Nissei Linguists and Elizabeth McIntosh

This is a continuation of last week's column.

When the group of women from Hawaii deployed to Tokyo, they were the first Nisei women to be assigned to Japan. For the purposes of pay and privileges they were a GS-07, which made them equivalent to lieutenants. These women were officially discharged from the army and functioned as civil servants for the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS).They wore women’s officer’s uniforms with only the insignia "US" on their lapels and were considered DACs (Department of Army Civilians) not WACs (Women Army Corps).

The original order sending them to Japan was classified RESTRICTED.

“Issued by Headquarters United States Army Forces, Middle Pacific, Office of the Commanding General, APO 958 dated: 23 Oct 1945

Para 1: The following female linguists, War Department civilian employees, CAF-6, with assimilated rank of second lieutenant, are authorized to proceed via government aircraft on or about 29 October from APO 953 to Tokyo, Japan, and upon arrival will report to the Civil Censorship Officer, HAFPAC: 1. Lily N.S. Lee, 2. Chisato Furukawa, 3. Dorothy H. Nakama, 4. Inez Yae Ahn, 5. Sumi Serizawa, 6. Masae T. Green, 7. Daisy Yàmanaka, 8. Midori Kawaguchi, 9. Thelma T. Towata 10. Mildred S. Yamamoto 11. Ranko Taketa 12. Alice Hyun, 13. Misao Kuwaye."

The women left Hickam in October 1945 and leap-frogged it across the Pacific for ten days to Japan. They went from Kwajalein to Johnson Island, and then returned to Kwajalein due to engine trouble. From Kwajalein they flew to Saipan then on to Atsugi Airbase, Japan, arriving ten days later.

While in Japan, their main duty was to censor mail. However, on at least one occasion the women were asked to help out at the Uraga Port to process women returning to Japan on repatriation ships. (Photo of Chito Isonaga. Department of the Army)

After the war, in January 1946, thirteen WACs left Fort Snelling for Japan and were assigned to work with Allied Forces as clerks, secretaries and translators. Four of these were from Hawaii: T5 Harriett Hirakwa, Sgt. Funiko Segawa, T5 Matsuko Kido, Sgt. Chito Isonaga.

Nisei women served in all parts of Asia. When Ruth Fujii applied for overseas duty she was stationed with Deputy Chief of Staff, General Richard J. Marshall’s group in Manila in the Philippines. She recalled, “There were about nine of us girls. It was a small outfit they called MAGIC (Military Advisory Group in China) I was secretary to four colonels. . . and each had locked files. I had four files: personnel, intelligence, training, and plants and supply. . . and had to memorize all four. . . Nobody was supposed to go behind the railing in [my] office. . .They could sit outside but not cross the bar.”

Fujii was protected with a bodyguard. “I had an escort wherever I went. When I went to town or anyplace, to the operator or anything, [there] was always [a male soldier] sitting in a jeep with a gun.”

After serving in the Philippines, Fujii was sent to Shanghai then to Nanking. Much of what the WACs in Manila, Shanghai and Nanking did was “secret, confining and restricted.”

After the defeat of the Japanese, many headquarters relocated to Shanghai taking the WACs with them. When the women were given the choice of being discharged, most, including Fujii remained.

Sergeant Chieko Ikeda was assigned to the South East Asia Translation and Interpreter Command (SEATIC) in Delhi, India. It was there she ran into another Hawaii woman, Elizabeth McIntosh. McIntosh was with the Morale Operations of the OSS.

The first time McIntosh visited the SEATIC offices, she heard someone call her name, it was Errol Naago, who had lived a few blocks from her family. There were other familiar Hawaii faces at SEATIC. Saburo Watanabe was the son of a Japanese language teacher in Honolulu, and Edward Mitsukada had worked from McIntosh's father in the sports department of the Honolulu Advertiser. McIntosh also recognized Chieko Ikeda as a former student of her mother’s at McKinley High School.

The Morale Operations, known as MO, was an OSS division that focused on "subversion, sabotage, and unorthodox or 'black' psychological warfare." This "black propaganda" mission included disseminating false information.

McIntosh and her boss, Bill Magistretti, were informed of a captured Japanese mail pouch with over 500 postcards in them written by soldiers of the Japanese Eighteenth Division in Burma to their families. These postcards were already approved by a Japanese forces mail censor.(Photo: Elizabeth McIntosh, Library of Congress.)

Magistretti and McIntosh came up with a plan to erase the original messages on the cards and write new ones on them. Those messages would tell of the lack of food, the low morale, and the absence of medical supply in Burma. And, they told them in pleading terms. Some messages read, "Obasan, where are the supplies from home? We are starving. How can we fight without bullets?"

Of the 500 post cards, 400 were able to be recycled and slipped back into the Japanese military post system.

A week after the cards arrived, the Japanese Cabinet resigned and military order from the High Command reinforced its threat that any soldier who was caught after he surrendered would be punished. The punishment ranged from death by firing squad to banishment from Japan.

The black ops continued. McIntosh recalls, "An idea suddenly hit me. What if we get the word out that the new cabinet approved a more lenient surrender policy?" She approached Magistretti with her idea. Together they cemented their plan.

They wrote a new order that stated, "under certain conditions, when soldiers were hopefully outnumbered in battle, unconscious, too ill to fight, or without ammunition, it would be now permissible to surrender and demand fair treatment under the Geneva conventions."

The order was placed in the pouch of a murdered Japanese Army courier. When the courier's body was found by the Japanese Army, the order circulated among the Japanese Army officers. This false document was then sent to the U.S. Office of War Information where, it was "seized by a psychological warfare team operating in northern Burma, and a leaflet was printed showing a Photostat of the 'captured' order. Then our U.S. planes papered the jungles and the Japanese with the leaflets."

From Burma, McIntosh was assigned to China. After the war she remained with the OSS in China and worked for the Voice of America. In 1958 she joined the CIA where she remained until her retirement in 1973.

One of the best sources of information about Hawaii Nissei women who joined the military is Brenda L. Moore's book, Serving Our Country: Japanese American Women in the Military during World War II. Other sources of information are: Mattie Treadwell's History of the Women Army Corps, Lillian Mott-Smith's piece on the Nisei women, Honolulu Star Bulletin, September 11, 1945; James C. McNaughton's Nisei Linguists: Japanese Americans in the Military Intelligence Service during World War II; Elizabeth P. McIntosh's Sisterhood of Spies: The Women of the OSS; and, The Center for Oral History, University of Hawaii, various interviews. For an online interview with Elizabeth McIntosh, see: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/vhp/story/loc.natlib.afc2001001.30838/


Top Photo: WAC in 1946 Veteran’s Day Parade. They are, left to right: Corporal Margaret Yang, Corporal Anna Kim, T/5 Helen Young, Corporal Alma Choy, T/5 Dora Shin and Staff Sergeant Ruth Fujii. Hawaii WACs rode on a float urging veterans to prepare for the future by enrolling in school. The float depicted a classroom scene
Last photo: Margaret Yang, Veteran's Day Parade, Wahiawa, (University of Hawaii War Records Depository)