#127: Nisei Linguists, Part I

Recognizing the importance of trained and competent linguists, during World War II, the US Army's Military Intelligence Service trained foreign language speakers to help with the war effort. Many were Japanese speakers and most of those were Nisei. These Nisei were the only Japanese Americans to fight in the Pacific, and according to Douglas MacArthur's chief intelligence officer, their service was so valuable that it shortened the war by at least two years.

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Transcript

Welcome back to another Ghosts of the Pacific edition of Ghosts of Arlington and thank you for joining me for episode 127, Nisei Linguists, Part I.

Last week, we finished the story of the 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442 Regimental Combat Team as World War II came to a victorious end for the Allies in and the Nisei who helped bring about that victory returned home, refused to accept the status quo ante bellum, and actively participated in the civil and equal rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s in the United States.

Now before I get to the story of the few Nisei who were allowed to serve in the Pacific during the war, I wanted to acknowledge something first. If this entire podcast wasn’t such a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants production on the part of yours truely, I would have gotten this episode out one week earlier - okay, really I should have said what I am about to say four weeks ago. In the United States, most months have an annual theme, celebration, or recognition attached to them. Back in Episode 31, I spoke a little about Black History Month, the annual commemoration in February, and today I want to touch a little on May’s official commemoration that wrapped up the day I recorded this episode. 

Friday, May 31st marked the end of the annual Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month – a celebration encompassing the culture and history of those either from or with ancestry from the Far East, Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and the Pacific Islands. The funny thing is, I had these 100th /slash/ 442nd episodes planned out before I realized they would be released in May… again this is truely a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants production!

The first Asians documented in the Americas arrived in 1587, when Filipinos landed in California. In 1778, the first Chinese to reach what would be the United States, arrived in Hawaii and ten years later, in 1788, the first Native Hawaiian arrived on the continental United States, in Oregon. The next group of Asians documented in what would be the United States were Japanese, who arrived in Hawaii in 1806; we talked about that migration in Episode 123. In 1884, the first Koreans arrived. Beginning in the early 1900s, Chamorros began to migrate to Hawaii and California after Guam was ceded to the US in 1898. In 1904, what is now American Samoa was ceded to the United States; beginning in the 1920s, Samoans began to migrate to Hawaii and the continental United States, with the first Samoans documented in Hawaii in 1920. Many would end up in Utah so if you’ve ever wondered why Brigham Young University and the University of Utah Polynesian heavy offensive and defensives lines on their respective football teams, now you know. In 1912, the first Vietnamese immigrant was documented in the United States.

Jumping ahead to the 1970’s Jeanie Jew, a fourth generation Chinese American and former congressional staffer, first mentioned to New York Representative Frank Horton the idea of designating a month to recognize Asian Pacific Americans, following the US bicentennial celebrations in 1976. In June 1977, Representative Horton, and California Representative Norman Yoshio Mineta, a Nisei who had been interned when he was 11 years old at the Heart Mountain, Wyoming Internment Camp, introduced a United States House of Representatives resolution to proclaim the first seven days of May as Asian-Pacific Heritage Week. A similar bill was introduced in the Senate a month later by Hawaii’s two senators, Daniel Inouye and Spark Matsunaga, both of whom had been decorated officers in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

The proposed resolutions sought that May be designated for two reasons. The first documented Japanese immigrant to arrive on the continental United States, Nakahama Manjirō, arrived on May 7, 1843. More than two decades later, on May 10, 1869, the golden spike was driven into the first transcontinental railroad, which was completed using a significant amount of Chinese labor.

The joint resolution passed both the House and Senate and President Jimmy Carter signed it into law on October 5, 1978. In this proclamation, President Carter spoke of the significant role Asia-Pacific Americans have played in the creation of a dynamic and pluralistic American society with their contributions to the sciences, arts, industry, government, and commerce. The first Asian Pacific Heritage week was celebrated the following year, beginning on May 4, 1979.

Over the next ten years, Presidents Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush continued to issue annual proclamations designating a week in May as Asian/Pacific American Heritage Week. In 1990, Congress passed a new resolution, which amended the original joint resolution, requesting that the President issue a proclamation expanding the observance to an entire month in May 1990. This law called on the people of the United States to observe Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month with “appropriate ceremonies, programs and activities.” President George H.W. Bush agreed and issued such a proclamation, designating May 1990 as the first “Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month.”

Every year since then, Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barrak Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, have issued annual proclamations with the occasional name change.

In 2009, President Obama changed the celebration’s name to Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month and in 2021, President Biden authorized another change, renaming the celebration to what it is today, Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

May 2024 marked the 33rd year of the month-long commemoration.

Now as I move into the final stage of this series on the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific and Nisei military service in World War II, I want to wrap everything up with a few episodes containing vignettes of a few specific Nisei veterans after I talk about the group that was allowed to serve in the Pacific. It was extremely difficult to decide who to include and I absolutely reserve the right to return to Punchbowl at some point in the future and share a few more of these inspiring tales. After all, most people who get the chance to travel to Hawaii leave wondering when their next visit will be.

[TRANSITION MUSIC]

While most Nisei serving in World War II did so as part of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team in Europe, there was a clandestine group that was allowed to serve in the Pacific. Under a shroud of secrecy and with the backing of the United States War Department, the Military Intelligence Service (or M.I.S.) trained and graduated nearly 6,000 linguists during World War II—the majority of whom were Japanese Americans. Due to the classified nature of their activities, Nisei members of the MIS never received as much publicity as their counterparts in the 442nd and the 100th Infantry Battalion. Nevertheless, they ultimately played a decisive role in Allied victory over Japan in the Pacific Theater of Operation. According to Major General Charles Willoughby, General Douglas MacArthur’s Intelligence Chief, these Nisei "shortened the Pacific war by two years." 

Throughout the war these linguists were often present at the most critical encounters—both military and diplomatic—between Japanese and American forces. MIS soldiers served as undercover agents in the Philippines, fought behind enemy lines with Merrill’s Marauders in Burma, experienced jungle warfare in New Guinea, landed with the Marines on the beaches of Iwo Jima, and crawled into the caves of Saipan to persuade suicidal enemy forces to surrender. Throughout their experiences, they confronted their dual identity as American citizens of Japanese ethnicity, fighting to prove their loyalty against the country of their parents.

Many of these soldiers had family members in US internment camps. When the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, all but ending the war, many Nisei experienced mixed emotions, as they had relatives living in these two Japanese cities.

These Nisei were among the first soldiers to arrive in Japan after its surrender, and they became some of the first American observers to witness the destructive effects of the atomic bombs. They later served in important positions during the occupation of Japan and more than seventy MIS linguists provided translation and interpreter services for the war crimes trials held in Japan, China, the Philippines, French Indochina (aka Vietnam), and the East Indies (aka Indonesia). As Japanese Americans, these linguists were instrumental in bridging cultural and linguistic differences and helped to establish the foundations for today’s close postwar relations between Japan and the United States. 

[TRANSITION MUSIC]

The US Army has long recognized the need for foreign language comprehension going all the way back to the establishment of the US Military Academy in 1802. At its founding, all West Point cadets were required to study French, which was considered the language of diplomacy at the time, and also the language in which most military engineering books were published. Spanish was added to the curriculum following the Mexican American War and German after World War I.

Army General Joseph Stilwell and Army Major General George Strong, both West Point class of 1904, served as military attaches to China and Japan respectfully, before World War II. They took the opportunity to study the local languages there and were among the first US commanders to establish language programs offering classes for both officers and interested enlisted soldiers, teaching rudimentary spoken Chinese and Japanese. Not surprisingly, the community center at the Army’s premiere language school in Monterey, CA is named for General Stilwell.

As US-Japanese relations declined during the interwar period, a group of officers with previous tours in the Japan Attaché office recognized the need for an intelligence unit able to comprehend not only the spoken Japanese language but the intricacies of military terminology. US Army intelligence staff first surveyed colleges for Japanese language students and came to the realization that in all of America, only 60 military aged White males had any interest in Japan – and most of those were purely for academic reasons. The possibility of using Nisei with language skills was suggested as the number of other personnel qualified in Japanese was almost non-existent, and there was little time to train additional White personnel. The US Army directed the Fourth Army, responsible for the defense of the West Coast, to start a school, assigning Lieutenant Colonel John Weckerling and Captain Kai Rasmussen, graduates of the Japanese language program in Tokyo, to stand up the school. A few Nisei soldiers, including John Aiso, who we will hear more about, were found to be qualified linguists and recruited along with two civilian instructors who became the Military Intelligence Service Language School (MISLS)'s first instructors.

The MISLS (initially known as the Fourth Army Intelligence School) began operation with an initial budget of $2,000 and scrounged together textbooks and supplies in November 1941, about a month before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The first class of 60 students begin their training at the Presidio in San Francisco, with 45 students graduating in May 1942.

Prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, some 5,000 Nisei were serving in the US military in various capacities, often assigned to menial tasks and labor units despite their qualifications. John Aiso, that MIS veteran I said we’d hear more about later, had been drafted in 1940 and assigned to a motor pool even though at the time, he was already a well-respected Harvard Law School educated attorney working with a prestigious firm in international law.

As has been mentioned a few times in recent episodes, following Pearl Harbor, most of the Nisei were summarily discharged or placed under constant surveillance. For the officers in charge of the language school and their Nisei students, the outbreak of war prompted them to work harder to prove their loyalty. Military Security officers questioned the loyalty of the Nisei students, removing some due to suspicion, and prompting Weckerling and Rasmussen to recognize that frontline commanders would have difficulty entrusting the Nisei soldiers with sensitive documents, and sought to find White officers with Japanese proficiency to serve as team leaders. Eighteen White National Guard and Reserve officers drifted through the class, most failing due to limited comprehension ability and the complexity of the Japanese written language. Two men, however, graduated with the first group, Captain David Swift and Captain John Burden, both born in Japan as the sons of missionaries. The pair even spoke the Tokyo dialect better than some of the Nisei students, though they still struggled in the course. In Burden’s words, “I didn’t know anything about the Japanese military, so I had to study very hard. Head Instructor John Aiso hounded me. At first I got frustrated. I would ask a question, and his explanation would be even worse than the original problem. Later, he told me, ‘If I gave you a pat answer, you wouldn’t learn anything. By pushing you, you’re forced to get that much better.’ He was a good man. He really worked on me.”

As mentioned in episode 123, anti-Japanese sentiment pushed President Roosevelt to issue Executive Order 9066, authorizing the forced removal of anyone with as little as 1/16th Japanese ancestry from West Coast of the United States. Because of this order, the first language school students came from the army, but later students were also recruited from Japanese internment camps.

By March 1942, the Military Intelligence Division was being reorganized as the Military Intelligence Service (Episodes 90-94). It was tasked with collecting, analyzing, and disseminating intelligence, and assumed responsibility for the Fourth Army Intelligence School. Originally comprising just 26 people, 16 officers and 10 men, the Military Intelligence Divison was quickly expanded to include 342 officers and 1,000 enlisted men and civilians. Minnesota's Governor offered up Camp Savage, a former Works Progress Administration facility to host the MIS Language School. The school moved from San Francisco to Minnesota in June 1942. The new site offering larger facilities without the complications of training Japanese American students in the coastal areas they were prohibited from. And for their part, the students faced less anti-Japanese prejudice in Minnesota where very few Japanese Americans lived. In 1944 the school outgrew Camp Savage and was moved to Fort Snelling – also in Minnesota. There it continued to grow, occupying 120 classrooms staffed by more than 60 instructors. Over 6,000 soldiers would eventually graduate from the WWII language program.

In Hawaii, the pre-war Corps of Intelligence Police detachment grew from a four-man staff to twelve officers and eighteen special agents, and was reorganized as the Army Counterintelligence Corps within the reorganized Military Intelligence Service.

In March 1941, Counterintelligence agent Major Jack Gilbert recruited two former students from his previous position as military advisor at McKinley High School in Honolulu, Richard Sakakida and Arthur Komori, who posed as Japanese sailors who had jumped ship in the Philippines to avoid the draft. Living amongst the Japanese community in Manila, they spied on Japanese interests and reported to the local Counterintelligence detachment of any hostile intentions discovered. Sakakida would eventually be captured and tortured by the Japanese following the fall of Corregidor. He survived that ordeal and would later help lead an escape of 500 Philippine guerrillas from Mantinlupa Prison.

As the first language school class completed its training in May 1942, its students were immediately sent to the frontlines, participating in Guadalcanal, the first US Marine landing in the Pacific, to interrogate the first captured Japanese pilot. Though initially, commanders were skeptical of the intelligence obtained by Nisei linguists.

The first MIS unit deployed under the command of Capt John Burden with the 37th Infantry Division to the Solomon Islands. Upon arrival, Burden and his Nisei predictably found themselves assigned to menial tasks translating non-sensitive personal letters far from the front due to a lack of trust. After a chance meeting with Admiral Bull Halsey, the five-star admiral who was the overall commander of the South Pacific Area, Halsey confessed to Burden that his own White interpreters only had a rudimentary understanding of Japanese and could only decipher the names of the prisoners. Burden convinced Halsey to give him a chance. After a brief conversation, Burden demonstrated the wealth of information that could be provided by a fully fluent linguist and vouched for the Nisei soldiers in his command to meet the demand. His presence proved to be instrumental in opening the eyes of the American field commanders to the value of the Nisei linguists.

Once they were finally allowed to move forward, these men faced some of the most dangerous situations during the war, often being placed on the front lines of battle against the Japanese while simultaneously trying to avoid "friendly fire" from American soldiers who could not distinguish them from the enemy. According to John Aiso, "We may have been the only soldiers in history to have bodyguards to protect us from our own forces in combat zones so we would not be mistaken for the enemy." More than one MIS soldier became a casualty from so-called friendly fire, and many MIS personnel had to ensure that White soldiers who could vouch for their loyalty accompanied them into battle.

Besides the constant danger of friendly fire, the Nisei were well aware that imperial forces considered them to be Japanese nationals, and capture meant certain execution as traitors. Their identities doubled the dangers they faced in battle from both Japanese and American soldiers, both of whom perceived them as the enemy. And unlike the Navajo Code Talkers also utilized by the American military, these linguists who operated in the Pacific were confronted by the very real possibility of encountering and fighting against friends, acquaintances, and family members. Many of them had close personal ties to Japan or had attended school in Japan. Throughout the war, many had unexpected meetings and spontaneous reunions with former teachers, classmates, and relatives, emphasizing the complicated and personal nature of war for the men of the MIS, particularly as combat came closer to the  Japanese home islands. 

Takejiro Higa, for example, wondered what would happen if "I meet somebody I know, or my relative, my classmate" in battle or in the prisoner of war camps. This was Higa's biggest concern—one that weighed heavily on his mind since contact between siblings or former classmates fighting on opposing sides took place fairly regularly. During the Battle of Okinawa, Higa unexpectedly encountered two of his childhood friends as well as his seventh and eighth grade teacher, Shunso Nakamura, who was "dumbstruck, never dreaming he would see one of his former students with the invading forces."

The war took on a very personal element as these soldiers also encountered civilian populations with familiar faces and family ties. One of the most dangerous yet valuable services the men of the MIS provided in Okinawa was to persuade people who were hiding in the numerous deep caves on the island to surrender. If they did not, the Americans would dynamite the caves to prevent Japanese soldiers from using them as hideouts. During the Battle of Okinawa, the men of Okinawan descent, such as Seiyu Higashi, Jiro Arakaki, and Shiney Gima, would often ask for permission to search for their parents or relatives in the mountains or civilian compounds.

[TRANSITION MUSIC]

"The most important action resulting from a Japanese translation was at Bougainville in 1942.” A M.I.S. [linguist] translated an un-coded Japanese radio transmission that Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto – the commander-in-chief of the Imperial Japanese Combined Fleet and the architect of the Pearl Harbor attack - was scheduled to go on an inspection tour of the bases around the Solomon Islands. The message was initially met with disbelief that the Japanese would be so careless, but other MIS linguists in Alaska and Hawaii had also intercepted the same message and confirmed its accuracy. After flying a great distance looking for their target, U.S. Navy P-38s had fifteen minutes of fuel time available to intercept Yamamoto's aircraft near Bougainville. His plane was located and shot down. Losing Yamamoto was a blow to the morale of the Japanese and greatly raised the spirits of the Allies in the Pacific.

The ambush of Yamamoto, combined with other successes of the first few Nisei linguists convinced the War Department to establish Japanese American combat units which led directly to the establishment of first, the 100th infantry Battalion, and ultimately the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

In early March 1944, as Japanese losses began to mount in the Pacific, a defensive strategy known as the Z Plan or Operation Z was developed as a strategy to defend the Marianas Islands – particularly Saipan – from US invasion.  The plan was approved by the Imperial Japanese Navy General Staff, with a formal title of Combined Fleet Secret Operations Order No. 73.

When this plan fell into US hands, it was give to the Nisei linguists, translated, and used to draw up US plans to mitigate the effectiveness of Plan Z.  The compromise of Plan Z led to Allied victories at the Battle of the Philippine Sea, in which the Japanese lost most of their aircraft carrier planes, and the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

A 2006 book published by the Department of the Army’s Center for Military History went so far as to call this "the most important document ever translated by the M.I.S.” 

So again, just to recap - splashing Yamamoto was the most important action resulting from a translation, whereas Plan Z was the most important single translation. I might argue that its splitting hairs but I think I get what everyone is saying. Regarless, both events went a long way toward ending the war earlier than it otherwise would have.

When Merrill's Marauders were organized to conduct long range penetration special operations jungle warfare deep behind Japanese lines in the China-Burma-India Theater in January 1944, fourteen MIS linguists were assigned to the unit, including future Army Ranger and Military Intelligence Hall of Fame inductee Roy Matsumoto - who we will hear more about in an upcoming podcast.

The Nisei under Merrill's command proved themselves particularly intrepid and helpful, venturing into the enemy lines and translating audible commands to counter attacks, and shouting conflicting commands to the Japanese, throwing them into confusion. These marauders soon 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 by placing their stories in local newspapers as the war waned in 1945, and the US government prepared to release Japanese American citizens back into their communities.

MIS Language School graduates were also used in a multinational capacity. Many were attached to the joint Australian/American Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS) as linguists and in other non-combatant roles, interpreting captured enemy documents and interrogating prisoners of war. MIS linguists were also assigned to the Office of War Information to help create propaganda and other psychological warfare campaigns, with the Signal Intelligence Service to decipher Japanese Army codes, and were even involved with the Manhattan Project, translating technical documents and scientific papers on nuclear physics. By war’s end, MIS linguists had translated 18,000 enemy documents, totaling some twenty million five hundred thousand pages, created 16,000 propaganda leaflets and interrogated over 10,000 Japanese POWs.

In December 1944, Oregon native Frank Hachiya was tasked with interrogating a prisoner captured during the Battle of Leyte. On his way back to headquarters to report the intel gained, he was shot in the abdomen – either by a Japanese sniper or, in a case of mistaken identity by US troops who thought he was an enemy infiltrator – and crawled, bleeding and in agony, through the grass and scrub back to his lines to make his report. Despite the best efforts of the field surgeons, he eventually succumbed to his wounds, but not before passing on the intelligence acquired. The account of his death was widely reported in national news.

At the same time, it was reported the local American Legion post in Hachiya’s hometown of Hood River, Oregon had removed the names of 16 WWI Japanese American veterans from its 'roll of honor' only a month before. Scathing editorials ran in The Oregonian and The New York Times – including one titled Private Hachiya, American, as well as one from three Florida infantrymen, who criticized the Legion for <<quote>> “knifing fighting men in the back. The American Legion National Commander called the actions “ill-considered and ill-advised” and contrary to the organization’s ideals. The post eventually reversed its action, restoring all the names of Nisei servicemen from Hood River to the wall, and added the name of Frank Hachiya. Despite this, the predominant anti-Japanese American sentiment in the small community continued. When internees from Hood River were eventually released from the Minidoka Internment Camp in Idaho, they were strongly encouraged not to return and to find somewhere else to live.

Well, I think we’ll have to stop on that bummer of an anictdote for this week. Next week we’ll take a look at how the Nisei linguists spent the last months of the war and some of their actions in the post-war occupation of Japan.

If you need more Ghosts of Arlington content in your life, there are pictures related to every episode on the website www.ghostsofarlingtonpodcast.com. You can help others learn about the podcast by leaving a 5-star rating and review at Apple Podcast or wherever you listen. If you really want to make my day, refer the show to a friend. And remember, fear not death, for the sooner we die, the longer we shall be immortal.