I Just received this email from my great aunt. The email was about a Japanese-American solider during world war two and how he was a big part of the mission to liberate a internment camp in China. My great aunt along with my grandpa were all interned there for 3 years. I can recall many stories my grandpa would tell about his story. This is a tribute from my aunt about one of the people who liberated her camp! I hope you enjoy this.
Tad was the last living member
of the World War II, 7-man American rescue team that liberated 1,500
Allied prisoners in the Japanese-held Weihsien concentration Camp in
China, August 17, 1945.
America has lost a true hero.
Who
can forget that day? Angels dropping from the sky on a windy August
day -- parachuting from the belly of that B-24 bomber outside those
barrier walls. Remember, remember, remember? Weihsien went mad.
Emaciated prisoners weeping, dancing, pounding the sky with their
fists. Prisoners climbing the walls. Hysterical with joy, we rushed
the gate to welcome these American gods. No matter how many guns the
Japanese had! Yes, sun-bronzed American gods with meat on their bones.
The
Tad Nagaki story is an important chapter of American history. As an
American-born, Japanese-American enlisted man, after Japan's attack on
Pearl Harbor, Tad Nagaki was sidelined with other Nisei, doing menial
labor in Ft. Campbell, KY, stupid stuff, Tad said -- like pruning
trees and loading trains. Tad wanted to fight in the real war
like every red-blooded American, but because he was Nisei, a personal
letter from his commander denied Tad's request to become an air cadet.
Then in 1943, Tad Nagaki volunteered to be part of an elite
team of Nisei spies. It was an experiment: Could Japanese-Americans be
trusted to fight the Japanese? But the United States desperately
needed men in intelligence service who understood the Japanese
language. This team was highly trained in communications and survival
skills.
Now Tad Nagaki was a member of this
Office of Strategic Services's (OSS) 15-member Nisei unit that
infiltrated behind Japanese lines in the China-Burma-India Theater of
Operations. Serving first with OSS 101 in Burma with Kachin tribesmen,
when the war wound down in Burma, he trucked over "The Hump" to China.
When Allied
intelligence warned that the Japanese planned to execute their Allied
prisoners in China and Manchuria, Tad volunteered for the rescue team
called the "Duck Mission" that liberated Weihsien. He served as the
team's Japanese-language interpreter. For his heroism, he was awarded
the Soldier's Medal. Team leader, Major Stanley Staiger promoted him
to sergeant.
In 1997, I tracked down these
liberators in a successful national search and visited each one
face-to-face to say thank you. Tad, a widower whose sons had died,
still farmed corn, and beans, and sugar beets in Alliance, Nebraska.
Tad
always insisted to me, "I am not a hero." He said he only did what
any American would have done. When I used to ask him what it felt like
to be trailed all over the concentration camp by a non-stop throng
of
children, he said, "It felt like being on a pedestal." That's the
understatement of the century. We made them gods. Remember?
Like
children following the Pied Piper, we children -- crowds of us in
Weihsien -- followed these heroes everywhere. My 12-year-old heart
turned summersaults over every one of them. I know yours did, too. I
remember in the evenings outside the commandant's office where the team
of American's now stayed. We wanted to sit on their laps, to touch
their cheeks. We begged for their insignia, begged for their
buttons, begged for their autographs. Tad told me that one girl cut off
a piece of his hair for a souvenir. When we begged these heroes to
sing to us the songs of America, they taught us 'You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.' Bless my soul! I can sing it
still.
When
American support personnel arrived to take over the evacuation of
Weihsien, in late September, liberators Major Stanley Staiger, Ensign
Jimmie Moore, Tad Nagaki, and Raymond Hanchulak moved to Tsingtao to
set up an OSS base there.
In
2010, when grandsons Jason and Ryan Nagaki celebrated Mr. Nagaki's
90th birthday with a town-wide open house in at the Alliance Country
Club, letters from around the world poured in from us former Weihsien
internees -- from United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand,
Belgium, and the United States.
Tad
was a quiet man. He never wanted me to make a fuss about him. At
that birthday celebration, I discovered that while Tad had lived in
Alliance for half a century, very few of Tad's family and friends even
knew that he had risked his life liberating 1,500 Allied prisoners
from the Weihsien concentration camp. They didn't know that they
rubbed shoulders every day with an American hero. At an evening banquet
at the country club for 80 family members and friends that day, Tad
finally let down his guard and let me talk to these, his closest friends
and family. I was at the microphone and he was sitting at a table up
front so close I could reach over and pat this hero as I told the
riveting Tad Nagaki story. I'm so everlastingly grateful I had this
opportunity to honor this hero -- and everlastingly pleased that Tad's
grandsons videotaped the story.
Grandson Jason told me today he hopes to play that story at some kind of memorial service to be held in Alliance.
And
what a story it is! In August 2005, in
recognition of the ending of World War II, a United States State
Department publication in China published the Tad Nagaki story in Chinese and
in living color for distribution to thousands of top-level Chinese
decision makers. I had written this story for an obscure military
magazine called the Ex-CBI Roundup. (I have no idea how the State
Department got hold of my story. The magazine editor told me she wanted
the Chinese to know that even in America, some people suffered during
the war.) Tad was so reticent to talk about himself that it had taken me
at least a year to interview him for this article -- usually by
telephone on Sunday nights when my phone rates were cheap, at 5 cents
per minute. To find the right questions to ask in our chats, I had to
read books and learn all about what Japanese-Americans had experienced
in this land during World War II. Tad told me
that the parents of his fiance were interned in the Poston Internment
camp in Arizona.
Goodbye, Tad.
Naturally we tend to forget about these heroes. We have our own lives to run and just forget about them. I wanted to take the time to remember this one hero. I may not have ever heard of him till now, but he deserves all the recognition :)
blessings,
Anna
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