Kunming, Julia McWilliams Child, and Tad Nagaki

Sisterhood of Spies is an account of women in the OSS in the European and CBI theaters in WWII.  Author Elizabeth P. McIntosh discusses China in her Chapter 19, Over the Hump to China.  She notes that Julia McWilliams Child, of whom we have read mention in R. H. Smith's history, was stationed in the OSS HQ in Kunming from early1945.  From pp. 296-297 of the paperback edition:

At the same time that new OSS women were checking into Chungking's Green Gate, the OSS advance base in K'unming four hundred miles south of Chungking was also expanding.  I flew over the Hump in a storm-tossed flight with imperturable Julia McWilliams, who calmly read a book while all the rest of us were preparing to die. . . 

The OSS compound was located on the outskirts of town, surrounded by high mud walls.  Before the war K'un-ming had been a resort town the end of the rail line from Indochina where French colonials spent their vacations enjoying this invigorating mountain retreat, the sparkling sunshine, and the medieval ambience of the walled city itself.  To the north was a beautiful lake with a fleet of fishing sampans.  Towering above the city was West Mountain, the landmark for Hump and combat pilots nearing that welcome safe haven, K'un-ming Airport. K'un-ming was also the end of the Burma Road, closed from 1942 to early 1945 while the Japanese controlled that country.  Vital military supplies were now arriving aboard lubering trucks caked with red clay from Burma.

Most of the women at K'un-ming headquarters had special operational skills.  Julia McWilliams continued the important job of organizing Registry material, as she had done in Ceylon.  Reports were coming in constantly from OSS field missions that were gradually spreading out to China's coastal cities.  One priority target was the pinpointing of prisoner-of-war camp sites.  Later this specific intelligence data enabled OSS rescue teams to zero in on these camps accurately and liberate Allied prisoners held by the Japanese.

The liberation to which McIntosh refers is specifically the rescue of Allied military and civilian POWs held by the Japanese as quickly as possible after the Japanese surrender, before the POW camp commanders had time to kill them.

The mission undertaken by Tad Nagaki, a Nisei OSS commando who rescued civilian prisoners held at a concentration camp in Shantung province, provides an example.  From an account written up years later when rescuer and rescuees maintained their friendship when back in the USA:

Reports had reached American headquarters in China the summer of 1945 that Japan planned to kill all Prisoners of War (POW). To prevent the massacre, seven-man rescue teams that included medics, communications specialists, and interpreters were hastily organized to find and evacuate POWs in China, Manchuria, and Korea.  

Determined to make one last difference as World War II came to an end, especially since so many lives were at stake, Nagaki immediately volunteered for the mission. As the “Armored Angel” droned toward Weihsien Concentration Camp in the Shantung Province, he remembered how he almost didn’t get the chance. 

It's an excellent story.

Lake Dian and West Mountain; Kunming

An earlier Kunming post includes photos of OSS personnel there to train the Chinese.  One of them I think is our EJZ.

Catalina Alumnus Tadash Nagaki, continued - Geography of DUCK Mission

Tadash Nagaki went on DUCK mission on August 17, 1945, to secure 1,400 Allied civilians imprisoned by the Imperial Japanese at Weihsien Compound, called by them the "Weishien Civilian Assembly Center," and referred to by the prisoners as Weihsien.

The Weihsien website has a lot of good material, of which here is a sample:  Nagaki post-misison at Tsingtao ( = Qingdao), on the Yellow Sea in Shandong Province.

Weihsien was back inland about 80 miles, in the city of Weifang.

So DUCK had flown in their B-24 Liberators way to the east of OSS China HQ in Kunming, as Weifang is near the coast, south of Manchuria, west of Korea, and north of Shanghai.

Japanese Occupation of China, 1940.

B-24 Liberator

Catalina Alumnus Tadash Nagaki

We have figured out in earlier posts here, here, here, and here, that our EJZ was in training on Catalina Island from mid-December 1944 to mid-January 1945.

One of his predecessors in OSS training at Toyon Bay was Nebraska farm boy Tadash Nagaki.  He was joining the 442nd Infantry Combat Regiment - "Go for Broke" - in July1943 when OSS put out a call for Nisei to volunteer for dangerous missions.  Tad was Nisei; he wanted a combat unit; soon enough he was at Toyon Bay.

Tad Nagaki was part of OSS Detachment 101, charged with clearing the Japanese from the jungles of Burma and rescuing downed Allied airmen, so that the Burma Road could be re-opened and the Ledo Road built.

Tad Nagaki's big brass:  Merrill and Stillwell

This is from Mary Previte's excellent essay.

Ex-CBI Roundup was a newsletter for veterans of China-Burma-India theater, from all branches, published 1946 through 2009.  Clark King and Gary Goldblatt are scanning the 600 issues and putting them up here, as well as assembling a great deal of background information on CBI here.  Thank you, Gentlemen!

Previte's essay is from the June 2002 issue.  It's riveting, all the way through; here are a couple of quotes to tempt you:

". . . Just before the war started, a tiny handful of Army Intelligence specialists were alerting superiors of the importance of training Japanese language interpreters to master the incredibly complex Japanese language.  But, could youth of an alien race - only one generation removed from the land of their ancestors - be trusted in battle or in top secret intelligence work?  While one hand of the Army was removing Japanese-Americans from the West Coast, another was searching for qualified Nisei for its language and intelligence effort.  In San Francisco, the Army opened a small-scale language school in a converted hangar at Crissy Field, The Presidio.  It hand-picked 58 Nisei for its first class - sitting on apple boxes and orange crates.  When the top brass saw its value, the school was transferred to Camp Savage, Minnesota, where it was reorganized as the Military Intelligence Service Language School. . ."

Remember Camp Savage, Minnesota?  Our EJZ got a letter from there while in Chicago conjugating Japanese verbs, if that's what you do.

". . . The OSS trained the Nisei team first in radio school in Naperville, Illinois, then the Military Intelligence Service Language School in Fort Savage, Minnesota, then six weeks of survival and demolition at Toyon Bay on Catalina Island.  They toughened up with fitness training in the mountains, exercised with water drills from LST boats.  They could survive by fishing or shooting mountain goats.  Catalina Island was ideal for coastal surveillance and commando training.  It was 1944, after begging for action since 1942, the Nisei were about to get their chance. . ."

". . . Late in 1944, Tad Nagaki arrived in Myitkyina (pronounced mich-chi-naw).  Burma, at a bend in the Irrawaddy River. Myitkyina was the strategic key to the entire plan in the north.  It had the only hard-surface, all-weather airstrip in Burma, north of Mandalay.  This was the airfield the legendary Merrill's Marauders had seized. . ."

Tadash Nagaki had to earn the trust of - as in, not get killed by - the Kachin mountain people, who understandably hated Imperial Japanese soldiers, whom he resembled phenotypically.  Take a good look at this old photo of Kachin in World War II, with their characteristic hats and stoles.  I do believe we shall see more of these people in future pages of the Zdrojewski CBI Photobook.

Just google "Kachin World War 2"

Julie