Nisei who served While the nation today honors Americans killed in battle, a small band of Japanese-American soldiers believe their sacrifices have been ignored.
on Okinawa push
for recognition
They were assigned to persuade
Japanese soldiers to surrender
and help the civilians
By Gregg K. Kakesako
Star-BulletinDrafted in the waning moments of World War II, about 175 second-generation Japanese Americans, or nisei, were sent to Okinawa as the Allies closed in on Japan in the late spring of 1945.
Their task was not only dangerous and difficult, persuading the Japanese soldiers to surrender; they also had to persuade the Okinawan civilians that the United States was there to offer them medical attention and food, not a bullet.
Now they are seeking recognition for their efforts.
Manoa resident Minoru Hinahara, 77, recalls being interviewed by Byron Goto and an Army colonel during basic training in Wahiawa.
"They asked me if I was willing to serve in the Pacific," said Hinahara, who was born in Lahaina.
"The Allies were winning in Europe, and so the strategy was shifting to the Pacific."
But unlike the nisei warriors of the 100th Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the exploits of the 1st Provisional Military Government Detachment and the 6,205th Interpreters Special Detachment, Navy 3256, are largely unknown.
Like nisei members of the Military Intelligence Service, these 175 Japanese Americans worked alone, and like MIS veterans, their stories never have been fully told because they were not a part of a larger military unit. In recent years, however, at the urging of U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka, the Army's historical office has been working to detail the achievements of the MIS.Nisei linguists like Hinahara were drafted in the closing months of the war and assigned to Navy and Marine Corps units as interpreters in Saipan and Leyte. However, their biggest task was during the bloody battle for Okinawa in 1945 and the subsequent reoccupation of the island by U.S. forces.
Mike Teiki Miyashiro, an interpreter assigned to the Navy, recalls that Okinawa was destroyed in 1945. Twenty-eight percent of its population of 134,000 civilians was killed, and thousands more were wounded; others hid, thinking they also would be killed.
Miyashiro said 80 percent of the island's homes and household possessions were destroyed and more than 16,000 people dislocated. "All farm animals were gone and farmlands abandoned."
Miyashiro believes that the Japanese government should build a memorial explaining what these nisei soldiers did.
He points to the efforts of the Italian government last year.On Liberation Day, April 25, 2000, in the Italian city of Pietrasanta, the city fathers erected a statue honoring Private 1st Class Sadao Munemori, the only 100th Battalion soldier to win the Medal of Honor.
Miyashiro also wants to have the names of the two units added to Los Angeles' 100th Battalion/442nd/MIS World War II "Go for Broke" memorial, which was dedicated in June 1999.
Tets Asato, monument director, said there already are 16,035 names engraved on the black granite memorial, and "there is space for another 100 or so."
Some of the names submitted by Miyashiro will be added, Asato said. "Others will be added if they meet the criteria based on when they served."
The same problem exists with getting recognized on the state's major monument to the nisei soldiers, located in Waikiki.
Henry Kuniyuki, past president of the 442nd Veterans Club, said there is no way to include them in the "Brothers in Valor" memorial that was erected at Fort DeRussy three years ago.
The memorial is on a 5,100-square-foot site at Kalakaua Avenue and Saratoga Road and includes time capsules with scrolls listing the names of the nisei soldiers who were killed in action and all members of the four AJA units -- 100th Battalion, 442nd RCT, MIS and 1399th Engineer Construction Battalion -- who contributed to building the monument.
But those time capsules will not be opened for the next 50 years, Kuniyuki added, and that would be the only time they could be amended.
Nisei soldiers belonging to the MIS served in the Pacific, translating intercepted Japanese messages, breaking codes and interrogating prisoners.
Members of the 1,399th engineers never saw combat action and were stationed in Hawaii. Here they built 54 facilities, including training facilities at Kahuku, Kahana and Kaaawa, bomber shelters at Wheeler Field, recreation facilities on Coconut Island and a million-gallon water tank in Wahiawa.
Hinahara, who was attached to the 10th Army, 27th Division on Okinawa, recalls being sent with Army officers on Okinawa in 1945 trying to convince Japanese civilians to surrender.
"At one point the military put families on a Navy boat to move them," Hinahara said, "and they started crying, thinking they were being taken out to sea to be drowned."
At another point Hinahara was sent to a cave, his only protection a fellow soldier with a rifle. "We didn't know what to expect. It was a large cave. ... What we discovered was a family which had committed suicide to avoid be taken by the Americans."
Terry Tsubota, who was assigned to the Marines, is well known on the island of Tsuken off the east coast of Okinawa. There he was able to coax 70 residents to come out of hiding and receive food and medicine.
During his four-month tour he would go into caves without a weapon to gain the trust of the people. In one of the caves, he talked a group out of committing suicide using a grenade. "I was about to leave," Tsubota said, "but I noticed a small girl about 6 years old still hiding. I took her by the hand and led her out."
Forty-five years later at Futenma, he was approached by a middle-aged woman who introduced herself as the girl he had led out of the cave.
Miyashiro believes that "our ancestry and our ability to communicate served as a common bond with the Okinawan civilians, enabling us to save lives of thousands and thousands of people. ... Individually, we are not heroes; collectively, as young men in our early 20s, we accomplished a great deal."
With help of Akaka's office, Miyashiro has gotten a list of all 175 nisei soldiers, but he has been able to only contact 30 of them.
"Time is running out," said Miyashiro, who is blind. "The youngest of us is 66, while the oldest is 80, and many of us have health problems."