Higa was one of more than a dozen American soldiers of Japanese ancestry who were involved in the Battle of Okinawa, which some historians have called the “cruelest battle of the Pacific.” It was a costly battle. More than 12,000 Americans and some 95,000 Japanese–60,000 of whom were Okinawan civilians–were killed.
For Kalihi resident Takejiro Higa, the Battle of Okinawa would pit two “parents” against each other.
Higa was born in Waipahu. At the age of 2, his mother took him, his brother Warren, then 5, and 8-year-old sister Yuriko to Okinawa to meet their grandparents. His father remained in Hawaii and operated the family store. Three years later he went to Okinawa to accompany his family back to Hawaii.
Higa was 11 when his parents died within a year of each other. His grandparents, with whom he and his mother had lived, died the following year. For the next four years, he lived with an uncle.
As his 16th birthday neared, Higa began thinking seriously about returning to Hawaii. New immigration to Hawaii had been halted in 1924, and Japan had begun sending young, able-bodied men to settle in Manchuria in its efforts to control Asia militarily.
When Higa turned 16 in April 1939, he wrote to his sister in Hawaii, asking her to sponsor him back to Hawaii “before the Japanese army grab me.” “Personally, I didn’t want to go Manchuria. If I had to leave Okinawa, I’d rather go back to Hawaii where my sister and brother and other relatives were.”
That July, 14 years after leaving Hawaii as an infant, Takejiro Higa went “home.”
Less than three years later, Japan and America were at war.
In early 1943, despite reservations about his lack of proficiency in English, Higa volunteered for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. His brother volunteered, also. Warren made the cut; Takejiro didn’t.
Several months after the 442 had left for training at Camp Shelby, Higa received a letter from the War Department, informing him of its plans to organize a unit of Japanese language soldiers, the Military Intelligence Service (MIS), to serve in the Pacific warfront. Was he willing to serve?
“It put me in terrific turmoil, psychologically, because, if it’s Japanese, it’s understood I’ll be sent to the Pacific warfront,” he says. What if he came face to face with someone he knew - a relative, a classmate. “It may not happen, but it was possible,” he said.
It left him torn between his personal anxiety and his desire to serve his country. After days of soul searching, Higa decided to volunteer for the MIS. This time he made the cut.
Higa was accepted into the MIS and underwent eight months of language training at Camp Savage, where he studied not only the language, but technical and military terminology based on a Japanese Military Academy textbook. He graduated in July 1943.
At his sister’s request, Takejiro was assigned to his brother’s team, an action that required War Department approval. The practice had been banned after five brothers serving on the same cruiser were killed when it was torpedoed in the South Pacific.
“In my case, my sister wanted me to be with my brother because of my lack of proficiency in English. She felt that two brothers serving together would cover each other and help each other,” Higa explained.
The brothers returned to Hawaii in the summer of 1944 and were assigned to the 96th Infantry Division. After two weeks of jungle training on Oahu, their jobs as soldiers officially began when the 96th was sent overseas.
En route to their destination, Yap Island, they learned that the island had been secured. So the 96th was diverted to Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s headquarters in New Guinea and then dispatched to Leyte lsland in the Philippines.
The captain said he heard that Higa had lived in Okinawa for many years. In what area, he asked. Higa pointed to the general area of his grandfather’s village in Nakagusuku.
Next he pulled out an aerial photo of Okinawa’s capital, Naha City. “I couldn’t recognize it at first,” Higa says. “It was completely destroyed.”.
The captain then pulled out another photo. Higa recognized it instantly as his grandfather’s village, Shimabuku, which, up until five years ago, had been his home. “My hair stood up! For awhile I couldn’t even open my mouth; I was so choked up.”
Higa looked at the photo through a special three-dimensional glass capable of picking up minute details. “I instantly recognized my Grandpa’s home and from there, finger-traced all of my relatives’ houses.” To his relief, their homes were intact.
The captain then pulled out a shot of a typical country hillside in Okinawa. Higa glanced at it and then looked back at the captain with a “so what?” look. “Godammit, look carefully,” shouted the captain. “We think the whole island is fortified!” The captain had mistaken traditional Okinawan burial tombs for fortifications. “I suddenly realized the wrong impression the captain and other intelligence officers had.” Higa proceeded to give the officers a crash course in Okinawan culture.
He explained that Okinawans view their burial tomb as their permanent home. Thus, they try to build them on a hillside with a good view, overlooking the ocean. He also explained that the crater-like holes intelligence officers had observed in the comers of fields were composting pits used by farmers, not machine gun nests.
“From that time on, he (the captain) said, ‘Sgt. Higa, you’re going to assist us right through here.’” Higa was sworn to silence. When he returned to division headquarters later, his brother asked him what he had done during the day. “Don’t ask me, because I’ve been told not to say anything,” Takejiro replied.
Unbeknownst to him; Warren had informally volunteered his brother’s first-hand knowledge of Okinawa to the division brass in the event of an Okinawa invasion.
All the signs–the aerial photos, the questions–pointed to an Okinawan invasion. Higa says he knew of the plans at least five months before the actual strike. The only thing he didn’t know was the exact landing date.
Higa proved a big help to Corps headquarters because the area in which they landed was about a mile from where he had grown up.
“It was a horrible feeling,” he says. “Ever since the first day I saw the picture, every night I used to dream about my relatives. Every night … never miss,” Higa said, his voice breaking. “I dreamed about my uncle, my cousins, and even schoolmates.”
But as an American soldier, he had a duty to perform. The last thing he wanted to do was harm his former countrymen, but he didn’t know how he could do that without violating the military code of conduct.
“Deep inside I was torn,” he says. “That feeling is hard to describe. Unless you yourself experience it, you don’t appreciate it.”
By late December, Leyte had been secured. In March 1945 the soldiers in the 96th Division boarded a troop ship. On their second day at sea, they were told their destination: Okinawa.
Higa was often called to the radio shack to translate radio transmissions they had picked up from Okinawa. Most of the time they were music programs with some Okinawan language sprinkled in the broadcast.
The Okinawa offensive, code-named “Operation Iceberg,” began April 1. Early that morning the soldiers lined up on the deck.
“When the outline of Okinawa came up, I instantly recognized the hills. I couldn’t help but choke up,” Higa says almost 50 years later, fighting back tears, his voice breaking.
Only five years had passed since he left Okinawa, and his heart was being tugged in two opposite directions. “I’m an American G.I. I have a duty to perform, and yet I have a cultural obligation to Okinawa. I was really torn between loyalty and patriotism versus personal feeling … . I can tell you I had tears in my eyes.”
It was different for his brother Warren, he says. True, he was Uchinanchu and Okinawa was the land of his ancestors. But he had not established an emotional attachment to the island in his three years there. “In my case, I grew up there. Although I’ve been back in Hawaii over 50 years, even to this day, the little country roads and small ditches and taro patches that we played in seem more like a real homeland to me than Honolulu.”
Higa recites an old Japanese saying: “Mitsugo no tamashi hyaku made… The spirit of a 3-year-old child will last a hundred years.” “What you learn in your small kid time, you’ll never forget.”
Because of his first-hand knowledge of the area and the Okinawan dialect, Higa was assigned to the division’s advanced unit. They landed at the Chatan beachhead on the western side of the island.
Higa remembers his first image on land. “There were farm houses all on fire, farm animals all over the place, all dead, some of them burning.”
The soldiers began moving towards higher ground. While walking through a narrow road, Higa saw something move in a small roadside dugout. “My heart stopped beating.” Higa jumped back and took cover. Slowly he began walking toward the dugout. With his carbine trained, he ordered loudly, “Come out, whoever you are! Come out!”
Higa was so scared he can’t remember whether he spoke English, Japanese or Okinawan. “I meant to speak Uchinaguchi (Okinawan dialect), but I have a feeling it was a mixture of everything,” he laughs.
After returning to Hawaii in 1939, he had made a concerted effort to not speak Okinawan and to learn English. In the excitement of the moment, he says he wouldn’t be surprised if what he uttered was a mish-mash of Japanese, Uchinaguchi, English and pidgin.
There was no response to his order, so Higa began squeezing his trigger. Suddenly he saw a thin human leg appear. “'Njiti (come out) mensooree (please)!” he ordered in Uchinaguchi.
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