Japan. Kaigun - The Japanese Administration of Guam, 1941-1944: a Study of Occupation and Integration Policies, with Japanese Oral Histories

Forewords by Donald Denoon
and Got Shinhachir

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina, and London

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

eISBN 978-0-7864-9094-3

BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

2013 Wakako Higuchi. All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Front cover: Japanese Naval General Staffs 1941 Guam map, miyat Heiyzu (background); detail of the Guam Minseibu staff of Japanese administrators, Saipanese patrolmen and Chamorro assistant teachers at the miya Jinja, January 1, 1944 ( Wakako Higuchi Personal Collection). Cover design by David K. Landis (Shake It Loose Graphics).

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
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I could not have completed this work without the invaluable help of the Australian National University, especially Professor Donald Denoon. I am grateful to the Australian government, the Australian National University, the National Resource Center for Micronesian Studies (USDA Title VI) through the University of Guam, and the Guam Preservation Trust Board for their scholarship and research grant assistance.

My study of the Guam Minseibu began when Mr. Yamaguchi Yoji of the Japan Institute for Pacic Studies showed me a Japanese army manuscript on Guam under Japanese rule. His Micronesian collection prompted me to conduct a comparative study of Guam and Japans South Seas mandate.

Ms. Rose Manibusan, Chief of Interpretation, War in the Pacic, National Historical Park, Guam, found a government grant for my initial research. The product of this research established a basis for my thinking.

In spite of their age and physical condition, often unknown to me, some hundred Chamorro and Japanese informants took me into their condence and told me what they could remember in response to my many questions. Of these informants, I especially express my gratitude to Mr. Kosuge Teruo, Monsignor Oscar Lujan Calvo, Ms. Takano Naoe, Mr. Nakahashi Kiyoshi, Mr. Ogawa Kanichi, Mr. Niino Michio, Mr. Yamashita Yasuhiro, Mr. Takeda Atsuo, and Mr. Murayama Kakuichiro and Sister Mary Mark Martinez.

I appreciate individual advice from three military history specialists: Professors Got Shinhachir (Takayama College), Goto Kenichi (Waseda University), and Hata Ikuhiko (Nihon University).

I recognize my good fortune in having the help of UOG President Robert A. Underwood, Professor Donald R. Shuster and Professor Lawrence J. Cunningham of the University of Guam and Mrs. Cheryl N. Cunningham. Their assistance and encouragement during my work were invaluable. Finally, I would also like to thank Mr. Nakagawa Ichir for his translation work.

by Donald Denoon

Historians are attracted to the centers of political and military powerWashington, London, Tokyobut the nature of that power is often most visible at the periphery. Guam and the Mariana Island Chain are peripheral to the Great Powers, so we may expect them to exhibit the nature of the Great Powers that have tried to control them. Because the islands straddle the boundary of Asia and Pacic Islands, they are cursed with a strategic value out of proportion to their size or their population. Their fate has often been decided in battle, and Chamorro people have been governedoften misgoverned or neglectedby Spanish, German, American and Japanese overlords.

The people have paid a terrible price for their location. Guam became a United States territory after the Spanish-American War and a vital naval base in the years leading to World War II, when it was captured by Japan. The people of the other Mariana islands were governed by Japan (under a League of Nations mandate) after the First World War, and subordinated to Japans strategic plans.

Events on the periphery tell us much about power structures at their cores, butbecause they were played out on the boundary between academic specialiststhey are difcult to study. Few Japanese scholars are interested in islands so far from home and so marginal to Japans military and economic history. Equally, few scholars of the English-speaking Pacic Islands have the language skills to analyze the Japanese era in the Marianas. We might expect naval and military historians to take an interest, if not for the lure of greater dramas: Pearl Harbor, Midway, Guadalcanal, Kokoda, the Coral Sea, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Study of the Japanese occupation of the South Seas has languished, waiting for a scholar with the ability to tap Japanese sources and the sensitivity to blend those insights with islanders experiences. Dr. Wakako Higuchis research meets that need, and raises new questions. Japans Naval Administration differed in fascinating ways from the military occupations. Through mass migration of Japanese and Okinawans, the demands on the islanders differed markedly from the pressures applied to Chinese and Southeast Asians. Uniquely, Chamorro people were expected to assimilate into the Japanese Empire.

This research raises acute questions about the purposes and methods of Japanese occupation in Manchuria, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. More immediately, we glimpse the purposes and methods of Japanese authorities in the Marianas and Guam, and sense the appalling suffering of the islanders, and the Japanese and Okinawans who were transported there in pursuit of a grand illusionthe Greater East Asia CoProsperity Sphere.

Donald Denoon is an emeritus professor of Pacic and Asian History, Research School of Pacic and Asian Studies (now School of Culture, History and Language, the College of Asia and the Pacic), Australian National University.

by Got Shinhachir

There is no comprehensive historical study of the military administration of Guam by the Minseibu although some individual recollections can be found. The Japanese Defense Agencys National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS) published some hundred volumes of ofcial war history between the 1950s and 1970s, but it did not cover the military administrations in the Asian and Pacic regions occupied by the Japanese forces during the Pacic War. Assigned by the NIDS, I had been enthusiastically engaged in research into the topic but came to realize it was too difcult a task because of the lack of references.

As a culmination of her research work, Dr. Wakako Higuchi undertook over long years in Guam, Micronesia, the United States, Japan and Australia to elucidate the entire picture of Guams military administration, taking advantage of her abundant knowledge of the Japanese Navys involvement in the South Sea Islands (Micronesia) that surround Guam.

Concerning the issue of an accurate empirical and historical method, Higuchis present work reaches beyond other works. This study will make a signicant contribution to the history of Guam, Micronesia, the United States, and Japan.