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A single missing word turned a Pacific War leaflet program into a breakthrough story of psychology, surrender, and survival. On Okinawa and earlier islands like Attu and Leyte, American troops learned that getting Japanese soldiers to come in alive required more than firepower: it demanded trust, careful wording, and interpreters who could read what prisoners feared most.
This military history documentary traces how surrender leaflets evolved from blunt promises into carefully crafted messages like “I cease resistance,” and finally a pass that removed the soldier’s own confession from the page. Along the way, it follows Japanese American interpreters, frontline GIs, and the harsh lessons of the Pacific War, where propaganda, interrogation reports, and battlefield experience collided.
If you enjoy World War 2 stories, WW2 history, Pacific Theater analysis, military documentary narration, and forgotten wartime intelligence, this is a compelling deep dive into how language changed combat behavior. It is also ideal for listeners searching for WWII stories, historical storytelling, war history analysis, and Japanese surrender leaflet history.
This military history documentary traces how surrender leaflets evolved from blunt promises into carefully crafted messages like “I cease resistance,” and finally a pass that removed the soldier’s own confession from the page. Along the way, it follows Japanese American interpreters, frontline GIs, and the harsh lessons of the Pacific War, where propaganda, interrogation reports, and battlefield experience collided.
If you enjoy World War 2 stories, WW2 history, Pacific Theater analysis, military documentary narration, and forgotten wartime intelligence, this is a compelling deep dive into how language changed combat behavior. It is also ideal for listeners searching for WWII stories, historical storytelling, war history analysis, and Japanese surrender leaflet history.
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LearningTranscript
00:00June 20th, 1945.
00:03The southern tip of Okinawa, where the island runs out of ground
00:06and breaks into coral cliffs above the East China Sea.
00:10The American 7th Infantry Division has been fighting down this island for 80 days.
00:16Ridge after ridge. Cave after cave.
00:20And every rifleman on the line has learned the same lesson the hard way.
00:24When a Japanese soldier comes out of a cave, he comes out with a grenade or a bayonet.
00:30Or a satchel charge strapped to his chest, usually at night.
00:35So in these last days of June, when figures start appearing on the rocks along the coast in broad daylight,
00:41the rifles come up first.
00:43The man walking toward the American line is almost naked, a loincloth and nothing else.
00:49His hands are high over his head.
00:52And in one of those hands, held up like a ticket at a train station, is a piece of paper.
00:58Behind him comes another man, then a small group,
01:02then soldiers walking north along the shoreline in a loose, silent column,
01:07stripped to the waist, each one holding up the same piece of paper.
01:11The day before, 343 had come in.
01:16That alone had looked like a miracle.
01:17By sundown on June 20th, the 10th Army has taken 977 prisoners.
01:24In a single day.
01:27Now let me give you the number that makes that one mean something.
01:31For the first 70 days of this battle,
01:34the Americans averaged fewer than four prisoners a day.
01:37Fewer than four.
01:48The army's official historians, who were not men given to excitement,
01:53later called it an unprecedented accomplishment in the Pacific War.
01:57Hold on to that, because this division has a history with numbers like this.
02:02Two years earlier, on a frozen island in the Aleutians called Attu,
02:06the 7th Division fought a Japanese garrison of roughly 2,500 men.
02:11When it was over, they had taken 28 prisoners.
02:1528.
02:17Remember that number.
02:18It's going to come back.
02:19And when it does, it will mean something very different from what it means right now.
02:25Look closer at the paper in that man's hand.
02:28It's about the size of a sheet of typing paper.
02:31That is deliberate.
02:33It's big enough that a nervous 19-year-old with a rifle can recognize it from a distance,
02:38before his finger finishes the squeeze.
02:41One side is printed in Japanese.
02:43The other side is printed in English.
02:45And the English isn't for the Japanese soldier at all.
02:49It's for the American looking at him down a rifle barrel.
02:52Keep that in mind.
02:54This paper is talking to two men at once.
02:57And the Americans who designed it eventually understood that both of those men had to be persuaded.
03:04But there's something else about it.
03:06Something missing.
03:08There is one word that isn't on this paper.
03:11A word the American army had printed in heavy type across the top of hundreds of thousands of earlier leaflets.
03:18It was the obvious word.
03:20The word you or I would have chosen without a second thought.
03:23And according to the prisoners themselves, it was the word that had kept men in those caves until the flamethrowers
03:29came.
03:30If you'd like to see how the American soldier in the Pacific learned to win a fight that firepower alone
03:36couldn't, hit like and subscribe.
03:38It tells us to keep digging into stories like this one.
03:42Here is the puzzle.
03:43And I want you to sit with it for a moment.
03:46Since the end of March, American planes had scattered about 8 million leaflets over this one island.
03:528 million.
03:54That's roughly 80 pieces of paper for every Japanese defender.
03:58And for most of the battle, almost none of those defenders walked out.
04:03Then, in the space of a single week, they began coming in by the hundreds.
04:07Paper doesn't suddenly get heavier.
04:10Something about what was printed on it had changed.
04:14And the Japanese soldier on Okinawa was not softer than the one on Atu.
04:19He was raised under the same code.
04:21Many of the men in those caves had been told by their own officers that the Americans killed every prisoner
04:27they took.
04:29The American official history records exactly that.
04:32His commanding general, in a cave inside Hill 89, was two days from taking his own life rather than give
04:39up.
04:40So what changed?
04:42Not him.
04:44What changed was what the Americans had learned about him.
04:47And what they had learned about themselves.
04:51That makes this investigation a story with two halves.
04:54One half is Japanese.
04:57What a soldier of the emperor could and could not bring himself to do.
05:01The other half is American.
05:04How an army that spent three years expecting no surrender, and often accepting none, taught itself to make one possible.
05:13The missing word sits exactly where those two halves meet.
05:17And the lesson was not cheap.
05:19It cost the life of a young interpreter from the apple country of Oregon's Hood River Valley.
05:25Shot on a jungle ridge on Leyte, while he was trying to talk three Japanese soldiers into staying alive.
05:31His commanding officer was a lieutenant named Howard Moss.
05:35Remember that name.
05:37Moss will be standing at the very end of this story.
05:45That same month, another Nisei serving with the same division sat down and wrote a memo.
05:50It said, in effect,
05:53The leaflets are working.
05:54The prisoners are reading them.
05:56They believe them.
05:58And nearly every one of them objects to the same thing.
06:02That objection is the answer to this whole story.
06:05But it only makes sense once you've seen what the 7th Division saw first.
06:10On the morning of May 29th, 1943, on Attu.
06:15When the Japanese garrison showed the Americans exactly what it would do instead.
06:19May 29th, 1943.
06:224 o'clock in the morning.
06:24Attu.
06:25The last island at the far western end of the Aleutian chain.
06:29For 18 days, the 7th Infantry Division has been pushing the Japanese garrison back through snow,
06:34mud, and fog toward the island's eastern shore.
06:38The Americans have the men, the artillery, and the ships offshore.
06:43The Japanese commander, Colonel Yasuyo Yamasaki, has what is left.
06:48By one American account, about 1,400 men, nearly half of them wounded.
06:54No fleet is coming to save them.
06:57At 4 in the morning, out of the fog, they come.
07:00The charge goes through the American front line and keeps going.
07:05William Warden, an Associated Press correspondent who had been on Attu since the landing,
07:10wrote that it
07:11drove deep into the rear echelons and even beyond.
07:15The headquarters of General Eugene Landrum.
07:18American soldiers, asleep in their pup tents, were bayoneted where they lay.
07:24Engineers, medics, cooks, men who hadn't expected to fire a rifle that week,
07:29grabbed what they had and fought.
07:32And they held.
07:34By daylight, the attack had broken against the American rear.
07:37What happened next is the scene I need you to see clearly,
07:41because it shaped what nearly every American in the Pacific would believe for the next two years.
07:46The surviving Japanese didn't run, and they didn't raise their hands.
07:50They gathered in groups in the gullies.
07:53They struck grenades against their helmets to start the fuses,
07:56and they held them against their chests.
07:59Warden described the bodies lying in heaps afterward.
08:02Some of the dead were still clutching small charms,
08:05Buddhist prayers written on scraps of paper,
08:08photographs of their families,
08:10photographs of their families.
08:13Remember that detail.
08:14By the end of this story, it will matter more than almost anything else in it.
08:19Then the Americans found the hospital.
08:21Among the papers the garrison left behind was a diary kept by its surgeon,
08:25Paul Nobuo Tatsuguchi.
08:27And here is a part of the Attu story that most people have never heard.
08:33Tatsuguchi had trained in California.
08:35He graduated from Pacific Union College,
08:38earned his medical degree at the College of Medical Evangelists,
08:41known today as Loma Linda,
08:43and held a California medical license.
08:46He was a Seventh-day Adventist.
08:48He knew Americans, and he had lived among them.
08:51The diary went to division intelligence,
08:53and the first English draft was made by a Nisei soldier named Yasuo Sam Umetani.
08:59Picture that for a moment.
09:01An American of Japanese ancestry,
09:04in the cold of the Aleutians,
09:06putting into English the last words of a Japanese doctor
09:09who had studied medicine in California.
09:12The final entry contains a sentence
09:15that went around the American army like a shockwave.
09:18All the patients in the hospital were made to commit suicide.
09:22A few lines later, the doctor wrote that he was
09:24only 33 years old, and I am to die.
09:28He said he had no regrets.
09:31How Tatsuguchi himself died is disputed,
09:34and the dispute matters.
09:35In one account, he came out of his position holding a Bible
09:39and shouting that he was a Christian.
09:41One American soldier heard him and held his fire.
09:45Another, who later said he couldn't hear over the wind and the noise,
09:48saw something in the man's hand and fired.
09:52Decades later, a different version was told,
09:54and we may never know which is true.
09:57But keep the first version close.
10:00A man coming out with something in his hand,
10:02and an American with a split second to decide what it is.
10:06That moment will come again in this story.
10:09The next time, the Americans will have prepared for it.
10:14Now the arithmetic of Attu.
10:16The Japanese lost 2,351 men killed or dead by their own hand.
10:2328 were taken prisoner.
10:25The 7th Division lost 549 killed,
10:28more than 1,100 wounded,
10:30and 1,800 more to frostbite, exposure, and sickness.
10:35Turn that around and look at it from the American side.
10:38For every Japanese prisoner taken on Attu,
10:41nearly 20 Americans were dead.
10:43That was the exchange rate of a war without surrender.
10:47Copies of the translated diary were passed hand-to-hand
10:50and bootlegged across the Pacific.
10:53American newspapers ran stories
10:55on how the Japanese had killed themselves on Attu,
10:57and the army drew the obvious conclusion.
11:00The Japanese soldier does not give up.
11:03You don't plan for his surrender.
11:05You plan for his death.
11:07The Japanese soldier did carry a reason in his pocket,
11:11and the Americans knew it.
11:13On January 8, 1941,
11:15the Japanese army issued every soldier a small booklet
11:19called the Senjing-kun,
11:20the Field Service Code,
11:22in the name of the war minister, Hideki Tojo.
11:25One line in it was quoted again and again
11:27by men who had already decided to die.
11:30In one common English rendering,
11:33never live to experience shame as a prisoner.
11:37Notice what that line is really about.
11:40Not pain, not death, shame.
11:45Being captured didn't just end a soldier's war.
11:48It cut him off from his unit,
11:50his village, his family, and his name.
11:54That is why a man in a gully on Attu
11:57died holding a photograph.
11:59The photograph wasn't a comfort.
12:01It was the reason.
12:04February 1, 1944.
12:07Eight months after Attu,
12:09the 7th Division lands on Kwajalein Island
12:11in the Marshals.
12:13In four days, it destroys the garrison.
12:16By one historian's count,
12:18the division killed 4,938 defenders
12:22on Kwajalein and the islands around it
12:24and took 206 prisoners.
12:27Only 79 of those prisoners were Japanese.
12:31Most of the rest were Korean laborers.
12:33Once the island is secure,
12:35a young sergeant arrives to work
12:36through the mountain of paper
12:38the dead garrison left behind.
12:40Frank Hachia was born in 1920
12:43in Odell, Oregon,
12:44in the apple orchards of the Hood River Valley,
12:47the son of Japanese immigrants.
12:50At 15, he went with his parents to Japan,
12:53and in 1940, he came back with his father,
12:56leaving his mother and his brother
12:57on the other side of the Pacific.
13:00After Pearl Harbor,
13:01he enlisted and volunteered
13:02for the Army's Japanese Language School.
13:05Now, on Kwajalein,
13:07he is reading what the dead carried.
13:10Orders.
13:11Letters.
13:12Diaries.
13:1479 Japanese soldiers had come out alive.
13:18A tiny number.
13:19But on Attu, it had been 28,
13:22and the men asking questions in the prisoner cages
13:24were starting to hear the same thing again and again.
13:27The prisoners had fully expected
13:29the Americans to kill them,
13:30and when the Americans looked honestly
13:32at their own side of the line,
13:34they had to admit something uncomfortable.
13:35The prisoners weren't entirely wrong.
13:38August 12, 1942.
13:41Guadalcanal.
13:42A captured Japanese sailor tells the Marines
13:45that some of his comrades to the west,
13:47near the Matanikau River,
13:48are starving and might be ready to give up.
13:51The division's intelligence officer,
13:54Lieutenant Colonel Frank Gutke,
13:55decides to go and get them.
13:57He takes a patrol of about two dozen men
14:00by boat along the coast after dark.
14:03It's an ambush.
14:04The patrol is cut to pieces on the beach.
14:07Only three men make it back.
14:09In the words of the historian John Dower,
14:1220 Marines responded to what appeared
14:15to be a Japanese attempt to surrender
14:16and died for it.
14:19You can imagine how fast that story moved.
14:21From company to company,
14:23from island to island,
14:25retold and sharpened each time.
14:27A Japanese soldier with his hands up is a trap.
14:30Don't wait to find out.
14:32Now let me show you how deep that lesson went.
14:36Historian Neil Ferguson dug out
14:37a secret American intelligence report
14:39written around 1943.
14:41It concluded that
14:42only the promise of ice cream and three days leave
14:46would get American troops
14:47to stop killing Japanese soldiers
14:49who tried to surrender.
14:51Ice cream and three days leave.
14:53That was the price,
14:55in the judgment of American intelligence,
14:57of a live prisoner.
14:58And the Japanese side was listening.
15:01Tokyo Rose gave the American 41st Division
15:04a nickname on the radio.
15:05The Butchers.
15:07Japanese officers told their men
15:09exactly what the Americans did to prisoners.
15:12Remember what the official history of Okinawa recorded?
15:15That soldiers in those caves had been told
15:17the Americans killed every captive?
15:20That claim didn't come out of nowhere.
15:23Japanese propaganda took real incidents
15:25and made them the whole truth.
15:27So think about what that does.
15:29Two fears, each one feeding the other.
15:32The G.I. shoots because he expects a trick.
15:35The Japanese soldier fights to the death
15:38because he expects to be shot.
15:40Each side's behavior proves the other side right.
15:44Somebody had to break that circle.
15:46And here's what most accounts of the Pacific War leave out.
15:49The first side to try was the American one.
15:53And the order came from the very top.
15:57April 1944.
15:59American forces land at Hollandia,
16:01on the north coast of New Guinea.
16:03The Japanese garrison collapses
16:05and scatters into the jungle.
16:08By now, American planes have been dropping
16:11surrender passes for months.
16:12Some of the Japanese stragglers
16:14actually pick them up and try to use them.
16:18On May 14, 1944,
16:21General Douglas MacArthur sends a telegram.
16:24It refers to
16:25numerous reports reaching this headquarters
16:28that Japanese carrying surrender passes
16:30have been killed in the Hollandia area.
16:33He orders an investigation.
16:36A separate message to the commander
16:38of the ground forces is blunter still.
16:41This situation must be corrected
16:43if propaganda for surrender
16:45is to be successful.
16:48Stop and consider what that means.
16:50The commander of an entire theater
16:52in the middle of a campaign,
16:54taking time to protect enemy soldiers
16:56holding pieces of paper.
16:59He wasn't being sentimental.
17:01He'd figured out something about the war
17:03that most of his men hadn't yet.
17:06A live Japanese prisoner
17:07was worth more than a dead one.
17:10Much more.
17:12MacArthur's headquarters called prisoners
17:14potent sources of information.
17:17And they were stranger sources
17:18than anyone expected.
17:20The Japanese soldier had been taught
17:22never to be captured.
17:23So nobody had ever taught him
17:25what to do if he was.
17:27No name, rank, and serial number.
17:29No drill for interrogation.
17:32A man who considered himself
17:34already dead to his family
17:35often had no reason left
17:37to keep secrets.
17:39Interrogators found many of them
17:41would talk about unit positions,
17:43supply, morale,
17:45the state of their officers.
17:46Every prisoner who walked in alive
17:49could save American lives
17:50on the next ridge.
17:52So in June 1944,
17:54MacArthur's command set up
17:55a new organization,
17:56the Psychological Warfare Branch,
17:58staffed mostly by Americans
18:00from the Office of War Information,
18:02with Australian specialists alongside.
18:05Their job was the paper.
18:07What it said,
18:08where it fell,
18:09and how it worked.
18:11And they understood
18:12the problem had two ends.
18:15A notice went out
18:16to American troops.
18:18Whenever a Japanese soldier
18:19attempts to surrender,
18:21it read,
18:22hold your fire
18:23and take him prisoner.
18:25Then came the line
18:26that explained why.
18:27If one surrendering man
18:29was shot,
18:30the men behind him
18:31will decide the pass
18:33is of no value.
18:35One trigger pull,
18:36in other words,
18:37could undo a million leaflets.
18:40There was even a leaflet
18:41written for the GIs themselves.
18:43It asked whether
18:45they could take a prisoner,
18:46and it promised
18:47that interrogation
18:48would pay off.
18:49It carried a line
18:50any farm boy from Iowa
18:52would understand.
18:53A watermelon cracks easy
18:55when it is ripe.
18:57That's why the surrender pass
18:59was built the way it was,
19:01big,
19:01so a rifleman
19:03could spot it at a distance.
19:04And bilingual.
19:06Across the top,
19:07in large letters,
19:09two words.
19:10Beneath them,
19:11in English,
19:13Attention American soldiers.
19:15This leaflet guarantees
19:16humane treatment.
19:19It was half a message
19:20to the enemy,
19:21and half an order
19:22to the American
19:22who would meet him.
19:24And on the American side,
19:25it started to work.
19:27On August 18, 1944,
19:30an intelligence report
19:31from MacArthur's Command
19:32noted that,
19:33Within the past week,
19:35approximately 20 prisoners of war
19:37have been taken
19:37by our troops.
19:39The report credited
19:40two things,
19:41the surrender leaflets
19:43and the orientation
19:44given to front-line
19:45American troops.
19:4720 prisoners in one week.
19:50On Attu,
19:51the 7th Division
19:52had taken 28
19:53in an entire battle.
19:56The G.I.
19:57had shown
19:57he could be taught
19:58to hold his fire.
19:59That was a real change,
20:01and the men who made it
20:02deserve credit for it.
20:03So by the autumn of 1944,
20:06the Americans believed
20:07they had solved the problem.
20:09They had fixed the fear
20:10on their own side.
20:11They had a pass
20:12that promised fair treatment
20:13in two languages.
20:15All that remained
20:16was to drop it
20:18in enormous numbers.
20:20October 20, 1944.
20:23The 6th Army
20:24lands on Leyte
20:25in the Philippines.
20:26The 7th Infantry Division
20:28comes ashore at Dulag,
20:30and with it,
20:31a small language team
20:32under Lt. Howard Moss.
20:34Frank Hachia
20:35is on that team.
20:37Over the weeks that follow,
20:39American planes
20:40scatter passes
20:41over the Japanese positions
20:42on Leyte
20:42by the hundreds of thousands.
20:45And then something happened
20:46that none of the Americans
20:48had planned for.
20:49The Japanese soldiers
20:50on Leyte
20:51picked up the leaflets.
20:52They read them.
20:54Some of them kept them,
20:55folded small,
20:57carried for weeks.
20:58And they still didn't come in.
21:00One American sergeant
21:02later described
21:03what he saw
21:03a Japanese soldier
21:04do with one of those passes.
21:06It's a small moment.
21:08It lasts about three seconds.
21:10And it held the key
21:11to the whole problem
21:12if anyone had known
21:13how to read it.
21:14The sergeant's name
21:15was Albert Gerger.
21:17After the war,
21:18in October 1945,
21:20he told his story
21:21to a reporter
21:22from the Manila Chronicle.
21:24He described
21:25a Japanese soldier
21:26in the Philippines
21:26holding one
21:27of the American passes.
21:29The man looked at it.
21:31Then,
21:32he threw it down
21:32on the ground
21:33and ground it
21:34under his heel.
21:36As he did it,
21:37he muttered
21:38something in Japanese.
21:40Gerger would later
21:41describe what the man
21:42said as
21:43the most despised term
21:45a Japanese soldier
21:46can utter.
21:47Hold on to that.
21:49We'll come back
21:50to exactly
21:51what he muttered
21:51and why.
21:53For now,
21:54just picture the gesture.
21:56Not indifference.
21:58Not disbelief.
22:00Disgust.
22:02The man wasn't rejecting
22:03the promise
22:04of good treatment.
22:05Something on that paper
22:07had insulted him.
22:09The Americans
22:09who heard about
22:10scenes like that
22:11didn't brush them off.
22:13According to Gerger,
22:14Filipino scouts
22:15were sent into the field
22:16to study the problem.
22:18Something about the pass
22:19was wrong
22:20and nobody yet knew what.
22:22Meanwhile,
22:23on Leyte,
22:24the war went on
22:25and it was turning
22:26into exactly
22:27the kind of war
22:28where a pass
22:29ought to work.
22:31By December 1944,
22:33the Japanese defense
22:34of Leyte
22:34was breaking apart.
22:35The 7th Division
22:37had pushed across
22:38the island's mountain spine
22:39to the west coast
22:40at Ormoc Bay.
22:43On December 26th,
22:45MacArthur announced
22:46that the Leyte campaign
22:47was over,
22:48apart from minor
22:49mopping up.
22:50But mopping up
22:52meant something
22:53very specific
22:54on Leyte.
22:55Thousands of Japanese
22:56soldiers were still
22:57loose in the hills,
22:59cut off,
23:00hungry,
23:01many of them sick.
23:02No ships were
23:04coming for them.
23:05No reinforcement,
23:06no rescue,
23:08no way home.
23:10Think about those men
23:11for a moment,
23:13because they're
23:13the whole point
23:14of the leaflet program.
23:16Not the fanatic
23:17in the bunker,
23:18the man in the bamboo
23:19with no ammunition left,
23:22no rice,
23:22and no orders,
23:24who has read
23:25the American pass
23:26more than once
23:27and can't bring himself
23:28to use it.
23:30Lieutenant Moss'
23:32language team
23:32was trying to reach
23:33men like that.
23:34And one member
23:35of the team
23:36had become
23:36very good at it.
23:38Frank Hachia
23:39had stayed on Leyte
23:40after much
23:41of the heavy fighting
23:42ended.
23:43His skill
23:44at talking Japanese
23:45soldiers into
23:46surrendering
23:46was the reason.
23:48He spoke their language
23:49the way they spoke it.
23:51And in Hachia's case,
23:52that came with years
23:54of life in Japan
23:55behind it.
23:56He knew how they thought,
23:57what they feared,
23:58and what they had been
24:00told about the Americans.
24:02December 30, 1944.
24:05Hachia is called
24:06to the command post
24:07of the 32nd Infantry Regiment
24:09to help question
24:10a prisoner.
24:12The man has
24:13some vague information
24:14about a Japanese position
24:15in the hills.
24:16Two infantry companies
24:18are going out
24:18to find it,
24:19and Hachia volunteers
24:21to go with them.
24:22On the way,
24:23he sees three Japanese soldiers
24:25slip into a bamboo thicket
24:27at the edge
24:27of a heavily wooded gorge.
24:30Three men.
24:32Exactly the kind of men
24:33the leaflets were written for.
24:35Hachia asks permission
24:37to go after them
24:37and persuade them
24:38to come out.
24:40He gets it,
24:41and he moves out
24:42ahead of the riflemen
24:43who are supposed
24:43to be covering him.
24:45About a hundred yards
24:46into the thicket,
24:47it goes wrong.
24:49By the army's account,
24:51as many as 12 Japanese soldiers
24:53are waiting there.
24:54A bullet hits Hachia
24:56in the abdomen.
24:57He empties his pistol
24:58into the group,
24:59and they scatter.
25:01Then,
25:02with a wound
25:03that will kill him,
25:04he makes his way
25:05back up the ridge
25:06to the American line
25:07on his own feet.
25:09I should tell you
25:11that the accounts
25:11don't all agree.
25:13A wartime
25:14associated press story,
25:15quoting Lieutenant Moss,
25:17said Hachia
25:18had volunteered
25:19to cross a valley
25:20under fire
25:20to scout the position,
25:21and that a sniper
25:23shot him at close range.
25:25A later history
25:27allows that,
25:27in the confusion,
25:29he may even have been
25:30hit by friendly fire.
25:32What every version shares
25:34is the heart of it.
25:35He went forward,
25:37ahead of the line,
25:39toward Japanese soldiers.
25:42The field surgeon
25:43found that the bullet
25:44had gone through his liver.
25:46The men of the regiment
25:47lined up to give blood.
25:48By the newspaper account,
25:50most of the regiment
25:51volunteered.
25:52It wasn't enough.
25:54Frank Hachia died
25:55on January 3, 1945.
25:58He was 24.
26:00Now I need to tell you
26:02what was happening
26:02back home,
26:03because the timing
26:04is almost impossible
26:05to believe.
26:06On November 29, 1944,
26:09about five weeks
26:10before Hachia died,
26:12the American Legion Post
26:14in Hood River, Oregon,
26:15took the names
26:16of 16 Japanese-American
26:18servicemen
26:18off the county's
26:20roll of honor.
26:21The roll stood
26:22outside the courthouse.
26:24The Nisei names
26:25were simply painted out.
26:27When the Associated Press
26:29reported Hachia's death
26:30in February,
26:32the headline read,
26:33Nisei,
26:34Target of Legion,
26:35Dies as Hero on Leite.
26:38The story said his name
26:39had been among those
26:40removed.
26:41The truth was
26:42slightly different.
26:44Hachia's name
26:45had never been put
26:46on the board at all
26:47because he had enlisted
26:48outside the valley.
26:50But that detail
26:51didn't change
26:52what Americans
26:52reading the story
26:53understood.
26:54A young man from Hood River
26:55had died on Leite
26:56trying to bring in
26:57enemy soldiers alive
26:58while his hometown
27:00was erasing men like him
27:01from its wall.
27:02His father,
27:03the AP noted,
27:05was being held
27:06in a war relocation
27:07authority camp.
27:08His mother and his brother
27:10were in Japan.
27:12Hold that picture
27:13for a moment.
27:14A man who belonged
27:16entirely to
27:17neither country
27:18and who died
27:19trying to do something
27:20both countries thought
27:21was nearly impossible.
27:23To persuade
27:24a Japanese soldier
27:25that he could put down
27:26his rifle
27:27and live.
27:28And here is the hard
27:30question his death
27:31leaves us with.
27:32The three men
27:33he followed
27:34into that thicket
27:34had almost certainly
27:35seen the American passes.
27:38Leite was covered in them.
27:39So why didn't
27:40they use one?
27:42Why did they wait
27:43in the bamboo
27:43rather than walk out
27:45with paper in their hands?
27:47The answer was already
27:48sitting in the 7th Division's
27:50own files.
27:51It had come from
27:52the mouths of the men
27:53who did walk out.
27:55The Division had taken
27:56127 prisoners on Leite.
27:59And in January 1945,
28:00the same month
28:02Hachiyo was buried,
28:04a Nisei on the division's
28:05language team
28:06named Harold Nishimura
28:07went through
28:08what those prisoners
28:09had told the interrogators.
28:11He was looking for one thing.
28:14What had actually
28:15brought them in?
28:16What he found
28:17surprised everyone.
28:19The leaflets
28:20hadn't failed at all.
28:22They had done
28:23almost everything
28:24they were supposed to do.
28:25Almost.
28:26January 1945,
28:28Leite.
28:29The war has moved on.
28:31The big American
28:32convoys are steaming
28:33north toward Luzon.
28:35But in the 7th Division's
28:36area,
28:37the language team
28:37is still at work,
28:39one man short.
28:40And Harold Nishimura
28:42is going through paper.
28:43Not Japanese paper
28:44this time.
28:45American paper.
28:47The interrogation reports
28:48on every one
28:49of the 127 prisoners
28:51the division took
28:52on Leite.
28:54Where each man
28:54was captured.
28:55How he came in.
28:57What he said
28:58when he was asked why.
29:00It's slow,
29:01dull work.
29:02And it's the kind of work
29:04that wins wars.
29:05Because Nishimura
29:06isn't asking
29:07what the enemy is doing.
29:08He's asking
29:09what the Americans
29:10are doing
29:11that works.
29:13His first finding
29:14is the one
29:14that matters most.
29:15So let me read it to you
29:17as he wrote it.
29:18Nearly all prisoners,
29:20Nishimura reported,
29:22either surrendered
29:22using a leaflet
29:23or stated they had read
29:25and been influenced
29:26by them.
29:27Nearly all.
29:29Stop and take in
29:30what that means.
29:32Because it overturns
29:33the picture we've been
29:34building since Atu.
29:35The Japanese soldier
29:36on Leite
29:36was not unreachable.
29:38The paper got to him.
29:40He picked it up,
29:41read it,
29:42and believed
29:43at least part of it.
29:44And when he finally
29:45came in,
29:46the leaflet was very often
29:47the reason
29:48or the thing
29:49he was holding
29:49when he did it.
29:51So the half of the problem
29:52the Americans
29:53had worked so hard on,
29:54the fear of being murdered,
29:56was cracking.
29:58You'll remember
29:59what the prisoners
29:59had always said.
30:00They expected
30:01to be killed.
30:03Months later,
30:04in June 1945,
30:06the Office of War Information
30:07put a number on it.
30:09Eighty-four percent
30:10of the Japanese prisoners
30:11it surveyed
30:12had expected
30:12to be killed
30:13by their captors.
30:14And yet here,
30:16on Leite,
30:17men who expected
30:18to die
30:19were walking in anyway
30:20with an American promise
30:22in their hands.
30:23The promise
30:24was getting through.
30:26MacArthur's telegram,
30:28the notices
30:28to the troops,
30:29the GIs
30:30holding their fire,
30:31all of it
30:32was paying off.
30:34Then Nishimura
30:35reported his second finding.
30:36Of those 127 prisoners,
30:39he wrote,
30:40nearly all of them
30:41objected to one thing.
30:43Not the promise
30:44of good treatment,
30:45not the pictures,
30:47not the guarantee
30:47in two languages.
30:49They objected
30:50to a single word
30:51printed on the leaflet.
30:54Now let me give you
30:54the number
30:55that turns that
30:56into a real problem.
30:57In November 1944,
31:00across MacArthur's
31:01entire theater,
31:02the ratio was roughly
31:03100 Japanese killed
31:05for every one
31:06who surrendered.
31:08One in a hundred.
31:10Those 127 men
31:12on Leite
31:12were the one.
31:14They were the ones
31:15who had overcome
31:16everything.
31:17The code,
31:18the officers,
31:19the fear,
31:20and made it
31:20to the American line.
31:22And even they hated
31:24what the paper
31:24made them say.
31:26So ask yourself
31:27the obvious question.
31:28If the men
31:29who did come in
31:30nearly all objected
31:31to that word,
31:32how many men
31:33in the hills
31:34read the very same
31:35pass,
31:35felt the same thing,
31:37and stayed
31:38where they were?
31:39How many were
31:40in that bamboo thicket
31:41on December 30th?
31:43To understand
31:43why one word
31:44could weigh that much,
31:46go back to two things
31:47you've already seen.
31:48The first is the line
31:50in the field service code.
31:51Never live
31:52to experience shame
31:53as a prisoner.
31:55The second
31:56is the photographs
31:57in the dead man's hands
31:58on Attu.
32:00Put them together
32:01and you get
32:01the real shape
32:02of the problem.
32:03The Japanese soldier
32:05didn't only fear
32:06what the Americans
32:06would do to him.
32:08He feared
32:09what capture
32:09would do to everyone
32:11who carried his name.
32:13An American interrogation
32:14report from the 96th Division,
32:16which also fought
32:17on Leyte,
32:18put it as plainly
32:19as anything written
32:20in the war.
32:21The prisoners'
32:23greatest anxiety,
32:24it said,
32:25is that their families
32:26might be notified.
32:28not pain,
32:29not prison,
32:31their families
32:32finding out.
32:33In a village in Japan,
32:35a son killed in action
32:36was an honor
32:37to his household.
32:39A son who had been
32:40taken prisoner
32:41was something nobody
32:42had a respectable word for.
32:44He couldn't come home
32:46in glory.
32:47Many prisoners begged
32:48that their names
32:49never be sent to Japan
32:50at all.
32:51Now look at the
32:52American pass again,
32:53with those men's eyes.
32:55The rest of the leaflet
32:56was addressed
32:57to the American soldier.
32:59Attention,
32:59American soldiers.
33:01This leaflet guarantees
33:02humane treatment.
33:04That part was fine.
33:05That part was working.
33:07But the words
33:08across the top
33:08were different.
33:10They were written
33:11in the first person.
33:12They were the words
33:13of the man
33:14holding the paper.
33:15He had to carry
33:16that sentence
33:17across open ground
33:18and hold it up
33:19over his head
33:20in front of his enemies.
33:21And in his own mind,
33:23he was holding it up
33:24in front of his father,
33:25his mother,
33:26his village,
33:27and every soldier
33:28in his unit
33:29who had died
33:30rather than say it.
33:31The Americans
33:32had written a pass
33:33that guaranteed
33:34his body would be safe.
33:36And at the very top of it,
33:38in the largest type
33:39on the page,
33:40they had asked him
33:40to sign a confession.
33:42That's what Albert Gerger
33:44saw in the Philippines,
33:45when the Japanese soldier
33:46ground the pass
33:47under his heel
33:48and muttered
33:49the most despised term
33:51a Japanese soldier
33:52could utter.
33:52He wasn't refusing
33:53the American promise.
33:54He was refusing
33:55the word on top of it.
33:57And notice one more thing,
33:59because it matters
34:00for what comes next.
34:01This wasn't a problem
34:03of vocabulary.
34:04The Japanese language
34:05had words for the act,
34:07several of them.
34:08Every one of them meant,
34:10to a soldier raised
34:11on the field service code,
34:12the end of his honor.
34:14Swapping one for another
34:15wouldn't fix it.
34:17The leaflet writers
34:18would have to find a way
34:19to describe what the man
34:20was doing,
34:21without naming it at all.
34:23That's a hard thing
34:24to do in any language.
34:25And they had to do it fast,
34:27because the next campaign
34:28was already underway.
34:29On January 9th, 1945,
34:32American troops
34:33landed on Luzon,
34:34where General Yamashita
34:36had something like
34:36a quarter of a million men.
34:39Nishimura's memo
34:40named the word.
34:41You may already
34:42have guessed it.
34:43But what the Americans
34:44put in its place
34:45is the part of this story
34:46almost nobody has heard.
34:48Several people
34:49claimed credit for it,
34:51and by one account,
34:52the phrase that replaced it
34:54was suggested
34:54by a Japanese prisoner.
34:56The word was
34:57surrender.
34:58Across the top
34:59of the American Pass,
35:01in the largest type
35:02on the page,
35:02in English and in Japanese,
35:04were the words
35:05I surrender.
35:07And the term
35:08Albert Gerger
35:09heard the Japanese soldier
35:10mutter
35:10as he ground the paper
35:12under his heel
35:12contained the Japanese word
35:14for exactly that act.
35:17koufuku.
35:19Surrender.
35:20Here's a detail
35:21that makes it sharper still.
35:23The historian
35:24Allison Gilmore,
35:26who went through
35:26the reports
35:27of the Allied
35:27translator and interpreter
35:28section,
35:29found that many
35:30Japanese soldiers
35:31could read
35:31the English words too,
35:33and found those
35:34offensive as well.
35:35In her words,
35:37virtually all Japanese
35:38objected to
35:39surrender leaflets
35:40that had the words
35:41I surrender
35:42emblazoned on them.
35:44So the Americans
35:45had spent a year
35:46teaching their own men
35:47to hold fire,
35:48persuading the enemy
35:49he'd be treated well,
35:50and dropping passes
35:51by the hundreds
35:52of thousands.
35:53And at the top
35:54of every one
35:55of those passes
35:55sat the one word
35:57guaranteed to make
35:58the man holding it
35:59feel he was betraying
36:00his family.
36:02Now,
36:03who fixed it?
36:04This is where
36:05the story gets interesting,
36:06because nearly
36:07everyone involved
36:08claimed a piece of it.
36:10Albert Gerger
36:11said that after
36:11the scouts came back,
36:13the experts of the
36:14psychological warfare branch
36:15held what he called
36:16a huddle,
36:17and came out of it
36:19with a new phrase.
36:20Gilmore credits
36:21the reports coming in
36:22from the translators
36:23and interrogators,
36:24and notes that
36:25Japanese prisoners
36:26were helping to
36:27write the leaflets
36:27by this stage.
36:29The Australians,
36:30who ran their own
36:31leaflet office,
36:32tell a version
36:33in which they interviewed
36:34a Japanese prisoner
36:35named Inagaki,
36:36who told them,
36:37the term surrender
36:38was itself a barrier
36:40for the Japanese soldiers.
36:42And a post-war study
36:43of leaflets
36:44said that captured
36:45Japanese who volunteered
36:46to write propaganda
36:48taught the Allies
36:49to avoid the word.
36:51I'll be straight with you.
36:52We can't say for certain
36:53who said it first.
36:55What we can say
36:56is that every version
36:57points to the same source.
36:59The answer came
37:00from listening
37:01to the prisoners.
37:02From men like
37:03Nishimura and Hachiya
37:04sitting across from them
37:05and taking seriously
37:06what they said.
37:08And the new phrase
37:09was this.
37:10I cease resistance.
37:13Hear the difference.
37:15I surrender
37:16is a decision.
37:17It means I give myself
37:19to the enemy.
37:20It is the act
37:21the field service code
37:22had forbidden.
37:24I cease resistance
37:25is a description.
37:27It says I've stopped.
37:29The fighting is over for me.
37:32A man can stop fighting
37:33because he's out of ammunition,
37:35out of food,
37:36cut off from his unit
37:37with no orders
37:38and no officer left.
37:40Stopping isn't betrayal.
37:42It's simply what is happening.
37:44The difference sounds tiny.
37:46For the man holding the paper,
37:48it was the difference
37:49between a confession
37:49and a fact.
37:51One of the first
37:52of the new passes on file
37:53is dated January 20, 1945,
37:57made for the 6th Army on Luzon.
37:59And the leaflet writers
38:00didn't stop at the headline.
38:02Look at what else
38:03they changed,
38:03because each change
38:05answers something
38:06the prisoners had said.
38:08The text now read,
38:16The word was gone
38:18from the body, too.
38:19A version printed
38:20around March
38:21showed photographs
38:22of three Japanese prisoners,
38:24well-fed and alive.
38:26Their eyes were blanked out.
38:28The caption explained why.
38:31Eyes are covered
38:32to protect their families
38:33in Japan.
38:35Remember the 96th Division report?
38:37The prisoners' greatest fear
38:39that their families
38:40would be notified.
38:42Here was the leaflet
38:43telling them,
38:44in effect,
38:45we know,
38:46and we won't.
38:48Another line told the reader
38:49that one leaflet
38:50could be used by a group.
38:52A man didn't have
38:53to walk out alone.
38:55A small detachment,
38:56one paper,
38:58one decision,
38:59shared.
39:00And then there was
39:02a sentence aimed
39:02at something deeper.
39:04This man is no longer
39:07an enemy.
39:07The leaflet writers
39:08knew an old saying
39:09from the samurai tradition,
39:11and they used it.
39:12Between victor
39:13and vanquished,
39:14there are enemies no more.
39:16The Americans
39:17were quoting Japan's
39:19own warrior code
39:20back to the Japanese soldier
39:21and telling him
39:22that stopping
39:23could be honorable, too.
39:25Now watch what happened next,
39:27because this is where
39:28the American field commanders
39:30took over.
39:31Corps and division officers
39:33on Luzon
39:33and in the southern islands
39:35began ordering passes
39:36made for their own sectors.
39:38A major at XI Corps
39:40requested a leaflet
39:41that told Japanese soldiers
39:42exactly how to come in,
39:44stripped to the waist
39:46so the Americans
39:46could see there was
39:47no grenade.
39:4850,000 were ordered
39:50for the Corps
39:51and 150,000 more
39:53for the bomber wing
39:54that would drop them.
39:55An American regimental
39:57combat team
39:58on Cebu
39:58ordered 150,000
40:00of its own.
40:01That's the part
40:02I want you to notice.
40:04A rifleman in 1943
40:06wouldn't take a prisoner
40:07for anything short
40:08of ice cream
40:09and three days leave.
40:11Now,
40:11two years later,
40:13American combat units
40:14were asking the leaflet riders
40:15for prisoners.
40:16They had seen
40:17what a live one was worth,
40:19and the numbers
40:19began to move.
40:21Remember the ratio
40:22from November 1944.
40:24100 Japanese killed
40:26for every one who surrendered.
40:28Two months later,
40:29it was 60 to one.
40:31Three months after that,
40:3330 to one.
40:34By July 1945,
40:36in the Philippines,
40:38it was close to 7 to one.
40:407 to one,
40:41down from 100.
40:43And on Luzon,
40:45according to one study,
40:4770% of the Japanese
40:48who surrendered
40:49either carried a pass
40:50or followed its instructions.
40:53Early in 1945,
40:54nearly half of all
40:56the Japanese prisoners
40:57in the Philippines
40:58said the leaflets
40:59had influenced them.
41:01Let me be honest
41:02about what those figures
41:03do and don't prove.
41:05A starving,
41:06beaten army
41:07surrenders more
41:08than a confident one.
41:09By the summer of 1945,
41:11the Japanese forces
41:12in the Philippines
41:13were cut off,
41:14hungry,
41:14and collapsing.
41:16The new word
41:17didn't do it alone,
41:18and nobody who worked
41:19on it claimed it did.
41:20But here's what
41:21the figures do show.
41:23When a Japanese soldier
41:24reached the point
41:25where he could stop,
41:26there was now a way
41:27to stop
41:28that he could live with.
41:29The paper met him
41:31at the moment
41:31he was ready,
41:32and it didn't ask him
41:33to say the one thing
41:34he couldn't.
41:36The real test, though,
41:38wasn't in the Philippines.
41:39It was coming somewhere
41:40the Japanese army
41:41was neither beaten
41:42nor scattered.
41:44An island it had spent
41:45a year fortifying,
41:47defended by an army
41:48whose generals regarded
41:49the very idea
41:50of negotiation
41:51as a joke.
41:53And the Navy's
41:54leaflet writers
41:54were about to take
41:55the idea
41:56one step further
41:57than anyone
41:58in MacArthur's command
41:59had.
42:00They would take
42:01the soldier
42:01out of the sentence
42:03completely.
42:04Before Okinawa,
42:05the leaflet writers
42:06of the Navy
42:06and the Office
42:07of War Information,
42:08working on Guam
42:09for Admiral Nimitz's command,
42:11looked hard at the pass.
42:13And they noticed
42:14something that
42:14I cease resistance
42:16still hadn't fixed.
42:18It still said,
42:20I.
42:21The Japanese soldier
42:22was still the one speaking.
42:24He was still putting
42:25his own name,
42:26in effect,
42:27to a statement
42:27about himself.
42:29So the Navy's writers
42:30took the last step.
42:32On their new passes,
42:34the soldier didn't say
42:35anything at all.
42:36The text read,
42:38The bearer has ceased resistance.
42:41Treat him well
42:42in accordance
42:42with international law.
42:44Take him to the nearest
42:45commanding officer.
42:47Read that again
42:48and notice who is talking.
42:50Not the Japanese soldier.
42:52The paper is talking.
42:54And it's talking
42:55to the American.
42:56It reports a fact
42:58about the man holding it,
42:59the way a medical tag
43:01reports a wound.
43:02The soldier isn't
43:04confessing anything.
43:05He's just carrying
43:06a message
43:06from one American
43:07to another.
43:08About 600,000 copies
43:10of one version
43:11were dropped over Okinawa
43:12in the last 10 days
43:14of organized fighting.
43:15Now let's go back
43:17to Okinawa
43:17and to the week
43:18that took us
43:19to the scene
43:19where this story began.
43:21June 10, 1945.
43:24The Japanese 32nd Army
43:26has been driven
43:27out of its Shuri line
43:28and pushed
43:29into the last few miles
43:30of the island's
43:31southern tip.
43:32That morning,
43:33American planes
43:34drop a letter
43:35from the 10th Army commander,
43:37Lieutenant General
43:37Simon Bolivar Buckner,
43:39addressed to the Japanese commander,
43:41Lieutenant General
43:43Mitsuru Ushijima.
43:45It's a soldier's letter.
43:46It tells him
43:47his forces
43:48have fought bravely
43:49and well.
43:50It tells him,
43:51as one infantry general
43:53to another,
43:54that the destruction
43:55of his army
43:55is merely
43:56a matter of days.
43:58And it invites him
43:59to talk.
44:00Because of the chaos
44:02in the Japanese lines,
44:04Ushijima doesn't receive it
44:05until June 17th.
44:06According to
44:07the American official history,
44:08he and his chief of staff,
44:10General Isamu Cho,
44:11found it hilariously funny.
44:13Accepting it,
44:14they said,
44:15would be inconsistent
44:15with their honor
44:16as samurai.
44:18There it is.
44:19The old code,
44:20at the very top,
44:21untouched.
44:22And this is why
44:23the American leaflet writers
44:25had stopped aiming
44:26at the generals.
44:27Two days after
44:28Buckner's letter,
44:29planes scattered
44:2930,000 more leaflets,
44:31telling the Japanese troops
44:32that their commander
44:33had refused to negotiate,
44:35and urging them
44:36to make their own decision.
44:37Their own decision.
44:39The appeal
44:40had gone past
44:41the generals,
44:42straight to the soldier
44:43in the cave.
44:44June 17th.
44:46The 7th Division
44:47tries a loudspeaker.
44:48It holds its fire
44:50for a full hour
44:50while interpreters
44:51broadcast surrender appeals
44:53across the lines.
44:54A few Japanese soldiers
44:56come forward,
44:56look,
44:57and go back.
44:58One American is wounded.
45:00The Japanese put
45:01three bullet holes
45:02through the loudspeaker.
45:03The official history
45:05calls the attempt
45:06wholly ineffective.
45:08That same day, though,
45:09at a cliff
45:10near the village of Nakaza,
45:12another loudspeaker team
45:13draws five or six hundred
45:15civilians out of the caves.
45:17Among them,
45:18the interpreters pick out
45:19more than 70 Japanese soldiers
45:21who have deserted
45:22and are trying to pass
45:24as civilians.
45:25Think about what that means.
45:28Seventy armed men
45:29who had already decided
45:31to stop.
45:32What they hadn't
45:33been able to do
45:34was walk up
45:35to an American line
45:36as soldiers.
45:39June 18th.
45:41General Buckner
45:42is killed
45:42by Japanese shell fire
45:43at a forward observation post.
45:46The highest-ranking
45:47American officer
45:48to die in combat
45:49in the war.
45:50His men keep pushing south.
45:53And now,
45:54at the water's edge,
45:56something new.
45:57A small American landing craft
46:00runs slowly
46:01along the southern coast
46:02near Hill 89
46:03with a loudspeaker
46:04on its deck.
46:06The voice on the loudspeaker
46:07is Japanese.
46:09It belongs to a sergeant
46:10who'd been taken prisoner
46:12and had come to believe
46:13the Americans
46:14would keep their word.
46:15He tells the hidden soldiers
46:17what to do.
46:19Strip to your loincloth,
46:20walk north along the shore
46:22to the American lines.
46:23And again,
46:24and again,
46:25they did exactly that.
46:27Two other prisoners,
46:28recorded in the American files
46:30under the names
46:31Murimoto and Goto,
46:33went back into the caves themselves,
46:36carrying American cigarettes
46:37as proof that the men outside
46:39were being treated well.
46:40They brought out
46:41several hundred
46:42of their comrades.
46:43By the end,
46:44the Americans trusted them enough
46:46to let them carry weapons
46:47and sleep inside
46:48the company perimeter
46:49at night.
46:50Now the numbers.
46:51For the first 70 days,
46:54fewer than four prisoners a day.
46:56From June 12th to the 18th,
46:59more than 50 a day.
47:00On June 19th,
47:03343.
47:04On June 20th,
47:07977.
47:09This is the scene
47:10from the beginning.
47:11The naked men along the coast,
47:13walking north,
47:14holding up a piece of paper.
47:16Now you know
47:16what that paper said.
47:18And you know
47:19what it didn't say.
47:19Remember the number from Attu.
47:2228 prisoners
47:23in a whole battle.
47:25On June 20th on Okinawa,
47:27the Americans took
47:28nearly 35 times that
47:29in a single day.
47:31By the end,
47:327,401 Japanese
47:34had surrendered on the island,
47:36among them
47:37more than 200 officers.
47:39Roughly 260 Attis.
47:42I don't want to overstate it.
47:44Fewer than a third
47:45of the Japanese
47:46on that tip of the island
47:47chose to live.
47:48Most still died
47:49by grenade,
47:50by gunfire,
47:51or by their own hand.
47:53In the early hours
47:54of June 22nd,
47:56Ushijima and Cho
47:56killed themselves
47:57on Hill 89.
47:59But for the soldiers
48:00who could be reached,
48:01the Americans
48:02had finally found
48:03how to reach them.
48:05And it came down to this.
48:07The pass never asked
48:08a Japanese soldier
48:09to surrender.
48:10It let him stop.
48:12It spoke for him,
48:14so he didn't have
48:15to say anything at all.
48:16And it told the American
48:18at the other end
48:19of the rifle,
48:19in plain English,
48:21to keep him alive.
48:23The Americans
48:24had skipped the word
48:25that a Japanese soldier
48:26couldn't say.
48:27And seven weeks later,
48:29his emperor
48:30skipped it, too.
48:31On August 15th,
48:331945,
48:34Emperor Hirohito
48:35spoke to his people
48:36by radio
48:37for the first time.
48:39He told them Japan
48:40would accept the terms
48:41of the Allied Declaration.
48:43He spoke of
48:44enduring the unendurable.
48:46In the whole broadcast,
48:48he never once
48:49used the word
48:49surrender.
48:51When the time came
48:52for a whole nation
48:53to lay down its arms,
48:55Japan used the same way out
48:56the American leaflet
48:57writers had found.
48:59There was one more thing
49:01to happen on Okinawa,
49:02two weeks after that broadcast.
49:05Japanese soldiers
49:06were still hiding
49:07in the caves
49:07of Klinishi Ridge.
49:09And the American
49:10they chose to walk out to
49:11you was a name
49:12you've already heard.
49:13August 29th, 1945,
49:16Kunishi Ridge,
49:17Southern Okinawa.
49:19The war is over.
49:21The emperor has spoken.
49:23But on this island,
49:25in the caves
49:25of a coral ridge
49:26where the 1st Marine Division
49:28fought for days in June,
49:30there are still Japanese soldiers
49:31who have never come out.
49:33They are what is left
49:34of the Japanese
49:3532nd Infantry Regiment.
49:37Their unit was broken apart
49:39in the fighting for this ridge,
49:40and for more than two months
49:42the survivors
49:42have lived underground,
49:44waiting.
49:46Their commander
49:46is Colonel Kikuji Hongo.
49:49On this day,
49:50Colonel Hongo
49:51brings his men out.
49:52Between four and five hundred
49:54of them
49:54by the American official record.
49:56Not as a mob,
49:58not one by one
49:59with their hands up,
50:00but as a body of soldiers
50:02under their own commander.
50:03And the American officer
50:05they come out to
50:06is the language officer
50:07of the 7th Infantry Division,
50:09Captain Howard Moss.
50:11I told you at the very beginning
50:13to remember that name.
50:14Eight months earlier,
50:15Moss was a lieutenant
50:16on Leyte,
50:17and it was his interpreter
50:18who walked into
50:19a bamboo thicket
50:20to talk three Japanese soldiers
50:22out alive,
50:23and didn't come back.
50:25It was Moss
50:26who told the Associated Press
50:27what Frank Hachia had done.
50:30Since the fighting
50:31on Okinawa ended,
50:32his team had persuaded
50:33several hundred Japanese soldiers
50:34to give up.
50:36Now a whole regiment's survivors
50:37were walking out to him.
50:39There's a small detail here
50:41I can't leave out.
50:42Frank Hachia went on
50:43his last patrol
50:44from the command post
50:45of the American
50:4632nd Infantry Regiment.
50:48The Japanese unit
50:49that walked out of the caves
50:51to Howard Moss
50:51was also called
50:53the 32nd Regiment.
50:54It's a coincidence,
50:56nothing more.
50:56But it's the kind of coincidence
50:58that makes you stop
50:59for a second.
51:00So what happened
51:01to the people in this story?
51:03Albert Gerger told his story
51:05to the Manila Chronicle.
51:07Harold Nishimura's memo
51:08went into the files of the war,
51:10where historians would find it
51:11decades later.
51:12The leaflets themselves
51:13ended up in scrapbooks,
51:14museum drawers,
51:15and university archives,
51:17which is the only reason
51:18we can still read the words
51:19on them today.
51:21And Frank Hachia came home.
51:24In April 1945,
51:26under heavy public pressure,
51:28much of it stirred by his story,
51:30the American Legion post
51:31in Hood River
51:32put the Nisei names
51:33back on the county honor roll.
51:35Three years later,
51:37on September 11, 1948,
51:40Hachia's remains
51:41were brought back from Hawaii
51:42and buried in Hood River,
51:43the valley where he'd grown up
51:45among the apple orchards.
51:47The town that had painted out
51:49his comrades' names
51:50buried him with honors.
51:51He was awarded the Silver Star
51:53for what he did
51:54on December 30, 1944.
51:57And in May 1980,
51:59the Defense Language Institute
52:00at the Presidio of Monterey
52:02named a building after him.
52:04Every year,
52:06young American soldiers
52:07learning the languages
52:08of other nations
52:08walk past the name of a man
52:10who died using his.
52:12Now let's put the whole story
52:13back together.
52:14On Attu,
52:16the 7th Division
52:17took 28 prisoners
52:18in an entire battle
52:20and lost nearly 20 Americans
52:22for every one of them.
52:24The army concluded
52:26that the Japanese soldier
52:27simply did not surrender.
52:29Then, step by step,
52:32Americans took that conclusion apart.
52:35A theater commander
52:36protected enemy soldiers
52:37carrying passes
52:38because he understood
52:40a live prisoner
52:41could save his own men's lives.
52:44Riflemen,
52:45who once wouldn't take a prisoner
52:47for ice cream
52:47and three days leave,
52:48learned to hold their fire.
52:52Nisei interpreters
52:53sat across
52:54from frightened,
52:55ashamed men
52:56and listened.
52:57One of them died
52:58in the effort.
52:59Another went through
53:01127 interrogations
53:03and found that
53:04the leaflets were working
53:05and that the one thing
53:07still in the way
53:08was a single word
53:09at the top of the page.
53:12So the Americans
53:13took it out.
53:14I surrender
53:15became
53:16I cease resistance.
53:18And then the soldier
53:19was taken out
53:20of the sentence altogether.
53:22The bearer
53:23has ceased resistance.
53:24Treat him well.
53:26A hundred dead
53:27for every prisoner
53:28became seven.
53:30Fewer than four prisoners
53:31a day on Okinawa
53:32became 977.
53:35And at the very end,
53:37the emperor himself
53:38ended the war
53:39without saying the word.
53:42That's the answer
53:43to the question
53:43this story started with.
53:45The American leaflet
53:46worked because
53:47it never asked
53:48a Japanese soldier
53:49to surrender.
53:50It let him stop
53:52and it told the American
53:54in front of him
53:54to let him live.
53:57Those naked men
53:58walking north
53:59along the shore
54:00with paper in their hands
54:01weren't there
54:02because the Americans
54:03had found a louder threat.
54:05They were there
54:06because Americans
54:06had taken the trouble
54:07to understand
54:08what the enemy
54:09couldn't bring himself
54:10to say
54:11and then simply
54:12stopped asking him
54:13to say it.
54:15On Attu,
54:16the dead held photographs
54:18of their families.
54:19On Okinawa,
54:21more than 7,000 men
54:22walked out alive
54:24and their families
54:25would see them again.
54:27Between those two islands
54:28stand an Oregon farm boy
54:30buried in Hood River,
54:32the G.I.s
54:33who learned
54:33to hold their fire
54:34and the men
54:36who wrote the paper.
54:37Thank you for watching
54:38this one all the way
54:39to the end.
54:40If this story meant
54:41something to you,
54:42please hit like.
54:43It sounds like a small thing,
54:44but it is how a story
54:45like this finds the people
54:46who ought to hear it.
54:48Subscribe and turn on the bell
54:50so you don't miss the next one.
54:51And tell me in the comments
54:53where you're watching from.
54:54If your father,
54:56your grandfather,
54:56or your uncle
54:57served in the Second World War,
54:59I'd be honored
55:00if you'd write his name
55:01and his unit below.
55:03Whether he was an American G.I.
55:05on Okinawa
55:05or he served alongside
55:07the Americans
55:08anywhere in that war,
55:09his name belongs here.