Objet : Fw: Tad Nagaki, Liberator of Weihsien died today

Subject: Tad Nagaki, Liberator of Weihsien died today

Tad Nagaki died today (April 22) at the home of his grandson in near Denver, Colorado. He was 93.

Tad was the last living member of the World War II, 7-man American rescue team that liberated 1,500 Allied prisoners in the Japanese-held Weihsien concentration Camp in China, August 17, 1945.

America has lost a true hero.

Who can forget that day? Angels dropping from the sky on a windy August day -- parachuting from the belly of that B-24 bomber outside those barrier walls. Remember, remember, remember? Weihsien went mad. Emaciated prisoners weeping, dancing, pounding the sky with their fists. Prisoners climbing the walls. Hysterical with joy, we rushed the gate to welcome these American gods. No matter how many guns the Japanese had! Yes, sun-bronzed American gods with meat on their bones.

The Tad Nagaki story is an important chapter of American history. As an American-born, Japanese-American enlisted man, after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, Tad Nagaki was sidelined with other Nisei, doing menial labor in Ft. Campbell, KY, stupid stuff, Tad said -- like pruning trees and loading trains. Tad wanted to fight in the real war like every red-blooded American, but because he was Nisei, a personal letter from his commander denied Tad's request to become an air cadet. Then in 1943, Tad Nagaki volunteered to be part of an elite team of Nisei spies. It was an experiment: Could Japanese-Americans be trusted to fight the Japanese? But the United States desperately needed men in intelligence service who understood Japanese. This team was highly trained in communications and survival skills.

Now Tad Nagaki was a member of this Office of Strategic Services's (OSS) 15-member Nisei unit that infiltrated behind Japanese lines in the China-Burma-India Theater of Operations. Serving first with OSS 101 in Burma with Kachin tribesmen, when the war wound down in Burma, he trucked over "The Hump" to China. When Allied intelligence warned that the Japanese planned to execute their Allied prisoners in China and Manchuria, Tad volunteered for the rescue team called the "Duck Mission" that liberated Weihsien. He served as the team's Japanese-language interpreter. For his heroism, he was awarded the Soldier's Medal. Team leader, Major Stanley Staiger promoted him to sergeant.

In 1997, I tracked down these liberators in a successful national search and visited each one face-to-face to say thank you. Tad, a widower whose sons had died, still farmed corn, and beans, and sugar beets in Alliance, Nebraska.

Tad always insisted to me he was not a hero. He said he only did what any American would have done. When I used to ask him what it felt like to be trailed all over Weihsien by a non-stop throng of children, he said, "It felt like being on a pedestal." That's the understatement of the century. We made them gods. Remember?

Like children following the Pied Piper, we children -- crowds of us in Weihsien -- followed these heroes everywhere. My 12-year-old heart turned summersaults over every one of them. I know yours did , too. I remember in the evenings outside the commandant's office where the team of American's now stayed. We wanted to sit on their laps, to touch their cheeks. We begged for their insignia, begged for their buttons, begged for their autographs. Tad told me that one girl cut off a piece of his hair for a souvenir. When we begged these heroes to sing the songs of America, they taught us 'You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.' Bless my soul! I can sing it still.

When American support personnel arrived to take over the evacuation of Weihsien, in late September, liberators Major Stanley Staiger, Ensign Jimmie Moore, Tad Nagaki, and Raymond Hanchulak moved to Tsingtao to set up an OSS base there.

In 2010, when grandsons Jason and Ryan Nagaki celebrated Mr. Nagaki's 90th birthday with a town-wide open house in at the Alliance Country Club, letters from around the world poured in from us former Weihsien internees -- from United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, and the United States.

Tad was a quiet man. He never wanted me to make a fuss about him. At that birthday celebration, I discovered that while Tad had lived in Alliance for half a century, very few of Tad's family and friends even knew that he had risked his life liberating 1,500 Allied prisoners from the Weihsien concentration camp. At an evening banquet at the country club for 80 family members and friends, Tad finally let down his guard and let me talk to these, his closest friends and family. I was at the microphone and he was sitting at a table up front so close I could reach over and pat this hero as I told the riveting Tad Nagaki story. I'm so everlastingly grateful I had this opportunity to honor this hero -- and everlastingly pleased that Tad's grandsons videotaped the story.

Grandson Jason told me today he hopes to play that story at some kind of memorial service to be held in Alliance.

And what a story it is! In August 2005, in recognition of the ending of World War II, a United States State Department publication in China published the Tad Nagaki story in Chinese and in living color for distribution to thousands of top-level Chinese decision makers. I had written this story for an obscure military magazine called the Ex-CBI Roundup. (I have no idea how the State Department got hold of my story. The magazine editor told me she wanted the Chinese to know that even in America, some people suffered during the war.) Tad was so reticent to talk about himself that it had taken me at least a year to interview him for this article -- usually by telephone on Sunday nights when my phone rates were cheap, at 5 cents per minute. To find the right questions to ask in our chats, I had to read books and learn all about what Japanese-Americans experienced in this land during World War II. Tad told mer that the parents of his fiance were interned in the Poston Internment camp in Arizona.

Goodbye, Tad.

You will understand why I have felt weepy today.

By the way, I'm so very happy that Leopold Pander was inspired in January to send Tad for his birthday Leopold's The Children of Weihsien. What a masterpiece those two volumes are!

Tad died this morning with his grandchildren around him at the home of grandson Ryan Nagaki. I'll follow when I learn more details and when I think of a lovely way to honor his memory.

Natasha, please forward this to Weihsien topica network.

Mary Taylor Previte