The late Dick Shigemi Hamada, a Japanese-American picked for World War II duty in what would become the Central Intelligence Agency, will be inducted into the Army’s Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., in June.
The Military Intelligence Service Veterans Club said Maj. Gen. Robert P. Ashley, commanding general of the U.S. Army Intelligence Center of Excellence, made the announcement of the award.
Hamada, who died in May 2014 at the age of 92, was one of about 6,000 nisei, or second generation Japanese-Americans, who served in the Military Intelligence Service in World War II.
Hamada is one of the veterans featured in the new MIS exhibit at the U.S. Army Museum of Hawaii. A grand opening of the exhibit will be held 9 a.m. March 28, as part of the MIS Veterans National Reunion. U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander Adm. Harry Harris Jr. and Army historian James McNaughton will be featured speakers at the national reunion.
According to a 2014 Honolulu Star-Advertiser obituary, Hamada was born on Hawaii island. Hamada later watched as Japanese planes flew over Moiliili in the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor. In a firsthand account, he said: "I felt betrayed and now feared for the worst to come to all American Japanese."
Volunteering for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team in 1943, Hamada was one of a small number of nisei to be picked for duty with the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor of the Central Intelligence Agency.
He was assigned to Detachment 101, whose soldiers spent months behind enemy lines in northern Burma "conducting clandestine operations, leading native and Allied troops in guerrilla raids, gathering intelligence and rescuing downed Allied aviators," the Military Intelligence Service Veterans Club of Hawaii said. Hamada was hospitalized twice with malaria and dysentery, encountered tigers and learned how to deal with leeches, according to the veterans club’s news release.
MIS records show that in early 1945, Hamada saved his battalion, made up primarily of Kachin troops, from being decimated at the village of Ke Hsi Mansam, the MIS veterans club said. The battalion was in the third day of fighting, and Hamada was leading a platoon of Nationalist Chinese troops on its left flank.
Hamada went from foxhole to foxhole, exposed to direct enemy fire. He rallied his men and manned a machine gun, according to the club. The platoon held and the enemy was repulsed. Hamada was credited with saving the entire battalion from "total defeat," the MIS club said.
After the Burma campaign, Hamada was assigned to Operation Magpie and parachuted into Fengtai Prison in Peiping (Beijing) on Aug. 17, 1945, according to the veterans club. After two days of negotiation, the Magpie team secured the liberation of several hundred prisoners, including four of the Doolittle Tokyo Raiders and the commander and survivors of the Wake Island garrison, according to the veterans club release.
After the war, Hamada worked at the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and retired as a planner and estimator supervisor, the news release said. He also was a baseball and softball umpire.
He was nominated for the Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame by retired Maj. Gen. Arthur Ishimoto, an MIS veteran of World War II who later became adjutant general of Hawaii, the veterans club release said.
"Dick Hamada was a true American hero whose exploits were largely unnoticed during his lifetime. His induction into the Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame is long overdue and well deserved," Ishimoto said in the club’s news release. Ishimoto served in combat in the Philippines and in the occupation of Japan after the war.
"The nisei were recruited to use our knowledge of Japanese language and culture against the enemy," said Ishimoto. "But we were soldiers first, as Dick Hamada and many others demonstrated."
