Hitoshi Tanigawa

On VJ Day, our training with the Military Intelligence Language School of Ft. Snelling, Minnesota, was terminated and immediate preparations where made to be shipped to Japan for the occupation. At Zama Replacement Department in Yokohama, I received my orders to report to Niigata-shi in northern Japan to serve in the Counter-Intelligent Corps of Niigata. I was told that Niigata would have been the target for the next Atom Bomb. After only one week in Niigata, I was transferred to the CIC of the 441' CIC, Area 43, of Tsu-shi, Mie Prefecture in Central Japan. All my traveling was done alone. In Tsu-shi, I arrived at 8P.M. In driving from the railroad station to our headquarters, I noticed that Tsu-shi was completely fire-bombed. People were living in make-shift shacks and burning wood to keep warm. The shocking scene took me back to Tokyo where I had seen Tokyo also completely fire-bombed. It was an amazing sight. In asking why Tsu-shi was bombed, I was told that this was the home of the Kamikaze Academy, and my memory was again jolted to another date.

On the day of the attack of Pearl Harbor, I was seventeen and witnessed the bombing of the naval base from in front of our home. We lived less than three miles from Pearl Harbor. I grew up in this neighborhood my whole life, adjacent to Pearl Harbor in Fort Shafter, an artillery unit. We lived across the street from Fort Shaffer and saw three men running out and carrying a BAR machine gun and setting it up on the side of the road in anticipation of any invasion. The skies over Pearl Harbor were completely enveloped in thick black clouds swirling into the sky. The tremendous sound and explosions awakened everybody that morning, and we were all outside witnessing the unbelievable sight. The attacking planes were still up in the sky. What caught my attention was seeing a plane dive straight down and not return to flight which indicated that the plane was a suicide plane, and in all probability was trained and came from the Kamikaze Academy of Tsu-shi that our unit was now occupying in Japan.

Upon arrival at my command unit, I got acquainted with all my men and presented my credentials as to my qualifications and knowledge of the Japanese language and what part I could play in all the investigations that were being conducted. It was determined then that I would be a translator looking into the books and records of the Japan Army Veterans Bureau to determine any irregularities in the disbursement of funds destined to be given to all the returning Veterans and widows. Two top high-ranking officers came to our office everyday with another interpreter hired by the United States CIC, and the four of us spent the whole day from 9A.M. to 5P.M. working on the translation of the whole document which were then compiled, typed, and made into a report that was sent to the Kyoto CIC Command Unit each week. From the early part of the investigation, there was tension between us working with the enemy officers of the Japan Army, however it gradually lessened. The respect and cooperation between us was to bring us a happy ending to our investigation.

An important sidelight was to occur from the second day of my arrival in Tsu. Because I came in late at night, I went to bed after meeting all the men of the unit. Early the next morning, I was awakened by the voices of little children singing. Looking down from my second-story room, I saw four little children ranging in ages from two to eight. I was also surprised to find that next door to our headquarters was a Japanese Christian Church. This church had survived the bombing of the city. The song the children were singing was, "Come, come everybody. How do you do and how are you? Won't you have some candy-one, two, and three four five." The song was being sung in English. 1 went right down to get acquainted. I asked the children, "How come you are singing in English?" The children replied that General McArthur, in order to create a cooperative feeling between the U.S. and Japan, had to take the first step to teach even children to sing songs in English. Then, one of the children asked, "What does it mean?" Here they were singing so happily, but did not know what they were singing about. I started to translate each work and the thought occurred to me, "Would you be willing to learn English? I would be happy to come over every night and conduct an English-Japanese conversation class." They answered immediately with excitement.

I spoke to their father, the minister of the church, and I brought up the proposal to my Commanding Officer to begin such a class. My Commanding Officer gave an immediate, happy endorsement to the idea, and on the first Monday night I started a two hour conversation class from six to eight after my regular nine to five translation that we had been conducting. The first night, half a dozen people of all ages came. The second night, twice as many came as the first, and for each night after that the amount of people doubled. The second week, I had to split the classes: Monday-Wednesday-Friday nights were for high school and adults, on Tuesday-Thursday nights the first hour was for pre-school children and the second hour was for teenagers. I was able to teach these classes each night for the whole eight months of my service. Saturdays were rest days playing with the children, and on Sundays, I attended the Christian service of the church. It was the beginning of a happy association for the whole eight months of service. I was the only instructor during the entire time and it was by itself strictly voluntary of my own free time after my duty hours of being a translator. The people of Tsu and all the young children made for a wonderful relationship of love and respect for all the post-war period. The group pictures of all the students attest to the integrity of all the people involved. All credit must go to my Commanding Officer for his insightful approval of bringing all the children and adults together for better understanding and helping sculpt relationships of the future.

At the end of our classes, we had a get-together of singing and fellowship in a school building. Everyone participated in happy songs. Someone had suggested, "How about a song from Mr. T.?" I was ready to sing a Japanese or English song but I asked them which one they would like to hear. The answer came back, "Old Black Joe," Stephen Foster's beloved spiritual. What a strange request, I thought, and I started to sing the song, "Gone are the days when my heart was young and gay. Gone are my friends from the cotton fields away. Gone from the earth to a better land I know, I hear their gentle voices calling Old Black Joe." As I sang each word, I realized that the Japanese people had all experienced the loss of their own loved ones during the war and the spiritual song was a comfort to themselves. After our song fest, I received a note from one young man that said, "Is it possible for you to hide me in your bags so that I can go to America to study and come back to help rebuild my country?" Such was the beautiful hope and courage of the people of Tsu.

Upon my discharge from the Army, I was so anxious to come back to my own church and take the opportunity to relate to them about my total experiences. I was so sure that they would send aid to the desperately needy people of Tsu. I had all the names and addresses of the people of Tsu. Instead, not one person was to welcome me back home or inquire as to what the people of Japan were going through. In Hawaii, all the boys returned home as heroes. How could a non-combat veteran as I, top their stories? I accepted their indifference to what I was ready to offer. My lack of confidence would not allow me to assert myself to force my attention to them to receive their support. I had no resources of my own to send aid to them. I have always felt that I disappointed all the people of Tsu because I was unable to help them on my own.

About two months after the disappointment with the members of my church, I received a phone call from a church on the other side of Honolulu asking me to come to their church and speak of my experiences in Japan. When I went to the church and spoke to the lady who called me, I had to ask her how in the world she found out who I was. She explained that her church was very much interested in the development of post-war Japan, and she had asked her boyfriend, who had returned from Japan, about it. Her boyfriend happened to be a buddy of mine working in the same CIC unit in Tsu. His duties and responsibilities were different from mine, but he knew of my extra voluntary work at night with the English conversation classes and told her, "You don't want to talk to me. I know just the man for you!" and gave her my name and address. Out of the discussion with the ladies that I talked to, one was to become a full-time missionary to Japan. Later, Gen. McArthur issued a call for missionaries and it was comforting to see the great support of the people back home to respond to the call. My home church of Kalihi Union did more than fall in line in sending multiple numbers of missionaries to Japan.

In the final analysis of assessing the value of serving in the occupation, a review of my family's contribution must be made. My parents, Tomizo and Yuki Tanigawa, were one of the first aliens to come to Hawaii in 1885 to work in the sugar plantations. In 1923, the year of my birth, my grandfather was to take my first-born brother to Japan. My brother spent his whole life in Japan as a Japanese citizen and eventually served with the Japan Army in Manchuria five years before Pearl Harbor. I had no contact with him until I arrived in Japan for the occupation. My father was arrested on December 7m, and became a prisoner of war for the entire period and was imprisoned in Santa Fe, New Mexico with all the rest of the enemy aliens arrested that day. After the war ended four years later, instead of returning home to Hawaii, he opted to go back to Japan in the prisoner exchange. In Japan, he was able to see all the devastation of Tokyo, Nagasaki, and Hiroshima to be finally convinced that Japan did lose the war. He now wanted to return to Hawaii and was in the process of filing applications to return when he suffered a brain hemorrhage and died instantly at 55 years of age. Before he died, he was able to see his second son come to Japan for the occupation as a Sergeant in the CIC unit of the U.S. Army. My father and brother are buried in Japan and the rest of the family still lives in Hawaii. My mother lived to the age of 94. Such was the fate of our family in victory and defeat.

Finally, if ever there was a person with a grudge against Japan and the Japan Navy that bombed Pearl Harbor, it would be me. When I was ten years old, my father enrolled me into a Japanese kendo class at the Japanese language school. The son of the kendo instructor and I were the first two to start training. It was not long before we had a good sized class and was competing in tournaments all over the island. The Japan Navy came into Hawaiian waters to conduct naval maneuvers. This is five years before Pearl Harbor. A team of naval officers came over to our training simian center to show us how to properly do kendo. My opponent was an adult against the young boy that I was. His kendo sword was six inches longer than mine and also heavier than any child's sword. With his height advantage, he started to pound my head. I was helpless to defend myself.

The pounding began to hurt me to the point of making me cry. I was wearing a head gear with an iron grill protecting my face so he could not tell that I was crying under the mask. After the match, I felt incredible revenge toward him. Then five years later the real war came and I found myself in Japan in the occupation. I was looking for a kendo exchange with anybody, but after the war Gen. McArthur outlawed kendo because of its militaristic samurai spirit. This ended my quest for revenge for the time being due to lack of opponents in kendo.

At our CIC unit, we had boxing gloves for exercise if anybody was interested in engaging in such activity. There was a young Japanese civilian man who picked up the gloves and wanted to do a little sparring. To accommodate him, I put on the gloves and started boxing. In a hectic exchange, I managed to land a punch to his ribs and the fight had to be stopped. That injury laid him up for two weeks. It was just an unfortunate accident that did not affect our friendship at all. At the end of my service, I was granted a week's vacation to Kumamoto, my father's home land. There I was able to meet my oldest brother for the last time.

On the return trip on the train, from Fukuoka to Kyoto, after only half an hour, our train came to a violent stop that threw me forward out of my seat. When I looked out the window to see where we were, I found that we were stopped in the middle of a rice field. Wondering why the train was not starting up again, I went off the coach to see what was causing the delay and was greeted by an incredible sight. The cars were being pulled by two locomotives. The first locomotive was still on the tracks, but the second one was derailed and lying on its side. The next car was the mail car that was also derailed and on its side. The next car was the diner and it was leaning, but still on the tracks. The car after that was a coach that I was sitting in, and was fully upright on the tracks. I escaped with no injury, but thoroughly shaken up. The accident caused such a delay that we had to wait for a relief train to come from the other end to pick us up. This whole delay made it necessary to sleep overnight in Kyoto to catch another train the next afternoon.

That night when we went to sleep right after midnight, there was a shouting of, "FIRE, FIRE!" When I opened my eyes, I saw the reflection of the fire dancing on the wall. Jumping into my pants and grabbing my duffel bag, we managed to escape out of the building. First the train wreck, and then this fire. At breakfast the next morning, who should I see but my buddy Yoshioka from out home unit. He was in Kyoto on a courier trip and it was a perfect set up for me to go home with him instead of the scheduled train trip. I explained to him about the two incidents of the train wreck and then the fire and I expressed my concern that if I were to go home with him in his jeep would we get into a jeep accident? What was I to do? He told me no way was he going to tell me what to do and that I had to make up my own decision. I had to make a hurried choice and I told him that I was going to take the train instead of riding with him in the jeep. I apologized that I elected to do it my way, but asked him to take my baggage home for me. My only explanation for my decision was that I did not believe that lightning would strike twice and that is why I chose the train.

We were expected to arrive home at about 5 P.M. He was not there. 6, 7, 8 P.M. rolled around and he had not come home. At 9 P.M., there was a telephone call. The caller said, "This is the Chief of Police. There has been a jeep accident and a G.I. is dead." All our men were greatly shocked. The Commanding Officer and I went to the scene of the accident. There was a bend in the dirt road and the jeep had run off the road and fell straight down-a 30-foot drop. I had to climb down to retrieve my suitcase from the jeep. The Chief of Police then took us to a house where in the middle of the room lay the dead man covered by a white sheet. When he lifted the sheet to identify the body, we were shocked that the dead person was not our buddy Yoshioka, but it was the Japanese handyman who worked for our unit. Because he was on an American jeep, he was presumed to be a G.I. That man who died was the same man that I had the boxing match with. He had died in my place. If I had chosen to ride on the jeep, I would surely have been the passenger on the right front seat. When the jeep fell, he fell off one side and Yoshioka fell off the other side, but the jeep tipped over to the passenger side and crushed him to death.

Such was the ending of my tour of duty in Japan. I was discharged the following day and was sent home by plane.

The everlasting effect of service and experience in the Army has resulted in my studying under the G.I. Bill that took me to Chicago, Illinois to become a Court Reporter for 35 years, ten years as Sunday School Superintendent of the Lakeside Japanese Christian Church, and ten years as Coach of a Girl's Softball team in the Chicago Nisei Athletic Association League.