FEATURED VETERANS

Takejiro Higa, Military Intelligence Service

For more than a quarter century, members of the Military Intelligence Service were sworn to secrecy about their unique role as Japanese interpreters and linguists in World War II. That silence was finally broken in 1972 when President Nixon signed Executive Order 11652 declassifying military intelligence documents and releasing stories long overdue for the world to hear. Takejiro Higa’s story is one of them.

It was a deadly game of hide and seek in the hills of Okinawa.

As Japan and the United States fought bitterly in the final campaign of the Pacific war for control of the strategic island, thousands of Okinawans were forced to flee to caves and an uncertain fate.

In one cave near Futenma, civilians were preparing to kill themselves with hand grenades, because Japanese propaganda claimed suicide was better than being raped and killed by savage Americans. But a voice calling from outside the cave changed their destiny.

"My name is Takejiro Higa. Come out – please!" Again and again the voice spoke urgently in their own dialect. "We won’t harm you, so come out, come out!"

The voice belonged to an American soldier with a Japanese face. Eventually, because they trusted it, their lives were saved.

Takejiro Higa was born in Hawaii in 1923 but lived in Okinawa between the ages of two and 16. When the all-Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team was being formed in 1943, Takejiro volunteered but was turned down. He wondered, "Why didn’t they take me? They don’t trust me?"

But soon he received a letter from the War Department recruiting Nisei interpreters for the Military Intelligence Service.

"That put me in a real dilemma," Takejiro said. "Knowing that it’s for interpreters, knowing that I’ll be sent to the Pacific war front to serve my duty – what if I meet somebody I know, or my relative, my classmate?"

For several days he wrestled with this thought until his sense of duty won out and he volunteered. This time, he was accepted.

On April 1, 1945, Takejiro found himself on a troopship headed for the Battle of Okinawa. As the island came into view, he was filled with emotion.

"I had tears in my eyes, knowing that my relatives were all out there," Takejiro said. "My feeling was, ‘why must I land on the land of my ancestors?’ But I had a duty to perform."

The demands of war extinguished any ambivalence as Takejiro went to work translating maps, documents and radio transmissions, coaxing people from caves and interrogating prisoners.

It was during an interrogation that Takejiro’s greatest fear was realized: he discovered the prisoners had attended the same school as he had in Okinawa. He recalls part of the interaction:

"From your class, was there a person by the name of Takejiro Higa?" he asked. Astounded that he knew the name, the prisoners answered, "yes," but that they hadn’t seen him in a long time.

"If you saw him today, you wouldn’t know him?" Takejiro continued.
"No, I don’t think so."
"Bakayaro (fools)!" Takejiro said. "Don’t you recognize your own classmate?" The POWs looked at Takejiro in shock. They then began to cry.
"Why are you crying?" said Takejiro.
One POW replied, "Until now, after this interrogation is over and our usefulness is over, you guys might take us over the hill and shoot us. Now knowing that our own classmate is on the other side of the fence, we figure our lives will be saved. So we cry for happiness."

With that, Takejiro and the Japanese soldiers all grabbed each other’s shoulders and wept.

Decades later, tears still come to Takejiro’s eyes when he reflects on the war’s toll overall. Although he is thankful he was able to save the lives of thousands of Okinawan citizens as well as help his classmates, the pain of regret remains.

"Even to this day, I feel this way – that if the Okinawan people, especially natives, believed in us a little bit more and came out earlier than when they did from the caves, perhaps more people could have been saved."

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