Honoring "China Hands" on July 4th: Koji Ariyoshi

China Hands (from Wikipedia)

• John Paton Davies, Jr.

• John S. Service

• John Carter Vincent

• O. Edmund Clubb

• Owen Lattimore

• John K. Fairbank

• Theodore White

• Raymond P. Ludden

• John F. Melby

• Edgar Snow

The first five served in the American Foreign Service during the War and provided inspiration behind the character in "Lovers & Comrades," John Quentin Liege (notice how many have the first name "John."). Missing from the list, however, is retired Army Intelligence sergeant, Koji Ariyoshi (photo courtesy of PBS Hawaii). Ariyoshi had been imprisoned at Manzanar after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and he volunteered for service with the 100th Infantry Battalion. He went to Military Intelligence Service Language School at Camp Savage in Minnesota and studied Japanese from seven to four in the afternoon.

After finishing training, he was assigned to the China-Burma-India theater, where he joined a psychological warfare unit in the Office of War Information. In October 1944, he was transferred to the US Army Observer Section in Yan'an, also known as the Dixie Mission. There, he met and worked with both Chinese and Japanese Communist leaders. Ariyoshi's book,"From Kona to Yenan"documents the changing political environment in Yan'an during the US Army's time there and has important insights about American attitudes toward China and Asians in general (being one of the few Asian Americans stationed there).

Like other China Hands, Ariyoshi returned to the US and was later accused of being a Communist. Ariyoshi was an outspoken critic of labor conditions in Hawaii. In 1951, he, along with six other labor organizers, was arrested on charges of attempting to overthrow the American government under the Smith Act. He was found guilty, but he appealed and was eventually acquitted of all charges. Madame Sun Yat-sen, the widow of the founder of the Republic of China, donated her mother's wedding dress to be sold in order to help pay for Ariyoshi's legal fees. In 1976 the Hawaii legislature honored Ariyoshi apologized for the things done to him during the 1950s. Ariyoshi died later that year.