Published July 20, 2007
The saga of fellow WWII Nisei GIs in military intelligence has been flashed over the past 60 years as bits and pieces in the Pacific Citizen, but now at hand are photographs and accounts by James C. McNaughton in his book, "Nisei Linguists: Japanese Americans in Military Intelligence Service during World War II." (Washington, D.C., USGPO, $29.95).
Comprised of 12 chapters and relating how much the Army generally mistrusted Nisei in service before Pearl Harbor, the U.S.-born Nisei and especially the Kibei-Nisei educated in prewar Japan were acknowledged to be the best qualified for military intelligence. The War Department in March 1941 began a survey for Japanese-speaking soldiers on the West Coast in case of a "major emergency involving Japan." The Navy totally relied on Caucasians except for one Hawaiian Nisei, Douglas T. Wada, who was recruited in 1937 for counter-intelligence.
Then, about 1,700 Nisei were counted in Hawaii and the West Coast as efforts to start a language school began. The U.S. military attaché in Tokyo was buying dictionaries and sent them to the Fourth Army in San Francisco to establish an intelligence school to train translators and interpreters of Japanese language.
McNaughton writes: "The United States was ill prepared for war in almost every respect, not the least in the languages of the Far East ... Such was the pitiful state in mid-1941."
It was then Col. John Weckerling who founded the Army military intelligence school. He had returned from Japan in 1932, describing his tour and urging fellow officers to volunteer that year in military intelligence. By 1941, the Army had a pool of 40 officers who could speak "at least some Japanese."
Another key figure in MISLS history, Capt. Kai E. Rasmussen, a Danish immigrant who graduated West Point in 1932, spent four years in Japan learning the language, returned in 1940 and was a coast artillery officer guarding the Golden Gate, "rather than using his language skills." Such was the Army pre-WWII.
The Fourth Army Intelligence School began in November, 1941, at the Presidio of San Francisco with four Nisei instructors: Pfc. John F. Aiso of Los Angeles as chief instructor and three civilian UC Berkeley graduates Akira Oshida, Shigeya Kihara, and Tetsuo Imagawa. They were hired 10 days before the first class of 60 students, including two Chinese American Army reserve officers and two Hakujins, convened at a shabby hangar at Crissy Field (now being refurbished by the National Park Service as a historic site). Weckerling had obtained $2,000 from the 4th Army Quartermaster to convert the empty space into classrooms and living quarters.
Now for some details:
"The Navy program (Feb '42) at UC Berkeley faced the same problem as the Army's Crissy Field. Though students in the Navy were Caucasian, many of their instructors were Nisei (eight of them)." Since the Fourth Army (DeWitt) insisted no person of Japanese ancestry could remain in the exclusion areas "even for important defense work," the Navy school moved in May to Boulder, Colo., a western state where its governor (Ralph Carr) agreed to accept Japanese evacuees.
In May '42, in the first MIS class at Crissy Field of 60, only 40 completed the course; 10 were held back to be instructors. "They didn't know whether they would be sent to Tanforan or somewhere else. No Nisei were deployed to Hawaii where the threat was the greatest."
When the Army in Alaska requested in the spring of '42 for Nisei linguists, Sgt. Yoshio Hotta (later JACL NCWNP regional director) led a team of five, the first to see combat. One of his men, Henry Suyehiro, witnessed the Japanese air raid of June 3-4 at Dutch Harbor. The MISers sat around the next few months, "where their major task was to keep warm." They translated a few documents, some confiscated from the handful of Japanese settlers in the region. DeWitt had removed all civilians of Japanese ancestry from Alaska, 230 in all, and about 900 Aleuts.
MISLS (Camp Savage) sent 35 more in July 1943 to face the Japanese invasion of fog-bound Attu and Kiska. S/Sgts Yasuo Umetani and George Hayashida entered caves at Attu to look for survivors and persuade the enemy to surrender. Twenty-eight did surrender.
Nisei linguists feared that their fellow soldiers would mistake them for the enemy. Most Nisei had bodyguards. T/5 Satsuki Fred Tanakatsubo took a direct approach at Attu, telling his Caucasian bodyguards: "Take a good look, and remember me, because I'm going in with you."
Over 10,000 American GIs sailed to Attu, where 3,000 Japanese soldiers waited. Of the 19-day battle (May 1943), the U.S. 7th Infantry was stunned by the ferocity of the enemy. "They penetrated into the rear areas, rushed through a field hospital and killing many of the wounded ... When surviving Japanese attackers were finally surrounded, they committed collective suicide with hand grenades ... Over 500 Americans died, 3,000 more were out of action from wounds, trench foot or illness."
For the next assault on Kiska in August, the Allies (Nobuo Furuiye of Denver was the first MIS Nisei attached to the Canadian Army in Alaska) landed and found the island empty except for equipment and a supply of Japanese rations, sacks of rice and shoyu which the Nisei were happy to seize. With offensive plans in the North Pacific shelved, MIS linguists returned (October '43) to school and were reassigned to the Pacific.
"The lessons learned in the Aleutians would be repeated many times over in other parts of the Pacific," McNaughton adds.
And this column will be filled one more time with details.
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