Japanese American POW "unmasked"

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Martin Cherrett in his excellent daily blog, World War II Today, points out that June 1 was the 70th anniversary of the "discovery" by Japanese guards that Staff Sergeant Frank Fujita of the Texas National Guard, their prisoner, was Japanese.

Fujita was a member of the 2D Battalion, 131st Field Artillery, Texas National Guard during World War II. Known as the Lost Battalion, they were captured in March 1942 on Java. Its members were sent to build the infamous Thai-Burma Death Railway. SSgt Fujita was then sent to be a slave laborer for Kawanami Shipyards at Fukuoka #2B near Nagasaki. He was also sent for interrogation to the infamous Ofuna Naval Interrogation Center and then forced to do radio propaganda at Omori where he was liberated.

Because SSgt Fujita was not part of the famous Japanese American 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team nor a member of Military Intelligence Service (MIS) during WWII, he was not honored by Congress on November 2, 2011 with a gold medal. There has been no  gold medal for the American POWs of Japan.

An excerpt from his memoir with military historian Stanley L. Falk, Foo, A Japanese-American Prisoner Of The Rising Sun: The Secret Prison Dairy of Frank “Foo” Fujita (1993), of his "unmaking" is below.

On June 1, 1942 almost one year and three months after we were captured in Java, a Japanese guard realized that my name was Japanese, here in Nagasaki, Japan. This guard, like so many people in Japan, could read something printed in English, but they could not understand when it was read back to them.
…
As room chief my name was at the top of the roster and when he saw it, his eyes liked to have popped out and he pointed to my name and said: ‘Fujital Fujita Nippon no namai!’ (Fujita is a Japanese name!’) And then he asked me where Fujita was, and I told him that he had gone to the benjo [toilet]. He said that he would wait and I moved towards the back of the room with my heart in my mouth and shaking like a leaf. I was as close to being scared to death as I will ever come. The guard remained at the front of the room and asked everyone that came into the room, where Fujita was. 

Almost everyone in the room was as keyed up as I was, for they had sweated my being found out, too, and now that the time had come they all stood around with bated breath to see what would happen next. 

Another man came into the room and the guard asked him where Fujita was and he looked around and saw me, and before anyone could caution him, he pointed to me and said ‘There he is!’ 

The guard looked surprised and also a little put out with me for having told him that Fujita had gone to the benjo. Any other time I would have been beaten up on the spot, but this time he was much too excited over his discovery to think of bashing me about.
He called me back up to the front of the room and looked me up and down, sucking his teeth and muttering something incredulously about Fujita being a POW. He tried to carry on a conversation with me, about me, and finally decided that I really could not speak the language. He would feel of my skin and then put his arm next to mine and compare them, and like the guard at the wash rack, he said ‘Somma, Somma! He would turn to the other guys in the room and then point to me and then to himself and tell them that we were somma, somma. 

Finally he could not stand it any longer, that he was the only Japanese to know this so he took off for the guard house. 

I really became frightened then and felt very strongly that my untimely demise could be forthcoming posthaste! Even though I felt like this, I still felt hope way down deep that I would survive the war in one piece. 

In a little while he brought another guard with him to look me over, only to have the lights go out, for it was bedtime and all room lights were turned out at 10:00 PM. 

Well, there was no sleep for me this night and Sgts. Heleman and Lucas were trying to comfort me and convince me that maybe they would not kill me after all. I was in such mental anguish that even the bedbugs, fleas, and mosquitos were not bothering me. 

During the night, each time the guard shift changed, the guards would take turns coming to my room and looking at me, even those who normally patrolled the other side of the camp 

Fujita became an object of curiosity for the Japanese but he survived several interrogations by pretending to be stupid. He upset them by refusing to join the Japanese Army and in the end they let him return to the ranks of the other U.S. POWs.

Lost Battalion

Seventy years ago today, March 8th, Texas’ famous “Lost Battalion” became “lost.” The 2nd Battalion, 131st Field Artillery Regiment, 36th Infantry Division of the US Army from Fort Richardson, Jacksboro, Texas was captured by Japanese forces on Java. They were considered “lost” because no one knew what happened to them until the war was nearly over. To the War Department they had simply disappeared.

Originally National Guardsmen from Wichita Falls, Abilene, Lubbock, and other towns throughout northwest Texas, the unit was activated into federal service in November 1940. They left the United States on 21 November 1941 and were on their way to the Philippines when Pearl Harbor was bombed. The unit was diverted to Australia and put under Dutch command, then sent to Java Island of the Dutch East Indies. They arrived at Soerabaja, Java on 11 January 1942.

The Japanese started bombing Java on 3 February 1942. After a series of brief, fierce battles, the Island fell to the Japanese on 8 March 1942. The Texans were the first Americans to fight alongside Australian troops. Of the 558 men and officers of the 131st who fought on Java, 534 became prisoners of war of the Japanese. These soldiers were transferred to prison camps throughout the Empire, including Singapore, Burma, Manchuria, Burma, and Japan. Most were sent to slave on the Thai-Burma Death Railroad popularized by the film The Bridge on the River Kwai.

Eighty-nine men, one out of six, perished during the Battalion’s 42-month “invisible” captivity. Those that endured the ordeal emerged from the liberated POW camps sick and emaciated, little more than walking skeletons whose health was permanently impaired. The survivors held an enduring bond with the survivors of the USS Houston with whom they were imprisoned and many viewed themselves are one unit.

 Located at the other end
of the parking lot from the interpretive
center of Fort Richardson State Historical Park.

Illness and death were constants. What was the secret of their survival? When that question was put to an elderly veteran of the "Lost Battalion," he answered, "The thing that brought most of us through it was the comradeship we showed for each."

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One of the most distinctive features of the 131st was that it included both a Japanese-American and a Chinese- American soldier.  Frank Fujita was a farm boy from Abilene, Texas. His fellow soldiers called him “Foo” that his biography is entitled, Foo : A Japanese-American Prisoner of the Rising Sun : The Secret Prison Diary of Frank 'Foo' Fujita. It took his captors two years to recognize that he was Japanese. 

Eddie Fung had gone to Midland, Texas from San Francisco as a 16-year old to become an cowboy. At 17, he enlisted in the Texas National Guard. After the War, he used the GI Bill to study chemistry at Stanford University. He gives his account of his life in The Adventures of Eddie Fung: Chinatown Kid, Texas Cowboy, Prisoner of War.

Both men were among those who returned home after the War.

The "Lost Battalion" remains the "Most Decorated Unit" in Texas of any War and USS Houston CA-30 remains the "Most Decorated" vessel of it's class in the U.S. Fleet.

Asian laborers or rǒmusha made up the majority of the deaths on the Thai–Burma Death Railway. Malay and Burmese workers had the largest number of dead. By comparison, Australians deaths totaled over 2,700 and American 25. [Data from Rod Beattie, The Death Railway: A Brief History of the Thailand–Burma Railway, TBRC Co., Kanchanaburi, 2009.]

The Wise County Heritage Museum in Decatur Texas has an entire room devoted to the Texas Lost Battalion. Two books are of special interest are: a first-person account of the horrors  a POW from a Battalion survivor, A Thousand Cups of Rice: Surviving the Death Railway, and a scholar's recent research, Hell under the Rising Sun: Texan POWs and the Building of the Burma-Thailand Death Railway. 

This video recounts one POW's experience: Missing In Action: The Story of Paul D. Stein and the Lost Battalion.


To the best of our knowledge, not one Texas Senator or Congressperson acknowledged the 70th anniversaries of either the sinking of the USS Houston or the capture of the Lost Battalion. Kay Granger (R-TX) represents Decatur and Mac Thornberry (R-TX) represents Jacksboro in Congress. Neither has yet to become co-sponsors of H. Res. 333 that asks Japan to do more to honor and remember these POWs from Texas. Thornberry's nonresponse is surprising as he owes his political career to a former American POW of Japan, Roland Towery who fought on Corregidor. Towery went on to be a prominent newspaperman in Texas and winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

As an aside, in November 1944 as members of the "Lost Battalion" toiled in Burma as POWs of Japan, another Texas Battalion was "lost." This time in Europe, Vosges, France. The 141st Infantry Regiment from the 36th Texas Division was surrounded by the German army and cut off from supply lines. The Japanese American  442nd Regimental Combat Team (about 3,000 men) was ordered to rescue the this "Lost Battalion." After days of near constant fighting, the 442nd suffering roughly 1,000 casualties fulfilled their mission. Two hundres soldiers were killed in action (or missing) with over 800 seriously wounded. The 442nd for its heroic action in the Vosges received 5 Presidential Unit Citations and last year (2011) a Congressional Gold Medal. Texan Frank Fujita, it should be noted, was not included in the Nisei Congressional Gold Medal.

As an aside, Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe visited Burma on May 25, 2013 where he paid his respects to Japan's war dead by visiting the Yeway Cemetery. The is no mention if he visited the memorials to the other laborers for Emperor.

Updated 7/28/13

February 19, 1942

President Obama and Australian PM Gillard
at memorial in Darwin for the USS Peary

On February 19, 1942, the United States was reeling from the realization that it has entered its second world war in the same century. Japan's attacks on the American possessions of Pearl Harbor, the Philippines Islands, Midway, Wake Island, and Guam were followed by fall of the British, French, and Dutch colonies in Asia. Bad news increased by the day.

That day, Japan began its assault on Australia. It was the first of 63 air attacks that Darwin and Western Australia endured between 1942 and 1943. The bombs that fell on February 19, 1942, officially killed 243 Australians, although many believe the figure is higher. The USS Peary, in Darwin's harbor that day, was sunk and 88 of its crew killed.

Remarkably, this year's anniversary will also be the first time it is recognized as a national day of observance, joining Anzac Day and Remembrance Day as a date when Australians can pause to remember those who lost their lives, many without acknowledgment.

In the United States, fear overtook the nation. Spies were believed to be hiding everywhere.  Japanese, German, and Italian immigrant communities were targeted for revenge. They were viewed with prejudice and suspicion.

So on February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 that allowed authorized military commanders to designate "military areas" at their discretion, "from which any or all persons may be excluded." The aim was to remove from both the West and East Coast potential threats to "national security." The order allowed the U.S. Government to forcibly remove approximately 120,000 Japanese-Americans from the West Coast to camps in remote parts of the country as well as 11,000 German-Americans and  418 Italian-Americans from the East Coast.

In the end, Japan never invaded Australia. The war in Asia lingered as it was secondary to the one in Europe. Spies were arrested and espionage did taper off, but at a great cost of American civil liberties, rule of law, and due process.

In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which had been sponsored in the House by Representative Norman Mineta and in the Senate by Senator Alan K. Simpson to provide redress of $20,000 for each surviving detainee, totaling $1.2 billion dollars. On September 27, 1992, the Civil Liberties Act Amendments of 1992, appropriating an additional $400 million to ensure all remaining internees received their $20,000 redress payments, was signed into law by President George H. W. Bush, who also issued another formal apology from the U.S. government. In 2009, President George W. Bush signed into law $38 million to preserve and restore 10 of the camps where Japanese-Americans were interned.

No apologies have been offered to the German and Italian Americans.

Today, the Japanese American National Museum launched a Remembrance Project, a website where people can pay tribute to those affected by internment and read stories others have posted.

Heroes All

SSgt Frank Fujita
POW of Japan

On November 2, Japanese-American war veterans received one of the highest U.S. awards. These veterans of the 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, as well as the Military Intelligence Service (MIS) were collectively awarded a Congressional Gold Medal. It will be stored at the Smithsonian. Veterans can buy a bronze replica if they want.

The awards ceremony was held in the great hall of the Capitol Visitor's Center and hosted by the House and Senate leadership. A full military color guard participated.

Later that week on November 4th many of these veterans met for the first time with Navajo and African-American recipients of the same honor for a celebratory dinner in Beverly Hills, California involving the three historically segregated military units.

 The other groups received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2000 and 2006, respectively. The dinner was organized by the Go For Broke National Education Center, a group working to preserve the history of the ''Nikkei'' World War II veterans.

Meeting men from the other segregated units had a deep emotional impact, a Japanese-American veteran said. ''I just hope the world will be a safer place to live now, for all of us,'' he said.

Interestingly, at least five Japanese-American WWII veterans did not serve in these units. They are believed to have been in the Army Air Corps like Ben Kuroki, who flew 28 missions over Japan. Cmdr Douglas Wada was the only one in the Navy. One, however, was from the Texas National Guard and became a POW of Japan. He did not receive an honor on November 2nd.

Staff Sergeant Frank Fujita was a member of the 2D Battalion, 131st Field Artillery, Texas National Guard during World War II. Known as the Lost Battalion, they were captured in March 1942 on Java. Its members were sent to build the infamous Thai-Burma Death Railway. SSgt Fujita was then sent to be a slave laborer for Kawanami Shipyards at Fukuoka #2B near Nagasaki. He was also sent for interrogation to the infamous Ofuna Naval Interrogation Center and then forced to be used for radio propaganda at Omori where he was liberated.

During his three-and-a-half year incarceration, Fujita kept a diary, from which he wrote his autobiography: Foo: A Japanese-American Prisoner of the Rising Sun : The Secret Prison Diary of Frank 'Foo' Fujita. He endured years of beatings and disgrace. Yet, his loyalty to the U.S. and his unit never wavered, even when the Japanese offered him a commission, money, and women. He turned it all down, accepting unending abuse and refused to assist in Japan's propaganda effort. His strength of character was an inspiration to his comrades.

SSgt Fujita became an Air Force illustrator after the war and died in 1996 in Abilene, Texas.

Segarent Richard Sakakida was also a POW of the Japanese. He was a member of MIS, which was included in the collective Congressional Gold Medal. Sakakida was captured on Corregidor and endured months of torture by the Kempeitai at several POWs camps in the Philippines. See, A Spy in Their Midst: The World War II Struggle of a Japanese-American Hero, Richard Sakakida, as told to Wayne S. Kiyosaki. Madison Books, 1995. Lt. Col. Sakakida died in 1996.