Category: Second World War

Roger Obata and Robert Oikawa from S-20 were posted respectively in February and March 1946 to the US Army’s Pacific Military Intelligence Research Section (PACMIRS) in Washington, D.C. (Oki, 1967 and Ito, 1984, p. 251). PACMIRS was established in September 1944 to exploit captured Japanese records (Bradsher, 2014).

Personnel needed to screen, scan and catalogue captured documents sent back from the Pacific such as manuals and technical journals (Lamarsh, 1967).  Obata translated technical documents.  Robert Oikawa was recognized by his commanding officer for his expertise on translating Japanese ordnance documents (Ito, 1984, p. 254).

The nisei of the senior class, minus Roy Matsui, were posted overseas with fellow S-20 students Ferdinand Leduc, Frank Haley, Howard MacDonald and Bill Hunter.  The group travelled by land, air, and sea from Vancouver to Karachi, India. Their flying experience was memorable; between Rotherham in the U.K. they were on three flights that included two planes with engine problems and one emergency landing in Cairo. When they arrived at SEATIC headquarters in New Delhi, they had a brief reunion with members of the India group of nisei. They also received their initial assignments to various locations.  Tad Ode was sent to Tokyo; Shigeru Oue, to Batavia, Java; Sadao Nikaido, to Singapore; Eiji Yatabe, to Bangkok; Roy Ito, to Hong Kong. Ferdinand Leduc was sent to French Indo-China.  Frank Haley was sent to Singapore (Ito, 1984. p. 254).

The second and final overseas draft of nisei from S-20 left Vancouver in January 1946 for Singapore via England and India.  Min Yatabe, younger brother of Eiji, was one of 14 nisei in this group of 19 soldiers, newly promoted to sergeants.

The S-20 nisei in the Far East served mainly with the War Crimes Investigation Force set up shortly after the war ended (LaMarsh, 1967, Adachi, 1976, p. 294) as interrogators and interpreters. They sometimes screened documents. They worked in the Dutch East Indies, Malaya, Burma, Thailand, French Indo-China, Hong Kong, and Japan. Their workplaces included ships, military courtrooms, prisons, interrogation centres, and temporary camps set up in the jungle.

Work was sporadic. Frank Haley, Eiji Yatabe, and Min Yatabe were screening members of the Japanese 15^th Area Army, who were arriving on trains, for evidence of war crimes.  Eiji and Min found that they were either swamped with too much work or having little work for days. Sadao Nikaido, attached to No. 5 War Crimes Investigation Team in Malaya, also noted in a letter to Roy Matsui that the work was irregular. Shig Oue, George Suzuki, and Fred Nogami (of the India group) served with the occupation forces in Japan. Tad Ode was posted to Tokyo and worked in the War Crimes International Prosecution Section with other translators.

In October 1946, work with SEATIC ended, and most of the S-20 group went to Singapore, where they did some translation work and conducted interrogations at Changi Jail (Ito, 1984, p. 276).  Most of the nisei remaining in Southeast Asia (except for those in Hong Kong and Japan) left for Britain aboard the British ship Otranto on April 7, 1947. From Britain they returned home.

Roy Matsui was sent to work as an interpreter at the P.O.W. Camp 101 at Angler, Ontario, a posting that disappointed him, as he had enlisted with the intention of participating in combat.  He was also upset that he could not serve in southeast Asia with his five fellow students from the senior class. Some of his work at Angler involved censoring letters written in Japanese or English. He may have channeled some of his frustration into this work.

In August 1943 the S-20 Canadian Army Japanese Language School opened at Vancouver.  The school was created by Lt-Colonel B.R. Mullaly, formerly an ex-British Army officer who had settled in Victoria. He worked as an intelligence officer with Pacific Command (LaMarsh, 1967). Major Arthur McKenzie arrived early in 1944 to serve as the commanding officer of the school. He had served as an Intelligence Officer in France in the First World War and lived in Japan after the war (Ito, 1984, p. 214).

The school was moved to four different locations in Vancouver (LaMarsh, 1967) between its creation in 1943 to its official closure in July 1946.

Before nisei arrived at the language school, there were already eighty non-Japanese students who had been enrolled at the school for nine months. Many of them became famous years later, including Arthur Erickson, architect; Judy LaMarsh, Secretary of State; William Sommerville, president of the Canadian Bar Association; Hugh Stephen, mayor of Victoria, BC.; and Saul Cherniak, Manitoba cabinet minister (Ito, 1984, p. 214). Two instructors were Canadian nisei; two were nisei on loan from the US Army. The nisei arriving from Brantford were very impressed with the progress that the eighty students had already made in nine months at S-20. The nisei students found interrogation classes easy, but had no prior experience with Japanese military and technical terms.

The one-year curriculum that the eighty original students had studied began with an introduction to the Japanese language (reading and writing), culture, and geography.  Oral exercises became increasingly focussed on military subjects. Students learned to read military terms, maps, and expressions in kanji. They learned to recognize Japanese military signs and abbreviations. They studied POW interrogations. Emphasis was on correct pronunciation of kanji, fluent reading of texts, and writing of kanji that had been learned in classes.  Students translated captured Japanese documents and diaries of Japanese officers, which gave them insights about Japanese tactics and weapons, terminology, and inadequacies (Ito, 1984, p. 219). They also listened to Japanese radio broadcasts intercepted by Allied monitoring stations (Ito, 1984, p. 220).

The nisei arriving from Brantford were placed in the S-20 school after missing the first nine months of an already advanced Japanese language course.  The course was very difficult and resulted in some nervous breakdowns among students (Ito, 1984, p. 243).

On August 2, 1945, the six nisei in the senior class at S-20 were officially posted to the Canadian Army Pacific Force, and were about to begin training at Fort Breckenridge in the US for the final assault on Japan.  Four days later, the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima, and seven days later, another bomb fell on Nagasaki.  On August 14, the Emperor of Japan ordered Japan to surrender.  The S-20 students and staff gathered around the flagpole at the school to mark the end of the war (Ito, 1984, p. 223).

“The long war that had completely destroyed the Japanese community and scattered its people across Canada had come to an end.  At S-20 there was no jubilation, no shouting, no expressions of joy; the nisei had mixed feelings.  There was relief that the war was over, but with mixed feelings of horror and revulsion, a sharper understanding of the utter obscenity of war. One atom bomb could indiscriminately kill thousands of men, women and children (Ito, p. 1984, p. 224)”.

There was no longer a need for the Canadian Army Pacific Force to take to the field with Japan (Ito, 1984, p. 222, 223), but there was still a requirement for Japanese language speakers to engage with surrendered soldiers in southeast Asia and to assist with the occupation of Japan.

The six nisei in the senior S-20 class graduated at the end of September, having completed their one-year Japanese language course in approximately two months. The six were Roy Matsui, Shig Oue, Eiji Yatabe, Sadao Nikaido, Tad Ode, and Roy Ito.  Their commanding officer, Mackenzie, recommended that three be commissioned and three be promoted to warrant officer, second class, but all of the graduates, nisei and non-Japanese, were promoted to sergeant.  By 1947, all of the nisei in the senior class would be promoted to warrant officer or staff sergeant (Ito, 1984, p. 224). 

Some of the nisei recruited for the S-20 became prominent community leaders who continued for years to advocate for the rights of Japanese Canadians. 

The second and final overseas draft of nisei from S-20 left Vancouver in January 1946 for Singapore via England and India. The S-20 school was moved to Ambleside Camp in West Vancouver later in 1946. Two incidents upset the commanding officer of S-20 because they resulted in unwanted publicity and attention on the intelligence unit and the nisei students.

In the first incident, George Tanaka, Roger Obata, and Tom Shoyama were invited by one of their instructors to attend a meeting in which the subject of sending all Japanese “back to Japan” was being discussed.  Tom Shoyama argued with some of the people in the meeting, defending the New Canadian newspaper.  The meeting was recorded on the radio and was publicized in the local newspaper.  The three nisei were reprimanded. In the second incident, an S-20 nisei student, David Watanabe, was refused entrance to a theatre because the manager did not allow Japanese to be admitted. The manager called the police; the police explained that Watanabe had not committed any crime, and drove the soldier back to the S-20 school.  The nisei were told by the camp to stay away from the theatre. Angry about this discrimination and lack of support from their superiors, several nisei tried several days later to enter the theatre and were again refused.  Again, the commanding officer of S-20 was upset at the attention focused on the school and he issued a letter to the nisei that demonstrated his anger (Ito, 1984, p. 224-231). Veteran Bill Sasaki had the original copy of Major McKenzie’s letter.

Just two drafts of qualified nisei graduates from S-20, totalling 20, saw overseas service.  Forty-eight of 62 nisei enlistees completed the S-20 course.  Sixty-one nisei served in India, Southeast Asia, Australia, Japan, Washington, and Angler, Ontario (Ito, 1984, p. 232). Three nisei, left at S-20 with no prospect of going overseas as the war needs no longer existed, travelled to Washington D.C. to enlist for US. Occupation Duty in Japan but were unsuccessful (Oki, 1967).

The nisei volunteers were inducted into the Canadian Intelligence Corps and most were sent to Brantford, Ontario for basic training for four months. They were called the No. 17 Platoon of B Company.  Lt.-Col R. Y. Corey, the Commanding Officer, said, “I think they were the most intelligent lot of men and the best platoon we ever had at Brantford.”  All came from British Columbia and most had been evacuated from the West Coast early in the war. Because they were in Ontario, not BC, they voted in the federal election (Ito, 1984, p. 204).  At Brantford, the Nisei Platoon set records in the number of banners won for achievement and deportment, personnel, barracks and parade ground (Oki, 1967).

A small number of nisei who signed up later trained at the Simcoe Basic Training camp before being sent to the S-20 school.