A combat interpreter's quest for mercy in the Pacific * The first
time that the entire story of one Marine Corps combat interpreter has been told;
a compelling personal struggle to come to terms with harrowing combat
experiences
Robert Sheeks was born and raised in Shanghai until his family fled the impending
Japanese occupation in the 1930s. He was emotionally scarred by grisly
atrocities he witnessed as the Japanese military terrorised the Chinese during
the Shanghai Incident of 1932; however, his intense hatred for the Japanese was
gradually transformed into tolerance and then compassion. He was recruited after
the Pearl Harbor attack to be a Japanese
language interpreter in the Marine Corps, and when he encountered kind and
considerate Japanese-American Nisei instructors during the intensive course at
the US Navy Japanese Language School, he began to re-think his attitudes toward
the Japanese.
Ultimately he developed an empathy for the Japanese enemy he had
formerly despised. This began during the invasion of Tarawa where he was frustrated by the near impossibility
of capturing Japanese combatants because there was no way to communicate with
them in their bunkers where they fought to the death. That led him to devise
methods to use a combination of surrender leaflets and amplified voice appeals
to convince them to surrender. As a consequence, he ended up saving the lives of
hundreds of Japanese civilians and military by being able to talk them out of
caves during combat on Saipan and Tinian in
1944. For his efforts he was awarded the Bronze Star with a unique
commendation, certainly one of the few medals ever given to a Marine officer for
saving the lives of the enemy.
