Sgt. Hachiya shot by Japanese patrol

Courtesy Photo | T3g. Frank Hachiya (courtesy photo).  

FORT HUACHUCA, AZ, UNITED STATES

12.20.2022

Courtesy Story

U.S. Army Intelligence Center of Excellence

by Lori S. Stewart, USAICoE Command Historian

On December 30, 1944, T3g. Frank Tadakazu Hachiya, a Japanese American interpreter attached to the 7th Infantry Division, was shot by a Japanese patrol while attempting to secure their surrender on the island of Leyte in the Philippines. Despite heroic efforts to save his life, Sergeant Hachiya died four days later.

Born in 1920 in Odell, Oregon, to Japanese immigrants, Frank Hachiya spent his first fifteen years on local farms before moving to Japan with his parents in 1935. When he returned to Oregon with his father in 1940, he left his mother and brother in Japan. He finished high school and enrolled for a year in the local college before transferring to the University of Oregon to earn a degree in political science.

In January 1942, spurred by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hachiya enlisted in the U.S. Army and volunteered for the Military Intelligence Service Language School. In December, he attended the first class held at Camp Savage, following the move of the school to Minnesota from San Francisco. After graduation, the Army sent him to Hawaii for translation work at the Joint Intelligence Center Pacific Ocean Area (JICPOA). When American forces secured Kwajalein in early 1944, Hachiya was sent to the island to assist in analyzing the mountain of documents captured in the assault. He spent five months in the Central Pacific, also taking part in the invasion of Eniwetok, before returning to his work at JICPOA.

Later in the fall of 1944, Hachiya got his wish to “go out again to see the action” when he replaced an ill interrogator on Lt. Howard “Mike” Moss’s language team attached to the 7th Infantry Division for its deployment to the Philippines island of Leyte. By late December, most of the fighting had ended on the island. Although Hachiya was scheduled to return to Hawaii, the division recognized his skill at persuading enemy soldiers to surrender. Consequently, his received quick approval of his request to stay and help the division search for remaining pockets of resistance.

On December 30, 1944, Hachiya was at division headquarters when one of the forward units called for assistance interrogating a Japanese prisoner with information about enemy defenses in the area. Hachiya immediately hurried to the 32d Infantry’s command post. According to Lieutenant Moss, the prisoner provided vague information, but Hachiya volunteered to accompany an infantry patrol of two companies to the suspected enemy location. On the way, he spotted three Japanese soldiers disappearing into a bamboo thicket at the edge of a heavily wooded gorge. Receiving permission to pursue the fleeing soldiers and convince them to surrender, he moved too far ahead of his infantry bodyguards. Approximately one hundred yards into the thicket, an unprotected Hachiya was ambushed by as many as twelve Japanese soldiers. Shot in the abdomen, Hachiya managed to empty the magazine of his own pistol into the enemy unit, forcing them to flee. He then staggered back up the ridge to American lines.

A field surgeon operating on Hachiya found the bullet had entered his liver. Although many of his fellow soldiers offered to provide blood for transfusions, the 24-year-old Oregon native succumbed to his wound on January 3, 1945. For his actions on December 30, 1944, Hachiya was posthumously awarded the Silver Star. His remains were sent to Hawaii until returned to his father for a proper burial in Hood River, Oregon, on September 11, 1948. Thirty-two years later, in May 1980, the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center at the Presidio of Monterey named one of the buildings in its Asian complex after Frank Hachiya.

• Date Taken: 12.20.2022
• Date Posted: 12.19.2022 11:14
• Story ID: 435462
• Location: FORT HUACHUCA, AZ, US