New film tells tale of MIS

By William Cole
Advertiser Military Writer

Most American servicemen went off to fight in World War II knowing they were protecting the rights and freedoms they enjoyed back home.

The documentary "Uncommon Courage" describes some of the invaluable services Japanese-American soldiers provided the United States during World War II. Here, a Military Intelligence Service soldier interrogates a Japanese prisoner. Photo from "Uncommon Courage"

Against those odds —Êand while fighting an enemy in the Pacific with which they had a common bond — the language specialists showed through valor and service that although they appeared and spoke Japanese, they were Americans first and foremost.

More than one-third of the 6,000 language-school graduates hailed from Hawai'i.

"From Pearl Harbor on, I was committed," recalled Honolulu attorney and MIS veteran Ted Tsukiyama. "They (the Japanese) were the enemy, and I had no compunction about fighting."

The civil rights struggle at home and cultural battle overseas form the backdrop for a one-hour documentary, "Uncommon Courage, Patriotism and Civil Liberties," airing at 8 p.m. Thursday on Honolulu PBS-station KHET and will air nationally for the first time this month.

From May 1, 1942 through the end of the war, Japanese-American MIS linguists translated documents, flush-ed Japanese from caves, infiltrated enemy lines, interrogated prisoners, and helped with the ensuing occupation of Japan.

Like the celebrated 100th Infantry Battalion and 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the MIS fought against the enemy on the battlefield while battling suspicion at home.

But with a classified mission and assignments to combat units on many fronts, MIS veterans were too scattered and too secret to garner the recognition received by the 100th and 442nd.

The national PBS airing of "Uncommon Courage" through May is helping to correct that.

The documentary by Northern California filmmaker Gayle Yamada has received two Emmy nominations and the Edward R. Murrow Award.

"What we did was kept secret for so many years," said MIS veteran Donald Okubo, 83, who lives in Honolulu. "I think it (the film) is a wonderful thing because it's about time that people learn what we did. The language skills played a vital part in battle, and saved a lot of men's lives."

MIS linguists served with Merrill's Marauders and the Mars Task Force behind enemy lines in Burma, and helped translate the captured "Z plan" for an all-out Japanese naval and air attack in the central Pacific.

The knowledge led to U.S. forces shooting down hundreds of enemy planes in June 1944 in what became known as the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot."

Okubo, then a tech sergeant, was the interpreter during the surrender of the Marshall Islands by the Japanese in 1945.

Hawai'i's Don Okubo, center, was an interpreter with the MIS when a Japanese admiral, left, surrendered the Marshall Islands to a U.S. military officer in September 1945. Advertiser library photo

"It is appropriate to record the invaluable services rendered by linguists of Japanese ancestry — the Nisei from Hawai'i and California," he said. "Although the Japanese of the Pacific Coast were dealt with harshly in the hysteria following the Pearl Harbor attack, the American Japanese amply demonstrated their loyalty to the United States in every capacity. Indeed, there is absolutely no record of sabotage or treason."

Okubo is one of four Hawai'i MIS veterans featured in an hour-and-a-half version of "Uncommon Courage" previously shown only in Hawai'i and Northern California.

Tsukiyama, who served in the India-Burma campaigns as a radio message interceptor; Kazuo Yamane, who uncovered a Japanese ordnance manual cataloging munitions plants; and Kan Tagami, an interpreter for MacArthur who met with Emperor Hirohito, also relate their experiences.

The first MIS language school was started on Nov. 1, 1941 in an abandoned hangar at the Presidio in San Francisco. It was later moved to Camp Savage in Minnesota. Each six-month class consisted of an intensive crash course in Japanese military language.

The MIS, many Nisei, or second-generation Japanese Americans, and Kibei, citizens here who received their education in Japan, served the country at a time of mass Japanese internments in the West.

Through old film clips and black and white photos, Yamada's film retraces the forced move of Japanese families to camps surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by armed soldiers — and the government's attempts to rationalize the civil rights abuses.

"The evacuation does not imply individual disloyalty," a government narrator calmly intones over images of Japanese being relocated. "They are not prisoners, they are not detainees. They are merely dislocated people."

U.S. Sen. Dan Inouye, D-Hawai'i, recalls in the film the mood of fellow 442nd soldiers when the unit visited an internment camp in Arkansas.

It was the first time some of the soldiers had even heard of the existence of such camps.

"I can't speak for the other truck, but in my truck, there was no singing, no one played the 'ukulele, and there was no conversation — it was almost eerie because no one talked," Inouye said. "But I think I can make the calculated guess that all of us were asking ourselves — would we have volunteered if we found ourselves in such a camp?"

In Hawai'i, most of those of Japanese ancestry did not have to face the prospect of internment camps, but felt the sting of racism nevertheless.

Following the Dec. 7, 1941 attack, University of Hawai'i ROTC cadets became the Hawai'i Territorial Guard, and took up guard posts.

Tsukiyama notes in the film that "that went on for six weeks until someone in Washington, D.C., discovered, to their horror, that Honolulu was being guarded by hundreds of 'Japs' in American uniforms."

"Suddenly, we were dismissed," Tsukiyama said, "and the only reason was our ancestry."

The drafting of Japanese Americans into the U.S. Army was halted on March 30, 1942, when their draft status was changed to "enemy alien." The Army became the only service branch to accept volunteers.

On the battlefield, there was also suspicion.

Guards were assigned to protect the MIS from falling into enemy hands, but also to make sure they were not somehow collaborating with the enemy.

Okubo, the only MIS assigned to his unit, was escorted by two to three Marines everywhere he went.

"I was more afraid of the Marines than the enemy," he says in the film.

But time and time again, the MIS proved their worth and loyalty.

Yamane relates in the film how a commanding officer sent him to take one last look at captured Japanese documents believed to have no value.

In one crate, he found a book stained and wet that was a virtual encyclopedia of the Japanese war machine.

"It listed the manufacturers of weapons, it listed manufacturing plants, it gave addresses, it listed an inventory of what they had," he said.

MIS would accompany U.S. troops into Japan following the war, witness the devastation wrought by the nuclear bombing in Hiroshima, and serve as interpreters during war-crimes trials.

Yamada says in the film that the fierce patriotism shown by the MIS helped change perceptions. But not all perceptions.

Mitsuo Usui, a Mainland MIS linguist, recalls coming home and the bus ride that followed.

"As I got on the bus, with my new uniform, and my new duffel bag and everything else, a lady sitting in the front seat opposite the driver said, 'Huh, another goddamn Jap,' and I looked around and looked at her (with) a surprised look," Usui says.

"What did the bus driver do? He stopped the bus in the lane in which it was driving ... all the cars were screeching and stopped, and he turned around to look at the lady, and he said, 'Lady, you apologize to this American soldier, or you get off my bus.' "

Yamada, 47, who worked on "Uncommon Courage" for three years, said the film is a story of bravery, but also a cautionary tale of civil rights violations with applications in the world today.

"You need stories like this to show what has happened in the past, and to ensure it doesn't happen again," Yamada said.