What a Maui Sergeant Did When 8 Japanese Soldiers Holding a Saipan Cave Called Him a Traitor

On July 26, 1944, an American soldier from Maui climbed down a hundred-foot rope on Saipan's northern cliffs and sat down inside a cave with eight armed Japanese soldiers. Behind them, in the dark, were more than a hundred civilians. The soldiers' first words to him were that he was a spy and a traitor. The Army's fallback, if he failed, was demolition. This is the day of Technician Fourth Grade Hoichi Kubo, Military Intelligence Service linguist with the 27th Infantry Division, told place by place from the clifftop to the cave mouth, and back to the Lahaina schoolroom where he learned the words he used. Sources used: Distinguished Service Cross citation, General Orders No. 52, Headquarters, U.S. Army Forces, Pacific Ocean Areas (18 Oct 1944) JAVA Research Team with Larry Kubo, "Bob Hoichi Kubo, Recipient of DSC, Profile of a Hero" (The Advocate, Fall 2017; Discover Nikkei, 2019) James C. McNaughton, oral history interview, Densho Digital Archive (1 July 2000) James C. McNaughton, Nisei Linguists: Japanese Americans in the Military Intelligence Service During World War II (Department of the Army, 2006) Lori S. Stewart, "T4G Kubo clears caves on Saipan," Saipan Tribune Jessica Wambach Brown, "The Cave-Flushing Nisei," HistoryNet (2019) Go For Broke National Education Center, "The Marianas: Saipan, Tinian, and Guam" Topics covered: Hoichi "Bob" Kubo · Military Intelligence Service linguists · 27th Infantry Division on Saipan · civilians held in Saipan's caves · Marpi Point · the July 7, 1944 banzai charge warning · Taira no Shigemori's loyalty dilemma · Japanese Americans from Hawaii in WW2 · Distinguished Service Cross