The Tatsaguchi Diary

I spent a year on Attu in the 90's at the old Coast Guard LORAN station that used to exist there, so my interest in the battle is acute to say the least.

There was an American educated Medical Officer with the Japanese forces at Attu. He was a devout Christian, a humanist, a man caught up in the typhoon of Japanese militarism through no choice of his own. He was drafted and found himself with the doomed garrison at Attu.

Paul Tatsaguchi left a diary of those events and that diary was found and translated by a Nissei soldier named Sam Umetami. Portions of the diary were quoted in newspaper accounts. General Buckner, head of the Alaskan forces found out about this and ordered the diary and all copies of it destroyed. The reasons given for this varied, but the most common reason is a passage where Tatsaguchi claims the Americans were using poison gas. That's almost certainly untrue, but they were using phosphorous shells and to the Japanese hiding in caves it probably did seem like the air was poisoned.
Another reason for the destruction of the diary was that the army simply didn't want US troops viewing the Japanese soldiers as men like Tatsaguchi. The Japanese were supposed to be slit-eyed little robots without souls or compassion. A kindly and thoughtful man like Tatsaguchi didn't fit the narrative of wartime propaganda.

The diary was destroyed and all copies were reportedly destroyed, though some passages are out there quoted in newspapers, etc.
But the diary in its entirety is lost, or... maybe not. Through an unlikely set of coincidences I may have tracked down an old mimeographed copy of the translated diary that was found in the effects of a serviceman who fought in the Aleutian theater. That stack of old paper is now in the hands of a son of that serviceman. The family story is that it's been at risk of being discarded, but for one reason or another it has avoided the trash bin all these years. I am trying to get my hands on it. If I can, I'll simply copy it and return the original to the family.

I haven't seen it yet, so I don't know if this is really the Holy Grail - the entire diary - or just the known portions. But, the family history is consistent with one of those copies of the entire diary that were passed around in the theater. The soldier simply didn't destroy it as he was ordered to.

There must be other copies out there, but in all these years I've never been able to track one down.

I'm excited!

 

If it can be scanned Opanna might be interested in hosting it if you and the family are willing.

 

We'll see. I'm not even sure they'll share it with me. I think they will, but there may be some lag time involved.

 

Things like this never happen over night. It's been missing for 60+ years even another year or two isn't than long. I'll just keep my fingers crossed that it's the real thing and they are willing to share.

 

There is a four page synopsis of the diary that can be found on the Internet. This short version just covers some entries in the last two weeks of the battle - 5/12 through 5/29. This version is well known and is what everyone draws from today. It's hard even to find that because of the variations in the spelling of Tatsaguchi's name - Tatsuguchi/Tatsaguchi/Tatsuguri. You can see that synopsis here: http://www.hlswilliwaw.com/aleutians/Attu/html/attu-diary_of_nebu_tatsuguri.htm

The much longer version is the one that is lost. The one I'm trying to get a copy of is described a "large" stack of papers, so may be the lost full version.

Interestingly, one of Tatsaguchi's classmates from California was in the field hospital on May 30th when the Japanese garrison was wiped out in the final banzai charge. Tatsagushi died in that event on May 30th after killing his last patients with a hand grenade. There are two versions of his death. One is that he was among a group of 6 or 8 men shot on engineer hill. A second version is that he emerged in front of two GI's holding a bible and asking not to be shot because he was a Christian. One man understood him and the other claimed not to because of the noise of battle and shot him.

That final battle happened on a place called Engineer hill. It's a flat(ish) area where three valleys fall away towards Chichagof harbor, Holtz bay and Massacre bay. I spent many days wandering around Engineer hill. You can still work out where the field hospital and the artillery (mostly mortars), etc, were. The Japanese attacked up the valley from Chichagof harbor silently in the fog and from a ridge on the American right that ran along that same valley. There were about 1000 of them and they overran the hospital and much of the rear area before being killed off. I once pulled a GI helmet out of the turf there with a bullet hole right in the center over the forehead. I put that back in the ground. I also found the rusty remnants of a loaded 1911a1 magazine where somebody had patiently cut the caps off the slugs, making them into soft-points. My ex-wife threw that away as junk a few years later.

 

Well, I have a copy of the diary! Unfortunately, it's not a "stack of papers" as I was led to believe, but five pages. However, it is a different translation than the one commonly known. See here: http://www.hlswilliwaw.com/aleutians/Attu/html/attu-diary_of_nebu_tatsuguri.htm

It's substantially the same narrative, but the wording is different. I think that this version was translated by a different person, perhaps somebody with better skills in both languages. Instead of trying to scan the copy I have, I'm going to ask for the original and scan them in as a high res jpg then upload to them to my Photobucket library. Anyone who wants to use them will be free to do so - hyperwar? I also want to get the name of the service member who brought the document home, so any use can be credited to him and his family. I'll need a couple of days to get that done.

Interestingly, this version closes with the words "I have no regrets dying for the Emperor and Christ."

 

Very interesting. Keep us posted. Thank you.