FEATURED VETERAN
Kan Tagami
Click here to view a video clip of Kan Tagami
Had it not been for the Emperor of Japan, Kan Tagami's first day of school in Hiroshima would have been uneventful. Instead, the boy from Selma, California, stood confronted by an irate principal, all because he failed to bow before a man's picture he did not recognize. That man was the emperor.
"How come you didn't bow?" the principal demanded. Tagami replied, "Why am I bowing to the emperor? I'm not Japanese."
Sent to Japan by his parents, Tagami paid reluctant homage throughout his four-year stay to Japan's divine monarchy, including the Crown Prince Hirohito. Tagami was among those students lining the platform when the soon-to-be emperor arrived at a nearby train station. At the command, "Saikeidei!" Tagami dutifully bowed his head and kept it bowed – except for one small peek.
"He was supposed to be a god, not a human being," Tagami says. "But I wasn't too impressed. We were there because we were told to be."
Never once did Tagami forget his rightful place. "If there's ever a war between Japan and the United States," his father always said, "you should never attempt to side with the Japanese. Because after all, you were born [in America], and I came here willingly. Your loyalty is where you're born and where you're staying, not for some mythical family relationship with Japan."
Drafted into the army in early 1941, Tagami maintained that loyalty even when others questioned it. The day Pearl Harbor was bombed he stood guarding the San Francisco waterfront. He laughs recalling the drunkard who saw him and shouted, "The Japs have landed!" But it was no laughing matter when all soldiers of Japanese origin were classified "enemy aliens." Tagami was shocked when he was stripped of his rifle. "After all," he says, "you're a soldier."
Tagami was moved to the Midwest, where he volunteered for the all-Nisei Military Intelligence Service Language School at Camp Savage, Minnesota. "The California boys were pretty good in English but pretty bad in Japanese," Tagami remembers, "so they had to team together with the Japanese kibei. You get a good team – a good kibei and a good student of English -- you could write a report."
Tagami earned a Bronze Star as an MIS team leader with the 124th Cavalry Dismounted. In Myitkyina, Burma, they joined the Mars Task Force, a special forces military unit operating behind enemy lines to re-secure the Burma Road to China. During the battle of Namhpakka, Tagami's captain was about to shoot a prisoner when Tagami stopped him and said, "I'll take him." Although the mortally wounded prisoner had already been interrogated, Tagami moved him to a hospital where he then disclosed critical information about the enemy's plans and actual strength.
"They're not afraid of death," Tagami said, "so you can't beat him up just to get him scared. You're not supposed to anyway." Instead, Tagami used respect and sympathy. "I asked him where he came from, and he talked to me about his wife and children. I told him whatever you do, we won't treat you badly. You're not going to be shot."
After Japan's surrender, Tagami was serving as personal interpreter for General Douglas MacArthur when he received a call to deliver a message to the emperor. The American media had been pressuring the foreign ministry department to allow them access to photograph the emperor's daily life. MacArthur felt it an invasion of privacy.
"I was told to tell the emperor not to accede to anything like that," Tagami says, "to use his own decision on what is personal and what is not, and don't worry about the foreign ministry, just make his own decision."
At the Imperial Palace, Tagami asked, "How do I talk to the emperor?" The chamberlain said, "Just talk to him in ordinary language," and escorted Tagami to a room. When Emperor Hirohito entered, Tagami was surprised to realize it would be just the two of them, alone.
"I told him the concern that MacArthur had of the media pressure to make him do things that he didn't want to do," Tagami says. He told the emperor, "Don't be shy about showing your true feeling about any matter that comes up. Don't get influenced by General Headquarters' attitude. Just tell them no if you feel like it."
After expressing appreciation for the general's thoughtfulness, the emperor asked if Tagami was of Japanese descent. When Tagami replied "Yes," the emperor said, "I understand that Niseis have been a tremendous help in getting the agreement for both sides. Just like a bridge. I appreciate that. I hope you and all Niseis will continue to be a bridge so there will be no misunderstanding."
Tagami was perhaps the first American to have such an intimate exchange alone with an emperor. Afterwards he flashed back to that small boy standing at the train station years earlier, afraid to even look up. "Here I was meeting the emperor in person, face-to-face across a small table," he says with wonder. "It's amazing what fate brings."
Special thanks to Caryn Fugami for this story.
