Williwaw January 2022

From the Editors

As night fell on the evening of December 7, 1941, the Alaska Territory was on alert, blackouts were instituted, and speculation was rampant. The AP reported that Army officers suggested that the Imperial Japanese Navy might swing by Alaska on a northern route back to their home islands. General Simone Buckner revoked leave for all servicemen to ensure that the Alaska Communications System was fully staffed.

Within days, dozens of stories peppered the papers across the country about what was going on, or what was speculated to be happening in the remote Alaskan Territory. One piece that circulated widely, perhaps in an effort to ease fears of a Japanese attack on a massive, nearly impossible-to-defend territory, was about how all-weather flying was possible from the lower 48, through Canada, and onto Alaska. The effort, however, was met with equal parts concern with The Chicago Daily News-Post-Dispatch reporting that talk of spies and hostile submarines caused quite a scare in Sitka, Alaska. On Christmas Eve, the Mount Carmel Item, of Pennsylvania, ran a story headlined “U.S.-Alaska Highway, Once Mere Tourist Project, Now Seen as Vital Defense Link”.

For the remainder of the 1941 holiday season, the only thing certain was uncertainty. No one knew how far in the future victory lay, but President Franklin Roosevelt was sure that “ No matter how long it may take us… the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.” Through his leadership and the deeds of regular citizens who did extraordinary things, the United States helped the Allies defeat the Axis powers and reshaped the world for democracy.

In this edition of the Williwaw you’ll notice a few changes. We have provided more information about the veterans list above. This was done intentionally to give readers more information about each veteran. Who knows, you might be able to find a connection. (Speaking of connections, we are always excited to help you share your veteran’s stories with our readers. We’ll be highlighting veterans with Aleutian connections in each issue of the Williwaw.)

We have a guest contributor, Ephriam Dickson, former Deputy Chief of Field Museums Division with the U.S. Army Center for Military History, and Acting Chief of Interpretation and Education at Yosemite National Park. He’s generously provided us a look into the story of the few Japanese POWs who were captured or surrendered at the Battle for Attu.

Rachel Mason, the Program Manager for the Affiliated Areas in the Alaska Region of the National Park Service also provides a look into the perspective of Japanese soldiers with the story of Karl Kasukabe, raised in America but drafted into the Japanese Imperial Army, who was on both Attu and Kiska during the war.

As always, we encourage you send cards to Mail for Morale, care of KUCB on Unalaska. During the holiday season these cards and notes mean a lot to the servicemen and women who were stationed on the Aleutian Islands. If you know someone who should be included, please drop us a line and we will have them added to the list.

Wishing you a happy and safe holiday season and a Happy New Year!

References:

Mount Carmel Item. December 24, 1941. P. 3.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch. December 8, 1941. P. 19.
The Cincinnati Enquirer. December 9, 1941. P. 2.
The Vancouver Sun. December 9, 1941, P. 22.

Centenarian Corner

Henry Gremmer, 101 of Britt, IA
Paul Schaughency, 100 of Pittsburgh, PA - Post Headquarters Adak
John Panza, 100, of Follansbee, WV
Talmage Bryd, 100, of Vancleave, MS
Paul Cohen, 100, of Los Angeles, CA - Bronze Star Recipient

(Not Quite) Centenarian Corner

Michael Amditis, a US Navy and Marine veteran, celebrated his 97th Birthday with members of the Young Marines in Port Saint Lucie, FL.

TAPS

Army

Joseph Harry Sasser, Jr., 99, of Carthage, MS - 50th Combat Engineers, Battle for Attu and Invasion of Kiska
Gerald Lamontagne, 97, of Sanford, ME - Landed on Kiska with Operation Cottage
Raymond R. Lawson, 101, of Bellevue, IA - AAF - 571st Signal Aircraft Warning Battalion
Harold E. Dodge, 94, of Montrose, CO
John Lorenz, 100, of Cromwell, CT - AAF - Control Tower Operator
Arnold Hano, 99, of Laguna Beach, CA - 7th Infantry Division, Artillery Bn.
John S. “Jack” Ducat, 92, of Alexandria Bay, NY
Floyd H. Erikson, 99, of Ann Arbor, MI - 10th Mountain Division
Joseph W. Powell of Charlestown, WV - Army Specialized Training Program & AAF
Charles “Charlie” Leggiero, of Vail, CO - 10th Mountain Division
Johnnie Allen, Sr. of Florence, TN

Navy

Lawrence A. Campagne, 100, of Elma, WA - Seabee
Eugene Talbot, 95, of Great Barrington, MA
Donald R. Smith, 97 of Excelsior Springs, MO - Gunners Mate, USS Salt Lake
Richard C. “Dick” Henneman, 96 of Omak, WA - backseat OS2U Kingfisher
Frank J. Muehlmann, 95, of Frankfort, Michigan - Seabee

Marines

Jasper E. Smith, 99, of Sonoma, CA - Pearl Harbor Survivor, Purple Heart Recipient, USS Indianapolis, 3rd Squad, 3rd Platoon, I Company, 23rd Marines’

Coast Guard

Joseph “Joe” Cronan, 95, of Grafton, MA - USS Albuquerque

Joyce Abramson in her nursing days.

Photo courtesy Jonathan Sherman.

From Africa to the Aleutian Islands – by Jonathan Sherman

In a time when travel was difficult and expensive, World War II saw Americans temporarily located in places they would very likely never have gone, exposed to cultures that they had only read about in their high school textbooks or, perhaps, National Geographic.

Joyce A. Abramson explored some of those cultures up-close. Born August 17, 1921 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she graduated from Lower Merion High School in 1939. The United States was still officially neutral and President Franklin Roosevelt hadn’t yet been elected to an unprecedented third term. Wanting to be a nurse, she began her medical training at Jewish Hospital in Philadelphia.

Joyce hadn’t yet finished her training when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Sometime in 1942, representatives from the Red Cross showed up at the hospital recruiting for the Army and Navy nursing programs. She jumped at the chance once she had finished her training. Joyce joined the Army Nurse Corps in the summer of 1943. Her basic training was at Aberdeen Proving Grounds and was later sent to Charleston, South Carolina, where she and her fellow trainees set sail to begin their overseas assignments.

For nearly three years, the Germans had control over North Africa. Joyce and her fellow nurses landed in Accra, Ghana (or Gold Coast as it was known under the rule of the British Empire). Her assignments took her from there to Dakar, Senegal. Joyce didn’t waste her furloughs and traveled to Casablanca, Morocco, and Cyprus and Palestine. In March of 1945, she was reassigned to the 38th General Hospital in Cairo, Egypt.

Herbert W. Sherman, Herb for short, had been a member of the Civilian Conservation Corps in the summer of 1939 and eventually signed up to serve in the Pennsylvania National Guard’s 103rd Engineer Battalion, 28th Infantry Division. When the war broke out, his unit was federalized and sent to Fort Polk, Louisiana for additional training.

One day, Herb and some his fellow Jewish soldiers were complaining about their anti-Semitic drill instructor in Yiddish. When the drill instructor found them, he surprised everyone by understanding exactly what they were saying. Herb was reassigned to the 176th Engineer Construction Battalion out of Texas, which was dispatched to Naknek and on to Adak sometime before the Battle for Attu. This turned out to be very good for Herb, as his original unit was sent to France and saw a great deal of action at the Battle of the Bulge.

Somewhere along the way, Joyce had received a letter from her cousin who had been writing to Herb. How Herb and Joyce’s cousin had become pen pals is unclear, the important thing was Joyce’s cousin thought that Herb was a little too young for her and asked Joyce if she would take up writing to that engineer stationed on those dreary islands. Joyce agreed and the two carried on correspondence through the rest of the war.

Herb was rotated back home before the death of President Roosevelt and was retraining to be among the Allied soldiers to invade the Japanese home islands when the war ended.

When Joyce returned home they continued their courtship and were married on September 1st, 1946. The pair that had become pen pals nearly half a world apart hand grown-up a half an hour walk from each other.

Herb passed away in January of 1986. After that, Joyce continued to travel with her son, Jon, himself a veteran of the US Coast Guard (Reserve) and was a member of the Fegelson-Young-Feinberg Post 697- Jewish War Veteran. The two attended several reunions organized by Al and Winnie King. Joyce died on October 5, 2021 at the age of 100. She was a long-time supporter of Aleutian World War II National Historic Area’s efforts to share the stories of those who served with her husband.

Joyce Abramson and Herbert Sherman in their military uniforms.

Photo courtesy Jonathan Sherman.

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A Much-Needed Deck Swabbing

Eighty years after the entry of the United States into World War II, the battlefields lay silent. Anyone who fought there was indelibly marked by their time on the Aleutian Islands. While time can potentially lessen the immediacy of war’s realities in the minds of its participants and the scars on the land, some things have gotten much worse with age. During the war Great Sitka Island was home to Sand By Naval Station, a refueling depot that held over 10 million gallons of fuel. A survey completed this summer by the Army Corps of Engineers found that the tanks that had been left behind hadn’t been completely emptied. According to US Fish and Wildlife, after a tsunami hit the facility in 1963, the US Navy “incinerated about a million gallons of fuel overall, in some cases by breaching the sides of the storage tanks with explosives and lighting the pool of liquid with incendiary grenades.” Naturally, not all of the fuel was consumed in the inferno and contaminated the soil and surface water on the island, adding to the issues of a deteriorating metallic infrastructure. The work will take years to complete, but will restore the land to usable habitat for wildlife.

(Source: https://www.fws.gov/alaska/stories/fuel-drums-war-cleanup-begins-great-sitkin-island)

Private Vincent Bell.

Photo courtesy Joshua Bell.

First Holiday Away from Home – Joshua Bell

Before being deployed to the Aleutian Islands, PFC Vincent Bell of Lunenburg, Vermont, spent his first wartime Thanksgiving away from home. He and his fellow trainees at Cochran Army Air Field in Macon, Georgia spent Thanksgiving Day 1942 thinking of home and sharing as much of their experience as they could. In his letter home that day, Bell tells of quiet the spread in the mess hall, weather that grounded flights for the day, hunting tips for his dad and brother Harold, and his plans to promote from Private to Private First Class. He also wrote home a very serious reminder about the cost of war, describing instances of airmen lost during training flights.

Thursday, November 25, 1942

Hello Folks,I got your letter of Sunday and Monday today and was very glad to hear from you. It has been a great Thanksgiving, but I had to work. We had a swell Turkey dinner with all the fixings and everybody ate their fill. There were a lot of soldiers’ wives and all the civilians that work in the shops were invited so they had one great gathering. We all received a bag of nuts, oranges, apple, and a pack of Old Gold cigs, so we done O.K. It looked like a storm this afternoon so they called off flying and gave us the afternoon off.

I just finished my washing and have to take a shower and turn in before long. I finished my candy and nuts and stuff this afternoon and it sure was swell. Some of the boys just came in and said it was colder than cold outside so it may snow before morning. Well, I gotta take another shot tomorrow and that should finish them for a while. Sunday is my day this week so I’ll probably go to early Mass and receive.

Dad what’s the trouble, can’t you track those little deer down anymore? You sure must be slipping in your “old age”. Didn’t you even jump one out up by the Powers place? All you need is that eight all flashlight and go up there with that gun of mine and sit around by the apple tree and they’ll walk right up to you. I had them trained so they would almost eat out of my hand. You’ll have to get “Luffering Wildcats” to show you how to do it. I sure hope you have gotten a couple of good big ones by this time. The deer must be thicker than fleas on a dog around there this fall. They had plenty of time to come around while I’ve been gone.

What’s the trouble with Harold, is he sick of hunting or has he just changed “dears”? He sure is getting special to be riding home by bus and train. I used to have to hitch hike or ride the motorcycle.

Keep this quiet, but I’ve seen four planes smashed up in the past three days. One was during the night; a big twin motor bomber crashed in the woods and burned, 2 dead. The next one was a collision taking the landing gear off and breaking a wing in two on one, cutting the wing half off with tail on the other. The one with the broke landing gear was crashed after the pilot bailed out. They landed the other. The last crashed with another wheel and ruined the plane. It wrapped the “prop” around the front end and took the wing off but no one was hurt, just shook up a little. It sure is exciting to watch the planes take off cause you never know whether or not they will return. The planes aren’t over a year old but they look like wrecks. Most of them have been wrecked at some time or other, but they still work O.K. They train an awful pile of pilots here so things are really moving.

I’m going to try and get a P.F.C. rating by the first of January but I don’t know if I can. I heard today that we would probably ship out of here sometime in the future. I don’t know when or where. There are going to be five new fields opening up soon so I may stand a chance of getting a couple of stripes if I get on one of those fields and learn something. I’m going to try hard anyway.

Well, I hope you’re all ok and happy because I am. I’ll be happier when I get paid Monday. It sure is tough being broke and nowhere to go. I hope you all get a few deer with our without me home.
Loads of Love,
Vincent

If you have letters you would like to see published in the Williwaw, submit them to [e-mail] and the editorial team will be happy to review them for publication. Please be sure to add a little writeup about your veteran and a picture or two, if available.

A Japanese flag on Kiska captured by members of the Royal Canadian Fusiliers, August 1943.

Photo courtesy National Archives.

Karl Kasukabe: From Pocatello to the Imperial Army – Rachel Mason

Karl, whose parents had migrated to the United States from Japan, grew up in Pocatello, Idaho. When he was a teenager, his mother took him and his younger sister and brothers back to Japan, leaving his father and sister Mary in Pocatello. Karl’s parents were concerned about the “democratic education” he and his siblings were getting in the U.S. They wanted him to learn to be loyal to the emperor. It was too late for Karl, who was declared an undesirable student in his Japanese high school. Before the war, while working at an aircraft works plant, he climbed peaks in the Japanese Alps for experiments on the effects of low temperatures at high altitudes. Because of his language ability, he did qualify as a first class military interpreter in English and second class military interpreter in Russian.

Karl was one of the Japanese soldiers who invaded Attu on June 7, 1942, serving as an interpreter to the villagers and to teacher Etta Jones and her husband, Foster Jones. When the Attu villagers were assembled at the school, Karl translated a proclamation to them before the Japanese flag was raised. He assisted in the interrogation of Foster Jones, and knocked both Etta and Foster around before Foster was executed. Before Etta left as a prisoner on a Japanese ship a few days later, Karl Kasukabe shook her hand and apologized for his treatment of her. He said he was just following his commander’s orders.

After that, Karl went to Kiska with the Japanese troops when they were transferred there from Attu. On June 10, 1943, the Allies dropped a bomb on Karl’s barracks. Karl’s left leg and hip were crushed, but he continued to work as a translator and decoder of American radio transmissions and telegraphs. Later that summer, he heard the uncoded news that the Americans were coming to reclaim Kiska by force, lining up a large fleet in the waters west of the island. The USS Zeilin left San Francisco with 3,000 mountain soldiers, trained and skilled in rock climbing and skiing. When they landed on Kiska on August 15, the Japanese had slipped out under cover of fog, almost three weeks before. At first, confused, the Allies shot at each other, resulting in casualties from friendly fire. Seventeen U.S. and four Canadians died, and 50 were wounded either by shots from the Allies or from Japanese booby traps.

Japanese Prisoners of War from Attu Island, Alaska - Ephriam D. Dickson III

In May 1943, the U.S. Army’s 7th Infantry Division landed on Attu and fought for more than two weeks to wrestle back control of the island from the Imperial Japanese Army. Of the more than 2,500 Japanese soldiers, sailors and civilians present on Attu when the battle began, only twenty-nine men were captured alive.

Portraits of Japanese POWs captured on Attu Island in 1943, arranged by their assigned POW number. (See list below for names at end of article).

From the perspective of most Japanese soldiers, capture by an enemy was viewed as a disgrace, bringing dishonor upon himself and his family. Every soldier carried a small booklet known as the guntai techo (軍隊手牒) or soldier’s handbook (Fig. 2) which began with an exhortation by the emperor highlighting the core values of the military: to be loyal to the nation, courteous, and brave while showing integrity and frugality in the midst of hardship. In a section added in 1941 by Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, soldiers were instructed to never yield to the enemy’s attack, “even at the cost of death.” The official Japanese Military Field Code added: “rather than live and bear the shame of imprisonment by the enemy, he should die and avoid leaving a dishonorable name!”

This example of the Japanese soldier’s handbook belonged to Sergeant Major Masataro Yanagihara who was killed during the battle for Attu Island. Every handbook began with Emperor Meiji’s 1882 message describing the military’s core values and code of conduct.

(National Archives)

As the Attu garrison prepared for the coming American counterattack in the spring of 1943, Japanese officers reiterated this warrior ethos by urging their men to fight to the death. One captured POW from Attu later explained that “the Japanese warrior code ‘Bushido’ leaves no choice except death for the defeated.” Because of this resistance to surrendering, only a small number Japanese soldiers were captured on Attu, usually as one or two isolated individuals who were either surprised without a weapon or so exhausted or wounded they were unable to offer any resistance. But not all gave up easily. One captured soldier was transported to a nearby naval destroyer for medical care and interrogation, but he suddenly broke away and leaped overboard. He was shot and killed by his guards.

The first two Japanese prisoners of war captured on Attu occurred on May 25, two weeks after the fighting had begun. Privates First Class Hiroshi Honda and Tameki Kawamura were members of 2nd Company, 6th Shipping Engineer Regiment, the unit responsible for operating the army’s landing barges that transported men and materiel from ships to shore and moved soldiers around the island. They had both originally been part of a small camp located near Casco Cove, part of a team surveying the area for the planned construction of a new airfield near Massacre Bay. When the American landings began on May 11, these two soldiers were dispatched north as messengers to the nearby infantry encampment, but on their return, they came under fire from the first U.S. soldiers landing on the beach. Kawamura was slightly wounded. Discovering their platoon had already left their camp, the two soldiers spent the next two weeks making their way around the western end of the island in hopes of rejoining their company. Just north of Holtz Bay, they stumbled upon an American patrol. “Raise your hands! Raise your hands!” the soldiers shouted. Unarmed, exhausted, and starving, Honda and Kawamura immediately surrendered.

Sergeant Ryuichi Okada was captured on June 17. He had severely injured one of his hands while working on the airfield construction near Holtz Bay and was in the hospital being treated when U.S. soldiers began landing on Attu Island. As the fighting progressed, he and a number of other wounded soldiers moved southeast along the shoreline, hiding among the rocks and surviving on clams and seaweed waiting to potentially be evacuated by a submarine that never came. When asked why he finally surrendered, Okada told interrogators “I was starving at that time, and I realized then that Japan could not compete with America.”

The last prisoner of war captured on Attu was Lance Corporal Yoshihiko Inouye who surrendered on September 8, nearly four months after the battle had begun. Having found a cache of supplies including canned codfish and some dried vegetables, Inouye had managed to hold out in the mountains, fearing that if he tried to surrender, he would be killed. An army patrol discovered him asleep and without a weapon when they took him prisoner.

After their capture, Japanese prisoners of war from Attu were generally first interviewed by the intelligence staff of the 7th Infantry Division. Lieutenant Colonel Robert G. Fergusson served as the division’s G-2 in charge of military intelligence while Captain John M. White Jr. commanded a team of intelligence staff and Japanese interpreters. Ironically, most of these interpreters were Nisei or second-generation Japanese Americans who were demonstrating their loyalty to the U.S. while many of their families were simultaneously being relocated into internment camps for the war.

An unidentified Japanese POW (probably Private First Class Genjiro Nakayashiki) points out locations on a map during his interrogation on Attu Island, June 4, 1943. Identified from left to right: Lt. Col. Robert G. Fergusson, Capt. John M. White Jr.,  Sgt. Donald R. Otis (taking notes); and unknown.

Photograph by T/4 George F. Noland. (111-SC-245178, National Archives, College Park, MD.

Within a few days of their capture, the Attu prisoners of war were evacuated to Adak Island where they were held in a secure compound for further interviews. These interrogations were generally conducted by Lt. Col. Tom R. Hutton who oversaw intelligence for the 11th Air Force or by the two U.S. Navy Japanese linguistics sent for the Aleutian campaign, Ensigns Otis Carey and Donald Keene. “They [the prisoners] were greeted with courtesy, but no effort was made to joke with them until a later phase of the interrogation had been reached,” wrote Major Luther Meyer, describing their methods. “In the preliminary stages, satisfactory response to a few crucial questions was the signal for a cigarette. This generally would be the first friendly gesture and eased the tension.”

During their initial interviews, each of the Attu POWs was asked if they wanted their families to be notified through the International Red Cross that they had survived the Battle of Attu. Nearly all said no. At the time, most of the captured soldiers thought it was better for their loved ones to believe they had perished instead of bringing them any dishonor for their capture. In Japan, a national day of mourning was held to commemorate the lost soldiers of Attu Island while the country’s largest newspaper published a book containing the names, hometowns and portraits of each officer and enlisted man. Their names were also entered into a book of remembrance as national heroes at the famed Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo.

In Alaska, the POW interviews and translations of captured Japanese documents were forwarded through the Alaska Defense Command’s intelligence office, in particular to Lieutenant Colonel William J. Verbeck, the chief of Combat Intelligence. His grandfather had been an early missionary in Japan and Col. Verbeck had served as an Assistant Military Attache at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo to help perfect his language skills before his transfer to Alaska. Verbeck forwarded this intelligence information through the Western Defense Command who then distributed copies to all of the military and U.S. intelligence offices.

Most of the POWs from Attu were next transferred to Angel Island, California, a former Immigration Service quarantine station that had been converted into a temporary transit center. From there, they were transported to Bryon Hot Springs, an old resort west of San Francisco now renamed Camp Tracy. Here army and naval intelligence officers continued more detailed interrogations of the prisoners, searching for any kinds of details that would be of value. Finally, after the interviews were complete, the POWs were sent on to a prisoner of war camp, probably Camp McCoy in Wisconsin, where they were held for the remainder of the war.

After the war ended, all Japanese prisoners were repatriated back to Japan. What they found however was a country that had been devastated by the war and was now under a U.S. military administration during its slow reconstruction. “It was kind of painful when I got home,” recalled Hiroshi Honda, the first Attu POW, as he remembered his return to Tokyo. “That was hard… There was no food, no homes, and the city was burned.” Still, he said he was grateful to be alive. In a 2010 television interview about the war, the ninety-year old veteran offered words of hope. “When I came back alive, I changed my mind to live and to do my best for everyone and for Japan. I had to work hard for myself and for my country…” he explained. “I came back thinking that I have an obligation to improve Japan for the future. So I lost the war, but I was told that I now should win [the peace] for her future.”

Prisoners of War captured on Attu Island, 1943

9W-J-14001 – Harada, Hideo (原田秀雄). Superior Private, 33rd Independent Anti-aircraft Artillery Company
9W-J-14002 – Kameyama, Isamu (亀山孝次郎). Private First Class, 24th Anti-Aircraft Company
9W-J-14003 – Nakayashiki, Genjiro (中屋敷源次郎). Private First Class, 302nd Independent Engineer Company
9W-J-14004 – Kawamura, Tameki (川村爲貴). Private First Class, 2nd Company, 6th Shipping Engineers
9W-J-14005 – Takahashi, Tomimatsu (高橋富松). Private First Class, 2nd Company, 303rd Independent Infantry Battalion
9W-J-14006 – Tonouchi, Koji (殿内幸二). Private First Class, 24th Anti-Aircraft Company
9W-J-14007 – Hatakeyama, Soji (畠山奏次). Private First Class, 303rd Independent Infantry Battalion
9W-J-14008 – Honda, Hiroshi (本田博). Superior Private, 2nd Company, 6th Shipping Engineer Regiment
9W-J-14009 – Sato, Kunio (佐藤國夫). Superior Private, 6th Independent Mountain Artillery
9W-J-14010 – Okada, Ryuichi (岡田龍市). Sergeant, 1st Company, North Kuril Island Fortress Infantry
9W-J-14011 – Sasaki, Ichiro (佐々木一郎). Private First Class, 3rd Company, North Kuril Island Fortress Infantry
9W-J-14012 – Sasaki, Saburo (佐々木三郎). Private First Class, 1st Company, 303rd Independent Infantry Battalion
9W-J-14013 – Kato, Shigeo (加藤重男). Private First Class, 1st Company, 303rd Independent Infantry Battalion
9W-J-14014 – Kawayama, Toshi ( ). Superior Private, North Kuril Island Fortress Infantry
9W-J-14015 – Iseda, Takemi (伊勢田武美). Sergeant, 302nd Independent Engineer Company
9W-J-14016 – Nishiyama, Isamu. Superior Private, 3rd Company, North Kuril Island Fortress Infantry. (Name incorrect?)
9W-J-14017 – Yamada, Kiyoshi. Superior Private, Gun Company, North Kuril Island Fortress Infantry Unit.
9W-J-14018 – Ito, Hachisaburo (伊藤六助). Lance Corporal, 4th Company, 303rd Infantry Battalion
9W-J-14019 – Koike, Sakae. Private First Class, 1st Company, 303rd Independent Infantry Battalion
9W-J-14020 – Kitakoshi, Kiichi (北越喜一). Medical Sergeant, North Kuril Island Fortress Infantry.
9W-J-14021 – Yoshino, Tokio (吉野時雄). Private First Class. 302nd Independent Engineer Unit
9W-J-14022 – Takagi, Nobuaki/Naokichi (高木直吉). Private First Class, 302nd Independent Engineer Company
9W-J-14023 – Fujiya, Hachisaburo (藤谷初三郎). Superior Private, 302nd Independent Engineer Company
9W-J-14024 – Kobayashi, Semiyoshi/Shimiyoshi. Superior Private, 302nd Independent Engineer Company
9W-J-14025 – Nishimura, Kanjiro. Civilian, Navy.
9W-J-14026 – Tanaka, Mitsuo (田中光男). Private First Class, 2nd Company, 6th Shipping Engineers
9W-J-14027 – Inoue, Yoshio AKA Inouye, Yoshihiko. Lance Corporal, 2nd Company, 6th Shipping Engineer Regiment
no POW number –Shindo, Shigeyoshi (新藤重義). Private First Class, 6th Fortress Mountain Artillery. Died on Adak.