Hawaii’s Top Secret Japanese Prisoner of War Camp –
Camp Iroquois, Ewa Beach
by John Bond Ewa Historian
A story very few anywhere know- Camp Iroquois is mentioned indirectly in various post Pacific War books and also in The Interpreter archives of the University of Colorado, Boulder. Finally its importance in helping to win the Pacific PSY-WAR against Japan in WW-II can be revealed and the still existing site considered for a National Register nomination.
Above, Japanese POWs captured at Tarawa
While Many know today of Honouliuli Internment Camp and the
internment of local Japanese Americans, far less is known about the facility called Camp Iroquois, an important
Pacific War Prisoner of War (POW) camp for selected Japanese.
NPS National Register of Honouliuli Internment Camp states that it is distinctive
as the only Hawaiian site remaining that was built exclusively as a World War II confinement camp.
Actually this
is not accurate. In the Ewa Beach – Puuloa area was a Japanese Prisoner of War
compound of significance to winning the Pacific War but remained so Top Secret
that only documents found at the University of Colorado reveal the extent of
the facility.
The existence of Camp Iroquois is mentioned only once in passing in the Honouliuli
Internment Camp National Register nomination form and not at all in the National Monument
declaration.
The National Register form states: “Straus notes that the last Japanese POWs to arrive in Hawaii were
from the battle of Iwo Jima. A select
few of these went to Iroquois Point, others may have been sent to
Honouliuli.”
Above POW picked up by a submarine and taken to Pearl Harbor
Camp Iroquois was unique as a Japanese POW camp with a philosophy of winning the "hearts and minds" which helped play
a significant classified, secret role in winning the Pacific
War. Americans usually heard very grim and brutal stories of the treatment of American prisoners in the hands of the Imperial Japanese military.
Japanese military POW’s arriving from the Pacific island battlefields were relatively few in numbers due to the fact that they were expected to never allow themselves to be captured alive. Huge numbers killed themselves by suicide attacks or killing each other.
Those that were captured early in the war usually were the result of incapacitating wounds or ship being sunk, such as at the battle of Midway where the Imperial Japanese Navy lost four aircraft carriers, among other fleet ships. Those survivors that could be picked up were brought back to Pearl Harbor to be interrogated for their military knowledge.
Then they were screened for a possible interest in cooperating with the
United States to win the war by saving Japanese lives and preparing for the
future democratic government of Japan.
Additionally, the alumni of the Camp Iroquois project became
some of the most important ambassadors, academics and writers that greatly
influenced future American Japanese relations and the establishment of many
organizations developing diplomatic and cultural relationships and a solid
mutual defense partnership.
Japanese Prisoner of War Camp – Camp Iroquois, Ewa Beach
The POW compound area, and building footings remain today in
an area off of North Road and bordered on two sides by the Ewa Beach Golf Club.
A 1946 14th Naval District Master Location
schematic map shows the location of the facility as north of today’s USMC
Puuloa Rifle Range and west of the FAA Radio facility. North of the site was
where hundreds of Pacific War Navy and Marine aircraft were shredded beginning
in 1946.
The 1946 schematic map legend lists 40 buildings: Headquarters,
BOQ, Recreation, 9 Barracks, Officers Mess, Enlisted Mess, Store Houses, 3 Interrogation,
Dispensary, Food Distribution, 4 Guard Towers, Work Shop, and most importantly,
a Beer Hall.
Camp Iroquois really should be a part of the telling of
the Honouliuli Internment and POW Camp story. Fortunately a lot of the story has
actually been saved in great detail by the US Navy Japanese/Oriental Language
School Archival Project, University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries in
newsletters called The Interpreter.
From The Interpreter stories about Camp Iroquois emerge.
Otis Cary, 84, who died of pneumonia April 14, 2008 in
Oakland, played a unique role in U.S.-Japan relations during and after World
War II. He was one of the
1,100 Japanese linguists trained by the Navy to serve as interrogators,
translators and interpreters after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
When America entered World War II, Cary enlisted in the Navy
and breezed through its crash course in the Japanese language at UC Berkeley
and the University of Colorado. Assigned to a POW camp at Pearl Harbor in early
1943, he became executive officer of the interrogation section. His first
interrogation subject gave up information vital to the Allied offensive in the
Aleutians after the prisoner learned that Cary was from his hometown of Otaru.
Cary's deep understanding of the Japanese enabled him to
help the POWs overcome their shame at having been captured and their fears of
returning home in disgrace. He counted among his "converts" POWs who
went on to become leaders in the new Japan, including the publisher of a major
newspaper and a prominent physician. He also drummed ideas of democracy into
members of the imperial family, whom he met on several occasions after Japan's
surrender in August 1945.
Cary spoke to the
POWs in colloquial Japanese, even though he was capable of navigating the
language's many levels of politesse. He did this, Straus explained, to break
down the Japanese military's stiflingly strict rank system and allow natural
leaders to emerge.
Cary refused to rough up prisoners and treated them as his
equal. He always had larger objectives in mind.
"Otis believed in treating prisoners very well,"
Frank B. Gibney, another former Navy interrogator who went on to become a
prominent journalist and author of books about Japan, wrote a few years ago in
an unpublished autobiography. (Gibney died April 9, 2008).
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Japanese POWs expected tough treatment and were not cowed by
harsh handling. By surrendering they had entered a separate new existence. They
had expected torture and beatings but instead were shown kindness, offered
chocolate, cigarettes and invited to talk about their families and where they
came from. This treatment was so shocking that many Japanese POW’s completely
opened up and divulged valuable military information that helped save both
American and Japanese lives.
***********************************************************
The Nice Way of Q&A Paid Off in World War II
May 09, 2004 | Frank Gibney, Frank Gibney, president of the
Pacific Basin Institute, is
professor of politics at Pomona College and the
author of "The Pacific Century" and
other books on Asia and foreign
policy.
SANTA BARBARA — I spent most of World War II as an
intelligence officer interrogating Japanese prisoners at a secluded Pearl
Harbor camp (Camp Iroquois, Ewa Beach) and at other
sites in the Pacific.
Our
work was not publicized. Like most world powers, the United States officially
subscribed to the rules of the Geneva Convention for POW treatment, according
to which prisoners were not required to divulge any information other than the
bare facts of their military identity -- name, rank and serial number.
Even so, the convention's rules were consistently violated throughout
World War II -- appallingly so in the case of the Japanese, Soviets and Nazis.
But in the U.S. military, interrogations were subject to rules and review.
Despite the vicious handling of American POWs by the Japanese, we tried to
avoid the use of force.
That sharply contrasts with news that U.S. military police and
interrogators used intimidation, beatings, sleep deprivation, "stress
positions," stun guns and other nasty methods to "soften up" Iraqi
prisoners for intelligence purposes.
Our reluctance to use force didn't mean
that interrogation wasn't serious business. The camp, in the then-barren acres
of Iroquois Point across from Pearl Harbor, was run for intelligence purposes. We
handled all prisoners in the Pacific Theater thought to possess useful
information.
Equipped with a fairly detailed knowledge of Japanese army and
navy units -- and a shopping list of strategic questions -- we asked POWs about
war industries, regime personalities, home-front morale and future military
strategies, as well as details about local units and their order of battle.
Interrogators and prisoners spent time talking about personal
histories and attitudes toward the war. We often ended up explaining a lot of
recent history that had been withheld from them by their heavily censored
press.
Most captured Japanese soldiers talked freely. Thanks in good part to
military regulations threatening disgrace for anyone taken prisoner, many did
not want their names sent back home for fear of retaliation against their
families. There were always a few die-hards trying to foment trouble, but we
were generally able to isolate them.
Most POWs were well behaved and surprised
by the good treatment they received. In two years of interrogation, I can
recall only one instance of an officer in charge ordering a Marine sergeant to
rough up an aggressively close-mouthed prisoner.
Hearing about this, the camp's executive officer went to the
prisoner's cell, apologized on behalf of America and pressed magazines and a
carton of cigarettes into the man's hands. Impressed by this involuntary good-cop,
bad-cop routine, he began to talk. No more rough stuff after that.
*****************************************************
Otis Cary; his sly interrogations of Japanese POWs helped bridge
cultures
By Elaine Woo, Los Angeles Times | May 4, 2006
When Otis Cary interrogated Japanese prisoners during World War II, he softened
them with gifts of magazines, cigarettes, and chocolates. He broke through
their reserve with humor. And he spoke to them in flawless Japanese -- shocking
from a blond American.
Mr. Cary spoke like a native because he was one, the son and grandson of
New England missionaries in Japan. With missionary-like ardor, he proselytized
for the Allied cause, persuading many of the prisoners to cooperate in efforts to
end the war and help rebuild Japan as a democracy.
''Prolonged contact with Americans in the prison camps clearly had an
impact on many prisoners, and for none more than those influenced by Otis
Cary," wrote Ulrich Straus, a former diplomat whose study of Japanese
prisoners of war, ''The Anguish of Surrender," was published in 2003.
Mr. Cary, 84, who died of pneumonia April 14 in Oakland, played a unique
role in US-Japan relations during and after World War II. He was one of the
1,100 Japanese linguists trained by the Navy to serve as interrogators,
translators, and interpreters after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
For more than four decades after the war, he bridged cultures as a
professor of American studies at Doshisha University in Kyoto. He was, in many
respects, more Japanese than American.
''When [Americans] asked him where he came from, he said it pained him
to say he was from
Massachusetts," said Donald Keene, a Columbia University specialist
on Japanese literature
and longtime friend, who served with Mr. Cary during the war.
''To tell a fellow officer 'I came from Japan' was to start a quarrel"
in the period after Pearl Harbor, Keene said. But Mr. Cary, he noted, ''saw
Japan as his real home."
Mr. Cary was born in Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan. He
moved to the United States after elementary school and attended high school at
Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts. From there he went on to Amherst College, which
had a long history of ties with Japan through an exchange program with
Doshisha.
When America entered World War II, he enlisted in the Navy. Assigned to
a POW camp at Pearl Harbor in early 1943, he became the executive officer of
the interrogation section. His first interrogation subject gave up information
vital to the Allied offensive in the Aleutians after the prisoner learned that
Mr. Cary was from his hometown of Otaru.
As the first officer to greet the POWs when they arrived at the Hawaii
camp, Mr. Cary devised
a ritual to set them at ease.
As recounted by Straus, Mr. Cary lined up the prisoners and called their
rank, beginning with the lowest rank first. Privates first class were asked to
take one step forward, the next highest rank two steps forward, and so on. Mr.
Cary generally ran out of prisoners by the time he reached lieutenant or
captain but continued the exercise until he reached the highest ranks.
''What, no generals or admirals?" he would ask, feigning shock when
no one stepped forward. This caused the assembled prisoners to burst out laughing at the absurdity of the exercise.
****************************************************
The Navy and Marines developed policies regarding the handling of Japanese POWs that were heavily influenced by Major Sherwood Moran, USMC, former missionary, who recommended that Japanese could not be brutalized beyond how that of their child-raising, schooling, and military training and that gentle and kind handling would produce better results. The Army was similarly convinced by a missionary officer, as well. So the US WWII military POW protocol coincided with the trained inclinations of the language officers.
The Navy and Marines developed policies regarding the handling of Japanese POWs that were heavily influenced by Major Sherwood Moran, USMC, former missionary, who recommended that Japanese could not be brutalized beyond how that of their child-raising, schooling, and military training and that gentle and kind handling would produce better results. The Army was similarly convinced by a missionary officer, as well. So the US WWII military POW protocol coincided with the trained inclinations of the language officers.
*****************************************************
The Interpreter, Issue 68
University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries. Archives Dept.
Keene at
JICPOA
I am sending you some of my official papers as a naval
officer. They are extremely boring, but perhaps they may be of use if anyone is
interested in tracking where language officers went. I am also sending a
photograph taken in 1943 or 1944 in Hawaii.
The three people in the picture (Keene, de Bary and Cary)
were all Boulder graduates in January 1943. We were stationed in Hawaii and
lived in the same house on Kamehameha Avenue, but worked in different places.
Otis Cary was officially at JICPOA (Joint Intelligence Center,
Pacific Operating Area), but spent most of his time at prisoner of war camps.
Ted de Bary was at the District Intelligence Office in Honolulu. I was at the
Annex, a supposedly secret office on Kapiolani Boulevard in Honolulu, where
Navy and Army personnel translated captured documents. I think that the office
was situated in Honolulu rather than at Pearl Harbor because the Navy was very
reluctant to admit Japanese-Americans into the navy yard, even if they were in
military uniform.
The office specialized in translating handwritten documents,
and for this reason it was believed that the Nisei interpreters would be better
at deciphering handwriting than naval officers. The Boulder graduates who worked
at this office were Sam Brock, Richard Beardsley, Charles Hamilton and myself.
I enclose a poem written by Charles Hamilton, known by his Chinese name
Ch’a-êrh, to me, known by my Korean name T’ang-nap. The references are all to
our life in Honolulu in 1943- 1945.
Tanaka was a nisei who, because he didn’t know any Japanese, was made the chauffeur. M’s Coffee Tavern was the best restaurant in Honolulu during
the War, very hard to get into, especially if one was in naval uniform. The
McKinley Grill was directly across the street from the Annex. It featured a
waitress with an unchanging simper. We called her Beatrice after
the character in the Divine Comedy. Major Bruner was the
exasperating army officer who headed the Annex for one long year.
Donald Keene
JLS
1943
*******************************************************
May Old Acquaintance
be Forgot
The material you sent
concerning the JLS at Boulder including a set of The Interpreter
newsletters has arrived. Thank you very much. I am sorry that my brother George
is no longer with us so we could read and talk about it together.
My knowledge
of his experiences is limited. One story of his impressed me – As a missionary
family, we lived in Akita, Japan from 1929 to 1932. George was 10 to 12 years
of age and fluent in children’s Japanese. Right behind our house was a boys’
orphanage.
While interrogating a
Japanese POW during the War, he learned that the prisoner was from Akita.
George asked him if he had ever known an American. The POW replied that there
was a boy from the house behind them who used to come over and play baseball
with them.
For me that would
have been old home week – “I’m the guy.” But George never identified himself –
something about not fraternizing with the enemy.
Reverend Robert K. Nace, Brother
of George Nace, LIJ and JLS 1943
*********************************************************************
Special Thanks To:
David M. Hays
Special Collections and Archives
University of Colorado Boulder Libraries
Collections: The
US Navy Japanese/Oriental Language School Archival Project (JSLP)
The relevance of
this school and its graduates is substantial:
1.
Japanese Americans made up more than 3/4th of the sensei of both the
Navy and the Army Japanese Language schools located at Harvard (1940-41),
Berkeley (1940-42), Boulder (1942-1946). Navy and Marine Japanese Language
Officers worked as interpreters and interrogators at Iroquois Point (Camp Iroquois). These
Nisei Sensei in CAL Berkeley and CU Boulder helped imbue these language
officers with considerable respect for the Japanese people and culture.
2. USN
and USMC language officer veterans time and again explain that the school
imparted a respect and affection for the Japanese culture and influenced how
they dealt with Japanese POWs, displaced personnel, and occupied territory.
3. USN
JLOs frequently sought out Nisei Hawaiians with whom to socialize.
4. The
Navy and Marines developed policies regarding the handling of Japanese POWs
that were heavily influenced by Major Sherwood Moran, USMC, former missionary,
who recommended that Japanese could not be brutalized beyond how that of their
child-raising, schooling, and military training and that gentle and kind
handling would produce better results. The Army was similarly convinced by a
missionary officer, as well. So the US WWII military POW protocol coincided
with the trained inclinations of the language officers.
5. In
addition, many of the language officers had been raised in Japan and China and
had known Japanese people in their childhoods. These bilingual “Born-in-Japan”
and “Born-in-China” JLOs were most often sent to the POW camps as they had the
spoken Japanese skills that the rest of the JLOs did not. Their affinity with
the Japanese is illustrated by stories told by Arthur Dornheim, George Nace,
about Otis Cary, and a number of others.
Consider this just a start. We may be
of considerable help to you. As I mentioned, you can use the Google custom
search on http://ucblibraries.colorado.edu/archives/index.htm to find
articles in the newsletter by using terms like “POW,” “prisoner,” Cary, Nace,
Dornheim, etc. They will bring up issues of The Interpreter carrying articles
of interest.
You will need to get the books by
Slesnick, Dingman, Meehl, and Ulrich, just for starters.
Best Wishes, David M. Hays, Archivist
David M. Hays
Special Collections and Archives
University of Colorado Boulder Libraries
184 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309-0184
Fax 303-492-3960
Phone 303-492-7242
*****************************************************
Good Reference Books On The Special POW Intelligence Operations in the Pacific:
The Interpreter, Kanji & Codes,
Deciphering the Rising Sun, and One Marine's War
By Roger Dingman
These books are about Americans not of Japanese
ancestry, who served as Japanese language officers in World War II. Covering
the period 1940-1945, it describes their selection, training, and service in
the Navy and Marine Corps during the war and their contributions to maintenance
of good relations between America and Japan thereafter. It argues that their service as "code breakers" and combat interpreters hastened victory and that their cross-cultural experience and linguistic knowledge facilitated the successful dismantling of the Japanese Empire and the peaceful occupation of Japan.
The books show how the war changed relations between the Navy and academia, transformed the lives of these 1200 men and women, and set onetime enemies on course to enduring friendship. Its purpose is twofold: to reveal an exciting and hitherto unknown aspect of the Pacific War and to demonstrate the enduring importance of linguistic and cross-cultural knowledge within America's armed forces in war and peace alike.
The book is meant for the general reader
interested in World War II, as well as academic specialists and other persons
particularly interested in that conflict. It will also appeal to readers with
an interest in America's intelligence establishment and to those interested in
Japan and its relations with the United States. This history tells and exciting
and previously unknown story of men and women whose
brains and devotion to duty enabled them to learn an extraordinarily difficult
language and use it in combat and ashore to hasten Japan's defeat and
transformation from enemy to friend of America.
One Marine's War: A Combat Interpreter's
Quest for Humanity in the Pacific
By Gerald A. Meehl
One Marine's War recounts the
experiences of Robert Sheeks, a Marine combat interpreter, and how he underwent
a remarkable transformation as a consequence of his encounters with the
Imperial Japanese Army, Nisei Japanese-American language instructors, Japanese
and Pacific Island native civilians, and American Marines.
It is the first time
the entire story of one Marine Corps combat interpreter has been told, and it
provides a unique insight into an aspect of the Pacific war that is not only
fascinating history, but also a compelling personal struggle to come to terms
with a traumatic childhood and subsequent harrowing combat experiences.
The son of an American corporate
executive, Bob was born and raised in Shanghai until the family fled the
impending Japanese occupation in the 1930s. He was emotionally scarred by
grisly atrocities he personally witnessed as the Japanese military terrorized
the Chinese population during the "Shanghai Incident" in 1932.
However, his intense hatred for the Japanese military was gradually transformed
into tolerance and then compassion. He was recruited out of Harvard after the
Pearl Harbor attack to be a Japanese language interpreter in the Marine Corps.
When he encountered kind and considerate Japanese-American Nisei instructors
during the intensive course at the U.S. Navy Japanese Language School at the
University of Colorado, he began to re-think his attitudes toward the Japanese.
Ultimately, through an intriguing set
of circumstances, he developed an empathy for the Japanese enemy he formerly
despised. This began during the invasion of Tarawa where he was frustrated by
the near impossibility of capturing Japanese combatants, partly because there
was no way to communicate with them in their bunkers where they fought to the
death.
That led him to devise methods to use a combination of surrender
leaflets and amplified voice appeals to convince the enemy to surrender. As a
consequence, he personally ended up saving the lives of hundreds of Japanese
civilians and military by being able to talk them out of caves during combat on
Saipan and Tinian in 1944. He was able to find humanity in the midst of war.
For his efforts he was awarded the Bronze Star with a unique commendation,
certainly one of the few medals ever given to a Marine officer for saving the
lives of the enemy.
Kanji & Codes: Learning Japanese for
World War II
by Carole E. Slesnick Irwin L.; Slesnick
A history of
America's heroic effort to learn Japanese both for the war, and for the peace
that followed. Of the 8000 Japanese linguists trained for this effort, 6000
were Japanese Americans. The linguists became the bridge from war to peace with
Japan.
The Anguish of Surrender, Japanese POWs of
World War II
by Ulrich Straus
From the Allied -- mostly American --
perspective in the zones of conflict, the capture of Japanese soldiers and
sailors, especially if they were officers, was important if the POWs could
provide battle-front intelligence.
For that to be realized, two requirements
had to be met. First, interrogators of POWs and translators of captured
documents were essential. Second, the POWs had to be willing to share important
information.
The latter imperative was overcome with relative ease because once
they had taken the monumental step of surrendering -- sometimes by feigning
unconsciousness -- they had no code of conduct to guide them and so answered
questions freely. Some even assisted in the preparation of leaflets or verbal
appeals to their erstwhile comrades to surrender.
Nisei linguists - US Army Center Of
Military History
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.
The US Navy Japanese/Oriental Language
Programs
In
the ensuing years after the stunning Japanese victory over one of the most well
regarded militaries of Europe in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, The United
States Army and Navy both began their own multi-year Japanese Language
tutorials in Tokyo. Both services sent naval and military academy graduates to
train while assigned as attachés at the embassy. From 1910 until 1940, the Navy
program trained 41 Navy language officers and 16 Marine language officers, of
which 48 graduated and 35 became active intelligence officers during World War
II.
In
1941, because of growing diplomatic strain the school had to be removed from
Tokyo to the United States. It was clear that the school needed to shorten its
curriculum to produce language officers quickly, and expand enough to produce
enough linguists for the needs of the Navy and the Marines. After experiments
with a Marine school at Pearl Harbor, and two pilot programs at Harvard
University and the University of California at Berkeley, the USN Japanese Language
School (JLS) shifted entirely to Berkeley in late 1941. The school used texts
pulled together and a curriculum developed for the Navy by Naoe Naganuma, who
had headed the Tokyo school (for the Navy, the Foreign Service and the Army) in
the 1930s. The length of training shortened to 14 months, and the instructors
were mainly Nisei from California and Washington. The attack on Pearl Harbor on
December 7, 1941 and the subsequent internment of West Coast Japanese
necessitated the school to move again or lose the bulk of their
instructors/sensei to the camps.
Since Colorado Governor Ralph Carr had “welcomed” Japanese Americans to the
state, and University of Colorado president Robert Stearns was lobbying with
the Navy to bring schools and personnel to the university to take the place of
the many students who had either enlisted or had been drafted by the military,
the JLS need for a location and the university’s need for students and funding
coincided. In June of 1942, the Navy’s JLS arrived in Boulder, Colorado. The
School’s Navy cadre, Nisei and former missionary instructors were joined by an
enrollment of alumni, recent graduates and even graduate students from the
nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges, with an emphasis on those
who were raised in Asia and were members of Phi Beta Kappa. Trained in classes
of five, most students knew only those who had come from their schools, roomed
with them, or stood nearby in formation. After rigorous, intensive language
training, the newly commission Navy and Marine officers were provided
intelligence training at the Henry Hudson Hotel in New York City.
The
Navy and Marine Japanese Language officers were then assigned to intelligence,
translation, interpretation, decoding, or interrogation duties in ONI or ONC
facilities in Washington, DC, CINCPAC’s Joint Intelligence Center Pacific Ocean
Area at Pearl Harbor, SWPAC’s Allied Translator and Interpreter Section in
Australia, Fleet Radio Units at Pearl Harbor or Melbourne, or any of a number
of Marine battalions, regiments and divisions during the many island campaigns.
Aside from assisting in major code-breaking coups, as well as strategic and
tactical discoveries, they also developed a humane manner of handling and
gaining intelligence from Japanese POWs, helped arrange the surrender of
bypassed Japanese units, facilitated the repatriation of the bulk of the
Japanese Imperial military after the surrender from China and island bases, and
were an integral part of the Occupation of Japan.
Perhaps as important as their wartime contributions were their postwar careers
in many fields that would enhance the understanding between Japan and the
United States. After WWII, the former Navy and Marine JLOs filled the ranks of
academia studying and teaching the anthropology, history, literature, art,
economy, society, biology, language, landscaping, political science, and other
aspects of Japan and Asia. Another group joined the US Foreign Service, rising
through consular and embassy positions to the ranks of consul and ambassador.
Another portion of JLS graduates became intelligence experts in the CIA, NSA,
and Defense Intelligence Agency. As I joke, “The failures in this group became
doctors and lawyers.” In all, they dominated the fields that sought to comprehend
and interpret Japan for America for almost a half century – truly a gift that
kept on giving.
David M. Hays, Archivist
Archives, University of Colorado
Boulder Libraries
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Nisei Military Intelligence Service And The Pacific OWI - JICPOA Psychological Warfare Campaign
***********************************************
