Takejiro Higa, center, shares his experiences as a U.S. Army soldier and Battle of Okinawa veteran Dec. 9 with Marines here. Higa was recruited by the U.S. Army for his linguistic abilities and, during the battle, his main mission was translating captured documents and interrogating prisoners. Higa also was able to use his Okinawa dialect to convince local non-combatants hiding inside the cave to surrender peacefully to U.S. forces. Higa was invited by the Okinawa Prefectural Government to attend a symposium at the Peace Memorial Museum in Itoman. Higa was born in Waipahu, Hawaii, and moved to Okinawa, Japan, at the age of two, and he returned to the U.S. at the age of 16 before becoming a soldier in the U.S. Army.