A Hawaii resident who served in the critical military intelligence role of a Japanese-language translator during World War II and was a former administrator for the Hawaii School for the Deaf and the Blind has died.
Fusao Uchiyama died at Hawaii Kai Assisted Living on Feb 7. He was 95.
Uchiyama, the son of Japanese immigrants from Yamaguchi prefecture, was born in Kona on Hawaii island on Nov. 22, 1919.
Uchiyama was among the pioneer group of 59 Japanese-Americans to be selected for translator training during World War II.
The Japanese-Americans who underwent the training came from Hawaii and from internment camps and were willing to fight for the United States despite racial discrimination.
The group was used for tactical intelligence in translating captured documents, interrogating prisoners and persuading Japanese soldiers entrenched in caves to release hundreds of civilian prisoners.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s chief of staff was quoted as saying the Japanese-American translators saved thousands of Allied soldiers’ lives and shortened the war by two years.
Uchiyama graduated from Konawaena High School in 1938 and joined the Hawaii Territorial Guard.
Uchiyama was in Hilo when the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked the U.S. Navy at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
Soon after the attack, the U.S. military took away his rifle and firearms, the family said.
"He, at that point, thought he was going to be sent off to an internment camp," his son David said.
Instead, Uchiyama was included in the Japanese-American 100th Battalion and sent to the mainland for military training.
After taking a language abilities test, he was selected for training as a Japanese translator in the Army’s Military Intelligence Service at Camp Savage in Minnesota.
He graduated in December 1942 and was assigned to a British battalion in India and, later, Burma, where he survived an airplane crash and a fractured back, the family said.
He left the military as a second lieutenant.
The family said under the GI Bill, Uchiyama was able to attend college, becoming a teacher and then a principal at several Hawaii schools.
In 1961 he became administrator for the Hawaii School for the Deaf and the Blind at Diamond Head.
He is survived by son David, daughter Judith Kawakami, eight grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
Private services are being held at Hosoi Mortuary.
