- 28 minutes ago
Japanese officers ordered wounded men to die rather than risk capture, but the real reason goes far beyond bushido. In the caves of Saipan, American troops found Japanese patients killed by their own doctors, a pattern that spread across Peleliu, Leyte, Luzon, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa as the Pacific War turned into a brutal intelligence battle.
This military history documentary traces how Japanese surrender fears met an unexpected American advantage: the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section, built around Nisei soldiers who could read, translate, and interrogate in fluent military Japanese. Their work exposed unencrypted documents, prisoner statements, and battlefield records that helped crack Japan’s secrets and changed how the war was fought.
Along the way, the story follows Camp Savage, Brisbane, Saipan, and Okinawa, where language, loyalty, and survival collided in one of World War II’s most overlooked intelligence campaigns. It is a powerful deep dive into WW2 history, Pacific War operations, and the hidden role of Japanese American linguists.
Created for listeners searching for WW2 stories, military history documentary, Pacific War history, Japanese officers, Nisei translators, and World War II intelligence. If you enjoy historical narration, forgotten war stories, and detailed battlefield analysis, this story offers a gripping look at how language became a weapon.
This military history documentary traces how Japanese surrender fears met an unexpected American advantage: the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section, built around Nisei soldiers who could read, translate, and interrogate in fluent military Japanese. Their work exposed unencrypted documents, prisoner statements, and battlefield records that helped crack Japan’s secrets and changed how the war was fought.
Along the way, the story follows Camp Savage, Brisbane, Saipan, and Okinawa, where language, loyalty, and survival collided in one of World War II’s most overlooked intelligence campaigns. It is a powerful deep dive into WW2 history, Pacific War operations, and the hidden role of Japanese American linguists.
Created for listeners searching for WW2 stories, military history documentary, Pacific War history, Japanese officers, Nisei translators, and World War II intelligence. If you enjoy historical narration, forgotten war stories, and detailed battlefield analysis, this story offers a gripping look at how language became a weapon.
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LearningTranscript
00:00July 7th, 1944. Saipan.
00:03Just before dawn, roughly 4,000 Japanese soldiers poured south across the Tanapag Plain toward the American lines.
00:11Some carried rifles. Some had bayonets lashed to bamboo poles.
00:17A few clutched live grenades with the pins already pulled, running with their fists clenched around the spoons.
00:24They hit the perimeter of the 27th Infantry Division in waves so dense that American machine gunners cut them down
00:31in rows and still could not stop them coming.
00:34By mid-morning, it was over.
00:37The plane looked like something from the First War, bodies carpeting the ground for hundreds of yards in every direction.
00:44More than 4,000 Japanese soldiers were dead in what would be remembered as the largest bonsai charge of the
00:51entire Pacific War.
00:53But the charge itself was not what stayed with the Americans who pushed forward through the Japanese rear positions that
00:59afternoon.
01:00In the caves and field stations behind the lines, they found something else.
01:05Japanese wounded.
01:07Men on stretchers.
01:08Men with splints and tourniquets.
01:10Men too weak to lift their heads.
01:12Had been killed.
01:14Not by American fire.
01:16By their own medical officers.
01:18Some had their throats cut.
01:20Others had been given lethal injections.
01:23Grenades had been placed beside soldiers too broken to crawl, with instructions to pull the pins before the Americans arrived.
01:30Those who could not manage even that had been finished with a pistol round.
01:35Americans had seen Japanese soldiers choose death over surrender before.
01:39On Attu, on Tarawa, across a dozen islands in the Central Pacific, Japanese garrisons had fought to annihilation,
01:47or flung themselves off cliffs rather than be taken alive.
01:50But this was something different.
01:52This was a doctor standing over his own patients.
01:56Men he had treated.
01:58Men whose wounds he had dressed that same morning.
02:01And killing them on orders from above.
02:04Not to spare them pain.
02:07To make absolutely certain they never reached American hands, breathing.
02:14It was not an isolated act of desperation.
02:17In the months that followed, on Palelu, on Leyte, on Luzon, American troops would find the same pattern again and
02:26again.
02:27Japanese officers systematically ensuring that their wounded and their stragglers never made it across to the American side.
02:35On some islands, the orders were found in writing.
02:39On others, they were simply understood.
02:42The practice was not just becoming common.
02:45It was becoming policy.
02:47If this kind of deep dive history is what you come here for,
02:51a like and a subscription help these stories reach the people who care about getting the real details right.
02:59The answer most people reach for is the familiar one.
03:02Bushido, the warrior code.
03:06The Senjinkun, that pocket-sized set of instructions issued in the name of War Minister Tojo on January 8th, 1941,
03:15with its eight words that would shape an entire war.
03:18Never live to experience shame as a prisoner.
03:23And that answer is partly right.
03:25But it is not the full story.
03:27Not even close.
03:29Because by the summer of 1944, something fundamental had changed in the way Japanese officers thought about their own wounded.
03:37They were no longer simply enforcing a code of honor.
03:41They were making a calculation.
03:43A rational, terrified, and very specific calculation
03:48about what happened to every Japanese soldier who reached American lines alive.
03:54Here is what they had come to understand, and what the standard telling of this war almost never explains.
04:01A Japanese soldier who died on the battlefield took everything he knew into the ground with him.
04:07But a Japanese soldier who was captured alive, even a private, even a half-conscious corporal pulled from a shell
04:14crater,
04:14became a source of intelligence so valuable that what he revealed could get hundreds of his own comrades killed within
04:21days.
04:21And the reason that was possible, the reason a single prisoner could be turned into a weapon aimed back at
04:28his own army,
04:29was an organization that Japan never anticipated,
04:33doing work Japan believed was impossible,
04:36staffed by people Japan never imagined would exist.
04:40Hold on to this number.
04:43By the end of the war, that organization had interrogated 14,000 Japanese prisoners,
04:49translated nearly 2 million captured documents,
04:52and published more than 20 million pages of finished intelligence on the Japanese military.
04:59Its commander would stand in Manila in January of 1945
05:03and make a claim that sounds like exaggeration, but was not.
05:07That his unit literally knew more about the Japanese army than most of the Japanese army's own officers did.
05:14Because, as he put it,
05:17we had their records.
05:19The organization was called the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section,
05:23A-T-I-S,
05:25and the weapon that made it devastating
05:27was something Japan had staked its entire security on, never encountering.
05:33Americans,
05:33who spoke fluent Japanese.
05:36Not just textbook Japanese,
05:38but the dialects,
05:40the military terminology,
05:41the cultural instincts that could make a terrified prisoner feel understood enough to talk.
05:47Where those Americans came from,
05:49and what their own country had already done to their families
05:51by the time they sat down across from their first prisoner,
05:55is where this story truly begins.
05:57On November 1st, 1941,
06:0036 days before Pearl Harbor,
06:02a small group of men filed into an unmarked airplane hangar on Crissy Field at the Presidio of San Francisco.
06:09There were 60 students.
06:1258 of them were Nisei,
06:14second-generation Japanese Americans,
06:17born on American soil to parents who had emigrated from Japan.
06:20The other two were white.
06:23The budget for the entire program was $2,000.
06:27The desks were scrap.
06:30The textbooks were mimeographed copies of materials so rare
06:33that only a handful existed in the entire United States military.
06:38Nobody told them exactly what they were training for.
06:42The instructors,
06:43four Nisei civilians who had never taught anything before,
06:47had been given no guidelines,
06:49no curriculum,
06:50no model to follow.
06:52One of them,
06:53Shigeia Kihara,
06:55would later say it plainly,
06:56We had no experience.
06:58There were no models.
07:00There was no idea what to do.
07:02What they were building,
07:04though no one in that hangar could have known it,
07:06was the weapon that would eventually force Japan to kill its own soldiers.
07:11The idea had come from a handful of officers
07:14who had served as military attaches in Tokyo.
07:17Men like Sidney Mashbeer and Rufus Bratton,
07:20who understood something that almost no one else in the American military grasped.
07:24The Japanese language was not merely difficult.
07:28For a non-native speaker,
07:30military Japanese was virtually impenetrable.
07:34Written Japanese used thousands of characters.
07:37Military documents mixed formal constructions with specialized terminology
07:41that even educated Japanese civilians could not always follow.
07:46And spoken Japanese carried layers of formality,
07:49dialect, and implication
07:50that could change the meaning of a sentence entirely
07:53depending on who was speaking to whom.
07:56The officers who had lived in Japan
07:58knew that if war came,
08:00the United States would be functionally deaf and blind against its enemy,
08:04unable to read captured orders,
08:06unable to understand intercepted radio traffic,
08:09unable to ask a prisoner a single question.
08:12But they also knew something else.
08:14A survey of 3,700 Nisei in the military
08:17had found that only 3% were truly fluent in Japanese.
08:224% were proficient.
08:24Another 3% could be made proficient with intensive training.
08:28That was it.
08:29Remember that number.
08:31Out of thousands,
08:32fewer than 400 Japanese Americans in uniform
08:36had the language skills to be useful.
08:39The entire intelligence war against Japan
08:41would be built on that sliver.
08:44Five weeks after the school opened,
08:47Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
08:49And then something happened
08:50that belongs in a different kind of story,
08:52except that it is the same story.
08:55On February 19th, 1942,
08:59President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066.
09:03Within months,
09:04120,000 Americans of Japanese descent,
09:07citizens, most of them,
09:08were forced from their homes on the West Coast
09:11and locked behind barbed wire
09:12in camps scattered across the interior.
09:15Families that had built businesses,
09:18raised children,
09:19paid taxes for decades,
09:20were given days to sell everything they owned
09:23and report for removal.
09:25No Japanese American was ever convicted of espionage.
09:29Not one.
09:30And here is where this war folds in on itself
09:33in a way that most tellings never acknowledge.
09:36The language school at the Presidio
09:38was now inside the exclusion zone.
09:41Its Nisei students,
09:42American soldiers in American uniforms,
09:45were technically subject to the same removal order
09:48as their own parents, brothers, and sisters.
09:51The school had to move or lose
09:54nearly every student it had.
09:56Several Midwestern states were approached.
09:58Most refused.
10:00Governor Harold Stassen of Minnesota said,
10:03yes.
10:04In May of 1942,
10:06the school relocated to a derelict former homeless shelter
10:09called Camp Savage,
10:10south of Minneapolis.
10:12The sign out front still read,
10:14homeless men's shelter,
10:15when the first Nisei soldiers arrived,
10:17which one of them later called,
10:19very ironic,
10:20because many of these men now were homeless.
10:24They studied 10 hours a day.
10:26Not conversational Japanese,
10:28military Japanese.
10:30The language of orders,
10:32intelligence reports,
10:33interrogation protocols,
10:35radio intercepts.
10:37The course was designed for students
10:39who already spoke Japanese at home.
10:41Even so,
10:42it crushed most of them.
10:44The washout rate was brutal.
10:47And now comes the detail
10:49that the Japanese military
10:50never accounted for
10:51in any of its planning.
10:53By June of 1942,
10:55Colonel Kai Rasmussen,
10:57the school's commandant,
10:58received permission to recruit
11:00directly from the internment camps.
11:03Nisei men,
11:04whose families were imprisoned
11:06behind barbed wire
11:07by their own government,
11:08were asked to volunteer
11:10for a secret intelligence program
11:12that would send them into combat
11:14against the country
11:14of their parents' birth.
11:16Some would interrogate prisoners
11:18who might recognize
11:19their family names.
11:21Some would crawl into caves
11:23on islands their relatives
11:24had once called home.
11:27150 stepped forward
11:28from behind the wire.
11:30The first graduates,
11:31just 40 from the original class
11:33at the Presidio,
11:34shipped out in the spring of 1942.
11:3830 were sent to the South Pacific.
11:40They arrived at a moment
11:42when American forces
11:43had almost no understanding
11:44of the enemy they were fighting.
11:46And when the first Japanese prisoner
11:48was brought in on Guadalcanal,
11:50something happened that no one
11:52on either side had predicted.
11:54He talked.
11:56Not under torture,
11:58not under threat.
12:00He talked because no one
12:01had ever told him
12:02what to do
12:03if he was captured.
12:04The Japanese military
12:06had built its entire security model
12:08on a single assumption.
12:10The assumption was not
12:11that their soldiers
12:12would never be captured,
12:13although most would fight
12:14to avoid it.
12:16The assumption was deeper than that.
12:18It was that even if
12:19a soldier were captured,
12:20the information he carried
12:22would be useless
12:23because the Americans
12:25could not speak Japanese.
12:27This was not arrogance.
12:29It was a reasonable calculation,
12:31and for most of the 1930s,
12:33it was correct.
12:34The number of non-Japanese people
12:37on earth
12:37who could read
12:38a Japanese military document
12:39with any fluency
12:40was vanishingly small.
12:43Written military Japanese
12:44used a specialized vocabulary
12:46layered on top
12:47of one of the most complex
12:48writing systems
12:49ever devised.
12:50Thousands of characters,
12:52multiple readings for each,
12:54context-dependent meanings
12:56that shifted
12:56between formal orders
12:58and field shorthand.
12:59A captured Japanese battle plan
13:02might as well
13:02have been written in code.
13:04In practical terms,
13:05it was.
13:07And so Japan did something
13:09that still astonishes
13:10intelligence historians.
13:11It treated the language barrier
13:13as its encryption.
13:14Japanese units in the field
13:16kept meticulous records.
13:18War diaries,
13:19organizational rosters,
13:21intelligence assessments,
13:22paybooks,
13:23postal savings records,
13:25personal correspondence.
13:26And they rarely
13:27encrypted any of it.
13:29Officers carried
13:31operational orders
13:31in their map cases.
13:33Soldiers carried
13:34letters from home
13:35that named their units,
13:36described their positions,
13:38mentioned other soldiers
13:39by name and rank.
13:40The paperwork
13:42of an entire army
13:43moved through the Pacific
13:44essentially in plain text,
13:46protected by nothing
13:47but the certainty
13:48that no American
13:49could read it.
13:51Think about what that means.
13:53Every dead Japanese soldier
13:54on every battlefield
13:55was carrying documents.
13:57Every abandoned headquarters,
13:59every overrun field hospital,
14:01every destroyed command post
14:03was a library.
14:04And for the first months
14:05of the war,
14:06the assumption held.
14:08The documents piled up
14:09and the Americans
14:10had almost no one
14:11who could read them.
14:13Then the Nisei arrived.
14:15A translator attached
14:16to an Australian unit
14:18at Buna in late 1942
14:19later described the moment
14:21he was handed
14:22his first captured
14:23Japanese document,
14:25a bundle of papers
14:26pulled from a dead
14:27officer's satchel.
14:29It was a complete set
14:30of standing operating procedures
14:32for the Japanese forces
14:33in that sector.
14:35Positions,
14:36strengths,
14:36supply routes,
14:38patrol schedules,
14:39everything a commander
14:40needed to understand
14:41what was facing him.
14:43And no one
14:44had encrypted a word
14:45of it
14:46because no one
14:47had imagined
14:47that any American
14:48could read it.
14:50At Buna,
14:511,349 documents
14:53were captured.
14:54At Ley,
14:551,562,
14:57each hall
14:59larger than the last,
15:00each one revealing
15:01more of the Japanese
15:02order of battle,
15:03more of their logistics,
15:05more of their plans.
15:07But documents
15:09were only half
15:09of the equation.
15:11The other half
15:12was sitting in a foxhole,
15:13breathing.
15:14Here is what
15:15neither side fully understood
15:17in those early months.
15:19Japanese soldiers
15:20had been trained exhaustively
15:21in how to die.
15:23They had been given
15:24no training whatsoever
15:25in how to be captured.
15:28Western armies
15:29had drilled their men
15:30for generations
15:31in the protocol
15:32of captivity.
15:33Name,
15:34rank,
15:35service number,
15:36nothing else.
15:37Every American soldier,
15:39every British soldier,
15:40every German soldier
15:41understood
15:42that if taken prisoner,
15:44his job was to resist
15:45questioning
15:46and reveal nothing
15:47of value.
15:48This was not instinct.
15:50It was doctrine,
15:51taught in basic training,
15:53reinforced in the field.
15:55The Geneva Convention
15:56codified the rights
15:57of prisoners,
15:58and Western soldiers
16:00were taught
16:00that those rights
16:01included the right
16:02to remain silent.
16:04Japan had no equivalent.
16:06The Senjin-kun
16:07did not contain a section
16:09on how to behave
16:10in captivity
16:10because the Senjin-kun
16:12did not acknowledge
16:13that captivity was possible.
16:15There was no protocol
16:16because there was
16:18no category.
16:20A Japanese soldier
16:21who found himself alive
16:22in American hands
16:23had no script,
16:25no rules,
16:26no fallback position.
16:28He had been told
16:29his entire military life
16:30that capture meant death,
16:33death of honor,
16:34death of family reputation,
16:36death of identity.
16:38And when the expected
16:39torture and execution
16:40did not come,
16:41when instead
16:42he was given food
16:43and medical treatment
16:44and spoken to
16:45in his own language
16:46by a young man
16:47who looked Japanese
16:48but wore an American uniform,
16:51something collapsed
16:52inside the system.
16:53Many prisoners concluded
16:55that since they had already
16:56died socially,
16:58since their families
16:59would be told
16:59they were killed in action,
17:01since they could never
17:02return to Japan,
17:03they had nothing left
17:05to protect.
17:06They were dead men.
17:07Dead men have no secrets.
17:10The Nisei interrogators
17:12discovered this
17:13very quickly.
17:14They did not need
17:15to threaten.
17:16They did not need
17:17to deceive.
17:18They offered a cigarette.
17:20They asked about
17:21the prisoner's hometown,
17:22his family,
17:23his unit.
17:25They spoke to him
17:26like a human being,
17:27something no one
17:28in his own army
17:29had done in months.
17:30And then,
17:31when the prisoner
17:32was calm and talking,
17:33they began asking
17:34about positions,
17:35about troop strengths,
17:37about when the next
17:37attack was planned.
17:39And the prisoner
17:40told them.
17:41Because no one
17:42had ever told him
17:42not to.
17:44What came pouring
17:45out of those
17:45first interrogations
17:46on Guadalcanal
17:47in New Guinea
17:47was not fragmentary.
17:49It was not vague.
17:51It was operationally
17:52precise,
17:53tactically immediate,
17:55and verifiable
17:56against the captured
17:57documents that the
17:57same Nisei translators
17:59were already reading.
18:00The two streams
18:01of intelligence,
18:02documents and prisoners,
18:04confirmed and
18:05amplified each other.
18:07Every diary entry
18:08verified a prisoner's
18:09statement.
18:10Every prisoner's
18:11statement explained
18:12a diary entry.
18:13Together,
18:14they built something
18:15that the Japanese
18:15high command
18:16did not yet realize
18:17was taking shape.
18:19By early 1943,
18:21a mansion in
18:22Indrupilly,
18:23a suburb of Brisbane,
18:24had become the most
18:25important building
18:26in the Pacific War
18:27that no one
18:28outside the
18:29intelligence community
18:30had ever heard of.
18:32What was happening
18:33inside it would
18:33eventually force Japan
18:35to turn its own
18:35code of honor
18:36into a kill order.
18:37The mansion was
18:38called Tinnabruich,
18:39a name no one
18:40could pronounce,
18:41built in 1892
18:43on a quiet street
18:44in a suburb that
18:45smelled like eucalyptus
18:46and river mud.
18:48Next door stood
18:49a second house,
18:50Witten House,
18:51older and smaller.
18:53Between them,
18:54Australian soldiers
18:55had built a five-building
18:56prisoner compound
18:57ringed with wire.
18:59A translation building
19:00stood near Tinnabruich,
19:02an interrogation building
19:03stood beside it.
19:04This was ATIS headquarters.
19:07And the man running it
19:08was Colonel Sidney
19:09Forrester Mashbir.
19:1151 years old,
19:13born in Manhattan,
19:14raised in Arizona,
19:15a man who had lived
19:16in Japan for four years
19:17in the early 20s
19:18as a language officer,
19:20who had resigned
19:21from the army in disgrace,
19:22gone bankrupt,
19:23rebuilt himself
19:24as an engineer,
19:25and been pulled back
19:26into uniform
19:27the day after Pearl Harbor
19:29because the United States
19:30military suddenly realized
19:32it had almost no one
19:33who understood Japan.
19:36Mashbir was not
19:37a field commander.
19:38He was an organizer,
19:39a man who thought
19:40in systems.
19:42And the system
19:43he built at Indrupilli
19:44was unlike anything
19:45that had existed before
19:46in the Pacific.
19:48Here is what Mashbir
19:49understood that most
19:50commanders did not.
19:51A captured document
19:53sitting in a crate
19:54was worthless.
19:55A prisoner sitting
19:56in a cage
19:57was worthless.
19:58Intelligence had value
19:59only if it was translated,
20:01cross-referenced,
20:02analyzed,
20:03and delivered
20:04to the right commander
20:05fast enough to act on.
20:07Speed was everything.
20:10A battle plan
20:10translated three weeks
20:12after capture
20:12was an academic exercise.
20:14The same plan
20:16translated in 48 hours
20:17was a weapon.
20:19So Mashbir built
20:20what he called
20:20a brainpower
20:21quantity production line.
20:23Documents arrived
20:24by the crate
20:25from forward areas,
20:26pulled from bodies,
20:28stripped from abandoned
20:29command posts,
20:30dug out of burned headquarters.
20:32Each document
20:33was logged,
20:34categorized,
20:35and assigned
20:35to a translator
20:36based on its apparent urgency.
20:39Priority items,
20:40operational orders,
20:41defense plans,
20:42unit rosters,
20:43went to the best linguists first.
20:46Personal diaries
20:47and letters
20:48went to a separate section
20:49that mined them
20:50for morale indicators,
20:51unit identifications,
20:53and the small details
20:54that revealed
20:55what the official documents
20:56did not.
20:57Meanwhile,
20:58in the interrogation
20:59building next door,
21:01prisoners move
21:02through a layered system.
21:03A soldier captured
21:05on the front line
21:05was first questioned
21:06by a Nisei linguist
21:08attached to the unit
21:09that took him.
21:10Quick,
21:11tactical questions
21:12about immediate positions
21:13and threats.
21:15Then,
21:15he was sent
21:16to division
21:16or corps level,
21:18where interrogators
21:19with more time
21:20extracted broader intelligence.
21:22Then,
21:23he was shipped
21:23to Brisbane,
21:24where the most
21:25skilled questioners
21:26sat him down
21:26in Tina Bruic
21:27and went deep.
21:28Order of battle,
21:30logistics chains,
21:31command personalities,
21:33strategic plans.
21:35And every answer
21:36was checked
21:36against the documents.
21:38Every document
21:39was checked
21:40against the prisoners.
21:42The two streams
21:43of intelligence
21:43were not separate operations.
21:45They were two halves
21:47of the same machine.
21:48Pay attention
21:49to what happened next,
21:51because this is
21:52where the scale
21:52becomes difficult
21:53to believe.
21:54Japanese soldiers
21:55carried postal savings books,
21:58small passbooks
21:59that recorded deposits
22:00in the military postal system.
22:02To a front line soldier
22:03who captured one,
22:04it looked like a scrap
22:05of bureaucratic paper.
22:07But at Indrapilli,
22:08an analyst
22:09who examined
22:10hundreds of them
22:11could track
22:11troop movements
22:12across the Pacific
22:13by the deposit locations.
22:15A savings book
22:16stamped in Rabaul,
22:17then Wiwak,
22:18then Hollandia,
22:19told you exactly
22:20which unit
22:21had moved where
22:22and when.
22:23Cross-reference that
22:24with a captured unit roster
22:26and a prisoner's statement
22:27about his regiment's movements,
22:29and you had
22:29a verified intelligence picture
22:31built from
22:32three independent sources
22:33that no Japanese commander
22:35would have imagined
22:36could be assembled.
22:37By 1944,
22:39ATIS had compiled
22:40nearly complete sets
22:42of unit papers
22:43for major Japanese formations
22:45across the Pacific.
22:46War diaries,
22:47organizational charts,
22:49intelligence reports,
22:51equipment inventories,
22:52correspondence.
22:54They could tell
22:55an American commander
22:56not just which Japanese unit
22:58was facing him,
22:59but who commanded it,
23:01how strong it was,
23:02what weapons it had,
23:04when it had last received supplies,
23:06and what its orders
23:07said to do if attacked.
23:09When American forces
23:11captured Hollandia
23:12in Dutch New Guinea
23:13in late April of 1944,
23:16CIC agents
23:17had a standing order
23:18that would have seemed
23:19bizarre
23:20to any conventional
23:21infantry officer.
23:23Before securing
23:24the airfield,
23:25before clearing the town,
23:27before anything else,
23:29seize the post office.
23:31It turned out to be
23:33what one intelligence summary
23:34called a gold mine.
23:36Battle plans,
23:38codes,
23:39letters,
23:39operational orders,
23:41all sitting in canvas bags,
23:44waiting for delivery,
23:45completely unencrypted.
23:47Three months later,
23:48on Saipan,
23:49the volume of captured material
23:51reached a point
23:52that required
23:53a new unit of measurement.
23:55Not documents,
23:56not crates.
23:58Tons.
23:5927 tons
24:01of Japanese paperwork
24:02recovered from a single island.
24:05At Kokoda,
24:06early in the war,
24:08268 documents
24:09had seemed like a windfall.
24:11At Saipan,
24:12the translators
24:13were drowning.
24:14And somewhere
24:15in that mountain of paper,
24:17in that steady stream
24:18of prisoners
24:18flowing through Tenebruik
24:20and its forward detachments,
24:21something began to surface
24:23in the intelligence reports
24:24that changed
24:25the nature of the war.
24:27Japanese field commanders
24:28were starting to notice
24:30that the Americans
24:30knew things
24:31they should not have known.
24:33Attack timings
24:34that had been changed
24:35at the last minute,
24:36and the Americans
24:37had adjusted.
24:37defensive positions
24:39that had been repositioned
24:41in secret,
24:41and American artillery
24:43had already re-aimed.
24:45Unit identifications
24:46that the Japanese
24:47had tried to conceal,
24:49and American leaflets
24:50dropped from the sky,
24:51addressed the unit by name.
24:54Japan had staked everything
24:56on the belief
24:57that its language
24:57was its fortress.
24:59And now,
25:01unit by unit,
25:02island by island,
25:04that fortress
25:05was being dismantled
25:06by Americans
25:07who looked Japanese,
25:09spoke Japanese,
25:10and read Japanese.
25:12Americans whose families
25:14were at that very moment
25:15locked behind barbed wire
25:17in camps scattered
25:19across the American interior.
25:21The irony would have been unbearable
25:23if anyone on the Japanese side
25:25had known the full truth.
25:26But they were beginning
25:28to suspect.
25:30And what they did
25:31with that suspicion
25:31would cost their own soldiers
25:33their lives.
25:34In the spring of 1944,
25:36a document was recovered
25:38from a crashed
25:38Japanese flying boat
25:40near the island of Cebu
25:41in the Philippines.
25:43The aircraft had gone down
25:44on March 31st,
25:46carrying Vice Admiral
25:47Shigeru Fukudome,
25:49Chief of Staff,
25:50to Admiral Koga Mineichi,
25:52Commander-in-Chief
25:53of the Imperial Japanese Navy.
25:56Fukudome survived the crash.
25:58His briefcase
25:59did not stay with him.
26:01Filipino guerrillas
26:02pulled a waterlogged box
26:04from the wreckage
26:04and passed it
26:05to an American intelligence officer
26:07named James Cushing.
26:09Inside was the Z-Plan,
26:11Combined Fleet
26:12Secret Operations Order No. 73,
26:15Japan's complete
26:16naval and air defense strategy
26:18for the Western Pacific.
26:30It was the single most important
26:32captured document
26:33of the Pacific War,
26:34and it had not been encrypted
26:36because it had never been imagined
26:38that anyone outside the Imperial Navy
26:40would be able to read it.
26:41The document was rushed
26:43to ATIS in Brisbane.
26:46Nisei translators
26:47worked through it
26:48page by page.
26:50When they were finished,
26:51the translated Z-Plan
26:52was distributed
26:53to every major American command
26:55in the Pacific.
26:57Two months later,
26:58when the United States
26:59invaded Saipan,
27:01American commanders
27:02already knew
27:03where the Japanese fleet
27:04would concentrate,
27:05which air groups
27:06would respond,
27:07and what the defensive plan
27:08looked like.
27:09The result was the Battle
27:11of the Philippine Sea,
27:12the engagement
27:13American pilots
27:14would call
27:15the Great Mariana's
27:16Turkey Shoot.
27:17Japan lost
27:18three aircraft carriers
27:20and roughly 600 planes
27:21in two days.
27:23The Imperial Japanese Navy
27:25never recovered.
27:27One document,
27:29unencrypted,
27:30translated by young men
27:31whose parents
27:32had been born
27:32in the country
27:33that produced it.
27:34But the Z-Plan,
27:36devastating as it was,
27:37illustrated only
27:38one half
27:39of the intelligence
27:40catastrophe
27:41that was overtaking Japan.
27:43The other half
27:44was quieter,
27:45more personal,
27:46and in some ways
27:47more destructive.
27:48Because it happened
27:49one man at a time,
27:50in rooms where
27:51a Nisei sergeant
27:52offered a cigarette
27:53and asked a question.
27:55And a Japanese soldier,
27:56who believed
27:57he was already dead,
27:58gave an answer
27:59that would get
27:59his former comrades killed.
28:02By mid-1944,
28:04the pattern had become
28:05unmistakable
28:06to Japanese field commanders.
28:08American forces
28:09were displaying
28:10a knowledge
28:10of Japanese positions
28:11and intentions
28:12that could not be explained
28:14by aerial reconnaissance
28:15or signals intelligence alone.
28:17The details
28:18were too specific.
28:20The timing
28:20was too precise.
28:22Someone was talking.
28:24The realization
28:25did not come
28:26as a single revelation.
28:27It came
28:28as a creeping horror,
28:30a series of small recognitions
28:32that accumulated
28:33into a terrible conclusion.
28:35On island after island,
28:37Japanese officers
28:38noticed
28:39that American attacks
28:40fell on positions
28:41that had been occupied
28:42for only days.
28:44That artillery concentrations
28:46hit command posts
28:47that had moved
28:48within the week.
28:49That propaganda leaflets,
28:51written in
28:52flawless Japanese,
28:53addressing specific units
28:55by their
28:55correct designations,
28:57drifted down from the sky
28:58over garrisons
28:59that had not reported
29:01their presence
29:01to anyone outside
29:02their own chain of command.
29:04The information
29:05was coming from prisoners
29:07and from the dead.
29:09That second realization
29:11was in some ways
29:12worse than the first.
29:13A prisoner
29:14could be prevented
29:15from talking,
29:16in theory,
29:17by ensuring
29:18he never became a prisoner.
29:19But the dead
29:20were beyond
29:21any officer's control.
29:23And the dead
29:24were carrying everything.
29:25Every corpse
29:26on every battlefield
29:28was a filing cabinet
29:29that the Americans
29:30were methodically opening.
29:32Paybooks
29:33that traced
29:33a soldier's
29:34entire service history.
29:36Letters from home
29:37that named his unit
29:38and described conditions.
29:41Diaries
29:42that recorded
29:42orders,
29:43movements,
29:44morale,
29:46casualties.
29:48The Americans
29:48were not just
29:49reading the living,
29:50they were reading
29:51the dead.
29:52And this is where
29:53Japan's code of honor
29:54twisted into something
29:55that had nothing
29:56to do with honor
29:57at all.
29:58The Senjin-kun
29:59had been issued
30:00in 1941
30:01as a moral document,
30:03a statement of values,
30:05a call to martial spirit.
30:07Never live to experience
30:09shame as a prisoner.
30:11It was shame-based.
30:13It spoke to the soul
30:15of the soldier.
30:16But by the middle
30:17of 1944,
30:19the prohibition
30:20against surrender
30:20had acquired
30:21a second logic,
30:22a logic that had
30:23nothing to do
30:24with shame
30:25and everything
30:26to do
30:26with operational security.
30:28Every soldier
30:29who fell into
30:30American hands alive
30:31was a breach
30:32in the wall.
30:34Every soldier
30:35who died
30:36but left his documents
30:37intact
30:38was a breach
30:39in the wall.
30:40The wall itself,
30:42the language barrier,
30:43the assumption
30:44that Japanese
30:45was unreadable,
30:46the belief
30:47that captured material
30:48was useless,
30:49had already fallen.
30:50But most Japanese
30:52soldiers did not
30:53know that.
30:54Their officers did.
30:56And so the orders
30:57changed.
30:58Not publicly.
30:59Not in any
31:00doctrinal revision
31:01that would be
31:01distributed and debated.
31:03The orders changed
31:04in the field.
31:05Quietly.
31:06Unit by unit.
31:08Island by island.
31:10Medical officers
31:11received instructions,
31:12sometimes written,
31:13sometimes verbal,
31:14that wounded soldiers
31:16who could not
31:16be evacuated
31:17were not to be left
31:18for the Americans.
31:19They were to be killed.
31:22Soldiers who became
31:23separated from their units
31:24and might wander
31:25into American lines
31:27were to be shot
31:28by their own rear guards.
31:30On some islands,
31:31officers distributed
31:32grenades to the wounded
31:34with a single instruction.
31:36Use it before
31:37they reach you.
31:38On others,
31:40the medical officers
31:41did not wait
31:41for the soldiers
31:42to decide.
31:43This was not Bushido.
31:46This was information security
31:48enforced with a pistol.
31:51And here is the detail
31:52that makes this story
31:53something more
31:54than a catalog of horror.
31:56It did not work.
31:58The Americans
31:59had already built
31:59a system that could
32:00extract intelligence
32:01from a single prisoner
32:02faster than Japan
32:03could kill all the rest.
32:06One man,
32:07pulled from a cave
32:08on Iwo Jima,
32:08was about to prove
32:10exactly how fast.
32:11March 17th, 1945.
32:14Five in the morning.
32:16Northern Iwo Jima.
32:18Lieutenant Candy Johnson
32:19was leading a patrol
32:20through the volcanic rubble
32:21north of the airfield
32:22when his men
32:23spotted movement
32:24in a shell crater.
32:26They expected
32:27a Japanese soldier
32:28with a grenade.
32:29What they found
32:30was a small man,
32:31five feet one,
32:3328 years old,
32:34sitting in the ash
32:35with his hands visible
32:36and his eyes open.
32:38He was not armed.
32:39He was not wounded.
32:41He was waiting.
32:43His name was
32:44Taizou Sakai,
32:46Master Sergeant,
32:48graduate of Tokyo
32:49Imperial University,
32:50the Harvard of Japan.
32:52Between 1939 and 1943,
32:55he had served
32:56as a communications clerk
32:57in China,
32:58traveling to Beijing,
33:00Nanking,
33:00Han Kao.
33:02He had been discharged
33:03in November of 1943
33:04and gone to work
33:06as a clerk
33:06in his father's
33:07mining office in Tokyo.
33:09Then,
33:10shortly after
33:11the American invasion
33:12of the Marianas
33:13in June of 1944,
33:15he was drafted again
33:16and sent to Iwo Jima.
33:19His assignment
33:20was the most sensitive position
33:21a non-commissioned officer
33:22could hold on that island.
33:24He was General Kuribayashi's
33:26code clerk,
33:27the man who encrypted
33:28and decrypted
33:29every message
33:30between the commander
33:31of Iwo Jima
33:32and Imperial General
33:33Headquarters
33:34in Tokyo.
33:35He had decided
33:36to surrender.
33:37He knew what that meant
33:39under the Senjinkun.
33:40He knew he could
33:41never return to Japan,
33:43never see his wife
33:44and young daughter again,
33:46never be anything
33:47other than officially dead.
33:49He had made his decision anyway.
33:53Lieutenant Lopardo,
33:54the officer who took custody
33:55of Sakai from Johnson's patrol,
33:57understood instantly
33:59what he had.
34:00He grabbed his radio operator,
34:02Walter Mann,
34:03and told him to put Sakai
34:04in a foxhole
34:05and protect him.
34:06Then Lopardo jumped
34:08into the foxhole himself
34:09and started talking.
34:11He did not have
34:12a trained interpreter with him.
34:13He spoke no Japanese.
34:15Sakai spoke limited English.
34:18Lopardo took notes in French
34:20on the back of his
34:21March 7th field orders,
34:22the only paper he had,
34:24while crouching
34:25in volcanic ash
34:26with a man
34:27who had just walked
34:28out of a war
34:29that did not permit
34:30walking out.
34:32Sakai told Lopardo
34:33that he knew Japan
34:34had lost the war.
34:35He said troop morale
34:37was very low.
34:38He said enlisted men
34:39were angry at their officers
34:41and losing faith
34:42in the emperor.
34:43Then Lopardo produced a map.
34:46Sakai looked at it,
34:47put his finger on an island
34:49south of Japan,
34:50and said words
34:51that would travel up
34:52the intelligence chain
34:53within hours.
34:55If you land here,
34:56they are waiting for you.
34:58Because that is what
35:00you guys do
35:00all the time.
35:02The island he was
35:03pointing at
35:04was Okinawa.
35:05The American invasion
35:07of Okinawa
35:07was 15 days away.
35:09When Sakai reached
35:11the regimental language
35:12officers,
35:13Richard White
35:13and John McClain,
35:15they realized immediately
35:16that he was beyond
35:17their scope.
35:19White would later
35:20say it simply,
35:21he was much too hot
35:22for us to handle.
35:23They extracted
35:25what pertained
35:26to their immediate area
35:27and sent him to division.
35:29The preamble
35:30of Preliminary
35:31POW Interrogation Report
35:34No. 122
35:35described him
35:36in clinical language
35:37that understated
35:38what was actually happening.
35:40POW was above average
35:42in intelligence
35:43and fully cooperative.
35:46Fully cooperative.
35:48Sakai was not merely
35:50answering questions.
35:51He was volunteering
35:52information that
35:53no interrogator
35:54would have known to ask.
35:56He described the messages
35:57he had encrypted
35:58between Kuribayashi
35:59and Tokyo.
36:01He revealed that
36:02on February 15th,
36:03four days before
36:04the American landing,
36:06Kuribayashi had sent
36:07a dispatch to
36:08Imperial General Headquarters
36:10reporting that
36:11the entire American fleet
36:12was at Iwo Jima
36:13and begging for
36:14the Japanese Navy
36:15to come and destroy it.
36:17The response from Tokyo
36:19had promised that
36:19on April 1st,
36:21the entire Japanese fleet
36:22would gloriously set forth
36:24and push the Americans
36:26back to the mainland.
36:28Sakai knew,
36:29and his interrogators knew,
36:31that this was theater.
36:33The Imperial Fleet
36:34was mostly a memory.
36:36April 1st
36:37would be too late
36:38for Iwo Jima regardless.
36:40The promise was a lie,
36:42designed to keep men
36:43fighting for an island
36:44that Tokyo
36:45had already written off.
36:47Then Sakai described
36:48something that revealed
36:49the morale collapse
36:50behind the Japanese lines
36:52more vividly
36:53than any intelligence
36:54assessment could.
36:55When Kuribayashi's code unit
36:57received orders
36:58to destroy their equipment,
37:00the men did not carry out
37:01the task with solemn duty.
37:03They did it with glee.
37:06Sakai reported
37:06their words directly.
37:08They said that
37:09having been thrust
37:10into a cheap
37:11and losing war
37:11and having received
37:13cheap food,
37:14cheap clothing,
37:15and cheap quarters,
37:16it was a pleasure
37:17to destroy expensive equipment.
37:20They called its destruction
37:21retributive justice.
37:24One man,
37:25one prisoner.
37:27In a matter of hours,
37:29he had confirmed
37:30what the Americans
37:30were about to face
37:31on Okinawa,
37:33exposed the fiction
37:34that Tokyo
37:35was feeding its own garrisons,
37:36and laid bare
37:37the psychological collapse
37:39of a garrison
37:39that was still
37:40killing Americans
37:41every day.
37:43This is what
37:44a single prisoner
37:45was worth.
37:46This is what
37:47the kill orders
37:48in the caves
37:48were meant to prevent.
37:50And this is why
37:51they failed.
37:53Because Sakai
37:54was not an anomaly.
37:55He was the system,
37:57working exactly
37:58as designed.
37:59The Nisei interrogators
38:01had refined
38:01their methods
38:02across two years
38:03and dozens of islands.
38:05They knew
38:06that kindness worked.
38:08They knew
38:08that speaking Japanese,
38:10real Japanese,
38:11not textbook phrases,
38:13disarmed prisoners
38:14faster than any threat.
38:17They knew
38:17that a man
38:18who expected
38:18to be tortured
38:19and was instead
38:20given food
38:20and a cigarette
38:21would experience
38:22a rupture
38:23so profound
38:24that the information
38:25simply poured out.
38:27Not because
38:27he was weak.
38:29Because no one
38:30in his entire
38:30military life
38:31had prepared him
38:33for decency.
38:35And Japan's answer?
38:37Kill them
38:38before they can
38:38be captured.
38:40Created its own
38:41cascading failure.
38:42Because the kill orders
38:43did not eliminate
38:44the intelligence problem.
38:46They simply guaranteed
38:47that every Japanese soldier
38:49who did reach
38:49American lines alive
38:50was more motivated
38:52than ever
38:53to talk.
38:54A man who had watched
38:55his own officers
38:56murder wounded comrades
38:58did not feel loyalty
38:59to the system
39:00that had ordered it.
39:01He felt the opposite.
39:03And he said everything.
39:05By late 1944
39:06American intelligence
39:08officers in the Pacific
39:09faced a problem
39:10they had never
39:11anticipated.
39:12They had built
39:13the most effective
39:14interrogation and
39:15translation system
39:16of the war.
39:16They had cracked
39:17the language barrier
39:18that Japan had trusted
39:20with its life.
39:21They had proved
39:22beyond any doubt
39:23that a single prisoner
39:24could yield intelligence
39:25worth hundreds of lives.
39:26And they could not
39:28get enough prisoners.
39:29Because American
39:30front-line troops
39:31kept killing them.
39:32The numbers were stark.
39:34In the fall of 1944
39:36the ratio of
39:37Japanese prisoners
39:38taken to
39:39Japanese killed
39:40in action
39:40was roughly
39:41one to a hundred.
39:43For every hundred
39:44Japanese soldiers
39:45who died
39:46one reached captivity.
39:48On some islands
39:49the ratio was worse.
39:51Historian Neil Ferguson
39:52documented that
39:53on Guadalcanal
39:54an army interrogator
39:56named Captain John Burden
39:57had written a scathing report
39:59blaming American
40:00officers directly.
40:02Japanese prisoners
40:03were dying suspiciously
40:04on the way to the rear.
40:06Soldiers who had surrendered
40:08were being shot in transit
40:09because
40:10as one man put it
40:12it was too much bother
40:13to take him in.
40:15The reasons were tangled
40:16and ugly.
40:17Years of combat
40:18against an enemy
40:19who booby-trapped
40:20his own dead
40:21who used fake surrenders
40:23to lure Americans
40:24into ambushes
40:24who murdered allied prisoners
40:26in ways that defied description.
40:28all of it
40:29had built a rage
40:31in front-line troops
40:32that no intelligence briefing
40:33could easily undo.
40:35Japanese soldiers
40:36had shot American medics.
40:38Japanese soldiers
40:39had grenaded Americans
40:40who tried to help
40:41their wounded.
40:42Every Marine
40:43every infantryman
40:45in the Pacific
40:46had heard the stories
40:47and many had seen
40:48the evidence
40:48with their own eyes.
40:50The instinct
40:51to shoot first
40:52was not irrational.
40:54It was survival.
40:54But it was also destroying
40:57the intelligence pipeline.
40:59And by 1944
41:00senior commanders
41:02understood
41:02what was being lost.
41:04The campaign
41:05to change behavior
41:06was blunt.
41:08Burden's recommendations
41:09from Guadalcanal
41:10were implemented
41:11across the Pacific.
41:12Any soldier
41:13who brought in
41:14a live prisoner
41:15was promised
41:16a three-day pass
41:17and ice cream.
41:18It sounds almost absurd.
41:21Ice cream
41:21as an incentive
41:22in the middle of a war?
41:23But it worked.
41:25Slowly.
41:27Because it gave
41:27the frontline soldier
41:28a concrete,
41:30personal reason
41:30to take the extra risk.
41:33Intelligence officers
41:34gave lectures
41:35to combat units
41:36before every operation.
41:38They did not appeal
41:39to mercy.
41:40They appealed
41:41to self-interest.
41:43That man you are
41:44about to shoot,
41:45they said,
41:46knows where
41:46the machine gun nests are.
41:48He knows where
41:49the mines are buried.
41:51He knows when
41:52the counterattack
41:52is coming.
41:53He is worth
41:54more to you
41:55alive than dead.
41:58The ratio
41:59began to move.
42:00By mid-1945,
42:02it had improved
42:03from 1 in 100
42:04to 1 in 7.
42:06The change
42:07saved American lives
42:09in ways that
42:09no one tallied
42:10at the time,
42:11but that the
42:12intelligence record
42:13makes undeniable.
42:15And then
42:15came Okinawa.
42:17April 1st, 1945.
42:21The largest amphibious
42:23assault of the
42:24Pacific War.
42:26182,000
42:27American troops
42:28going ashore
42:29on an island
42:3060 miles long
42:31where 130,000
42:33Japanese defenders
42:34and 300,000
42:36civilians
42:36were waiting.
42:37And among
42:38those American
42:39troops,
42:40walking onto the
42:41beaches alongside
42:41the riflemen
42:42and the tankers
42:43were Nisei linguists
42:45who carried no weapon
42:46more powerful
42:47than their voices.
42:49Their job on
42:50Okinawa was new.
42:52It had evolved
42:53beyond interrogation,
42:55beyond translation,
42:56into something that
42:57no one had planned for
42:58at the start of the war.
43:00They were cave
43:01flushers.
43:02They crawled
43:03to the mouths
43:04of the caves
43:04and tunnels
43:05where Japanese
43:06soldiers and
43:07Okinawan civilians
43:08huddled together
43:08in the dark.
43:09And they spoke
43:10into the blackness
43:11in Japanese.
43:13They promised
43:14that the Americans
43:15would not kill them.
43:16They promised food,
43:18water,
43:19medical care.
43:20They asked them
43:21to come out.
43:23The Japanese military
43:24had told every
43:25civilian on Okinawa
43:26that the Americans
43:27would torture,
43:28rape,
43:28and murder them.
43:30Families had been
43:31given grenades.
43:32Mothers had been
43:33told to kill
43:34their children
43:34rather than
43:35let them be taken.
43:36And into that terror
43:38walked men
43:38who looked Japanese,
43:40spoke Japanese,
43:41and wore
43:42American uniforms.
43:44A combination
43:44so impossible
43:45that some of the
43:46people in those caves
43:47could not process
43:48what they were seeing.
43:50Sergeant Bob
43:51Hoichi Kubo
43:52from Lahaina
43:53on the island of Maui
43:54stood outside
43:55a cave on Saipan
43:56months before Okinawa
43:58and talked for hours
44:00until Japanese soldiers
44:01released more than
44:02a hundred civilian
44:03hostages.
44:04He received
44:05the Distinguished
44:06Service Cross.
44:07On Okinawa,
44:09the stakes were
44:10multiplied a thousandfold.
44:12Takejido Higa
44:13had worried about
44:14this moment
44:14since before
44:15he shipped out.
44:16What happens,
44:18he had asked himself,
44:19if I meet somebody
44:20I know?
44:21A relative?
44:22A classmate?
44:24It was not
44:25a hypothetical fear.
44:26Higa was of
44:27Okinawan descent.
44:29His family had roots
44:30on the island
44:31the Americans
44:31were invading.
44:33It happened.
44:35Moving through
44:36a civilian compound,
44:37Higa came face to face
44:38with two childhood friends.
44:40Then,
44:41deeper into the island,
44:43he found his
44:43seventh and eighth
44:44grade teacher,
44:45a man named
44:46Shunso Nakamura.
44:48Nakamura stared
44:49at his former student
44:50in an American uniform
44:51and could not speak.
44:54Dumbstruck,
44:55the record says.
44:56Never dreaming
44:57he would see
44:58one of his former students
44:59with the invading forces.
45:01What Higa felt
45:03in that moment,
45:04standing between
45:05two countries,
45:06two loyalties,
45:07two identities,
45:08the record does not say.
45:10What it does say
45:12is that he kept working.
45:14He kept talking people
45:15out of caves.
45:16He kept saving lives
45:18on both sides of a war
45:20that his own country
45:21had made as personal
45:22as a war could be.
45:24By the time
45:25Okinawa ended
45:26in June of 1945,
45:28something had become clear
45:30that the statistics alone
45:31cannot convey.
45:33The intelligence system
45:34that America had built,
45:36ADIS,
45:36the Nisei,
45:37the interrogation pipeline,
45:39the document exploitation machine,
45:41had not merely contributed
45:43to the war.
45:44It had reshaped it.
45:46It had turned
45:47Japan's own
45:48cultural assumptions
45:49into the instrument
45:50of its defeat.
45:51The language
45:52that was supposed
45:53to be impenetrable
45:54became transparent.
45:55The soldiers
45:56who were never supposed
45:57to be captured
45:58became the most productive
45:59intelligence sources
46:00of the entire war.
46:02The documents
46:03that were never supposed
46:04to be read
46:04became a library
46:06so complete
46:07that the enemy's own officers
46:08could not match it.
46:10And the kill orders,
46:11the grenades given
46:12to the wounded,
46:13the pistol rounds
46:14in the field hospitals,
46:16the doctors murdering
46:17their own patients,
46:18had not sealed the breach.
46:20They had widened it.
46:23Because on the other side
46:24of the Pacific,
46:25in a headquarters
46:26that had moved from Brisbane
46:27to Hollandia to Manila,
46:30a man named Mashbir
46:31was reading a captured
46:32Japanese document
46:33that proved exactly
46:34how far the desperation
46:35had gone.
46:37It was dated
46:38February 1945.
46:40It came from
46:41the Japanese headquarters
46:42at Taihoku
46:42on Formosa.
46:44And what it said
46:45about what to do
46:46with prisoners
46:46when American forces
46:47approached
46:48was the coldest sentence
46:49produced by any army
46:51in the entire war.
46:52The document was titled
46:53Captured Japanese
46:54Instructions
46:55Regarding the Killing
46:56of P.O.W.
46:58It was recovered
46:59by American military
47:00intelligence
47:01and cataloged
47:02on February 26, 1945.
47:06Inside was an entry
47:07from the Journal
47:08of the Japanese headquarters
47:09at Taihoku
47:10on Formosa, Taiwan,
47:12that laid out
47:13in plain language
47:14what was to be done
47:15when American forces
47:17approached any installation
47:18holding prisoners of war.
47:21Extreme measures
47:22were to be taken
47:22in urgent situations.
47:25Whether they are destroyed
47:26individually
47:27or in groups
47:28or however it is done
47:29with mass bombing,
47:31poisonous smoke,
47:32poisons,
47:33drowning,
47:34decapitation,
47:34or what,
47:36dispose of the prisoners
47:37as the situation dictates.
47:39In any case,
47:41it is the aim
47:41not to allow
47:42the escape
47:43of a single one,
47:44to annihilate them all,
47:46and not to leave
47:47any traces.
47:49Not to allow
47:50the escape
47:51of a single one.
47:53Not to leave
47:54any traces.
47:56This was not
47:57a rogue commander.
47:59This was
48:00institutional policy,
48:01distributed through
48:02the chain of command,
48:03applied in camps
48:04from Formosa
48:05to the Philippines
48:06to Manchuria.
48:08At Palawan
48:09in December of 1944,
48:11Japanese soldiers
48:12had already carried it out,
48:14pouring gasoline
48:15into air raid shelters
48:16where 150 American
48:18POWs were huddled,
48:20setting them on fire,
48:22machine gunning
48:22the men who broke free
48:23with their clothes burning,
48:25bayonetting the ones
48:26who crawled
48:27toward the sea.
48:28But the Taihoku document
48:30was not only
48:31about allied prisoners.
48:32It was the same logic,
48:34the same calculus,
48:35that had already been applied
48:37to Japan's own soldiers.
48:39The wounded
48:40in the caves of Saipan,
48:42the stragglers
48:43on Peleliu,
48:44the broken men
48:45in the field hospitals
48:46of Leyte.
48:47The principle
48:48was identical.
48:49No one reaches
48:50American hands alive.
48:52No one talks.
48:54No one carries a document
48:56into captivity.
48:58Annihilate them all.
49:00And now pull back
49:02from that document
49:02and consider the full shape
49:04of what happened.
49:05A country built a wall
49:08around its secrets
49:09and made it
49:10out of language.
49:11It trusted that wall
49:13so completely
49:14that it stopped encrypting
49:16its most sensitive documents,
49:18stopped training its soldiers
49:19to resist interrogation,
49:21stopped imagining
49:22that any enemy
49:23could breach it.
49:24And then another country,
49:26using men
49:27that it had locked
49:28in camps
49:29behind barbed wire,
49:30men whose families
49:31it had stripped
49:32of everything,
49:34trained those men
49:35to walk through the wall
49:36as if it were not there.
49:39The 6,000 Nisei
49:41who graduated
49:41from Camp Savage
49:42and Fort Snelling
49:43did not fire
49:44the most bullets
49:45or drop the most bombs.
49:47But General Charles Willoughby,
49:50MacArthur's chief
49:51of intelligence,
49:51not a man given
49:53to overstatement,
49:54said after the war
49:55that the Nisei
49:56shortened the Pacific War
49:58by two years
49:59and saved possibly
50:00a million American lives
50:02and billions of dollars.
50:05Mashbir,
50:06the man who built
50:07the machine,
50:08stood in Manila
50:09at the end
50:09and wrote a single sentence
50:11about them
50:11that cuts deeper
50:12than any statistic.
50:15The United States of America
50:16owes a debt
50:17to these men
50:18and to their families,
50:19which it can never
50:20fully repay.
50:22Their families.
50:24The ones behind the wire.
50:26The role and activities
50:28of the Military Intelligence Service
50:29were classified
50:30for more than 30 years
50:31after the war ended.
50:33The records were not released
50:34to the public
50:35until 1972
50:36under the Freedom of Information Act.
50:39For three decades,
50:41the men who had shortened
50:42the war by two years
50:43could not tell anyone
50:45what they had done.
50:46Many of their own families
50:47never knew.
50:48Some went to their graves
50:50without a single decoration
50:51for their service
50:52because the service itself
50:54was a secret.
50:56In 2010,
50:5865 years after the war,
51:00Congress awarded
51:01the Congressional Gold Medal
51:02to the Nisei soldiers
51:04of the MIS
51:04alongside the men
51:06of the 442nd
51:07Regimental Combat Team
51:08and the 100th Infantry Battalion.
51:11Taizo Sakai
51:13the code clerk
51:14from Iwo Jima
51:15who sat in a foxhole
51:16with Lt. Lopardo
51:17and pointed at Okinawa
51:19on a map
51:19survived the war.
51:22He had told his interrogators
51:23that he knew
51:24he could never go home.
51:26He was wrong about that.
51:28Japan took its prisoners back.
51:30But what he returned to
51:32the shame
51:33the silence
51:34the country that had told
51:36his family he was dead
51:38the record does not say.
51:40Go back now
51:41to the morning on Saipan.
51:43July 7th, 1944.
51:46The bodies
51:46on the Tanapag Plain.
51:48The field hospitals
51:50where Japanese doctors
51:51killed their own patients
51:52rather than let
51:53the Americans have them.
51:55The question
51:56in the title
51:57of this video
51:57was
51:58why?
51:59Why would officers
52:01order their own men
52:02to die
52:02rather than let them
52:04be taken?
52:05The answer
52:06was not honor.
52:07The answer
52:08was fear.
52:09Fear of an intelligence
52:11system so effective
52:12that a single
52:13captured soldier,
52:14a man with a paybook
52:16and a memory
52:16and no training
52:17to keep silent,
52:18could unravel
52:19an entire defense.
52:22Japan killed
52:22its own men
52:23because it had
52:24no other way
52:25to stop the bleeding.
52:26And it did not work.
52:27Because the Americans
52:29had already taught
52:29the wall to speak.
52:32Thank you for staying
52:33through every minute
52:33of this one.
52:34If the story
52:35meant something to you,
52:36a like is the single
52:37best thing you can do.
52:38It is how the algorithm
52:39knows to show this
52:40to other people
52:41who care about
52:42getting the history right.
52:43Subscribe if you have not
52:45and tap the bell
52:46so you do not miss
52:47the next one.
52:48I would love to know
52:49where you are watching
52:50from today
52:50and if someone in your family
52:52served in the Second World War,
52:53in the Pacific,
52:54in Europe,
52:55anywhere.
52:56Tell their story
52:57in the comments.
52:58These videos exist
52:59because of them
53:00and because of people
53:01like you
53:02who believe the details matter.
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53:04in the next one.
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