Private Yokoi's War and Life on Guam, 1944–1972

Front matter

Private Yokoi's *War and- Life

` gG ; uam;

W* The story of the Japie paperet ¿ Army's longest WWII survivor in thes field and.later life.

Contents

Plate section faces page 112

Chronology List of Plates Introduction by Omi Hatashin

Early Days (1915—September 1941)

Introduction

Islands, Saipan and Guam in particular, with the new 31st Army, consisting of divisions from Manchuria. The 31st Army was placed under the overall command of Admiral Koga, the Commander-in- Chief of the Combined Fleet who was killed in an air crash in a low pressure weather zone over the western Caroline Islands on 31 March 1944. So far, so bad, was the background setting of the stage on which the strange, surprising adventures of Shō-ichi Yokoi were to unfold.

The US invaded Saipan on 15 June 1944. Being outmanoeuvred, Japan then committed nearly all of its surviving naval air power to counter the US invasion. In the resulting battle of the Philippines Sea near Saipan and Guam, Japan effectively lost the last ounce of its capacity to fight a modern naval battle. The Japanese resistance on Saipan ceased on 7 July 1944. General Tojo, the Prime Minister who had waged the war against the United States and the British and Dutch Empires in December 1941, stepped down on 18 July 1944. This was merely the beginning of the end of Japan’s war.

On 21 July 1944, US troops, 54,891-strong, comprising all ranks, invaded Guam. The Commander of Japan’s 31st Army there died on 11 August 1944. The saga of the imperial Japanese decision-making continued for more than a year up to 15 August 1945 in standard Japanese time, which was 14 August in the United States, when the emperor’s announcement of surrender was finally broadcast. By then, out of the 20,810-strong Japanese garrison on Guam, the US marines counted 18,377 dead and 1,250 taken prisoner of war, leaving 1,183 unaccounted for.' Japan was disarmed and democratized. All the Japanese mandatory territories in the Pacific were transferred to the UN strategic trusteeship, with the United States as a trustee. While Guam remained an important strategic operation centre for the US armed forces engaged in subsequent wars in Korea and Vietnam, some Japanese soldiers continued living a hidden life on the same island, following the Japanese ‘no surrender’ code. The repatriation of Japanese servicemen from the zones held by the US was relatively smooth. However, sporadic ‘discovery’ and repatriation of Japanese continued throughout the 1950s, and as late as 21 May 1960, two Japanese soldiers were discovered on Guam.

Guam is, indeed, a calm, beautiful, tropical island (which makes xiii all of this period of history appear a grotesque mismatch) and hopefully encourages everyone to be envitonment-friendly. “The last of the Japanese Mohicans’, who emerged from the Guam jungle in 1972, appeared, at times, just like many of the endangered species on such an island.

Sho-ichi Yokoi has tended to be confused with two other members of the Japanese army who had similarly refused to surrender until 1974. These were Second-Lieutenant Hiro-o Onoda who had commanded a guerrilla task force in the Philippine island of Lubang near Manila and was repatriated in March 1974, and Suniyon (also known as “Teruo Nakamura’ in Japanese and ‘Li Guang-Hur’ in Chinese, all meaning ‘shining man’), from the Ami tribe of Taiwan. Suniyon was found cultivating crops on his own on the Indonesian island of Morotai in December 1974. Surprisingly, he was able to communicate with the local Morotai people in his native Ami language of Taiwan. Overall, Onoda, an intelligence officer, appears to have suited the popular stereotype of Japanese ‘no surrender’ fighters, while the other two, Sh6-ichi Yokoi, a logistics serviceman, and Suniyon, a tribal soldier, failed to do so. The latter two were even accused of ‘cowardice’ after their repatriation. But were they really ‘cowards’?

One of the main purposes of the publication of this book is to shed a different light on the reality of the war in the Pacific, which was arguably an example of the ‘clash of civilizations’, with specific reference to a particular ‘no surrender’ man refusing to surrender for so long apparently in order to maintain his ‘honour’. To say the least, his survival was different from the more stereotypical Japanese ‘kill and become a martyr’ operation of kamikaze suicide bombers. This book may also assist the reader in looking at the life of an individual and aspects of modern civilization from an entirely different perspective.

Drafting and Translation Processes

The Japanese publisher, Bungei Shunji, Tokyo, prepared a draft of Sho-ichi Yokoi’s biography the year after his return to Japan. Sho-ichi was not satisfied with it, saying, ‘no one can survive for xiv

Introduction twenty-eight years in such a way’. Subsequently, his wife, Mihoko, wrote down his stories more fully, and to his satisfaction. Bungei Shunjū made copies of the manuscript sources of the Japanese Defence Agency’s official military history relating to Guam available to the Yokois.

The present book contains a full English translation of Shō-ïchi Yokoi’s autobiography, which was originally published by Bungei Shunji in 1974, namely, Chapters 1 to 17, describing his earlier life, war and survival up to 1972. Omi Hatashin, Sho-ichi Yokoi’s nephew by marriage, authored this introduction and wrote about Sho-ichi’s life back in Japan in the three sections entitled, ‘Afterwards’.

This translation represents a team effort. First among these ‘players’ must be Takaoki Hatashin, another of Yokoi’s nephews by marriage, who provided the first complete English translation of Sho-ichi Yokoi’s autobiography. His translation was helped by Osamu Nishimura, who undertook experiments to verify the method of making fire, which Yokoi described in Chapter 13, p. 148.

Second, Wakako Higuchi, MA (Australian National University), a resident historian on Guam, who specializes in the modern international history of the island, first proposed the publication of the autobiography in English. She supplied, as far as she was able to identify after consultation with relevant local specialists, the current English names of the place names which appear in this book, as well as both the English and Chamorro names of local plants on Guam.

In fact, Sho-ichi Yokoi referred to local Guam plants sometimes in their local Chamorro names, and sometimes in Japanese names, which he often invented. By contrast, he referred to local place names almost always in the way in which the Japanese Army called them. This contrast is a rather interesting one. It would seem that Sho-ichi Yokoi remembered the place names as a member of the Japanese Army occupying Guam, whereas he remembered the local plants principally for reasons of personal survival.

Third, Omi Hatashin reviewed both the original text and the translation, and whatever revisions were required. Fourth,

XV

Christopher C. E. R. Barder, MA (Cantab), PGCE, JP, proofread the English text in the presence of Omi Hatashin. Some points, therefore, were discussed between the two and decisions made. Christopher Barder proceeded on the assumption that Omi Hatashin had made sure that the language and nuances of the original text were accurately conveyed into English. The principle was that the text should remain a ‘translation’, as Sh6-ichi Yokoi’s stories were not those of an English-speaking man shipwrecked and cast on an isolated Pacific island. This was a deliberate choice, because this book is concerned with Japan’s war as an example of the ‘clash of civilizations’; Shd-ichi Yokoi’s stories would never have been the same, if he had thought and acted in the manner in which an Englishman in his position would have acted.

Omi Hatashin bears the ultimate responsibility for the quality of this translation.

Dr Ann Waswo encouraged and assisted the process by making Omi Hatashin a member of the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies, and a senior associate member of St Antony’s College, Oxford, 2004-2005.

As regards Sho-ichi Yokoi’s later life back in Japan, Mrs Mihoko Yokoi supplied all the relevant medical records, newspapers, magazines, photographs, etc. to Omi Hatashin who authored the relevant part. Mrs Yokoi also supplied Sho-ichi Yokoi’s original illustrations to assist the translation, and which appear in the plate section herein.

My thanks are also due to Professor Arthur Stockwin for introducing me to Global Oriental and for his support and encouragement over many years; to Paul Scott for making his copy of Asahi Newspaper’s book on Yokoi available to me; to Dr Mark Rebick for lending me Michael Morpurgo’s Kensuke’s Kingdom, to Kensuke Haga on Guam who took some photographs of Guam’s plants and topography which feature in this book; and to Paul Norbury and David Blakeley of Global Oriental. Without their help, this book might never have appeared.

Omi Hatashin Kyoto and Oxford, Autumn 2008 xvi

CHAPTER 1 was born on 31 March 1915 to a tailor named Yamada in a village

which was later annexed to Nagoya City in central Japan. I do not know what happened to my parents. They divorced when I was three months old. My mother had returned to her home leaving me in my father’s house. My father did not take care of me at all. My paternal grandmother searched around from among her neighbours for someone who was willing to breast-feed me. Tired and weary, she eventually deposited me at my mother’s house when she was away. (Japan was so safe at that time that houses were rarely locked.) My mother, perhaps thinking that I was an impediment to her prospect of new marriage, carried me back to her former husband’s house. After being shuttled several times in this way between my father and mother, I was eventually settled in my mother’s house. In fact, by that time, her parents were no longer alive. My mother was merely lodging in the house of her older sister who was living with her two daughters, Akiye and Kinu.

Nowadays, nobody bothers about a woman becoming divorced. However, in rural Japan in the early decades of the twentieth century, a divorced woman was regarded as a sort of social outcast. The social pressure caused my mother to feel uneasy about lodging in her older sister’s house. She soon found a job as a maidservant in the town and left the house. Once again I was left behind. This time my cousins, Akiye and Kinu, assumed the arduous task of looking after me.

Thus, I was brought up without parents, without siblings and

© OMI HATASHIN, 2009 | DOI:10.1163/9789004213043_002 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

without a home. I was often mocked and abused as a ‘fatherless child’. Naturally, I became withdrawn, incommunicative and silent. As my mother’s family name, Oshika, sounded in Japanese like an interrogative phrase, “dumbr’, my school colleagues tended to ask me ‘Sho-ichi, are you dumb (oshika)? Or deaf? How annoyed and humiliated I felt! I wished I had had an ordinary family life living with both parents.

When I was eleven, my mother married Mr Jūsan Yokoi in Sennonji, a village which was later absorbed by Nagoya. Since he had no children, she brought me with her. ‘At last’, I thought, ‘I can live with my mother in my own home!’ To my chagrin, my delight was soon to disappear. The Yokois turned out not to be a place where I was able to live peacefully. My stepfather was such a good person that he was often called ‘Buddha’ Jiisan. However, he was such a soft, kindly man that he was unable to protect my mother and me from the other people in the family. Indeed, I was not permitted to call myself “Yoko? until I reached conscription age. I was not a legitimate member of the family. I also saw how often my mother found herself in trouble. Indeed, I frequently asked myself why on earth my mother had married anew. Her new marriage caused us to suffer only bitter humiliation and misery. Had she waited for just a few more years, until I had left school, I would have been able to work and take care of her.

In March 1929, I left Tomita Higher Primary School. I was fourteen years old then. To tell the truth, I had no desire to stay at the Yokois. However, my mother did not want me to go off and disappear. Following her advice, I commuted for a year to Aichi Abacus School. I attended not only its daytime class, but also its evening class, and obtained a licence to teach. In the meantime, my stepfather, mother and I discussed my future. ‘A duckling grows up alone’, I said, ‘I would like to be a tailor like my father was.’ My natural father died when I was seven. ‘Although my bond with my natural father was tenuous’, I continued, ‘I believe that he will support me from heaven. If I were to stay in Nagoya, my determination will be at risk, since it is too easy to return home. Therefore, I think I would like to work further away.’ My mother was not at all happy with this idea but my stepfather helped me obtain an apprenticeship with Mr Hanai, a tailor in Toyohashi, some forty miles east of Nagoya.

The day for an apprentice started at six o’clock in the morning, My first job was to clean the premises and to sew cloths together with which to clean the floor. I had to work continuously until 11.30 at night. I was fifteen years old then, and at first felt sleepy all the time. My breakfast consisted of only a cup of miso (soya bean paste) soup, a few pieces of pickled radish, and two bowls of boiled rice and barley. Before asking for the third bowl I had to examine the demeanour of the other people and to act discreetly. Life as an apprentice was so hard, especially for teenagers with vigorous appetites, that almost half of my peers who had started at the same time as me, failed to complete the course. I stayed on with a determination that I should not give up and return home. In the third year of my apprenticeship, when I was seventeen, I volunteered to collect orders. In order to become established as a tailor, I thought, manual skills as a tailor would not be enough. Negotiation and sales skills were also essential for a successful business. In fact, Master Hanai did not act as a tailor by himself. He directed the business, leaving the manufacturing to his skilled employees. ‘Fine,’ said Master Hanai to my proposal, ‘you can compete with me for sales.’

Master Hanai specialized in military uniforms, because the economy of Toyohashi City was thoroughly dependent on the army Division stationed there. I tried to obtain as many orders as possible by behaving in the following way: when I took orders for winter clothing, I also took orders for summer clothing as a set by offering some discount. For those people who were going to be demobilized, I offered five per cent discount if they ordered cotton clothes section by section, each section consisting of ten to twelve people.'

In 1935, I turned twenty and had my military physical examination. Fortunately, I was classified as Grade B-1, which meant that I was not enlisted for immediate service. ‘If you do not need to join the army’, Master Hanai said, ‘please stay with us for another year. I will pay you one hundred yen as a premium, and twenty yen per month as a salary.’ Working under contract with the master after the completion of apprenticeship was a custom of the time. I had been paid two hundred yen for the entire six years of my apprenticeship.

Therefore, the offer was not too bad. Also, as the local Toyohashi Division had been sent to Manchuria by that time, the master was planning to establish a branch in Korea. His business was therefore at a turning point and expanding. I decided to help the master by working with him under contract.

I could have stayed with Master Hanai even longer. However, since I was a small boy, I had been mocked and bullied as a fatherless child or, a stepson, etc. ‘I shall become more important’, I said to myself, ‘than those who abuse me, and show them what I am able to do. I shall never give up.’

At the beginning of 1937, at the age of twenty-one, after I had completed my contract, I went home to Sennonji to set up a tailor’s shop there. My primary target customers were the serving officers and soldiers of the Division stationed in Nagoya. My stepfather and mother promised to look after my subsistence so that I could concentrate on establishing a business as soon as possible. Thanks to Mr Shigenobu Yokoi from the head family, as well as to Master Hanai who kindly introduced me to the Division people, there was a smooth transition from the master to the pupil in securing orders from the Division. Thus, from February 1937 onwards, I was able to devote myself entirely to the business.

However, on 1 May 1938, I received a ‘red paper’ calling me up for military service for the first time. I was twenty-three years old. Whether I liked it or not, I was thrust into the army on 5 May that year. I was attached to a reserve unit of the 3rd Transport Regiment, Nagoya, as a private second class. After two months, I was upgraded to a private first class. This did not mean, however, that I was an accomplished soldier. The reasons were that the Sino-Japanese War had broken out the year before around the Marco Polo Bridge near Peking (Beijing) on 7 July 1937; that a porter needed to be in the rank of a private first class or above; and that there were not enough privates first class.

In September 1938, we departed from Port Ujina, Hiroshima, and landed in Taku (Dagu) near Tientsin (Tianjin) in Northern China. We were to augment the Second Company of the Transport Service of the 1st Field Artillery Brigade consisting mainly of the Division from Nagoya. When we reached Peking, the company had already departed for Chi-nan (Ji-nan). We hastened after it all the way across the Shantung (Shandong) peninsula up to Tsingtao (Qingdao) where we finally caught up with the Company. We then sailed to Canton (Guangdong) Province and landed from Bias Bay in the east of Hong Kong. We were stationed in the premises of a girls’ school which was turned into a field provisions depot. At that time, the Japanese Army was overwhelming the Chinese and there was little risk to life even in active service. I returned to Japan in February 1939, was demobilized in March and went home.

As soon as I was back home, I struggled to re-establish my business which had been shut for ten months. However, most of the Division in Nagoya had been sent to China and there were few familiar faces remaining there. It quickly became clear that my business would fail if I continued to specialize in military uniforms. Therefore, I re-opened my shop as a general tailor. This time, I handled mainly the kind of clothing which was to be worn on the way to the barracks after being called up, as well as school uniforms and uniforms for civil servants. Clothing began to be rationed then, and it had become difficult to obtain cloth. On the other hand, there was an increasing number of customers who wanted to place their orders, while they were still able to. The prospects for my business looked good and I devoted myself to making it a success. There was talk of marriage. But then I was confronted by the arrival of a ‘red paper’, once again. That was on 5 August 1941. I was twenty-six years old.

Six weeks earlier, on 22 June, Germany had invaded the Soviet Union. The red paper, this time, specifically ordered me to return to the barracks as discreetly as possible for reasons of intelligence security: no celebratory goodbyes; dress casually; hide your kitbag beneath another holdall. I walked to the barracks as if I were proceeding casually to the public baths. I stayed there for about twenty-five days, and underwent drill every day.

Almost every day, late in the afternoon, I saw my mother and stepfather standing on the roadside while we were on our way back to the barracks from drill. I have no idea how they realized that I had been called up for military service again. My mother discreetly gave me about a dozen small pieces of sushi wrapped in bamboo sheaths. My stepfather, too, appeared utterly disappointed, presumably because he wanted me to marry, maintain his lineage and look after him after his retirement. He often stopped his cart and just gawped at me helplessly from a corner of the drill ground. I believe that he and my mother were praying for my safe return, even though they were unable to help because I was removed from their grasp and became instead a property of the state.

They came to see me also on the day of the final family reunion before our departure for the front. We parted suppressing and hiding our tears. This turned out to be the last occasion in my life when I saw my mother and stepfather.

Late at night, my unit was secretly transported in a goods train from Nagoya to Osaka to sail overseas. We landed in Talien (Dalian), and were assigned to the 29th Transport Regiment in Liaoyang, Mukden Province, ‘Manchuria’. There, I was put on guard duty as a private superior, and later as a lance corporal.

[It was already autumn, to be followed by a long freezing Manchurian winter. It appeared that it was rather too late to invade the Soviet Union. At that time, nobody imagined that Japan was going to fight the United States in the coming winter.]’

Chapter 2 To Where Are We Going To Be Posted? (february-—-march 1944)

n 8 February 1944 at around 21.00 hours, I finished my duty

which was to oversee the mass bathing of soldiers (fourteen to fifteen hundred soldiers bathed between 16.00 and 21.00 hours in a tiny space so that someone was required to watch lest any theft or any act of indecency occurred) and returned to my barracks to find my colleagues more agitated than usual. Squad Leader’, my subordinates told me as soon as they caught sight of me, ‘Lieutenant Inaba is calling you. It seems, Squad Leader, that we ate organized for an operation in northern Manchuria.’ An operation in northern Manchuria suggested a war with the Soviet Union.

‘OR’, I was excited and went to see Lieutenant Inaba.

He produced a piece of paper without uttering a word. It was a document for the formation of a company.

‘Yokoi’, the lieutenant said, ‘you shall take the field in my platoon as the chief of the second section.' We must be discreet, but we ate going to the south.’

I examined the list.

‘Sir’, I said, ‘may I ask if this is final? I would like to bring some soldiers from my own section whom I know well, if this is at all permissible.’

‘Yokoi’, the lieutenant said with a grimace of mild pain, I know what you want to do. But please understand my position. If I allow

© OMI HATASHIN, 2009 | DOI:10.1163/9789004213043_003 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

you to take your favourites, what would happen to the rest? Yokoi, I think you understand the issue.’

‘Yes, I am sorry for having troubled you, Sit’

Thereupon, I hastened back to my room. From 22.00 hours onwards, I was subsumed by the mountains of weapons, clothing, provisions, salaries, etc. received, and by checking equipment. When I finished this preparation for a winter operation, it was already 08.00 hours on the morning of 9 February. I completed checking military equipment by 08.30 hours and left the barracks where we had been settled for such a long time. Getting on a convoy of lorries, we headed for the base of the 38th Infantry Regiment. On arrival, the soldiers of the Infantry Regiment were unable to comprehend why on earth we, transport servicemen, had suddenly to join the infantry. Some of them were bewildered. Some of them were so agitated that they did not attempt to hide their dangerously threatening disdain and loathing.

We stayed there for ten days. There was heated debate about what was going to happen. ‘We are sent to the north (to fight the Soviets)!’ “No, we ate being sent to the south (to fight the Americans)!’ Although we were in military service, we heard absolutely nothing about our defeats on Attu in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, or on Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands near the equator. We had never heard of these islands nor had we any idea how overstretched our front was!” Nor were we informed of the retreat on the German fronts. Still, somewhat strangely, all of us sensed that Japan was losing ground to its enemies.

On the morning of 20 February 1944, a departure ceremony under the command of Colonel Jotaro Suenaga took place. That evening, 3,000 of us were packed and crammed into a goods train and left Liaoyang without knowing where we were going. Our train crossed the Manchu-Korean border on the 21st, and arrived in Pusan (Busan) in southernmost Korea on the morning of the 22nd.

There, we were provided with new summer uniforms. ‘We are being sent to the south!’ Invariably, we imagined what our destination looked like and pondered about a dark destiny awaiting us there. At the same time, we had not yet abandoned a glimpse of

To Where Are We Going To Be Posted? (February—March 1944)

hope that we might be repatriated. We stayed in Pusan for about three days. That was because ships were experiencing difficulties coming over from Japan, presumably because the Korean Channel was already filled with US submarines.

The streets of Pusan were empty and cold. Goods were in shorter supply than in Liaoyang. Prices were so high that I was unable to buy any of the things which I wanted. I searched around for sweets to prepare for a long voyage. But regrettably, only cigarettes were available.

Eventually, three ships hove into view in the port of Pusan — the Akimaru, the Higashiyamamaru and the Sakitomaru. Our Supplement Company loaded cargoes on board continuously for two days and two nights without a break. We were soaked with sweat despite the chilling cold of the Korean winter. We loaded so many goods on board that crews were amazed and said, “The ships are so bloody full of weapons, ammunition, and various provisions that there is no space for humans!’ And we had still more than a half of the vehicles to be loaded on board, requiring another convoy of ships.

We embarked on the redoubtable Aksmaru displacing more than 10,000 tons, which was one of the most luxurious semi-cargo cruisers in Japan at that time, usually serving the European route. Requisitioned for military transport purposes, however, the ship was remodelled into something akin to a slave ship in which we were packed tightly like cattle right up to the doors. Because it was dark at night, we were unable to see which route the ship had taken. We simply imagined whenever a few electric lights were seen that we were passing near a port. In the end, we sailed away from Japan without being allowed to disembark. There appeared to be air cover and an escort destroyer for a few days after the departure.

Each deck was so full of cargo that there was little space to stand. The second floor of the hold was further divided into two floors of hatches into which we were squeezed. Some of us slept on weapons lorries. To make matters worse, it was a season of rough seas, and most of us suffered from seasickness. We hardly had appetites to eat anything although food was served three times a day. Since there was such limited space to cook properly for so many people, the food distribution was always inadequate: a cup of poorly cooked distasteful miso (soya bean paste) soup for breakfast and tiny fragments of meat for lunch. We had simply to swallow them.

Under normal circumstances, we could hoist a canvas to ventilate the air inside the ship. However, we were unable to do so because the ships were disguised as cargo ships as a precautionary measure against enemy submarines. People were treated like cargo. The heat, humidity, foul breath and odour which filled the ship was more than enough to make everyone on board sick. Our faint hope to be regrouped in Japan had evaporated. As we approached Taiwan, we were given tropical uniforms, as distinct from summer uniforms. ‘We are definitely being sent to the south’, we thought. ‘Probably as a garrison on an island. But which island?’ We were kept in the dark about wherever we were going.

After a few days, the destroyer which had escorted us had turned back and headed north. Deserted in the middle of nowhere, our voyage remained peaceful for another four days. On the fifth day, at sunset, all of a sudden, warning alarms sounded ominously. “Ong! Ong! Ong!’ Alerted, we made ourselves ready for the next order. The ship heeled over a bit. Ever vigilant, we waited for ages and ages for a further order. ‘Is this ship going to explode or sink?’ ‘Are we going to die? After breathtaking minutes of despair and cold perspiration, there was an announcement:

We were attacked by enemy submarines. The captain managed to escape from the first torpedo. The second torpedo hit the bottom of the ship. Please be assured as there is no hindrance to navigation. We are proceeding at a decreased speed.

We were relieved and shared delight with tears for our luck and safety.