The Wartime Interpreter: World War II veteran Oliver Sekimura to be recognized for little-known efforts following Battle of Okinawa

World War II veteran Oliver Kazuyoshi Sekimura was only 22 when he shipped out from Honolulu on Valentine’s Day in 1945 after 13 weeks of Army basic training at Helemano in central Oahu.

Fluent in Japanese language, he thought he was headed to Camp Savage, Minn., for Military Intelligence Service training.

But he wasn’t. The ship he was aboard, USS Aurelia, landed 22 days later in Leyte, Philippines. There, Sekimura became part of a joint Army-Navy unit later known as the 1st Provisional Military Government Interpreters Detachment.

The humanitarian work done by Sekimura and others like him, including his brother, Sueo, who served in the 6205th Interpreters Special Detachment, has received little recognition or fanfare, unlike the exploits of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the 100th Infantry Battalion and the MIS.

Sekimura didn’t stay long in the Philippines, soon boarding a second ship, the USS Appling. Only two days prior to his April 2, 1945, landing, he learned his destination was Okinawa.

Now a 92-year-old Hilo resident and retiree from Isemoto Contracting Co., Sekimura took part in the largest amphibious landing in the Pacific, and found himself immersed in the theater’s bloodiest conflict — the Battle of Okinawa.

The engagement lasted almost three months and resulted in the deaths of more than 14,000 Allied forces, 77,000 Japanese troops, and civilian death estimates upwards of 100,000.

The battle was in its second day when Sekimura’s group landed. He told the Hawaii Tribune-Herald on Tuesday the experience was “scary.”

“After we reached Okinawa, (there were) planes flying, battleships (and) cruisers firing on land,” he said. “So I thought to myself, ‘Oh, this is what war is.’ On the second day, we landed on the beach, and we were there two nights in a pup tent. It was cold.”

Fittingly, the invasion of Okinawa — which came to be known as a “tsunami of steel” for the sheer numbers of ships and amphibious landing craft — was code-named “Operation Iceberg.”

Sekimura, whose parents came to Hawaii from Yamaguchi Prefecture in Japan, was dispatched to Shimabuku village, where his main duty was helping Okinawan refugees.

“When they came to the village, they only had what was on their back and a few items,” he said. “… We had to feed them, clothe them with what we could scrounge around. And (obtain) tents. There were some homes that were not damaged too much. You’d see dozens of people in one house or one tent.”

He and another interpreter were tasked at first with helping about 200 displaced civilians. That number increased to about 10,000 in a bit more than a week.

“As the war progressed … south, we had more and more refugees that came to our village. … They came in truckloads, five or six a day,” he noted. “This I don’t forget. This lady was carrying, I told myself … an overgrown girl, a baby, maybe about four or five years old. I asked her, ‘May I help you?’ … The girl was dead and the mother was carrying her.”

Many of the refugees were ill or injured, Sekimura said.

“We were supposed to help in the medic tent. We had one doctor and about five corpsmen (Navy medics),” he said. “From morning to dark, people (were) lining up for treatment, all kinds.”

Sekimura, who spent about 18 months of his two-year enlistment in Okinawa, said efforts to comfort the displaced, injured and ill went around the clock — even as Japanese warplanes carried out air raids.

“(One) night, I can remember this little girl was crying, crying, crying,” he recalled. “I had some candy in my pocket. I gave it to her. She had no thumb.”

Unlike MIS interpreters, who received months of formal training in translation, interpretation and interrogation methods, Sekimura was deployed straight from basic training. He spoke Japanese but not Okinawan.

“An officer came to our village for somebody who could speak Japanese. So I was picked to go to this huge cave,” he said. “I had no flashlight, no light. … It was a huge cave where a truck could go through. So I went. It was pitch dark. … I said a few words. If I could only have some Okinawan phrases, then I’m sure they would have answered me. But they had no idea who I was. I was scared, so I came out.”

Then, Sekimura pondered an even more frightening possibility.

“Could all of them been (Japanese) soldiers? I could have been shot,” he said.

Few of Sekimura’s fellow detachment members are still alive, although he knows of two — Ken Kajikawa, a 92-year-old former interpreter from Honolulu, and George Benson, a 90-year-old former sailor from Michigan.

Unlike the 442nd, the 100th and the MIS, Sekimura’s detachment didn’t receive the Congressional Gold Medal or any significant U.S. government recognition, although the Okinawa Prefecture government recognized the U.S. interpreters with a proclamation in 2006.

Sekimura recalled a lunch in Honolulu which included a former MIS interpreter.

“He asked me what I did in the service,” he said. “I told him I was an interpreter but not MIS. And he tells me, ‘You’re one of those outcasts that didn’t make it.’ And I told him, ‘Hey, wait. I went to the invasion of Okinawa.’

“You know, he shut up,” Sekimura said.

The lack of recognition will change tonight, at least in a small way, when U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz joins Sekimura and a group of his family and friends to honor him and the detachment’s humanitarian efforts, which Schatz wrote were “instrumental in protecting the lives of more than 30,000 Okinawan citizens.”

Schatz’s visit is the result of communication from Sekimura’s family, especially his granddaughter, Tania Takashiba, who emphasized her grandfather didn’t ask to be recognized. She said it’s important “to document this little bit of history and his legacy, really, while he’s alive, not after the fact.”

“It’s us, the grandchildren, and … he has great-grandchildren,” she said. “You think, ‘He’s done all of this, and nobody even knows.’

“It’s crazy, right?”

Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.