Steve Shizuma Yamamoto grew up in San Gabriel, Calif., and attended the Japanese school his parents and members of the community built. His language teacher doubled as a judo instructor. In 1939, as part of judo exchange tour, Yamamoto traveled to Japan, Manchuria (an area occupied by Japan in northeastern China), Korea, and North China for two months.
On March 11, 1941, Yamamoto did not want to wait for the draft to call him, so he volunteered for the Army. When he was in basic training the Military Intelligence Language School (MISLS) recruited him and he left for San Francisco to join the first class of MIS linguists eventually graduating on May 1, 1942.
He shipped out to Brisbane, Australia, where he worked for the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS) translating captured documents. In December 1943, he left for Fort Moresby on New Guinea.
When he returned to Brisbane, he participated in an interrogation of one of the first prisoners taken in the Pacific War. The prisoner had been brought to Gen. Douglas D. MacArthur's headquarters in Australia and quickly turned over to ATIS for interrogation:
This prisoner I had started interrogating and caught lying.... He thought that I still did not believe in him after he apologized, that he was telling the truth. He became disheartened because I didn't see him for 2-3 days while I had a three-day pass. So meantime, he got very disheartened. [Oral History]
When I came back to ATIS, I got a note signed by him saying: "I [POW] felt very badly that you [Yamamoto] didn't come see me and I thought perhaps you still did not believe that I started to tell you the truth." And so he did not know how to regain his face and committed suicide. [Oral History]
They were quite surprised to see me.... In the distance I see the mothers, women folks of the house wait in the front yard, and as I come closer everybody starts to disappear.... And I greet them by hollering, "Ohayo," [good morning] nobody comes out.... I waited around and my aunt slowly opened the shoji [rice paper screen door], peered out and saw me, and apparently, she recognized me although I was in uniform. And she says, "Oh, Shizuma-san desu ka?" [Are you Mr. Shizuma?].... Everybody was afraid of American forces, especially the guys in uniform. [Oral History]
My aunt, that morning when the blast took place, she was out shopping in the suburban little shop up above the city proper, and she said she had her youngest ... on her back. The baby was blown off her back and still survived. [Oral History]
From the intelligence point of view, we were looking for any information concerning North Korea and the Order of Battle information concerning both. [Oral History]After the Occupation, Yamamoto continued his military duty for 23 years while working in various departments and taught interrogation techniques and Japanese. He retired from active duty in April 1961.