The Japanese on Bikini as described by Rubon Juda & Biamon Lewis to Jack Niedenthal, May 1989, September 1990 [top picture: Biamon Lewis. bottom picture: Rubon Juda] [Note: Rubon died from natural causes in Honolulu, Hawaii on April 4, 2003 at the age of about 80. He was a former Councilman who had served several terms before his retirement from office in the late 1990's. Rubon was a very special member of our community. He was King Juda's oldest son and the oldest brother of Senator Tomaki Juda. When I lived on Kili from 1984-87 I lived with Rubon, so it was through his eyes that I learned and experienced much of the Bikinian culture in my early years with the people of Bikini.]
Having just arrived from Kili Island, Biamon Lewis entered our old liaison office wanting to conduct some personal business. While I finished up a task on my computer, I asked him to sit down. Instead of sinking comfortably into the black padded swivel chair, the sexagenarian began to inspect the myriad of archival pictures that covered almost every inch of available wall space in my old office. Clad in his clean, neatly pressed white T-shirt and black polyester pants, Biamon purposefully circled the room. Before long, I noticed that he had paused to scrutinize one particular black and white glossy print of the granite monument that the Japanese had erected on Bikini in the 1970's to commemorate their war dead.
All of a sudden, Biamon laughingly sung out a string of words in Japanese. He shook his head, smiled and exclaimed, "My those men from Japan were characters."
The Japanese were the first foreigners ever to reside among the islanders on the island of Bikini. The men from The Land of the Rising Sun brought to Bikini their customs, habits, clothes, laws, religion, government and morals: most of which differed greatly from the Marshallese way of life.
The Japanese came to the Marshall Islands in the late 1800's. Most of the early comers were businessmen and teachers; none of whom wound up on Bikini on a permanent basis. Then World War II broke out. The Japanese found it necessary to build and maintain a watchtower on Bikini. Throughout the conflict the Bikini station served as an outpost for what became the Japanese military command center in the Marshall Islands, Kwajalein Atoll.
I knew Biamon to be a member of the faction that harbored very mixed remembrances--good and bad--of the Japanese. Upon hearing his comment about the exotic nature of the initial foreign invasion of Bikini by outsiders, I asked, "Biamon, what was it like for you, personally, during the war while living on Bikini?"
BIAMON LEWIS said, "I was a school student when the Japanese lived on Bikini and, on occasion, I did work for them unloading supplies when their ships would arrive in Bikini's lagoon. Upon the approach of one of their big supply barges, the ri-Nippon [Japanese men] would call out to us from the beach: 'Some of you young men come over here and help us get our supplies from this ship!' and we would all go running. We were afraid to be late: You didn't hesitate, even for a second, when those men asked you to do anything, no matter how minor the task seemed to be. We would offload their kerosene, rice, engines, bedding, radios, fruit trees and then help them carry the stuff across to their camp on the far side of the island. I guess what seems funny, at least now, was the way we always ran nervously about the island--but none of us found our situation humorous back then."
"How close did the Japanese live to the Bikinians?"
"Not very close at all. They lived apart from us on the ocean side while our community resided on the lagoon side of Bikini."
"Besides offloading ships, what other tasks were performed by the young Bikinian men? or was that your main function?"
"Oh no," said Biamon as he shook his head, "sometimes they would send us hunting and fishing for turtles, tuna, lobsters, snails, clams, crabs and bird eggs, and upon our return, we would be asked to cook large meals for them. Most of the time, however, we just went to school."
"What was it like be a student in a Japanese school?"
"Every morning we would wake up, wash our faces and then run to the classroom which was located way down on the end of the island. Like I said before, you tried your best not to be late or the teacher would smash you one with a stick. Our parents used to yell and remind us: 'Don't be late!' They hated seeing us get hit by those men. After spanking us, if we didn't come to school on time, the soldiers would put us to work for the day with the rest of the men either digging holes for water wells, making latrines for the soldiers or making copra. I was one of the fortunate ones. I never had any problems with the foreigners."
"Yes, but weren't there some other young Bikinian men who had run-ins with the soldiers?"
"Oh, yes. Rubon and Pero, both of whom were older than I, were injured by them several times, and Reverend Josaia was punished constantly because they didn't like him or our Christian religion. I am glad that I personally had no skirmishes with the Japanese because those who did lived to regret it."
"What subjects were taught in the schools?"
"They used to teach us mainly math and Japanese. Sometimes they taught us Japanese songs, like the one you heard me singing earlier."
"What do the words of the song mean, do you remember?"
"Oh, no. Learning those songs was great fun for me, but I can't remember what the lyrics mean."
"What was community life like amid the two clashing cultures?"
"Well, in the evenings we would spend a lot of time talking with the men by using a language which was a mixture of Marshallese and Japanese; Tibon and Hermon could speak a little Japanese, so they helped us to have many long and provocative conversations. We learned a lot from those Japanese men."
Rubon Juda, a storyteller from the previous section of this book and the oldest son of King Juda and then Mayor Tomaki Juda's older brother, entered the office. Seeing that Biamon and I were discussing the Japanese, he requested that he be allowed to add his remembrances to our storytelling session. I agreed, but I asked Biamon for one final comment on the war years.
He glanced around the room at all of the pictures on the walls of nuclear weapons explosions and the wide array of photographs that portrayed the movements of his people for the past half-century. He said meditatively, "We certainly had many good times with them. When they got mad, however, they were like demons. I guess that is the reason why some of our people hated them so much."
Biamon looked over at Rubon, and jokingly asked, "Why don't you explain about the watchtower, and the time that Towijki beat you? Ha-ha."
Rubon didn't think Biamon's attempt to ridicule him was very funny. Although Rubon is a happy-go-lucky and very pleasant man to be around, his recollections of the war years are not fond ones.
RUBON JUDA "I was a young adult back in the days when the Japanese arrived on our islands. There were six military men. I recall that the first thing they set out to do on our island was to build a huge watchtower so they could search the ocean for American ships and planes which were believed to be in the area. Myself, Moses, Uraiah and Pero were chosen from the young Bikinian men to work with these soldiers to complete this task. Soon their watchtower was erected. Then they began to teach us their rules. The first boss that was sent from Japan was named Towijki Aso, then after him came Nakashima. They had very strict laws for us to follow when we were working with them; the worst of them was if we fell asleep during our watch, they would send for one of the stronger Japanese soldiers to come and unmercifully beat us.
"My hours for keeping watch were from 8 p.m. until midnight. I remember one evening I mistakenly fell asleep and didn't hear Towijki coming up the ladder to check on me. When he saw me napping on the tower he ran over to where I was lying down. He lifted me up by my hair and slapped me in the face. He shouted at me, 'This isn't the time for sleep!' and then he said that I shouldn't come down off the tower until the next morning when it would be time for us to eat breakfast.
"In the morning Moses came up the tower and told me that the soldiers were waiting at the bottom to punish me. As I climbed down the ladder, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Towijki pick up a huge piece of wood and heard him say to the others that he was going to beat me with it. When I stood at the bottom of the ladder, I pleaded with him by crying out, 'Jima [grandfather], not that big piece of wood! Jima, Jima, Jima!'
"With his face set in stone, Towijki looked at me for a long time, and finally said, 'Okay, okay. I'll use a smaller piece so you won't get hurt that badly.' I would certainly have died if he had used that first piece." Rubon reflected for a second, and then added, "I think he may have been fooling me, but I was frightened anyway because sometimes it was hard to figure out when they were telling the truth."
"Rubon, how did your family feel when they knew you were being punished by the Japanese?"
"Our families felt very sorry when we were beaten, like I was that time, and sometimes they would cry and become very heartbroken. Everyone in the community knew when one of us was being punished. I also know that our relatives felt frustratingly helpless because they were unable to come to our aid."
Biamon, who had been very quiet during Rubon's narration, cut-in and said, "Rubon, tell about some of the good times that we had with the soldiers."
"Well, Biamon is right. Our involvement with the Japanese did sometimes feel, for me, like a long succession of horrible events. However, we often would share with them our local foods like pero [pandanus mixed with shredded coconut], jankwun [preserved pandanus] and the fish that we caught. Showing our kindness in this way, we managed to forge a relationship with the men. In return they always gave us rice, flour and the other things from the supplies which they had sent to them."
"Rubon, I want to know how you felt about these foreign men. How did the community explain away their strange behavior and customs? and, why do you think they were so rough with the Bikinians?
Rubon, who never answers a question without carefully thinking it over first, sat back in the creaky, unoiled office chair. Biamon started to say something, but Rubon silenced him by telling his friend not to interrupt his thoughts. Finally, after the three of us spent several quiet moments listening to the sound of the blower of the air-conditioner overhead, the old man replied, "I guess that I can explain it this way: We had a hard time understanding them. When they were nice, they were very good to us, but when they were in a rotten mood, they could be very mean. It was when they followed their rules and laws from Japan that we thought they became terrible men."
"Okay, now lets talk about when the Americans came."
"I remember well the day the Americans first came to Bikini. The day before, some of us were fishing in our canoes on the ocean side of the island when we started to hear planes buzzing overhead in the distance, and we heard some noise that sounded like fighting that we thought may have been taking place way out at sea. The sounds of war approaching must have made the soldiers on our island feel apprehensive because that night Towijki made an announcement: The following day he was going to kill those of us who were of the Christian faith. We were horrified and assumed that many of us were going to die, and so we prayed all night long. Nakashima and Towijki hated Reverend Josaia. They cruelly beat him all the time, in fact, most of our Christian deacons (Lokiar, Jokdru and Jakeo) were hassled and punished often.
"Anyway, the very next morning, at the time we thought they were going to start killing some of our Christian men, a plane appeared without warning and quickly flew over the watchtower. At first we thought it was Japanese, but the aircraft swooped down and started spraying those men on the tower with hundreds and hundreds of bullets. It was unbelievable that none of the Bikinians working at that time on the tower were killed. Many of the bullets just missed several of us; but two of the Japanese men got hit and the shrubs surrounding the tower caught fire. Most of our men fought the conflagration well into the night while the others carried the two soldiers who had been shot to their camp and tried to heal their wounds. One of the men, Towijki, eventually died. The next day, following their custom, we built a funeral pyre and burned his body."
"So, did they harm any of the Christians?"
Rubon shook his head from side to side, and said, "The attack convinced Nakashima to forget about the plan to kill all the Christians on the island as they had promised us the night before. We kept thanking God for this stroke of good fortune. We just couldn't believe it--we all thought that it was surely a miracle that the plane had come from the sky spewing bullets at the Japanese.
"Shortly afterwards a ship came into our lagoon with many soldiers from America. I can still remember them coming off their huge boat all dressed in their uniforms that were just covered with medals and stars. They told most of us to go to the far end of the island and wait there. At the same time they sent one of our men to find the Japanese soldiers and give them a letter that said, 'If you want to live, then come to the beach and surrender with your hands over your heads. If you want to die, fight. You have until tomorrow to make your decision.'"
"What did the soldiers do when they were requested to surrender?"
"When the Japanese men read the message they immediately asked us to help them dig a deep hole for them to hide during the next day, and so we worked for hours digging a huge trench located toward the center of the island. The next morning the Americans came and asked if one of us would volunteer to go to get the reply, from the Japanese men, to the demands of the previous day."
"So Rubon, here you people were--trapped between two warring nations with both of them demanding your assistance--how did your leaders handle this dilemma? Weren't you leery of the consequences of helping either side during the conflict?"
"Well, we hesitated to help the Americans because, regardless of the now perilous situation, most of us remained terrified of the Japanese soldiers. They had treated us so cruelly and were continually telling us that they were the strongest nation in the world, and furthermore, they were fond of making boastful claims to being the 'Emperors of the Universe.'" Rubon stopped the flow of his story, smiled, and then added, "However, Samuel, Reverend Josaia's son, proved to be the one exception."
"What did he do?"
"After having watched his father get beaten repeatedly by that brutal gang of foreign men, Samuel harbored a deep hatred for the soldiers; so, he offered to locate the Japanese men for the Americans and find out what they wanted to do. Samuel set out into the jungle, found the men and asked the now cowering soldiers what they wanted him to say to the Americans. They harshly demanded that Samuel cover the hole with palm fronds, weeds, dirt and grass. They said that if he didn't do it correctly they would kill him later. Without a word, he performed the task that they required of him. When the job was completed, Samuel hurried back to where the Americans were waiting. He stepped forward and volunteered to show them where the fugitives were hiding. And so, Americans in tow, Samuel calmly made his way toward the center of the island.
"After Samuel approached the hole, he pointed to the exact place where the soldiers were quietly lying under the blanket of brush. The Americans moved forward--and Samuel moved quickly back to stand where some of us were now watching in terror from the jungle. We were anxious to see what the Japanese soldiers would do. Even surrounded by Americans we were still frightened by Nakashima, the leader of the men from Nippon. All of a sudden we heard a click, or what sounded maybe more like a 'ping,' and then instantly we saw the hole explode in a wild rush of flame, dirt, pieces of the fronds and blood! They had killed themselves with a grenade! We stood absolutely dumbfounded as the Americans pulled the Japanese one by one out of the hole with their clothes all bloodied and torn, some of them were even missing limbs--making it a horrible sight for us to witness. We didn't sleep for nights after that."
I asked, "So now the Bikinians found themselves alone with the conquerors of the Emperors of the Universe. What happened then?"
"Well, after the action had subsided, the Americans held a meeting with our community and served us all kinds of good food: corned beef, rice, coffee, and sugar, then they thanked us for a job well done. They told us that by cooperating with them we had saved our island because, otherwise, they would have had to mount an attack by dropping bombs and shooting many rounds of bullets. Surely, in the process, they would have destroyed many of our houses and trees. We thought the coming of the Americans was a very fortunate event for our people."
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