FEATURED VETERANS
Harry & Ken Akune, Military Intelligence Service
When MIS linguist Harry Akune boarded the paratrooper plane headed for Corregidor, he had a parachute, but no formal parachute training
He also had no helmet, weapon, food or water.
So what did he have?
"Just my coveralls," says Harry. And determination.
Attached to the 503rd Parachute Regimental Combat Team, Harry had lost his equipment on a wayward jeep. Veteran paratroopers say that very few men would have continued under such circumstances. Harry was one of those few.
"I'm gonna have to go," Harry remembers thinking. "I can't quit here." Plus, he worried about what people would think if they heard he got to the plane but didn't get on.
"So I got up, put on my parachute, got on the plane and sat down."
Parachuting had "sounded easy" to Harry when he volunteered for the airborne assault on the Manila Harbor fortress. As it turned out, jumping out of the plane was the easy part.
Landing in an area the size of a football field meant only eight men could jump on each pass. Depending on the wind, jumpers might be blown over a cliff into the sea, or become impaled on bomb-splintered trees. Those who landed safely would face heavy enemy fire. A 20 percent casualty rate was expected on the jump alone.
Harry made the jump safely, and his timely intelligence work during the campaign helped shorten the conflict and save countless lives.
In one instance, Harry faced a resistant group of Japanese Imperial Marine POWs. "They were a suicide group," Harry says. "They could have jumped me." He identified a Korean volunteer among them, and pulled him out for special interrogation.
"The others figured he gave up everything," Harry says, "so they talked." The marines eventually revealed the location of 100 of their dynamite-laden boats.
In recognition of his many acts of bravery throughout his MIS career, in 1996 Harry was inducted into the U.S. Army MIS Hall of Fame.
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Across the South China Sea, another Akune was interrogating prisoners, but with a different tact and purpose.
An MIS graduate like his older brother, Ken Akune was an interrogator on the Burma-India border in the Office of War Information, where he could afford to be a little more sympathetic towards prisoners.
"We found that kindness and decent treatment automatically put them in a vulnerable spot where they were willing to talk." Ken recalls. And because Japanese soldiers had not been trained to withhold information, he said "anything we asked for, they would give."
Ken also found himself counseling prisoners who, because they were captured alive, felt a great burden of shame. "They would rather die than become prisoners," Ken says. The POWs seemed relieved when they saw a Nikkei soldier who might understand their feelings.
"We tried to convince them that it wasn't a shame," Ken says. "You did what you had to do. So just remember that you're alive, you can still go back to Japan after the war and help rebuild Japan. That's what your goal should be."
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When Harry and Ken first volunteered to serve in the MIS, some in the community could not understand why they would want to serve a country that had put them behind barbed wire and classified them as "enemy aliens."
But while others became bitter, Ken saw an opportunity.
"Now's our chance," he said. "If we don't take this chance and do something about it, it's going to be our fault. Some of us are not going to come back. But if that will change things for the better for the Japanese, it would be worth it."
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Please visit the Oral History Videos section to watch Harry and Ken's oral history online.
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