944 and feared that the Japanese might 

massacre their prisoners rather than let them fall into Allied hands. Mounting 

evidence of Japanese atrocities further inflamed hatred of the Japanese as a “cruel 

race.” On 30 January 1945, American Alamo Scouts and rangers and Philippine 

guerrillas slipped behind Japanese lines to liberate 500 internees at Cabanatuan. 

On 24 February another raid liberated 2,147 internees at Los Baños.8

The Nisei in the Philippines were painfully aware that they faced racial hatred. 

Sgt. George I. Nakamura from Santa Cruz, California, had been a pre-med student 

at the University of California before the war. He had volunteered for the language 

school from a relocation camp in November 1942 against his father’s wishes. In 

February 1945 he wrote to a former high school teacher in California:

One thing that I find amusing is that some of the Filipinos cannot understand why I am 

in the United States Army. “Gawds,” they say, “what’s a Jap doing in the division C.P.!” I

try to explain how my folks have been in America for 35 years and that I’m an American 

born, educated and indoctrinated with American ideals but some of them seem dubious of 

it all. At least at first they seem bewildered.9

Racial hatred also engendered incidents more threatening than amusing. T3g. 

Iwao Roy Kawashiri and his language officer visited an American unit on Negros 

7

 Interv, Ann Bray with Arthur Komori, 1955, p. 18, in Harrington Papers; Memo, 441st CIC 

Detachment, sub: Sakakida, Richard Motoso, 12 Nov 45; Arthur Komori, Biography, Military 

Intelligence Service Club of Northern California (this and similar biographies hereafter cited as 

MISNorCal Bios); Ted T. Tsukiyama et al., eds., Secret Valor: M.I.S. Personnel, World War II

Pacific Theater, Pre–Pearl Harbor to Sept. 8, 1951 (Honolulu: Military Intelligence Service Veterans Club of Hawaii, 1993), p. 35. All CIC detachments in the Southwest Pacific Area were consolidated into the 441st CIC Detachment on 25 June 1945. 8 D. Clayton James, The Years of MacArthur, 3 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975), 2: 

512–13, 642–43; Robert L. Eichelberger, Our Jungle Road to Tokyo (New York: Viking, 1950), p. 

206; E. Bartlett Kerr, Surrender and Survival: The Experience of American POWs in the Pacific, 

1941–1945 (New York: William Morrow, 1985), pp. 212–15. 9 Ltr, George I. Nakamura to Mr. C. E. Fehliman, 26 February 1945.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1945 337

in April or May 1945. (Kawashiri had graduated in April 1942 with the first class 

from Crissy Field and had served with the Americal Division for three years on 

Bougainville, Leyte, and Cebu.) The lieutenant went to the officers’ mess tent, and 

Kawashiri got into the mess line for the enlisted men. Suddenly, a Philippine Scout 

pointed to Kawashiri and began shouting, “An enemy soldier!” The mess sergeant 

placed his hand on the Nisei’s shoulder, and another Filipino soldier took the plate 

of food from his hands. Kawashiri quickly pulled out his dog tags and explained 

he was an interpreter from division headquarters, but the soldiers remained unconvinced. “The Philippine Scouts with their long machetes made me feel a bit nervous,” Kawashiri recalled; and he began looking for his lieutenant, who appeared 

at a run. After that, Kawashiri always made sure he was accompanied by his language officer or another Caucasian.10

The campaign in the Philippines yielded thousands of Japanese prisoners of 

war, in part because the Americans employed psychological warfare to an extent 

not previously seen in the theater. Brig. Gen. Bonner Fellers established the theater 

Psychological Warfare Branch in June 1944 and in the spring of 1945 developed a 

comprehensive strategy for psychological warfare against Japan.11 Colonel Mashbir 

also had a strong interest in psychological warfare and assigned several ATIS Nisei 

to work with captured Japanese prisoners of war (nineteen by May 1945) to develop 

leaflets. In March 1945 they developed a newspaper-style leaflet, the Rakkasan 

[Parachute] News, which was dropped in large quantities over Japanese-held areas 

of the Philippines and eventually over the Japanese home islands.12

In March the Psychological Warfare Branch asked ATIS for two Nisei to use 

as radio announcers. Mashbir asked for volunteers with broadcast experience, telling them:

This is an extremely dangerous thing to ask any Nisei to do. In fact, from the instant you 

leave here you will be traveling under a false name, because I know that should your 

names become known dire vengeance will be wreaked on your relatives in Japan. Not 

10 Iwao Roy Kawashiri, in “First Class,” ed. David W. Swift, Jr., p. 13, Unpubl Ms, Mar 00, copy 

in author’s files; Ltr, Roy Kawashiri to Joseph Harrington, 7 December 1977, Harrington Papers; 

Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 292. In January 1946 a group of Nisei linguists stationed in Manila 

complained of a “hostile attitude” and threats of violence from the Filipino population: “Army Will 

Act To Protect Nisei GIs in Philippines,” Pacific Citizen, 19 Jan 46. 11 ATIS History, pp. 63–64; USAFPAC, “Report on Psychological Warfare in the Southwest 

Pacific Area 1944–45,” Record Group (RG) 4, Psychological Warfare, MacArthur Memorial, 

Library and Archives, Norfolk, Va.; “Basic Military Plan for Psychological Warfare against Japan 

with Appendices and Minutes of the Conference on Psychological Warfare against Japan, 7–8 May 

1945,” Bonner Fellers Papers, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University. 12 Sample issues of Rakkasan News can be found in ATIS History, plate 13; Allison B. Gilmore, You Can’t Fight Tanks with Bayonets: Psychological Warfare against the Japanese Army in 

the Southwest Pacific (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), p. 141. The Rakkasan News

sometimes used cartoons from existing Japanese publications. One popular Japanese manga artist, 

Yokoyama Ryuchi, recognized his drawings in the American leaflets and after the war asked the 

U.S. Army for royalties. Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook, Japan at War: An Oral History

(New York: New Press, 1992), pp. 471–72.
338 NISEI LINGUISTS

only that but you will be the first Nisei to arrive in Manila and the Filipino guerrillas may 

mistake you for Japanese in disguise and kill you. Therefore this job calls not only for 

ability and intelligence but nerve.13

S.Sgt. Clifford P. Konno and Sgt. John Masuda volunteered and were flown 

from Brisbane to Manila. In June MISLS sent ten more Nisei directly from 

Minnesota led by enlisted instructors M.Sgts. Masao Harold Onishi and Yoshio 

Kenneth Harano.14 Onishi had witnessed the first bombs falling on American soil. 

Born and raised in a fishing village close to Pearl Harbor, he had worked his way 

through the University of Hawaii as a Japanese-language announcer for KGMB in 

Honolulu. On 7 December 1941, he saw the Japanese airplanes strike Pearl Harbor. 

When the USS Arizona exploded and hot metal pieces landed in his yard, he threw 

his family into his car and drove away. “I looked out the car window and saw the 

flag of the Rising Sun on the planes. Then I realized it was Japan attacking us.” 

He volunteered for the language school and upon graduation was held back as an 

instructor. Now he had a chance to speak directly to the Japanese people.15

Sixth Army established a central POW camp on Luzon, known as POW Camp 

No. 1, or LUPOW, near New Bilibid Prison outside Manila. Dozens of Nisei interpreters were assigned to interrogate over 5,000 prisoners and help with camp 

administration. Eighth Army established a similar camp on Leyte.16 The Japanese 

prisoners had endured American firepower, the tropical environment, the selfdestructive urges of their own leaders, little food, poor medical support, and the 

hatred of the Filipinos. The Nisei encountered a variety of other Japanese persons, 

soldiers and sailors, civilians (especially in the southern Philippines), as well as 

forced laborers and “comfort women” from Korea and Taiwan.

Many Japanese were surprised to meet the Nisei. One well-educated prisoner 

captured on Mindoro in January 1945 was a literary critic, Sho ̄hei O ̄oka, who 

spoke English. When a Nisei came to interrogate him, O ̄oka was shocked. “I could 

hardly believe that I would meet a Japanese man in such excellent health at this 

place, only a few miles removed from where my outfit had been so ravaged by 

disease. Never did I feel more painfully the meaning of defeat than when I saw this 

man of Japanese blood dressed in an American uniform.”17

13 Sidney F. Mashbir, I Was an American Spy (New York: Vantage, 1953), p. 245. 14 “Konno Gets Bars; Grads Hope To Broadcast from Tokyo,” Yaban Gogai, Sep–Oct 45, p. 5. 15 Masao Harold Onishi, MISNorCal Bio. 16 Yoshito Iwamoto, in MIS in the War against Japan, ed. Stanley L. Falk and Warren M. Tsuneishi (Washington, D.C.: Japanese American Veterans Association, 1995), pp. 39–41. The ATIS

History, p. 17, says that 5,410 prisoners were examined at New Bilibid up to 1 September 1945. 

After the war the LUPOW prisoner population peaked at 80,000. 17 After the war O ̄oka described the collapse of Japanese forces in the Philippines, his capture, 

and his imprisonment on Leyte. O ̄ oka Sho ̄hei, Taken Captive: A Japanese POW’s Story, trans. and 

ed. Wayne P. Lammers (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1996), p. 34. He also drew upon his experiences to write a widely acclaimed novel, Fires on the Plain (New York: Knopf, 1957), and Reite 

senki [Military record of the Leyte operation] (Tokyo: Chu ̄o ̄ Ko ̄ronsha, Sho ̄wa, 1971).
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1945 339

Another prisoner, Japanese naval lieutenant Kiyofumi Kojima, had wandered 

the hills of northern Luzon for weeks trying to avoid Philippine guerrillas. When 

he finally surrendered to an American unit, he met his first Nisei, “a Japanese in 

an American uniform. I can’t tell you how strange that felt. He questioned us, but 

this time in Japanese. Until then, I’d been using my very limited English.” The 

Americans then took him to meet a Nisei first lieutenant: “He was unarmed. He 

took me to his own room. ‘Mr. Kojima,’ he asked me, ‘would you like coffee or 

tea?’ Coffee, I replied. Then he pulled out a bag of cookies. We’d been told it was 

our duty to endure privation to the moment of victory. We hadn’t had such luxurious things for years. He just opened the bag and dumped them on the table. ‘Go 

ahead,’ he said. ‘Please eat.’” The two “enemies” enjoyed a long conversation.

He informed me that his grandmother and grandfather lived in Hiroshima, and asked 

me what I thought of Nisei soldiers. Did I hate them? I realized he was genuinely worried about that, which was why he was being so kind to me. It gave me confidence. “You 

were born in America,” I replied. “You’re fighting for your country, America. I have no 

ill feelings about that.” He was like me, and I did the same thing for my country. Then 

he told me about how Japanese-Americans were horribly ill-treated in America, that they 

were placed in camps, and still oppressed even though the outstanding record of the allNisei 442d Regimental Combat Team had changed the situation a little. We chatted until 

ten-thirty at night, and I learned that there were people who were suffering because they 

belonged to neither country.18

The Nisei’s friendly approach won the prisoner’s confidence. Kojima subsequently 

was transferred to Hawaii, where he helped monitor Japanese radio broadcasts and 

draft propaganda materials.

More intelligence came from captured documents, of which one collection was 

particularly noteworthy. The U.S. Navy found the heavy cruiser Nachi, the flagship of the Japanese Fifth Fleet, sitting on the bottom of Manila Bay where it had 

rested since being sunk in November 1944. In April 1945 Navy divers explored the 

wreck and found a complete library of all plans and orders issued by the Imperial 

Japanese Navy since 1941. Seventh Fleet requested an immediate translation, 

and ATIS assigned almost every officer to the task for six weeks. The resulting 

translations were later called “the most completely authentic exposition of current 

Japanese naval doctrine then in Allied hands, detailed information being included 

relative to the composition and command structure of the entire Imperial fleet.”19

Among them, for example, was the operational order for the Pearl Harbor attack.

18 Cook and Cook, Japan at War, pp. 373–82. Kiyofumi Kojima tells the same story in The Color 

of Honor, documentary film, Loni Ding, prod., Vox Productions, 1987. 19 ATIS History, p. 13; “Navy Operation Plans and Orders, 1941–1944, Recovered from CA 

NACHI,” ATIS Limited Distribution Translations (LDT), no. 39, pts. 1–12, 22 Apr–18 Aug 45; 

ATIS History, pp. 13, 49–50; John Prados, Combined Fleet Decoded: The Secret History of American Intelligence and the Japanese Navy In World War II (New York: Random House, 1995), pp. 

698–99; John Prados, “The Spies at the Bottom of the Sea,” MHQ 6, no. 2 (Winter 1994): 39–47.
340 NISEI LINGUISTS

American soldiers were just as curious as the Japanese prisoners about the 

Nisei. In early 1945 2d Lt. Yoshikazu Yamada, a Nisei from Hawaii, met Sgt. 

Norman Mailer in the Philippines. Yamada was a University of Hawaii graduate and had been a graduate student at the University of Michigan until he was 

drafted in April 1941. In 1944 he was assigned to the 112th Cavalry RCT, where 

he earned a direct commission. Mailer, a Harvard graduate, had joined the regimental intelligence and reconnaissance platoon for the Luzon Campaign. He had 

dreams of writing the great novel of the war, which was published in 1948 as The 

Naked and the Dead. In it he describes an encounter between a Nisei lieutenant, 

“Tom Wakara,” and a Navy language officer. Mailer portrays the Navy language 

officer as a blustering hypocrite, who tells another officer, “You know our Jap 

translators are overrated. I do all the work in our unit, of course I’m in charge, but 

Wakara isn’t much help at all. I’m always having to correct his translations.” The 

fictional Nisei, a sensitive and cultured Kibei, can read the captured diaries with 

more empathy than the officer, even though the Japanese philosophy seems ultimately futile to him. He also understands that he will never gain acceptance from 

Caucasians such as this naval officer. The Nisei is “a little tired of being treated as 

a freak,” Mailer concludes. “He was alone, a wise man without a skin.” 20

Other Nisei wrestled with their sense of identity between the two cultures, 

sometimes in unexpected ways. T.Sgt. Masaji Gene Uratsu was assigned to the 

158th Regimental Combat Team. A Kibei and graduate of the first class at Crissy 

Field, Uratsu had already earned a Bronze Star on New Guinea. A few days after 

landing on Luzon, the 158th RCT captured a huge supply dump “full of Japanese 

beer, sake, whiskey, Chinese medicinal wine, and all kinds of Japanese foodstuff.” 

The language team held “a victory celebration of sorts, . . . a rip-roaring evening 

spent enjoying the spoils of war with our friends from headquarters,” after which 

they stumbled into their cots. The next morning he awoke with “a terrific hangover.” He rolled to the edge of his bunk and opened his eyes:

I happened to look down and there was a most ugly looking Japanese soldier staring at me. I had my gun, I had my machete within easy reach, but I knew that if I made 

even a slightest movement of muscle, he’s gonna shoot me. So I thought Jesus Christ, 

there goes Gene Uratsu. But since I gotta go, I gotta remember this guy to the Devil or 

wherever I’m going.

So I took a good hard look at the guy. . . . And I looked at him again and I said I’ve 

seen this guy. I’ve seen this guy. . . . So again I looked at him. Then all of a sudden I realized I was looking at my own reflection.

He was looking into his shaving mirror that had fallen under his cot.21

20 Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead (New York: Henry Holt, 1998), pp. 244–49. Yamada 

was assigned to the Air Corps in the Philippines in November 1941. He suffered a noncombat injury 

and was evacuated to Australia, where he was assigned to ATIS. Yamada later commented, “The 

story [in Mailer’s novel] seems to parallel my own actual experience with a white lieutenant who 

was also a language officer.” Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor, p. 85. 21 Masaji Gene Uratsu, in Swift, “First Class,” pp. 20–21; Anthony Arthur, Bushmasters (New 

York: St. Martin’s, 1987), p. 197; Masaji Gene Uratsu presentation, in Saga of the MIS.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1945 341

The Luzon Campaign caused Sergeant Nakamura to reflect on his reasons 

for fighting. He had seen his friend and team chief, Sgt. Terry Mizutari, killed on 

New Guinea in June 1944. After visiting Manila on pass, he wrote home: “It’s all 

wrecked now by the war, but I can see how it might have been in peacetime. Most 

of the buildings have been ruined either by artillery shells or bombs. There is so 

much waste connected with a war.” 22 He celebrated his twenty-first birthday that 

May, but his teammates with the 6th Infantry Division still called him one of the 

“babies” of the outfit. The division continued fighting stubborn Japanese resistance in northern Luzon, and in June Nakamura wrote to his sister:

We have been more than just busy the last month and a half. Since coming to this new area 

we have had no day when we could relax and take it easy. It is the busiest we have been 

since coming overseas and it is more than I ever expected to see out here. Lately we have 

had so many prisoners that we just keep ourselves busy interrogating them all day long. 

Then we have to type up the reports so the day never seems to end.23

On 29 June a patrol from the 63d Infantry encountered some Japanese holdouts and called to division for an interpreter. Nakamura was chosen. Another Nisei 

later recalled that “usually we said our good-byes to all our teammates, knowing 

the ferocity of battle up front,” but Nakamura “left that day without a word.” When 

he reached the front lines, he found that the patrol had a small group of Japanese 

soldiers surrounded. Nakamura called for them to surrender to no avail. “Although 

he knew that he could be observed by the enemy, believing that they had not heard 

his calls, he crawled to within twenty-five yards of the emplacement, where he 

rose, exposing himself to view, and again called to the enemy encouraging them to 

surrender. The enemy’s response was a single shot which fatally wounded [him].” 

The 6th Infantry Division awarded Nakamura the Silver Star posthumously.24

While the Sixth Army liberated Luzon, Eighth Army swept through the 

southern Philippines with five infantry divisions. Lt. Gen. Robert L. Eichelberger 

boasted that “in one forty-four-day time period alone these troops conducted fourteen major landings and twenty-four minor ones, thus rolling up an average of a 

landing every day and a half.” 25

The campaign began on 28 February, when the 186th Regimental Combat Team 

landed on Palawan, and culminated on 17 April with the landing on Mindanao, the 

second largest island in the Philippines and the location of its second largest city, 

22 Ltr, Nakamura, 14 May 1945, Historical Files, Defense Language Institute Foreign Language 

Center (DLIFLC), Monterey, Calif. 23 Ltr, Nakamura, 7 June 1945, DLIFLC. 24 HQ, 6th Inf Div, General Orders no. 139, 18 Jul 45; Kiyo Fujimura, “They Told Me ‘G.I.’ 

K.I.A.,” in John Aiso and the M.I.S.: Japanese-American Soldiers in the Military Intelligence Service, World War II, ed. Tad Ichinokuchi (Los Angeles: Military Intelligence Service Club of Southern California, 1988), p. 95; Min Hara, in Ibid, p. 74; Nob Yamashita, “Fighting My Ancestors: The 

Autobiography of a Nisei,” p. 22, Unpubl Ms, n.d. In 1980 DLIFLC dedicated an academic building 

to Nakamura on the Presidio of Monterey, California. 25 Eichelberger, Our Jungle Road to Tokyo, p. 200.
342 NISEI LINGUISTS

Davao City. Mindanao held about 20,000 Japanese civilians and 43,000 Japanese 

troops. Wresting control of the island took two American divisions and thousands 

of Philippine guerrillas ten weeks at a cost of over 3,000 American casualties. 

The Nisei played a key role in Eighth Army operations. As a one-time intelligence 

officer, Eichelberger liked to interrogate prisoners himself with the help of a Nisei 

interpreter.26 At regiment and division command posts, the Nisei translated documents, interrogated captured prisoners, and persuaded small groups of enemy soldiers to surrender.

Elsewhere in the South Pacific, hundreds of thousands of bypassed Japanese 

troops held out in New Guinea, the Solomons, Rabaul, and elsewhere, subsisting 

on whatever foods they could grow for themselves. During 1944 the Americans 

treated them to occasional bombing raids or guerrilla harassment but otherwise 

left them undisturbed. As American combat units shifted to the Philippines, the 

Australian government adopted a more aggressive strategy. After November 

1944 the First Australian Army began to eliminate Japanese forces using three 

Australian divisions. As these Australian units took over from American units, 

they were often disappointed at the lack of intelligence from the Americans. For 

the most part, American units in the rear areas had not been patrolling aggressively. The Australians learned that “information of enemy strength and dispositions 

was extremely limited. Apart from the enemy forces immediately in front of them 

the Americans could supply very little information.” 27 However, ATIS provided 

each Australian brigade with several American Nisei, a dozen of whom received 

Australian commendations.28

The Australian II Corps and 3d Division covered Bougainville and the Solomon 

Islands. When the Australians took over in October 1944, American intelligence 

officers assured them there were only 12,000 Japanese soldiers remaining on 

Bougainville. Australian intelligence officers revised this to 25,000. At the end of 

the war, the true number turned out to be 40,000.29

Bypassed Japanese forces could still be dangerous. As late as April 1945 the 

Japanese on Bougainville launched a surprise offensive against the Australians.30

From the autumn of 1944 until the summer of 1945, about 2,100 Australian soldiers 

were killed or wounded in the Solomons. Life for Nisei with Australian units was 

seldom easy. They faced tropical diseases and the hazards of combat and missed 

the comradeship of their Nisei comrades. T4g. Robert T. “Rusty” Kimura from 

Sacramento, California, was assigned to Bougainville and would far rather have 

been assigned to an American outfit. The Australians offered him an Australian 

26 See Jay Luvaas, ed., Dear Miss Em: General Eichelberger’s War in the Pacific, 1942–1945

(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1972), pp. 232, 245–46, 249–50, 282. 27 Gavin Long, ed., Australia in the War of 1939–1945, ser. 1, vol. 7, The Final Campaigns (Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1963), p. 611. 28 ATIS History, app. 12, Decorations, Awards, and Commendations. Intervs, author with Paul 

T. Bannai, 11 Sep 96; with Yasuo Ace Fukai, 9 Sep 96; with Robert T. “Rusty” Kimura, 9 Sep 96. 29 Long, Final Campaigns, pp. 100–103. 30 Ibid., pp. 181–83.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1945 343

uniform, but he insisted on wearing his American uniform. It was seven long 

months before he saw ATIS again.31

On New Guinea, beginning in December 1944, the 6th Australian Division 

fought at Aitape and elsewhere. Over the next eight months 1,800 Australian soldiers were killed or wounded. Three Nisei were assigned to the 16th Brigade on 

New Guinea. The Australians gave the Nisei “Digger” campaign hats in place of the 

heavy American helmets, and the Nisei enjoyed the daily tea breaks. These Nisei 

“Yanks” proved their value many times over. One captured document, a Japanese 

operation order, gave the time and place for a submarine pickup off Aitape. The 

Nisei translated it, and the Australians intercepted and destroyed the submarine.32

31 Interv, author with Kimura, 9 Sep 96. 32 Richard Oguro, in Sempai Gumi, ed. Richard S. Oguro (Honolulu: MIS Veterans of Hawaii, 

ca. 1981), pp. 171–73.

A Nisei (with back to camera) helps General Eichelberger question a Japanese 

soldier, Zamboanga, 10 March 1945.
344 NISEI LINGUISTS

On New Britain, the Australians bottled up the Japanese fortress of Rabaul, 

once the main objective for Allied operations in the region. American intelligence 

assured the Australians that only 38,000 Japanese Army personnel were inside. 

(The correct number turned out to be 93,000.) The 5th Australian Division took 

over operations on the island and gradually cleared Japanese from all but the eastern end, Rabaul itself. A Nisei, T5g. Larry Tamotsu Mizumoto, served for a while 

with the Australians on New Britain but suffered a breakdown and was evacuated 

for medical treatment.33

In May 1945 the Australian I Corps captured the oil-rich island of Borneo. 

Several American Nisei, including Paul T. Bannai, landed with the Australians. 

Bannai had been born in Colorado, where his father and grandfather were both 

coalminers, and had volunteered for language training from the Manzanar relocation camp. The Aussies outfitted him with an Australian uniform and the widebrimmed Digger campaign hat.34

Sporadic fighting continued in the South Pacific long after organized resistance had been crushed. The African American 93d Infantry Division patrolled 

Morotai in the spring and summer of 1945, assisted by an ATIS Nisei team. On 2 

August a patrol from the 93d Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop captured the Japanese 

colonel commanding the island. The division awarded Silver Stars to four patrol 

members, including Nisei T3g. Stanley J. Nakanishi.35

India-Burma and China

By early 1945 the United States had committed two infantry regiments and 

thousands of trainers, advisers, support units, and Army Air Forces elements to 

the China and India-Burma Theaters.36 (See Map 11.) As Chinese and U.S. forces 

advanced in the north, British Commonwealth forces advanced from India and 

drove the Japanese from Burma. In February 1945 the Stilwell Road opened from 

Burma to China and American advisers prepared the Chinese Army for an offensive that would drive the Japanese Army to the coast. The XX Bomber Command 

flew B–29 Superfortresses from airfields in India and China to attack Japanese 

targets in Southeast Asia and Japan proper. By this time about 140 Nisei were 

already serving in the region; over the next six months another ninety joined them. 

33 Hawaii-born Mizumoto volunteered for the 442d RCT at age nineteen in 1943 and was 

selected instead for language training. One source states he was evacuated for a tropical disease, 

another says battle neurosis. He was hospitalized in Chicago, where he jumped off a bridge to his 

death on 8 July 1945. “Open Verdict Returned in Jap-American GI’s Death,” Chicago Daily Tribune, 10 Jul 45; “Wounded Nisei Soldier Plunges to Death in Chicago,” Pacific Citizen, 21 Jul 45; 

In Freedom’s Cause (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1949), p. 94. 34 Interv, author with Paul T. Bannai, 11 Sep 96; Paul T. Bannai, MISNorCal Bio; Bannai presentation, in Saga of the MIS. 35 Elliott V. Converse III, et al., The Exclusion of Black Soldiers from the Medal of Honor in 

World War II (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 1997), pp. 146, 159. 36 In October 1944 the War Department (WD) divided the command into the China Theater and 

a separate India-Burma Theater.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1945 345

Fifty worked in the Southeast Asia Translator and Interrogation Center (SEATIC) 

in New Delhi. Some lived like colonial pashas, with servants and travel opportunities. Others accompanied British and Indian divisions and psychological warfare 

teams on the front lines. Two dozen were assigned to the 6th Radio Squadron 

Mobile (RSM) monitoring Japanese air-ground radio traffic, “a routine, dull and 

unglamorous task, far from the field of battle,” recalled one Nisei. “The most we 

suffered were dysentery and malaria.” In diverse ways they made significant contributions to the Allied victory.37

Merrill’s Marauders had proven at great cost that American ground forces 

could contribute to victory in Burma. The 5332d Brigade, or Mars Task Force, 

continued the push into northern Burma. The 475th Infantry made first contact 

with the Japanese in mid-December, and the 124th Cavalry entered the fight in 

mid-January. S.Sgt. Kazuo Komoto, a veteran of fighting in the Solomon Islands, 

led ten Nisei with the 475th Infantry. T.Sgt. Kan Tagami, a former MISLS enlisted 

37 Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor, pp. 72–73. One Nisei, T.Sgt. Russell Takeo Fujino, was killed 

in Burma on 4 August 1945. He was not an MISLS graduate but had been sent to Burma in March 

1945 with a U.S. Army medical unit. “Nisei Sergeant Reported Killed in Action in Burma,” Pacific 

Citizen, 1 Sep 45.

George S. Harada, Arthur T. Morimitsu, and Tom Tsutsumi Tsunoda prepare to 

enter Burma with the 124th Cavalry Regimental Combat Team, part of the Mars

Task Force, 19 December 1944.
346 NISEI LINGUISTS

instructor, led fifteen Nisei with the 124th Cavalry.38 From January through March 

the Mars Task Force, supplied only by air, maneuvered and fought over several 

hundred miles of mountain ranges and treacherous rivers. Its members fought the 

terrain, the climate, various illnesses, and on occasion, the enemy. One Nisei, 

Arthur T. Morimitsu, recalled:

The one-month forced march in December over some of the roughest terrain in the world 

took us through dense jungle growths, up narrow mountain passes eight thousand feet 

high and swift streams that we forded waist-deep. Because of manpower shortage we also 

ended up as probably one of the first Nisei muleskinners in the CBI. Hanging onto the lead 

mule’s tail helped on those steep terrains where we marched ten minutes and took five. 

The pack mules carried weapons, ammo and other materiels [sic]. We carried our own 

essentials—blanket, poncho, canteen, machete, trench shovel and carbine.39

 “Before the first skirmish with the enemy,” he recalled, “the Texans wondered 

what we Nisei were doing in their outfit. After the first initial contact the entire 

brass of the regiment crowded into our makeshift shelter at night to check out diaries and documents brought in by some of the troopers.”40

Tagami remembered that at MISLS the Nisei had been taught: “Keep your 

team together and don’t go into combat because you’re not supposed to be combat 

trained.” In Burma, this proved impossible, as Tagami and the other Nisei frequently volunteered for patrols. One time Tagami almost learned his lesson the hard way 

when his reconnaissance patrol became surrounded and their Kachin irregulars 

melted away. Tagami could hear the Japanese soldiers closing in on them as they 

shouted “Go left, go left, they’re over there.” He relayed the Japanese commands to 

the other members of the patrol, and they successfully eluded their pursuers.41

A few Nisei were attached to the Chinese New First Army. Sgt. Frank T. 

Tokubo served with the Chinese until the capture of Lashio in March 1945. One 

of his duties was to fly over Japanese lines in an L–5 liaison aircraft to broadcast 

surrender messages through a loudspeaker. His aircraft was struck by ground fire 

on two occasions, but each time it landed safely in Chinese positions. The Chinese 

awarded Tokubo their equivalent of the Silver Star.42 Other Nisei were attached to 

the British Fourteenth Army. T4g. Samuel T. Harano, a Kibei from Hawaii, fought 

from November 1944 with the Indian 19th Division, the first division to cross the 

38 Interv, author with Kan Tagami, 7 Dec 94; Interv, author with Toshio Uesato, 21 Aug 95; 

“Waipahu Soldier [Toshi Uesato] Tells of Life with Mars Task Force in Burma,” Honolulu Advertiser, 29 Apr 45.

39 Arthur T. Morimitsu, MISNorCal Bio. 40 Ibid. For another first-person account written in verse, see Toma Tasaki, “The Journey of the 

Men of Mars,” Unpubl Ms, n.d. 41 Interv, author with Tagami, 7 Dec 94. 42 “Sgt. Tokubo Reported Only Nisei Attached to Chinese Unit,” Pacific Citizen, Jun 46; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 249.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1945 347

Irrawaddy. He then joined the Indian 5th Division, which led the final drive to 

Rangoon in April 1945.43

The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) had begun guerrilla operations 

in Burma in 1943, borrowing a few Nisei as needed from other commands. In 

November 1944 fourteen specially selected Nisei arrived to provide language support. Seven under 1st Lts. Junichi Buto and Ralph T. Yempuku were assigned to 

OSS Detachment 101, which numbered 131 officers, 418 American enlisted men, 

and some 9,000 native guerrillas principally from the Kachin tribes. The Nisei 

were assigned to small teams and often inserted by parachute into remote jungle 

camps behind Japanese lines. 1st Lt. Richard K. Betsui and four Nisei joined OSS

Detachment 202 in Kunming, China; two others were assigned to New Delhi.44

Yempuku, a graduate of the University of Hawaii, had volunteered for the 442d 

RCT and volunteered a second time for the OSS. Soon after his arrival, he fell ill 

with malaria. When he recovered, he flew to OSS Detachment 101 headquarters at 

Myitkyina and then went forward to join a Kachin battalion in which half a dozen 

American officers led 150–200 lightly armed Kachin rangers. Yempuku was the 

only Japanese-speaker with the outfit and for a time even commanded a Kachin 

ranger company. Yempuku had three younger brothers living in Japan and often 

wondered as he prepared attacks on Japanese troops: “Jesus! What would happen 

if one of my brothers is in that convoy? What if my brother is among the prisoners I have to interrogate? . . . So much of war is placing personal feelings aside.” 

He later learned that all three brothers had served in the Imperial Japanese Army, 

none in Burma.45

Detachment 101 saw its heaviest fighting in May and June 1945, killing 

1,200 Japanese while losing 300 of its own. For this the unit was awarded the 

Distinguished Unit Citation. In July the detachment was inactivated and most of 

its personnel transferred to Kunming, where OSS Detachment 202 had set up 

a training camp for Chinese guerrillas. The detachment also inserted American 

teams behind Japanese lines in south China, including S.Sgt. Roy Matsumoto, a 

Merrill’s Marauders veteran, who served near the French Indochina border.46

After the victory in Burma Lord Louis Mountbatten prepared to liberate 

Malaya and Singapore with amphibious landings set for early September. For this 

he would need even more Japanese linguists. In April 1945 “the British Chiefs of 

Staff Joint Intelligence Committee considered a report drawing attention to the 

lack of Japanese language personnel in South-East Asia Command,” according 

to Japanese Canadian author Roy Ito. “SEATIC was short of trained linguists 

43 Samuel T. Harano, “My India-Burma Odyssey,” Unpubl Ms. 44 Calvin Tottori, “The OSS Niseis in the China-Burma-India Theater,” 2d ed., Unpubl Ms, 

2001, copy in author’s files. 45 Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor, pp. 75–76; Tomi Kaizawa Knaefler, Our House Divided: 

Seven Japanese American Families in World War II (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991), 

pp. 88–95; Interv, Andrew Cox with Ralph Yempuku, n.d. 46 John Morozumi also served with the OSS in China. Harrington, Yankee Samurai, 

pp. 302–03.
348 NISEI LINGUISTS

and unable to function as a viable unit. The situation was considered desperate.”47 The first twelve Canadian Nisei arrived in Bombay on 21 April 1945, led 

by Pvt. Albert Takimoto, a Canadian Nisei graduate of the University of British 

Columbia. They were distributed among various British headquarters in India 

and Burma, including psychological warfare units. Like the American Nisei, they 

sought to fight for their country and prove their loyalty. Leaving for overseas 

service “was a hard decision to make,” one Canadian Nisei wrote his wife upon 

arrival in India, “but I wanted all of us to be able to hold our heads up when we 

walk the streets again.”48

In China, American advisers worked to strengthen the Chinese Nationalist 

Army. In return, American intelligence officers hoped to learn more about 

Japanese forces in China. The G–2 of U.S. Forces in the China Theater was a prewar Japanese-language attaché, Col. Joseph K. Dickey, who had helped organize 

the Fourth Army Intelligence School in 1941 and served as its director of training 

until 1943. Working with Dickey in Chungking was Lt. Col. John Burden, who 

had led the first group of Nisei to the South Pacific. In May 1945 Burden escorted 

a high-ranking Japanese prisoner of war to the United States. While there, he visited MISLS and requested two Nisei who had served with him in the South Pacific, 

T.Sgt. Tateshi Miyasaki and 2d Lt. Shigeo Yasutake. By that summer Burden had 

about forty Nisei, including eight veterans of Merrill’s Marauders, at the Sino 

Interrogation and Translation Center (SINTIC). Six other Nisei were assigned to 

Fourteenth Air Force.49 In Chungking, Sergeant Tokubo and another Nisei were 

placed in charge of a camp for 3,000 Japanese prisoners of war. Several Japanese 

political exiles who had sought the protection of the Chinese government also 

lived in Chungking.50

In early 1945 the Office of War Information (OWI) sent its psychological warfare team with eight Nisei from Ledo to Kunming and then to Chungking. T.Sgt. 

Koji Ariyoshi was shocked at how the Nationalist Chinese were treating Japanese 

prisoners of war in Kunming and a group of Korean comfort women who had been 

captured with the Japanese, compared to how well the Chinese Communists were 

treating Japanese prisoners being “re-educated” in Yenan. Nationalist government 

officials refused his request to use one or two prisoners for propaganda work, as 

the OWI had done in Burma. Another Nisei, T3g. Howard Furumoto, a veteran 

of Merrill’s Marauders, was assigned to OSS Detachment 203 in Chungking in 

March to develop “black” propaganda. His clever fabrications included a patent 

47 Roy Ito, We Went to War: The Story of the Japanese Canadians Who Served during the First 

and Second World Wars (Stittsville, Ontario: Canada’s Wings, 1984), p. 163. 48 Ito, We Went to War, p. 238. See also “Describe Departure of First Canadian Volunteers,” 

Pacific Citizen, 14 Jul 45; “Canadian Nisei Troops Active in East Asia,” Pacific Citizen, 24 Nov 45. 49 Interv, author with John A. Burden, 5 Dec 94; Interv, Loni Ding with John A. Burden, 30 Sep 

86, NJAHS; Tateshi Miyasaki, in Swift, “First Class”; Sohei Yamate, in Japanese Eyes, American 

Heart: Personal Reflections of Hawaii’s World War II Nisei Soldiers (Honolulu: Tendai Educational Foundation, 1998), pp. 299, 301–02. 50 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 297–98.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1945 349

medicine poster that exaggerated the disease risks for Japanese troops in China 

and a leaflet that “exposed” a nonexistent plot by Japanese militarists to depose 

the emperor. That summer he was given a field commission. In July a separate 

group of twenty-seven civilian Nisei arrived in Calcutta to develop propaganda for 

the OSS Morale Operations Branch; five proceeded to Kunming on 1 August.51

In mid-1945 the U.S. observer group in Yenan, the Dixie Mission, had three 

Nisei.52 Two more arrived in July and August 1945. T4g. George I. Nakamura and 

T4g. Shoso Nomura had been in Yenan since the summer of 1944, doing Japanese 

order of battle under Ray Cromley, a Wall Street Journal correspondent in Tokyo 

before the war and now an OSS major. Sergeant Ariyoshi worked for the Office 

of War Information, studying propaganda techniques that the Communists were 

using to “re-educate” Japanese prisoners of war. He served as informal liaison 

with Japanese Communist leaders in exile in Yenan. He also met opponents of 

the Nationalists such as Madame Sun Yat-Sen (Soong Ch’ing-ling). “She seemed 

interested in the Nisei during our conversation,” Ariyoshi recalled. “She knew a 

great deal about the evacuation and about the [100th Infantry Battalion and 442d 

RCT]. She was proud of the Nisei role in the war of liberation, as she called it. She 

said it was remarkable that my people were coming through the evacuation experiences with dignity and new strength.” 53

Central Pacific

In the Central Pacific, American forces continued on the most direct route 

to Japan, guided by powerful intelligence centers in Hawaii such as the Joint 

Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Areas (JICPOA), and the Fleet Radio Unit, 

Pacific (FRUPAC). Army officials in Hawaii lifted martial law in October 1944 

but maintained surveillance of the local Japanese population using loyal Nisei 

such as Maj. Gero Iwai and Lt. Cmdr. Douglas T. Wada and the Nisei-dominated 

Emergency Service Committee.54

By early 1945 JICPOA numbered 500 officers and 800 enlisted men. MISLS

had sent about 160 Nisei to the Central Pacific by this time. In January 1945 the 

school sent another forty and then ten more later that spring. Fifty Nisei worked for 

51 Koji Ariyoshi, From Kona to Yenan: The Political Memoirs of Koji Ariyoshi, ed. Alice M. 

Beechert and Edward D. Beechert (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2000), pp. 158–60; 

Interv, author with Howard Furumoto, 8 Dec 94; Howard Furumoto, “Black Propaganda,” student 

paper, 1946, author’s files; Howard Schonberger, “Dilemmas of Loyalty: Japanese Americans and 

the Psychological Warfare Campaigns of the Office of Strategic Services, 1943–45,” Amerasia 

Journal 16, no. 1 (1990): 21–38. 52 Intervs, author with George I. Nakamura, 6 Dec 94; with Shoso Nomura, 10 Sep 96; with 

Uesato, 21 Aug 95.

53 Ariyoshi, From Kona to Yenan, pp. 156–57. 54 Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor, pp. 31–33; Interv, Ted Tsukiyama with Douglas T. Wada, 21 

Mar 02; Gary Y. Okihiro, Cane Fires: The Anti-Japanese Movement in Hawaii, 1865–1945 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991), pp. 195–276; Tom Coffman, The Island Edge of America: 

A Political History of Hawaii (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003), pp. 59–105.
350 NISEI LINGUISTS

the JICPOA Translation Section in a former furniture store in downtown Honolulu. 

This section processed the large number of captured documents that included technical documents, nautical charts, administrative orders from the Japanese Navy, 

and data on Japanese industries. From the Marianas came crates of captured documents by the ton. Translators culled out documents of potential value and shipped 

the rest to the Pacific Military Intelligence Research Section in Camp Ritchie, 

Maryland. When Admiral Chester W. Nimitz established an advance headquarters on Guam in January 1945, JICPOA sent an advance intelligence center; the 

translation and interrogation sections remained in Hawaii. About thirteen JICPOA 

language officers, but no Nisei, went to Guam.55 JICPOA attached Nisei to Army 

and Marine divisions and corps headquarters as needed for specific operations. 

These Nisei were assigned to “intelligence service organizations,” each of which 

had up to seven officers and twenty enlisted men. By the summer of 1945 JICPOA 

had organized fifteen such teams.56

JICPOA assigned four intelligence service organizations for the assault on 

Iwo Jima (Map 13): one for the V Amphibious Corps and one for each Marine 

division. These teams included more than fifty Nisei. When the Nisei reported to 

Pearl Harbor for boarding, sentries stopped them at the gate because they looked 

Japanese. The Nisei were outraged, and some were angry enough to turn around. 

However, “cool heads prevailed,” recalled M.Sgt. Don C. Oka. “We knew that, so 

far, we had done everything right in our duty to our country and weren’t going 

to stop there. After some discussion and with the help of some of the Caucasian 

officers destined for the same ship, we were finally allowed to board. But only 

because those Caucasian officers escorted us.” 57

Several Nisei, including T5g. Terry Takeshi Doi, landed with the assault 

waves on 19 February 1945. Before the war, while living in Japan, Doi had been 

conscripted into the Imperial Japanese Army. He returned to the United States in 

1941, only to learn that his American citizenship had been revoked because of his 

military service in Japan. While a student at MISLS in 1944, he had his citizenship restored so he could be assigned overseas. On Iwo Jima, Doi went “into cave 

after cave with only a flashlight and knife persuading many enemy soldiers to 

come out and surrender.” He was awarded the Silver Star, and his language officer 

wrote to the judge who had restored his citizenship:

I know you’ll be happy to know that Terry did one of the finest pieces of work possible. 

Doi was one of the first GIs to land on Iwo Jima. The limits of censorship prohibit details, 

but I can say Terry is one of the bravest and most capable men I have seen out here—that 

55 W. J. Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets: U.S. Naval Intelligence Operations in the Pacific during World War II (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1979), pp. 197–99; Paul F. Boller, Jr., 

Memoirs of an Obscure Professor and Other Essays (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 

1992), pp. 43–44. 56 ATIS History, p. 29. 57 Quote from Don C. Oka, MISNorCal Bio; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 279–80; Saga 

of the MIS.
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C H I N A

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BRUNEI NORTH

BORNEO

SARAWAK

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A U S T R A L I A

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PA P U A

140° 150°

20°

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Manila

Hong Kong

Wewak Hollandia

Rabaul

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Okinawa

FORMOSA R Y U

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M A R I A N A

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Guam

Palau

Islands C A R O L I N E I S L A N D S

Truk

MINDANAO

Leyte

LUZON

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N E W G U I N E A

January–August 1945

OPERATIONS

CENTRAL AND SOUTHWEST PACIFIC AREAS

Battle Site

Boundary as of 15 August 1945

�

 Statute Miles

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MAP 13
352 NISEI LINGUISTS

includes Marines as well as Army—and did not hesitate to put his life in great danger 

whenever it was felt that a useful military purpose would thereby be served.58

At least one MIS Nisei, Sgt. Mike Masato Deguchi, was wounded while fighting on Iwo Jima. While serving with the 8th Radio Squadron Mobile, he was seriously injured by a landmine and died soon after the end of the war.59

Another Nisei on Iwo Jima, T3g. James Yoshinobu, at forty-seven was one of 

the oldest serving MIS Nisei. This was his second war: he had served in the U.S. 

Army during the World War I. After that war he earned a degree in electrical engineering from Northwestern University; but, unable to find suitable employment 

in California, he operated a truck farm near Los Angeles before being interned in 

1942. In December 1943 he brought his wife and five children out of the Rohwer 

internment camp to resettle in Chicago and then volunteered for language training. 

He landed with the 4th Marine Division and was also awarded the Silver Star.60

Ben I. Yamamoto had been assigned to the Byron Hot Springs interrogation 

center, but after thirteen months he requested an overseas assignment. He ended 

up with the 4th Marine Division on Iwo Jima:

I hit the beach on the fourth day and was greeted by a stack of dead Marines and a 

group of live ones sitting with blank stares. These gyrenes have had it—cracked. They 

were so gung ho on the transport but two or three nights on the front lines broke them. 

This was not an encouraging start for me.

We were assigned an area near the air strip, told to dig in and wait for orders. The first 

night’s mortar barrage was a nightmare, some shrapnels landing too close for comfort. 

Yes, I did regret I didn’t somehow stick it out at Byron.61

The accomplishments of the JICPOA Nisei were soon common knowledge 

back in Hawaii. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin praised them in an editorial on 1 

March:

It hardly need be said that the Japanese Americans who face the enemy Japanese in 

this great Pacific battle face a special hazard. For them, if taken prisoner, there will be 

no mercy nor even an easy death. The least they can expect is prolonged torture. For they 

58 “Nisei Who Regained U.S. Citizenship Is War Hero,” Pacific Citizen, 28 Apr 45; WD Press 

Release, 22 Oct 45. 59 Oda, Secret Embedded, p. 73. Karl G. Yoneda claimed that Deguchi had been a fellow member of the Communist Party. Karl G. Yoneda, Ganbatte: Sixty-Year Struggle of a Kibei Worker (Los 

Angeles, Calif.: Asian American Studies Center, University of California at Los Angeles, 1983), 

p. 213. 60 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 277; WD Press Release, 22 Oct 45. 61 Quote from Oguro, Sempai Gumi, pp. 70–72; Ben I. Yamamoto, MISNorCal Bio; Japanese 

Eyes, American Heart, pp. 180–82. See also “Henry Yokoyama: Nisei Recalls Historic Iwo Jima 

Battle,” Hawaii Herald, 2 Jul 93, p. A–21; Public Media Video, “Return to Iwo Jima,” videotaped 

presentation, 1985.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1945 353

would be regarded by the fanatical Japanese of the imperial forces, not merely as enemy 

combatants, but as traitors to Japan.62

Navy and Marine language officers from the Boulder School also served on 

the JICPOA teams. Marine units further relied upon enlisted marines from the 

Japanese-language courses at Camp Elliott and Camp Pendleton, California. For 

ship-to-shore radio nets the Marine Corps used Navajo Code Talkers. The Navajo 

had “Oriental” features like the Nisei, similarly risked being mistaken for the enemy, and were given bodyguards for their protection. A Marine signal officer later 

wrote, “The entire operation was directed by Navajo code. . . .Were it not for the 

Navajos, the marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.” 63

62 Cited in Pacific Citizen, 31 Mar 45. See also “Japanese Americans Are Working with Marines 

in Iwo Jima Fight,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 27 Feb 45. 63 “Navajo Code Talkers,” in Native America in the Twentieth Century: An Encyclopedia, ed. 

Mary B. Davis (New York: Garland, 1994); Bruce Watson, “Navajo Code Talkers: A Few Good 

Second Lt. Manny Goldberg (left) and T.Sgt. Ben Hirano (third from right, seated)

question a prisoner, Iwo Jima, 25 March 1945.
354 NISEI LINGUISTS

The marines declared Iwo Jima secure after twenty-six days, but fighting 

continued for months as soldiers and marines rooted out the remaining Japanese 

defenders from tunnels and caves. In April 1945 the 147th Infantry began mop-up 

operations and over the next two months killed 1,602 and captured 867 Japanese.64

The Nisei continued to play a key role in this phase. One battalion commander 

told a reporter: “The Nisei were brought here for office work, and by golly, they’ve 

done better in the field than anyone. They’re really good, no fooling. They try hard 

and they’re smart—really interested in their jobs.” 65

Men,” Smithsonian (August 1993): 34–42. Four Nisei may have served with Marine radio intelligence platoons on Iwo Jima and Okinawa for tactical voice intercept operations. 64 Whitman S. Bartley, Iwo Jima: Amphibious Epic (Washington, D.C.: Headquarters, U.S. 

Marine Corps, 1954), pp. 190–93; George W. Garand and Truman R. Strobridge, History of U.S. 

Marine Corps Operations in World War II, vol. 4, Western Pacific Operations (Washington, D.C.: 

Historical Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1971), pp. 703–04; Tsukiyama et al., Secret 

Valor, pp. 93–94. 65 “Nisei Tells Japs in Iwo Caves: Come Out—Or Stay Forever,” Seattle Times, 23 Apr 45, 

reprinted as “Nisei Helps Take 120 Iwo Jima Prisoners,” Pacific Citizen, 28 Apr 45.

Nisei language team with the marines in the sands of Iwo Jima. Starting second 

from left: Ben Kuwahara, George J. Kawamoto, Tamotsu Koyanagi, and two other 

Nisei.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1945 355

The Secretary of the Navy awarded the Navy Unit Commendation to all support units in V Amphibious Corps, including the JICPOA teams.66 A more meaningful tribute came from Joe Rosenthal, an Associated Press photographer who 

electrified the country with his picture of the flag-raising on Mount Suribachi. 

Rosenthal spoke out forcefully against prejudice toward individuals of Japanese 

ancestry in America and called the recent Hood River incident a “crying shame”:

All of those [Nisei] with whom I came into contact are anxious to prove their loyalty 

to this country. Often their anxiety is touching, for they volunteer for all sorts of dangerous missions.

Many have paid with their lives, and many more have been wounded. They have 

done an outstanding job for the allied cause and their heroism should be recognized. It 

has been recognized by the marine commanders where I saw them in action at Guam, 

Peleliu and Iwo.

Usually they work with headquarters in serving as interpreters. Armed with hand 

grenades at entrances to Jap pillboxes or caves, they often convince the enemy to surrender where American officers, lacking the proper diction of the Japanese language, 

would fail.

They work so close to the enemy on these missions that, along with the danger of 

being killed by Japs, they run the risk of being shot, unintentionally, by our own marines. 

From a distance it’s hard to tell them from the enemy. Their dungarees soon become 

ragged in rough country and the similarity of their physical appearance makes their job 

that much tougher.67

Okinawa

As the marines fought for Iwo Jima, Nimitz’s staff completed planning 

for Operation Iceberg, a massive assault on Okinawa, the largest island in the 

Ryukyus and only 400 miles from Japan proper. (See Map 14.) Tenth Army would 

command the XXIV Corps and III Amphibious Corps, with four Army divisions 

and three Marine divisions. The campaign would feature the most extensive use 

of Nisei linguists to date, many of them in military government for the island’s 

civilian population.68

66 Bartley, Iwo Jima, pp. 242–43. 67 “Jap-American Bravery Hailed by Camera Man,” Chicago Tribune, Apr 45; War Relocation 

Authority (WRA), Nisei in the War against Japan (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Interior, 

1945), p. 2; “Marine Generals Recognize Work of Nisei GIs in Pacific,” Pacific Citizen, 14 Apr 45. 

The quotation is altered in MISLS Album (Minneapolis: Military Intelligence Service Language 

School, 1946), p. 115. Mineo Yamagata, a veteran of Saipan and Tinian, accompanied the 28th 

Marines to the summit of Suribachi and witnessed the famous flag-raising. Harrington, Yankee 

Samurai, p. 282. See also Ltr, Maj. Gen. Clayton Bissell to Col. Kai E. Rasmussen, 29 May 1945, 

copy in Richard K. Hayashi Collection, NJAHS. 68 Arnold G. Fisch, Jr., Military Government in the Ryukyu Islands, 1945–1950, U.S. Army in 

World War II (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1988), pp. 15–29; Ted T. 

Tsukiyama, “The Battle of Okinawa Revisited,” Unpubl Ms, n.d., author’s files. Robert N. Colewell, 
356 NISEI LINGUISTS

The Okinawan dialect posed special challenges for American forces. At 

Fort Snelling, MISLS formed a special team of Okinawan Nisei who spoke the 

Okinawan dialect.69 On Leyte, the 96th Infantry Division language team included 

two brothers, Warren T. Higa and Takejiro Higa, born of Okinawan parents in 

Hawaii. When the boys were ages five and two, respectively, their mother took 

them to her home village in southern Okinawa, where they grew up and attended 

“Intelligence and the Okinawa Battle,” Naval War College Review (March–April 1985): 81–95. 

Colewell was chief of photo intelligence for Tenth Army. 69 Interv, author with Thomas Ige, 5 Dec 94; Thomas H. Ige, Boy from Kahaluu: An Autobiography (Honolulu: Kin Cho Jin Kai, 1989), pp. 78–80; Okinawa Club of America, History of the 

Okinawans in North America (Los Angeles: Asian American Studies Center and Okinawa Club of 

America, 1988), pp. 450–51, 460–61.

MAP 14

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Axis of Advance
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1945 357

school. They returned to Hawaii to avoid conscription into the Imperial Japanese 

Army or forced migration to Manchuria. In 1943 both brothers volunteered and 

were selected for language training.70

Sometime in November 1944 the XXIV Corps G–2 summoned T3g. Takejiro 

Higa: “The minute I entered the tent my heart nearly stopped beating as I saw hung 

before me a large blown-up map of the southern half of Okinawa. Chills ran up my 

spine as I realized the next target would be that part of Okinawa where I had lived 

for fourteen years and left merely six years before.” The photo-interpreter officer 

showed him an aerial photo of the capital of Naha, but Higa could barely recognize 

the heavily bombed port. The officer then showed Higa a photograph of the village where Higa’s parents had lived. “My hair stood up! For awhile I couldn’t even 

open my mouth, I was so choked up.” Higa put his eyes to the viewer and traced 

his finger over his grandfather’s home and his relatives’ houses (all still intact, 

he was relieved to see). The officer questioned him about the suspicious concrete 

structures that dotted the landscape. These were not fortifications, Higa explained, 

but traditional Okinawan tombs.71 “It was a horrible feeling,” Higa recalled. “Ever 

since the first day I saw the picture, every night I used to dream about my relatives. 

Every night, never miss. . . . I dreamed about my uncle, my cousins, and even my 

schoolmates.” 

In January 1945 forty Nisei arrived in Hawaii from Fort Snelling, but Tenth 

Army needed more than the school could provide. Consequently, U.S. Army Forces 

Middle Pacific selected about 165 Nisei with Japanese-language skills who been 

drafted but had not yet begun basic training. In February about seventy-five were 

formed into the Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet (CINCPAC), 1st Provisional 

Military Government Interpreter Detachment, and attached to the assault forces. Once the invasion forces had departed Hawaii for Operation Iceberg, the 

Army established the Allied Military Government Language School at Schofield 

Barracks in March for some 275 Nisei soldiers. In March and April 1945 more 

Hawaii Nisei were enlisted and rushed through the school. About ninety organized into the 6205th Interpreter Special Detachment flew to Okinawa between 

70 Interv, author with Takejiro Higa, 7 Dec 94; “Aru Okinawa Hawaii Imin no Shinjuwan” [One 

Okinawan Immigrant and Pearl Harbor], Unpubl Ms, 1991, author’s files; Tsukiyama et al., Secret 

Valor, pp. 101–02; “Takejiro Higa: An Okinawan Caught in the Battle of Okinawa,” Hawaii Herald, 

2 Jul 93, p. A–24; Japanese Eyes, American Heart, pp. 291–302; Yuki Kikuchi, “The Pacific War 

of the Nisei in Hawaii,” pp. 114–20, Unpubl English translation of a Japanese book, 1999. “Nisei 

Meets Father on Okinawa; Sgt. Higashi Received Special Training for Okinawa Invasion,” photos 

in Pacific Citizen, 14 Jul 45. Yaban Gogai, Aug 45. 71 See the photographs in Roy E. Appleman et al., Okinawa: The Last Battle, U.S. Army in 

World War II (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, Historical Division, 1948), p. 8; Chas. 

S. Nichol, Jr., and Henry I. Shaw, Okinawa: Victory in the Pacific (Washington, D.C.: Historical 

Branch, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1955), p. 54. Both Japanese and American forces used 

the tombs for military purposes; local civilians used them for protection. 
358 NISEI LINGUISTS

May and July 1945. A similar unit, the 6201st Interpreter Special Detachment, 

went to Saipan.72

The battle for Okinawa was marked by the most extensive psychological warfare yet in the Central Pacific. The Office of War Information borrowed Nisei 

from the JICPOA annex, together with trustworthy Japanese prisoners of war, to 

prepare propaganda leaflets. The leaflets were “based on twenty-five carefully 

developed themes. . . .The texts of the leaflets were reworked and reworded scores 

of times until the ideas and the language itself were intelligible to the average 

Japanese soldier.” The illustrations “were designed to appeal to the Oriental sense 

of artistic values.” 73 The JICPOA Psychological Warfare Branch printed and disseminated 5.7 million leaflets, including a weekly newspaper that was disseminated in Japan in the final months of the war.

Operation Iceberg began on 26 March on the Kerama Islands, fifteen miles 

west of Okinawa, where the 77th Infantry Division with its Nisei team landed on 

Ie Shima against light opposition. On the third night of the battle, to the horror of 

the Americans, over 300 civilians killed themselves rather than surrender to the 

foreign invaders.74 The 77th Infantry Division reloaded onto its transports and 

sailed away, grateful that its own casualties had been light.

The fates were not so kind when ten or more kamikazes attacked the convoy 

on 2 April. One crashed on the bridge of the USS Henrico, an assault transport 

carrying the 305th Infantry headquarters. The regimental commander and executive officer were killed outright. In all, forty-nine soldiers and sailors were dead 

or missing. Among the dead was a Nisei, T3g. Edwin Yukio Fukui. He had been 

born and raised in Tacoma, Washington, and was one of the first Nisei to enlist 

from Tule Lake in November 1942. Ie Shima was his third campaign with the 

77th Division.75

On Easter Sunday, 1 April 1945, the assault waves came ashore on Okinawa 

expecting heavy resistance as on Iwo Jima. Instead they were met with an eerie 

silence. In Hawaii, the Tenth Army kept a forward command post ready to parachute onto the island with a team of airborne-qualified Nisei linguists under Sgt. 

72 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 314–15; U.S. Army Forces Middle Pacific (and Predecessor 

Commands), “History of G–2 Section, 7 December 1941–2 September 1945,” 2 vols., pp. 217–18, 

Unpubl Ms, copy at U.S. Army Center of Military History; Ted T. Tsukiyama et al., eds., Secret 

Valor, rev. ed. (Honolulu: MIS Veterans Club of Hawaii, 2001), addendum, pp. 102(a)–(j); “Listening to Voices of the Past,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 29 May 00. 73 Edgar L. Jones, “Fighting with Words: Psychological Warfare in the Pacific,” Atlantic Monthly

(August 1945): 47–51. 74 Appleman et al., Okinawa: The Last Battle, p. 58; Saburo Ienaga, The Pacific War, 1931–1945

(New York: Pantheon, 1978), p. 185. 75 Samuel E. Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, 15 vols. 

(Boston: Little, Brown, 1947–1952), 14: 176–77; Appleman et al., Okinawa: The Last Battle, p. 79; 

Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 306–08; Roy Ito, Ltr from the field published in Yaban Gogai, 

Dec 45; “Nisei Gives Life for the U.S.,” Tacoma News Tribune, 27 May 45; “Report Death of First 

Nisei GI on Okinawa,” Pacific Citizen, 2 Jun 45.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1945 359

Mits Usui. However, because of light opposition, the jump was canceled at H+4.76

On Okinawa, the Nisei, some with CIC bodyguards, set about doing the tasks they 

had performed during previous campaigns: translating captured documents and 

interrogating the few prisoners.77 On the third day one Nisei saved 250 Okinawans 

hiding in tombs in a ravine. According to a war correspondent who witnessed 

the incident, the unidentified Nisei entered a tomb and encountered an Okinawan 

woman, who lifted his helmet “to make sure he was of Japanese stock, then gasped 

and put a hand to her forehead in relief.” Another Nisei told the correspondent:

[The civilians] are cooperating very well. This morning we had quite a time inducing a 

crowd to come out of a cave. They said they had been told they would be tortured with 

needles. Now they seem happy to be safe—from the way they are chipping in to clean 

up rubbish, wash clothes and make things livable. They are poor peasants for the most 

part—a pitiful lot who didn’t expect kind treatment.78

When American soldiers found a detailed topographical map on the body of a 

dead Japanese artillery forward observer, Nisei worked through the night to translate it. American intelligence agencies had few maps of Okinawa’s rugged terrain; 

aerial reconnaissance had not been possible until shortly before the invasion. The 

translated map was rushed to Hawaii, where JICPOA printed 12,000 copies for 

issue to every unit on Okinawa.79 On 17 April the Tenth Army language team 

published another important translation, the Japanese 32d Army order outlining 

the basic plan of defense for Okinawa.80

The Nisei also interrogated prisoners of war, but the Americans took an average of only four Japanese prisoners per day during the first ten weeks. One division G–2 told an observer: “The number of interrogators given to the division is 

76 Mits Usui, in Saga of the MIS. 77 “Camp Savage ‘Alumni’ on Okinawa Boost State,” Minneapolis Star-Journal, 24 Jul 45, 

reprinted in Oguro, Sempai Gumi, pp. 213–14; Duval A. Edwards, Spy Catchers of the U.S. Army 

in the War with Japan (Gig Harbor, Wash.: Red Apple Publishing, 1994), p. 247. 78 “Japanese American Soldiers Take Part in Okinawa Invasion,” Pacific Citizen, 14 Apr 45; 

“U.S. Army Utilizes Many Nisei Specialists in Okinawa Battles,” Pacific Citizen, 5 May 45. On 

the experience of Okinawa’s civilians, see Masahide Ota, “Re-examining the History of the Battle 

of Okinawa,” in Okinawa: Cold War Island, ed. Chalmers Johnson (Encinitas, Calif.: Japan Policy 

Research Institute, 1999), pp. 13–37; Ishihara Masaie, “Memories of War and Okinawa,” in Perilous Memories: The Asia-Pacific War(s), ed. T. Fujitani et al. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University 

Press, 2001), pp. 87–106. For a firsthand description by an American doctor who was born in Japan 

and spoke Japanese, see Henry S. Bennett, “The Impact of Invasion and Occupation on the Civilians of Okinawa,” United States Naval Institute Proceedings (February 1946): 263–75. 79 Ichinokuchi, John Aiso and the M.I.S., p. 79. On inadequate Allied maps, see Appleman et 

al., Okinawa: The Last Battle, p. 14; Nichols and Shaw, Okinawa: Victory in the Pacific, pp. 19–21; 

and Benis M. Frank and Henry I. Shaw, Jr., History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War 

II, vol. 5, Victory and Occupation (Washington, D.C.: Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1968), 

pp. 78–79. 80 Headquarters, U.S. Army Forces Pacific Ocean Areas, Observers Rpt: The Okinawa Operation, 15 Jun 45, p. 18, Combined Arms Research Library, Fort Leavenworth, Kans.; Appleman et 

al., Okinawa: The Last Battle, p. 92; Ichinokuchi, John Aiso and the M.I.S., p. 79.
360 NISEI LINGUISTS

hopelessly inadequate. Each battalion commanding officer needs one. The G–2 

stated that a thousand instances could be cited where lives could have been saved 

if prisoners could have been interrogated right at battalion.” 81

After the initial landings, the XXIV Corps wheeled right to face the main 

Japanese defenses on the south end of the island. Soon the Americans found themselves stalled in brutal World War I–style fighting. Heavy rains turned the soil 

into a quagmire, and the soldiers faced the most intense Japanese artillery concentrations they had ever seen. On the evening of 18 April the corps language team 

received a captured Japanese forward observer’s chart that showed all Japanese 

artillery and heavy mortar positions in their sector. Knowing that an American 

attack was set for the next morning, Lt. Benjamin Hazard and his Nisei worked 

straight through the night to translate the chart. They finished two hours before the 

81 Rpt, Army War College, sub: Report on the Okinawa Operation, 1 May 45, Trng Grp, Ofc of 

the Dir of Intel G–2, RG 165, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

T.Sgt. Hiroshi “Bud” Mukaye (left) and S.Sgt. Ralph Minoru Saito (center), 7th 

Infantry Division, question a Japanese sailor, Okinawa, 17 June 1945.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1945 361

attack, and Hazard delivered the translation to the corps assistant G–2. However, 

the attack went on as scheduled with three American divisions—the 7th, 27th, and 

96th Infantry Divisions—attacking on line. The result was disastrous; at no point 

did the Americans break through. The corps lost 720 dead, wounded, and missing 

in a single day. When the corps commander found out about the captured map, 

he was furious and told Hazard that had he known about the map he would have 

called off the attack.82

Not all casualties came from enemy fire. One day two Nisei with the 7th 

Infantry Division were cleaning their carbines when one accidentally discharged 

and grazed Toshimi Yamada. When he limped to the aid tent for treatment, he 

requested a Purple Heart. When the surgeon told him that the wound had to result 

from Japanese action, Yamada responded, “Well, what the hell do you call the 

guy?” The surgeon still refused, saying it had to be caused by an enemy Japanese. 

“Well, he’s sure as heck my enemy now!” Yamada did not have long to wait for his 

Purple Heart: a few days later he was wounded while flushing Japanese soldiers 

out of a cave.83

On 16 April the 77th Infantry Division seized Ie Shima, an island near 

Okinawa. Sgt. Vic Nishijima with the division language team saw “an elderly 

private” walking toward a minefield on the first or second day and “bawled him 

out.” Only later did he learn that this was the famous war correspondent Ernie 

Pyle. On 18 April Pyle was killed by a Japanese machine gun.84 Three days later 

Tenth Army declared Ie Shima secure and the Nisei stepped up their efforts to 

persuade isolated groups of Japanese soldiers and civilians to surrender. At one 

point Nishijima coaxed 150 civilians from a single cave. In the early morning light 

of 23 April T4g. Mitsuo “Mits” Shibata saw another group of civilians approach 

American lines. He jumped up, waved his arms, and shouted to them. In an instant 

he fell mortally wounded, probably killed by a fellow American soldier who mistook him for Japanese. Shibata, a veteran of the Aleutians and the South Pacific, 

was the second member of the division’s language team to die in three weeks.85

Teammate T.Sgt. Shigeo Ito wrote to his friends in the language school: “After 

losing two of our buddies, the team almost went to pieces. It certainly was hard to 

82 Appleman et al., Okinawa: The Last Battle, pp. 184–207; Falk and Tsuneishi, MIS in the War 

against Japan, pp. 54–57; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 335. 83 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 309–10. Two Marine Corps enlisted linguists were killed on 

Okinawa. Ltr, Calvin Dunbar to author, 11 July 1999, author’s files. 84 “Private ‘Bawled Out’ by Nisei Sergeant Was Ernie Pyle,” Pacific Citizen, 21 Jul 45; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 323–24. 85 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 325. By a later account, Shibata was “shot in error by a BARwielding GI as he sought to rescue some civilians.” “America’s Superb Secret Human Weapon in 

World War II,” Brochure, Presidio of San Francisco Army Museum, 1 Nov 81; see also Ichinokuchi, 

John Aiso and the M.I.S., p. 81. A visiting newspaper publisher heard that two Nisei had been killed 

by American troops while taking prisoners. “Noted U.S. Publisher Says Japanese Americans Faced 

Double Hazard in Pacific,” Pacific Citizen, 15 Sep 45, p. 2. He was probably referring to Fukui and 

Shibata, only one of whom was killed by friendly fire. See also Michael Sakamoto, interview notes 

by Joseph Harrington, NJAHS.
362 NISEI LINGUISTS

take. We finally pulled ourselves together and I believe the eight of us did the work 

of 11 men. Yes, we felt that spiritually the two of the boys are still with us, and so 

we decided to finish our mission without any additional aid.” 86

Most language teams on Okinawa were led by Caucasian Army or Navy lieutenants. One Boulder graduate, Marine 1st Lt. Spencer V. Silverthorne, earned the 

Silver Star on 13 June by persuading fifty-six Japanese to surrender.87 Tensions 

between the Nisei and their Caucasian officers were common. The Army language officers had trained alongside the Nisei, but the Navy officers often had 

no contact with the Nisei until assigned to a team. The JICPOA final report later 

commented, “It frequently happened that the two types of language personnel 

were in competition, or openly working against each other, largely as a result of 

misunderstandings which could easily have been avoided.” 88

Some Navy officers earned the respect of the Nisei. During the fighting Lt. 

Donald Keene, U.S. Navy Reserve, took over the 96th Infantry Division language 

team. It was, he later admitted, “the first time in my life [I had] a group of men in 

my command.” Before the war Keene had studied at Columbia University and had 

a gift for the Japanese and Chinese languages. When he took over the team, “at first 

I was obliged to demonstrate (as usual) that I really could read and speak Japanese, 

but it did not take long to become friends.” 89 One Nisei on the XXIV Corps team, 

T.Sgt. Warren Tsuneishi, had been a student at the University of California before 

the war and was of a similar scholarly bent. Tsuneishi and Keene developed mutual respect and enjoyed long conversations about the nature of loyalty, especially 

for the Kibei. Tsuneishi explained to the Caucasian officer “what it meant to be an 

American fighting in the Army against the country of my parents.” 90

Organized Japanese resistance finally collapsed in June, and the surviving 

Japanese soldiers began to surrender in large numbers. On 20 June the Americans 

took a record 977 prisoners. At one point Tatsuo Elmer Yamamoto went into a cave 

and persuaded 350 Japanese to surrender. In July 2d Lt. Wallace S. Amioka led a 

combat patrol into a remote area to locate a Japanese colonel and his staff; when 

86 Yaban Gogai, Dec 45. 87 History of the Sixth Marine Division (Washington, D.C.: Infantry Journal Press, 1948), pp. 

157, 189; Roger V. Dingman, “Language at War: U.S. Marine Corps Japanese Language Officers in 

the Pacific War,” Journal of Military History 68 (July 2004): 875–81. 88 Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Areas, “Report of Intelligence Activities in the 

Pacific Ocean Areas,” 15 Oct 45, p. 45 (hereafter cited as JICPOA History), copy in author’s files. 

Warren Higa felt the navy language officers compared favorably to the Army’s Michigan graduates. 

Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 328. 89 Donald Keene, On Familiar Terms: A Journey across Cultures (New York: Kodansha, 1994), 

pp. 49–50. 90 Warren Tsuneishi, Ltr to the Editor, New York Times, 14 Mar 94; Interv, author with Warren Tsuneishi, 22 Aug 95; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 341. Another Navy language officer on 

Okinawa was Kenneth Lamott, who had been born in Japan. After the war he became a writer and 

editor. His first novel portrayed the relationship between a Caucasian language officer and a Nisei 

sergeant in a prisoner of war camp on Okinawa. Kenneth Lamott, The Stockade (Boston: Little, 

Brown, 1952).
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1945 363

the colonel was discovered, he tried to escape and was shot by the patrol members. 

Soon more than 7,000 Japanese soldiers were in American hands and Tenth Army 

had to establish large holding compounds for the prisoners alongside camps for the 

dislocated civilians. On Saipan and Guam, similar mopping-up efforts continued 

for many months.91

The rising surrender rate was in part due to tactical psychological warfare 

developed by the Office of War Information with the Nisei and trusted Japanese 

prisoners. This proved to one observer that “Japanese troops can be reached by propaganda weapons as well as bullets and flamethrowers.” Without such weapons, 

91 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 310–11, 343–45; Shelly Mydans, “Guam Holdouts Give 

Up,” Life (9 July 1945): 67–70; “Tinian Experiment,” Yank (3 August 1945): 10–11; Gordon Cotler, 

“Kobayashi,” New Yorker (26 August 1950): 54–57; Gordon Cotler, “A Sort of Detective Story,” 

New Yorker (9 February 1952): 88–93.

Nishijima (right) and a captured Japanese soldier (left) used to make surrender 

appeals, Aka Shima
364 NISEI LINGUISTS

he concluded, Americans must “be prepared to continue the Pacific war until the 

majority of the vast numbers of remaining Japanese troops have been killed.” 92

These mopping-up operations could be as dangerous as active combat. 

T4g. Thomas H. Ige was wounded by a landmine while attached to an African 

American antiaircraft battalion on the Kerama Islands. The Hawaii-born Ige had 

been a graduate student in economics at the University of Wisconsin before the 

war. He volunteered for language training and joined the Okinawan-speaking 

team. While on the Kerama Islands, he “made it a point to mingle freely with 

both sides [African American and Caucasian], eating my meals with each group 

on an alternating basis.” 93 On 27 July he accompanied a patrol led by an African 

American lieutenant to look for more Japanese and was severely wounded when 

the point man stepped on a landmine. Ige’s bodyguard, an African American from 

92 “Jap Surrenders Are Increasing—Psychological Warfare Proves Effective,” Life (9 July 1945); 

quote from Jones, “Fighting with Words”; Stanley Sandler, Cease Resistance, It’s Good for You: 

A History of U.S. Army Combat Psychological Operations (Fort Bragg, N.C.: U.S. Army Special 

Operations Command, 1996), pp. 210–18; JICPOA History, p. 31. 93 Ige, Boy from Kahaluu, p. 85.

Amioka (in front with helmet), guided by a Japanese prisoner, leads an American 

patrol to the hiding place of a senior Japanese commander, Okinawa, 10 July 

1945.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1945 365

Schenectady, New York, wrote Ige’s wife in Minneapolis to tell her that her husband had been wounded.94

On Okinawa, the American troops encountered an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. At one point during the fighting on Okinawa, the 96th Infantry Division 

team rounded up 1,500 civilians in a single surrender. (On Saipan, by comparison, only a few thousand Japanese civilians had been taken.)95 Tenth Army had 

plans for humanitarian assistance and military government, but these plans were 

quickly overwhelmed. Many civilians, injured, ill, exhausted, and terrified, fled 

their homes. Between one-tenth and one-fourth of all civilians died. By the end 

of the fighting the military government was responsible for the care and feeding of 200,000 civilians. The Island Command started with seventy-five Japanese 

linguists and within weeks received another ninety-five. The Counter Intelligence 

Corps faced an equally severe shortage and in some cases used Okinawans who 

spoke some English.96

Lieutenant Amioka’s Okinawan-speaking team arrived toward the end of 

April; Army and Navy authorities in Hawaii continued to search for other Nisei 

who spoke Japanese, even recruiting from among discharged or convalescing veterans of the 100th Infantry Battalion. Among these was Pfc. Thomas Taro Higa, 

an original member of the battalion. He had been born in Hawaii to Okinawan 

parents who sent him to their home village to be raised by his grandparents. He 

returned, was drafted, and ended up in the 100th Infantry Battalion. When MISLS

recruiters visited the battalion in 1942, Higa was not among those selected for language training: “I think that most of us did not respond to the recruitment because 

we felt a certain mental agony in engaging in interpreting activities against Japan, 

our grandfather’s country, even for the sake of assisting the country of our birth. . . .

Many Nisei felt less mental agony in going to the European front and fighting 

against the Germans.” 97

Higa fought the Germans in Italy and was wounded at Cassino in January 

1944. He returned to the United States for treatment. Upon recovery he toured the 

United States for the War Relocation Authority to tell the American public about 

the Nisei fighting in Europe.98 When the battle for Okinawa began, he helped 

94 Ibid., pp. 87–88. Many years later, while serving as administrative assistant to Senator Daniel 

K. Inouye, Ige stood on the Lincoln Memorial as Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his famous 

“I Have a Dream” speech in 1963. Ige, Boy from Kahaluu, pp. 153–55. 95 Yaban Gogai, Aug 45. 96 Fisch, Military Government in the Ryukyu Islands, pp. 45–60; Appleman et al., Okinawa: The 

Last Battle, pp. 415–19; Edwards, Spy Catchers, p. 243. The refugees included numerous Taiwanese and Korean laborers, as well as a number of Korean comfort women. Ige, Boy from Kahaluu, 

pp. 82–83. 97 “Pfc. Higa Reports Okinawa Civilians Get Kind Treatment from U.S. Military Government,” 

Pacific Citizen, 28 Jul 45; quote from Thomas Taro Higa, Memoirs of a Certain Nisei (Aru Nisei No 

Wadachi), 1916–1985 (Kaneohe, Hawaii: Higa Publications, 1988), p. 160. 98 “Nationwide Speaking Tour Outlined for 100th Veteran: Pfc. Higa Tells Issei of Conditions 

Faced by Japanese Americans,” and Saburo Kido, “Timely Topics,” Pacific Citizen, 9 Sep 44. On 

the War Relocation Authority’s 1944–1945 public relations campaign, see Thomas D. Murphy, 
366 NISEI LINGUISTS

organize a relief campaign in Hawaii for the Okinawan civilians. The Hawaiian 

Department G–2, Col. Kendall J. Fielder, personally asked Higa to go to Okinawa. 

Higa agreed and arrived on 25 April to join other Nisei in coaxing Okinawan 

civilians out of hiding. He went into caves twelve different times, he recalled, and 

was successful all but once. Even so, his main effort continued to be organizing 

civilian relief efforts.99

Okinawan-speaking Nisei became adept at spotting Japanese deserters among 

the refugees. Recalled one Nisei:

The ability of most of our team members to speak the Okinawan dialect proved most 

helpful in interrogation of Japanese prisoners. This was especially valuable and effective 

in separating out the Japanese soldiers masquerading as Okinawan civilians. A few basic 

questions to them in the Okinawan dialect immediately unmasked their disguise. Very 

few Japanese soldiers could understand, much less speak, the dialect. They would be 

embarrassed when unmasked and, thereafter, would be in a more cooperative mood.100

In June the Japanese 32d Army’s senior operations officer was identified while 

trying to pass himself off as a civilian refugee. Captured by the 96th Infantry 

Division and questioned by George Inagaki, he revealed that the 32d Army chief of 

staff had ordered several key staff officers to infiltrate the refugees and attempt to 

return to Japan to report on the battle to the Imperial General Headquarters.101

The war was bringing the Nisei closer to their parents’ homes: several found 

family members on Okinawa. T4g. Seiyu Higashi had been born in California but 

raised on Okinawa. Upon graduation from middle school in 1937, he had returned 

to Los Angeles and had not seen his father since. They were reunited in Naha on 

21 June, and the cheerful photograph appeared in newspapers across the United 

States.102 Even Ernie Pyle reported that he had met a farmer who had lived in 

Hawaii for a time and whose Nisei son was serving in the U.S. Army.103 Takejiro 

Higa met his 7th/8th grade teacher soon after coming ashore with the 96th Infantry 

Division. “Neither of us could say much in that very emotional encounter,” he 

Ambassadors in Arms (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1954), pp. 274–79. Another wounded 

Nisei veteran who served as a spokesman for the WRA in the autumn of 1944 was Capt. Spark M. 

Matsunaga, who later became a U.S. senator from Hawaii. 99 Another recuperating 100th Infantry Battalion veteran, Walter Kajiwara, was sent to Saipan 

to help round up Japanese stragglers. Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 313–14. 100 Ige, Boy from Kahaluu, pp. 80–81; Edwards, Spy Catchers, p. 249. 101 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 341; Thomas M. Huber, Japan’s Battle of Okinawa, April–

June 1945 (Fort Leavenworth, Kans.: Combat Studies Institute, 1990), p. 114. The interrogation 

report of Col. Hiromichi Yahara proved helpful to the writing of the U.S. Army’s official history 

of the battle; he later published his own account. Hiromichi Yahara, Okinawa Kessen [Battle of 

Okinawa] (Tokyo: Yomiuri shimbunsha, 1972). 102 “Nisei GI Finds Dad on Okinawa,” Minneapolis Morning Tribune, 6 Jul 45, reprinted in 

Oguro, Sempai Gumi, p. 215; “Sgt. Higashi Received Special Training for Okinawa Invasion,” 

Pacific Citizen, 14 Jul 45. Jiro Arakaki also found his father. “Jiro Arakaki: Okinawa,” Hawaii 

Herald, 2 Jul 93, p. A–30; Jiro Arakaki, MISNorCal Bio. 103 Ernie Pyle, Ernie’s War (New York: Random House, 1986), p. 409.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1945 367

recalled. A few weeks later he met two classmates who did not recognize him 

wearing an American uniform. Without disclosing his identity, he questioned them 

closely and surprised them with his detailed knowledge of their village and school. 

Finally he asked them if they remembered a classmate named Takejiro Higa. They 

admitted they did but said that he had returned to Hawaii before the war. Higa 

“looked them straight in the face” and shouted in their dialect: “Goddammit, don’t 

you recognize your own classmate?” The two Okinawans burst into tears and 

stammered, “Now, knowing that our own classmate is on the other side, we believe 

our lives will be saved.” Higa recalled that “the three of us grabbed each other’s 

shoulders and had a cry.”104

104 Interv, author with Higa, 7 Dec 94; “Aru Okinawa Hawaii Imin no Shinjuwan”; “Unforgettable Encounters: Battle of Okinawa,” in Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor (1993 ed.), pp. 101–02; 

Higashi reunited with his father, Okinawa, 21 June 1945 
368 NISEI LINGUISTS

Another first was the discovery of significant numbers of American Nisei on 

Okinawa. This forced the U.S. government and Japanese American community 

leaders to confront the uncomfortable issue of how to handle American citizens 

of Japanese ancestry who had remained in Japan and Japanese-controlled areas 

during the war. In June 1945 the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) 

ran the first editorials and commentaries on the question in the Pacific Citizen. 

Ironically, before the landings the Japanese government had also been suspicious 

of the American Nisei among the Okinawan population and had spread rumors of 

spy activities, including allegations that the Americans may have infiltrated Nisei 

into Okinawa by submarine before the landings.105

The War Department sent one unusual Nisei to assist with military government. Before the war Masaji Marumoto had graduated from Harvard Law School 

and had practiced law in Honolulu. After Pearl Harbor he had served as liaison between military government and law enforcement in Hawaii and the local 

Japanese community. He had enlisted in 1943 and in May 1945 was commissioned 

into the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. He arrived on Okinawa on 25 June. For 

five weeks he crisscrossed the island in a jeep “to locate and interview civilians 

with leadership background, who were willing to participate” in an Americansponsored assembly of prominent Okinawans. His list of local leaders was accepted by the American authorities; the Provisional Advisory Assembly held its first 

meeting in Ishikawa on 15 August as Okinawa’s first step toward self-government 

after three generations of Japanese rule.106

On 18 June, as the American victory was almost complete, a Japanese shell 

killed the Tenth Army commander, Lt. Gen. Simon B. Buckner. However, organized Japanese resistance soon ended and Buckner was replaced by General Joseph 

W. Stilwell. Stilwell was well acquainted with Nisei soldiers, having commanded 

them before the war in the 7th Infantry Division and again in the China-BurmaIndia Theater. The situation of the Nisei soldiers was on his mind even on Okinawa. 

On a visit to the 27th Infantry Division he congratulated Sgt. Hoichi Kubo on his 

Distinguished Service Cross and told him that “the boys of Merrill’s Marauders 

send their regards.” One day Sgt. Nobuo Dick Kishiue, also with the 27th Infantry 

Division, was setting up a prisoner of war collecting point at a crossroad. A jeep 

pulled up and out climbed Stilwell, who struck up a conversation with the Nisei. 

Kishiue recalled that the general “fully understood the work that we were trying 

“Takejiro Higa: An Okinawan Caught in the Battle of Okinawa,” Hawaii Herald, 2 Jul 93, p. A–24; 

Japanese Eyes, American Heart, pp. 291–302; Kikuchi, “The Pacific War of the Nisei in Hawaii,” 

pp. 114–20. 105 For example, see Bill Hosokawa’s column in Pacific Citizen, 23 Jun 45; Larry Tajiri, “Nisei 

USA,” Pacific Citizen, 14 Jul 45. For rumors of infiltration by submarine, see Ota, “Re-examining 

the History of the Battle of Okinawa.” I have seen no evidence that Nisei in fact were infiltrated. 106 Masaji Marumoto, “Okinawa Revisited: A Look at Past, Future,” Honolulu Sunday StarBulletin and Advertiser, 14 Feb 71; Fisch, Military Government in the Ryukyu Islands, p. 105; Coffman, Island Edge of America, pp. 61–66; Tsukiyama, “Battle of Okinawa Revisited,” pp. 41–42.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1945 369

to do.”107 Later that autumn Stilwell expressed his sense of outrage at the treatment 

of persons of Japanese ancestry in California. Speaking to a correspondent with 

the G.I. newspaper, C.B.I. Roundup, he declared with characteristic bluntness:

You’re damned right, those Nisei boys have got a place in the American heart—now 

and forever. . . . I say we soldiers ought to form a pick-axe club to protect the JapaneseAmericans who fought with us in this war. Yes sir, a pick-axe club. Any time we see any 

bar-fly commando picking on any of these kids or in any way discriminating against them, 

we ought to bang them over the head with a pick-axe, and I’m willing to be the charter 

member of such a club. . . .

We cannot allow a single injustice to be done these Nisei without defeating the very 

purposes for which we fought this whole war. . . .These Nisei have bought an awful big 

chunk of America with their own blood.108

Army Air Forces

The Army Air Forces had more than 200 MIS Nisei assigned in the Pacific by 

1945. However, the most famous Nisei with the Army Air Forces was not in the 

MIS. Shortly after Pearl Harbor, Nebraska-born T.Sgt. Ben Kuroki had enlisted 

and flew thirty missions in Europe as a gunner, including the costly Ploesti Raid 

on 1 August 1943.109 In 1944 he returned to the United States to a hero’s welcome 

and toured the country on behalf of the War Relocation Authority and the Japanese 

American Citizens League to publicize Nisei contributions to the war effort. Early 

in 1945 he was reassigned to the Pacific, where he flew twenty-seven missions 

against Japan as a B–29 turret gunner with the 313th Bombardment Wing. For 

these later missions the Army Air Forces awarded him a second Oak Leaf Cluster 

for his Distinguished Flying Cross.110

107 Hoichi Kubo, “Military Biography,” p. 14, Unpubl Ms, 1996, copy in author’s files; Nobuo 

Dick Kishiue, in Falk and Tsuneishi, MIS in the War against Japan, p. 52; Nobuo Dick Kishiue, 

MISNorCal Bio.

108 CBI Roundup (11 October 1945); paraphrased in Pacific Citizen, 8 Dec 45; Bill Hosokawa, 

Nisei: The Quiet Americans (New York: William Morrow, 1969), pp. 414. Stilwell returned to the 

United States and, from his new position as Sixth Army commander, continued his campaign for 

justice for the Nisei. On 8 December 1945, he presented the posthumous Distinguished Service 

Cross to the sister of a Nisei soldier who had served with the 442d RCT. The Santa Ana, California, ceremony was attended by several Hollywood personalities including Ronald Reagan, who as 

President of the United States signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 granting redress to Japanese 

Americans who were affected by wartime relocation and internment. 109 Another Nisei, Sgt. Rodney Higashi, served as chief engineer and gunner with a B–24 

squadron that was sent to the Fifth Air Force in early 1944. “Japanese American Gunner Flies 150 

Combat Missions against Japanese in Pacific,” Pacific Citizen, 26 May 45. The Air Corps enlisted 

a few other Nisei before Pearl Harbor. 110 Ralph G. Martin, Boy from Nebraska: The Story of Ben Kuroki (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1946); “Sgt. Ben Kuroki Reported in Action on Pacific Front,” Pacific Citizen, 17 Mar 45; 

“Sgt. Ben Kuroki Completes 27 Combat Missions in Superfort over Japanese Territory,” Pacific 

Citizen, 11 Aug 45; “Sgt. Ben Kuroki Awarded DFC [Distinguished Flying Cross] at B–29 Base,” 

Pacific Citizen, 13 Oct 45; Arthur A. Hansen, “Sergeant Ben Kuroki’s Perilous ‘Home Mission’: 
370 NISEI LINGUISTS

Unlike Kuroki, Nisei in the MIS serving with the Army Air Forces were kept 

out of the public eye. By January 1945 about 265 Nisei had been assigned to air 

intelligence functions. Dozens served on technical intelligence teams with Fifth, 

Seventh, Tenth, Thirteenth, and Twentieth Air Forces, specializing in gathering 

information from downed Japanese aircraft and captured aviation equipment. The 

Technical Air Intelligence Unit–Southwest Pacific Area language team was led by 

Lt. Ernest J. Silver, the only Air Corps officer to graduate from MISLS. One of the 

Nisei on his team, Robert K. Fukuda, had taken preflight training at the University 

of Hawaii in 1940–1941 but was not allowed to take flying lessons at that time, 

he believed because of secret restrictions that prohibited Americans of Japanese 

ancestry from such training.111

Perhaps a hundred others were assigned to the 1st, 6th, 7th, and 8th RSMs in 

the Philippines, India-Burma, and the Marianas. These special units listened to 

Japanese air-to-ground radio communications. Beginning in 1944 each squadron 

was assigned about twenty-five Nisei. Sgt. Ted T. Tsukiyama, who served in IndiaBurma with the 6th RSM, described his duties:

We intercepted Japanese air force air-ground radio communications between fighter 

planes and tower at Japanese airfields in Northern Burma. Nisei on three-man radio intercept teams (four hours on, eight hours off, around the clock) monitored Japanese air traffic at six airfields. We recorded all Japanese air-ground radio traffic on old-fashioned 

recorder rolls, translated, and sent them in to air force G–2 to analyze the Japanese flight 

activity, number and types of aircraft, as well as message content. Fighter pilots utilized 

code names. . . .The towers maintained their own identity, and all conversation was in 

uncoded voice. The Japanese had no idea they were being monitored!112

The duty was tedious. If the Japanese were not active in a certain area or the 

radio reception was poor, there was little for the Nisei to do. One Nisei in the 

Philippines with the 7th RSM complained in August 1945: “The majority of us are 

corporals with no hope of a raise, as long as we’re in this squadron. . . . [A] transfer 

to the ground force G–2 is virtually nil, and frankly in my opinion I think we’re 

‘screwed.’” Another Nisei wrote to express his agreement:

He did a good job of explaining our plight. Our life has been mixed with disgust, regret, 

disillusionment, excitement, fun and sorrow. We couldn’t do any good in the 1st Radio 

Squadron, yet we were refused transfers. Seven fellows “piloted” two 1/2-ton trucks 

Contested Loyalty and Patriotism in the Japanese American Detention Centers,” in Remembering 

Heart Mountain: Essays on Japanese American Internment in Wyoming, ed. Mike Mackey (Powell, 

Wyo.: Western History Publications, 1998), pp. 153–75. 111 Michael J. Freeman, “Behind Enemy Lines,” Airpower (July 1994): 10–23, 44–55; Fukuda, 

private communication to author, 5 Sep 01. 112 Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor (1993 ed.), pp. 72–73. On Okinawa, Navy language officers 

performed similar radio monitoring duties to warn of kamikaze attacks: Holmes, Double-Edged 

Secrets, pp. 207–08.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1945 371

while seven others were night watchmen on transport planes. Promotions too, have been 

lacking for us.

A few weeks later the first writer replied:

[Enemy radio activity] was at minimum and . . . reception, was very poor due to our position and more often than not the voice came in very weak and garbled plus the intense 

artificial and manmade interference that we had to contend with. As a result of these 

factors, the voice section was soon relegated to minor import—and not thru the fault of 

the Niseis. . . . It is now a good year and half since I have had anything to do with the language and bitterly feel that for all practical purposes we may as well never have attended 

the school.113

Even tedious assignments could be dangerous on occasion. Yukio Tamura was 

shot through the lung by a Japanese sniper while serving on Palawan Island with 

the 7th RSM.114 When Twentieth Air Force B–29s began attacking Japanese cities, 

MIS Nisei flew along to protect the aircraft from Japanese air defense networks by 

monitoring Japanese radio circuits.115 In the spring of 1944, XX Bomber Command 

had begun using Nisei on missions against targets in Southeast Asia and Formosa. 

Sergeant Komoto, who had been wounded in New Georgia in 1943, and Sgt. 

Masaharu Okinaka were awarded the Air Medal, although the press release identified them only as radio operators. Other Nisei flew with the XXI Bomber Command 

in the Marianas and were awarded Bronze Stars for combat missions.116

In December 1944 the 8th RSM arrived in Guam with about fifty Nisei to 

support the strategic bombardment of Japan. They became part of RAGFOR, the 

Army-Navy Radio Analysis Group (Forward). At first, B–29s simply recorded 

Japanese radio transmissions during the bombing raids, then after each mission 

the Nisei would listen to and translate the tapes. In the spring of 1945 ten Nisei 

began to fly along with B–24 “ferret” missions to monitor communications in real 

time. The RAGFOR officer in charge later praised these Nisei: “Jap voice for airground communications was close to a virgin field, and one which the 8th RSM 

was almost alone endeavoring to exploit. Records and transcripts of voice activity 

113 Ken Sekiguchi, Ltr from the field published in in Yaban Gogai, Aug 45, p. 7; Kaz Oshiki, Ltr 

from the field published in Yaban Gogai, Sep–Oct 45, p. 9; Ltr, Ken Sekiguchi to Yutaka Munakata, 

9 September 1945, Harrington Papers. An edited version of Sekiguchi’s letter was reprinted in 

Yaban Gogai, Sep–Oct 45, p. 6. 114 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 283; Interv, Dawn E. Duensing with James Sasami Okada, 

in Americanism: A Matter of Mind and Heart, vol. 1, The Military Intelligence Service (Maui, 

Hawaii: Maui’s Sons and Daughters of the Nisei Veterans, 2001); Ibid., pp. 143–44, 150–51. 115 John F. Kreis, ed., Piercing the Fog: Intelligence and Army Air Forces Operations in World 

War II (Washington, D.C.: Air Force History and Museums Program, 1996), pp. 297–347; Kenneth 

P. Werrell, Blankets of Fire: U.S. Bombers over Japan during World War II (Washington, D.C.: 

Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996), pp. 190–92. 116 Pacific Citizen, 16, 23 Jun 45; Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor (1993 ed.), p. 91.
372 NISEI LINGUISTS

during B–29 missions were provided by the XXI Bomber Command. Nisei operators were continually provided for ferret missions.”117

B–29s dropped propaganda leaflets as well as bombs. By early 1945 Guambased JICPOA language officers used prisoners of war to develop warning leaflets 

for the XXI Bomber Command.118 In July 1945 the Psychological Warfare Branch 

in Hawaii began a “city” leaflet campaign. Each leaflet announced: “These leaflets are being dropped to notify you that your city has been listed for destruction 

by our powerful air force.”119

Sgt. John Okada from Seattle served with the 8th RSM. He later recalled how 

he would sit “smoking in the belly of a B–24 on his way back to Guam from a 

reconnaissance flight to Japan. His job was to listen through his earphones, which 

were attached to a high-frequency set, and jot down air-ground messages spoken 

by Japanese-Japanese in Japanese planes and in Japanese radio shacks.” On one 

such flight he talked with a Caucasian lieutenant who was shocked to learn that 

Okada’s family was interned. “Hell’s bells,” said the lieutenant, “if they’d done 

that to me, I wouldn’t be sitting in the belly of a broken-down B–24 going back to 

Guam from a reconnaissance mission to Japan.” Okada replied, “I got reasons.” 

“They could kiss my ass,” exclaimed the lieutenant. “I got reasons,” was all Okada 

replied. For most MIS Nisei, their reasons, though sometimes difficult to explain, 

were never far from their minds.120

Preparing for Operation Olympic

By mid-summer 1945 organized Japanese resistance had ended on Okinawa 

and in the Philippines. Japan’s Navy lay on the bottom of the sea; her cities lay in 

ruins. America was gathering its strength for the invasion of the Japanese home 

islands beginning in early November. Operation Olympic, the invasion of the 

southern island of Kyushu, would involve more troops, ships, and aircraft than the 

Normandy invasion. MacArthur’s plans called for Sixth Army to command three 

Army corps and one Marine amphibious corps with thirteen divisions. Meanwhile, 

a million troops would redeploy from Europe to the Pacific. In early August Lt. 

Gen. Courtney H. Hodges secretly arrived in Manila with an advance party from 

First Army to prepare for Operation Coronet, the follow-on landing on the Kanto 

Plain set for the spring of 1946.

The War Department G–2 was already deeply involved in planning the utilization of Japanese linguists for the coming invasion. As early as 28 December 

117 “Report of Mission to Pacific Ocean Areas RAGFOR and Associated Activities at Guam, 27 

March 1945,” Special Research History 133 (SRH–133); Memo, Lt. Cmdr. Robert B. Seaks, OIC, 

RAGFOR, n.d., sub: Performance of 8th Radio Squadron Mobile, reproduced in “The Story Behind 

the Flying Eight Ball [8th RSM],” p. 40, Unpubl Ms, [1945?], author’s files; Tsukiyama et al., Secret 

Valor (1993 ed.), p. 83. 118 Boller, Memoirs of an Obscure Professor, pp. 44–49. 119 Sandler, Cease Resistance, pp. 220–21. 120 John Okada, No-No Boy (Rutherford, Vt.: Tuttle, 1957), p. xi.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1945 373

1944, Army and Navy intelligence chiefs had convened the Washington Document 

Conference to deal with the flood of captured Japanese documents pouring in 

from Pacific battlefields. All Pacific Theater intelligence staffs were represented 

along with the British War Office and the Australian and Canadian Armies. The 

conference called for the United States to establish a joint Army-Navy center to 

receive and allocate incoming documents, “after theatre exploitation.” The new 

organization, named the Washington Document Center, commenced operations 

in February.121

The conference further recommended that one headquarters control all language personnel in the Pacific. In April 1945 the Joint Chiefs of Staff reorganized the Pacific commands, making MacArthur commander of all ground forces 

and Nimitz commander of all naval forces. In response to this realignment the 

War Department G–2 gave MacArthur’s command, redesignated as U.S. Army 

Forces in the Pacific, authority to review and coordinate all requests for Army 

Japanese linguists. For the invasion of Japan ATIS gained authority over all MIS

Nisei for the first time, including those formerly assigned to JICPOA and those 

arriving from language training.122 Colonel Mashbir advised Maj. Gen. Charles 

A. Willoughby that 4,000 additional Nisei would be required for the invasion. 

Willoughby objected, “Well, I’m not going to stand for any such God-damned 

thing as that.” Mashbir replied: “Well, General, I don’t give a damn whether you 

do or not. Frankly if we don’t have these linguists, somebody is going to be tried 

by court-martial and I’m going to be God-damned sure it isn’t me.” Mashbir did 

not get all 4,000, but from May to July 1945 MISLS shipped 1,073 graduates to 

U.S. Army Forces in the Pacific.123

In preparation for the invasion, ATIS moved from Brisbane to Manila. In 

March, Advance ATIS sent one officer and three enlisted men from Hollandia to 

Manila, where they took over part of the Philippine Racing Club in the Santa Ana 

district. Base ATIS left Brisbane on 4 June, after almost three years in Australia. 

Personnel, files, and equipment were loaded onto three Liberty ships. The main 

body departed on 17 June and arrived on 5 July in Manila harbor, which was 

jammed with vessels waiting to discharge their cargo. The Nisei went to work and 

121 After-Action Report, Pacific Military Intelligence Research Section (PACMIRS), sub: History and Organization of PACMIRS, Camp Ritchie, Maryland, 6 September 1944–14 August 1945, 

p. 6; “Office of Naval Intelligence,” p. 894, United States Naval Administration in World War II, 16 

parts in 4 vols., Unpubl Ms, n.d., U.S. Naval Historical Center, Washington, D.C. 122 ATIS History, p. 28; WD, Ltr, MID 908, 23 April 1945. On 8 August ATIS issued an instruction that assigned all Army Japanese linguists to the Translator and Interpreter Service, General 

Headquarters. ATIS SOPI [Standing Operating Procedure Instructions] no. 4, Policy and Procedure Concerning the Use of Language Personnel and the Processing of Prisoners of War and Captured Documents in the Pacific, 8 Aug 45. Fifteen JICPOA intelligence service organizations, each 

with up to seven officers and twenty enlisted men, were transferred to ATIS on 30 August 1945. 

ATIS History, p. 29. 123 Interv, D. Clayton James with Col. Sidney F. Mashbir, 1 Sep 71, p. 12, D. Clayton James 

Collection, RG 49, MacArthur Memorial; Covert Warfare, 12 vols. (New York: Garland, 1989), 

vol. 2.
374 NISEI LINGUISTS

had unloaded and uncrated most of their equipment by 1 August. Hundreds more 

recent MISLS graduates arrived directly from Minnesota. ATIS was also augmented by the 5225th Women’s Army Corps Detachment with about 150 women, 

including a few Nisei, none of them MISLS graduates.124

The arrival of hundreds of Nisei in Manila aroused public curiosity. Mashbir 

recalled:

The night the personnel arrived, thousands of Filipinos thronged the gates and 

even climbed the walls to see what, as the Filipino major [commanding the guard force] 

explained to me, were thought to be the “Japanese prisoners.” I told him they were not 

Japanese prisoners, but American soldiers. He looked at me blankly, until I had to explain 

to him.

“This officer,” I said, “is Irish-American, that officer is German-American, you are 

Filipino-American, and these are Japanese-Americans.”

Again he looked blank, but finally light began to dawn.

“Are they American citizens?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied, “they are American citizens.”

124 Mattie E. Treadwell, The Women’s Army Corps, U.S. Army in World War II (Washington, 

D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1954), pp. 433, 435; ATIS History, p. 12; Brenda L. 

Moore, Serving Our Country: Japanese American Women in the Military during World War II

(New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2003), p. 116.

Allied Translator and Interpreter Section at the Santa Ana Racecourse, Manila. 

In July and August 1945 ATIS was augmented by hundreds of recent MISLS

graduates and the 5225th Women’s Army Corps Detachment.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1945 375

Whereupon, after a lengthy harangue in Tagalog, he succeeded in dispersing the 

crowd. However, the next morning found an equally large crowd outside the gates. I asked 

the major what they wanted this time.

“They have come to see the American citizens,” he said.125

One Nisei who arrived with ATIS, Howard Yasumaro Uno, met his older 

brother, Kazumaro “Buddy” Uno, in Manila. Before the war Buddy had worked 

in southern California as a journalist and was well-known to some of the ATIS

Nisei. He had left California for the Far East during the Depression and had spent 

the war years in Manila working for a Japanese radio station. At the war’s end he 

had been captured by the Filipino guerrillas. Howard visited his brother in New 

Bilibid Prison soon after his arrival. Colonel Mashbir hoped to film their encounter, “sensing the terrific drama that could occur from what I believed would be the 

first confrontation of brothers on opposite sides in the Pacific Theater.” However, 

shortly after their initial meeting, Howard was unloading a ship when he “stepped 

backward into an open hatch, fell, and broke his back.” The two brothers did not 

meet until much later.126

Planning for the coming invasion put great pressure on intelligence. Aerial 

and submarine reconnaissance increased, and intelligence staffs collected and 

produced intelligence at a frantic pace. Kyushu was extensively photographed 

and mapped, but few Japanese prisoners of war had recent knowledge of Kyushu, 

where the Japanese troop buildup was worrying top-level planners. Japanese troop 

strength on the island had grown from 150,000 to 600,000 in the first half of 1945. 

To track the buildup, intercepted radio communications, not the sorts of intelligence that ATIS could provide, played the most important role. On 29 July General 

Willoughby issued a sober assessment and declared, “We are in a race against 

time.” The buildup was a “threatening development,” and he warned that “if this 

development is not checked it may grow to a point where we attack on a ratio of 

one to one which is not the recipe for victory.”127

125 Mashbir, I Was an American Spy, p. 256; ATIS History, p. 35. T3g. Saburo Kubota arrived 

in Manila toward the end of June as part of a shipment of about 200 Nisei. As they “rode railroad 

flatcars to the replacement center,” he recalled “young Filipino boys throwing stones at us yelling, ‘Haponese,’ when we passed through the villages.” Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor (1993 ed.), 

p. 90. 126 Mashbir, I Was an American Spy, p. 248 (gives Howard Uno’s first name as “Roy”); “Report 

Buddy Uno Interned by U.S. Troops near Manila,” Pacific Citizen, 25 Aug 45, p. 1; Yuji Ichioka, 

“The Meaning of Loyalty: The Case of Kazumaro Buddy Uno,” Amerasia Journal 23, no. 3 (1997): 

45–71, esp. notes 52 and 54. 127 Reports of General MacArthur, 4 vols., U.S. Army in World War II (Washington, D.C.: U.S. 

Army Center of Military History, 1994), 1: 395–43; Barton J. Bernstein, “The Alarming Japanese Buildup on Southern Kyushu, Growing U.S. Fears, and Counterfactual Analysis: Would the 

Planned November 1945 Invasion of Southern Kyushu Have Occurred?” Pacific Historical Review

68, no. 4 (November 1999): 561–609; Edward J. Drea, MacArthur’s Ultra: Codebreaking and the 

War against Japan, 1942–1945 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992), pp. 202–23; Edward 

J. Drea, “Previews of Hell,” MHQ 7, no. 3 (Spring 1995): 74–81; Richard B. Frank, Downfall: The 

End of the Imperial Japanese Empire (New York: Random House, 1999), pp. 197–213; Douglas 
376 NISEI LINGUISTS

As preparations continued for the invasion, the War Department made changes to personnel policies affecting the Nisei. Many Nisei had long hoped in vain for 

officer commissions and watched with resentment as their Caucasian classmates 

were appointed second lieutenants upon graduation from language training. In 

fact, the problem of obtaining commissions was not confined to the Nisei, and 

frontline units struggled with persistent shortages of combat leaders throughout 

the war. Not until the autumn of 1944 did the War Department allow theater commanders to grant field commissions. MacArthur’s headquarters delegated that 

authority to Sixth and Eighth Armies in May 1945.128 By the spring of 1945 several ATIS Nisei had gained their commissions through officer candidate school or 

field commissions. From India to Okinawa, several other MIS Nisei also won field 

commissions that spring and summer.

With the end of the war in Europe the War Department announced a rotation system for “high-point” men and discharges for some, but declared the MIS

Nisei essential personnel. A few of the longest-serving MIS Nisei were allowed 

to return to the States that spring and summer on 45-day furloughs. One lucky 

Nisei, S.Sgt. Minoru Masukane, had served in Australia, New Guinea, and the 

Philippines since April 1943. When he arrived in San Francisco on 5 May 1945 for 

a 45-day furlough, a personnel officer reviewing his records determined that he 

already had eighty-seven points, enough for immediate discharge. On 14 May he 

took off his uniform and never returned to ATIS.

129

In Manila, two other Nisei preparing for furloughs were also being considered 

for commissions. The day before their planned departure the personnel warrant 

officer asked them to delay for three or four days to receive their commissions. 

One replied bluntly: “Do I look like officer material? I’m going on home.” The 

other, S.Sgt. Richard S. Oguro, was more interested in getting back to Hawaii 

in time for his wedding. He made an obscene suggestion as to what the warrant 

officer could do with the second lieutenant’s bars. The next day the two Nisei 

hopped on an airplane and arrived in Hawaii two days later. Neither was ever 

commissioned.130

. . .

MacEachim, The Final Months of the War with Japan: Signals Intelligence, U.S. Invasion Planning, and the A-Bomb Decision (Washington, D.C.: Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1998); 

John R. Skates, The Invasion of Japan: Alternative to the Bomb (Columbia: University of South 

Carolina Press, 1994), pp. 134–47. 128 Walter Krueger, From Down Under to Nippon (Washington, D.C.: Combat Forces Press, 

1953), pp. 324–25; Robert R. Palmer et al., The Procurement and Training of Ground Combat 

Troops, U.S. Army in World War II (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, Historical Division, 1948), pp. 152–57. The 442d RCT began granting direct commissions in the autumn of 1944. 

To cite a well-known example, S.Sgt. Daniel K. Inouye was commissioned in December 1944. 129 “First Nisei Soldier Wins Discharge on Point System,” Pacific Citizen, 26 May 45; “Nisei 

Discharged on Points Returns to Home in California,” Pacific Citizen, 9 Jun 45. 130 Oguro, Sempai Gumi, pp. 174–75.
MIS NISEI IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1945 377

The momentum toward the culminating point of the war continued regardless of the actions of any individuals. On 26 July 1945, Allied leaders meeting in 

Potsdam demanded Japan’s unconditional surrender. “The alternative for Japan is 

prompt and utter destruction.” That seemed a fair description of what Japan was 

already suffering, but on 28 July the Japanese government rejected these latest 

demands.131 On Luzon, Sixth Army and its subordinate units continued planning 

for the invasion, now barely ninety days away. In Kunming, China, the OSS drew 

up plans to parachute special teams into Japan with Nisei interpreters to disrupt 

Japanese defenses, even though Lieutenant Yempuku, already a veteran of behindthe-lines OSS missions in northern Burma, told his superiors, “No way could it 

succeed or could we survive.”132 Another Nisei, T.Sgt. Robert Oda, learned he was 

to be put ashore by submarine near Wakayama on the Inland Sea with two trusted 

Japanese prisoners of war to report on weather and beach conditions.133

All the American soldiers dreaded the high casualties certain to accompany 

any invasion. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson said of the troops redeploying 

from Europe: “These men were weary in a way that no one merely reading reports 

could readily understand.” President Harry S. Truman told his top advisers that 

“he had hoped there was a possibility of preventing an Okinawa from one end of 

Japan to the other.”134

The Nisei shared this apprehension. Some felt a special dread, now that the 

fighting was about to reach Japan proper. Most Japanese immigrants to America 

came from the southern parts of Japan, which meant that many had relatives still 

living in the area. One such Nisei was T4g. Nob Yamashita, who served with 

the 6th Infantry Division from New Guinea to Luzon and saw his team chief, 

Terry Mizutari, killed at Aitape in June 1944. Yamashita came to know another 

teammate, George Nakamura, “pretty good” on their thirty-day voyage from San 

Francisco to New Guinea, but Nakamura had died just as the Luzon Campaign 

seemed finished. “Tragically, the intelligence wasn’t even needed,” Yamashita 

lamented. “The surrounding areas were all secure. The colonel just wanted to 

question [some prisoners] for what little they knew. . . . MIS personnel weren’t supposed to be expendable like that.” Yamashita stopped taking his atabrine tablets, 

contracted malaria, and was hospitalized in July. By the time he was released, his 

unit was preparing for Kyushu, where his American-born sister and other relatives 

131 William Craig, The Fall of Japan (New York: Dial Press, 1967), pp. 66–68; Frank, Downfall, 

pp. 232–39. 132 Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor (1993 ed.), p. 76. 133 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 354–55. However, Robert Oda’s memoir states that his mission was to land on Kyushu, not Wakayama. Robert Oda, in Harrington Papers. Reconnaissance 

in the Inland Sea may have been part of a strategic deception plan, Operation Pastel, designed to 

fool the Japanese into thinking the initial invasion site was the island of Shikoku. See Thomas M. 

Huber, Pastel: Deception in the Invasion of Japan (Fort Leavenworth, Kans.: Combat Studies Institute, 1988), pp. 5–6; Lance Q. Zedric, Silent Warriors of World War II: The Alamo Scouts behind 

Japanese Lines (Ventura, Calif.: Pathfinder Publishing, 1995), pp. 241–43. 134 Frank, Downfall, pp. 126–27, 143; Michael D. Pearlman, Unconditional Surrender, Demobilization, and the Atomic Bomb (Fort Leavenworth, Kans.: Combat Studies Institute, 1996).
378 NISEI LINGUISTS

were living. “I had a feeling of fear. I had a fear of shooting women and children 

that were supposedly training to attack us when we hit the beach in Kyushu. I

thought maybe I could shoot myself in the leg and claim that in cleaning my carbine I accidentally shot myself in the leg, thinking that the chamber was empty. 

That would let me avoid hitting the beach.”135

Many of the other Nisei felt the same way. 2d Lt. Harry K. Fukuhara had been 

overseas for more than two years and had won the Bronze Star with Oak Leaf 

Cluster and a battlefield commission. As an “old” master sergeant at age twentyfive, he had been accorded considerable respect; now he was just another second 

lieutenant. “I was suffering from battle fatigue and I had been hospitalized several 

times with malaria. I was physically and emotionally exhausted.” He had not heard 

from his mother and brothers in Hiroshima since the war began.136

In early August, Fukuhara went directly to Colonel Mashbir with two other 

long-serving Nisei from I Corps language teams. As Mashbir recalled, “three of 

my best Nisei officers” requested permission to speak to him. They came in, sat 

down, and he offered them cigarettes.

Finally the senior, after a great deal of hesitation, started to talk. “Sir,” he said, “we would 

each like to be relieved from the division to which he is assigned and transferred to another 

combat division. . . .” This was extremely unusual. I was accustomed to having them take 

their assignments and carry them out without question, without remark. I knew that when 

three of them from three different divisions in one corps came with such a request, there 

must be something behind it far out of the ordinary.137

The three Nisei explained that their parents had come from the same sectors 

that had been assigned to their divisions. They themselves had attended university 

in Japan and feared that if they were recognized their families would be mistreated. “They made it perfectly clear, by insistent repetition, that they had no 

reluctance whatever to participate in the invasion of Japan, but that if it could be 

done they preferred to be attached to divisions which were not going into their 

native province.” Mashbir acknowledged their concerns and promised to look into 

the matter. He then ordered his subordinates to identify the native province of each 

Nisei under his command so that, “where necessary,” they could be transferred 

“unobtrusively . . . to divisions which were due to attack other parts of Japan.” 138

The invasion was less than three months away.

135 Yamashita, “Fighting My Ancestors,” p. 22. In September 1945 the 6th Infantry Division 

was sent to occupy Korea; Yamashita served there until December 1945, when he was sent home 

and discharged. 136 Interv, Harry Fukuhara, U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, 5 Jun 90; Harry 

Fukuhara, “The Return,” Nikkei Heritage (Fall 1995): 12. 137 Mashbir, I Was an American Spy, p. 252. Torao Pat Neishi, who also had relatives in Hiroshima, accompanied Fukuhara to the meeting. Interv, Sheryl Narahara with Torao “Pat” Neishi, 

1992, NJAHS. 138 Mashbir, I Was an American Spy, p. 252.
11

MIS Nisei 

and the Surrender of Japan,

August–September 1945

Startling news swept around the world on 6 August 1945: a single bomb of hitherto unimaginable power had leveled Hiroshima in southern Japan. The Japanese 

people struggled for the right word. Their language simply lacked words to describe 

what had happened. Some used the word pika, a flash (of lightning), or pika-don, 

flash-boom. The U.S. government called it an atomic bomb. The MIS Nisei already 

knew the Japanese word bakudan, bomb. So they looked up the word for atomic, 

genshi, and combined it to form genshi-bakudan, literally atomic bomb.1

2d Lt. Harry K. Fukuhara, like many of the MIS Nisei, had family members 

living in Hiroshima. In fact, before the war he had attended school in the city. Now 

stationed in the Philippines, he delivered the news to the Japanese prisoners of war 

near Manila:

I told them that a new bomb called the atomic bomb, equivalent to thousands of tons of 

TNT, had been dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, and that one single explosion had 

1 Richard B. Frank, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire (New York: Random 

House, 1999), pp. 264–65; Stanley L. Falk and Warren M. Tsuneishi, eds., MIS in the War against 

Japan (Washington, D.C.: Japanese American Veterans Association, 1995), pp. 34–38. See also 

Allan S. Clifton, Time of Fallen Blossoms (New York: Knopf, 1951), p. 49. Clifton, an Australian 

linguist, served near Hiroshima in 1946 with the British Commonwealth Occupation Force.
380 NISEI LINGUISTS

completely wiped out the entire city of Hiroshima and that it had been erased from the 

surface of the earth. I told them nothing living had survived and that all human and 

animal life was non-existent. I further elaborated that no vegetation, plant life or trees 

would grow there and people would not be able to live there for at least 100 years, due to 

radiation. When I told them that, they were silent—either they did not believe me or else 

the information was beyond their comprehension. I know that I did not want to believe 

it myself.2

Three days later the Twentieth Air Force dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki. 

A rumor that Japan was about to surrender swept through American service personnel throughout the Pacific. When the news hit Manila, it touched off six hours 

of delirious celebration; similar celebrations erupted on Guam, in Honolulu, and 

elsewhere. On Okinawa, a Japanese guerrilla commander saw the night sky fill 

with tracers and wondered if it was the grand Japanese counterattack he had been 

hoping for; but his scouts reported that the Americans seemed to be celebrating. 

On 10 August came radio reports that Tokyo had accepted the Potsdam Declaration demanding unconditional surrender. The rumors were true.3

The Nisei were jubilant that the fighting had finally ended, but the way it 

ended hit them hard. More than for other Americans, the war’s ending was bittersweet. Half of all Japanese immigrants to the United States came from Hiroshima 

and the neighboring prefectures. Many Nisei, like Fukuhara, still had relatives in 

the area; some Nisei had lived and attended school there before the war. Fukuhara 

recalled his feelings upon hearing of the Hiroshima bombing:

My frame of mind . . . was one of shock and relief. . . . I was shocked because Hiroshima was 

where I had lived before the war and where my mother and three brothers were still living. 

I was relieved because we would not be participating in the long-dreaded invasion. . . . For 

the first few days I kept thinking: Why? Why did they drop it on Hiroshima? . . .The more 

I thought about it, the more depressed I became. My thinking degraded to the point that I

blamed myself—that they had died because I had volunteered to fight against them.4

Another Nisei officer, 2d Lt. George S. Taketa, knew from interrogating prisoners in Manila that Japan could not hold out much longer, so he felt the atomic 

bombings were unnecessary: “What the hell are we doing? Why kill additional 

people? We didn’t have to; the war was going to end. Then a couple of days later 

2 Harry Fukuhara, “The Return,” Nikkei Heritage (Fall 1995): 12–13; Loni Ding, prod., The 

Color of Honor, documentary film, Vox Productions, 1987; Interv, John P. Finnegan with Harry 

Fukuhara, 5 Jun 90, U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, Fort Belvoir, Va. 3 John Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936–1945 (New 

York: Random House, 1970), p. 852; Louis Allen, The End of the War in Asia (London: Hart-Davis, 

1976); Robert J. C. Butow, Japan’s Decision To Surrender (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University 

Press, 1954); William Craig, The Fall of Japan (New York: Dial Press, 1967, 1979); Frank, Downfall; Stanley Weintraub, The Last Great Victory: The End of World War II, July/August 1945 (New 

York: Dutton, 1995). 4 Fukuhara, “The Return.”
MIS NISEI AND THE SURRENDER OF JAPAN 381

they dropped one over Nagasaki. And that really shook us. I said, ‘Geez, what the 

hell is going on? Here another hundred thousand killed. . . .’ It was a terrible thing; 

I wouldn’t do it to a dog. . . . It just made us sick.” 5

On the other side of the world, Nisei stationed with the 442d Regimental Combat Team (RCT) in Italy also expressed mixed feelings. One expressed the consensus of millions of American soldiers when he told a correspondent, “Those 

goddamn bastards! They cost us plenty at Pearl Harbor. It’s time they paid for it.” 

Other Nisei remained silent, “still trying to comprehend what an atomic bomb 

could do.” 6 S.Sgt. Mike Masaoka, the regimental public relations officer and a 

leading Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) spokesman, described the 

atomic bombs as “the ghastly and unnecessary coup de grâce.” He recalled, 

“Reporters came to our camp for comment. How did we feel about Japan’s surrender? We were elated. The war was over, wasn’t it?” The atomic bomb, he felt, “was 

a helluva weapon. It was just too damned bad that civilians had to be killed—we 

had seen too much of that in Italy and France. But if it shortened the war, we were 

glad we had this new weapon rather than the other guys.” 7

Army commanders in the Pacific shared the Nisei’s feelings. General Douglas 

MacArthur was reportedly “appalled and depressed” by the atomic bombings and 

felt there was no military justification for their use. “Probably no living man has 

seen as much of war and its destruction as I had,” he later wrote. “My abhorrence 

reached its height with the perfection of the atomic bomb.” 8 Maj. Gen. Charles A. 

Willoughby, MacArthur’s G–2, knew that Japan had been on the verge of collapse 

and was seeking to negotiate. “There was then no reason to use the Atom bomb 

and give the show away that we had perfected the most revolutionary weapon in 

modern history. MacArthur was not consulted; he was merely presented with a fait 

accompli.” Brig. Gen. Bonner Fellers, MacArthur’s chief of psychological warfare, 

felt much the same way.9

5

 George S. Taketa, in David W. Swift, Jr., ed., “First Class,” pp. 8–9, Unpubl Ms, Mar 00, copy 

in author’s files. 6 Lyn Crost, Honor by Fire: Japanese Americans at War in Europe and the Pacific (Novato, 

Calif.: Presidio Press, 1994), p. 288. For similar reactions, see Paul Fussell, “Thank God for the 

Atomic Bomb,” The New Republic (26 August 1991). 7 Mike Masaoka, They Call Me Moses Masaoka: An American Saga (New York: William Morrow, 1987), p. 182. 8 Douglas A. MacArthur, Reminiscences (New York: Time, 1964), p. 347. 9

 Gar Alperovitz, The Decision To Use the Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth

(New York: Knopf, 1995), pp. 350–52; Barton J. Bernstein, in Judgment at the Smithsonian, ed. 

Philip Nobile (New York: Marlowe & Co, ca. 1995), p. 142. Charles A. Willoughby, “The Character 

of Military Intelligence,” pt. 2, p. 197, Unpubl Ms, Charles A. Willoughby Papers, Record Group 

(RG) 23B, MacArthur Memorial, Library and Archives, Norfolk, Va. ATIS coordinator Colonel 

Mashbir and CIC chief General Thorpe both avoided mention of the atomic bombings in their 

memoirs. Sidney F. Mashbir, I Was an American Spy (New York: Vantage, 1953); Elliott R. Thorpe, 

East Wind, Rain: An Intimate Account of an Intelligence Officer in the Pacific, 1939–49 (Boston: 

Gambit, 1969). For other soldier responses, see J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors: Reflections on Men in 

Battle (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), pp. 238–39.
382 NISEI LINGUISTS

For some Nisei the war’s end meant new beginnings. For example, Sgt. Akira 

Nakamura had already been on Okinawa for five months by August 1945. Just 

before going overseas, he had been married in the Fort Snelling chapel. On Okinawa, he had survived several close calls; at one point an American bullet struck 

his helmet and left a dent, “a slight headache, ringing of his ears and wounded 

pride.” But he had survived. A few days after the Hiroshima bombing, he received 

a cablegram informing him that his wife had given birth to a daughter in Minneapolis on 6 August. He searched through the ruins of an Okinawan distillery, 

“found a clay urn filled with well-aged sweet potato whiskey,” and brought it back 

to the language detachment, where his Nisei buddies helped him celebrate the 

birth of his first child.10

For several days after the atomic bombings the relentless pounding of Japan 

continued by air and sea. The Twentieth Air Force paused its B–29 raids after 10 

August, but land-based aircraft of the Fifth and Seventh Air Forces and carrier 

aircraft and surface units from the Third Fleet continued to blast Japanese targets. 

“Never before in history had one nation been the target of such concentrated air 

power.”11 The Psychological Warfare Board continued its radio broadcasts twelve 

hours per day and dropped up to 2 million copies per week of the Rakkasan News

on Japan and Japanese troop concentrations around the region. Col. Sidney F. 

Mashbir broadcast personal appeals to Japanese leaders on 9 and 13 August. On 

the night of 13–14 August, B–29s dropped 5 million leaflets over the Tokyo area. 

Prepared by the Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Areas (JICPOA), and the 

Office of War Information, the leaflets gave the texts of the Japanese note accepting the Potsdam Declaration, as well as the American Secretary of State’s reply, 

which the Japanese government had not yet released to its own people.12

On 15 August Radio Tokyo carried a special broadcast to the Japanese people. 

Speaking to the nation for the first time, the emperor addressed his “good and 

loyal subjects” in traditional courtly language. “Despite the best that has been 

done by everyone,” he explained, “the war situation has developed not necessarily 

10 Akira Nakamura, Biography, Military Intelligence Service Club of Northern California (this 

and similar biographies hereafter cited as MISNorCal Bios); Akira Nakamura, in “Rocky Mountain MIS Veterans Club Autobiographies,” Unpubl Ms, ed. Kent T. Yoritomo, [1989], author’s files 

(this and similar biographies hereafter cited as Rocky Mountain Bios). 11 Quote from Reports of General MacArthur, 4 vols., U.S. Army in World War II (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1994), 1: 442; Samuel E. Morison, History of 

United States Naval Operations in World War II, 15 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1947–1952), 15: 

447–50. 12 Wesley F. Craven and James L. Cate, eds., The Army Air Forces in World War II, 7 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950), 5: 732; Craig, Fall of Japan, pp. 168–69; Toland, Rising 

Sun, pp. 829–30; General Headquarters, Far East Command, Operations of the Allied Translator 

and Interpreter Section, GHQ, SWPA, Intelligence Series, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Far East Command, 1948) 

(hereafter cited as ATIS History), p. 63; Josette H. Williams, “The Information War in the Pacific,” 

Studies in Intelligence 46, no. 3 (2002). Captain Zacharias believed that this final leaflet campaign 

caused “a delay in acceptance of surrender” and incited a last-minute revolt. Ellis M. Zacharias, 

Secret Missions: The Story of an Intelligence Officer (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1946), 

pp. 386–87.
MIS NISEI AND THE SURRENDER OF JAPAN 383

to Japan’s advantage.” He announced Japan’s acceptance of the Allied terms and 

called upon his subjects to accept peace by “enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable.”13 Allied psychological warfare units spread the emperor’s words throughout the region as propaganda leaflets and voice recordings.

MacArthur’s headquarters began to implement its contingency plan, Operation Blacklist, for the sudden surrender of Japan. The 11th Airborne Division in 

southern Luzon was alerted for immediate movement to Japan, and the Army Air 

Forces assembled hundreds of transport aircraft to move the division to Japan by 

way of Okinawa. The division would have the honor of being the first American 

soldiers to land in Japan. The division already had an experienced Nisei language 

team. In addition, the 306th Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) Detachment under 

Capt. John H. Norton was assigned ten more Nisei, Military Intelligence Service 

Language School (MISLS) graduates recently arrived in the Philippines.

In forty-eight hours the division moved the 800 miles from Luzon to Okinawa. 

On 12 August in the gathering dusk a transport aircraft arrived at an airfield near 

Naha carrying thirty soldiers from division headquarters, including most of the 

306th CIC Detachment and the ten new Nisei. Shortly before their arrival the 

airfield had been subjected to a kamikaze attack and ships in the harbor had sent 

up thick clouds of obscuring smoke. The airfield, which sat on a bluff overlooking 

the ocean, was blacked out. Twice the pilot tried to land. On the third attempt the 

plane crashed into the cliff short of the runway and killed everyone on board.14

This was the largest loss of life to the MIS during the entire war. An 11th Airborne Division officer described the accident in a letter to Fort Snelling:

Just prior to leaving for Okinawa for staging, we received a group of replacements, and 

they were all men fresh out of the states. They arrived at our Hqs a day and a half before 

we flew to Okinawa. . . . It was a terrible shock to all of us. These men, whose names and 

13 The emperor’s address has been variously translated. For one version, see Ted T. Tsukiyama 

et al., eds., Secret Valor: M.I.S. Personnel, World War II Pacific Theater, Pre–Pearl Harbor to 

Sept. 8, 1951 (Honolulu: Military Intelligence Service Veterans Club of Hawaii, 1993), pp. 78–81. 

Compare with text given in Reports of General MacArthur, 1: 444–45, 2: 727–28, plate 167; Toland, 

Rising Sun, pp. 838–39; Craig, Fall of Japan, pp. 209–12; John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: 

Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: Norton, 1999), pp. 33–39. 14 Duval A. Edwards, Spy Catchers of the U.S. Army in the War with Japan (Gig Harbor, Wash.: 

Red Apple Publishing, 1994), p. 241; William B. Simpson, Special Agent in the Pacific, WWII: 

Counterintelligence—Military, Political, and Economic (New York: Rivercross Publishing, 1995), 

pp. 107–12. Simpson was a member of the 306th CIC Detachment. He flew to Okinawa on the 

afternoon of 12 August and learned of the crash the next morning. The 441st CIC headquarters in 

Tokyo was later named for Captain Norton. The crash was first reported in Pacific Citizen, 8 Sep 

45. At Fort Snelling, the Yaban Gogai printed nine names in its September–October 1945 issue 

and added the tenth name and additional details in the November issue. T4g. Iwao Iijima described 

the crash in a letter dated 23 August 1945. Hawaii War Records Depository, Reel 26–A, Hamilton 

Library, University of Hawaii at Manoa. See also E. M. Flanagan’s account, “The Occupation of 

Japan,” Army (August 1995): 48–58.
384 NISEI LINGUISTS

faces I had not as yet familiarized myself with, came without records or papers of any 

kind, and the identifying of them was difficult.15

Two other Nisei died in the frenzy of activity after the Japanese surrender. 

S.Sgt. Shoichi S. Nakahara had enlisted in June 1943 from Hilo, Hawaii. He had 

been an excellent student at MISLS, attended voice-intercept training in Florida, 

and then was assigned to the 1st Radio Squadron Mobile (RSM). On 13 August 

he was returning from Manila when his jeep was involved in an accident near San 

Fernando. An Army chaplain who had served with MISLS at Camp Savage conducted his memorial service.16 On Okinawa, Pvt. Masayuki Ishii died in a vehicle 

accident on 19 August. The twenty-year-old had enlisted in Hawaii in April 1945, 

had attended basic training at Schofield Barracks, and had been sent directly to 

Okinawa with the 1st Provisional Military Government Detachment.17

In the tumultuous days following the Japanese surrender, Colonel Mashbir 

commissioned about 100 Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS) Nisei 

on 18 August and promoted 600 Nisei enlisted men by one grade. As Mashbir 

recalled:

Jubilation was the order of the day when the first one hundred were sworn in as lieutenants. This number finally reached the one-hundred-and-fifty mark because of vacancies 

that then occurred in the combat divisions, which had also been awarded a T/O. . . . Any 

other group on earth would have taken Manila apart, because seven hundred promotions 

in two days is not a thing that a bunch of soldiers will pass over lightly. But the Nisei 

received this news with the same dignity and reserve with which they had received bad 

news in the past.18

As early as the autumn of 1943 Mashbir had begun sending Nisei to officer candidate school in Australia and pressed for an increase in authorizations 

for language officers. The planned invasion of Japan made that possible, and the 

War Department issued a new table of allowances for ATIS effective 29 July. The 

authorized number of lieutenants jumped from 38 to 300, while that for captains 

and above jumped from 26 to 116. Enlisted authorizations more than tripled, from 

15 Yaban Gogai, Nov 45. 16 Ibid. Sep–Oct 45, p. 3; In Freedom’s Cause (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1949), p. 

103; Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor, p. 91. 17 Freedom’s Cause, p. 55. 18 Mashbir, I Was an American Spy, p. 250. The exact number of Nisei commissioned at this 

time is not clear, as some Nisei on detached service were also promoted at about the same time. 

“Report Battlefield Commissions for 200 Pacific Nisei,” Pacific Citizen, 1 Sep 45. One photo of 

the ATIS ceremony shows forty to fifty Nisei. Benjamin Obata, who was commissioned at this 

time, recalls sixty or seventy. Interv, author with Benjamin Obata, 21 Aug 95. ATIS History, p. 

59, asserts, “To date [1948], ATIS has obtained direct commissions for eighty United States Army 

enlisted linguists.”
MIS NISEI AND THE SURRENDER OF JAPAN 385

419 to 1,377. As a result ATIS held officer selection boards for the new authorizations; three weeks later Mashbir swore in the new lieutenants.19

A few high-point Nisei were reluctant to accept commissions, which would 

require them to remain on active duty for an indefinite period. Those who accepted 

had plenty of reason for “dignity and reserve”: Some felt that the commissions 

were too long in coming. When Thomas Sakamoto was recruited for the Fourth 

Army Intelligence School in the summer of 1941, then Capt. Kai E. Rasmussen 

had promised him a commission. He had watched Caucasian students pin on lieutenant’s bars upon graduation while their Nisei classmates who often had better 

language skills graduated with sergeant’s stripes. Not until June 1945 did Sakamoto receive a field commission. Now the Army was handing out commissions 

even to Nisei who had never spent a day in combat. “It was wholesale,” wrote 

S.Sgt. Clifford Konno to a friend at Fort Snelling. “The WD [War Department] 

decided that we needed a little more rank in Japan or something.” 20

The Japanese Surrender

On 11 August General MacArthur was appointed Supreme Commander for 

the Allied Powers to accept the Japanese government’s surrender in Tokyo and 

19 ATIS History, app. 3. 20 Ltr, Clifford Konno, 19 September 1945, Joseph D. Harrington Papers, National Japanese 

Historical Society (NJAHS), San Francisco, Calif.

ATIS Nisei becoming second lieutenants, Manila, 18 August 1945
386 NISEI LINGUISTS

to direct the military occupation of Japan and southern Korea. Other Allied commanders were directed to accept the surrender of Japanese armed forces, each 

in his respective area: Lord Louis Mountbatten in Southeast Asia, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in China, and the Soviet High Command in Manchuria 

and northern Korea. (See Map 15.) Overnight MacArthur’s headquarters switched 

from planning for the invasion to planning for an unopposed occupation. On 12 

August General Willoughby formed an advisory committee of experts on Japan 

to aid MacArthur and the general staff. Mashbir provided Maj. John E. Anderton 

as the executive officer for the committee and assigned dozens of experienced 

Nisei to GHQ staff sections. Meanwhile, hundreds more recent MISLS graduates 

arrived in Manila and were assigned new duties. By 1 September ATIS counted 

over 1,300 Nisei. All would be needed in the months ahead.21

As the emperor’s speech was being broadcast in Japan, MacArthur’s signal 

center in Manila sought to establish the first-ever direct radio contact with the 

Japanese high command by sending plaintext messages in kana, ro ̄maji, and English to the main Japanese commercial teletype station: “Tokyo from Manila: We 

have an urgent message for you.” They tried several known frequencies, but no 

Japanese station would respond. After several hours GHQ gave them a longer 

message detailing the procedures for discussions, but there was still no answer. 

After ten hours of what MacArthur’s official report called “exasperating and suspicious delays,” a Tokyo station responded. Thus, in the early hours of 16 August 

Manila and Tokyo began to exchange technical messages in English about the 

surrender talks.22

MacArthur demanded that the Japanese send a delegation to Manila. From 

the outset, language problems caused some minor incidents. The first message 

directed the Japanese to send a delegation to Ie Shima near Okinawa and directed 

that the Japanese planes be marked with green crosses. However, the Japanese 

language has several words for “green,” so the American translators wrote “green” 

and added “the color of grass.” 23 On 19 August two Japanese bombers displaying 

green crosses arrived at Ie Shima. They were met by a large crowd of American 

soldiers and reporters, among them several Nisei. Sgt. Hoichi Kubo with the 27th 

Infantry Division on the island recalled 7 December 1941, when he had witnessed 

Japanese aircraft attacking Wheeler Field on Oahu. He had later fought on Makin, 

Majuro, Saipan, and Okinawa. For valor on Saipan he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and was the only MIS Nisei to receive this award. He had 

witnessed the war’s beginning and now was witnessing its end.24

21 Willoughby, “Character of Military Intelligence,” pt. 2, p. 201. 22 Craig, Fall of Japan, pp. 217, 228–29; Reports of General MacArthur, vol. 1 supplement, p. 

12; “Surrender on the Air,” Military Review (May 1946): 31–39; Jacques Kunitz, “Sequel to Surrender on the Air,” Signals 1, no. 2 (November–December 1946). 23 Mashbir, I Was an American Spy, p. 287; John E. Anderton, in Willoughby, “Character of 

Military Intelligence,” pt. 2, p. 203. 24 Joseph D. Harrington, Yankee Samurai: The Secret Role of Nisei in America’s Pacific Victory

(Detroit: Pettigrew Enterprises, 1979), p. 349; Interv, author with Hoichi Kubo, 30 Oct 87.
MIS NISEI AND THE SURRENDER OF JAPAN 387

Lt. Gen. Torashiro Kawabe, vice chief of the Imperial Army General Staff, 

and the Japanese delegation stepped down from their aircraft. A Nisei officer 

instructed them to move to the American C–54 transport aircraft for the flight to 

Nichols Field near Manila. Lt. Warren S. Munzenmeyer flew with them to Manila 

as interpreter for the flight crew. The Caucasian MISLS graduate had taught before 

the war at the American School in Japan. Willoughby met the delegation at Nichols Field, backed by Mashbir, several Caucasian interpreters, and two Nisei, 2d 

Lt. Thomas T. Imada and 2d Lt. George Kenichi Kayano, who had been commissioned only the day before. Imada recorded his excitement in a letter home:

Today will be one of the Red Letter days for me in the Army. Only last evening I was 

commissioned as a 2d Lieutenant in the Army of the United States. . . .This was to be our 

first assignment as officers. Only in an Army of the United States could a Nisei be given 

such an important task.25

The Japanese delegation climbed into waiting staff cars, with one American 

linguist riding in each. Kawabe got into the lead car with Willoughby and Mashbir. Willoughby, trying to be friendly, asked Kawabe in what language he would 

like to converse. Kawabe shrewdly suggested they use German. Kawabe had studied in Germany and knew that Willoughby was of German birth.26

Over the next few days the Nisei found some opportunities for small talk with 

the Japanese. General Kawabe had brought a Nisei of his own, Sadao Roy Otake, 

who spoke fluent English and Japanese. A graduate of New York University, Otake

had been in Japan when the war broke out. He was drafted into the Japanese Army 

and was now a second lieutenant. He was astonished to learn that among the 

American guards was his brother-in-law, Sojiro Takamura from Hawaii. “Look 

me up in Japan,” Otake told him. At another point a Nisei interpreter tried to strike 

up a conversation with a Japanese official by asking: “When the Japanese attacked 

Hawaii, why didn’t they land?” The Japanese officer did not respond. Another 

Nisei, T4g. Raymond H. Katayama, asked a Japanese officer if the atomic bomb 

had indeed destroyed Hiroshima. “Hiroshima hasn’t been destroyed,” the officer 

replied. “It has vanished from the face of the earth.” 27

25 Yaban Gogai, Sep–Oct 45; WD Press Release, 22 Oct 45; “Japanese Surrender Envoys 

Escorted by Nisei Officers,” Pacific Citizen, 25 Aug 45; Mashbir, I Was an American Spy, pp. 

250–51. 26 Craig, Fall of Japan, pp. 237–49 (quote on p. 242); Transcript of U.S.-Japanese meetings in 

Manila, 19–20 Aug 45, Folder #15, Box 24, Papers of Lt. Gen. Richard K. Sutherland, U.S. Army, 

1941–1945, RG 30, MacArthur Memorial; “The Japs Get MacArthur’s Orders,” Life (3 September 

1945): 23–27; John E. Anderton, in Willoughby, “Character of Military Intelligence,” pt. 2, pp. 

200–22; ATIS History, pp. 35–37; Reports of General MacArthur, 1: 447–50; Mashbir, I Was an 

American Spy, pp. 278–99; Edwards, Spy Catchers, p. 246; Toland, Rising Sun, pp. 857–61; George 

Kenichi Kayano, MISNorCal Bio; Harvey Watanabe, in Falk and Tsuneishi, MIS in the War against 

Japan, pp. 42–44; Harvey Watanabe, personal communication to author, 19 May 03. 27 Falk and Tsuneishi, MIS in the War against Japan, pp. 42–44; Toland, Rising Sun, p. 860; 

Hawaii quote from Craig, Fall of Japan, p. 242; Hiroshima quote from Yank (28 September 1945).
479,313

62,389

1,105,837

1,501,260

595,418

1,620,516

69,374

32,037

19,222

710,727

15,590

132,917

Palau Islands

Bonin Islands

Japan

Korea

China

Formosa

Philippines

Hong Kong

Southeast Asia

Singapore

Borneo

Netherlands Indies

Timor

Morotai

Wewak 

Ryukyus

Rota

 Ulithi

 Yap

S O

U

T

H

C

H I N

A S E A

I N D I A N O C E A N

S E A

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J A P A N

U N I O N O F S O V I E T S O C I A L I S T R E P U B L I C S

M A N C H U R I A

C H I N A

O U T E R M O N G O L I A

J

A P A

K O R E A

F R E N C H

I N D O C H I N A

T H A I L A N D

B U R M A

N E T H E R L A N D S I N D I E S

A U S T R A L I A

BRUNEI

NORTH

BORNEO

MALAYA

SARAWAK

P H I L I P P I N E S

EQUATOR

10°

100° 110° 120°

K U 

Iwo Jima

M A R I A N A

IS L A N D S Saipan

Guam

C A R O L 

B O R N E O

N E W G U I N E A

B I S M A 

A R C H I P 

MAP 15
130,906

138,680

s

Bismarcks

Truk

Wake

Solomon Islands

S O U T H P A C I F I C

O C E A N

N O R T H P A C I F I C O C E A N

150° 160° 170°

180° 170° 160° 40°

30°

40°

10°

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EQUATOR

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U R I L I S

n

I N E

Eniwetok

Wotje

Maloelap

Makin

Tarawa

Ocean

G I L B E RT 

IS L A N D S

Nauru

Jaluit

Mili

Ponape

 Kusaie

M A R S H A L L I S L A N D S P H O E N I X

I S L A N D S

E L L I C E I S

Johnston

H A W A I I A

N I S

A R C K 

P E L A G O

August–September 1945

PACIFIC THEATER

JAPANESE FORCES

Surrender Site

532 Estimated Japanese Strength, 15 August 1945

 Statute Miles

0 200 60°

40° 20° Equator

400 600 800
390 NISEI LINGUISTS

The Americans presented the Japanese delegates with directives from Washington translated into Japanese. A few days before the meeting, Mashbir selected 

Sgt. Kiyoshi Hirano to review the draft translations. Hirano, a California-born 

Nisei, had been educated in Japan and for a time had taught middle school there 

before returning to America in 1939. At first Hirano declined on grounds that his 

Japanese was not good enough to translate such important documents. Mashbir 

insisted: “Sergeant Hirano, you were a school teacher in Japan according to your 

service record. You have the best background in Japanese education among the 

group here. Someone has to do this very important job to end the war. Please do your 

duty.” Hirano worked straight through three nights to finish the assignment.28

During the conference Imada and Kayano worked with Mashbir and several 

other Caucasian interpreters and translators. The Japanese delegates brought documents that the ATIS Nisei worked around the clock to translate.29 On the second 

day differences erupted over the proper language to use for the emperor in the 

instrument of surrender. In the version presented to the delegates, which had been 

translated in Washington, the Japanese pronoun “I” was used for the emperor 

rather than the imperial “we.” The Japanese delegates were upset at such insulting 

language. Mashbir suggested that they could substitute the proper word and he 

would clear it with MacArthur.30 On 20 August the Japanese delegates returned 

to Japan with the agreed upon documents. In Manila, the ATIS Nisei worked in 

shifts for ten straight days to translate the surrender terms and the initial occupation directives.

GHQ had developed a contingency plan for the sudden collapse or surrender 

of Japan. Operation Blacklist called for Eighth Army to occupy Tokyo and northern Honshu, while the Sixth Army and III Amphibious Corps were to occupy 

the south. The Tenth Army on Okinawa contributed the XXIV Corps for Korea. 

Meanwhile, the VII Amphibious Force sent two Marine divisions to North China 

ports. The Americans were suspicious that the Japanese might lure them in only 

to slaughter them or poison their leaders. Willoughby described “the enormous 

initial military risks of landing with token forces on the Japanese mainland, into 

a colossal armed camp. . . . All possible landing areas, in the event of American 

armed landing, were completely organized by the Japanese Army and each of 

these had the potentiality of another Okinawa.” Using Okinawa as “a completely 

28 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 348; Crost, Honor by Fire, p. 289. As a precaution, all translations were marked “This is an unofficial translation.” English was considered the official language for the surrender directives. Mashbir, I Was an American Spy, p. 289. 29 Translator and Interpreter Section, “Documents Submitted to the SCAP by the Japanese Mission To Negotiate Surrender, Manila, 19 August 1945,” Folder 6, Box 23, U.S. Army Forces, Pacific, 

RG 4, MacArthur Memorial; ATIS History, p. 13. 30 Toland, Rising Sun, p. 859; Craig, Fall of Japan, pp. 246–47; Mashbir, I Was an American 

Spy, pp. 304–10; D. Clayton James, The Years of MacArthur, 3 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 

1970–1985), 2: 779.
MIS NISEI AND THE SURRENDER OF JAPAN 391

authentic yardstick,” he predicted over 700,000 American casualties, “had we 

gone in shooting.” 31

In the first weeks of the occupation Caucasian language officers, rather than 

MIS Nisei, were entrusted with several critical tasks, including the initial landings, 

the surrender ceremony, and MacArthur’s first meeting with the emperor. On 28 

August American minesweepers led the Third Fleet into Tokyo Bay, and the same 

morning sixteen C–46 transports landed at the Atsugi naval air station southwest 

of Tokyo carrying Col. Charles P. Tench from G–3, GHQ, and 150 Army Air 

Forces communication specialists. They landed without incident and in forty-five 

minutes established radio communications with Okinawa. Local Japanese officials 

began preparing the airfield for the 11th Airborne Division, scheduled to arrive on 

30 August with its own team of Nisei linguists. The 4th Marines would land the 

same day at the Yokosuka naval base.32 The Atsugi advance party included Maj. 

Faubion Bowers, one of ATIS’s top Caucasian linguists, but no Nisei. Bowers had 

lived in Tokyo before the war and was one of the first Caucasians to graduate from 

Camp Savage. He interpreted for the discussions between Tench and the Japanese 

officers, but the Japanese provided their own English interpreters as well.33

2d Lt. Thomas Sakamoto flew into Atsugi on 30 August with a press pool of 

American correspondents to cover MacArthur’s triumphal arrival:

The morning was dark and overcast, with low-hanging clouds. Our plane flew towards 

our destination with great confidence, for we were to be among the first to land in Japan. 

But I was filled with anxiety as I did not know what was awaiting us.

The next few hours passed uneventfully, until suddenly in the distance an eerie 

shadow of a huge mountain appeared. It was Mt. Fuji. As we flew over its peak, I reminisced about a mere eight years earlier when, as a student in Japan, a classmate and I had 

climbed Fuji-san. How little did I realize then that I would be seeing Mt. Fuji again under 

a totally different circumstance. I had always pictured Mt. Fuji as a majestic snow-capped 

mountain, but today it looked only like a dark ghostly figure, perhaps reflecting the tragic 

defeat of Japan.

31 Charles A. Willoughby, “Occupation of Japan and Japanese Reaction,” Military Review (June 

1946): 3–4. 32 Col. C. T. Tench, “Advance Party: Mission Surrender,” Infantry Journal (August 1946): 

30–36; Craig, Fall of Japan, pp. 285–90; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 353. Hayami Russ Sato 

accompanied the 11th Airborne Division advance party to Atsugi. He recalls the date as 25 August, 

but this is incorrect. Hayami R. Sato, MISNorCal Bio, Rocky Mountain Bio. Although not assigned 

to the 11th Airborne Division, S.Sgt. Kazuo Komoto also landed with the division at Atsugi. WD 

Press Release, 22 Oct 45; Pacific Citizen, 8 Sep 45. 33 Interv, D. Clayton James with Faubion Bowers, RG 49, D. Clayton James Collection, MacArthur Memorial; Falk and Tsuneishi, MIS in the War against Japan, pp. 11–13, 89–91, 94; Faubion 

Bowers, “Japan, 1940–1949: A Tumultuous Time Remembered,” Japan Society Newsletter, Oct 95, 

pp. 4–7. Some sources report that S.Sgt. Hideo Ihara from the 1st Radio Squadron Mobile landed 

at Atsugi on 28 August for “a special mission,” perhaps to monitor Japanese military communications. Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor, p. 91; WD Press Release, 22 Oct 45.
392 NISEI LINGUISTS

Then between the breaks in the clouds, we could see the neatly laid out pattern of 

rice fields and the thatched farmhouses sporadically dotting the landscape below. Soon 

we descended and taxied onto a runway, as if awakening from a dream. This was Atsugi 

airfield on August 30, 1945.34

Crowds of Americans and Japanese gathered near the airfield to greet MacArthur, who held a press conference on the tarmac. Sakamoto was startled to meet 

among the fifty Japanese correspondents in the crowd a high school classmate: 

Jimmy Wada from Hawaii, who had gone to Japan to attend Meiji University. 

When the war broke out, he was attached to the Imperial Navy. Sakamoto gave his 

friend all the K-rations he had brought with him. That same day Admiral Chester 

W. Nimitz landed at Yokosuka accompanied by at least one JICPOA Nisei, T.Sgt. 

Robert Oda.35

On 2 September Colonel Mashbir escorted the Japanese delegates on board 

the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay for the surrender ceremony. Three Nisei were 

on board that day. Sakamoto, who was still escorting the American correspondents, watched as Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu hobbled on his wooden 

leg before a silent, hostile audience: 

Every available space was occupied by sailors. The atmosphere was one of celebration. 

But this festive moment abruptly turned to silence as the Japanese delegation arrived. 

They were stripped of their samurai swords. One could hear a pin drop. The delegation 

was left standing for fifteen minutes, subject to hostile staring. If there was ever a scene 

that brought to me how sad a defeated nation can be, this was it. Of the total surrender 

ceremony, this fifteen minutes of cruel silence and abusive staring impacted me more than 

any other portion of the ceremony. I recalled then my four years of high school education 

in Japan, of once proud Yamato Damashii (Japanese spirit), Bushido (Way of the Samurai) mentality of the Japanese military, and as a Nisei of my parents’ pride in those things 

Japanese, now vanished at that moment on the deck of the Missouri in a total defeat and 

disgrace for the Japanese people and the nation.36

34 Interv, David Swift with Thomas Sakamoto, in Swift, “First Class”; The Saga of the MIS, 

videotaped presentation, Los Angeles, 11 Mar 89; Thomas Sakamoto, “Witness to Surrender,” Nikkei Heritage (Winter 2003): 8–9. 35 Interv, author with Thomas Sakamoto, 16 Nov 87; Saga of the MIS; WD Press Release, 22 

Oct 45; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 354–55. At least two other Nisei lieutenants, 2d Lts. 

Yoshito Fujimoto and Kay I. Kitagawa, traveled with MacArthur’s advance echelon. GHQ, Travel 

Orders, 28 Aug 45. 36 Thomas Sakamoto, biographical statement, 1 Nov 96, author’s files; Saga of the MIS; Thomas 

Sakamoto, “News of the Century: Japan’s Surrender & Hiroshima, September 1945,” Nikkei Heritage 7, no. 3 (Fall 1995): 10–11; Interv, author with Sakamoto, 16 Nov 87; Sakamoto, “Witness to 

Surrender,” pp. 8–9; Mashbir, I Was an American Spy, pp. 332–34. Sources differ on other Nisei on 

board that day. Kayano identifies Jiro Yukimura. Kayano, MISNorCal Bio. Duval Edwards identifies Noboru Yoshimura. Edwards, Spy Catchers, p. 262. Saburo Kubota identifies Thomas Imada, in 

Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor, p. 90. Shigeya Kihara identifies Kiyoshi Hirano. “Fifty Years of the 

Yankee Samurai,” Unpubl Ms, Mar 90, author’s files. Another source identifies Kazu Yoshihashi. 

War Relocation Authority Photo no. 464, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Roy 
MIS NISEI AND THE SURRENDER OF JAPAN 393

With the surrender, small numbers of Nisei began to enter Japan with combat 

units or on special assignments. M.Sgt. Arthur S. Komori entered Tokyo Bay with 

the first American ship as personal interpreter for Brig. Gen. Elliot R. Thorpe, 

chief of counterintelligence. Lt. Kay Kitagawa went ashore as Fleet Admiral William F. Halsey’s personal interpreter. When the 1st Cavalry Division rolled into 

Tokyo on 8 September, it was accompanied by its Nisei language team.37

Numerous combat divisions and corps headquarters, each with its Nisei language team, poured into Japan over the next several weeks. Several Nisei were 

detailed to the Navy, which needed to secure the cooperation of the Japanese Navy 

for clearing minefields and seizing shore facilities. In the largest such operation, 

Uyehata identifies Thomas Sakamoto, Noby Yoshimura, Jiro Yukimura, Thomas Imada, and Kaz 

Yoshihata. Roy Uyehata, “MIS Chronology, 1940–1999,” Unpubl Ms, 1999, author’s files. 37 Arthur Komori, MISNorCal Bio; Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor, p. 35; Harrington hints 

that Komori worked undercover at this time. Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 350; Yaban Gogai, 

Sep–Oct 45.

MacArthur meets with the Japanese press corps upon his arrival in Japan, 

30 August 1945. Sakamoto (upper right) serves as press escort.
394 NISEI LINGUISTS

beginning on 22 September, thirty-two American minesweepers and thirty-three 

Japanese minesweepers cleared a two-mile-wide channel for 150 miles through the 

Inland Sea.38 The V Amphibious Corps got a firsthand look at Japanese defenses 

on Kyushu that would have awaited Operation Olympic when it landed in September with Nisei teams from JICPOA. Sgt. Don Oka was attached to the 5th Marine 

Division when it moved to Sasebo on 22 September and then onward to Nagasaki. 

His mission was to “release all Japanese political prisoners, locate all downed U.S. 

planes and the whereabouts of all surviving airmen.” 39 At Aomori, the northernmost port on Honshu, the 81st Infantry Division landed on 18 September. On the 

first day some Japanese men walked around 2d Lt. Robert K. Sakai and asked 

themselves in Japanese, “Who is this Asian-looking person dressed in an American military uniform? He must be Chinese or Korean.”40

Freeing Allied prisoners of war was an urgent concern. When the Americans 

arrived, POW camps in Japan held about 32,000 Allied prisoners. In the Philippines, thousands of former prisoners of war and civilian internees told horrifying 

stories of great suffering and atrocities. Intelligence channels picked up indications that the Japanese might execute prisoners rather than relinquish them. These 

concerns were well grounded. When the U.S. Navy bombarded Wake Island in 

October 1943, the Japanese executed 96 American civilian prisoners held there 

since December 1941. In December 1944 the Japanese commander on Palawan 

Island in the Philippines executed 150 American prisoners when he thought the 

island was about to be retaken. The Potsdam Declaration had warned that “stern 

justice shall be meted out to all war criminals, including those who have visited 

cruelties upon our prisoners.”41 In the last months of the war military authorities 

made plans for the rapid recovery of prisoners of war and internees, and camps 

were identified from the air. When the surrender came, Twentieth Air Force bombers and Navy carrier aircraft dropped food and medical supplies into the camps. 

The liberated prisoners were brought to Yokohama and then moved onward to 

Guam, Saipan, or Manila. Thousands of Allied POWs and internees were also 

released in China and Southeast Asia.

In a few instances the Nisei helped the Recovered Personnel Detachments 

make arrangements with camp officials. Sgt. Ichiro James Ito reported that his 

team would “inquire with camp officials, go over train schedules, inquire about 

38 Morison, History of United States Naval Operations, 15: 12–14. 39 Don C. Oka, MISNorCal Bio; Henry I. Shaw, Jr., The United States Marines in the Occupation of Japan (Washington, D.C.: Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1969); Benis M. Frank and 

Henry I. Shaw, Jr., History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, vol. 5, Victory and 

Occupation (Washington, D.C.: Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1968); Charles R. Smith, Securing the Surrender: Marines in the Occupation of Japan (Washington, D.C.: Headquarters, U.S. 

Marine Corps, 1997). 40 Japanese Eyes, American Heart: Personal Reflections of Hawaii’s World War II Nisei Soldiers (Honolulu: Tendai Educational Foundation, 1998), p. 132. 41 Reports of General MacArthur, vol. 1 supplement, pp. 89–116; Gavan Daws, Prisoners of 

the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific (New York: William Morrow, 1994); ATIS

Research Rpt no. 86, 24 Aug 44 (see ch. 3, note 53).
MIS NISEI AND THE SURRENDER OF JAPAN 395

the route and act as interpreters for officers.” In areas where Allied prisoners had 

been forced to work as slave laborers, he wrote, “coal mining officials made us 

guests in private clubs and hotels. After talking to some of the people here I found 

that there were no signs of resentment in their speech or actions; only the quiet 

aloofness shown to all strangers.”42 From a camp near Tokyo, marines liberated 

one unusual prisoner, Sgt. Frank Fujita, Jr. He had been born and raised in Texas 

by his Japanese father and Caucasian mother. Upon the outbreak of the war he had 

been on Java in the Netherlands East Indies with a Texas National Guard artillery 

battalion when they were captured in March 1942.43

In the first few weeks only a few dozen MIS Nisei arrived in Japan, most 

assigned to combat units. Those few were stretched thin to meet critical requirements, together with even fewer Caucasian linguists. All too often this shortage 

forced American commanders to rely on interpreters provided by the Japanese 

government. Three weeks after MacArthur’s arrival, when the emperor requested 

a private meeting, the Imperial Household Agency supplied the interpreter. Major 

Bowers waited outside the meeting, but his services were not needed.44

Regional Surrenders

The surrender of Japanese Army and Navy forces in the home islands was 

swiftly accomplished. However, several million other Japanese soldiers and sailors 

were spread throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Within a few days of the emperor’s announcement, armies that had been locked in a deadly embrace from the 

Burmese highlands to Pacific atolls laid down their arms. Two million Japanese 

soldiers remained in China and Manchuria and almost a million in Korea. Another 

million soldiers were scattered from Burma through the Netherlands East Indies 

to New Guinea. A quarter million were stranded from the Gilberts and Marshalls 

to the Bonins and the Ryukyus.45 Imperial General Headquarters sent out radio 

messages on 16 August to its regional commands, ordering them to cease fighting; the Imperial Household Agency sent imperial princes to Manchuria, China, 

42 Yaban Gogai, Nov 45, pp. 5, 8. 43 “Sgt. Fujita, Only Nisei Taken Prisoner by Japanese in Pacific Fighting, Reported Liberated,” 

Pacific Citizen, 22 Sep 45; Frank Fujita, Foo! A Japanese-American Prisoner of the Rising Sun

(Denton: University of North Texas Press, 1993). Another Nisei, Frank Fujino, was said to have 

been captured on Bataan but escaped and later joined the 442d RCT. “Nisei Survived Death March 

on Bataan, Lost a Leg in Rescue of Lost Battalion,” Pacific Citizen, 29 Mar 47, p. 1. 44 Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), 

pp. 541–51; Yaban Gogai, Sep–Oct 45, p. 3; Dower, Embracing Defeat, pp. 292–97; Fabion Bowers, 

“Japan, 1940–1949: A Tumultuous Time Remembered,” Japan Society Newsletter, Oct 95, pp. 4–7; 

Faubion Bowers, “The Late General MacArthur, Warts and All,” Esquire (January 1967): 90. 45 Reports of General MacArthur, vol. 1, pp. 459–60, plate 134, and vol. 1 supplement, plate 48; 

Meirion Harris and Susie Harris, Soldiers of the Sun: The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese 

Army (New York: Random House, 1991), pp. 444–72.
396 NISEI LINGUISTS

and Southeast Asia to ensure compliance. In other areas, the Allies had to inform 

isolated Japanese detachments that the war had ended.46

On 19 August MacArthur’s headquarters directed that no formal surrenders 

be held anywhere until he had completed the ceremony in Tokyo Bay, which complicated local surrenders throughout the region. Not until 2 September did the 

Imperial General Headquarters send out General Order no. 1 (drafted by American planners), ordering all Japanese armed forces to lay down their weapons.47

During these weeks suspended between war and peace, the Nisei were needed 

everywhere. They transmitted the emperor’s speech to isolated Japanese detachments by leaflet, radio, and loudspeaker in a dramatic intensification of psychological warfare. They accompanied Allied troops to disarm Japanese forces. They 

arranged the surrender ceremonies with their myriad administrative and logistical details. Parlays had to be arranged, radio links established, information about 

troop dispositions exchanged, and minefields cleared.

In each region, the Allied troops first had to contact local Japanese commanders. In some cases, the Japanese had not yet received word of the surrender through 

their chain of command and feared an Allied ruse. In many cases, the Allies provided copies of the emperor’s rescript. Some Japanese commanders refused to 

deal with the Allies and killed themselves rather than endure such humiliation. 

Commanders on both sides would sometimes arrange local ceasefires, which held 

until formal surrender ceremonies could be held, sometimes weeks later. The 

Nisei played an essential role in all these talks. Areas such as Korea, French Indochina, and the Netherlands East Indies contained a volatile mix of Japanese troops, 

nationalist forces, and former colonial forces. In some areas, the Allies retained 

Japanese troops and local authorities for months after the surrender, making the 

situation even more chaotic and dangerous. In other areas, Allied or indigenous 

forces wreaked terrible vengeance on Japanese soldiers. Everywhere, the local 

population suffered from famine, diseases, destruction, and displacement.

Southeast Asia

After the United States withdrew its combat troops from the Southeast Asia 

Command in the spring and summer of 1945, 150–200 Nisei remained in New 

Delhi with the Southeast Asia Translation and Interrogation Center (SEATIC).48

46 Reports of General MacArthur, vol. 1, p. 446, and vol. 2, pt. 2, pp. 742–45, 748–55; Frank, 

Downfall, pp. 326–29. Bix, Hirohito, cites CINCPAC-CINCPOA, Bulletin no. 164–45, 15 Aug 45. 47 Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, Government Section, Political Reorientation 

of Japan, September 1945 to September 1948, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing 

Office, 1949). 48 Earl Louis Mountbatten, Post Surrender Tasks: Section E of the Report to the Combined 

Chiefs of Staff by the Supreme Allied Commander South-East Asia, 1943–45 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1969); Bisheswar Prasad, ed., Official History of the Indian Armed Forces 

in the Second World War, Post-War Occupation Forces: Japan and South-East Asia (India: Orient 

Longmans, 1958); S. Woodburn Kirby, ed., The War against Japan, 5 vols. (London: Her Majesty’s 

Stationery Office, 1969), vol. 5; Allen, End of the War in Asia; Peter Dennis, Troubled Days of 

Peace: Mountbatten and South East Asia Command, 1945–1946 (New York: St. Martin’s, 1987).
MIS NISEI AND THE SURRENDER OF JAPAN 397

They were joined by Canadian Nisei trained at the Canadian Army language 

school in Vancouver, twelve of whom arrived in April 1945.49 Lord Mountbatten’s 

forces had been preparing for the invasion of Malaya, Operation Zipper, scheduled 

for September; American Nisei already had been assigned to British and Commonwealth units for the assault. However, Operation Zipper was superseded by 

hasty plans to seize Japanese-held Southeast Asia following the surrender. Adding 

to Mountbatten’s worries, at the last minute the Combined Joint Chiefs moved the 

boundary line between his theater and MacArthur’s, transferring most of Southeast 

Asia and Indonesia to Mountbatten. In September 1945 Mountbatten rushed his 

forces to take possession of former British, French, and Dutch colonies and conduct what the British called Recovery of Allied Prisoners of War and Internees.50

On 27 August Allied and Japanese representatives met in Rangoon for regional 

surrender talks. Serving as interpreters were two newly commissioned Nisei, 2d 

Lts. Teichiro Hirata and Joe Amaki. Hirata wrote to friends at Ft. Snelling:

In early August, just prior to the surrender, I was flown to Kandy, Ceylon, to await the 

word to cease fire. Then in late August I was fortunate in drawing an assignment to the 

surrender negotiations held in Rangoon, Burma. . . . [S]everal of the Nisei boys . . . were 

scattered about along the Malay Peninsula, and some were sent to Java, [Hong Kong], 

[Bangkok], and Saigon.51

Singapore, the site of Britain’s humiliating 1942 defeat, was selected for the 

surrender ceremony on 12 September. A local surrender agreement was signed on 

4 September, and British troops landed the following day. On 9 September assault 

troops, accompanied by six Canadian Nisei, landed on the Malay Peninsula. 

American 2d Lt. Kan Tagami, a veteran of the Mars Task Force, accompanied the 

34th Indian Corps into Kuala Lumpur. About fifteen American Nisei remained 

with Commonwealth forces in Malaya and Singapore to assist with the surrender 

and demobilization of Japanese forces.52

Commonwealth forces pushed into the southern half of French Indochina, 

arriving in Saigon on 8 September. As an interim measure the British commander 

ordered the Japanese commander to maintain law and order; but the British soon 

found themselves caught between French officials and the Vietnamese nationalists, the Vietminh. Iwao Kumabe, attached to the British, was in Saigon in late 

49 Roy Ito, We Went to War: The Story of the Japanese Canadians Who Served during the First 

and Second World Wars (Ontario: Canada’s Wings, 1984), pp. 235–79. 50 Kirby, War against Japan, 5: 243–49, 532–41; William J. Slim, Defeat into Victory: Battling Japan in Burma and India, 1942–1945 (London: Cassell, 1956), pp. 531–32. The territory 

was formally transferred from the Southwest Pacific Area to the Southeast Asia Command on 2 

September.

51 Yaban Gogai, Dec 45, p. 5; Allen, End of the War in Asia, p. 119. For a description of local 

surrender negotiations in Burma from the Japanese perspective, see Allen, End of the War in Asia, 

pp. 3–13. 52 Interv, author with Kan Tagami, 7 Dec 94; Kirby, War against Japan, 5: 271–73; Henry 

Hideo Kuwabara, MISNorCal Bio.
398 NISEI LINGUISTS

September when “shooting broke out. We were told to prepare against any attack, 

and our barracks were barricaded. . . .The rebels had barricaded the roads to the 

airport, and put up posters that the police tore down.” 53

British authorities in Saigon with Nisei assistance also investigated war 

crimes. Kumabe helped interrogate the Kempeitai (Japanese military police) chief 

for South Indochina, which took three weeks. Kumabe himself remained in Saigon until February 1946. Sam T. Kikumoto flew to Saigon to aid in investigating the treatment of American prisoners of war held in Indochina. He spent six 

months in Saigon helping to interrogate Kempeitai members who had abused or 

killed Americans.54 French troops arrived in October. Most Americans had left by 

the end of the year, the Nisei involved in war crimes investigations among the last 

to leave.55

The Netherlands East Indies presented similar problems. Indonesian nationalist leader Achmed Sukarno proclaimed the Indonesian Republic on 17 August, 

weeks before the arrival of Allied troops, and obtained arms from the Japanese 

Army. The Netherlands government dispatched a lieutenant governor, who arrived 

at Southeast Asia Command headquarters at Kandy on 1 September. Mountbatten 

later reported that the official “[gave] me no reason to suppose that the reoccupation of Java would present any operational problem, beyond that of rounding up 

the Japanese.” 56

The first Allied force sent to the Netherlands East Indies was Force 136 

“Mastiff,” which parachuted to liberate Allied prisoners of war on 8 September. 

The Royal Navy arrived at Batavia (Jakarta) on 16 September and immediately 

requested troops to maintain order; two Indian divisions were dispatched. All this 

required close work with Japanese commanders and units, which required linguists. Second Lt. Gil Ryo Arai accompanied the British forces to Java, while 

T.Sgt. Paul T. Bannai assisted Australian forces with surrenders in Bali, Java, and 

the former Portuguese colony of Timor. By early 1946 all American Nisei had 

been withdrawn from the South-East Asia Command.57

China

In the months before the surrender, Japanese troops began withdrawing from 

southern China and Chinese nationalist forces advanced toward the coast. With the 

53 Allen, End of the War in Asia, pp. 96–131; Kirby, War against Japan, 5: 297; Harrington, 

Yankee Samurai, pp. 358–59. 54 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 357–58; Interv, Dawn Duensing with Sam T. Kikumoto, in 

Americanism: A Matter of Mind and Heart, vol. 1, The Military Intelligence Service (Maui, Hawaii: 

Maui’s Sons and Daughters of the Nisei Veterans, 2001). 55 Ronald H. Spector, Advice and Support: The Early Years, 1941–1960, U.S. Army in Vietnam 

(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1983), pp. 64–73; Robert D. Schulzinger, A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam, 1941–1975 (New York: Oxford University 

Press, 1997), pp. 19–22. 56 Kirby, War against Japan, 5: 311. 57 Intervs, author with Tagami, 7 Dec 94, and with Paul T. Bannai, 11 Sep 96; Paul T. Bannai, 

MISNorCal Bio.
MIS NISEI AND THE SURRENDER OF JAPAN 399

support of 30,000 American advisers with the U.S. Forces China Theater and Chinese Combat Command, Chinese forces were poised to launch a major offensive 

in the south. Guerrilla units under the Sino-American Cooperative Organization 

passed through Japanese-held areas to reach Nanking (Nanjing), Canton (Guangzhou), Peking (Beijing), and Shanghai. In late July Lt. Gen. Albert C. Wedemeyer 

and Chiang Kai-shek agreed that American troops would seize China’s coastal cities in the event of a sudden Japanese collapse and hold them until nationalist troops 

could arrive. When the surrender came, 3 million Japanese soldiers remained in 

China and Manchuria. On 10 August the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent Wedemeyer a 

new directive for the China Theater and authorized Chiang Kai-shek to accept the 

surrender of all Japanese forces in China. After the Japanese surrender, Admiral 

Nimitz provided a marine amphibious corps with two divisions.58

In the north, the Soviet Union abruptly broke its long truce and attacked on 9 

August. More than a million Soviet soldiers swept into Manchuria and northern 

China and seized Sakhalin Island and the northern half of Korea. The Red Army 

gave the Kwantung Army no chance to surrender. Instead it was completely shattered, losing about 80,000 killed.59

Dozens of Nisei were serving in China, about forty with the Sino Translation and Interrogation Center (SINTIC) in Chungking. Perhaps six others were 

assigned to the Fourteenth Air Force. Others worked for the Office of War Information. Five were in Yenan with the Dixie Mission. A few were parceled out 

to Chinese guerrilla forces with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Other 

language personnel included some Chinese-American graduates of the MISLS

Chinese-language program. For example, in August the school sent thirty 

Chinese-language graduates to China at the urgent request of the China Theater. 

Nisei in China worked under two experienced American language officers, Col. 

Joseph K. Dickey and Lt. Col. John Burden.

Immediately after the surrender announcement OSS Detachment 202 conducted rescue missions for Allied prisoners of war in eight camps in China, Korea, 

Hainan Island, and Formosa. Individual Nisei were assigned to most teams, 

including several of the original fourteen Nisei selected for the OSS in 1943. One 

team went to Manchuria in search of senior Allied prisoners held by the Japanese, 

including the defeated commanders of the Philippines and Singapore, Maj. Gen. 

Jonathan M. Wainwright and British General Arthur E. Percival, respectively.

Six OSS operatives parachuted near the Hoten prison camp outside Mukden 

on the morning of 16 August after a long B–24 flight from Sian (Xian) in northcentral China. Cpl. Fumio Kido was the team’s lone interpreter. They were met 

by Japanese soldiers with fixed bayonets and a Japanese sergeant who barked 

58 Albert C. Wedemeyer, Wedemeyer on War and Peace, ed. Keith E. Eiler (Stanford, Calif.: 

Hoover Institution Press, 1987), pp. 133–54; Albert C. Wedemeyer, Wedemeyer Reports! (New 

York: Henry Holt, 1958). 59 Alvin D. Coox, Nomonhan: Japan Against Russia, 1939, 2 vols. (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford 

University Press, 1985), 2: 1059–74; David M. Glantz, August Storm: Soviet Tactical and Operational Combat in Manchuria, 1945 (Fort Leavenworth, Kans.: Combat Studies Institute, 1983).
400 NISEI LINGUISTS

a command at the Americans. Kido interpreted: “He says to kneel down.” The 

sergeant demanded to know who they were. Kido explained that the war was over 

and they had come to bring aid to the prisoners, but the sergeant was skeptical. 

A Japanese officer approached to question Kido. “He seemed only interested in 

knowing whether I was Japanese or not,” Kido recalled. “I replied that I was of 

Japanese ancestry but that I was an American and an American soldier.” 60

After a long wait, another Japanese officer arrived and apologized, saying 

that the news of the surrender had just reached Mukden. The officers took the 

Americans to their headquarters to wait for further instructions. The Japanese 

were especially confused about Kido, who overheard a Japanese officer telephone 

his higher headquarters to ask, “We have an American-born Japanese here. What 

do we do with him?” He could not hear the answer on the other end. Later that day 

they met a Kempeitai colonel, who produced a bottle of American whiskey and 

conversed with them in excellent English. When Kido asked where he had learned 

his English, the colonel explained he had spent some time in Hawaii.61

The following morning Japanese officials allowed the team to visit the prison 

camp, where they liberated over a thousand prisoners. Wainwright and Percival 

flew to Tokyo just in time for the surrender. One of the other senior American 

prisoners, Maj. Gen. George M. Parker, recommended the OSS team for the Distinguished Service Cross:

From my personal observation and experience based on three years close contact with the 

Japanese Army, I feel certain that the lives of all the members of [the] party were in grave 

danger during the greater part of August 16th. Any misunderstood action on the part of 

one of the Americans would not only have resulted in quick death to that individual and 

mass punishment to the others, but in the failure of the attempt to contact the prisoners.62

One week later the first Soviet troops arrived in Mukden, and Kido feared they 

would treat him as a Japanese soldier. He quickly memorized some simple Russian 

phrases such as “Nyet Nipponaky soldat!” [“No Japanese soldier!”].63

Capt. John K. Singlaub led another OSS team on 27 August to Hainan Island, 

where 356 Australian and Dutch soldiers and sailors were being held. The lone Nisei 

interpreter was Lt. Ralph Yempuku. Yempuku had never jumped before, Singlaub 

recalled, “but did not hesitate to volunteer.” They jumped from five or six hundred 

feet. When Yempuku’s parachute opened, a buckle hit him in the face and split open 

60 Calvin Tottori, “The OSS Niseis in the China-Burma-India Theater,” 2d ed., p. 42, Unpubl 

Ms, 2001, copy in author’s files. 61 Craig, Fall of Japan, pp. 221–28; Roger Hilsman, American Guerrilla (Washington: Brassey’s, 

1990), pp. 232–52; Fumio Kido, MISNorCal Bio; Harrington Papers. Craig states that the Japanese 

soldiers struck Kido, but Kido later denied this. 62 Memo, Maj. Gen. George M. Parker to CG, U.S. Army Forces, China Theater, 1 Sep 45, app. 

to Kido, MISNorCal Bio. The China Theater awarded to all American members of the OSS rescue 

teams the Soldier’s Medal, not the Distinguished Service Cross. HQ, U.S. Forces, China Theater, 

General Order no. 211, 4 Nov 45, in Harrington Papers.

63 Kido, MISNorCal Bio, p. 6.
MIS NISEI AND THE SURRENDER OF JAPAN 401

his chin. He hit the ground hard with blood streaming down his face. But he had no 

time to worry about that: in minutes trucks arrived and disgorged nervous Japanese 

soldiers who approached the team with fixed bayonets. From the opposite direction, 

Chinese farm laborers rushed over to see what was happening.

Singlaub made a quick decision. He spun around with his back to the advancing Japanese soldiers and told Yempuku to interpret: “Stop right there.” Yempuku 

translated: “The major commands, stop right there!” Then Singlaub spun around 

and shouted in an angry voice, “Turn those troops around. Face the Chinese civilians. You will protect these supplies from them.” Yempuku translated in the same 

tone of voice. The Japanese lieutenant hesitated, and then he too made a decision. 

He turned his troops around to face the approaching Chinese laborers. “We had 

won the first engagement of this strange campaign,” Singlaub recalled.64

The OSS sent other teams to POW camps elsewhere in China, Korea, and 

Formosa. S.Sgt. Dick S. Hamada accompanied a team that landed near Peking on 

17 August, where they found four survivors of the 1942 Doolittle bombing raid 

on Tokyo.65

In the aftermath of the Japanese surrender, the U.S. headquarters in the China 

Theater moved forward from the wartime capital of Chungking to Shanghai on the 

coast. In these weeks the language section did heavy translation work. Most Nisei 

flew onward to Nanking, the capital of Japanese-occupied China. Colonel Burden 

attended the formal surrender ceremony on 9 September at Whampoa, the Central 

Military Academy in Nanking.66

Meanwhile, the III Amphibious Corps seized key points on the China coast, 

recalling the marines’ long service in China before the war. The corps chief of 

staff and G–2 were both former Chinese-language attachés. Navy language officers, aided by a few Nisei, did most of the work of liaison with local Japanese officials. The 1st Marine Division advance party arrived at Tientsin on 24 September 

and conducted a surrender ceremony on 6 October for 50,000 Japanese soldiers. 

The 6th Marine Division landed at Tsingtao on 11 October and conducted a local 

surrender ceremony on 25 October. The situation on the ground grew more complicated by the day because the nationalists controlled the cities while the Communists controlled the countryside. During October the Fourteenth Air Force flew 

50,000 nationalist troops into the area. The marines accepted local surrenders, 

maintained order, and facilitated the repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers and civilians, as well as many Koreans, Okinawans, and Taiwanese. 

Eventually the III Amphibious Corps repatriated more than 500,000 Japanese and 

64 John K. Singlaub, Hazardous Duty: An American Soldier in the Twentieth Century (New 

York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), pp. 71–101; Craig, Fall of Japan, 278–84. Singlaub was a captain 

but on this mission wore major’s rank insignia. 65 Tottori, “OSS Niseis.” For an account of the liberation of another camp, see Mary Previte, 

“Ted Nagaki,” Ex-CBI Roundup (June 2002). 66 Ho Ying-Ch’in, “Accepting the Surrender and Taking-Over Conditions,” China Handbook, 

1937–1945 (New York: Macmillan, 1947), pp. 764–67; Allen, End of the War in Asia, pp. 219–56; 

John Burden autobiography, Unpubl Ms, 1992, copy in author’s files.
402 NISEI LINGUISTS

Koreans.67 Nisei John Noguchi accompanied the 1st Marine Division to Changzhou and eventually sailed to Sasebo as escort for a returning Japanese battalion. 

Among the returning Japanese soldiers he discovered an American-born Nisei 

whom Noguchi had known when they were students together at San Francisco 

State College. His friend had been caught in Japan at the start of the war, was 

drafted into the Japanese Army, and spent three years stationed in China.68

In North China, the marines found that their greatest problems came not from 

the defeated Japanese soldiers but from the clash between Chinese factions. General Order no. 1 had directed Japanese forces in China to surrender to Chiang 

Kai-shek, which left the Communists out of the picture. Soon the marines were 

pulling joint duty with Japanese soldiers to protect key areas from the Chinese 

Communists. The marines and nationalists even used some Japanese Army units 

in fighting against Communist guerrillas. According to the official Marine Corps 

history, “the [Japanese] China Expeditionary Army reversed its wartime role and 

became a quasi-ally of the National Government.” The last Nisei were withdrawn 

by the end of 1946 and the bulk of marine forces by early 1947.69

Other Nisei were scattered throughout China on special assignments. The 

China Theater headquarters sent a small team with one Nisei to T’aiyuan in Shansi 

Province in North China to observe the surrender of 60,000 Japanese troops of 

the North China Area Army.70 Three other Nisei joined a U.S. advisory group for 

Formosa. Toshio Uesato flew to Taihoku (Taipei) on Formosa in mid-November to 

help repatriate Japanese troops. Six weeks later he accepted a civilian position in 

the SCAP Civil Intelligence Section in Tokyo. He took the civil service job in part 

because he wanted to search for his older brother, a University of Hawaii graduate 

who had been studying at Waseda University when war broke out. He later learned 

that he had been conscripted and died of malaria on Bougainville in April 1944.71

The U.S. Army had maintained its liaison mission to the Chinese Communists 

in Yenan, though the relationship had noticeably cooled. In July 1945 Col. Ivan 

D. Yeaton, a former U.S. military attaché to Moscow, took command of the Dixie 

Mission. He was impressed with the three Nisei already there, two of whom, Koji 

Ariyoshi and George I. Nakamura, had received field commissions that spring. In 

August two more Nisei arrived. 

Yeaton considered Ariyoshi the most important man on the Dixie Mission 

“because the Communists trusted him and gave him free access to their compound.” 72 Ariyoshi had been in Yenan since October 1944 and was genuinely 

67 See Donald Keene’s letters in Otis Cary, ed., From a Ruined Empire: Letters—Japan, China, 

Korea, 1945–46 (San Francisco: Kodansha, 1975); Donald Keene, On Familiar Terms: A Journey 

across Cultures (New York: Kodansha, 1994), pp. 58–68. 68 John Noguchi, MISNorCal Bio, Rocky Mountain Bio. 69 Frank and Shaw, Victory and Occupation, pp. 521–650 (quote on p. 532). 70 Arthur T. Morimitsu, in Falk and Tsuneishi, MIS in the War against Japan. 71 Intervs, author with Toshio Uesato, 21 Aug 95, and with George I. Nakamura, 6 Dec 94. 72 Carolle J. Carter, Mission to Yenan: American Liaison with the Chinese Communists, 1944–

1947 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997), p. 202.
MIS NISEI AND THE SURRENDER OF JAPAN 403

impressed with the Communists and their political work with Japanese prisoners. 

The Americans, he recalled, “were generally favorably impressed by the broad 

participation in government by the people of all classes, reduced land rent, clean 

government, active resistance against the Japanese invaders, and the educational 

program that reached the peasant masses who were generally neglected in the 

Nationalist areas.” Ariyoshi also had good relations with the small group of Japanese Communists in Yenan, including Sanzo ̄ Nosaka.

73

In September 1945 Ariyoshi flew to Chungking, where he reported to Wedemeyer on the strength of Communist forces: “What China needs is not Nationalist 

domination but good clean government and democracy. Such a government must 

be broadly representative.” Wedemeyer sent him to Ambassador Patrick J. Hurley, 

to whom he delivered the same assessment. Hurley responded angrily and shook 

his finger in Ariyoshi’s face: “Young man, you have been fooled by Communist 

propaganda! I am the only American who has not been fooled by Communist propaganda!” 74 Deeply discouraged at America’s China policy, Ariyoshi flew back to 

Yenan, where he stayed a few months longer. When General George C. Marshall 

visited Yenan in March 1946, Ariyoshi accompanied him. He was discharged in 

China and briefly worked for the State Department before finally leaving China 

in July 1946.75

When news of the Japanese surrender reached the former British possession of 

Hong Kong, the British internees took matters into their own hands, established a 

provisional government using former colonial officials, then radioed Allied forces 

to announce they had liberated themselves. The British government dispatched a 

naval task force from Subic Bay in the Philippines and accepted the provisional 

surrender on 3 September.76

The surrender ceremony took place on 16 September in the gracious old Peninsula Hotel. The OSS observer team included Lieutenant Yempuku. By strange 

coincidence, one of the interpreters for the Japanese delegation was Yempuku’s 

younger brother, Donald. Both had been born in Hawaii and were graduates of 

McKinley High School. When war broke out, Donald was still living in Japan. 

He renounced his U.S. citizenship and found work with the Do ̄mei news and the 

military press bureau as a translator. When he entered the crowded hotel lobby, 

he spotted his older brother wearing an American uniform. “I knew it was Ralph 

right away,” he recalled, “Immediately, I was happy he was alive. But almost in 

73 Koji Ariyoshi, From Kona to Yenan: The Political Memoirs of Koji Ariyoshi, ed. Alice M. 

Beechert and Edward D. Beechert (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2000), pp. 124–25, 150–

51 (quote from pp. 150–51). 74 Ariyoshi, From Kona to Yenan, pp. 174–78. 75 Upon returning to the United States, Ariyoshi wrote a memoir; but in 1947 his New York 

publisher rejected it. Ariyoshi later published it himself in installments in the Honolulu Record, a 

progressive weekly he edited. In 1951 he and six others were arrested under the Smith Act. He was 

convicted of “conspiring to teach and advocate the overthrow of the government by force,” but this 

was later overturned. 76 Kirby, War against Japan, 5: 283–88; Allen, End of the War in Asia, pp. 251–56; Morison, 

History of United States Naval Operations, 15: 5.
404 NISEI LINGUISTS

the same breath, I was embarrassed because he was on the side of the enemy.” He 

decided not to approach his brother, who did not notice him. The brothers finally 

met several months later in Japan. “This time, we shook hands,” Donald recalled. 

“Japanese, you know, never show much emotion. We didn’t discuss the war. I felt 

that we were all fortunate to have come out alive.” 77

In northern Indochina, the situation was explosive. The Japanese Army had 

overthrown the Vichy colonial regime in March 1945, so the Japanese surrender 

left a power vacuum. Ho Chi Minh, the Vietnamese nationalist leader, declared 

himself president of “free Vietnam” on 16 August. The OSS inserted a team on 

22 August with a Nisei interpreter, T.Sgt. Alvin Toso. This team liberated 300 

Allied prisoners but could not control the area without reinforcement. The Viet 

Minh seized power in Hanoi on 2 September and declared a provisional government. To seize territory and disarm the Japanese soldiers, Chiang Kai-shek sent 

across the border 80,000 men accompanied by American advisers, who reached 

Hanoi in mid-September. French troops did not arrive until early October. Several 

Nisei were assigned to the advancing Chinese, including Tom Haga, who took a 

train from Kunming to the Indochina border at the end of August. Another Nisei, 

2d Lt. Clarke H. Kawakami, was picked for the mission because he spoke French, 

but he asked George I. Nakamura to take his place. Nakamura had just returned to 

Chungking after eleven months in Yenan for a commissioning board. Kawakami 

wanted to go to Japan, not Indochina, as quickly as possible. Shortly before he 

had left Japan in 1941, he had married a Japanese actress. Now he was anxious to 

return and find her. Nakamura won his commission, agreed to take Kawakami’s 

place, and soon found himself in Hanoi.78

Following the Japanese surrender in Hanoi in late September, the Nisei helped 

arrange the evacuation of all Japanese troops to Formosa and then on to Japan. But 

first the U.S. Navy had to clear Haiphong Harbor of Japanese mines. For this Toshi 

Uesato was assigned to a U.S. Navy destroyer to obtain information from the 

Japanese Navy on their sea mines in the area. Throughout October and November 

he interviewed Japanese naval officers and helped translate their charts for the 

American naval officers. All Americans were withdrawn from northern Indochina 

by December 1945, and the Chinese troops departed the following spring.79

Central Pacific

Scattered across the Central Pacific, more than a quarter-million Japanese soldiers and sailors were slowly wasting away on bypassed islands while American 

forces were stronger than ever and backed by powerful intelligence. JICPOA in 

Hawaii, grown to 544 officers and 1,223 enlisted men, produced 2 million printed 

sheets of intelligence each week. On Guam, the Advance Intelligence Center 

77 Tomi Kaizawa Knaefler, Our House Divided: Seven Japanese American Families in World 

War II (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991), pp. 85–87. 78 Interv, author with G. Nakamura, 6 Dec 94. 79 Intervs, author with Uesato, 21 Aug 95, and with George Nakamura, 6 Dec 94; George I. 

Nakamura, MISNorCal Bio; Spector, Advice and Support, pp. 51–73.
MIS NISEI AND THE SURRENDER OF JAPAN 405

provided direct support to Nimitz and his combat commanders. More than 200 

Nisei were assigned to JICPOA. Some worked in the JICPOA Annex in downtown Honolulu, while others served with Army and Marine divisions and corps. 

JICPOA was also staffed with several hundred Navy and Marine language officers 

from the Navy’s Oriental Language School in Boulder, Colorado.80

JICPOA conducted psychological warfare operations with the Office of War 

Information using leaflets and voice broadcasts to induce surrenders on bypassed 

islands. In May 1945 the Psychological Warfare Section established a special 

stockade on Oahu for Japanese prisoners of war assisting the program. After the 

Japanese surrender these efforts were increased.81

Within weeks of the Japanese surrender, this massive theater intelligence 

infrastructure was dismantled. Nimitz had no responsibilities for the occupation 

of Japan or Korea, so JICPOA and its translation annex were closed and the intelligence specialists, including the Nisei, were reassigned or demobilized. Several 

Nisei were dispatched to help with local surrenders. Some were deployed for the 

Navy Technical Mission to Japan or the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey.82

In the war’s closing days, T3g. Don S. Okubo was patrolling the Marshall 

Islands in a Navy landing craft, using a loudspeaker to call out to stragglers. 

Sometimes cooperative prisoners of war made the broadcasts under his supervision. Okubo had fought with the 1st Marine Division on Peleliu, which he considered his “most dangerous assignment.”

I was much more worried about the marines shooting me than the Japs. You know how 

those marines are: if they see anyone who even looks like the enemy they fire. Whenever 

I was on patrol I had to be escorted by half a dozen marines or I’d be a dead duck. Despite 

my army uniform I was fired on several times.83

A few days after Japan’s surrender, Okubo was sent to Mille Atoll to negotiate 

the surrender of the Japanese headquarters there. Late in the afternoon he went 

ashore alone, only to learn that the admiral’s headquarters was on another island. 

By the time he reached the second island, night had fallen; so the whaleboat that 

brought him there cautiously pulled up to the dark landing. The Japanese guards 

80 On the end of the war in the Pacific Ocean Areas, see CINCPAC-CINCPOA, Rpt of Surrender and Occupation of Japan, 11 Feb 46; Morison, History of United States Naval Operations, 

15: 3–6; Frank and Shaw, Victory and Occupation, pp. 449–63; Dorothy E. Richard, United States 

Naval Administration of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, 3 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1957), vol. 2. For a list of seventy-five major islands that remained under 

Japanese control, see Memorandum to the Press, 18 Aug 45, in Navy Department Communiqués 

601–624 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Navy), pp. 71–73. 81 Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Areas, “Report of Intelligence Activities in the Pacific 

Ocean Areas,” 15 Oct 45, p. 32 (hereafter cited as JICPOA History), copy in author’s files. 82 Rpt of Intelligence Activities; ATIS History, p. 29; Sam Setsuo Isokane, “Nisei Men of 

JICPOA Annex,” Unpubl Ms, n.d. 83 “Honolulu Army Sergeant Storms Pacific Island Alone, Persuades Japanese Admiral To Surrender His Garrison,” Honolulu Advertiser, 5 Oct 45.
406 NISEI LINGUISTS

held their fire and took Okubo to their lieutenant, who told the lone Nisei that it 

was too late to disturb the admiral. The Nisei insisted that his commander had 

ordered him to deliver the message personally to his Japanese counterpart that the 

war had ended and to ask the Japanese commander to surrender his forces. The 

Japanese lieutenant relented and took Okubo to the cave where the admiral was 

sleeping. Okubo met with the admiral for two hours before obtaining his promise 

to surrender. The next morning the whaleboat returned to take Okubo back to the 

command ship. As a result of his solo mission, more than 1,000 Japanese sailors 

and soldiers on the atoll surrendered on 22 August in the first mass surrender in 

the Central Pacific. For his valor Okubo was promoted to master sergeant and 

awarded the Bronze Star.84

In the Bonin Islands, the marines had captured Iwo Jima; but 40,000 Japanese 

remained on other islands in the chain. The Americans and Japanese held surrender talks on Chichi Jima on 31 August; the surrender ceremony was held on 3 

September. However, because of the large number of Japanese soldiers and their 

dispersal throughout the chain, the Americans did not take possession of the other 

islands until 13 December.

In the Ryukyu Islands, the Americans declared Okinawa secure in June; but 

105,000 Japanese soldiers and sailors remained at large throughout that chain. On 

7 September the Tenth Army commander, General Joseph W. Stilwell, accepted 

their surrender, with Sergeant Oda serving as his interpreter. The surrender did 

not bring an end to the overwhelming problems in the Ryukyus. In mid-September a powerful typhoon hit Okinawa, and another hit a few weeks later. Soldiers, 

prisoners of war, and refugees all suffered as their tent cities and improvised shelters were destroyed by the wind and rain. Scores of Nisei worked with military 

government officials to relieve the civilian suffering.85

Following the surrender, small groups of Japanese soldiers continued to hide 

in Okinawa’s rugged terrain. In mid-September Sgt. Tim Ohta and a bodyguard 

went looking for one group of holdouts. The two Americans went as far as they 

could together, then Ohta “ventured alone into Japanese-held territory and disappeared into the rocks.” A short while later he returned with two Japanese officers 

who agreed to surrender the forces under their command. Three days later Ohta, 

his bodyguard, and a Marine officer drove two trucks to the agreed-upon location. 

The bodyguard recalled the scene: “It was dawn, with mist still in the valley. I

expected we’d be early and that the Japanese soldiers would wander down from 

the hills during the day. The scene which greeted us was unforgettable: the Japanese stood at attention in battalion formation, . . . fairly well dressed, their weapons neatly stacked, and silent as we approached.” The Marine officer was “clearly 

84 Atoll Commander, Majuro, Commendation, 10 Dec 45, author’s files; “Honolulu Army Sergeant”; Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor, pp. 64–66; Steve Lum, “Donald Okubo’s Amazing Story,” 

Hawaii Herald, 2 Jul 93, p. A–23. Okubo’s Bronze Star was upgraded to the Silver Star in 2001. 85 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 354–55; Akira Nakamura, MISNorCal Bio. Tenth Army 

was inactivated on 15 October 1945, and responsibility for the Ryukyus passed to Army Forces 

Western Pacific.
MIS NISEI AND THE SURRENDER OF JAPAN 407

taken aback at this scene, . . . [and] left in one truck to get more transportation.” 

Ohta, his bodyguard, and the remaining truck driver stayed behind to guard the 

250 Japanese soldiers. Ohta had thought to bring four cartons of cigarettes, which 

he presented to the Japanese colonel for his men. “Each soldier stepped forward, 

saluted, took his cigarette and returned to the ranks—an amazing display of discipline in a defeated army.” When the marine returned with more trucks, the surrender proceeded without incident. Ohta was awarded the Silver Star.86

On Guam and Saipan in the Marianas, American soldiers guarded tens of 

thousands of Japanese prisoners. On Saipan, one refugee camp alone held 18,000 

civilian detainees. Japanese prisoners on Guam “sobbed loudly, waving their hands 

and showing great and visible grief when they heard Hirohito’s radio address on 

the empire’s surrender.” 87

86 Edwards, Spy Catchers, pp. 249–50. 87 Tom O’Brien, “Camp Susupe,” Yank (22 June 1945); quote from Yaban Gogai, War Extra, 

Aug 45.

A Nisei sergeant (second from right) assists as Lt. Gen. Yoshio Tachibana

surrenders 40,000 Japanese in the Bonin Islands, USS Dunlap, 3 September 1945.
408 NISEI LINGUISTS

In the Carolines and the Marianas, 130,000 Japanese soldiers and sailors 

remained under the command of the Japanese 31st Army and Fourth Fleet. After 

U.S. Navy bombers dropped surrender leaflets on Truk, American pilots spotted white crosses spread out on the island’s runways. On 30 August surrender 

negotiations using JICPOA Nisei were held aboard an American destroyer. The 

night before the surrender, the intelligence officer handed T3g. Sam Setsuo Isokane the American general’s prepared speech to translate into Japanese. Isokane 

had left his dictionary back in Hawaii; nevertheless, he worked through the night 

to prepare a translation, which the naval intelligence officer read out loud the next 

morning. The formal surrender ceremony with two Nisei interpreters was held on 

2 September. The next day Isokane sailed to Rota, where he interpreted as 3,000 

Japanese surrendered.88

88 CINCPOA Press Releases no. 244, 2 Sep 45, and no. 247, 3 Sep 45; Tsukiyama et al., Secret 

Valor, p. 67; Isokane, “Nisei Men of JICPOA Annex.”

T3g. Jiro Arakaki (right) helps an Army intelligence officer (center) question a 

senior Japanese officer, Yonakunajima, Ryukyus, 7 October 1945.
MIS NISEI AND THE SURRENDER OF JAPAN 409

On nearby Yap Island, five Hawaii Nisei persuaded 7,000 Japanese troops 

and civilians to surrender.89 On 31 August 2,500 Japanese surrendered on Marcus Island with the help of Nobuo Furuiye. In the final months of the war he had 

served on Iwo Jima, where he was wounded by mortar fire, worked with refugees 

on Saipan, and interpreted at a war crimes trial on Guam. Soon after the Marcus 

surrender he was attached to the Navy Technical Mission in Sasebo.90 On Wake 

Island, Larry Watanabe helped a Marine general negotiate the surrender of 1,262 

emaciated Japanese defenders on 4 September.91

On 31 August the North Pacific Fleet set sail from the Aleutians for northern 

Japan. Two Nisei, T3g. Hiromu William Wada and T3g. Laurence Mihara, sailed 

with Admiral Frank J. Fletcher on his flagship, the USS Panamint. When they 

reached Japanese waters, a Japanese pilot came aboard to guide them through the 

heavily mined strait between Honshu and Hokkaido. The pilot brought his own 

interpreter, a Canadian Nisei who spoke English well. The Americans arrived at 

the Ominato naval base on 6 September. On 9 September Wada interpreted as 

89 Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor, p. 67; Gwenfread Allen, Hawaii’s War Years, 1941–1945

(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1950), p. 273; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 355. 90 Falk and Tsuneishi, MIS in the War against Japan, pp. 58–60; Nobuo Furuiye, MISNorCal 

Bio; Yaban Gogai, Nov 45, p. 8. 91 S. E. Smith, ed., The United States Marine Corps in World War II (New York: Random 

House, 1969), pp. 923–29; Morison, History of United States Naval Operations, 15: 5.

T3g. William Hiromu Wada (third from left) interprets for Vice Adm. Frank J. 

Fletcher during surrender talks on the USS Panamint, flagship of the North Pacific 

Force, 9 September 1945.
410 NISEI LINGUISTS

Fletcher accepted the surrender. Soldiers from the Eighth Army did not arrive in 

that part of Japan until 25 September.92

The JICPOA Nisei also had an indirect influence on the status of Japanese 

Americans in the United States. In October the Japanese American Citizens League 

called upon the Navy to allow Japanese Americans to enlist, something the service had resisted during the war. In response the new Chief of Naval Operations, 

Admiral Nimitz, declared that Japanese Americans had “served with distinction 

in the . . . Pacific Ocean Areas and elsewhere,” and lifted the Navy’s wartime ban 

on Japanese American enlistments.93

Korea

The mission to take control of the southern half of Korea was given to the 

XXIV Corps. Because of Korean hostility toward the Japanese, 1st Lt. Benjamin H. Hazard, but no Nisei, accompanied the reconnaissance party. Hazard was 

an experienced language officer and veteran of fighting on Saipan and Okinawa. 

When the first twenty Americans landed on 6 September outside Seoul, a Japanese 

battalion was in formation on the Kimpo airfield to greet them. Hazard interpreted, and the Japanese helpfully provided their own English-speakers.

Nisei language teams accompanied the units that landed at Inchon on 8 September. About thirty Nisei were assigned to XXIV Corps headquarters; smaller 

teams were attached to the divisions, military government, and the CIC. T.Sgt. 

Warren Tsuneishi landed with the corps team. “I felt personally a sense of trepidation,” he wrote a few days later:

As I waited for my turn to go down the cargo net, and then ashore, I thought that Korea, 

after forty-odd years of Japanese misrule and oppression, would not be the healthiest spot 

in the world for us. . . . I was afraid that, like Americans, the Koreans would be unable 

to differentiate between Japanese-Japanese, whom they have good reason to hate, and 

Japanese-Americans; nor would they be able to comprehend how completely American 

birth and life in the United States have made us. I felt, however, that perhaps we would be 

able to convince them with our bad manners, our hit-and-miss spoken Japanese, and our 

general inability to act like the polite and docile—and at times cruel—Japanese.94

92 “North Pacific Fleet Occupies Ominato,” in U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings (October 1945): 

1245; Morison, History of United States Naval Operations, 15: 7; Bill Wada, “My Two Year Experiences and Impressions on the Aleutian Islands,” MISNorCal Bio. 93 “Nimitz Declares Nisei GIs Have Served with Distinction in Pacific Forces,” Pacific Citizen, 

10 Nov 45; “Disclose Administrative Order Issued Opening Enlistments in Any Branch of Naval 

Service,” Pacific Citizen, 17 Nov 45; “Nisei Accepted by Navy as Ban Lifted,” Pacific Citizen, 5 

Jan 46; Bill Hosokawa, JACL in Quest of Justice: The History of the Japanese American Citizens 

League (New York: William Morrow, 1982), p. 309. On 15 August 1945, Nimitz outlawed “the use 

of insulting epithets in connection with the Japanese as a race or as individuals.” Time (10 September 1945): 5; quote from Frank, Downfall, p. 330. 94 Ltr, Warren Tsuneishi, 12 September 1945, in Cary, From a Ruined Empire, p. 27.
MIS NISEI AND THE SURRENDER OF JAPAN 411

Six-hundred-thousand Japanese soldiers remained in Korea, and the colonial administration continued as it had since 1910. Japanese was the language of 

administration and education. The Japanese had used thousands of Korean laborers throughout Asia and the Pacific. North of the 38th Parallel, the Red Army was 

pouring into the country. As in other places, the Americans found it convenient to 

use Japanese troops and the colonial police to maintain order, much to the outrage 

of the local population. In this confusing situation the Nisei proved their value. 

They worked with the Japanese command and civilian officials, as well as with 

Japanese-speaking Korean leaders. Japanese soldiers were gradually removed to 

Cheju Island off the southern coast and then repatriated to Japan.

For some Nisei, occupation duty in Korea was a welcome respite. T4g. Nob 

Yamashita arrived with the 63d Infantry, which was posted to Kunsan, a Japanese 

naval base on the southwest coast. The California-born Nisei had served with the 

6th Infantry Division in New Guinea and Luzon, earning the Combat Infantryman 

Badge and suffering from malaria and dengue fever. He had seen two teammates 

killed during the war, Terry Mizutari in New Guinea and George I. Nakamura 

in the Philippines. In Kunsan, Japanese merchants greeted him with open arms 

and found him a comfortable room with a Japanese family. “So began the best 

seven weeks or so of my time in the service. It made up for all the bum deals I had 

before. . . . It was wonderful compared to New Guinea and the Philippines.” His 

duties were minimal, and he spent most evenings soaking in the Japanese bath and 

sitting around the stove talking, smoking, dining on fresh fruits, and sipping sake, 

“which I did not drink much of.” In November his replacement arrived, a recently 

commissioned Nisei lieutenant. Yamashita knew the lieutenant had no combat 

experience, so he asked how he had earned a commission. The lieutenant said 

simply that he had an IQ over 110 and had tended bar at GHQ’s noncommissioned 

officers’ club. “I guess,” Yamashita reflected, “as with other things, the boys down 

at GHQ got the goodies first, and hardly any came down to us in the field. . . .

Anyway, I wonder how my replacement turned out.” Soon afterward Yamashita 

boarded a transport for home.95

The Philippines

When the war ended, the Philippines was the staging area for three-quarters of 

a million American service members. More than a thousand Nisei were assigned 

to ATIS or different combat units. Prisoner of war camps held tens of thousands 

of Japanese on Leyte and Luzon. One camp on Luzon held a thousand Formosan 

laborers. T4g. Toshio Ichikawa took a psychological warfare team to the camp 

and spoke for two hours to convince them “that Japan had actually surrendered.” 

When they finally understood him, they cheered noisily. He reported they were 

95 Nob Yamashita, “Fighting My Ancestors: The Autobiography of a Nisei,” pp. 22–25, 29, 

Unpubl Ms, n.d.
412 NISEI LINGUISTS

especially happy when he told them “that Formosa will soon belong to China,” 

after fifty years of Japanese rule.96

Japanese soldiers responded to the surrender news with much less enthusiasm. 

In September 1945 tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers remained in the hills 

and jungles. In northern Luzon, General Tomoyuki Yamashita remained at large 

with 60,000 troops. After the emperor’s announcement, the 32d Infantry Division 

made contact with Yamashita’s staff by dropping a written message from a lowflying liaison aircraft. Around this time an American patrol ran into a thirty-man 

Japanese patrol. The Nisei linguist with the patrol, S.Sgt. Kiyo Fujimura,

boldly approached them and informed them of the cessation of hostilities while his men 

watched from a distance. However, due to lack of radio communication with Japan, they 

were skeptical and unconvinced. So Kiyo returned and told his men that he’ll have to 

bring them over to convince them thoroughly. His patrol would not trust Japanese coming in fully armed, so he went back again, did some fast talking, and got them to come in 

without their weapons. Kiyo said that he finally convinced them when he threatened to 

wire Japan and bring one of their princes.97

Surrender talks with Yamashita began on 24 August. On 2 September Yamashita and his staff walked out of the hills into American custody. He formally 

surrendered his command the following day at the former residence of the U.S. 

high commissioner at Camp John Hay, Baguio.98 The Sixth Army G–2, Col. Horton V. White, personally interrogated Yamashita and several other senior Japanese officers at Bilibid Prison. Lt. Gen. Walter Krueger later wrote that “General 

Yamashita expressed astonishment at the complete, detailed information which 

Sixth Army had of his military situation throughout the campaign.” 99

Farther south, from the Netherlands East Indies to the Solomon Islands, a 

quarter-million Japanese soldiers and sailors surrendered to Australian forces. 

On Bougainville, Australian light aircraft dropped 230,000 leaflets announcing 

Japan’s surrender. After some difficult negotiations, a surrender ceremony was 

held at Torokina on 8 September and the Japanese troops concentrated in new 

96 Yaban Gogai, Dec 45, pp. 6, 10. 97 Quote from Min Hara, in Only What We Could Carry: The Japanese American Internment 

Experience, ed. Lawson F. Inada (Berkeley, Calif.: Heyday Books, 2000), p. 361; Nob Yamashita, 

in Saga of the MIS; “General Yamashita’s Troops Surrender to ‘Captain’ Kiyo Fujimura,” in John 

Aiso and the M.I.S.: Japanese-American Soldiers in the Military Intelligence Service, World War 

II, ed. Tad Ichinokuchi (Los Angeles: Military Intelligence Service Club of Southern California, 

1988), pp. 140–41. For this, Fujimura was awarded the Silver Star. 98 Reports of General MacArthur, 1: 461, 464–65. ATIS History says his surrender was “negotiated entirely by ATIS personnel” (p. 37). H. W. Blakeley, 32d Infantry Division in World War 

II (Madison, Wis.: Thirty-Second Infantry Division History Commission, [1955]), pp. 266–75; 

William H. Gill, Always a Commander: The Reminiscences of Major General William H. Gill

(Colorado Springs: Colorado College, 1974), pp. 98–104; Robert L. Eichelberger, Our Jungle Road 

to Tokyo (New York: Viking, 1950), pp. 255–58. 99 Walter Krueger, From Down Under to Nippon (Washington, D.C.: Combat Forces Press, 

1953), pp. 325–28.
MIS NISEI AND THE SURRENDER OF JAPAN 413

camps. In New Guinea, Lt. Gen. Hatazo Adachi surrendered on 13 September. 

On Morotai, Japanese soldiers surrendered to the African American 93d Infantry Division with help from the division’s Nisei team. When Australian General 

Sir Thomas Blamey held the Borneo surrender ceremony on 9 September, the 

final count included 36,700 military and 5,000 civilians. In the former Portuguese 

colony of Timor, Nisei Paul T. Bannai helped with surrender at Koepang on 11 

September. The largest surrender ceremony in the region was held in Rabaul on 

6 September on the British aircraft carrier HMS Glory. When Australian troops 

landed at Rabaul several days later, they found 80,000 Japanese military personnel 

and 21,000 civilians, far more than previously estimated.100

The end of the war in the Pacific was the culmination of three years of active 

service for the MIS Nisei, during which they had developed specialized combat 

intelligence skills and served in numerous campaigns from Burma to the Pacific 

Islands. With the Japanese surrender came challenges that called for their language and cultural skills in new and unexpected ways.

100 Interv, author with Bannai, 11 Sep 96; ch. 23, “After the Ceasefire,” in Australia in the War 

of 1939–1945, ser. 1, vol. 5, The Final Campaigns, ed. Gavin Long (Canberra: Australian War 

Memorial, 1963), Sources disagree on some surrender ceremony dates. See Reports of General 

MacArthur, 1: plate 133.

12

MIS Nisei and the 

Early Occupation of Japan,

September 1945–February 1946

American troops entered Japan with apprehension, unsure how they would be 

received by their former enemies. On the other side, the Japanese people feared the 

American soldiers. The worst fears on both sides soon evaporated; the Japanese 

people cooperated with the American occupiers to restore their country, its economy, and society. “Whatever the causes of this cooperativeness,” writes American 

historian Edwin O. Reischauer, later ambassador to Japan, “there can be no denying that it was the single most important factor in the history of the occupation, 

accounting in large part for the degree of success we had in Japan.” 1

The MIS Nisei were an important factor in achieving this unprecedented 

cooperation between once bitter enemies. From the first landings, Nisei served as 

liaisons between military government officers and Japanese officials. They helped 

dismantle the instruments of Japanese military power and repatriate millions of 

Japanese servicemen from overseas. They helped censor civil communications 

and assisted with war crimes investigations and trials. They worked in an astonishing variety of roles to guarantee a peaceful and ultimately successful occupation during which former enemies became close allies. The work of the Nisei in 

the initial months of the occupation laid the foundation for all that was to follow.

1 Cited in D. Clayton James, The Years of MacArthur, 3 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970–

1985), 3: 8.
416 NISEI LINGUISTS

Fort Snelling

The occupation demanded linguists just as urgently as had combat operations, perhaps even more so. The principal source was the Military Intelligence 

Service Language School (MISLS) at Fort Snelling, Minnesota. When the war 

ended, the school had 160 instructors and more than 1,800 students in training 

for the impending invasion. At Fort Snelling, the initial reaction to the war’s end 

was similar to that of Americans everywhere: shock and relief. At first the atomic 

bombings left instructors and students feeling numb as they anxiously listened to 

radio broadcasts. Then on Friday, 9 August, came news that Japan had accepted 

the Potsdam Declaration. The following Sunday the school held baccalaureate 

services followed by a picnic and outdoor dance. On the evening of 14 August 

came President Harry S. Truman’s announcement that the Japanese had surrendered. The students were jubilant; one quipped, “Hurray! The bastards quit! We 

go home!” Shigeya Kihara recalled that the older Nisei reacted more somberly, 

“saddened by our ambivalent background.” Students were confined to post for the 

remainder of the day to prevent any “incidents.” That night the beer flowed freely 

and more than a few students ended up in the guardhouse. That same evening the 

St. Paul radio station recorded a five-minute interview with two Nisei veterans 

from the school, T.Sgt. Kazuhiko Yamada and T.Sgt. Kaoru Nishida, for nationwide broadcast over the NBC network. Colonel Rasmussen cancelled classes for 

15 August and ordered a memorial service in the field house followed by a battalion parade attended by hundreds of civilians from Minneapolis–St. Paul. Students 

were given 24-hour local passes. Classes resumed on Friday, 17 August.2

On Saturday, 18 August, the school held its largest commencement ever, with 

552 graduates. The guest speaker, Maj. Gen. Clayton Bissell, the War Department 

G–2, praised the work of previous graduates. Their job was just beginning, he told 

them, because many combat-experienced Nisei would be returning home. “We 

must have replacements so the men that have been over there two and three years 

and who have the necessary 85 points can come back.” 3 The school published 

orders for more than 700 Nisei, including recent graduates and holdovers from 

earlier classes awaiting assignment. Maj. John F. Aiso, director of academic training, led more than 500 by train to Los Angeles, where they boarded transport ships 

and proceeded on a twenty-day voyage to Manila, during which the surrender 

ceremony on the USS Missouri took place.4

2 Yaban Gogai, Aug 45; Tamotsu Shibutani, The Derelicts of Company K: A Sociological Study 

of Demoralization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), p. 221 (student quote); Kihara 

quote from Joseph D. Harrington, Yankee Samurai: The Secret Role of Nisei in America’s Pacific 

Victory (Detroit: Pettigrew Enterprises, 1979), p. 351. 3 Pacific Citizen, 1 Sep 45; Yaban Gogai, Sep–Oct 45, p. 2; Shibutani, Derelicts of Company K, 

pp. 260–61. Shibutani gives Bissell the pseudonym Jonathan Wilson. 4 Kaoru Inouye, Biography, Military Intelligence Service Club of Northern California, p. 5 (this 

and similar biographies hereafter cited as MISNorCal Bios).
MIS NISEI AND THE EARLY OCCUPATION OF JAPAN 417

Aiso took a brief leave of absence in Southern California and returned to 

Minnesota for some of the most trying months in the school’s history. “For most 

army organizations,” stated a school official a few weeks later, “VJ-Day meant the 

beginning of curtailment of activities and a slackening to a peacetime tempo. For 

the Military Intelligence Service Language School, it spelled just the opposite—

heavier loads and a faster gait.” 5 Graduations rushed by one after the other. On 1 

September, before classes had been scheduled to finish, 134 students were assigned 

to civil censorship. On 29 September another 155 Nisei enlisted men graduated 

with 111 Caucasian officers and officer candidates. New students poured in, over 

400 each month until December. In the first seven months after the surrender, the 

school took in 1,875 new students. By 15 October student enrollment peaked at 

1,936. In November and December alone the school shipped 1,097 enlisted graduates to Japan. Regular classes no longer received the full nine-month course but 

graduated after six. One regular course began on 30 July with 253 students; it was 

hurried through in three months, with most students graduating on 26 October. 

“Speed up” sections received four months’ training at most. A special oral course 

began on 30 July with 307 students; 285 graduated on 17 November. A special 

officer candidate class began on 27 August with 184 Caucasian students. Many 

students were discharged before graduation, resulting in a 50 percent attrition rate; 

only 91 graduated on 15 December.

General Bissell took a personal interest in keeping the language school in 

operation, and he knew that skilled instructors would be needed more than ever. 

On 29 September he returned to address another graduation and praised the 

enlisted instructors:

Theirs was pure hard work. They took it and carried it through—I’m proud of them. Many 

of them would have looked forward to travel, see action, but they remained. I’m asking 

that they keep their shoulder to the wheel a little longer. If the 3,700 linguists now overseas 

are to come back, someone has to replace them. That means more work for the instructors. 

They are the heart and soul of this school—their job is not yet done.6

The faculty was indeed the heart and soul of the school. The staff revamped 

the curriculum by dropping military topics in favor of general language usage, 

speaking skills, civil affairs, Japanese government, and administration. The school 

continued to publish its mimeographed newsletter, Yaban Gogai, through the end 

of the year to keep in touch with its far-flung graduates, who in turn submitted 

scores of letters from the field. The special Chinese-language classes continued 

in support of the occupation forces in China, and in October the school began a 

Korean-language class with eight students under a Korean American officer, Lt. 

Calvin Kim.

5 War Department (WD) Press Release, 22 Oct 45. 6 Yaban Gogai, Sep–Oct 45.
418 NISEI LINGUISTS

Most of all, the instructors held the school together during a period of great 

strain. The rapid demobilization threw the entire War Department into turmoil. 

Disgruntled soldiers around the globe became the subject of congressional and 

press attention. For Americans of Japanese ancestry, the strains were even greater. 

Families on the mainland were reemerging from the internment camps and picking up the pieces of their lives. In some cases they were met with prejudice and 

harassment by white neighbors who were not pleased at their return. In Europe, 

the 442d Regimental Combat Team (RCT) remained in northern Italy guarding 

German prisoners of war until the spring of 1946. Some high-point men returned 

home, and a few came to MISLS for retraining.

The school continued to absorb hundreds of Nisei selectees from training centers. At Fort Meade, Maryland, more than a thousand Nisei replacements waited 

for assignment to Europe. Recruiters from the school visited in June and August 

and selected 850 for language training. In September recruiters visited fifteen 

other Army posts and selected another 600 Nisei. In July, August, and September 

the Army headquarters in Hawaii shipped 800 Nisei to the mainland for basic 

training and language training.7

The school instructors and cadre redoubled their efforts to keep the new students in line now that the war had ended. Robert T. Matsushita, nineteen, was 

enlisted from Hawaii that July, attended basic training, and arrived at Fort Snelling in November:

Boy! Our company commander was a 100th Battalion man. Oh, he was strict! Very 

strict! He was from Hawaii also. He wanted us to really shape up and be a good soldier. 

I remember he was strict with us. Without that, I’d never be a good soldier. . . . [Capt. 

Kiyoshi Kuramoto] was from Honolulu. Some of the boys seemed to dislike him because 

he was very serious about haircuts. We used to have those long . . . sideburns. He didn’t 

like them. If we had sideburns, there’s no weekend passes for you. Quite a few of our 

boys didn’t get weekend passes because they kept their sideburns long. He wanted all 

crew top, real GI haircut.8

The Nisei from Fort Meade with lower language aptitude were grouped in 

Company K in the temporary wooden huts of the “Turkey Farm.” Disobedience 

and violence became common, to the despair of the instructors and staff. At one 

point Aiso assembled the company and threatened to withhold their weekend 

passes: “I am not at all pleased with your conduct. There have been too many derelictions in this division. . . .You have a job to do; I expect you to do it. I hold all 

7 MISLS, “Training History of the Military Intelligence Service Language School,” ann. 10, 

Personnel Procurement Office, Unpubl Ms, 1946, U.S. Army Center of Military History (CMH), 

and Gen Records, 1943–1945, Military Intelligence [Service] Language School, Fort Snelling, 

Minn., Records of the Army Staff, Record Group (RG) 319, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). 8

 Interv, Dawn Duensing with Robert Matsushita, in Americanism: A Matter of Mind and 

Heart, vol. 1, The Military Intelligence Service (Maui, Hawaii: Maui’s Sons and Daughters of the 

Nisei Veterans, 2001).
MIS NISEI AND THE EARLY OCCUPATION OF JAPAN 419

the officers and noncommissioned officers under me strictly responsible for your 

conduct.” His speech had little impact on the disgruntled students. According to 

one, after this incident, Aiso “came to symbolize all the pettiness and anything 

else obnoxious that took place.” The anger, bitterness, and occasional brawls continued.9

 One student in the company later wrote:

Company K was blamed for virtually all the violence that broke out at Fort Snelling in 

the autumn of 1945. Actually, fewer than a half dozen members of the unit were involved. 

As a general atmosphere of gloom and futility settled over the company, a small band of 

disgruntled Hawaiians was able to give vent to its pent-up hostility—first within the company and later against outsiders.10

War Department policy on demobilization shifted repeatedly, which caused 

uncertainty in the ranks. Many European veterans from the 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442d Regimental Combat Team arrived at Fort Snelling for language 

training, only to be discharged. When Bissell returned for another graduation on 

15 December, fewer than one in five graduates agreed to remain in service and 

many OCS candidates turned down commissions. Bissell gave them a stern lecture: “While others were dying overseas,” he said, they “had stayed home in comfortable barracks, had the ‘best food when civilians went without,’ and had the 

‘best teachers,’ and a good education.” His words had little effect.11

One school official lamented “the present unsettled conditions of both the faculty and student body”:

Uncertainty as to their future in the Army, as to their further needs as linguists and especially as to the future status of the school have contributed to the general unrest. Due to 

the absence of a clearly defined plan in regard to the future of the school and the kaleidoscopic changes occasioned by the shifts in the Army policy since VJ Day, the training 

section has been forced to revise the program and improvise from day to day. The fast 

dropping requirements for discharge have taken toll of our best and most experienced 

enlisted instructors month after month. This loss has had to be made up by digging deeper 

and deeper down into the barrel. The later replacements have dropped not alone in ability 

but in maturity and in the conviction that this job is essential. Ill-trained and poorly oriented instructors have not the quality of leadership and stability so necessary in training 

these new recruits. These constant changes in the curricula and in instructors have further 

undermined the morale of the students already shaken by the general letup after the cessation of hostilities.12

9

 Shibutani, Derelicts of Company K, pp. 269–70. Shibutani gives Aiso the pseudonym Robert 

Kawashita. Shibutani took detailed field notes during his military service, which became the basis 

for this book. 10 Ibid., p. 284. For another view on Company K, see Interv, author with Susumu Toyoda, 12 

Sep 96. Toyoda was school battalion adjutant in 1945. 11 Shibutani, Derelicts of Company K, pp. 323–24. On demobilization and soldier morale after 

V-J Day, see John C. Sparrow, History of Personnel Demobilization in the United States Army

(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1952). 12 “Training History,” ann. 1, Academic Training, para. 3–b–3, p. 3.
420 NISEI LINGUISTS

Poor morale was exacerbated by the departure of longtime administrators. The 

director of personnel procurement, Maj. Paul Rusch, left for Japan with two other 

officers who had been repatriated in 1942.13 In October Col. Kai E. Rasmussen took 

extended leave to visit Germany and his native land, Denmark, where his parents 

still lived. A few months later he was named military attaché to Oslo, Norway.14

Major Aiso requested release from active duty but instead received orders 

for Japan. He stepped down as director of academic training on 1 October and 

handed over the position to one of the senior instructors, Tsutomu Paul Tekawa. 

In his farewell letter to the students, Aiso praised Rasmussen and the instructors, 

but warned of “an indication of slacking on the part of some students now that the 

war is over.” He admonished them that “what may result, can nullify all that the 

former graduates have accomplished in the past four years.”15 In November he 

wrote to the school’s graduates overseas that the faculty was “battling the spirit of 

disintegration that demobilization in general has contagiously spread[;] they are 

still holding the line making strategic retrograde movements to meet the new post 

V-J Day students and conditions.”16

Over the winter and spring of 1945–1946 the War Department considered 

what to do with the school. Fort Snelling was scheduled for closure, so the school 

needed to find a new home. The War Department offered it to General Douglas 

MacArthur’s headquarters in Tokyo, but a restriction on overseas tour lengths 

meant that students could not attend language training and then complete a full 

tour. In the spring of 1946 Rasmussen learned that the Presidio of Monterey, California, was vacant and scheduled for closure. Knowing that many of the students 

and instructors were from the West Coast, Rasmussen made a bid for the post: it 

was taken off the closure list. The school held one final graduation in May 1946 

and moved to Monterey.

Another sign of change at the school was the presence of women soldiers in 

the classrooms. Forty-six students from the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) started 

a six-month oral proficiency course in May 1945. Most were Nisei, but the group 

included several Caucasians and Chinese Americans and was commanded by a 

Caucasian officer, Capt. Marian E. Nestor. Forty-one graduated in November; 

half went to Camp Ritchie, Maryland, to work at the Pacific Military Intelligence 

Research Section, where they were housed at the “presidential retreat” in the Catoctin Mountains. Some of these were later transferred to Fort Holabird, Maryland, 

13 Yaban Gogai, Sep–Oct 45. See also Rusch’s mimeographed letters from Tokyo in Paul Rusch 

File, Joseph D. Harrington Papers, National Japanese American Historical Society (NJAHS), San 

Francisco, Calif. 14 Yaban Gogai, Sep–Oct 45. 15 Ibid., Nov 45. 16 Ibid., Dec 45. John F. Aiso, “Observations of a California Nisei,” Interv by Marc Landy, 

University of California at Los Angeles, 1971. His transfer was delayed when a predeployment 

medical examination disclosed a double hernia that had to be repaired before overseas deployment. 

He departed for Japan in January 1946.
MIS NISEI AND THE EARLY OCCUPATION OF JAPAN 421

for more translation duty.17 Three remained at Fort Snelling as instructors, “much 

to the delight of the EMS [enlisted men],” according to the school album.18

Thirteen women selected for occupation duty flew to Tokyo on 23 January 

1946. This group included 11 Nisei, 1 Caucasian, and 1 Chinese American. They 

were surprised to learn that MacArthur’s headquarters had not been notified of 

their arrival. They also learned that the War Department had just announced that 

all WACs would be returned from overseas as soon as possible. The director of the 

Women’s Army Corps had ordered all WACs removed from the Pacific Theater 

by 1 January 1946. Of the 5,000 women who had served in the Southwest Pacific 

Area during the war, only 200 were allowed into Japan as War Department civilians. As a consequence, the thirteen language school graduates were invited to 

17 Among the Nisei WACs assigned to PACMIRS was Tamie Tsuchiyama. Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, 

The Politics of Field Work: Research in an American Concentration Camp (Tucson: University of 

Arizona Press, 1999), pp. 153–55. 18 MISLS Album (Minneapolis: Military Intelligence Service Language School, 1946), p. 91.

The first women MISLS graduates to deploy overseas, January 1946. Among 

them were eleven Japanese Americans, a Chinese American, and Sgt. Rhoda V. 

Knudten, all from the MISLS Women’s Army Corps detachment. 
422 NISEI LINGUISTS

accept immediate discharges and were offered one-year contracts as War Department civilians. All of them remained in Tokyo as civilian employees.19

The end of the war caused the closure of most other Japanese-language training programs. At the University of Michigan, Prof. Joseph K. Yamagiwa headed a 

program that had trained 975 Caucasian officer candidates since early 1943. When 

the war ended, forty-six Issei and Nisei instructors were teaching 300 students 

to prepare them for the regular course at Fort Snelling. Six other instructors had 

been working since June on a large translation project for the Office of the Provost 

Marshal General, which ended in October. In September Yamagiwa reported that 

the end of the war had “unsettled the morale of a small section of the student body 

and necessitated a stiffening of standards to separate those who are weak either in 

their schoolwork or in their conviction that the work must be carried on.” 20 In one 

incident a group of students staged an “apparently innocent college prank” and 

“managed to raise a Japanese flag on the campus flag pole in such a way that it 

could not be lowered.” Shortly afterward they published an anonymous manifesto 

explaining “that the flag-raising was undertaken . . . in order to call attention to the 

restrictions placed on them, . . . and including a long list of complaints,” most of 

which “were laid at the feet of the ‘incompetent’ officers and noncommissioned 

officers who were in charge of the daily routines.” 21 Yamagiwa left in November to join the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey; the War Department terminated 

the Michigan program on 22 December with one class only halfway through the 

course. The last two classes hastily wrapped up their courses and, bypassing the 

usual eight-week basic training, were sent directly to Fort Snelling to begin the 

MISLS course in mid-January.22

The Navy School of Oriental Languages at the University of Colorado continued its programs at Boulder, which by now included instruction in Chinese and 

Russian as well as Japanese. A new branch had opened in June 1945 with 700 students at Oklahoma A&M College in Stillwater, Oklahoma, under Navy Capt. John 

H. Morrill and Dr. James H. McAlpine, a former missionary and senior instructor 

19 Mattie E. Treadwell, The Women’s Army Corps, U.S. Army in World War II (Washington, 

D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1954), pp. 456–60; Brenda L. Moore, Serving Our 

Country: Japanese American Women in the Military during World War II (New Brunswick, N.J.: 

Rutgers University Press, 2003), pp. 124–31; Yaye (Furutani) Herman, in Unsung Heroes: The 

Military Intelligence Service, Past-Present-Future (Seattle: MIS-Northwest Association, 1996), 

pp. 5–8; Kenji Murase, “More Than Mannequins: Nisei Women in the WACs,” Nikkei Heritage

(Winter 2003): 10–11; Photo in Pacific Citizen, 26 Jan 46. 20 “Training History,” ann. 3, The Army Japanese Language School: A Preliminary Report. 21 Edward E. Jones and Harold B. Gerard, Foundations of Social Psychology (New York: John 

Wiley & Sons, 1967), pp. 8–12. Jones was among the pranksters. 22 Joseph K. Yamagiwa, “The Japanese Language Programs at the University of Michigan during World War II,” ch. 2, Unpubl Ms, 1946, Ann Arbor, Mich.; “Training History,” ann. 9, Personnel Office.
MIS NISEI AND THE EARLY OCCUPATION OF JAPAN 423

at Boulder. The school closed on 30 June 1946. Between the two locations the 

school had 240 faculty members. Both branches closed in the summer of 1946.23

Other Japanese-language training programs continued for a time; but on 

21 August 1945, the War Department abruptly closed all Civil Affairs Training 

Schools except the one at the University of Virginia. All 678 remaining students 

were slated for Japan following their brief language instruction.24 The Marine 

Corps’ Japanese-language school at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, closed in 

December 1945.

The Canadian Army Japanese Language School (S–20) had about fifty students (Nisei and Caucasians combined) in training in Vancouver when the war 

ended. On the day of the surrender the students gathered in the assembly hall to 

hear a radio address by British Prime Minister Clement Attlee. One Canadian 

Nisei later recalled:

There was no jubilation, no shouting, no expressions of joy; the Nisei had mixed feelings. 

There was relief that the war was over, but with millions of others, they shared feelings 

of horror and revulsion, a sharper understanding of the utter obscenity of war. One atom 

bomb could indiscriminately kill thousands of men, women, and children. It was no longer war in the accepted sense; it was the slaughter and destruction of a nation. Nonetheless, the S–20 students were disappointed that they had come so far but were denied actual 

service on the battlefield. They had no glowing military service record to display in their 

quest to be called Canadians. Perhaps it was enough that they had volunteered for service, 

the ultimate test of citizenship and loyalty.25

The school held a brief ceremony, which “concluded with the national anthem 

and three cheers for the king.” The students were dismissed, and “most Nisei 

headed quietly for dinner in Chinatown.” 26 A few graduates were shipped to the 

Southeast Asia Command, others to the Pacific Military Intelligence Research 

Section (PACMIRS) in Maryland. In November 1945 the school relocated to 

Ambleside Camp in West Vancouver. Another class graduated in March 1946 with 

ten Caucasians and four Nisei and the final class in June 1946 with twenty-eight 

Nisei. Shortly before the students completed their final examinations, the government announced there would be no further overseas postings; the remaining students were granted discharges. In all, the school graduated forty-eight Canadian 

Nisei. A Canadian Army report concluded, “there is no doubt that they would have 

23 Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, “School of Oriental Languages,” Unpubl Ms, Naval 

Historical Center, Washington, D.C.; Pauline S. McAlpine, Diary of a Missionary (Decatur, Ga.: 

Presbyterian Church in America, 1986). Morrill had escaped from Corregidor in 1942. John H. 

Morrill and Pete Martin, South from Corregidor (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1943). 24 Army and Navy Register (25 August 1945): 1. 25 Roy Ito, We Went to War: The Story of the Japanese Canadians Who Served during the First 

and Second World Wars (Stittsville, Ontario: Canada’s Wings, 1984), p. 224. 26 Ibid.
424 NISEI LINGUISTS

made a valuable contribution to the Allied land war effort against Japan had larger 

numbers of them been enlisted sooner.” 27

In the continental United States, by August 1945 hundreds of MISLS graduates were serving at various locations. Camps for Japanese prisoners were scattered around the country. Some Nisei soldiers, often those who did not perform 

well in language training, were assigned to the military police units guarding the 

camps.28 In September the Civil Affairs Staging Area in Monterey hastily closed 

and its students and staff were deployed or discharged. The handful of Nisei language instructors was reassigned.

At Vint Hill Farms in rural Virginia, more than sixty Nisei worked for the 

Signal Security Agency. By the spring of 1945 the Military Intelligence Division was already consolidating all signals intelligence activities: “Experience has 

demonstrated that most Japanese military traffic now intercepted in the Pacific 

and Far East can be forwarded to Arlington Hall Station, decoded, translated, 

evaluated and disseminated to operational headquarters more quickly than the 

same processes can be performed within any theater.” 29 For several difficult weeks 

in August and September 1945, as Japanese officials negotiated surrender terms, 

the airwaves were alive with Japanese radio traffic. The Nisei at Vint Hill Farms 

helped translate these intercepts in support of Arlington Hall. “As Japan’s legions 

stacked their arms in surrender,” writes historian Edward Drea, “the former great 

stream of military radio communications declined to a trickle, mainly directing 

units to burn codebooks and cryptanalytic paraphernalia.” Nevertheless, American code breakers continued to read Japanese diplomatic traffic with its embassies 

and consulates for some time after the surrender. Some Vint Hill Farms Nisei were 

discharged in November and December; the last left in February 1946.30 When 

the war ended, another twenty-five Nisei were attending voice intercept training 

at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey; but they returned to Fort Snelling, and most were 

sent to Japan.31

27 Ibid., p. 278. 28 Yaban Gogai, Aug 45. 29 Memo, MID for Chief of Staff, sub: Centralized Control of Signal Intelligence Activities for 

War against the Japanese, 1 Jun 45 (SRH–169), in U.S. Army Signals Intelligence in World War II: 

A Documentary History, ed. James L. Gilbert and John P. Finnegan, U.S. Army in World War II

(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1993), p. 219. 30 Edward J. Drea, MacArthur’s Ultra: Codebreaking and the War against Japan, 1942–1945

(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992), p. 225; Richard B. Frank, Downfall: The End of the 

Imperial Japanese Empire (New York: Random House, 1999), pp. 221–51, 326–30; Ronald Lewin, 

The American Magic: Codes, Ciphers and the Defeat of Japan (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 

1982), pp. 290–91; Ted T. Tsukiyama et al., eds., Secret Valor: M.I.S. Personnel, World War II

Pacific Theater, Pre–Pearl Harbor to Sept. 8, 1951 (Honolulu: Military Intelligence Service Veterans Club of Hawaii, 1993), p. 108; Ltr, Naomitsu Kitsuwa to Joseph Harrington, ca. 1977, Joseph 

D. Harrington Papers, NJAHS. 31 Susumi Hidaka, in “Rocky Mountain MIS Veterans Club Autobiographies,” Unpubl Ms, 

ed. Kent T. Yoritomo, [1989], author’s files (this and similar biographies hereafter cited as Rocky 

Mountain Bios).
MIS NISEI AND THE EARLY OCCUPATION OF JAPAN 425

Immediately after the surrender the Signal Security Agency deployed a Target Intelligence Committee team to Japan. Capt. Clarence S. Yamagata, who had 

worked in Central Bureau since 1942, entered Tokyo with the team on 8 September. But the Japanese cryptographers had covered their tracks very well. Central 

Bureau members visited the Japanese signal corps headquarters, but all codebooks 

and cryptological equipment were gone. They did find several copies of a Japanese 

translation of Herbert O. Yardley’s controversial 1931 book, The American Black 

Chamber, which had revealed that the American government had read Japanese 

diplomatic messages during the Washington Conference in 1921.32

Another forty-five Nisei were working at PACMIRS. Among them were some 

of the best, most experienced Japanese linguists, including Maj. John E. Anderton 

from the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS), Capt. Won-Loy Chan 

from Burma, 1st Lt. Sunao Phil Ishio from ATIS, M.Sgt. George M. Koshi from 

MISLS, 2d Lt. Dye Ogata from the South Pacific, 1st Lt. Toshio G. Tsukahira 

from MISLS, and Lt. Col. Eugene A. Wright from the South Pacific serving as 

deputy chief. By the summer of 1945 PACMIRS was sitting on a mountain of 

Japanese documents. PACMIRS had received about 120,000 original documents, 

but most were useless. Only about 10 percent “were found to contain new or useful 

information. Highly skilled linguists have to be used for the scanning of all documents, both valuable and worthless, [leading to] the waste of man-hours involved 

in dealing with the useless material received.” 33 Some of the documents, including 

some German-language documents pertaining to Japan, came by an indirect route 

from Europe after the German surrender. The translators found the work dull and 

exhausting. Morale declined further after Lt. Col. Sidney F. Gronich, the first 

PACMIRS chief, was reassigned to the European Theater in July and was replaced 

by Col. Sidney P. Marland, the former operations officer of the 43d Infantry Division. Twenty-one Nisei WACs from MISLS were assigned in December.

PACMIRS worked closely with the Washington Document Center. On 29 

August the War Department G–2 and the Office of Naval Intelligence convened 

the Washington Document Conference to coordinate “the handling and exploitation of Japanese documents.” The attendees agreed that an advance echelon should 

be sent to Japan to gather strategic intelligence, especially relating to the Soviet 

Union. The advance echelon of nearly a hundred personnel (including between 

twenty-five and fifty Nisei) left for Tokyo in October; the main body arrived on 

29 November. Full-scale operations began on 4 December with about seventy-five 

32 The Quiet Heroes of the Southwest Pacific Theater: An Oral History of the Men and Women 

of CBB and FRUMEL (Fort Meade, Md.: National Security Agency, 1996), pp. 51–52; Robert C. 

Christopher, “When the Twain Met,” in The Occupation of Japan: The Grass Roots Level, ed. 

William F. Nimmo (Norfolk, Va.: General Douglas MacArthur Foundation, 1992). On Yardley’s 

book and its reception in Japan, see David Kahn, The Codebreakers (New York: Signet, 1973), pp. 

179–81. For similar activities of the Target Intelligence Committee in Europe after the German surrender, see James Bamford, Body of Secrets (New York: Doubleday, 2001), pp. 7–19. 33 After-Action Report, PACMIRS, sub: History and Organization of PACMIRS, Camp Ritchie, 

Maryland, 6 September 1944–14 August 1945, p. 26.
426 NISEI LINGUISTS

Nisei, including some detailed from ATIS. The teams spread out across Japan to 

search for the records of government ministries and other agencies. For example, 

Koshi helped search the underground facilities of the Imperial General Headquarters in Nagano Prefecture. 1st Lt. Arthur M. Kaneko helped recover Imperial 

General Staff studies on Manchuria and the Soviet Far East. In more than four 

months the Washington Document Center team “screened, processed, packed, and 

shipped 419,064 documents from Japan.” 34

Several Nisei who went to Japan with these teams stayed on to work for the 

Tokyo War Crimes prosecution section as civilian interpreters or monitors, including Koshi, a graduate of Denver Law School. Others, such as Kaneko, returned 

to Washington and set about translating Japanese intelligence documents about 

the Soviet Far East. PACMIRS closed in 1946; the Washington Document Center 

was absorbed into the Central Intelligence Group, which later became the Central 

Intelligence Agency.

One year after Japan’s surrender, the War Department had only one remaining 

Japanese-language training program, the Military Intelligence Service Language 

School, in its new home at the Presidio of Monterey. In 1947 the school expanded 

to include more than two dozen languages and was renamed the Army Language 

School.

Nisei Arrive in Japan

The initial landings and formal surrender ceremony were followed by weeks 

of frantic activity as American combat units poured into defeated Japan. Outside 

Tokyo, the 11th Airborne Division landed at Atsugi Airfield followed closely by 

the 27th Infantry Division. The 1st Cavalry Division landed at Yokohama and on 

8 September became the first American unit to enter Tokyo, accompanied by its 

Nisei language team.35 Over the next several weeks ten divisions and six corps 

arrived in Japan. Each division and corps was accompanied by a team of Nisei linguists, who were needed everywhere at once. The commanding general of Eighth 

34 Unsung Heroes, pp. 23–26; General Headquarters, Far East Command, Operations of the 

Allied Translator and Interpreter Section, GHQ, SWPA, Intelligence Series, vol. 5 (Tokyo, Far East 

Command, 1948), p. 72 (hereafter cited as ATIS History); Interv, author with Arthur M. Kaneko, 

25 Aug 95; Y. Kono, MISNorCal Bio; George M. Koshi, “My Experience in Japan with the Occupation Forces,” MISNorCal Bio; Ltr, George M. Koshi to Yutaka Munakata, 9 Nov 45, Harrington 

Papers, NJAHS. In 1949 the CIA transferred 3,450 cubic feet of captured records from the Washington Document Center (WDC) to the National Archives. James W. Morley, “Check List of Seized 

Japanese Records in the National Archives,” Far Eastern Quarterly 9, no. 3 (May 1950). After the 

peace treaty was signed in 1951, the Japanese government sought their return. In 1957–1958, with 

a Ford Foundation grant, the Library of Congress microfilmed 400,000 pages and returned the 

originals to Japan. Various scholars have used these files, such as MISLS graduate George O. Totten III, whose book The Social Democratic Movement in Prewar Japan (New Haven, Conn.: Yale 

University Press, 1966) was based on Home Ministry files.

35 S.Sgt. George Chuman was reported to have been the first MIS Nisei to enter Tokyo. Pacific 

Citizen, 13 Oct 45.
MIS NISEI AND THE EARLY OCCUPATION OF JAPAN 427

Army personally appealed to Maj. Gen. 

Charles A. Willoughby for more Nisei 

“of the type I would want to use personally for confidential discussions,” 

General Robert L. Eichelberger wrote 

his wife. “He had already sent me 16, 

varying from captains to sergeants.” 36

Until the arrival of ATIS from Manila, 

the Nisei remained in short supply:

During the months of October, November, 

and December 1945, the acute need for 

trained linguistic personnel for duty with 

the Occupation Forces in Japan became 

apparent to everyone. Requisitions for large 

numbers of linguists to deal with surrender 

problems throughout the entire Pacific area 

were also received. ATIS was hard-pressed 

to fill the many demands for linguistic 

talent.37

Finding sufficient linguists was 

critical. Unlike the occupation of Germany, in Japan “the language barrier 

alone represented an effective bar to 

administration,” as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP) 

official history put it, because the military government operated through established governmental mechanisms at all levels.38 The widely read study of Japanese 

national character, published by anthropologist Ruth Benedict in the early months 

of the occupation, opened with a strongly worded assertion of this cultural and 

linguistic gap: “The Japanese were the most alien enemy the United States had 

ever fought in an all-out struggle. In no other war with a major foe had it been necessary to take into account such exceedingly different habits of acting and thinking.” 39 Now the U.S. Army needed the Nisei to help govern Japan in peace.

Many Americans who had studied Japanese found it a difficult language. In 

March 1946 the U.S. Education Mission to Japan called for national language 

reform: “The need for a simple and efficient medium of written communication 

36 Jay Luvaas, ed., Dear Miss Em: General Eichelberger’s War in the Pacific, 1942–1945 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1972), p. 301. 37 ATIS History, p. 67. 38 Reports of General MacArthur, 4 vols., U.S. Army in World War II (Washington, D.C.: U.S. 

Army Center of Military History, 1994), vol. 1 supplement, pp. 2, 4. 39 Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture (Boston: 

Houghton Mifflin, 1946), p. 1.

Lt. Charles Tatsuda, Tokyo, 

November 1945. This watercolor by 

Cecil Calvert Beall was printed in 

Collier’s Magazine, 24 November 

1945.
428 NISEI LINGUISTS

is well recognized, and the time for taking this momentous step is perhaps more 

favorable now than it will be for many years to come.”40 A Navy language officer 

with the SCAP Information Section expressed similar frustration and advocated 

reform that would make for more efficient government and reduce illiteracy. The 

Japanese language was so complicated even for the Japanese themselves that “this 

difficulty must have slowed down Japan’s war effort in ways which it is hard for us 

even to begin to imagine.” The Japanese language, he wrote, “hastened the fall of 

Japan by veiling military and technical operations in a linguistic fog.”41 But like 

it or not, Japan could be ruled only using the medium of the Japanese language as 

it existed.

During the war the Nisei occasionally had been considered for a possible role 

in the occupation of Japan. In September 1942, during the debate within the War 

Department on the enlistment of Japanese American volunteers, Edwin O. Reischauer argued:

Such a unit might prove an invaluable asset in lessening the inevitable animosity of the 

Japanese populace for us and our troops. If liberal numbers of Japanese Americans were 

to be among the troops of occupation we may station in Japan or were to be among the 

units which receive the surrender of the Japanese armies, the bitterness of the defeat would 

be alleviated slightly and cooperation with the victor nations would seem more possible 

to the Japanese.42

In November 1943 John Aiso, then the chief instructor at MISLS, described 

some of the policies implemented two years later. However, Nisei were rarely 

invited to help formulate occupation policy and were not trained at the Military 

Government School or the Civil Affairs Training Schools.43 In May 1945 film 

director Orson Welles picked up the theme and suggested that the Nisei were “in 

an enviable position to bring the democratic gospel to the land of their ancestors.” 

Larry Tajiri, editor of the Pacific Citizen, responded that “Nisei Americans are 

far more eager to see democracy work in the Hood River and San Joaquin valleys of the western coast than in acting as missionaries for democracy in Japan.” 

Tajiri conceded that Nisei would “be able to render a valuable service, especially 

40 Herbert Passin, Society and Education in Japan (New York: Columbia University, 1965), p. 

280.41 John Ashmead, Jr., “A Modern Language for Japan,” Atlantic Monthly (January 1947): 

68–72. 42 Takashi Fujitani, “The Reischauer Memo: Mr. Moto, Hirohito, and Japanese American Soldiers,” Critical Asian Studies 33, no. 3 (2001): 379–402 (quote from p. 402). 43 John F. Aiso, “Japan’s Military System Must Be Crushed,” Vital Speeches of the Day (15 

December 1943); Aiso, Speech, 12 Nov 66, printed in Hokubei Mainichi, n.d.; see also Aiso speech, 

1964. Another Nisei may have helped to develop occupation policies: John M. Maki had been an 

instructor at the University of Washington before the war and served with the Office of War Information from 1943 to 1945. After the war he earned a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University and became a scholar of Japanese constitutional law. John M. Maki, Japanese Militarism: 

Its Cause and Cure (New York: Knopf, 1945), and Government and Politics in Japan: The Road to 

Democracy (New York: Praeger, 1962).
MIS NISEI AND THE EARLY OCCUPATION OF JAPAN 429

as linguists.” But he reminded his readers that using them for the occupation 

would require an “extensive project of training Nisei Americans for reconstruction work.”44

Immediately after Japan’s surrender the War Department declared its intent 

to use the Nisei. On 18 August Bissell told hundreds of Nisei graduates at Fort 

Snelling:

The need for language students is even greater now than when you first entered the school 

under war conditions. . . .The Nisei of this school will be absolutely essential to the successful occupation of Japan and to the winning of the peace. Just as the former graduates 

served as the vital connecting link between Allied soldiers and the Japanese in combat, 

the Nisei will serve as the language bridge between the Allied occupation forces and the 

80,000,000 people of Japan.45

Aiso also suggested that Nisei might be well suited for occupation duty: “Perhaps the heartaches caused by the spiritual and material destruction wrought by 

evacuation will better fit us for the tasks of reconstruction by a better understanding of the feelings of the millions of innocent men, women, and children caught 

unmercifully in the ravages of this ‘most-civilized’ holocaust, World War II.”46

Many Nisei were eager to serve in the occupation, but many combat veterans 

opposed the idea. In September several Nisei serving with the 25th Infantry Division on Luzon poured out their frustrations in a letter to the Pacific Citizen: “We 

are sick of people calling us non-combatants. We are also slighted when you refer 

to us as the men to reorganize the New Japan. We have done our bit. Now you do 

yours. We want to get back home to our loved ones just as badly as our Caucasian 

brothers in arms.”47

Regardless of the opinions and feelings of individuals, the occupation needed 

large numbers of linguists. For the first two months after the surrender, hundreds 

of replacements from Fort Snelling continued to arrive in Manila. From June thru 

August 1945, MISLS shipped 1,073 enlisted Nisei to Manila, including one group 

of 536 who arrived in early September on board the AP Kinkaid. That November 

a new table of allowances authorized ATIS to grow to 2,667.

The influx of replacements and discharge of veterans caused constant turmoil 

for ATIS in Manila. “Adding to the difficulties of effective operation in this critical 

period,” according to an ATIS report, “many of the most experienced linguists of 

the Section were removed from ATIS for duty with various GHQ [General Headquarters] staff sections which experienced an immediate demand for on-the-spot 

44 Orson Welles, in New York Post, 18 May 45; Larry Tajiri, “Nisei and Post-War Japan,” Pacific 

Citizen, 26 May 45. 45 Pacific Citizen, 1 Sep 45; Yaban Gogai, Sep–Oct 45, p. 2; Shibutani, Derelicts of Company 

K, pp. 260–61. Shibutani gives Bissell the pseudonym Jonathan Wilson. 46 Yaban Gogai, Dec 45. 47 Ltr to the Editor, Pacific Citizen, 22 Sep 45.
430 NISEI LINGUISTS

translators and interpreters.”48 While they waited for movement to Japan, the Nisei 

continued to translate thousands of pages of captured documents and to interrogate 

Japanese prisoners of war. The replacements needed testing and remedial training. 

In September and October ATIS published translations of thirty-three different 

enemy publications. Adjacent to the racetrack, ATIS set up a small POW holding 

area for special prisoners. One ATIS Nisei, Kaoru Inouye, a thirty-year-old chemist and graduate of the University of California, was one of the replacements who 

arrived in Manila in September. He especially enjoyed 

the opportunity to talk to [these] POW’s, many of whom were high executives/technical 

personnel of Japanese firms operating in PI [the Philippine Islands] and members of the 

Japanese Consular Service besides Army and Navy officers. An interesting discussion 

was held with a Captain of the aircraft carrier used for bombing Pearl Harbor. The discussion disclosed dissension between the Japanese Army and Navy, lack of logistics for 

invasion of Hawaii, miscalculation of war effort of United States, denouncing the use of 

English language, and use of Nisei’s as linguist.49

On 27 September ATIS sent an advance party with Advance Echelon, General 

Headquarters, which arrived in Tokyo on 3 October. GHQ took over the Dai-Ichi

building, former headquarters of the Eastern District Army Command next to the 

imperial palace. The office building included a 735-room hotel; one ATIS Nisei, 

2d Lt. Harvey H. Watanabe, became the de facto manager of the hotel and liaison 

to its Japanese staff. Nearby stood another large office building, headquarters of 

Japan’s major shipping line, Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK). ATIS took over the 

lower three stories for office space and used the upper four for billets and messes. 

Like most of Tokyo’s office buildings, its central heating plant had been removed 

for scrap metal; so the Nisei used temporary oil stoves for the approaching winter. 

The ATIS main body arrived on two transport vessels on 15 and 16 November and 

completed unloading on 1 December. Nearly 2,000 American Nisei set up shop in 

the heart of Tokyo.50

The ATIS Nisei quickly became integral to military government at the working level. General Willoughby, MacArthur’s chief of intelligence and one of the 

most important leaders in the occupation, continued to control ATIS during the 

occupation. ATIS reorganized to reflect its new duties. Australian Maj. John Shelton continued to head the Translation Section. The Nisei shifted from translating 

captured documents to translating civilian materials such as the letters, postcards, 

and telegrams that thousands of Japanese private citizens had sent directly to General MacArthur. In December 1945 Shelton established the Letters Subsection to 

translate these materials. According to a language officer in the section, they “were 

48 Yaban Gogai, Sep–Oct 45, p. 9; ATIS History, pp. 13, 29, 77. 49 Inouye, MISNorCal Bio, pp. 5–6. 50 Harvey H. Watanabe, personal communication to author, 19 May 03; ATIS History, ch. 9, 

Occupation Activities; Grant K. Goodman, America’s Japan: The First Year, 1945–1946 (New 

York: Fordham University Press, 2005).
MIS NISEI AND THE EARLY OCCUPATION OF JAPAN 431

mostly expressions of gratitude for the Allied victory, for the orderly Occupation, 

and for the anticipated future democracy of Japan under MacArthur’s guidance. . . .

A number of letters contained intelligence of various kinds, i.e., information on 

‘war criminals’ and their nefarious activities and/or their whereabouts, data on 

hidden arms caches, reports of ultranationalists political activities which the writers saw as inimical to Japan’s nascent democracy, etc.” 51

Another task for the Translation Section was to prepare a summary of the 

daily press. “Each morning, when General MacArthur arrived at his office on the 

fifth floor of the Dai-Ichi building, on his desk would be a full English translation 

of all editorials and of a wide selection of articles from the Japanese press of the 

previous evening and that same morning. Such a project, as you might well imag51 Grant K. Goodman, “The Grass Roots in Tokyo: A Language Officer Remembers,” in 

Nimmo, ed., Occupation of Japan, p. 148; Goodman, America’s Japan, pp. 52–60; John W. Dower, 

Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: Norton, 1999), pp. 227–29; 

ATIS History, p. 70; Sodei Rinjiro, ed., Dear General MacArthur: Letters from the Japanese during the American Occupation (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001).

The Allied Translator and Interpreter Section occupied the NYK building, shown 

here from across the Imperial Palace moat.
432 NISEI LINGUISTS

ine, entailed around the clock translation and, in those bad old days, mimeographing.” 52 In February 1946, when Maj. Gen. Courtney Whitney and the Government 

Section wrote a new constitution for Japan, ATIS supplied translators.53

Upon arrival in Tokyo, ATIS underwent rapid change. The wartime coordinator, Col. Sidney F. Mashbir, was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal and 

departed for the United States on 8 December: “The war had ended; my small 

share had been contributed,” he recorded in his memoirs. “I had no wish to be 

a gauleiter [Nazi-style “district leader,” or petty dictator] in a conquered country.”54 Over the next two years ATIS was commanded subsequently by five officers, 

beginning with Col. Harry I. T. Creswell, author of a widely used Japanese-English

military dictionary.55 Four other colonels commanded ATIS for brief periods: 

Harold Doud, I. G. Walker, Eric H. F. Svensson, and Archibald W. Stuart. Stuart 

had been assistant commandant of MISLS from 1942 to 1944.56

MacArthur’s headquarters was changing as well. In April 1945 GHQ, Southwest Pacific Area, had become GHQ, U.S. Army Forces Pacific, and now included 

forces previously under U.S. Army Middle Pacific. In August 1945 ATIS dissolved 

its Allied Land, Naval, and Air Force subelements; the remaining American portion was renamed the Translator and Interpreter Service. Twenty-one British, Australian, and New Zealand officer linguists remained, some as War Department 

civilians (such as Shelton, who headed the Translation Section until 1948). On 1 

January 1946, GHQ, U.S. Army Forces Pacific, became GHQ, Far East Command. 

ATIS was officially inactivated as of 30 April 1946, and the organization continued as the Translator and Interpreter Service (TIS), GHQ, Far East Command.

The early months of the occupation were marked by high turnover among 

American personnel in Japan. As soon as units arrived in Japan, they began sending veterans home, starting with those with the highest points. Recent draftees 

arrived to take their places. At the end of December, Sixth Army was relieved of 

occupation duties in the southern half of Japan and Eighth Army took over military government for the entire country. (Map 16) American troop strength peaked 

in January 1946 at 240,000 before declining sharply. This drawdown affected the 

Nisei as well. At first they were declared to be critical personnel. Then in mid52 Goodman, “Grass Roots in Tokyo,” p. 148. 53 Min Hara, in John Aiso and the M.I.S.: Japanese-American Soldiers in the Military Intelligence Service, World War II, ed. Tad Ichinokuchi (Los Angeles: Military Intelligence Service 

Club of Southern California, 1988), p. 75, reprinted in Only What We Could Carry: The Japanese 

American Internment Experience (Berkeley, Calif.: Heyday Books, 2000), p. 362; James, Years of 

MacArthur, 3: 119–39; Dower, Embracing Defeat, p. 380. 54 Sidney F. Mashbir, I Was an American Spy (New York: Vantage, 1953), p. 347. Five other 

Caucasian officers on the ATIS staff, but no Nisei, received the Legion of Merit. ATIS History, 

app. 12. 55 Harry I. T. Creswell et al., A Dictionary of Military Terms, English-Japanese, Japanese-English (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942). 56 Eric H. F. Svensson later wrote a dissertation about the occupation, “The Military Occupation of Japan: The First Years Planning, Policy Formulation, and Reforms,” Ph.D. Diss., University 

of Denver, 1966.
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OCCUPIED JAPAN

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Miles
434 NISEI LINGUISTS

October 1945 this was reversed. Some Nisei were offered three-month furloughs 

to reenlist; others were awarded commissions, while still others were discharged 

in Japan and accepted civil service positions. ATIS personnel strength peaked at 

250 officers and 1,700 enlisted personnel; these numbers declined sharply in the 

months that followed. By the spring of 1946 the authorized strength for ATIS was 

reduced to 809, almost two-thirds of which was now in civilian positions (301 

military, 508 civilian).57

The Nisei were anxious to return home. Many had families still in the internment camps. The War Relocation Authority was intent upon closing all camps by 

December 1945 except for Tule Lake, which remained open a few months longer. 

Many Nisei wanted to help their parents return home to the West Coast or resettle 

elsewhere after three years behind barbed wire.

Most Nisei were curious about Japan, just as most Japanese were curious 

about the Nisei. During the war rumors had been widespread in Japan that all 

Japanese living in America had been killed. The Nisei dispelled these rumors and 

thereby helped allay Japanese fears that the Americans would kill their men and 

rape their women. Most Nisei discovered that the Japanese people were friendly 

toward them. One reported: “GI’s are popular wherever they go. Especially those 

who can speak Japanese. Whenever they stop to talk with a Japanese civilian on 

the street, passersby gather around, and in no time, 30 or 40 form a tight circle 

around the conversationalists, bending an intent and pleased ear.” 58

Other Nisei reported that some Japanese looked down on the American Nisei. 

Major Aiso reported that the Nisei “were coolly received at first,” but “were gradually being received more cordially by the Japanese people.” He remained concerned about moral lapses among the occupation troops, and especially the Nisei. 

“It was most unfortunate that a few Nisei were abusing their positions as occupation personnel and had marred the good name of the Nisei by committing unlawful and disagreeable acts against the Japanese people.” Historian John Curtis 

Perry concluded that “the level of expectation for nisei was extremely high, indeed 

impossible to achieve. Japanese expected nisei to be sensitive to the nuances of 

their ancestral culture. Because they looked Japanese, . . . they were expected to 

behave accordingly. Naturally they did not, and they were resented for it. That 

the nisei were privileged to be among the victors seemed especially galling to the 

Japanese.” 59

Most Nisei had never seen Japan before, so the occupation gave them a chance 

to visit their ancestral land.60 For Kibei, who had lived in Japan before the war, it 

57 For an unflattering firsthand portrait of the early days of Nisei replacements that arrived at 

Camp Zama in January 1946, see Shibutani, Derelicts of Company K, pp. 364–410. 58 “People in Japan Show Friendly Attitude toward Nisei GIs,” Pacific Citizen, 12 Jan 46. 59 Kiyoshi Yano, “Participating in the Main Stream of American Life,” in Ichinokuchi, John 

Aiso and the M.I.S., pp. 24, 29; John C. Perry, Beneath the Eagle’s Wings: Americans in Occupied 

Japan (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1980), pp. 172–73. 60 For firsthand impressions of Japan by Caucasian language officers in the early occupation, 

see Otis Cary, ed., From a Ruined Empire: Letters—Japan, China, Korea, 1945–46 (San Francisco: 
MIS NISEI AND THE EARLY OCCUPATION OF JAPAN 435

was a chance to rediscover a dramatically changed country. Many Nisei used the 

occupation to search out family and schoolmates, some traveling to the devastated 

city of Hiroshima. Most Japanese emigrants to the United States came from Hiroshima and neighboring Yamaguchi Prefectures.

The first Nisei to visit Hiroshima after the bombing was probably the Hawaiiborn journalist Leslie Nakashima, who had spent the war years in Japan. Before 

the war he had worked for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and had been a member of 

the territorial legislature. When war broke out he had been working in Tokyo for 

the United Press. On 22 August 1945, he hastened to Hiroshima to search for his 

mother. A few days later he filed a story, his first with an American newspaper 

Kodansha, 1975); John Ashmead, “The Japs Look at the Yanks,” Atlantic Monthly (April 1946): 

86–91.

Sgt. J. Kenneth Iwagaki visits his parents in July 1945, shortly after their return to 

San Jose, California, from the Heart Mountain camp.
436 NISEI LINGUISTS

since 1941. “I was dumbfounded at the destruction before me. . . .What had been 

a city of 300,000 had vanished.” He found his mother, who had been weeding a 

relative’s vegetable garden on the outskirts of the city on the day of the bombing. 

When she saw the flash, she threw herself face down on the ground and heard “a 

terrific explosion.” She arose to see tall columns of white smoke rising “from all 

parts of the city, high into the sky.” She ran home, “because she didn’t know what 

would happen next.” 61

On 9 September 2d Lt. Thomas Sakamoto escorted a group of American correspondents to Hiroshima, where they visited the Red Cross hospital. “Even after 

fifty years, I find it very difficult to fully describe my feelings and emotions of that 

day. . . . Lying in every available space were not combat soldiers, but defenseless 

women, children and elderly Japanese. . . . As a Japanese American, I was really 

shaken up—to think that these defenseless people were subjected to that kind of 

cruelty by one bomb, transforming their lives, body, and totally disfiguring their 

faces[,] was hard to take.” 62

On 2 October 2d Lt. Harry Fukuhara went on pass to Hiroshima to look for 

his family. He found their home, its windows shattered and glass shards imbedded 

in the walls inside. He found his mother and sister safe, but his older brother had 

been on the way to work when the bomb struck and was to die of acute radiation 

sickness within the year.63

Capt. Ralph Yempuku was eligible for a discharge but reenlisted for the Counter Intelligence Corps so he could search for his family:

First chance I got, I headed for Hiroshima. I didn’t know the country. All I knew was 

that my parents lived on a tiny island called Atatashima near Hiroshima City. The train 

official had never heard of the place. When I got to Hiroshima City, I was shocked—there 

was nothing there but devastation. The whole city was wiped out. I thought my parents 

really must be dead. I left Hiroshima City thinking that.

But later, I decided to try again. This time, I went further into Hiroshima. I asked 

people along the way and finally found a man who said he could take me out to Atatashima 

in his skiff.

Night had fallen when I got to Atatashima. When my mother answered my knock, 

she didn’t know who I was until I said “Okasan” [mother]. My father almost had another 

61 “Nisei Reporter Says Atomic Bomb Wiped Out Hiroshima,” Pacific Citizen, 1 Sep 45. During 

the war Nakashima worked at Radio Tokyo for Do ̄mei. In early September he identified the California-born Nisei Iva Ikuko Toguri d’Aquino to American correspondents as Tokyo Rose. Clifford 

Uyeda, “Also Born on the Fourth of July: The Story of ‘Tokyo Rose,’” Nikkei Heritage (Summer 

1994): 4–8, 14–16. 62 Quote from Thomas Sakamoto, “News of the Century: Japan’s Surrender & Hiroshima, September 1945,” Nikkei Heritage 7, no. 3 (Fall 1995); Interv, author with Thomas Sakamoto, 16 Nov 

87; The Saga of the MIS, videotaped presentation, Los Angeles, 11 Mar 89. 63 Harry Fukuhara, MISNorCal Bio; Harry Fukuhara, “The Return,” Nikkei Heritage (Fall 

1995): 12–13; Harry Fukuhara, “My Story, 50 Years Later,” Nikkei Heritage (Winter 2003): 12–13; 

“For Family Living in Japan: Brothers Split by War and Circumstance,” San Francisco Chronicle, 

5 Aug 95.
MIS NISEI AND THE EARLY OCCUPATION OF JAPAN 437

stroke. They were convinced that I had died because of all the weird propaganda that they 

had heard about the slaughter of the nisei.64

Frank Tokubo found his parents and five brothers alive near Hiroshima. He 

learned that his family had been ostracized because the whole community knew 

that one of their sons was serving in the U.S. Army. To counter this shame, one of 

his younger brothers had volunteered for the Tokko-tai, or kamikaze corps; however, he had not gone on a mission before the war had ended.65

Lt. Steve Shizuma Yamamoto landed in September with Sixth Army and 

helped set up its headquarters in the ancient capital of Kyoto. In December he 

rode the train to Hiroshima to look for his father and stepmother. “Early in the 

morning I got off at the local station out in the country. I was in uniform and had 

a duffle bag with me.” A young man loaned him a bicycle so he wouldn’t have to 

carry his bag.

I went along the road toward the homestead. In the distance I see the womenfolks sweeping in their front yards, and as I approached closer everybody disappears. When I got to 

my dad’s homestead, nobody comes out. I holler, ‘Ohayo ̄!’ [Good morning!]. Nobody 

comes out. So I waited. Slowly my aunt opened the shoji [sliding door], peered out, recognized me and said, ‘Oh, Shizuma-san desuka’? [Oh, is it Shizuma?] That was the reaction 

I got when I visited Hiroshima. Everybody was afraid of Americans in uniform.66

In Italy, veterans with the 442d Regimental Combat Team also reenlisted for 

occupation duty. A front-page story in the Pacific Citizen of 20 October 1945 told 

of one such 442d RCT veteran who reenlisted for the “opportunity to search the 

atomic ruins of Hiroshima for his aged mother.” 67

Counter Intelligence Corps, War Crimes Trials, and the Purge

At the very beginning of the occupation the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) 

moved to the forefront, from having small detachments with each combat division 

to becoming a major force in the occupation. In June 1945 the 441st CIC Detachment absorbed the small, individual detachments. It had few Nisei assigned at that 

time, among them M.Sgt. Arthur S. Komori, personal interpreter for the theater 

CIC chief, Brig. Gen. Elliott Thorpe. In the summer of 1945 the Military Intelligence Training Center at Camp Ritchie, Maryland, organized a special CIC class 

64 Tomi Kaizawa Knaefler, Our House Divided: Seven Japanese American Families in World 

War II (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991), pp. 93–94. Yempuku learned that his four 

brothers all survived the war. 65 Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 226, 353. 66 Interv, David W. Swift, Jr., with Steve Yamamoto, in David W. Swift, Jr., ed., “First Class,” 

Unpubl Ms, Mar 00, copy in author’s files.

67 Masayo Umezawa Duus, Unlikely Liberators: The Men of the 100th and 442nd (Honolulu: 

University of Hawaii Press, 1987), pp. 230–31; “Nisei GI Will Seek Mother in Hiroshima Ruins,” 

Pacific Citizen, 20 Oct 45.
438 NISEI LINGUISTS

of eighty Nisei who were individual replacements from Fort Meade, Maryland. 

None was an MISLS graduate, but all reportedly had at least fair speaking ability 

in Japanese.68

After the surrender CIC personnel rushed into Japan, their mission to protect 

occupation forces and investigate war crimes. In December the theater CIC headquarters, the 441st CIC Detachment, installed itself in the former headquarters 

building of the Kempeitai, the Japanese military police.69 Thorpe soon became 

known as “the most feared man in Japan.” Once the CIC arrived, Thorpe later 

wrote, “the biggest problem was to spread as thinly as possible the limited number 

of our Japanese-speaking agents.” 70

War crimes investigations called for tact, as the CIC soon learned. On MacArthur’s first day in Tokyo, he gave Thorpe a simple mission: “Thorpe, have your 

people arrest General [Hideki] Tojo and lock him up.” On 11 September CIC 

agents drove to the house where the former prime minister was staying (he had 

stepped down in July 1944). When the general saw the American soldiers, he shot 

himself before they could arrest him. CIC agents learned that it was better to summon individuals using Japanese officials, rather than approaching them directly. 

Tojo recovered to face trial.71

Like the other occupation forces, the CIC was hampered by hasty demobilization. Komori left Japan in November 1945 to return home to Hawaii. At the same 

time several Caucasian language officers, including former members of the school 

staff from Fort Snelling such as Lt. Col. Paul R. Rusch and Col. Archibald W. 

Stuart, transferred to CIC. ATIS assigned more Nisei to CIC, but CIC leaders complained of their weak language proficiency. Mashbir responded that they would 

68 Covert Warfare, vol. 2 (see below), dates this to 1 August, but Joseph Y. Kurata recalls that 

it began in May and graduated in late July. Covert Warfare, 12 vols. (New York: Garland, 1989), 

vols. 2, 11; “Counter Intelligence in Occupied Japan,” in MIS in the War against Japan, ed. Stanley 

L. Falk and Warren M. Tsuneishi (Washington, D.C.: Japanese American Veterans Association, 

1995), pp. 79–83; George S. Ishida, “CIC in Yokohama, 1945 to 1953,” in Tsukiyama et al., Secret 

Valor, pp. 118–19. The Pacific War and Peace: Americans of Japanese Ancestry in Military Intelligence Service, 1941 to 1952 (San Francisco: Military Intelligence Service Association of Northern 

California/National Japanese American Historical Society, 1991), p. 78, refers to about a hundred 

Nisei in training at Camp Ritchie in the spring of 1945. 69 A Brief History of the G–2 Section, GHQ, SWPA and Affiliated Units, Intelligence Series 

(Tokyo: Far East Command, 1948), pp. 117–18; George S. Ishida, in Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor, 

pp. 118–19. 70 Elliott R. Thorpe, East Wind, Rain: An Intimate Account of an Intelligence Officer in the 

Pacific, 1939–49 (Boston: Gambit, 1969), pp. 184, 193. See also Reports of General MacArthur, 

vol. 1 supplement, pp. 231–67; General Headquarters, Far East Command, Operations of the Civil 

Intelligence Section, SCAP, Intelligence Series, vol. 9 (Tokyo: Far East Command, 1948); Duval 

A. Edwards, Spy Catchers of the U.S. Army in the War with Japan (Gig Harbor, Wash.: Red Apple 

Publishing, 1994); William B. Simpson, Special Agent in the Pacific, WWII: Counterintelligence—

Military, Political, and Economic (New York: Rivercross Publishing, 1995), pp. 113–206. Simpson 

was assigned to the 11th Airborne Division as a CIC special agent from August 1945 to April 

1946. 71 Thorpe, East Wind, Rain, p. 184.
MIS NISEI AND THE EARLY OCCUPATION OF JAPAN 439

have to make do with what they had: “Practically all of ATIS old and experienced 

linguists have been returned or are being returned in the very near future to the 

United States under the point system. Linguists now available at ATIS are nearly 

all hastily and incompletely trained and inexperienced personnel just recently 

arrived from the United States.” 72

CIC’s mission soon broadened to include civil intelligence. When Thorpe 

returned to the United States in February 1946, Willoughby brought CIC under 

his own direct control, something he had never been able to do during the war. 

Willoughby thus became more powerful than ever. CIC soon became involved in 

the search for Communists in Japan, including Communist infiltration of repatriates, the Japan Communist Party, and the Soviet spy ring led by Richard Sorge, 

who had been arrested in 1941 and executed in 1944.73

72 Memo, ATIS GHQ ADVON to CIS, 30 Nov 45, G–2, OCCIO, Gen Corresp, 1944–1945, 

091–300.6 (Decimal 200), GHQ, Southwest Pacific Area and U.S. Army Forces Pacific, RG 338, 

NARA. 73 Eiji Takemae, Inside GHQ: The Allied Occupation of Japan and Its Legacy (New York: Continuum, 2002), pp. 161–68; Reports of General MacArthur, vol. 1 supplement, pp. 256–67. See the 

441d CIC Detachment report on the Sorge case from early 1946, in Covert Warfare, vol. 7.

Nisei special agents with the Counter Intelligence Corps, Yokohama, 1946
440 NISEI LINGUISTS

When American forces arrived in Japan, the U.S. government was determined 

to hold Japanese leaders to account for war crimes. As many as seventy Nisei 

were involved in war crimes work, playing critical roles as translators, interpreters, and investigators. Their job was not easy; in the interval between Japan’s surrender and the arrival of American forces, Japanese military and civilian officials 

engaged in the systematic destruction of potentially incriminating records. As a 

result, the prosecution had to build its cases on wartime intelligence and postwar 

interrogations. Fortunately, ATIS had begun focusing on gathering war crimes 

evidence as early as 1943.74

The first major trial was held not in Tokyo, but in Manila for General Tomoyuki 

Yamashita beginning in late October 1945. Six or eight Nisei were assigned as 

interpreters under Navy language officer Lt. Cmdr. Samuel C. Bartlett. Two others 

served on the defense team and fifteen on the prosecution team. Nisei working on 

the trial had the opportunity to meet the defendant, who at one point consented to 

have his photograph taken with them. “I am glad to know you men have fought for 

the country of your birth,” Yamashita told them. “That is the way it should be. You 

are American citizens. Therefore, you should fight for the United States.” 75

American prosecutors in Manila received timely assistance when Richard M. 

Sakakida emerged from the mountains in northern Luzon in September 1945. After 

the fall of Corregidor in 1942, the Corps of Intelligence Police had lost track of the 

Hawaii-born undercover agent. At last they learned that he had been held for six 

months in a POW camp in 1942–1943 and had suffered torture in Bilibid Prison. 

But he had managed to win the confidence of the Japanese, who employed him 

in the staff judge advocate section inside the Japanese Army headquarters from 

March 1943 to the end of the war. He secretly used his position whenever possible 

to help American and Filipino prisoners, who later described how he would slip 

food to them and do other small kindnesses. The Japanese held trials for Filipinos 

accused of being guerillas, but “the trials were highly superficial with only weak 

attempts made to simulate fairness,” Sakakida later wrote, and the Filipinos were 

often sentenced to death. “Occasionally, I was forced to fill in as an interpreter at 

the trials. About all I could do was to tone down some of the replies of those being 

accused so that the Japanese wouldn’t be so harsh on them.” He later described 

how he had passed secrets to Philippine guerrillas and assisted them in other ways 

that would surely have cost his life if discovered.76

74 For example, see ATIS Research Rpt no. 72, “Japanese Violations of the Laws of War,” 29 

Apr 44. 75 Quote from “Honolulu Realty Broker [Tad Tadashi Yajima] Recalls Days as Interpreter at 

Yamashita’s Trial,” Honolulu Advertiser, ca. 1957; “Snelling GIs Take Part in Yamashita Case,” 

Yaban Gogai, Dec 45, p. 1; Ichinokuchi, John Aiso and the M.I.S., pp. 125–27, 142–50; Sueo Ito, 

Rocky Mountain Bio. 76 Quote from Richard Sakakida and Wayne S. Kiyosaki, A Spy in Their Midst: The World War 

II Struggle of a Japanese American Hero (Lanham, Md.: Madison Books, 1995), pp. 151, 152; 

“Mission in Manila—The Sakakida Story,” video, 1994; Ann Bray, “Undercover Nisei,” in Military Intelligence: Its Heroes and Legends (Arlington Hall Station, Va.: U.S. Army Intelligence and 

Security Command, 1987), pp. 29–45.
MIS NISEI AND THE EARLY OCCUPATION OF JAPAN 441

In late 1944, when Yamashita left Manila for northern Luzon, Sakakida accompanied the judge advocate section into the mountains. As the situation deteriorated 

he became separated from his section; in September 1945 he finally was reunited 

with American forces but had suffered from dysentery, malaria, beriberi, and an 

untreated abdominal wound from a mortar fragment. At first the CIC investigators were suspicious because he had worked for the Japanese, but they soon satisfied themselves as to his loyalty. Sergeant Komori, who by then had moved on to 

Tokyo with General Thorpe, vouched for his former colleague. He “felt certain of 

[Sakakida’s] loyalty. I was glad when General Willoughby took my word for it.” 77

The CIC restored Sakakida as a special agent and promoted him to master sergeant. His insider knowledge of Japanese occupation activities in the Philippines 

proved immediately useful to the prosecutors. He testified against a member of 

Yamashita’s staff on 15 November 1945.

Following the Yamashita trial, most Nisei involved in the trial moved to Japan 

for further trials in Tokyo and Yokohama. Trials continued in Manila for lesser 

77 Quote from Interv, Ann Bray with Arthur S. Komori, 1955, pp. 11–12.

T.Sgt. Tadao Ichinokuchi (left) with Yamashita, on trial for war crimes, Manila, 

November 1945. Yamashita was convicted and executed in February 1946.
442 NISEI LINGUISTS

defendants. In all, the United States held 97 trials in the Philippines for 215 Japanese defendants, which resulted in 195 convictions and 92 death sentences. Sakakida remained in Manila for eighteen more months working on war crimes investigations and sometimes found himself investigating Japanese officers with whom 

he had worked during the war. At one point he identified the Kempeitai officers 

responsible for his torture:

Looking frightened and guilty, my former torturers prostrated themselves on the ground 

as if ready to accept any punishment I chose to inflict upon them. But by now I was far 

too removed from the rage I had felt while in their control; the war was over, and I had no 

desire to return to bitter hatred and killing. As soldiers in combat we had all done what 

was required of us. . . . I was ready to let bygones be bygones.78

In January 1946 MacArthur announced the formation of the International 

Military Tribunal for the Far East. Already, on 1 December 1945, ATIS had established war crimes echelons in Tokyo and Manila to support the trials. Dozens of 

Nisei served as translators, interpreters, and investigators. Proceedings began in 

May 1946 against twenty-eight Class A defendants, high military and civilian 

government leaders, in the former Army Ministry building in Tokyo.79 The trials, 

which lasted until 1948, presented unusual challenges. War crimes trials were a 

new experience for the Nisei, who worked with investigators, prosecutors, and 

defense attorneys. Japanese documents captured during the war were translated 

by ATIS Nisei and introduced as evidence. Other evidence came from interrogations of thousands of witnesses and suspects. The trials brought to light some 

of the war’s most horrifying events, including abuse of prisoners, forced labor, 

executions, cannibalism, and human experimentation. Several of the most proficient Nisei interpreters, including several enlisted instructors from Fort Snelling, 

served as courtroom monitors. In Tokyo, the courtroom was equipped with the latest technology for simultaneous interpretation, similar to that used at the Nuremberg trials and the United Nations conference in San Francisco. Japanese nationals 

worked as interpreters, while the American Nisei monitored to ensure accuracy. 

The Nisei worked under intense pressure. Controversies could erupt over the correct interpretation of a single word, potentially a life-and-death issue for the defendant. Japanese journalists were present in the courtroom and paid close attention 

to the interpretation. Many Nisei viewed the trials with mixed feelings and like 

many other Americans had doubts about what they considered “victor’s justice.” 

78 Sakakida, A Spy in Their Midst, pp. 186–87. 79 Arnold C. Brackman, The Other Nuremberg: The Untold Story of the Tokyo War Crimes 

Trials (New York: William Morrow, 1987); Dower, Embracing Defeat, pp. 443–84; James, Years 

of MacArthur, 3: 93–108; Richard H. Minear, Victors’ Justice: The Tokyo War Crimes Trial (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971); Philip R. Piccigallo, The Japanese on Trial: Allied 

War Crimes Operations in the East, 1945–1951 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979); Yuki 

Tanaka, Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 

1996); Jeanie M. Welch, The Tokyo Trial: A Bibliographic Guide to English-Language Sources

(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001).
MIS NISEI AND THE EARLY OCCUPATION OF JAPAN 443

As Thorpe later expressed it, “We wanted blood, and by God, we had blood.” 80

Even MacArthur wrote that “the principle of holding criminally responsible the 

leaders of the vanquished in war was repugnant to me” and distanced himself 

from the proceedings. Despite such feelings, the Nisei performed their duties with 

dedication and skill.81

Nisei also helped conduct hundreds of trials of Class B and Class C defendants 

in Yokohama, where Eighth Army established the Yokohama Interrogation Center 

on 10 October 1945. Most of these trials involved accusations of brutality toward 

Allied prisoners of war. Australian Capt. G. J. Moses, one of ATIS’s best Caucasian 

language officers, commanded dozens of ATIS Nisei, who worked closely with the 

80 Cited in Dower, Embracing Defeat, p. 452. 81 Ken K. Aiba, “MIS in War Crimes Trials,” in Unsung Heroes, pp. 15–21; Pacific War and 

Peace, pp. 76–77.

A Nisei sergeant (standing at right center) interprets at a war crimes tribunal in 

Japan in early January 1946.
444 NISEI LINGUISTS

CIC to develop evidence for the prosecution.82 More than 300 trials were conducted 

in Yokohama between 1945 and 1949. Twenty-six Nisei worked as investigators, 

eighteen as interpreters, and fifty in the interpreter-translator section. In April 

1946 six Nisei serving in Japan for the Washington Document Center took civilian 

jobs on these trials. George M. Koshi, an attorney from Colorado, took a discharge 

in Japan to become a defense attorney with the Eighth Army judge advocate section. Ken K. Aiba became chief investigator for the defense section.83

Other Nisei worked at Sugamo Prison, where the defendants were confined. 

One Nisei guard was Sohei Yamate from Hawaii, who had served for six months 

in Kunming, China: “To my relief, my Japanese-language skills were never really 

tested. . . . At times, I can hardly believe that at the young age of twenty, I was 

handing out orders to former generals, admirals, ambassadors, and prime ministers. Given my Hawaiian upbringing, I was never good at honorifics.”

When General Tojo was confined in Sugamo Prison following his suicide 

attempt, Yamate was assigned to monitor the general’s family visits. The twentyyear-old Yamate used the direct approach and asked the general not to try to kill 

himself again because Yamate would be held responsible. Tojo told him not to 

worry. Yamate could see that the general was “a beaten man,” especially, Yamate 

felt, when the general heard how poorly the Nisei spoke the Japanese language; it 

was only then that the general “finally realized that he had lost the war.” 84

The United States and its Allies held other war crimes trials throughout the 

region. The U.S. Navy conducted forty-seven trials on the Pacific Islands, principally on Guam and Kwajalein. The United States held eleven trials in China, 

including one trial in Shanghai for the killers of some American airmen. China, 

the Philippines, Australia, Britain, France, and the Netherlands conducted separate trials. The Australians alone tried over 900 Japanese. Canadian Nisei with 

Commonwealth forces served in war crimes investigations and trials in Java, Singapore, and Hong Kong. One Canadian Nisei, Sgt. Tadashi Ode, who graduated 

from the Canadian language school in September 1945, was assigned to the prosecution section for the International Military Tribunal for the Far East.85

82 ATIS History, p. 66. 83 George M. Koshi, MISNorCal Bio. Koshi continued legal work in Japan for many years and 

later published a handbook of Japanese criminal law, Japanese Legal Advisor: Crimes and Punishments (Rutland, Vt.: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1970). 84 Quote from Tsukiyama et al., Secret Valor, p. 112; Japanese Eyes, American Heart: Personal 

Reflections of Hawaii’s World War II Nisei Soldiers (Honolulu: Tendai Educational Foundation, 

1998), pp. 328–34; Ichinokuchi, John Aiso and the M.I.S., pp. 142–50, 151–55. 85 Cary, From a Ruined Empire, pp. 196–217; Ito, We Went to War, pp. 256–72; Timothy Maga, 

“‘Away from Tokyo’: The Pacific Islands War Crimes Trials, 1945–1949,” Journal of Pacific History 36, no. 1 (2001): 37–50. Jeannie M. Welch, “Without a Hangman, Without a Rope: Navy War 

Crimes Trials after World War II,” International Journal of Naval History 1, no. 1 (April 2002). 

One prisoner in Hong Kong was Canadian Nisei Kanao Inouye from Kamloops, British Columbia. 

He had moved to Japan in 1935 at age nineteen and in 1944–1945 worked as an interpreter for the 

Kempeitai. He was charged with twenty-seven acts of cruelty committed as part of Japanese interrogations and was convicted and hanged in 1947.
MIS NISEI AND THE EARLY OCCUPATION OF JAPAN 445

Related to the war crimes trials was the purge of leading Japanese civilian 

leaders. This was also one of the most controversial aspects of the occupation. 

Shortly after MacArthur arrived in Japan, he ordered Thorpe to draw up a list of 

top military and civilian leaders to put on trial. Many Americans demanded that 

the emperor be removed from the throne and tried as a war criminal, but MacArthur decided to retain him. Brig. Gen. Bonner Fellers, one of MacArthur’s most 

trusted lieutenants, worked behind the scenes to protect the emperor with the aid 

of Maj. John E. Anderton from ATIS.

86

In February 1946 MacArthur removed the Civil Intelligence Section from 

investigating war criminals and directed it to continue the purge. That same month 

Major Aiso arrived from Fort Snelling and was assigned to the Civil Intelligence 

Section as a legal assistant. Despite his humble birth in Southern California, Aiso 

was well connected with many Japanese leaders under consideration for the purge. 

To cite just one example, when the emperor paid his first visit to MacArthur on 27 

86 Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), 

pp. 567–68; Dower, Embracing Defeat, pp. 277–330.

T.Sgt. Donald S. Okubo (front right) interprets at a war crimes trial, Kwajalein 

Atoll, 21 November 1945. A Japanese warrant officer (kneeling) demonstrates how 

an American prisoner had been executed by beheading.
446 NISEI LINGUISTS

September 1945, the Japanese diplomat Hidenari Terasaki served as the emperor’s 

personal interpreter. Aiso and Terasaki had shared a room in the early 1930s at 

Brown University, where Aiso was attending on a Japanese government scholarship. (Terasaki also had a connection with MacArthur’s inner circle: his wife 

Gwen was Bonner Feller’s cousin.) In 1926–1927, when Aiso was sixteen, his 

parents had sent him to a special school in Japan for the children of Japanese diplomats returning from overseas, where he befriended other future officials. After 

graduating from Brown and the Harvard School of Law, he went back to Japan in 

1936, this time as an attorney for a New York law firm. From 1936 to 1939 he did 

legal work in Tokyo, Shanghai, and Mukden for the British-American Tobacco 

Company and got to know many Japanese businessmen.

By 1946 much had changed. Aiso had spent the intervening years as the senior 

Nisei in MISLS and now was wearing the uniform of an officer in the U.S. Army. 

Aiso avoided his former contacts and benefactors out of consideration for his position and theirs. It was his aim, he later said, “to enforce the purge with fairness, 

justice, and humanity.” However, he clashed with Col. Charles L. Kades, chief of 

the government section. Kades freely admitted that he had “no knowledge whatsoever about Japan’s history or culture or myths. . . . I was blank on Japan, except 

of course I knew about the atrocities that had occurred during the war and I was 

aware of their expansion into China and Southeast Asia.” Aiso recalled that “Colonel Kades seemed to lack an understanding of the true nature of the Japanese 

people and was unduly harsh in literal enforcement [of] decrees against the Japanese.” In particular Aiso was “very much opposed [to] the mechanical method of 

screening which was applied,” such as membership in certain societies.87

Deeply discouraged, Aiso left Japan after his twelve-month tour. In February 

1947 he returned to Los Angeles to resume his law practice, which the war had 

interrupted six years earlier. There, much of his legal work involved helping Issei 

and Nisei returning to the Los Angeles area from wartime internment. He was 

replaced in the Civil Intelligence Section by another Nisei lawyer, Maj. Walter T. 

Tsukamoto, who had served as national president of the Japanese American Citizens League during the critical years 1940–1942.88

The war crimes trials also drew attention to the fact that thousands of American Nisei had spent the war in Japan and that many had worked for the Japanese 

armed forces, government, or war industries. This publicity threatened to aggra87 Kades quote from Dower, Embracing Defeat, p. 223; Aiso quotes from Aiso, “Observations 

of a California Nisei,” p. 88. 88 Aiso, “Observations of a California Nisei”; Interv, Loni Ding and Eric Saul with John F. 

Aiso, 1986, NJAHS; Interv, author with John F. Aiso; Yano, “Participating in the Main Stream,” 

in Ichonokuchi, John Aiso and the M.I.S., pp. 4–32. See also John Aiso, “Japan as Observed from 

MacArthur’s Headquarters,” Rafu Shimpo, ca. 22 Mar 47, cited in Ichinokuchi, John Aiso and the 

M.I.S. Upon transfer to the Officer Reserve Corps in 1947, Aiso was promoted to lieutenant colonel. 

In 1953 Governor Earl Warren named Aiso to the Los Angeles municipal court, making him the 

first Japanese American to serve on a state bench on the mainland. Ironically, in 1942, as California 

attorney general, Warren had been instrumental in the evacuation of all individuals of Japanese 

ancestry from the state.
MIS NISEI AND THE EARLY OCCUPATION OF JAPAN 447

vate the long-standing prejudice on the American West Coast against the Japanese, just as thousands of Japanese Issei and Nisei were returning from the War 

Relocation Authority camps. In October 1945 American authorities arrested Iva 

Ikuko Toguri d’Aquino, a California-born Nisei who been in Japan at the outbreak 

of the war. She had become one of more than a dozen English-language radio 

announcers for Radio Tokyo’s overseas service known by the collective nickname 

Tokyo Rose. She was released in 1946 without trial but was rearrested in 1948 and 

brought to San Francisco, where she was convicted of treason after a sensational 

trial. The Pacific Citizen commented that “race prejudice is a definite factor in the 

trial.” In another case, California-born Tomoya Kawakita was accused of having 

mistreated Allied prisoners of war. He had gone to Japan in 1939 and worked as an 

interpreter for a Japanese company that used Allied prisoners. When he returned 

to Los Angeles in 1946, he was identified by a former prisoner of war, convicted 

of eight counts of treason, and given a death sentence, which was later commuted 

to life imprisonment.89

Other Occupation Duties

In the early days of the occupation the Nisei became essential to the dayto-day function of military government and throughout the country. Their duties 

most often took the form of liaison with Japanese local government officials to 

supervise the carrying out of SCAP directives. The first order of business in each 

city and prefecture was to establish working relationships with local officials. In 

what must have been repeated hundreds of times, Ben I. Yamamoto arrived in 

Sasebo in late September 1945 with a U.S. Navy headquarters to help inventory 

Japanese naval munitions stockpiles. At first he carried a .38 cal. revolver:

After all, we did not know how we would be received by the natives. I packed my sixshooter with me the first two days and was careful not to let any Japanese get behind me. 

It was an awkward, uncomfortable relationship, with some of the Japanese men casting 

embarrassing glances at my gun. These people didn’t look dangerous at all; in fact, they 

looked much like the Issei back home. On the third day I left my firearms at home. They 

reacted beautifully. They warmed up to me and worked more enthusiastically. We shared 

our lunch with each other and played volleyball during our breaks, among other things.90

89 Frank F. Chuman, The Bamboo People: The Law and Japanese Americans (Chicago: Japanese American Citizens League, 1981), pp. 288–95; “d’Aquino, Iva Ikuko Toguri,” and “Kawakita 

v. United States,” in Encyclopedia of Japanese American History, rev. ed., ed. Brian Niiya (New 

York: Facts on File, 2001). For the impact of the Tokyo Rose trial on postwar Japanese American 

communities, see David K. Yoo, Growing Up Nisei: Race, Generation, and Culture among Japanese Americans of California, 1924–1949 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), pp. 174–79 

(quote from p. 177). 90 Japanese Eyes, American Heart, p. 184; Richard S. Oguro, ed., Sempai Gumi (Honolulu: MIS

Veterans of Hawaii, ca. 1981), pp. 74–75.
448 NISEI LINGUISTS

The Nisei helped with another urgent task, the repatriation of 3.5 million Japanese soldiers and sailors and 3 million civilians stranded overseas when the war 

ended. The SCAP G–2 supervised this vast undertaking. The Japanese had to be 

controlled, cared for, and shipped home. The effort dragged on for several years, 

particularly for the Japanese captured by the Soviets in Manchuria. As with the 

rest of the occupation, SCAP worked through existing Japanese agencies. In this 

case, the War and Navy Ministries were transformed into the First and Second 

Demobilization Ministries. (They merged into a single Demobilization Board on 

1 July 1946.) To develop an orderly process, SCAP held a conference on repatriation in January 1946. Weather and the availability of shipping determined the rate 

of return. Shipment from the ice-bound ports in the Soviet Far East was delayed 

until the autumn of 1946. SCAP designated four principal ports of entry—Sasebo, 

Hakata, Maizuru, and Hakodate—where American intelligence personnel screened 

returning Japanese. (Map 17) Repatriates of special interest were interrogated at a 

Central Interrogation Center established in June 1946.91

SCAP simultaneously supervised a massive return flow of civilians from 

Korea, Formosa, and other parts of Japan’s former empire. On the southern island 

of Kyushu, V Amphibious Corps was particularly busy supervising this two-way 

91 Reports of General MacArthur, vol. 1 supplement, pp. 149–93; ATIS History, pp. 72–74; 

Dower, Embracing Defeat, pp. 48–64.

A Nisei captain (left) and another U.S. Army officer (right) question a Japanese 

shipmaster transporting repatriates to Japan.
N

S E A O F J A P A N

IN - 288,000

OUT - 29,000

HAKODATE

IN - 664,000

OUT - 36,000

URAGA

IN - 250,000

OUT - 34,000

NAGOYA

IN - 202,000

OUT - 0

TANABE

IN - 580,000

OUT - 47,000

IN - 413,000 KURE AREA OUT - 242,000

SENZAKI

IN - 428,000

OUT - 61,000

KAGOSHIMA

IN - 1,390,000

OUT - 428,000

HAKATA

IN - 492,000

OUT - 39,000

MAIZURU IN - 1,437,000

OUT - 268,000

SASEBO

H O K K A I D O

K Y U S H U

S H I K O K U

H O N S H U

Aomori

Kyoto

TOKYO

Osaka

Hiroshima

Nagasaki

140°

145°

45°

40°

145°

35°

30°

140

135

°

°

130°

35°

40°

130°

45°

135°

30 September 1945–31 December 1948

OCCUPIED JAPAN

PRINCIPAL RECEPTION CENTERS

0 200

Miles

MAP 17
450 NISEI LINGUISTS

repatriation. By the end of November 1945 over 700,000 Japanese had returned 

from overseas through Kyushu ports, while 273,276 Koreans, Chinese, and 

Okinawans had departed through the same ports. Inevitably, frictions occurred 

between the various groups. Kure on the Inland Sea was the repatriation point 

for Korean workers returning to the peninsula. In December 1945 rioting broke 

out there between Korean workers and Japanese sailors. Nisei from the X Corps 

language detachment were called out to help control the rioting.92

In the Philippines, Prisoner of War Camp No. 1 south of Manila held 60,000–

80,000 Japanese prisoners. After the surrender, ATIS organized the Luzon Prisoner of War (LUPOW) team with perhaps 100 Nisei to assist the military police 

in controlling the massive camp. Some were MISLS graduates, but some were 

shipped directly from Hawaii with no language training. T.Sgt. Yoshito Iwamoto 

was assigned to the LUPOW records section, where he “spent most of [his] spare 

time looking for Nisei who been drafted into the Japanese army,” including his 

two older brothers “who had been stranded in Japan and drafted.” He later learned 

they were not sent to the Philippines; one had served in Malaya and the other in 

Manchuria.93 Nisei and Caucasian language officers sometimes got to know individual Japanese prisoners of war and agreed to carry messages to their families in 

Japan. When the Americans were subsequently assigned to Japan, they searched 

out the prisoners’ families and brought word of their sons and husbands still alive 

in prisoner of war camps. In one instance, 2d Lt. Tad Yajima, who had served in 

General Yamashita’s trial, paid a courtesy call to the general’s widow in Kamakura a few months after his execution.94

The first repatriation ship to depart the Australian-controlled areas was a 

Japanese aircraft carrier that left Rabaul on 28 February 1946 with 2,658 men 

on board. Through June 1946 thirty-seven ships departed from Rabaul with a 

total of 90,909 Japanese personnel. In the southern Philippines, where Japanese 

immigrants had settled peaceably before the war, officials deported “practically 

everyone who looked Japanese and their Filipino wives with their half-Japanese 

small children. Other families were split up.” 95 The extensive prewar Japanese 

population in the Philippines virtually disappeared.

Little noticed among the millions of Japanese returning to Japan were 8,000 

from America. Most were Issei, but more than 1,000 were Nisei. Starting in 

December 1944, these Nisei at Tule Lake for varying reasons had accepted a 

U.S. government offer to renounce U.S. citizenship. At the end of the war many 

petitioned to withdraw their renunciations and fought deportation, but the government persevered. The first group arrived in Japan on 10 December 1945 to 

92 Inouye, MISNorCal Bio. 93 Yaban Gogai, Dec 45, p. 5; Yoshito Iwamoto, in Falk and Tsuneishi, MIS in the War against 

Japan, pp. 39–41; Harrington, Yankee Samurai, p. 353. 94 Cary, From a Ruined Empire, p. 217; “Honolulu Realty Broker Recalls Days as Interpreter.” 95 George Totten, in Falk and Tsuneishi, MIS in the War Against Japan, pp. 34–38.
MIS NISEI AND THE EARLY OCCUPATION OF JAPAN 451

face an uncertain future in a devastated and unfamiliar land that many of them 

had never seen.96

The last major repatriation program to get started and the last to be completed 

was from the Soviet Far East. It began with a trickle in the autumn of 1946, but this 

was soon halted by the onset of winter weather. It restarted in April 1947 and continued on and off through the early 1950s, eventually totaling about 700,000. The 

American intelligence officials subjected these repatriates to special scrutiny to 

detect signs of Communist indoctrination and to identify former Japanese Army 

officers who could provide information of intelligence value about Soviet forces 

and facilities in the region.97

MIS Nisei performed a surprising variety of other duties, such as serving with 

the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, in the early months of the occupation. The 

War Department established the survey in late 1944 to investigate the effectiveness of the aerial campaigns against Germany and Japan. Teams of experts worked 

in Germany for several months after the surrender. In August 1945 President Truman directed a similar study for Japan. The advance party arrived in Japan on 4 

September 1945 and by the end of the month numbered several hundred. The survey requested fifteen volunteers from ATIS in the Philippines, including several 

from the Army Air Forces radio squadrons mobile. More Nisei joined after ATIS

arrived in Tokyo.98 Lt. Col. David W. Swift, one of two Caucasians to graduate 

from Crissy Field in 1942, joined as head of the logistics section. Several Navy 

language officers served as well.99 Nisei accompanied survey teams to examine 

bomb damage and to help conduct thousands of interviews. In just a few months 

the teams gathered data for over a hundred reports on various topics. Most personnel returned to the States by the end of 1945, and the survey released several 

reports over the following year. Japan’s Struggle To End the War (1 July 1946) 

concluded based on extensive interviews that Japan would have surrendered “in 

all probability prior to 1 November 1945,” even without the atomic bombings. The 

Effects of Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (30 June 1946) was the first 

technical study of the bombings.

96 Michi Weglyn, Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps (New 

York: Morrow Quill, 1976), pp. 229–65; “Renunciation of Citizenship,” in Encyclopedia of Japanese American History. 97 Y. Kono, MISNorCal Bio; Pacific War and Peace, pp. 80–82; Allen H. Meyer, “Repatriation 

at the Grass Roots Level,” in Nimmo, Occupation of Japan, pp. 101–15. For an early example of 

intelligence on Soviet forces, see GHQ, FECOM [Far East Command], MI [Military Intelligence] 

Section, GS [General Staff], ATIS, ATIS Bulletin no. 1, 15 Jan 47, based on 817 military and civilian interrogations. 98 Intervs, Dawn Duensing with Yoichi Kawano and James Sadami Okada, in Americanism: A

Matter of Mind and Heart; David MacIsaac, Strategic Bombing in World War II: The Story of the 

United States Strategic Bombing Survey (New York: Garland, 1976); U.S. Army Air Force, Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence, Mission Accomplished: Interrogations of Japanese Industrial Military and Civil Leaders of World War II (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1946). 99 Swift, “First Class,” pp. 293–97; Ltrs by Frank Turner in Cary, From a Ruined Empire.
452 NISEI LINGUISTS

Harvard Professor of Psychiatry Alexander H. Leighton came to Japan with 

the Strategic Bombing Survey’s Morale Division. A self-appointed expert on Japanese psychology, Leighton had studied Japanese internees in Poston and then 

worked in the Office of War Information. T.Sgt. Yasuo Baron Goto and M.Sgt. 

Keith Kaneshiro, together with several other non-MIS Nisei, served as translator-analysts for Leighton. In December 1945 he traveled to Hiroshima “to study 

the feelings and attitudes of the survivors” and published his impressions in The 

Atlantic Monthly.

100

The Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Areas (JICPOA), sent another 

special survey team, the Naval Technical Mission to Japan (NAVTECHJAP) to 

gather “intelligence in which the Ground Forces and Air Forces would not normally be vitally interested but which to the U.S. Navy was of inestimable value.” 

The group arrived shortly after the surrender. One Nisei with the mission was 

Nobuo Furuiye, one of the first Nisei assigned to the JICPOA annex and a veteran 

of Iwo Jima, where he had been wounded by mortar fragments. He helped inventory Japanese armaments on Kyushu. While in southern Japan, he took the opportunity to visit relatives and classmates in Kumamoto; he departed in November 

1945 to return to his native Colorado. NAVTECHJAP eventually published 185 

reports on Japanese naval equipment and other naval topics.101

Dr. Karl T. Compton, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 

and leader of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, led a Scientific 

and Technical Survey Mission to Japan with two handpicked Nisei. Second Lt. 

Yoshikazu Yamada, a combat veteran with the 1st Cavalry Division and 112th 

Cavalry Regimental Combat Team, had been a graduate student in chemistry at 

the University of Michigan before the war. Fumio Yagi had earned his Ph.D. in 

mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was working at 

Fort Snelling when the war ended.102

Research into Japanese wartime science and technology continued during 

the occupation. An MIS Nisei, Kaoru Inouye, had been a chemistry major at the 

100 Alexander H. Leighton, “That Day at Hiroshima,” Atlantic Monthly (October 1946): 85–90; 

Alexander H. Leighton, The Governing of Men: General Principles and Recommendations Based 

on Experience at a Japanese Relocation Camp (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1945); 

quote from Alexander H. Leighton, Human Relations in a Changing World: Observations on the Use 

of the Social Sciences (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1949). Leighton’s account appeared shortly 

after John Hersey’s influential account was published in The New Yorker (31 August 1946). 101 Ltr, Col. Joseph J. Twitty to Chief, Historical Section, Far East Command, 2 February 

1948, Folder 1, Box 17, RG 23, Charles A. Willoughby Papers, MacArthur Memorial, Library and 

Archives, Norfolk, Va.; Nobuo Furuiye, Rocky Mountain Bio; Falk and Tsuneishi, MIS in the War 

against Japan, pp. 58–60; Unsung Heroes, pp. 94–95. For NAVTECHJAP reports, see Reports of 

the U.S. Naval Technical Mission to Japan, Microfilm Pub 2, Oct 94, Operational Archives, U.S. 

Naval Historical Center, Washington, D.C. 102 Karl T. Compton, “If the Atomic Bomb Had Not Been Used,” Atlantic (December 1946); 

Donald M. Richardson, comp., “Random Recollections of the Second Class, AIJLS [Army Intensive Japanese Language School], aka the Second OCS Class, MISLS, Fort Snelling, Minn,” p. 34, 

Unpubl Ms, Sep 88, author’s files. Navy language officers also assisted. Sherwood Moran described 

visits to Japanese factories in his letter of 30 September 1945 in Cary, From a Ruined Empire.
MIS NISEI AND THE EARLY OCCUPATION OF JAPAN 453

University of California. He was discharged in the summer of 1946 and took 

a civilian job with the 5250th Technical Intelligence Detachment investigating 

Japan’s chemical warfare research activities. As part of his work, he interrogated 

key Japanese scientific personnel returning from Soviet prison camps in Manchuria.103 In the Philippines, the Army Air Forces Technical Air Intelligence Unit 

rebuilt and tested Japanese aircraft that had been abandoned at Clark Field, many 

still in operating condition. About 145 aircraft were shipped to the Technical Air 

Intelligence Center in Washington, D.C. In the unit were Lt. Ernest Silver, the 

only Japanese-language officer in the Army who was also an aviator, and Floyd 

Yamamoto, a graduate of University of Washington who had worked for Showa 

Aircraft Company in Japan before the war.104

Another urgent task was imposing civil censorship of newspapers, magazines, 

and books, as well as letters and telegrams. In early September MISLS selected 149 

Nisei enlisted men and twenty-three officers before graduation and sent them to a 

short course in civil censorship at Fort Mason in San Francisco. Because they were 

all awarded sergeant’s stripes, they were nicknamed the Zebra Platoon.105 Over the 

next few months the school sent thirteen more Nisei enlisted men and sixty-two 

103 Kaoru Inouye, MISNorCal Bio; Sheldon H. Harris, Factories of Death: Japanese Biological 

Warfare, 1932–1945, and the American Cover-Up, 2d rev. ed. (New York: Routledge, 2002). 104 Robert K. Fukuda, personal communication to author, 5 Sep 01. 105 Kojiro Kawaguchi, “The Story of the Zebra Platoon,” Unpubl Ms, author’s files.

The Civil Censorship Detachment employed hundreds of Japanese civilians, 

shown here on the ground floor of the NYK building. 
454 NISEI LINGUISTS

officers for censorship duties. From Hawaii came fourteen Nisei women trained 

for censorship who arrived in Japan on 1 November 1945.106 The Civil Censorship Detachment employed hundreds of Japanese nationals who worked under the 

supervision of American Nisei. Some of the local hires came from the estimated 

15,000 American-born Nisei who had spent the war in Japan. The detachment’s 

mission was the “close scrutiny of every newspaper, radio script, movie scenario, 

dramatic production, book, magazine, and pamphlet in Japan.”107 Caucasian language officers, including Maj. Faubion Bowers, also worked in censorship. He 

took a special interest in traditional kabuki theater and befriended many actors. In 

1947 he took a civilian job as theater censor and used this position to shield kabuki

from its detractors and aid its revival.108

MIS Nisei also played a role in writing the war’s history. Initially, American 

interest in the Japanese side of the war stemmed from the demands of prosecuting 

war crimes. This soon turned to a broader historical interest. Researching the history of the war was hampered by the lack of documentation on the Japanese side. 

For example, a complete set of Imperial General Headquarters army orders and 

directives covering the war years 1937–1945 was not discovered until 1949. The 

captured records that ATIS had accumulated took on greater significance because 

the other intelligence centers such as JICPOA and PACMIRS closed down shortly 

after V-J Day. As early as 1 December 1945, ATIS published two historical reports, 

Japan’s Decision To Fight, “solely based on documentary evidence held at ATIS, 

GHQ, prior to 1 January 1945,” and The Pearl Harbor Operation.

109 The Strategic 

Bombing Survey interrogations of Japanese leaders similarly filled more gaps in 

the documentary record.

In October 1945, GHQ directed the collection and exploitation of Japanese 

military history records and directed Japanese authorities to establish a historical bureau and prepare a history. General Willoughby took charge and named 

as chief of the Historical Investigation Section Col. Frederick Munson, who had 

106 “Original Women ‘M.I.S.’ Linguists Were Dept of the Army Civilians,” M.I.S. Veterans 

Newsletter [Hawaii], Sep–Oct 03, p. 3. 107 Reports of General MacArthur, vol. 1 supplement, pp. 232–33, 236–41 (material cited from 

p. 236); Kawaguchi, MISNorCal Bio; Dower, Embracing Defeat, pp. 405–40. Takemae, Inside 

GHQ, pp. 110–11. According to Dower, Embracing Defeat, pp. 619–20, note 10, “Since much of the 

translating work on which GHQ relied was conducted by Nisei to whom Japanese was a second language, more than a little Japanese resentment concerning inaccurate or incomplete communication 

with the conquerors became directed against these second-generation Japanese-Americans. These 

ethnic tensions comprise a sensitive and generally unexplored subtheme in the occupation.” 108 Faubion Bowers, “Japan, 1940–1949: A Tumultuous Time Remembered,” Japan Society 

Newsletter, Oct 95, pp. 4–7; Faubion Bowers, Japanese Theater (New York: Hermitage House, 

1952); Shiro Okamoto, The Man Who Saved Kabuki: Faubion Bowers and Theatre Censorship in 

Occupied Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001). 109 Jerome Forrest and Clarke H. Kawakami, “General MacArthur and His Vanishing War History,” The Reporter: The Political Yearbook 1952 (New York: Fortnightly Publishing Company, 

1953), p. 138; ATIS, “Japan’s Decision To Fight,” ATIS Research Rpt no. 131, 1 Dec 45; ATIS, “The 

Pearl Harbor Operation,” ATIS Research Rpt no. 132, 1 Dec 45.
MIS NISEI AND THE EARLY OCCUPATION OF JAPAN 455

been military attaché in Tokyo in 1941. On 17 October Munson sent to the Japanese military his first questionnaire about the Pearl Harbor attack.

In the autumn of 1946 Willoughby launched two major historical efforts 

directed by Gordon W. Prange, a professor of history from the University of 

Maryland. One project was a history of MacArthur’s campaigns in the Southwest 

Pacific with a supplement on the military phase of the occupation. A separate 

volume written by former Japanese Army and Navy officers covered the Japanese 

side. Lt. Gen. Torashiro Kawabe, who had conducted the surrender negotiations in 

Manila, became chief of the Japanese Section of the GHQ Historical Division. The 

Nisei joined this historical effort as translators, interpreters, and research assistants. The Japanese volume was translated into English under Nisei 2d Lt. Clarke 

H. Kawakami, chief American editor. Kawakami was the son of the well-known 

Issei author K. K. Kawakami, who had written extensively before the war on the 

Nisei and local Japanese women at a weekly dance, Tokyo, September 1946 
456 NISEI LINGUISTS

relations between Japan and America. Lieutenant Kawakami had served with the 

MIS in Burma and China.110

. . .

In the years that followed, the Nisei became a language bridge between America and Japan, as General Bissell had predicted. Thousands continued to serve 

until the occupation ended in 1952, and many continued to work for the U.S. government in Japan long after that. What had begun in 1941 with sixty Nisei soldiers 

and four civilian instructors at Crissy Field on the Presidio of San Francisco had 

influenced the course of war and peace for both countries in the years that followed and in ways they never could have imagined.

110 Publication of all volumes was suspended when MacArthur left Tokyo in 1951. Willoughby 

used portions for Charles A. Willoughby and John Chamberlain, MacArthur, 1941–1951 (New 

York: McGraw-Hill, 1954); MacArthur used the material in Douglas MacArthur, Reminiscences

(New York: Time, 1964). Forrest and Kawakami, “General MacArthur and His Vanishing War 

History,” pp. 126–42; James, Years of MacArthur, 3: 668–69. The U.S. Army Center of Military 

History first published the volumes in 1966, after MacArthur’s death. Takemae, Inside GHQ, pp. 

165–66; S. Daito and H. Takahashi, “Postwar Trends and Developments in the Study of Military 

History in Japan,” Mededelingen van de Sectie Militaire Geschiedenis, 14 (1991): 74–81.
Epilogue

MIS Nisei and History

The story of the Military Intelligence Service (MIS) Nisei emerged at the end 

of the war, but it was overshadowed by better-known stories about their brothers in the 100th Infantry Battalion and 442d Regimental Combat Team (RCT) in 

Italy and France. The first significant news story about the MIS Nisei originated 

from the 27th Infantry Division on Okinawa, based on information provided by 

the division G–2, Lt. Col William K. Antwerp, and former language team leader, 

1st Lt. Benjamin Hazard. In mid-September 1945 the North American Newspaper 

Alliance carried this story of Nisei bravery on Makin, Saipan, Eniwetok, and 

Okinawa. The story opened with a sweeping claim: “The war in the Pacific would 

have been far more costly and thousands more American lives would have been 

lost had it not been for the Nisei—American Japanese—serving with the United 

States Army.” One officer told the reporter, “These men are too valuable to risk 

in the front lines, but it’s all we can do to restrain them from getting into the thick 

of it every time.” Hazard spoke proudly of the ten Nisei on his team, led by S.Sgt. 

Tim Ohta. Sgt. Hoichi Kubo earned the Distinguished Service Cross on Saipan; 

two of the Nisei earned the Silver Star. “Men in the 27th Division will stare at you 

unbelievingly when you tell them that there were some people and some newspapers in the U.S. that violently opposed the use of Nisei in the Pacific. ‘Are those 

people crazy?’ the soldiers will ask. ‘Only God knows how many of us are alive 

today only because we had these marvelous guys with us.’”1

1 “Nisei Saved U.S. Thousands of Lives in Pacific Theater,” Seattle Times, 18 Sep 45; “Use of 

Nisei Saved GI Lives in Pacific,” Pacific Citizen, 29 Sep 45. The story identified the Nisei by first 

name only. Hoichi Kubo (identified only as “Sergeant Hoichi”) was mistakenly said to have been 

awarded the Distinguished Service Cross posthumously.
458 NISEI LINGUISTS

A few weeks later, shortly before the arrival of the Allied Translator and 

Interpreter Section (ATIS) advance party in Tokyo, Col. Sidney F. Mashbir for the 

first time disclosed ATIS’s existence to the press and presented staggering statistics about the millions of pages translated and the thousands of prisoners interrogated. But in his eyes the biggest story was the loyalty and bravery of the Nisei: 

“No group in the war had as much to lose. Capture would have meant indescribable horror to them and their relatives in Japan.” In later years Mashbir continued 

to tell the MIS Nisei story, writing about the Nisei in The Saturday Evening Post in 

1948. In his memoirs he concluded, “The United States of America owes a debt to 

these men and to their families which it can never fully repay.” But the American 

public soon forgot these stories.2

In Tokyo, Maj. Gen. Charles A. Willoughby ordered the preparation of a 

ten-volume history of intelligence in the Southwest Pacific Area to document 

the achievements of the Allied Translator and Intelligence Service, the Allied 

Intelligence Bureau, the Counter Intelligence Corps, and other agencies that had 

been under his purview. The ATIS volume, completed in 1948, detailed the many 

contributions of the Nisei and included samples of typical products; but it was 

marked restricted and never released to the general public.3

Back in Minnesota, the language school told the story from its perspective 

as soon as wartime restrictions were removed. Col. Kai E. Rasmussen held a 

press conference on 22 October 1945 at Fort Snelling and issued a lengthy press 

release about the school and its graduates. Local newspapers ran stories that were 

reprinted in the Japanese American press.4 The school’s newsletter, Yaban Gogai, 

trumpeted the press conference under the headline, “MISLS Secrecy Lifted—

WD [War Department],” and began, “The veil of secrecy which had cloaked the 

activities of the Military Intelligence Service Language School for the past four 

years, was lifted Monday, 22 October.” The press release itself outlined the basic 

story and gave many valuable details about the Nisei. In the words of the anonymous author, “Never before in history did one army know so much concerning its 

2

 The Associated Press story about Mashbir’s press conference appeared in the Pacific Citizen, 

20 Oct 45. Quote from Sidney F. Mashbir, I Was an American Spy (New York: Vantage, 1953), p. 

242; Sidney F. Mashbir, “I Was an American Spy,” Saturday Evening Post, 27 Mar, 3 Apr 48. 3

 General Headquarters, Far East Command, Operations of the Allied Translator and Interpreter 

Section, GHQ, SWPA, Intelligence Series, vol. 5 (Tokyo, Far East Command, 1948) (hereafter cited 

as ATIS History). 4

 The War Department (WD) Press Release, 22 Oct 45, was in three parts: Part 1, “The Military 

Intelligence Service Language School”; Part 2, “Nisei Linguists—Eyes and Ears of Allied Pacific 

Forces”; Part 3, “Army Japanese Linguists in Training.” Japanese Evacuation Research Study 

(JERS), pt. 2, sec. 2, reel 20, frame 0037, Bancroft Library, University of California. The story 

was covered in the St. Paul Dispatch, 22, 23, 24 Oct 45; Minneapolis Star-Journal, 22 Oct 45; 

Minneapolis Morning Tribune, 23 Oct 45; and Pacific Citizen, 27 Oct, 3 Nov, 22 Dec 45. The 

authorship of the press release is unknown, but was most likely prepared by the MISLS staff. A 

different version, probably a draft, can be found in Trng Grp, Ofc of the Dir of Intel G–2, Record 

Group (RG) 165, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
MIS NISEI AND HISTORY 459

enemy prior to actual engagement as did the American army during most of the 

Pacific campaign.” 5

This initial publicity was only the beginning. Over the winter and spring of 

1945–1946, the school’s staff prepared a lengthy administrative history of the 

school and its various departments; however, this remained unpublished.6 The 

school also published an illustrated album in about June 1946, shortly before the 

school left Fort Snelling. The album was prepared under editor Lt. Richard K. 

Hayashi and art editor and designer M.Sgt. Tom Okamoto. Hayashi was one of 

the few Nisei to have served in both the MIS and the 442d RCT. Okamoto, a commercial artist, had worked at Disney Studios before the war.7

Another way to commemorate the MIS history was through forming veterans’ 

groups. As MIS Nisei veterans returned to their homes, they joined groups such 

as the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars, often opening their own 

Nisei posts. In June 1946 Honolulu attorney Masaji Marumoto and six other Nisei 

in Hawaii formed the MIS Linguists Associates, the first veteran’s association 

specifically for MIS Nisei.8

With the end of the war and loosening of secrecy restrictions, individuals 

began to evaluate MIS Nisei contributions to victory. In 1945 the War Relocation 

Authority asked the War Department to publicize the wartime contributions of the 

Nisei, including those in the MIS, to counter public opinion on the West Coast, 

which remained hostile to the Nisei. The two agencies cooperated in an aggressive public relations campaign to promote acceptance of the Issei and Nisei. The 

War Department sent a few MIS officers on lecture tours to educate the public 

about the MIS Nisei. Lt. Col. Wallace H. Moore, who had fought with Nisei in the 

Pacific, undertook a sixty-day speaking tour in the autumn of 1945.9 In January 

1946 General Willoughby returned to the United States, speaking to the press at 

each stop. In Hawaii, San Francisco, and New York, he had high praise for the 

5 Yaban Gogai, Nov 45, p. 1. WD Press Release, 22 Oct 45. The “never before” statement was 

later attributed to General MacArthur or General Willoughby, but I have seen no evidence of this. 

In 1946 Weckerling revised the press release for submission as an article to the Infantry Journal. 

It was declassified in February 1948 but not published at that time. In 1971 he provided a copy to 

an MIS Nisei veterans’ group, who published it in the Hokubei Mainichi, 27 Oct–5 Nov 71, and 

reprinted it in booklet form. 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. 6 MISLS, “Training History of the Military Intelligence Service Language School” Unpubl Ms, 

with annexes, 1946, U.S. Army Center of Military History (CMH). Another copy may be found 

in General Records, 1943–1945, Military Intelligence [Service] Language School, Fort Snelling, 

Minn., Records of the Army Staff, RG 319, NARA. 7 MISLS Album (Minneapolis: Military Intelligence Service Language School, 1946), pp. 84–

85, 124; Richard K. Hayashi, Biography, Military Intelligence Service Club of Northern California 

(this and similar biographies hereafter cited as MISNorCal Bios). 8 “MIS Reunion,” a booklet distributed at a veterans’ reunion in 1962; Ted T. Tsukiyama et al., 

eds., Secret Valor: M.I.S. Personnel, World War II Pacific Theater, Pre–Pearl Harbor to Sept. 8, 

1951 (Honolulu: Military Intelligence Service Veterans Club of Hawaii, 1993), p. 22. 9

 Talk given by Lt. Col. Wallace H. Moore, 3 Nov 45, JERS Papers, pt. 2, sec. 15.
460 NISEI LINGUISTS

MIS Nisei. In Hawaii, he expressed concern about reports of discrimination on 

the West Coast:

The nature of Nisei service, from an intelligence point of view, represented the greatest single contribution to the Pacific war. . . .

Language detachments (of Nisei) were placed with every division, corps, and army 

in the Pacific. The division detachments, of course, accompanied the division in action. 

They bore their share of losses, awards and decorations. Their loyalty was never questioned. Had they been captured, they ran an even greater risk than the rank and file of 

other American troops.

In spite of the 2,000 to 3,000 Nisei used, 40 percent of whom were Hawaii-born, there 

has been no single case of disloyalty or ill-feeling. They did their job quietly, and with 

great efficiency. . . .

I have been employing several thousand Nisei since 1942, and feel morally obligated 

to report on them.10

A few months later one of the top Caucasian language officers in ATIS, Lt. 

Col. John E. Anderton, told a reporter that Willoughby “has said that the war 

would have lasted at least two years longer if it were not for the Nisei boys.” 

Bradford Smith, chief of the Honolulu branch of the Office of War Information, 

published a book in 1948 about Americans of Japanese ancestry. In discussing the 

MIS Nisei, Bradford wrote: “General Charles Willoughby, MacArthur’s Chief of 

Staff for Intelligence, says their work shortened the war by two years.” Colonel 

Rasmussen echoed these sentiments: “The use of thousands of Japanese Americans 

in the Pacific shortened the war considerably and saved the lives of thousands of 

American soldiers and billions in American Dollars.”11 Colonel Mashbir, writing 

about the ATIS Nisei in The Saturday Evening Post in 1948, made the same point: 

“I know that their faithful service to the United States saved many thousands of 

American lives and shortened the war by months.” Had it not been for the Nisei, the 

war “would have been a far more hazardous, long-drawn-out affair. . . . At a highly 

conservative estimate, thousands of American lives were preserved and millions 

of dollars in matériel were saved as a result of their contribution to the war effort.” 

At a memorial service for Nisei soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery, Mashbir 

“declared it would be impossible to determine how many hundreds of American 

lives and how many billions of dollars were saved due to the intelligence supplied 

by the Nisei in the ATIS.”12

10 “AJA Service in Pacific Termed Greatest Single Contribution by Willoughby,” Hawaii Times, 

22 Jan 46. Sentence order changed for clarity. 11 “Role of Japanese American Linguists in Pacific Campaign Described by Army Officer,” 

Pacific Citizen, 11 May 46; “Nisei Lauded for Skillful War Intelligence Work in Pacific,” Honolulu 

Advertiser, 9 May 46; Bradford Smith, Americans from Japan (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 

1948), p. 325. 12 Mashbir, “I Was an American Spy”; Mashbir, I Was an American Spy, p. 242; “High Praise 

Paid Nisei at Arlington,” The Washington Post, 31 Oct 49.
MIS NISEI AND HISTORY 461

Great as Nisei contributions to victory may have been, their contributions to 

the subsequent peace were even greater and just as hard to measure. In February 

1946 Willoughby told a New York audience that without the Nisei, “the occupation 

job in Japan could not have been accomplished on the ground of language difficulties alone. . . .The result would have been utter chaos, and recent history shows that 

nothing acceptable to democratic tastes ever emerged from national wreckage.”13

The Japanese recognized the importance of the Nisei as well. Several years into 

the occupation, even the emperor found a way quietly to express his appreciation. 

The occasion arose during one of the many attacks by the American press against 

General Douglas MacArthur for his policy toward the emperor. MacArthur later 

complained in his memoirs of a “vehement press and radio campaign within the 

United States [at the start of the occupation] against retention of the Emperor. . . . 

[Reporters and commentators] were now insisting that Hirohito and his family, 

and the complete Japanese government, be stamped out.” This hostility continued 

for years. In April 1949 the weekly newsreel, “The March of Time,” requested 

permission to film the emperor. MacArthur considered the request an invasion of 

privacy and decided to send a private message to the emperor that he could decline 

this latest request.14

One evening MacArthur’s aide-de-camp summoned 1st Lt. Kan Tagami, the 

general’s personal language officer, and told him to convey MacArthur’s message to the emperor in person. California-born Tagami was a combat veteran of 

Burma, where he had earned a field commission. His Japanese was excellent from 

six years’ schooling in Japan before the war. In the 1920s he had once set eyes on 

Hirohito, then prince regent, while changing trains at a railway station near his 

school. The children were called out of class and told to bow their heads when the 

prince regent alit from his carriage. But the young American boy had lifted his 

head and caught a glimpse of the young Hirohito. It would be twenty more years 

before he saw the emperor again.

That evening Tagami crossed to the palace from the Dai-Ichi Building and 

was ushered into the emperor’s presence. No one else was there, not even members 

of the imperial household. Tagami was no longer a schoolboy but a U.S. Army 

officer. He gave MacArthur’s message to the emperor, who listened politely and 

answered, “I will do what is appropriate.” With that, Tagami began to leave, but 

the emperor motioned for him to stay. “Tagami, where are your father and mother 

from?” Tagami responded, from Hiroshima. The emperor thanked him and all the 

Nisei then serving in the occupation: “Your Japanese ability has truly made the 

13 “General Tells of Nisei Service in Pacific War,” Pacific Citizen, 16 Feb 46. See also Yaban 

Gogai, Dec 45, and Pacific Citizen, 26 Jan 46. 14 Douglas MacArthur, Reminiscences (New York: Time, 1964), p. 320. For MacArthur’s 

troubles with the press in 1949, see D. Clayton James, The Years of MacArthur, 3 vols. (Boston: 

Houghton Mifflin, 1970–1985), 3: 261–64.
462 NISEI LINGUISTS

government’s work much easier. The Nisei are a bridge across our two countries. 

Thank you very much.”15

. . .

The accomplishments of the MIS Nisei remained little known after the 

war. While their brothers who served in the 100th Infantry Battalion and 442d 

Regimental Combat Team enjoyed public acclaim, the MIS Nisei remained 

true to their wartime pledge of secrecy, their service known to but a few. Maj. 

Gen. Clayton Bissell lauded their proud silence. On 29 September 1945, the War 

Department G–2 visited Fort Snelling for a graduation ceremony. His advice to the 

graduates was straightforward: “If you Japanese-Americans are ever questioned 

as to your loyalty, don’t even bother to reply. The magnificent work of the graduates of the Military Intelligence Service Language School in the field has been 

seen by your fellow Americans of many racial extractions. Their testimony to your 

gallant deeds under fire will speak so loudly that you need not answer.”16

The MIS Nisei took pride in their “gallant deeds under fire” and their service as a language bridge between America and Japan. Their ability to speak the 

Japanese language stemmed from their immigrant parents, long afternoons in 

after-school language classes, and, for the Kibei, from schooling in Japan. They 

learned from their instructors at Crissy Field, Camp Savage, or Fort Snelling and 

then went out to prove their loyalty, courage, and skill on many battlefields. They 

served their country, brought honor to their families, and ultimately turned enemies into friends.

15 “A Conversation with the Emperor,” in Japanese Eyes, American Heart: Personal Reflections 

of Hawaii’s World War II Nisei Soldiers (Honolulu: Tendai Educational Foundation, 1998), pp. 315–

20; Interv, author with Kan Tagami. Tagami served on MacArthur’s personal staff from November 

1946 until April 1951. Tagami’s meeting with the emperor probably occurred sometime between 

the autumn of 1948 and the spring of 1949. Fukuhara places it in early April 1949. 16 Quote from WD Press Release, 22 Oct 45. Reproduced with slight variations in Yaban Gogai, 

Sep–Oct 45, p. 2; Yaban Gogai, Dec 45, p. 9; MISLS Album, p. 115.
Bibliography

Libraries and Archives

Amherst College Archives and Special Collections, Amherst, Mass.

• John J. McCloy Papers

Combined Arms Research Library, Fort Leavenworth, Kans.

Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford, Calif.

• Dr. John A. Burden Papers

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464 NISEI LINGUISTS

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Abe, T4g. Masao, 272

Adachi, Lt. Gen. Hatazo, 413

Aderholdt, Virginia, 215

African American soldiers

counterintelligence monitoring of, 189

on Kerama Islands, 364–65

Kozaki and, 296

Nisei and 25th Regimental Combat Team 

(RCT), 241

Nisei and 93d Infantry Division, 344, 413

Aiba, Ken K., 444

AIJLS. See Army Intensive Japanese 

Language School.

Air Medal, Nisei awarded, 371

Air Technical Intelligence Units (ATIUs), 247

Airborne troops, Military Intelligence Service 

(MIS) Nisei serving as

11th Airborne Division, 127–29, 257, 320, 

332, 383–84, 391

deployment of Camp Savage graduates, 

127–29

deployment of Fort Snelling graduates, 320

Office of Strategic Services, 285–86, 377, 

399–401

Operation Blacklist, 383–84

Pacific campaigns, 257, 332, 334–35, 

358–59

Aiso, Maj. John Fujio

Canadian Army Language School, 324–25

childhood and early Army career, 10–11, 

14, 15

civilian status, 34

commissioning of, 116, 131

at Fort Snelling, 302–03, 309

marriage of, 34, 42, 44

on military government of Japan, 225–26

occupation of Japan and, 416–17, 418–19, 

420, 428, 429, 434, 445–46

Pearl Harbor attack, immediate aftermath 

of, 42, 50

personality of, 99–101

recruitment as instructor at Fourth Army 

Intelligence School, 34, 46–47

reputation among Japanese Americans, 

10–11, 98–99

as technical director at Camp Savage, 

98–102

Aiso, Maj. John Fujio—continued

writing to former student, 188

Aitape, Papua New Guinea, 252, 343

Akune, T3g. Harry M., 334–35

Alamo Force, 187

Alamo Scouts, 248

Alaska/Aleutian Islands

campaigns of 1943, 166–72

early campaigns, May 1942–February 

1943, 65–66, 125

Alien Japanese volunteers, recruitment for 

MISLS, 305

Allied Military Government Language 

School, 357

Allied prisoners of war, 335–36, 394–95, 

399–401, 404, 440–44

Allied Translator and Interpreter Section 

(ATIS)

commissioning of personnel, 182, 256–57, 

384–85

historical reports of, 454

Manila, move to, 373–75

occupation of Japan and, 429–34, 451

Pacific campaigns

1943, 179–84, 187, 188

1944, 241–42, 242–47, 252, 255–57

1945, 332, 337, 339, 342–43, 373–76

May 1942–February 1943, 77–82, 

84, 87, 121

Pacific Military Intelligence Research 

Section (PACMIRS), ATIS veterans 

detailed to, 425–26

propaganda broadcasts, 214, 337–38

psychological warfare, 291–92

publicity regarding, 458

secrecy requirements, 257

war crimes trials and, 442, 443

women at, 180, 256, 374

Amaki, 2d Lt. Joe, 397

The American Black Chamber (Yardley), 

425

American citizenship. See Citizenship, 

American.

American Council of Learned Societies, 24,152

American Legion Post, Hood River, Oreg., 

297

Amioka, 2d Lt. Wallace S., 320, 321, 362, 365

Index
492 NISEI LINGUISTS

Anderton, Lt. Col. John

on contributions of MIS Nisei to war 

effort, 460

occupation of Japan, 425, 445

Pacific campaigns of 1944, 244, 245–46, 

292

before Pearl Harbor attack, 18

service of Nisei in continental U.S. and, 

221

Fort Snelling and, 325–26

surrender of Japan, 386

Andow, T.Sgt. Harry Katsuto, 276

Angel Island, Calif., 204

Arai, 2d Lt. Gil Ryo, 398

Ariyasu, Jim Masaru, 68n, 70n, 237n

Ariyoshi, Koji, 126–27, 209, 288–89, 348–49, 

402–03

Army, U.S., Nisei serving in, 3–7. See also

Army forces, U.S. and U.S.-controlled; 

Army Air Forces, U.S.

Burma, 345n

enlistment and service after Pearl Harbor 

attack, 47–49

evacuation from Hawaii, 47, 64–65

evacuation from West Coast, 60

in Hawaii after Pearl Harbor attack, 47

interwar enlistments, refusal of, 7

Military Intelligence Service Language 

School (MISLS), recruitment for, 

25–28

Nisei combat units, decision to form, 

85–89, 133–37. See also Army forces, 

U.S. and U.S.-controlled, 442d 

Regimental Combat Team, 100th 

Infantry Battalion.

Women’s Army Corps, enlistment of Nisei 

women in, 143–44

Army Air Forces, U.S.

Fifth Air Force, 172, 183, 184, 185, 246, 

247, 250, 369n, 370, 382

Seventh Air Force, 172–74, 370, 382

Tenth Air Force, 172, 248, 287, 370

Thirteenth Air Force, 172–74, 370

Fourteenth Air Force, 348, 399, 401

Twentieth Air Force, 248, 370, 371, 380, 

382, 394

XX Bomber Command, 344, 371

XXI Bomber Command, 220, 261, 371, 372

1st Air Commando Group, 126, 287

1st Radio Squadron Mobile (RSM), 

247–48, 370

6th RSM, 248, 287, 370

7th RSM, 248, 370

8th RSM, 248, 352, 370, 371, 372

Army Air Forces, U.S.—continued

138th Signal Radio Intercept Company, 

185–86, 247

313th Bombardment Wing, 369

Air Technical Intelligence Units, 247

Camp Savage, deployment from, 126, 129

continental U.S., Nisei serving in, 199

Pacific campaigns

1943, 172–74, 184–85

1944, 247–48, 271

1945, 369–72

refusal of Nisei enlistees by, 6

Technical Air Intelligence Units, 247, 453

Army forces, U.S. and U.S.-controlled

First Allied Airborne Army, 228

Fourth Army

designated as Western Defense 

Command, 21

language school. See Fourth Army 

Intelligence School.

Sixth Army

headquarters, Nisei assigned to, 182, 

187, 248, 252, 292, 294

liberation of Philippines, 332, 334, 

338, 341

occupation of Japan, 432

preparations for Operation Olympic, 

372, 377

surrender of Japan, 390

Eighth Army

liberation of Philippines, 332, 338, 

341, 342

occupation of Japan, 432

surrender of Japan, 390

Tenth Army, 355, 357, 358, 365

I Corps

Camp Savage graduates assigned to, 

81–82, 124

Papua New Guinea Campaign, 82

XIV Corps, 74–75, 77, 238, 241

XXIV Corps, 293, 355, 357, 360, 362, 390, 

410

11th Airborne Division, 127–29, 257, 320, 

332, 383–84, 391, 426

1st Cavalry Division, 250, 295, 334, 393, 

426, 452

7th Infantry Division

Aleutians, 166

Camp Savage graduates deployed 

with, 125, 175, 206

Kwajalein, 263

Leyte, 295, 296

Okinawa, 361

24th Infantry Division, 295
INDEX 493

Army forces, U.S. and U.S.-controlled

—continued

25th Infantry Division, 71, 73, 175, 176, 

429, 774

27th Infantry Division

Makin Island, 192–93

occupation of Japan, 426

Okinawa, 361, 368

publicity about Nisei emanating 

from, 457

Saipan, 264, 267

32d Infantry Division, 82, 83, 187, 296, 412

37th Infantry Division

Bougainville, 238, 240

Guadalcanal Campaign, 68, 70–71, 

74

New Georgia, 175

41st Infantry Division, 187, 252, 254

43d Infantry Division, 74, 174

77th Infantry Division, 295, 358

81st Infantry Division, 272, 394

93d Infantry Division, 344, 413

96th Infantry Division, 361, 362, 365, 366

Americal Division, 66–68, 69–70, 237, 

238, 241

5332d Brigade, 291, 345–46, 397

112th Cavalry RCT, 249, 250, 252, 340, 452

124th Cavalry RCT, 291, 345–46

503d Parachute RCT, 334–35

25th RCT, 241

126th RCT, 250

163d RCT, 252

442d RCT, 3

atom bomb, dropping of, 381, 437

Camp Savage students, basic training 

for, 121

casualties, 229

decision to form, 85–89, 133–37

deployment in Europe, 89, 102, 418

Hawaii Nisei response to formation 

of, 133, 191

military intelligence training, use of 

Nisei for, 231–32

MIS Nisei transferring to, 142, 176

Oral Language School at Fort 

Snelling, 328–29

public acclaim for, 300–301

publicity regarding, 284

Fort Snelling, returning combat 

veterans at, 310, 418, 419

1st Filipino Infantry, 224

105th Infantry, 267, 268

163d Infantry, 84

321st Infantry, 272

Army forces, U.S. and U.S.-controlled

—continued

323d Infantry, 272

475th Infantry, 291, 345

511th Parachute Infantry, 332

1399th Engineer Construction Battalion, 

262

100th Infantry Battalion, 3

Camp Savage trainees recruited 

from, 107

combat losses, 145

decision to form, 85–89

deployment in Europe, 102

Hawaii Nisei soldiers transferred to, 

47, 64–65

military intelligence training, use of 

Nisei for, 230

public acclaim for, 300–301

Fort Snelling, returning combat 

veterans at, 310, 419

training for, 47, 60

Hawaii Provisional Infantry Battalion, 60

6201st Interpreter Special Detachment, 358

6205th Interpreter Special Detachment, 

357

3795th Signal Intelligence Detachment, 

218

4029th Signal Intelligence Detachment, 

218

93d Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop, 344

5307th Composite Unit (Provisional), 125, 

127, 200, 278–85, 291

Army Intensive Japanese Language School 

(AIJLS), 147–50, 322–23, 422

Army Language School, MISLS renamed as, 

426

Army Map Service, 224

Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP), 

153–57, 322, 323

Arnold, General Henry H., 287

Ashizawa, Roy Yoshio, 130

Ashmead, Navy Lt. John, 294

Assimilation of Japanese Americans in U.S. 

and Hawaiian societies, 9–11

ASTP. See Army Specialized Training 

Program.

ATIS. See Allied Translator and Interpreter 

Section.

ATIUs. See Air Technical Intelligence Units.

Atom bombs, 379–82, 423, 435–37

Atomic weapons program, Nisei involvement 

with, 222–23

Attlee, Clement, 423

Attu, Alaska, 168–70, 172
494 NISEI LINGUISTS

Aurell, Maj. George E., 84, 292

Aurell, Capt. Paul W., 180, 250

Australia and Australian forces

9th Australian Division, 187–88

7th Infantry Division, 82, 83–84

16th Brigade, Nisei assigned to, 343

cleanup operations, 342–44

Japanese-language schools, 161, 255

Japanese linguists provided by, 78, 79

Nisei on leave in Australia, 255–56

Nisei serving at ATIS and, 180–81, 

188–89, 255, 342–44

POW responsibilities, 255

viewing Nisei as “Yanks,” 180–81

war crimes trials, 444

Ayers, Capt. Gilbert B., 236

Bagnall, Lt. Richard, 246

Baldwin, Lt. Col. Karl F., 79

Bali, Indonesia, 398

Bannai, T.Sgt. Paul T., 344, 398, 413

Bartlett, Lt. Cmdr. Samuel C., Jr., 244, 440

Basic military training, 121–22, 304

Bataan, Philippines, 59, 62, 94, 178, 189, 207

Belousoff, Victor B., 28n, 373

Bendetsen, Lt. Col. Karl R., 45, 54

Benedict, Ruth, 210, 427

Betts, Col. Thomas J., 198

Biak Island, 254–55

Bissell, Maj. Gen. Clayton

Camp Savage and, 131

continental U.S., Nisei serving in,218,220,223

Fort Snelling and, 300, 318, 327

graduation ceremony at MISLS addressed 

by, 462

occupation of Japan, 416, 417, 419, 429, 456

Blacklist. See Operations.

Bletchley Park, Great Britain, 161, 286

Bloch, Bernard, 158

Bloomfield, Leonard, 153

Blunda, Col. Gaspare F., 235n, 286, 287

Boas, Franz, 153

Bonin Islands, Japan, 406. See also Iwo Jima.

Borneo, 344

Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, 172, 176, 

179, 186, 193, 236–42, 342

“Boulder Boys,” 152

Bowers, Maj. Faubion, 53, 180, 246, 391, 395, 

454

Bratton, Col. Rufus S., 15, 16, 86, 198

Bridges, Harry, 127

British and Commonwealth forces

Fourteenth Army, 346

4 Corps, 276

British and Commonwealth forces—continued

19th Division, 276

Indian 5th Division, 347

Indian 19th Division, 346

Indian 26th Division, 276

Japanese-language training, 160–61, 324

Nisei serving with, 276, 289

Southeast Asia, surrender of Japanese 

forces in, 396–98

British Empire Medal, awarded to Kuwabara, 

276

Bronze Star recipients

XXI Bomber Command, Nisei with, 371

Chojin, 273

Fukuhara, 378

Honda, 265

Masuda, John, 241

Matsui, George, 265

Okubo, 406

Sakamoto, Thomas, 251

Taketa, Tom, 287n

Uratsu, 341

Uyehata, 241

Yoshiwara, 74n

Brothels, Japanese

Korean comfort women, 282, 338, 348, 

365n

at Rabaul, 246

Brunner, Glenn, 260

Buchanan, Daniel C., 141

Buckner, Simon B., 368

“Buddhaheads,” 139, 305, 308

Buddhist services for Fort Snelling MISLS

students, 303–04

Buna-Gona, Papua New Guinea, 178, 187

Burden, Lt. Col. John A.

in China, 288, 348, 399, 401

on deployment of 442d RCT, 89

documents sent to Camp Savage by, 120

in Guadalcanal Campaign, 68, 70–74, 76, 

77

at MISLS, 176

at New Georgia, 175

recruitment to Intelligence School, 52

Silver Star awarded to, 73n

South Pacific, deployment of Camp Savage 

graduates to, 125

at Vella Lavella, 176

Buri airstrip, Philippines, 294–95

Burke, Capt. Arleigh A., 264

Burma. See China-Burma-India Theater.

Bushido code, 269

Buss, Claude, 200, 208

Buto, 1st Lt. Junichi, 347
INDEX 495

Byron Hot Springs, Calif., interrogation of 

Japanese prisoners at, 204–06

Cabanatuan, Philippines, 336

California alien land law, 8

California at Berkely, University of, 7, 30, 57, 

58, 143, 151n

California Gold Rush, 8

Camp Chelmer, Australia, 79, 180–81

Camp Ritchie, Md.

Military Intelligence Training Center at, 158

PACMIRS at, 218–22, 228, 270, 350, 420, 

423, 425–26

Camp Savage, Minn.

Aiso as technical director at, 98–102

basic military training, 121–22

Caucasians recruited for, 103

countersubversive program at, 114–16

feedback from graduates, use of, 120–21

first special class, graduation and 

deployment of, 81–82, 98

Hawaii and mainland recruits, tensions 

between, 139

initial classes and curriculum, 97–98

initial mental state of Nisei assigned to, 

96–97, 99–100

instructors at, 116–19

language teams, deployment of, 122–31

latrines used for late-night study sessions, 

40, 97, 108

Military Research and Liaison Section, 

120, 121

recruitment of students

1942, 102–08

1943–1944, 135, 138–41, 145–46

from Hawaii, 138–40

relocation of Military Intelligence School 

to, 54, 91–95

relocation of school to Fort Snelling from, 

161, 300

reorganizations of school, 119–20

school renamed, 97

social life of Nisei at, 110–14

training and instructional methods at, 

108–10

Translation Section, 120

Canada and Canadian forces

1st Special Service Force (U.S.-Canada), 

170

in Aleutian Islands, 170

AIJLS, Canadians admitted to, 150

in China-Burma-India Theater, 348

Japanese-language training, 161, 324–25, 

423–24

Canada and Canadian forces—continued

MISLS, Canadians admitted to, 150

Nisei recruitment by armed forces of, 145

Southeast Asia, surrender of Japanese 

forces in, 397

war crimes trials, 444

Cartographic services, 224

Cary, Otis, 58n, 152n, 168, 186n, 402n, 434n

CASA. See Civil Affairs Holding and Staging 

Area.

Castle, Arthur Robert (M.Sgt. Arthur 

Katsuyoshi Ushiro), 81, 98, 187, 256

Cat Island, Miss., 230

CATS. See Civil Affairs Training Schools.

Caucasians

at AIJLS, 147–50

Camp Savage recruits, 103

Fourth Army Intelligence School recruits, 

28, 51–53

as leaders of language teams, 130, 147, 

168, 243, 294, 313, 362

psychology of interrogating Asians vs. 

Caucasians, 31

Weckerling on need to enroll, 51–52

Censorship in occupied Japan, 453–54

Central Bureau

in occupied Japan, 425

Pacific campaigns, 78, 80, 82n, 184, 240, 

244–45

Central Pacific

campaigns in, 190–93, 258–73, 349–55

deployment of Camp Savage graduates to, 

125

surrender of Japanese forces in, 

404–10

Centralized intelligence school, arguments 

for, 30–31

Chan, Capt. Won-Loy, 52n, 125, 142, 221, 276, 

278, 282, 425

Chiang Kai-shek, 386, 398, 402, 404

China-Burma-India Theater

deployment of Camp Savage graduates to, 

125, 127

Dickey transferred to, 119

Kachin Rangers, 280, 285, 289, 291, 

346–47

Merrill’s Marauders, 125, 127, 200, 

278–85, 291

Office of Strategic Services in, 285–86, 

347, 348–49, 399

Pacific campaigns, 273–91, 344–49

psychological warfare teams in, 209

Sino Translation and Interrogation Center, 

218, 288, 348, 399
496 NISEI LINGUISTS

China-Burma-India Theater—continued

surrenders of Japanese forces

China, 398–404

Southeast Asia, 396–98

Chindits, 287

Chinese Americans

at Fourth Army Intelligence School, 52

Japanese Americans compared, 5, 8

military government training, 227

at MISLS, 97n, 142–43, 315–16, 399

Nisei confused with, 73, 113

Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, 8

Chinese-language programs, 315–16

Chinese Nationalist Army, 348

Chinese New First Army, 346

Choctaws used as Code Talkers, 179

Chojin, T4g. Shiuso, 272–73

CIC. See Counter Intelligence Corps.

Citizenship, American

dual citizenship of Nisei, 11

Issei ineligibility for, 8

Nisei losing and regaining, 12n, 115, 350

Nisei renouncing, 450–51

Civil Affairs Holding and Staging Area 

(CASA), 227, 424

Civil Affairs Training Schools (CATS), 159, 

226, 323, 423

Civil censorship in occupied Japan, 453–54

Colleges and universities. See also California 

at Berkeley, University of; Colorado, 

University of; Columbia University; 

Harvard University; Michigan, University of; Oklahoma A&M College; 

Pennsylvania, University of; Princeton 

University; Virginia, University of; 

Washington, University of.

ASTP language programs, 153–57

independent language programs, 158

military government language training at, 

159–60

Collins, Maj. Gen. J. Lawton, 73

Colorado, University of, 58–59, 70, 150–52, 

168, 323, 422–23. See also Navy School 

of Oriental Languages; Office of Naval 

Intelligence (ONI).

Columbia University, 119, 159, 362

Combat Infantry Badge, Nisei awarded, 83, 

187, 193, 283, 411

Combat Intelligence Center, Noumea, New 

Caledonia, 172, 174

Comanche used as Code Talkers, 179

Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet (CINCPAC), 

1st Provisional Military Government 

Interpreter Detachment, 357

Commissions. See also Caucasians, as leaders 

of language teams.

Aiso, 116, 131

anglicized names, supposed blackballing 

of Nisei with, 257n

AIJLS graduates, 323

ATIS personnel, 182, 256–57, 384–85, 434

in the field, 376, 378, 387

Merrill’s Marauders Nisei, 283

MIS Nisei graduates, 130–31

MISLS instructors, 116, 303

morale of draftees due to lack of, 229–30

Navy V–12 precommissioning program, 

153, 156

Office Candidate School, MIS Nisei 

attending, 131, 176–77, 222, 242, 313

Sakamoto, Thomas, 26

Communism, 126, 209, 211, 288–89

Communist Chinese, 288–89, 348–49, 377, 

399, 402–04

Communist Japanese, 288–89, 439, 451

Company K at Fort Snelling, 418–19

Compton, Karl T., 452

Continental U.S., MIS Nisei serving in, 

195–233

II Armored Corps Training Center, 224

Army Map Service, 224

interrogation of POWs, 203–07

Manhattan Project, 222–23

military government, 225–27

Military Intelligence Division (MID), 

198–201

Military Intelligence Training Units, 

229–33

Pacific Military Intelligence Research 

Section, 218–22, 228

Pacific Order of Battle Section, 200–203

psychological warfare, 207–14

Signal Intelligence Service, 200, 214–18

Coordinator of Information (later Office of 

Strategic Services), 59, 207, 208

Cornell University conference of Japaneselanguage teachers, 1941, 24, 29

Coronet. See Operations.

Corps of Intelligence Police, 20. See also

Counter Intelligence Corps.

language training school, 23

Philippines, surveillance of Japanese 

community in, 20

prisoners of war from, 335–36

Cory, 1st Lt. Ralph, 69

Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC), 20. See 

also Corps of Intelligence Police.

306th CIC, 383
INDEX 497

Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC)—continued

African American soldiers, monitoring of, 

189

Camp Savage countersubversion program, 

114–16

in occupied Japan, 437–39, 441

Pacific campaigns, 1944, 247

Philippines, responsibility for security in 

liberated areas of, 335

surrender of Japan and, 383

Covell, Maj. Sheldon M., 125, 287

Craig, Helen (later McCullough), 152n

Creswell, Col. Harry I. T., 432

Crissy Field. See Fourth Army Intelligence 

School.

Cromley, Roy, 349

Cryptanalysis, 217

Cushing, Lt. Col. John, 245

D’Aquino, Iva Ikuko Toguri (“Tokyo Rose”), 

447

Defense Language Institute Foreign Language 

Center (DLIFLC), 3, 224n, 254n, 297n

Deguchi, Sgt. Mike Masato, 352

Demographics of Japanese Americans in U.S., 

1920s to 1940, 8–9

DeWitt, Lt. Gen. John L.

exclusion policy favored by, 136–37, 301

Fourth Army Intelligence School and, 40, 

45, 86

before Pearl Harbor attack, 21, 25

Dickey, Col. Joseph K.

at Camp Savage, 96–97, 107

in China, 119, 288, 348, 399

establishment of Fourth Army Intelligence 

School, 25, 26

initial Fourth Army Intelligence School 

classes, 37, 40–41, 44

Nisei War Department demonstrations, 

201

recruitment of additional students, 54

recruitment of instructors, 53

Dirks, T.Sgt. Dempster, 28n, 37n, 204–05, 224

Discharges, 34, 42, 48, 376, 419, 422, 432, 434

Distinguished Flying Cross awarded to T.Sgt. 

Ben Kuroki, 369

Distinguished Service Cross

100th Infantry Battalion and 442d RCT, 

142n, 231, 369n

Hachiya possibly recommended for, 297n

Hirata, 231

Kubo, Hoichi, 43n, 268n, 270, 326, 331, 

368, 386, 457

OSS team recommended for, 400

Distinguished Service Medal awarded to 

Mashbir, 432

Distinguished Unit Citation, 347

Division E (Oral Language School), 328–29

Dixie Mission, 288, 349, 399, 402

Doi, T5g. Terry Takeshi, 12n, 115, 201, 350

Do ̄mei news service, 205, 211–212, 289, 403, 

436n

Donovan, William J., 59, 207, 208

Doud, Col. Harold, 432

Douglass, Frederick, 5

Dowd, Capt. Lawrence P., 53, 114–15

Dozier, Lt. William L., 295

Draft. See Selective Service System.

Drea, Edward, 424

Dual citizenship of Nisei, 11

Dull, Paul S., 160

Dusenbury, Lt. Col. Carlisle C., 21, 198

Eclipse. See Operations.

Eichelberger, General Robert L., 81, 84–85, 

203, 252, 341, 427

Eisenhower, General Dwight D., 86, 198, 

228

Eisenhower, Milton S., 54, 86

Elisséeff, Serge, 29–30, 58

Embree, John F., 159, 210

Emmerson, John K., 276, 278, 282, 288–89, 

290–91

Emperor, Japanese. See Hirohito.

Eniwetok, Marshall Islands, 263

Erskine, Hugh, 245

Ethnically/racially segregated service units, 

87–88

Exclusion policy. See also War Relocation 

Authority; War Relocation Centers.

evacuation of Japanese Americans from 

West Coast, 45–46, 56–60, 91

Nisei soldiers kept out of exclusion zone, 

53, 58, 94, 123, 205, 208

rescindment of, 284, 297, 301

Executive Order 9066, 45

FBIS. See Foreign Broadcast Intelligence 

Service.

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

Japanese-language teaching, investigation 

of, 24

MID and ONI, coordination with, 17

Nisei loyalty, investigation of, 12, 17–20

Pearl Harbor attack, response to, 43–44

Fellers, Brig. Gen. Bonner F., 212, 292, 337, 

381, 445, 446

Ferret missions, 371–72
498 NISEI LINGUISTS

Fielder, Col. Kendall J., 87, 138, 191, 262, 316, 

366

Fifth-column fears. See Loyalty of Nisei to 

U.S., suspicions regarding.

Filipino troops, instruction of, 224

Fish, Gordon T., 216

Fisher, William, 236, 240, 241

Fleet Radio Unit, Melbourne (FRUMEL), 81

Fleet Radio Unit, Pacific (FRUPAC), 64, 65, 

190, 258, 350

Fletcher, Frank J., 409–10

Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service 

(FBIS), 107, 211–12

Fort Hunt, Virginia, interrogation of Japanese 

POWs at, 204

Fort Ord, Calif., 21, 55, 224, 227

Fort Snelling, Minn., 299–329

Aiso’s authority at, 302–03

basic military training, 304

chaplaincy and religious services, 303–04

Chinese-language program, 315–16

Company K, 418–19

deployment of graduates, 318–21

first graduating class, 313

Hawaii and mainland recruits, tensions 

between, 305, 308

instructors and instructional methods, 

308–16

Japan, training for invasion and occupation 

of, 326–29, 416–22

Korean-language class, 417

language teams, deployment of, 320–21

Military Research and Liaison Section, 314

morale at, 300–304, 418–20

Oral Language School, 328–29, 417

recruitment of students, 304–08

relocation from Camp Savage to, 161, 300

relocation to Presidio of Monterey from, 

420

returning combat veterans recruited to 

speak at, 310

spirit and morale of MISLS students at, 

300–304

Translation Section, 314–15

“Turkey Farm,” 311, 418

Women’s Army Corps members at, 316–18, 

420–22

Fourth Army Intelligence School

budget, 37

Caucasians recruited for, 28, 51–53

establishment of, 20–28

first graduating class, 56, 60, 61

first students sent into field, 55–56, 61–63

initial classes, 37–40

Fourth Army Intelligence School—continued

instructors, recruiting, 33–37, 50–51

need for additional recruits after Pearl 

Harbor attack, 54–55

Nisei enlistees recruited for, 25–28

Pearl Harbor attack, immediate aftermath 

of, 40–43, 44–45, 49–50

relocation to Minnesota, 53–54, 60, 91–95. 

See also Camp Savage, Minn.

renamed, 97

textbooks used at, 35–36, 37

threats to establishment, 30–31

French Indochina, 23, 397–98, 404

Friendly fire, 178, 254n, 297n, 355, 361, 405

FRUMEL. See Fleet Radio Unit, Melbourne.

FRUPAC. See Fleet Radio Unit, Pacific.

Fudenna, T.Sgt. Tarno H., 181, 185, 186, 188

Fujimura, S.Sgt. Kiyoshi, 253–54, 412

Fujita, Sgt. Frank, Jr., 395

Fukuda, Robert K., 370

Fukudome, Shigeru, 245

Fukuhara, 2d Lt. Harry K.

awarded Bronze Star, 378

occupation of Japan, 436

Pacific campaigns, 181, 378

at Camp Savage, 121

surrender of Japan, 379–80

Fukui, T3g. Edwin Yukio, 358

Furloughs

from occupation of Japan, 434

from Pacific campaigns, 242, 256, 376

from Camp Savage, 122, 128

from Fort Snelling, 320, 326

Furuiye, Nobuo, 170, 192, 260, 409, 452

Furumoto, T3g. Howard, 126, 348–49

Furutani, Yaye (later Herman), 144n

Gabaldon, Pfc. Guy, 267

Galahad, Project, 125, 127. See also Army 

Forces, U.S. and U.S.-controlled, 

5307th Composite Unit (Provisional).

General Headquarters and threats to 

establishment of Fourth Army 

Intelligence School, 31

Germany, Japan’s ties with, 228–29

Gilbert Islands, Great Britain, 190

Gillette, Guy M., 11

Goda, T.Sgt. George H., 181, 185

Goettge, Lt. Col. Frank B., 69

Gosho, Sgt. Henry Hiroharu, 278–79, 281, 284

Goto, T.Sgt. Yasuo Baron, 452

Gould, Lt. Col. Karl, 163

Grass writing. See So ̄sho. 

Green Islands, Papua New Guinea, 237
INDEX 499

Grew, Joseph C., 129, 225

Gripsholm, SS, 74, 119, 125, 199–200

Griswold, Maj. Gen. Oscar W., 240

Gronich, Lt. Col. Sidney F., 219–20, 221, 222, 

425

Groves, Brig. Gen. Leslie R., 223

Guadalcanal Campaign, 66–77

XIV Corps, 74–75, 77

25th Infantry Division, 71, 73, 74

37th Infantry Division, 68, 70–71, 74

43d Infantry Division, 74

Americal Division, Noumea, New 

Caledonia, 66–68, 69–70

Burden’s involvement in, 68, 70–74, 76, 77

intelligence lessons learned in, 75–77

marine taking of Guadalcanal, 69

Navajo Code Talkers in, 178

Nisei brought to front, 73–75

ONI language school graduates in Hawaii, 

70

prisoners, reluctance to take, 69, 71, 76

Guam, 270–71, 350, 371, 372, 404, 407

Gunjin Shimbun [Soldier News], 289

Gyokusai, 267, 268

Hachiya, Sgt. Frank Tadakazu, 48, 192, 

263–64, 296–98

Halsey, Admiral William F., 66–67, 71, 172, 

174, 200

Hamada, S.Sgt. Dick S., 401

Hamano, S.Sgt. Shunji, 174

Hamasaki, James, 200

Harada, Sgt. Tsuneo “Cappy,” 293

Harano, T4g. Samuel T., 346–47

Harano, M.Sgt. Yoshio Kenneth, 338

Harvard University

Japanese translators, training of, 215

ONI Japanese-language program at, 29–30, 

58

Hawaii. See also Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

442d RCT, response of Nisei to formation 

of, 133, 191, 262

1399th Engineer Construction Battalion, 

Nisei with, 262

assimilation of Japanese Americans in, 

9–11

demographics of Japanese Americans in, 

8–9

evacuation of Nisei soldiers from, 47, 

64–65

fears of fifth-column activity in, 44

Japanese immigration to, 7–8

martial law declared after Pearl Harbor 

attack, 46–47

Hawaii—continued

Military Intelligence Service Language 

School

recruitment of students from Hawaii, 

138–40

tensions between Hawaii and 

mainland recruits, 139, 305, 308

Naval intelligence operations out of

dismissive attitude toward Nisei, 

262–62

ONI language school graduates, 70

reluctance to use Nisei, 63–65, 140, 

191

War Department secondment 

of MIS Nisei to JICPOA, 258–62

proposal to establish language school in, 

328

territorial legislature, Japanese Americans 

elected to, 9

Hayashi, Lt. Richard Kaoru, 55, 176, 328–29, 

459

Hayashida, WO George Tetsuo, 169, 174, 

242

Hazard, 1st Lt. Benjamin H., Jr., 121n, 264, 

267, 360–61, 410

Henderson, Harold G., 119

Henrico, USS, 358

Higa, T3g. Takejiro, 138–39, 356–57, 366–67

Higa, Thomas Taro, 365–66

Higa, Warren T., 356–57

Higashi, Sgt. Rodney, 369n

Higashi, T4g. Seiyu, 366

Hindmarsh, Cmdr. Albert E., 29–30, 58, 

150–51, 261–62, 319–20, 323

Hirabayashi, Sgt. Grant Jiro, 282

Hirano, Sgt. Kiyoshi, 222–23, 390

Hiraoka, William T., 189, 247

Hirata, Jesse M., 231

Hirata, Richard Y., 248

Hirata, 2d Lt. Teichiro, 397

Hirohito

criticism of MacArthur’s protection of, 

445, 461

language used in surrender documents 

regarding, 290

meeting with MacArthur, 391, 395

on Nisei, 461–62

removal and trial as war criminal, 

proposals regarding, 385–95, 445

surrender broadcast, 382–83, 386, 407

Hironaka, M.Sgt. George K., 305

Hiroshima, Japan

bombing of, 279–380, 387

Nisei visits to, 435–37
500 NISEI LINGUISTS

History of war, writing, 454–59

Ho Chi Minh, 404

Hobby, Col. Oveta C., 143

Hodges, Lt. Gen. Courtney H., 372

Hollandia, New Guinea, 252

Hollingshead, Col. Frank, 308, 320, 326

Holmes, Cmdr. W. J., 323

Holtom, Capt. Gerald P., 30n, 68

Homosexuality, suspected, 149–50n

Honda, T.Sgt. Ben, 265

Honda, T5g. Robert T., 285

Hong Kong, 403

Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 139n, 182n, 185n, 

189n, 232, 257n, 352–53, 358n, 435

Hood River, Oreg., 48, 192, 263, 296–98, 355, 

428

Hoover, J. Edgar, 43

Hosokawa, Bill, 55

Humanitarian crisis in Okinawa, 365

Hurley, Maj. Gen. Patrick J., 403

Iceberg. See Operations.

Ichikawa, T.Sgt. Torao George, 180

Ichikawa, T4g. Toshio, 411–12

Ickes, Harold L., 203, 232, 301

Ie Shima, Japan, 361, 386

Ige, T4g. Thomas H., 320–21, 364–65

Imada, 2d Lt. Thomas T., 387, 390

Imagawa, Tetsuo, 34, 140

Imai, T5g. Hideo, 285

Inagaki, George, 366

India. See China-Burma-India Theater.

Indonesia, 398

Inouye, Daniel Kaoru, 43, 140, 223n, 430, 

452–53

Intensive Language Program, American 

Council of Learned Societies, 153

International Military Tribunal for the Far 

East, 442–44

Internment camps. See also War Relocation 

Authority; War Relocation Centers.

at Camp McCoy, Wisc., 99n

detention of suspicious persons in, 44, 46

Japanese evacuated from West Coast, 

45–46, 56–60, 91

terminology, 46n

Interrogation of prisoners

in Aleutians, 169

by ATIS, 183, 244

Bougainville, Army Day attack on, 238–41

Central Pacific campaigns, 263, 272

China-Burma-India Theater, 286

in continental U.S., 203–07

early attempts at, 66–67

Interrogation of prisoners—continued

Hachiya and Hood River, 296–97

Okinawa, 359–60, 366

Papua New Guinea, 187

Philippines, liberation of, 338–39

reluctance of Americans to take Japanese 

prisoners, 69, 71, 76, 192n, 295

Camp Savage instruction in, 110

Invasion of Japan, plans for. See Japan, 

planned invasion of.

Ishida, T3g. Bill, 334n

Ishii, T.Sgt. Chris, 112, 209, 289

Ishii, Masayuki, 384

Ishikawa, Moffett M., 243

Ishimaru, Stone S., 300

Ishio, 1st Lt. Sunao Phil

and occupation of Japan, 425

Pacific campaigns, 81–82, 244, 256, 292, 

294

at Camp Savage, 96, 98

service in continental U.S., 221

Isokane, T3g. Sam Setsuo, 408

Issei. See also Japanese Americans; Kibei; 

Nisei; Sansei.

as AIJLS instructors, 148

citizenship ineligibility, 8

military service of, 8

military service of sons, response to, 4, 6, 

106, 134, 247–48, 304–05

repatriation of, 114, 450–51

surveillance of, 17–20

Ito, Sgt. Ichiro James, 394–95

Ito, Roy, 423n

Ito, T.Sgt. Shigeo, 295, 361–62

Iwai, Maj. Gero, 18, 64, 349

Iwamoto, T.Sgt. Yoshito, 450

Iwo Jima, Japan, 350–55, 406

JACL. See Japanese American Citizens 

League.

“Jap” as racial slur, 112

Japan, Nisei spending time in

Kibei, 8, 13–15, 27–28

remaining in Japan or Japanese-controlled 

territory during war, 368, 447, 450

Japan, occupation of, 415–56. See also

Military government.

censorship, 453–54

CIC in, 437–39, 441

Fort Snelling and, 326–29, 416–22

history of war, writing, 454–56

Japanese-language schools other than 

MISLS, 422–26

Japanese people’s reception of Nisei, 434
INDEX 501

Japan, occupation of—continued

local officials, establishing relationships 

with, 447

MIS Nisei involved in, 426–37

purges of civilian leaders, 445–47

repatriation of soldiers, sailors, and 

civilians, 401–02, 448–51

survey and technical missions, 451–53

war crimes trials, 247, 426, 440–44

Japan, planned invasion of

Nisei concerns about, 377–78

Operation Olympic, preparations for, 

372–78, 394

training at Fort Snelling for, 326–29

Japan, surrender of, 379–413

atom bombs, dropping of, 379–82, 423

emperor. See Hirohito.

formal surrender process, 385–95

General Order No. 1, 396, 402

Operation Blacklist, 383–84, 390

regional surrenders of territories, 395–413

Central Pacific, 404–10

China, 398–404

Korea, 410–11

Philippines, 411–13

Southeast Asia, 396–98

unconditional surrender, demand for 

(Potsdam Declaration), 377, 380, 

416

Japanese American Citizens League (JACL)

atom bomb, reaction to news of, 381

espionage conscription, protesting 

charges of, 11

Nisei combat units, decision to form, 87

Nisei remaining in Japan or Japanesecontrolled territory during war, 368

Rasmussen’s appeal to, 108

Selective Service, support for, 5–6, 145

Tsukamoto, Walter T., 309

“Japanese American Creed,” 6, 20

Japanese Americans. See also Issei; Kibei; 

Nisei; Sansei.

anger and suspicion against, following 

Pearl Harbor attack, 40–49

evacuation from West Coast, 45–46, 56–60

history of, 1885–1941, 7–15

morale and spirit, 1944, 300–301

remaining in Japan or Japanese territory 

during war, 368, 447, 450

response to induction of Nisei into armed 

forces, 4–6

Japanese assets, U.S. freezing of, 20, 23

Japanese Communists, 288–89, 439, 451

Japanese Emancipation League, 289

Japanese government and Japanese Americans

dual citizenship of Nisei, 11

intercession with U.S. government, 8, 9

recruitment/conscription of Nisei by, 

11–12, 14, 19, 28

Japanese language

declining skills of MISLS graduates, 181, 

244, 305

difficulty for English speakers, 39, 62–63, 

108, 427–28

Japanese-language officers, Office of Naval 

Intelligence, 17, 23, 29, 199, 200

Japanese-language schools. See also Military 

Intelligence Service Language School.

AIJLS, 147–50, 322–23, 422

of Allied forces, 160–61, 255, 324–26, 

423–24

Allied Military Government Language 

School, 357

ASTP courses, 153–57, 322, 323

Australian, 78

Civil Affairs Training Schools, 159, 226, 

323, 423

closure at end of war, 422

of Fourth Army. See Fourth Army 

Intelligence School.

Hawaii, proposal to establish Army 

language school in, 328

marines, 30, 160, 324, 353, 423

military government training, 159–60

multiplication of, 152–53

Navy. See Office of Naval Intelligence.

Nisei attendance as children, 9, 12–13, 26

Office of Strategic Services, 158

prewar paucity of, 153

Camp Ritchie MID training center, 158

at Camp Savage. See Camp Savage, 

Minn.

self-study materials, 157–58

Signal Intelligence Service, 158

at Fort Snelling. See Fort Snelling, Minn.

Japanese soldiers and POWs

Australian POW camps, 255

civilians, posing as, 366

interrogated. See Interrogation of 

prisoners.

myths about fighting capacity of, 175, 273, 

293

Native Americans confused with, 178, 353

New Zealand POW camps, 175–76

Nisei to simulate for training, 230–33

reluctance of Allies to take prisoners, 69, 

71, 76, 192n, 295

suicides of, 170, 183, 206–07, 268
502 NISEI LINGUISTS

Japanese writing. See Ro ̄maji characters; 

So ̄sho, or grass writing. See also Kana

code; Kanji (Chinese) characters.

Japan’s ties with Nazi Germany, 228–29

Java, Indonesia, 395, 397, 398, 444

Johnston, Philip, 177–78

Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Areas 

(JICPOA)

Naval Technical Mission to Japan, 452

and Nisei in service in continental U.S., 218

Pacific campaigns

1943, 190, 192, 218

1944, 246, 258–62, 270

1945, 349–55, 358, 359, 362, 373

surrender of Japan and, 382, 404–05, 410

Jorgensen, Lt. Gordon S., 169

Kabuki theater, 454

Kachin Rangers, 280, 285, 289, 291, 346–47

Kadani, Lt. Gary Tsuneo

Pacific campaigns, 78, 81, 179–80, 187, 

244, 256

at Camp Savage, 91–94

service in continental U.S., 213

Kades, Col. Charles L., 446

Kadomoto, M.Sgt. Thomas S., 189

Kahn, David, 215

Kai, S.Sgt. James T., 272

Kamikaze attacks, 273, 293, 358, 370n, 383, 

437

Kana code, 185

Kanegai, M.Sgt. George, 96, 100–101, 112, 

123, 179–80, 242

Kaneko, 1st Lt. Arthur M., 34, 201, 222, 426

Kaneshiro, M.Sgt. Keith, 452

Kanji (Chinese) characters, 37, 39, 120, 201, 

215, 305, 315, 316, 386

Katayama, T4g. Raymond H., 387

Kawabe, Torashiro, 387

Kawahara, T.Sgt. Edwin I., 139, 144

Kawakami, 2d Lt. Clarke H., 404, 455–56

Kawakami, K. K., 289, 455

Kawakita, Tomoya, 447

Kawashiri, Iwao Roy, 336–37

Kayano, 2d Lt. George Kenichi, 387, 390

Keene, Lt. Donald, 70, 168, 260, 362

Keller, Maj. Fred B., 308, 312

Kenney, Maj. Gen. George C., 247

Kerama Islands, Japan, 358, 364

Kibei, 8, 13–15, 27–28. See also Issei; 

Japanese Americans; Nisei; Sansei.

Kido, Cpl. Fumio, 399–400

Kihara, Shigeya

Canadian Army Language School, 325

Kihara, Shigeya—continued

at Fort Snelling, 309

instructional methods at Camp Savage, 

109, 110

mistaken for Chinese American, 113

occupation of Japan, 416

recruitment as instructor at Fourth Army 

Intelligence School, 34

recruitment efforts by, 140

Kikumoto, Sam T., 398

Kim, Lt. Calvin, 417

Kimura, T4g. Robert T. “Rusty,” 342

King, Admiral Ernest J., 200, 268

Kiriwina Island, Papua New Guinea, 187

Kishiue, Sgt. Nobuo Dick, 192, 265, 368–69

Kiska, Alaska, 170–72

Kitagawa, Daisuke, 303, 304

Kitagawa, Lt. Kay I., 206, 393

Knox, Frank, 44, 46

Knudten, Sgt. Rhoda V., 318

Koga, Mineichi, 245

Kojima, Kiyofumi, 339

Komori, M.Sgt. Arthur S.

occupation of Japan, 437, 441

Pacific campaigns, 59, 80, 189, 247, 256, 

335–36

before Pearl Harbor attack, 19

service in continental U.S., 207

surrender of Japan, 393

Komoto, S.Sgt. Kazuo, 175, 291, 345, 371, 

391n

Konno, S.Sgt. Clifford P., 213, 338, 385

Korea

Soviet invasion of, 399

surrender of Japanese forces in, 410–11

Korean Americans, recruitment of, 58, 69n, 

143, 268

Korean comfort women, 282, 348

Korean-language class at Fort Snelling, 417

Koshi, M.Sgt. George M., 202, 222, 231–32, 

425, 426, 444

“Kotonks,” 139, 305, 308

Koyama, Sgt. Spady Ayato, 47–48, 292–93

Kozaki, S.Sgt. Kazuo, 41n, 42n, 187–88, 254n, 

292, 296

Krueger, Lt. Gen. Walter, 412

Kubo, Sgt. Hoichi “Bob”

Camp Savage, 107

Distinguished Service Cross, 43n, 268n, 

270, 326, 331, 368, 386, 457

and Wheeler Field, Hawaii, 43, 47 

Pacific campaigns, 191–92, 193, 266–70, 

284, 368

before Pearl Harbor attack, 7
INDEX 503

Kubo, Sgt. Hoichi “Bob”—continued

Silver Star, 267

surrender of Japan, 386

Kubo, Takashi, 70

Kubo, T3g. Takeo, 70, 176–77

Kubota, Hisashi, 115n

Kubota, Saburo, 375n, 392n

Kumabe, Iwao, 397–98

Kuniyoshi, Yasuo, 207

Kunming, China, 348, 377

Kuramoto, Capt. Kiyoshi, 418

Kuroki, T.Sgt. Ben, 47, 369

Kuwabara, T4g. Henry, 276

Kwajalein, Marshall Islands, 263

Kyushu, Japan, 372–78, 394

Labor activist Nisei, 126–27, 209, 211, 

288–89

Lae Campaign, 187–88

Laffin, Capt. William A., 125, 200, 278, 280

Language schools. See Japanese-language 

schools.

Language teams, deployment of

Caucasians as team leaders, 130, 147, 168, 

243, 294, 313, 362

Okinawa special language team, 320–21, 

356, 366

Camp Savage graduates, 122–31

Fort Snelling, 320–21

Lattimore, Owen, 208

Laytha, S.Sgt. Edgar M., 283, 289

Layton, Capt. Edwin T., 64, 246

Leahy, Admiral William D., 214

Leftist Nisei, 126–27, 209, 211, 288–89

Legion of Merit awards to Matsumoto, 279

Leighton, Alexander H., 210, 452

Leyte Campaign, 291–96

Leyte Gulf, Battle of, 293

Lincoln, Abraham, quoted by John Aiso, 99

Lindbergh, Charles, 192n, 254–55

Lippmann, Walter, 45

Lone Tree Hill, Maffin Bay, New Guinea, 253

Los Baños, Philippines, 336

“Lost Battalion,” 301

Loyalty of Nisei to U.S., suspicions regarding. 

See also Prejudice against Japanese 

Americans.

Camp Savage, countersubversive program 

at, 114–16

Fort Snelling instructors, 311

German American experience in World 

War I compared, 41, 204–05

Hawaii, troops serving in, 262

inefficient use of MIS Nisei due to, 194

Loyalty of Nisei to U.S., suspicions 

regarding—continued

Japanese-language school, soldiers 

interviewed for, 27–28

MID, ONI, and FBI surveillance programs, 

17–20

Pearl Harbor attack, reactions to, 40–49

reasons for, 11–12

review board for expanded leave clearance, 

136

at Signal Intelligence Service, 216–18

in South Pacific campaigns of 1943, 174

War Department press release of 28 

January 1943 on, 136

Luzon, Philippines, 332–41

McAlpine, James H., 323, 422

MacArthur, General Douglas

atom bomb, reaction to news of, 381

occupation of Japan, 431, 438, 442, 445

Pacific campaigns

1943, 189

1944, 242, 252, 270, 292

1945, 332, 336, 372, 373, 376

May 1942–February 1943, 62, 77

recalled from retirement, 23

surrender of Japan, 385–86, 391, 392, 395, 

396

treatment of emperor, 395, 445, 461

McCloy, John J.

Army Map Service, 224

commissioning of MIS Nisei, 131

countering DeWitt on exclusion policy, 137

European Theater, Nisei recruited for, 86, 

89, 102, 106

exclusion zone, Nisei removal from, 59, 

208

loyalty review board under, 136

on multiplicity of government Japaneselanguage schools, 152

Nisei to simulate Japanese soldiers, 233

on publicity for MISLS, 162

Reischauer, Edwin O., services of, 215

support for Camp Savage, 129–30

McCollum, Cmdr. Arthur H., 28–30, 81, 199, 

215

McCullough, Helen Craig, 152n

McKenzie, Maj. Arthur P., 324

MacLeish, Archibald, 208

McWilliams, Carey, 13

Maffin Bay, New Guinea, 253

Mailer, Sgt. Norman, 340

Maine, USS, explosion of, 8

Makin Island, Kiribati, 68–69, 190–93
504 NISEI LINGUISTS

Malaya, planned invasion of, 397

Manchuria, China, Soviet invasion of, 399, 

448

Manhattan Project, 222–23

Manila, Philippines, liberation of, 332–35

Mariana Islands, 220, 264, 271, 408

Marine Corps, U.S.

III Amphibious Corps, 355, 390, 401

V Amphibious Corps, 268, 350, 355, 394, 

448

1st Marine Division, 249–50, 271, 402, 405

2d Marine Division, 271

3d Marine Division, 270

4th Marine Division, 271, 391

1st Provisional Marine Brigade, 270

2d Marine Regiment, 267

Guadalcanal, 69, 71

Iwo Jima, 350–55

Japanese-language programs, 30, 160, 324, 

353, 423

Navajo Code Talkers, 177–79

need for linguists, 57

refusal of Nisei enlistees by, 6

Tarawa, taking of, 192

Marpi Point, Saipan, Mariana Islands, 268

Mars Task Force. See Army forces, U.S. and 

U.S.-controlled, 5332d Brigade.

Marshall, General George C., 129, 198, 403

Marshall, Lt. Col. S. L. A., 135, 193

Marshall Islands, 262–63, 405

Marumoto, Masaji, 101, 139, 368, 459

Maruyama, Herb, 238

Masaoka, S.Sgt. Mike, 6, 87, 381

Mashbir, Col. Sidney F.

on contributions of MIS Nisei to war 

effort, 460

discharge and Distinguished Service 

Medal, 432

occupation of Japan, 438–39

Pacific campaigns

1943, 179–80, 181, 182, 189

1944, 244–49, 254, 256, 257, 292

1945, 332, 337–38, 373–75, 378

May 1942–February 1943, 79–81, 84

propaganda broadcasts, 212–13, 214, 

337–38, 382

publicity about ATIS emanating from, 458

surrender of Japan, 384–85, 387, 390, 392

Masuda, M.Sgt. Joe Yuzuru, 117, 129, 216

Masuda, Sgt. John Hiroshi, 213, 240–41, 335, 

338

Masukane, S.Sgt. Minoru, 376

Matsui, T.Sgt. George, 265

Matsui, S.Sgt. Takashi, 118

Matsumoto, S.Sgt. Roy Hiroshi, 279–80, 347

Matsumura, T.Sgt. Jimmie M., 202

Matsunaga, Capt. Masayuki “Spark,” 328, 

329, 366n

Matsunaka, T5g. Charles Y., 285

Matsushita, Robert T., 418

Mazawa, T3g. Shigeto Ken, 285

Medal of Honor, Nisei awarded, 142

Merrill, Brig. Gen. Frank D., 278, 281, 282

Merrill’s Marauders. See Army forces, U.S. 

and U.S.-controlled, 5307th Composite 

Unit (Provisional).

Mexico, Japanese community in, 17

Michigan, University of 

AIJLS, 147–50, 322–23, 422

ASTP language program, 156, 323

CATS program at, 159, 323

MID. See Military Intelligence Division.

Midway, Battle of, 98

Mihara, T3g. Laurence, 409

Milanowski, Joseph J., 103

Military government

language training for, 159–60

MIS Nisei and preparation for, 225–27

on Okinawa, 355, 357, 365–69

on Saipan, 270

Military Intelligence Division (MID)

Counter Intelligence Group Japanese 

section, 136

Japanese-language school, establishment 

of, 20, 23, 24, 25, 31

Military Intelligence Training Center, 158

MISLS and, 54, 300

Nisei loyalty, investigation of, 17–20

Nisei service in, 198–201

preparation for war with Japan, 15–20

Military Intelligence Research Section 

(MIRS), 218–19

Military Intelligence Service Language 

School, 3

at Camp Savage. See Camp Savage, Minn.

Chinese-language program, 315–16

command structure, 54, 300

declining language skills of graduates, 181, 

244, 305, 308, 326–28

deployment of graduates, 81–82, 98, 

122–31, 318–21

emblem, 112

at Fort Snelling. See Fort Snelling, Minn.

Hawaii and mainland recruits, tensions 

between, 139, 305, 308

history of, 459

ONI recruiters, competition with, 151

Oral Language School, 328–29, 417
INDEX 505

Military Intelligence Service Language 

School—continued

at Presidio of Monterey, 420, 426

public knowledge about, lack of, 162–63

renamed Army Language School, 426

renaming of Fourth Army Intelligence 

School as, 97

translation services at, 218

Military Intelligence Service (MIS) Nisei, 3

contributions of, 459–62

occupation of Japan. See Japan, occupation 

of.

Pacific campaigns, 1943, 165–94

Alaska/Aleutian Islands, 166–72

Central Pacific, 190–93

South Pacific, 172–77

Southwest Pacific, 179–90

Pacific campaigns, 1944, 235–98

Central Pacific, 258–73

China-Burma-India Theater, 273–91

Leyte, 291–96

South Pacific, 236–42

Southwest Pacific, 242–58

Pacific campaigns, 1945, 331–78

Army Air Forces, 369–72

Central Pacific, 349–55

China-Burma-India Theater, 344–49

Okinawa, 355–69. See also Okinawa.

Operation Olympic, preparation for, 

372–78, 394

Philippines, liberation of, 332–44

Pacific campaigns, May 1942–February 

1943, 61–89

Alaska/Aleutian Islands, 65–66, 125

Guadalcanal. See Guadalcanal 

Campaign.

Hawaii, reluctance to use Nisei in, 

63–65, 140

Southwest Pacific, 77–85, 87, 121, 

181

secrecy vs. publicity about, 162–63, 

283–84, 326, 365–66, 369, 457–60

serving in continental U.S. See Continental 

U.S., MIS Nisei serving in.

training of. See Military Intelligence 

Service Language School.

veterans’ groups, 459

Military Intelligence Training Center (MITC), 

158, 231. See also Camp Ritchie, Md.

Military Intelligence Training Units (MITUs), 

Nisei serving in, 229–33

Military Police, Nisei in, 308

Minamoto, Masanori, 56, 62, 66, 74

Mindanao, 341–42

Minnesota, Japanese Americans in, 54, 

94–95, 112–14, 311–12

MIRS. See Military Intelligence Research 

Section.

MIS Nisei. See Military Intelligence Service 

(MIS) Nisei.

MISLS. See Military Intelligence Service 

Language School.

Missouri, USS, 392

MITC. See Military Intelligence Training 

Center.

Mitchell, Lt. Michael, 175

Mitsukado, Sgt. Edward Hideo, 126, 278, 281, 

283

MITUs. See Military Intelligence Training 

Units.

Miyasaki, T.Sgt. Tateshi, 176, 242, 348

Miyatake, Michael M., 252

Mizumoto, T5g. Larry Tamotsu, 344

Mizutari, Yasuyuki, 44, 254

Mizutari, T.Sgt. Yukitaka Terry

at Camp Savage, 107

death of, 253–54, 341, 377, 411

Fourth Army Intelligence School, 44, 47

Pacific campaigns of 1944, 250, 253–54

Silver Star, 44n, 244

Mobile Intelligence Training Units (MITUs), 

230–33

Monterey, Calif., Presidio of, 224, 420, 426

Moore, Capt. Lardner W., 219

Moore, Lt. Col. Wallace H., 24, 459

Morale

commissions for Nisei, lack of, 229–30

at Fort Snelling, 300–304, 418–20

of Japanese American community in 1944, 

300–301

of Nisei draftees in 1944–1945, 229–30

at PACMIRS, 425

Morale Services Division, Army Service 

Forces, 223

Moran, Maj. Sherwood F. “Pappy,” 76n, 249n, 

452n

Morimitsu, Arthur T., 346

Morotai, Indonesia, 255

Morrill, Capt. John H., 323, 422

Moses, Capt. G. J., 443

Mountbatten, Lord Louis, 273, 347, 386, 396n, 

397

Movies, Japanese, used for training, 149

Munakata, Yutaka

head of Translation Section, MISLS, 218, 

308, 309, 314–15

at Camp Savage, 116, 119, 121

Munemori, T.Sgt. Sadao S., 142
506 NISEI LINGUISTS

Munson, Curtis R., 12, 14

Munson, Col. Frederick P.

career before Pearl Harbor attack, 18, 23

continental U.S., MIS Nisei serving in, 

199–200

occupation of Japan, 454

Pacific campaigns, 74, 172, 174

Munzenmeyer, Lt. Warren S., 387

Murata, Kenichi, 138

Myer, Dillon S., 104–05

Myitkyina, Burma, 280–82, 290

Nagano, Pat, 114, 222, 228n

Naganuma, Naoe, and Naganuma readers, 16, 

30, 35, 37, 150, 313

Nagasaki, Japan, bombing of, 380, 381

Nagase, WO Satoshi “Bud,” 50–51

Nagata, Sgt. Mac N., 66

Nagata, Raymond Shogo, 271

Nakahara, Shoichi S., 384

Nakamura, Sgt. Akira, 142n, 382

Nakamura, 2d Lt. George I., 288, 336, 341, 

402, 404

Nakamura, Sgt. George I.

death of, 341, 377, 411

Pacific campaigns, 336, 341, 377

Silver Star, 341

Nakamura, Susumu, 150

Nakanishi, T3g. Stanley J., 344

Nakao, T4g. Kunihiro Pete, 166n, 170

Nakashima, Leslie, 435–36

Nakashima, Sho, 134n

Nakatsu, Dan, 137

The Naked and the Dead (Mailer), 340

Namba, S.Sgt. Yutaka, 222–23

Nassau Bay, 187

Native Americans

Japanese confused with, 178, 353

as Code Talkers, 177–79, 353

Nisei confused with, 113, 201

Navajo Code Talkers, 177–79, 353

Naval Technical Mission to Japan 

(NAVTECHJAP), 452

Navy, U.S.

Third Fleet, 382, 391

VII Amphibious Force, 390

Columbia University, Navy School 

of Military Government and 

Administration at, 159

Hawaiian intelligence operations. See

Hawaii.

Issei serving in, 1890s to 1907, 8

Japanese Americans finally allowed to 

enlist in, 410

Navy, U.S.—continued

Nisei personnel, resistance to, 6, 29, 258, 

260

School of Oriental Languages. See Office 

of Naval Intelligence.

Unit Commendation for Iwo Jima, 355

V–12 precommissioning program, 153, 156

Women Accepted for Volunteer 

Emergency Service, 151

Navy Cross award to Gabaldon, 267n

Navy School of Oriental Languages

after Pearl Harbor attack, 57–59

closure of, 422–23

deployment of graduates, 152

establishment of, 24, 28–31

growth and development, 150–52, 323–24

Hawaii, graduates in, 70

MISLS recruiters, competition with, 151

Nisei loyalty, investigation of, 17–20

relocation to Colorado, 58–59, 150

Stillwater, Oklahoma, branch, 323–24, 

422–23

Nazi Germany, Japanese ties with, 228–29

Nestor, Capt. Marian E., 317, 420

Netherlands East Indies, 395, 398

New Britain, Papua New Guinea, 344

New Georgia, Solomon Islands, 172, 174–75

New Zealand

3d Division, 176, 237

Japanese prisoners in, 175–76

Nhpum Ga, Battle of, 279–80

Nichols, T5g. Frances, 158

Nimitz, Admiral Chester W.

Pacific campaigns

1943, 186, 190, 191, 193

1944, 246, 259, 268, 270, 271

1945, 350, 373

May 1942–February 1943, 71n

surrender of Japan, 392, 399, 405

Japanese Americans allowed to enlist in 

Navy, 410

Nisei serving in continental U.S. and, 

209

Camp Savage and, 140

Fort Snelling and, 319

Nisei. See also Issei; Japanese Americans; 

Kibei; Sansei.

defined, 3

dual citizenship of, 11

enlistment of Nisei women, 143–44, 

316–18

Japanese-language schools, attendance at, 

9, 12–13, 26

Kibei, 8, 13–15
INDEX 507

Nisei—continued

loyalty of. See Loyalty of Nisei to U.S., 

suspicions regarding.

morale of draftees in 1944–1945, 229–30

occupied Japan, reception in, 434

Okinawa, Japanese Americans remaining 

on, 368

Pearl Harbor attack, response to, 41, 

42–43

remaining in Japan or Japanese-controlled 

territory during war, 368

renouncing American citizenship, 450–51

sociology of, 9–11

Nishida, T.Sgt. Kaoru, 416

Nishijima, Sgt. Vic, 361

Nishimura, T3g. Hiro Harold, 206, 266, 276, 

295

Nishita, M.Sgt. Morio, 117, 216

Noble, Capt. Harold J., 160

Noemfoor Island, Indonesia, 255

Noguchi, John, 402

Noji, Mamoru, 123

Nomura, T4g. Shoso, 288, 349

North Korea, 399

Norton, Capt. John H., 383

Nosaka, Sanzo ̄, 288, 403

Noumea, New Caledonia, 66–68, 69–70, 172, 

174

Obata, Benjamin, 384n

Obata, Sgt. Roger S., 200

Occupation of Japan. See Japan, occupation 

of.

OCS. See Officer Candidate School.

Oda, James, 315

Oda, T.Sgt. Robert, 377, 392

Ode, Sgt. Tadashi, 444

Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), 17–18, 24, 

28–31, 57, 58–59, 136, 147, 176, 199, 

210, 214, 215, 221, 425–26

Office of Strategic Services (OSS)

in China-Burma-India Theater, 285–86, 

347, 348–49, 399–401

invasion of Japan, plans for, 377

language course at University of 

Pennsylvania, 211

language training at, 158

Nisei recruited by, 141

psychological warfare, use of, 210–11, 212

Office of War Information (OWI)

in China-Burma-India Theater, 289

Nisei serving with, 126–27

psychological warfare, 207, 208–10, 

348–49, 382

Office of War Information (OWI)—continued

Roosevelt’s letter on Nisei recruits, 136

Officer Candidate School (OCS)

AIJLS graduates, 323

MIS Nisei attending, 131, 176–77, 222, 

242, 313

Ogata, 2d Lt. Dye, 48, 236, 310, 325, 425

Ogawa, Mary, 200

Ogawa, Tadashi Ted, 260

Oguro, S.Sgt. Richard S., 352n, 376

Ohta, S.Sgt. Timothy T., 264, 265, 406–07

Oka, Sgt. Don C., 260, 271, 350, 394

Oka, Shigeki, 289

Oka, Takeo, 271n

Okada, Sgt. John, 372

Okamoto, M.Sgt. Tom, 459

Okano, Susumu, 288

Okihiro, Gary, 46

Okinaka, Sgt. Masaharu, 371

Okinawa, 229, 355–69

fight to secure, 360–65, 368

initial landings, 355–60

military government, 355, 357, 365–69

Nisei found on, 368

Provisional Advisory Assembly, 368

special language team, 320–21, 356, 366

Oklahoma A&M College, 151n, 322–23

Okubo, T.Sgt. Donald S., 271–72, 405–06

Okumura, 1st Lt. Suyeki, 227

Olympic. See Operations.

Omura, S.Sgt. Ken, 184, 243

ONI. See Office of Naval Intelligence.

Onishi, M.Sgt. Masao Harold, 108n, 138, 213, 

338

Ono, Atsuko, 114

O ̄oka, Sho ̄hei, 338

Operations

Blacklist, 383–84, 390

Coronet, 372

Eclipse, 228

Iceberg, 355, 357, 358. See also Okinawa.

Olympic, 372–78, 394

Zipper, 397

Oral Language School, 328–29, 417

Osako, Hiroshi, 276

Oshida, Akira

at Camp Savage, 107, 116, 120

at Fort Snelling, 309, 314

at Fourth Army Intelligence School, 34, 37

Oshiki, Kaz, 371n

Oshima, Hiroshi, 228

OSS. See Office of Strategic Services.

Otake, Sadao Roy, 387

OWI. See Office of War Information.
508 NISEI LINGUISTS

Pacific campaigns, MIS Nisei in. See Military 

Intelligence Service (MIS) Nisei.

Pacific Military Intelligence Research Section 

(PACMIRS), 218–22, 228, 270, 350, 

420, 423, 425–26

Pacific Order of Battle Section, 201–03, 218

Palawan, Philippines, 336, 341

Panama Canal Zone, Japanese community in, 

17, 18, 25

Panamint, USS, 409

Pang, Lt. Robert F., 52n, 142

Papua New Guinea Campaign

1943, 181, 187–88

1944, 242, 252–55

Australian cleanup operations, 1945, 

343

May 1942–February 1943, 82–85

Paratroopers. See Airborne troops, MIS Nisei 

serving as.

Parker, Maj. Gen. George M., 400

Patch, Maj. Gen. Alexander M., 74, 75

Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, 40–49, 339

Peleliu, Palau, 271–72

Pender-Cudlip, Lt. Col. P., 222

Pennsylvania, University of, 158, 211

Percival, General Arthur E., 399

Perry, John Curtis, 434

Pettigrew, Col. Moses W.

Camp Savage, support for, 116

in MID, 198

on need for Nisei linguists, 16, 37

Pacific campaigns, 1942–1943, 62–63, 

85–86, 116

Pacific Order of Battle Section, 201–02

Phi Beta Kappa, 148

Philippines

Battle of the Philippine Sea, 246, 

264

Filipino guerillas, intelligence gathered 

from, 245

Japanese community in, 17, 19

Leyte, 291–96

liberation of, 332–44

prejudice against Japanese Americans in, 

336–37, 375–76

propaganda broadcasts from, 211–13

surrender of Japanese forces in, 411–13

Photoreconnaissance, 220

Population of Japanese Americans in U.S., 

1920s to 1940, 8–9

Potsdam Declaration, 377, 380, 394, 416. See 

also Japan, surrender of.

POWs. See Prisoners of war.

Prange, Gordon W., 455

Prejudice against Japanese Americans, 8. See 

also Loyalty of Nisei to U.S., suspicions 

regarding.

Aiso on, 10

commissions for MIS Nisei graduates, 

130–31

conversations with Japanese POWs about, 

339

DeWitt’s support for exclusion policy and, 

137

Hood River incident, 296–98, 355, 428

“Jap” as racial slur, 112

Japanese soldiers, Nisei to simulate, 

231–33

military service as counterweight to, 5–6, 

372

Minnesota’s absence of, 54, 94–95, 112–14

MIS Nisei role in offsetting, 101–02, 460

Nisei soldiers’ experience of, 141–42

Pearl Harbor attack contributing to, 40–49, 

88

in Philippines, 336–37, 375–76

returning to homes after lifting of 

exclusion policy, 418

soldiers and internees at Camp McCoy, 

Wisconsin, 99n

of soldiers in Pacific Theater, 69, 73–74, 

171, 254–55, 273, 340

Stilwell on, 369

war crimes publicity exacerbating, 446–47

Princeton University, 159, 227

Prisoners of war (POWs)

Allied, 335–36, 394–95, 399–401, 404, 

440–44

Japanese forces. See Japanese soldiers and 

POWs.

Recovered Personnel Detachments, 

394–95

Propaganda. See Psychological warfare.

Provisional Advisory Assembly, Okinawa, 

368

Psychological warfare

Army Air Forces, 372

China-Burma-India Theater, 289–91, 

348–49

Guadalcanal, 73

Guam, taking of, 270–71

Leyte, 291–92

Navy in Central Pacific, 258

in Okinawa, 358

in Philippines, 337

Saipan, Battle of, 265–66

Fort Snelling propaganda-writing course, 

315
INDEX 509

Psychological warfare—continued

surrender of Japan and, 382–83, 405, 411

theater Psychological Warfare Branch, 

establishment of, 292, 337

U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, 452

use of Nisei in, 207–14

Psychology of interrogating Asians vs. 

Caucasians, 31

Publicity vs. secrecy about MIS and other 

Nisei in military, 38n, 162–63, 257n, 

283–84, 326, 365–66, 369, 457–60

Purges of civilian leaders in Japan, 445–47

Purple Heart recipients

Komoto, 175

Kozaki, 296

Ogata, 236

Tanikawa, 103

Yamada, Toshimi, 361

Pyle, Ernie, 273, 361, 366

Racial prejudice. See Prejudice against 

Japanese Americans.

Racially/ethnically segregated service units, 

87–88

Radio Analysis Group (Forward) (RAGFOR), 

371

Rakkasan [Parachute] News, 212, 337, 382

Rasmussen, Col. Kai E.

and AIJLS, 147–48, 150

Burden and, 77

at Camp Savage, 96, 103, 107–08, 120, 

130–31

commissions for MIS Nisei graduates, 

130–31

establishment of school, 24–27

at Fort Snelling, 299, 302, 308, 326, 416, 

420

leftist Nisei, use of, 209

loyalty of Nisei soldiers, testimony on, 137

Norway, appointment as military attaché 

to, 420

ONI recruiters, competition with, 151

Pacific tour of duty, 120–21, 193–94, 241, 

299

publicity for MISLS and, 162, 458

recruitment of instructors, 35

recruitment of students, 55, 103, 107–08, 

140

relocation of school, 53–54, 299

translation center at MISLS, establishment 

of, 218

Recovered Personnel Detachments, 394–95

Reischauer, Edwin O., 29, 215–16, 220, 415, 

428

Relocation camps. See Internment camps; 

War Relocation Authority; War 

Relocation Centers.

Repatriation

Issei requesting, 114, 450–51

of Japanese, Chinese, and Korean soldiers, 

sailors, and civilians, 401–02, 448–51

of Nisei renouncing American citizenship, 

450–51

Research and technical missions in occupied 

Japan, 451–53

Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC), 6n, 

7, 18, 36n, 43, 47, 58, 64, 231

Richardson, Jacques, 322

Richardson, Lt. Gen. Robert C., 225

Ringle, Cmdr. Kenneth D., 19, 87

Roberts, Owen J., 45

Rochefort, Cmdr. Joseph J., 64

Rockefeller Foundation, 23–24

Ro ̄maji characters, 202, 215, 315, 386

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 144

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano

death of, 326

Executive Order 9066, 45

fireside chats, 59

meeting with Nimitz and MacArthur, 270

military base tour, confinement of Nisei 

soldiers during, 141

on Nisei recruits, 136

promise not to send American soldiers into 

foreign wars, 6

racially/ethnically segregated service 

units, use of, 87–88

Rosenthal, Joe, 355

ROTC. See Reserve Officer Training Corps.

Rusch, Maj. Paul F., 303, 308, 318, 420, 438

Russo-Japanese War (1904), 7, 8, 12n, 269

Ryukyu Islands, Japan, 355–69, 406–07

Saipan, Mariana Islands, 163, 246, 264–71, 

407

Saito, Yoshitsugu, 268

Sakai, S.Sgt. Hiroshi, 231

Sakai, M.Sgt. Paul Jun, 227

Sakai, 2d Lt. Robert K., 135–36, 272, 394

Sakakida, M.Sgt. Richard M.

on Bataan, 59, 207

captured by Japanese, 59, 80, 335–36

liberation of, 440–42

mother’s renunciation of Japanese 

citizenship for, 11n

sent to Philippines, 19–20

Sakamaki, Lt. Kazuo, 204, 207

Sakamoto, Michael, 263, 361n
510 NISEI LINGUISTS

Sakamoto, 2d Lt. Thomas Tokio

Bronze Star, 251

at Camp Savage, 117

commission, 26, 385

enlistment of, 6–7, 14

occupation of Japan, 436

Pacific campaigns, 1944, 250–51

recruitment for Fourth Army Intelligence 

School, 26, 27

surrender of Japan, 391–93

Sakauye, T3g. Eiichi “Eddy,” 276

Sakhalin Island, Japan, 399

Sameshima, Hitoshi G. “Ko,” 310, 311

San Francisco, Presidio of, 18, 21, 33

Sankey, Kiyoshi (S.Sgt. Kiyoshi Yamashiro), 

246, 247, 256

Sano, Iwao Peter, 12n

Sansapor, Indonesia, 255

Sansei, 34n, 201n, 279. See also Issei; 

Japanese Americans; Kibei; Nisei.

Sanson, Sir George, 210

Sapir, Edward, 153

Saturday Evening Post, 81n, 214n, 289, 458

Sazaki, Haruo, 206

Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, 6, 7, 43, 44, 139, 

270, 357, 384

Scientific and technical missions in occupied 

Japan, 451–53

SEATIC. See Southeast Asia Translator and 

Interrogation Center.

Segregated service units, 87–88

Sekiguchi, Ken, 371n

Selective Service System (draft), 4, 145–46, 

304–05

Self-study materials, Army-issued, 157–58

Senjin Shimbun [Battlefront News], 289

SHAEF. See Supreme Headquarters Allied 

Expeditionary Force.

Shame in Japanese culture, 43

Shaw, Glenn W., 28–29, 58–59, 323

Shelton, Maj. John V., 78, 183, 244, 255, 430, 

432

Shibata, T.Sgt. Jerry Yoshito, 249

Shibata, T4g. Mitsuo “Mits,” 361

Shigemitsu, Mamoru, 392

“Shikata ga nai,” 50–59

Shimabukuro, Sgt. Stanley S., 295

Shitabata, Yoshio, 138

Shohara, Hide, 323

Shunki Koreisai, 238

Signal Corps

language training school, 21–23

Yamagata, Clarence, commissioned as 

second lieutenant in, 245

Signal Intelligence Service (SIS). See also

Vint Hill Farms, Va.

Camp Savage graduates deployed with, 

129, 260n

continental U.S. operations, 200, 214–18

language training at, 158

Nisei translators’ assistance with code 

interpretations, 241

preparation for war with Japan, 15

suspicions of Nisei loyalty at, 216–18

Signal Security Agency, Nisei at, 424–25

Silver, Lt. Ernest J., 370, 453

Silver Star, 331, 457

100th Infantry Battalion and 442d RCT, 

142n, 188n

Burden, 73n

Doi, 12n, 116n, 350

Fujimura, 412n

Gabaldon, 267

Hachiya, 48n, 297n, 200–201

Ishida, 334n

Kozaki, 42–43n, 188

Kubo, Hoichi, 267

Mizutari, Terry, 44n, 244

Nakamura, Sgt. George I., 341

Nakanishi, 344

Ohta, 265, 407

Okubo, 406n

Sakauye, 276

Silverthorne, 362

Tanimoto, Jack, 265

Yamamoto, Steve, 248

Yasui, 282

Yoshinobu, 352

Silverthorne, 1st Lt. Spencer V., 362

Sinclair, Maj. Lachlan M., 221, 260, 272

Singlaub, Capt. John K., 400–401

Sino-American Cooperative Organization, 

399

Sino Translation and Interrogation Center 

(SINTIC), 218, 288, 348, 399

SIS. See Signal Intelligence Service.

Slim, Lt. Gen. William J., 273

Smith, Maj. Gen. Holland M., 268

Smith-Hutton, Capt. Henri H., 200

Smithsonian Institution, 210

Solomon Islands

Australian cleanup actions in, 342, 412

New Georgia, 172, 174–75

Vella Lavella, 172, 176

Soong Ch’ing-ling (Sun Yat-Sen), 349

Sorge, Richard, 439

So ̄sho, or grass writing, 39, 50, 129, 181, 226, 

261
INDEX 511

South Pacific

campaigns of 1943, 172–77

campaigns of 1944, 236–42

deployment of Camp Savage graduates to, 

125

Guadalcanal. See Guadalcanal Campaign.

Southeast Asia. See also China-Burma-India 

Theater.

Camp Savage graduates deployed in, 

125–26

French Indochina, 23, 397–98, 404

regional surrenders of Japan, 396–98

Southeast Asia Translator and Interrogation 

Center (SEATIC), 218, 285, 286, 347, 

396

Southwest Pacific. See also Allied Translator 

and Interpreter Section; Papua New 

Guinea Campaign.

Camp Savage graduates deployed to, 

124–25

campaigns of 1943, 179–90

campaigns of 1944, 242–58

campaigns of May 1942–February 1943, 

77–85

Souvenirs, American soldiers’ desire for, 176, 

192

Soviet Union, 228, 386, 399, 400, 439, 448

Spence, S.Sgt. George, 38n

Spruance, Admiral Raymond A., 264

Stassen, Harold E., 54, 174

Steele, Cmdr. John W., 260

Stilwell, General Joseph W.

Camp Savage and, 119, 125

Nisei serving in continental U.S. and, 221

Pacific campaigns

1944, 273, 276, 278–79, 288

1945, 368–69

“Pick-axe club” assertion, 369

surrender of Japan, 406

Stimson, Henry L., 87, 377

Stroh, Lt. Col. Donald A., 31

Strong, Maj. Gen. George V., 79, 104, 129, 

162, 198

Stuart, Col. Archibald W., 119, 138, 200, 432, 

438

Sugimura, Satoru, 211

Suicide

of AIJLS students, 149n

of Japanese civilians, 358

of Japanese soldiers and POWs, 170, 183, 

206–07, 268

others, 149n, 191n, 344n

surrender of Japan and, 396

Tojo’s attempt, 438

Sukarno, Achmed, 398

Sumida, Marshall M., 106

Sun Yat-Sen (Soong Ch’ing-ling), 349

Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary 

Force (SHAEF), 228–29

Surrender of Japan. See Japan, surrender of.

Survey missions in occupied Japan, 451–53

Sutherland, Maj. Gen. Richard K., 85

Svensson, Lt. Col. Eric H. F., Jr., 201, 432

Sweetland, Monroe, 263

Swift, Col. Allender, 286

Swift, Lt. Col. David W., Jr., 18, 52, 78, 79, 

124, 181, 451

Syro-Boyarsky, Ganna M., 156

Tagami, 1st Lt. Kan, 291, 345–46, 397, 461

Tahira, Masami, 238

TAIUs. See Technical Air Intelligence Units.

Tajiri, Larry, 428–29

Takai, Sgt. Roy T., 122–23, 276

Takamura, Sojiro, 387

Takata, Thomas Masaharu, 256

Taketa, 2d Lt. George S., 380–81

Taketa, Tom Shojiro, 126, 287

Takimoto, Albert, 348

Tamura, T3g. Albert Y., 187

Tamura, Yukio, 371

Tanakatsubo, T5g. Satsuki Fred, 55, 123, 166

Tanikawa, S.Sgt. John M., 103, 252

Tanimoto, Sgt. Jack, 265

Tanimoto, Thomas N., 50

Tarawa Island, Gilbert Islands, Great Britain, 

190–93

Tasaki, Toma, 291

Tashiro, Benjamin M., 138

Tatsuda, Lt. Charles, 127

Taylor, George, 208

Taylor, Maj. Gen. Maxwell D., 229

Technical Air Intelligence Units (TAIUs), 

247, 453

Technical missions in occupied Japan, 451–53

Tekawa, Tsutomu Paul, 50, 116, 309, 420

Tench, Col. Charles P., 391

Terasaki, Hidenari, 446

Thomas, Elbert D., 214

Thorpe, Brig. Gen. Elliott R.

Fort Snelling and, 327–28

occupation of Japan, 437–39, 441, 443, 445

Pacific campaigns of 1943, 188–89

surrender of Japan, 393

Timor, Indonesia, 398, 413

Toda, Paul, 209, 212

Tojo, General Hideki, 270, 438, 444

Tokubo, Sgt. Frank T., 282, 286, 346, 437
512 NISEI LINGUISTS

“Tokyo Rose.” See D’Aquino, Iva Ikuko 

Toguri.

Toso, T.Sgt. Alvin, 404

Toyoda, Sgt. Susumu, 174, 240

Truman, Harry S., 377, 416, 451

Tsubota, Sgt. Thomas Kiyoshi, 107

Tsuchiyama, Tamie, 317–18

Tsukahira, 1st Lt. Toshio George, 51, 109, 116, 

310, 424

Tsukamoto, Maj. Walter T., 5, 6n, 101, 309, 

446

Tsukiyama, Sgt. Ted T., 140, 370

Tsuneishi, T.Sgt. Warren, 362, 410

Tsutakawa, S.Sgt. George, 310–11

Turner, Lt. Col. Farrant L., 112

Twitty, Col. Joseph J., 190, 258

Uchiyama, Betty Hackett, 315

Uchiyama, 2d Lt. Fusao, 315

Uesato, Toshio, 402, 404

Ultra, 183, 185. See also Signal Intelligence 

Service.

Umetani, S.Sgt. Yasuo Sam, 169

Unit citations

Distinguished Unit Citation, OSS

Detachment 101, 347

Navy Unit Commendation, V Amphibious Corps and JICPOA teams, for Iwo 

Jima, 355

Presidential Unit Citation, I Corps, for 

Buna Gona, 283

Universities and colleges. See also California 

at Berkeley, University of; Colorado, 

University of; Columbia University; 

Harvard University; Michigan, 

University of; Oklahoma A&M 

College; Pennsylvania, University 

of; Princeton University; Virginia, 

University of; Washington, University 

of.

ASTP language programs, 153–57

independent language programs, 158

military government language training at, 

159–60

Uno, Howard Yasumaro, 375

Uno, Kazumaro “Buddy,” 375

Uratsu, T.Sgt. Masaji Gene, 26, 27, 117, 341

U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, 220, 405, 422, 

451–52, 454

Ushiro, M.Sgt. Arthur Katsuyoshi (Arthur 

Robert Castle), 81, 98, 187, 256

Usui, Mitsuo “Mits,” 128–29, 358–59

Uyehata, T3g. Roy T., 55, 238–41

Uyesugi, Kenji, 334

V–12 precommissioning program (Navy), 153, 

156

Varsity Victory Volunteers, 47, 138, 140

Vella Lavella, Solomon Islands, 172, 176, 242

Veterans’ associations for MIS Nisei, 459

Vietnam, 23, 397–98, 404

Vint Hill Farms, Va., 117, 129, 195, 215–18, 

424–25

Virginia, University of, 159, 423

WAC. See Women’s Army Corps.

Wada, Lt. Cmdr. Douglas T., 18, 64, 349

Wada, T3g. Hiromu William, 172, 409–10

Wada, Jimmy, 392

Wainwright, Maj. Gen. Jonathan M., 399

Wake Island, 394

Walker, Col. I. G., 432

Walne, Florence, 29–30, 35, 58, 150, 152, 323

War crimes, 247, 426, 440–44

War Department. See also Military 

Intelligence Division.

continental U.S. operations, 200, 201

University of Virginia, School of Military 

Government at, 159

War Plan Orange, 15, 28

War Relocation Authority (WRA)

442d RCT, response to formation of, 

133–37

closure of camps, 434

establishment of, 46

evacuation of West Coast Japanese 

Americans, 45–46, 56–60, 91

family visits by MIS Nisei, 91, 122–23, 

128, 175

leave clearance program, 113–14, 133–34, 

136

names used for camps, 46n

Nisei soldiers with families in, 99–100

recruitment of Nisei for Camp Savage, 

103–07

registration crisis, 133–35

release of general populations from, 284, 

297, 301–02

repatriation to Japan, Issei requesting, 114

return from, 418, 435

Selective Service, reaction to resumption 

of, 146, 304–05

sites for, 53–54

strain on MIS Nisei due to families in, 174

War Relocation Centers, 91, 97

Gila River, Ariz., 106, 121, 144, 175, 256

Jerome, Ark., 260, 279

Manzanar, Calif., 100, 103, 106, 123, 126, 

142, 146, 344
INDEX 513

War Relocation Centers—continued

Poston, Ariz., 106, 135, 210, 241, 256, 452

Rohwer, Ark., 352

Tule Lake, Calif., 103, 123, 126, 174, 358, 

434, 450

Warrant officers, Nisei as, 51n, 182, 256

Warren, Earl, 100

Washington Document Center, 221, 444

Washington, University of, 53, 55, 58, 103, 

116n, 118, 127, 156, 158, 227, 309, 

310–11, 314, 428n, 453

Watanabe, 2d Lt. Harvey H., 430

WAVES. See Women Accepted for Volunteer 

Emergency Service.

WDC. See Western Defense Command.

Weckerling, Brig. Gen. John

Aiso, recruitment of, 34

article on MIS Nisei, 459n

assessment of Nisei recruits’ loyalty after 

Pearl Harbor attack, 44–45

Camp Savage, support for, 129

Caucasians, need to enroll, 51–52

as Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff for 

Intelligence, 300

on difficulty of learning Japanese 

language, 108

early career, 17, 18

Fourth Army Japanese-language school, 

establishment of, 21, 23, 25–28, 30–31

G–2 for WDC, promotion as, 53

Nisei combat units, decision to form, 85

Pearl Harbor attack, Nisei recruits’ 

response to, 41

on Thomas Sakamoto’s Bronze Star 

commendation, 251

Wedemeyer, Lt. Gen. Albert C., 288, 399, 403

Welles, Orson, 428

Western Defense Command (WDC), 21, 25, 

26n, 40, 42, 45–46, 49, 53–54, 58, 61, 

62, 65–66, 86, 91, 123, 129, 145–46, 

204, 205, 208, 224, 301

White, Col. Horton V., 412

Whitehead, Brig. Gen. Ennis, 186

Whitney, Maj. Gen. Courtney, 432

Wiadrowski, Flying Officer Max, 255

Wiener, Capt. Jean, 308

Willoughby, Maj. Gen. Charles A.

atom bomb, reaction to news of, 381

on contributions of MIS Nisei to war 

effort, 460

history of war, writing of, 454, 456, 458

occupation of Japan, 427, 430, 439

Pacific campaigns

1943, 184, 188

Willoughby, Maj. Gen. Charles A.—continued

1944, 247, 257n

1945, 327, 373, 375

May 1942–February 1943, 77, 79, 85

before Pearl Harbor attack, 16

surrender of Japan, 386, 387, 390

Women

as AIJLS instructors, 148

at ATIS, 180, 256, 374

civil censorship duties in occupied Japan, 

454

Minnesota, Japanese American women 

in, 114

MISLS reluctance to accept as instructors 

or students, 116, 144

ONI language school, 151

Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency 

Service (WAVES), 151

Women’s Army Corps (WAC)

5225th Women’s Army Corps Detachment, 

374

ATIS, 256, 374

Camp Savage and, 143–44

Fort Snelling and, 308, 316–18

and the occupation of Japan, 420–22

Woodlark Island, Papua New Guinea, 187

World War I

German American prejudice compared to 

Nisei experience, 41, 204–05

Issei serving in, 8

veterans recruited for MISLS, 103, 138, 

352

Wright, Lt. Col. Eugene A., 174, 175, 221, 425

Yaban Gogai [Savage Extra], 315, 383n, 417, 

458

Yagi, Fumio, 452

Yajima, 2d Lt. Tad, 450

Yamada, T.Sgt. Kazuhiko Rocky, 187, 416

Yamada, Tadao, 51

Yamada, Toshimi, 361

Yamada, 2d Lt. Yoshikazu, 80, 246, 340, 452

Yamagata, Capt. Clarence S., 80, 245, 425

Yamagiwa, Joseph K., 147, 149, 150, 156, 159, 

322–23, 422

Yamamoto, Ben I., 205, 260, 352, 447

Yamamoto, Floyd, 453

Yamamoto, Admiral Isoroku, 185–86, 188

Yamamoto, WO Steve Shizuma, 182, 183, 

248, 256, 292, 437

Yamamoto, Tatsuo Elmer, 362

Yamane, M.Sgt. Kazuo E., 202, 220, 228

Yamashiro, S.Sgt. Kiyoshi (later Sankey), 

246, 247, 256
514 NISEI LINGUISTS

Yamashita, T4g. Nob, 377, 411

Yamashita, T3g. Shigeru, 70, 236

Yamashita, General Tomoyuki, 335, 336, 412, 

440

Yamate, Sohei, 444

Yanaga, Chitoshi, 211

Yardley, Herbert O., 425

Yasui, S.Sgt. Kenji “Kenny,” 126, 281–82, 

284

Yasutake, 2d Lt. Shigeo, 175, 177, 348

Yeaton, Col Ivan D., 402

Yempuku, Donald, 403–04

Yempuku, Capt. Ralph T.

at Camp Savage, 141

occupation of Japan, 436–37

Pacific campaigns, 286, 291, 347, 377

Yempuku, Capt. Ralph T.—continued

surrender of Japan, 400–401, 403

Yenan, China, 288–89, 348–49, 399, 402–04

Yoneda, Karl G., 126, 209, 289–90

Yoshihashi, Takehiko, 208

Yoshihashi, M.Sgt. Taro, 184

Yoshimura, Akiji, 42n

Yoshinobu, T3g. James, 352

Yoshiwara, Sgt. Joe J., 74n, 174, 242

Yuen, Capt. Quan H., 227

Zacharias, Capt. Ellis M., 69, 199, 200, 214, 

382n

Zaugg, Harold E., 200, 215

Zipper. See Operations.

Z–Plan, 245–46, 264