Chapter 4
War Far from Home
Serving Abroad
SOMEWHERE IN GERMANY, EARLY spring, 1945. A young Crow (Apsáalooke) infantryman and his unit pursued a group of mounted SS officers to a farmhouse where the Germans pastured their horses for the night. Early the next morning, as they prepared to attack the farmhouse, the Native American soldier proposed freeing the horses so the enemy couldn’t use them to escape. Choosing a tall sorrel for himself, Joseph Medicine Crow led the little herd into nearby woods, where he couldn’t resist circling around the stolen horses, singing a Crow praise song.1
Indigenous soldiers like Joseph Medicine Crow were not unique in serving far from home. The war moved millions of troops and laborers around the world. In this chapter, we look at fighting abroad from two perspectives. First, for Native North Americans, combat in foreign battlefields publicized their patriotism and fulfilled their own traditions. Second, the service of Indigenous troops in British, French, and Japanese imperial forces committed them further to the central government, while also highlighting their distinctiveness.
First Nations and Native Americans Serving Abroad
All Canadian Indian men were liable for conscription, but the wording of treaties meant that certain groups were exempt from overseas posting. Nonetheless, many First Nations and Métis (Indigenous Canadians of Native and European descent) did serve abroad in both Asian and European theaters, and more than two hundred died in the war. They won praise from commanding officers and awards for valor. Among the best known was Thomas George Prince, of the Brokenhead Band of Manitoba, who was awarded a Military Medal for action at Anzio beachhead and a US Silver Star in southern France.2
In the United States, Native American servicemen were posted overseas as a matter of course. Of the roughly twenty-five thousand who served in World War II, five hundred were killed in action and more than seven hundred were wounded. Several held high rank, including Major General Clarence L. Tinker (Osage), a bomber pilot killed in action at Midway, and Admiral Joseph J. Clark (Cherokee), who commanded aircraft carriers in the Pacific. US Marine Ira Hayes (Pima, Akimel O’odham) served in Vella Lavella and Bougainville and was one of the men in the famous photograph of the flag raising at Iwo Jima. American Indians received at least seventy-one Air Medals, thirty-four Distinguished Flying Crosses, fifty-one Silver Stars, forty-seven Bronze Stars (Joseph Medicine Crow received one of them), and five Medals of Honor—three earned in Italy and two in the Pacific War.3
Though fighting abroad, these servicemen saw themselves as defending their homelands. Native American patriotism has a territorial focus, made explicit by Utah Shoshone when they passed a tribal resolution to defend their country—but not Europe—in the event of foreign invasion.4 Peter MacDonald (later Navajo tribal chairman) recalled Marine boot camp talks directed at Navajo recruits: if the Japanese come over here, you’ll have to fight on your home ground, wouldn’t you rather fight them overseas? “Naturally we didn’t want to bring the war home to our families. It was better to be a part of the military, to travel across the ocean, to hunt the Japanese away from our land. Thus the white man’s war became our war as well.”5
Though Native North Americans shared the fight with fellow citizens, their view of war was distinctive. Medicine Crow’s memoir, Counting Coup, recounts how his community interpreted his experiences. At the welcome dance following his discharge in 1946, elders asked him to recite his actions in Europe. After recounting how he led a party to retrieve boxes of dynamite, disarmed a German soldier in hand-to-hand combat, and stole horses, the elders explained the significance of these coups and declared him a war chief. He was given a new name and an honor song, linking him with past and future generations of Crow warriors.6
Ceremonial Support, Continuity, and Renewal
Songs, ceremonies, prayers, and dances sent recruits to war, protected them while they were gone, and welcomed them back, renewing generational links and traditional practices. Before they left home, Canadian Indians from the Prairie provinces sought advice and blessings from World War I veterans who had served abroad. Navajo servicemen were sent off with a Blessing Way ceremony, and Ojibwe (Anishinaabe) with Spring Drum gatherings. War inhibited some ceremonial life because of the shortage of men at home, but it could also increase religious activity, as when Zuni officials used the draft classification 4-D (for clergy-in-training) to request deferments for men who then took on permanent ritual duties.7
Many Native Americans carried protective amulets, corn pollen, tobacco, peyote, or medicine bundles into battle; they offered prayers and reflected on prophetic dreams; they used war cries and battle paint in combat.8 Others followed Christian practice, or mixed Christian and traditional ways. Journalist Ernie Pyle reported Indians improvising ceremonial dances before the Okinawa invasion; a Navajo man was then reassured by a rainbow arcing over the convoy. Before landing at Peleliu, Navajo codetalker Joe Hosteen Kelwood recalled that his uncle had advised him to offer pollen to the Pacific Ocean, “Mama Water,” who would protect him. Worried the commander would refuse permission, he hid the pollen in chewing gum and spat it into the sea as he boarded a landing craft.9
Joseph Medicine Crow was raised as a Christian, “But I still believed in traditional sources of spiritual power,” which he called on during the war—like a special eagle feather he inherited. “Before a battle, I would put the feather inside my helmet. In addition to carrying the feather, I recited certain prayers and painted myself with a red lightning streak and red ring. . . . When I was under fire, I felt much better because of my special spiritual ‘medicine.’” He passed the feather to a cousin, a B-25 machine-gunner who carried it in Africa and Europe, and a Crow soldier later took it to Korea.10
Chester Nez’s memoir Code Talker recalls how Navajo beliefs infused his war experience as a US Marine. As the chaplain blessed the men on deck before the Guadalcanal landing, Nez held a small buckskin medicine bag his father had sent him and said his own prayer: “I pinched some corn pollen from my medicine bag, touched my tongue, my head, and gestured to the east, south, west, and north, then tucked the bag back into the pants pocket of my fatigues.” He kept his medicine bag in his pocket during the horrific landing: “Navajo belief forbids contact with the dead, but we waded through floating bodies, intent on not becoming one of them. Close your mind, I told myself. I tried not to think about all those dead men, their chindí [dangerous spirits] violently released from this life. I am a Marine. Marines move forward. I tried to make myself numb.”11 Non-religious customs also comforted. Medicine Crow’s mother sent pemmican to him in Germany, and Nez describes Navajo buddies making fry bread on Guam, melting lard in a helmet over a butane stove.12
Like Native Americans, other Indigenous men took their culture into combat. Ainu soldiers carried talismans, made by relatives and imbued with prayers, made of a fox tooth and of mountain-elm barkcloth rubbed with ashes from the fireplace. An Ainu woman named Beramonkoro Sunamura said, “‘When my son left home to serve in that horrible war, he put a small inau [a wooden staff with attached curled shavings] that his father made for him into a little sack. He carried it on his person all through the war and he, too, returned home unharmed, one of the only three survivors of his troop.’”13 Some Siberian Orochen reindeer herders credit their survival to performing rituals at a special rock art site before joining the Soviet Army. Māori Battalion chaplains as well as soldiers used traditional prayers and rituals on the battlefield and after returning home.14
Homecoming feasts, dances, and ritual also renewed war-related traditions. Memoirs by Joseph Medicine Crow, Brummett Echohawk (Pawnee), and Hollis Stabler (Omaha, Umonhon) describe ceremonies in which they received new honor names. Some returnees felt (or their families and communities felt) the need for purification. Zuni men were cleansed with cedar bark at the edge of the reservation; one veteran’s mother, meeting him in Gallup, refused to touch him until he had undergone the ritual. The importance of ritual for reintegrating combat veterans seems clear, but in that era of strong assimilationist pressure it also showed commitment to one’s culture.15
Chester Nez spent five months in a naval hospital in San Francisco with what would today be diagnosed as PTSD. As he put it, “The war had climbed inside my head.” At home on the reservation, he was disturbed by memories, especially of the Japanese corpses he had waded through in the bloody surf of island invasions. To restore balance, his family arranged an Enemy Way, designed for those who had touched enemy dead. It required an item from an enemy (called a “scalp” in the ceremony), which was available because some Navajo soldiers had sent home hair or clothing from dead Japanese for such use.16 Ceremonies were not a cure-all; many veterans rejected such traditions, others went through them only to please relatives, and the cynicism of war itself could crush beliefs; but many found them valuable.17
Like ceremonies in World War I, but involving many more people, World War II rites linked generations and renewed practices on the edge of loss. When, in 1942, Standing Rock Sioux held their first Battle Sun Dance in half a century, returning soldiers danced alongside veterans of older wars; the audience included Henry One Bull, who had participated in the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Kiowa men who qualified as warriors by counting coup revived moribund warrior societies. Plains women’s groups held their own activities to prepare men for war, invoke sacred powers to protect them, and honor returnees. Once veterans were acknowledged as warriors, the community marked their new status in public events.18
Memories of World War II and commitment to tribal culture are fused in modern ceremonial. The influence of the war years can be seen today in powwows and other social events that recognize veterans, the use of flags and patriotic symbols, the popularity of war songs, and honors for men and women in current or recent military service.19
Public Attention to Native Service
Publicity about Native Americans’ war service shaped the way fellow citizens viewed them, with media stories that highlighted both loyalty and difference. The pattern had been set in World War I, when journalists delighting in stereotypes tagged Native speakers (even those with high school or college educations) with broken English and expressed amazement at their use of modern technology—but also applauded their patriotism.20 World War II recycled the formula, praising Indians’ service while repeating hackneyed images, as in an official photo showing “Dan Waupoose, a Menominee chief, kneeling with a rifle and wearing a feathered headdress for a U.S. Navy photographer in 1943.”21 Feature stories on individuals like Sioux US Army Ranger Samuel (Sampson) One Skunk trotted out the usual clichés, but also noted his many awards, including a Silver Star and a Legion of Merit. Bill Mauldin’s famous cartoons of hard-bitten GIs Willie and Joe were inspired in part by Sergeant Rayson Billey, a Choctaw in Mauldin’s infantry division.22 Canadian newspapers offered similar coverage, shifting over the war years from insulting, patronizing views of Indians to representing them as loyal, brave Canadians, offering a new image of their First Nations compatriots to a public steeped in old stereotypes.23
In Al Carroll’s sardonic comment, “Outside of the campaign that killed Custer, no other war in American history left so many indelible images of Natives put to canny use by white propagandists.”24 Indian imagery was deliberately deployed at home and abroad, helped along by the Bureau of Indian Affairs director John Collier’s desire to promote his organization.25 Heroes like Ira Hayes and Medal of Honor recipient Ernest Childers were brought home for war bond tours. The media loved to report dances, ceremonies, and tribal “adoption” of famous outsiders—Eleanor Roosevelt, General Douglas MacArthur, Wendell Willkie, and even Josef Stalin were given tribal honors. News media publicized displays of loyalty such as Southwest tribes’ agreeing to discontinue use of the traditional swastika in arts. A poster promoting the Alaska Territorial Guard (chapter 6) showed three armed men—white, Inuit, and Indian—backed by US and Alaskan flags (figure 4.1).26 Morale-boosting publicity emphasized Native American loyalty as proof of assimilation without recognizing its other meanings, as when coverage of tribal declarations of war failed to note their significance as statements of sovereignty.27
Elsewhere in the world, too, official publicity displayed images of Indigenous people to a public insatiable for news. Showing their integration into the war effort made two propaganda points: that even the people most marginal to the nation supported the war, and that cultural assimilation was progressing as intended. A staged photo of a women’s knitting group at an Australian Aboriginal government mission encapsulated this dual message, paying tribute to the women’s loyalty in knitting scarves, socks, and mittens for servicemen and also congratulating the Aborigines Welfare Board on its successful assimilation program. Similarly, a 1938 Japanese film showed Ainu women in traditional dress assembling comfort packages for soldiers alongside other patriotic Japanese women.28
Military and civilian leaders were quick to praise Indigenous support of the war as evidence of universal patriotism, and most thought it demonstrated a desire, or at least willingness, to be subsumed into the majority culture. This was far from the truth, as we see from how wartime confirmed and renewed tradition—and even where it was true, attitudes toward assimilation changed in postwar decades. Hoist by their own propaganda petard, nations that had benefited from the patriotism of Indigenous peoples during the war had to deal with their demands for greater equality, inclusion, and recognition after it (chapter 12).
Serving Far from Home in Imperial Forces
When Alfred “Bunty” Preece, a Chatham Islander who was the last surviving officer of the Māori Battalion, was buried in March 2018, the Italian song included at his funeral was a poignant reminder of the war’s international reach.29 New Zealanders fought for Great Britain in all theaters of war. The 28th (Māori) Battalion alone suffered 680 deaths and 1,712 wounded in overseas service. It became New Zealand’s most-decorated battalion, receiving seven Distinguished Service Orders, thirteen Distinguished Conduct Medals, twenty-four Military Crosses, fifty-one Military Medals, and the first Māori Victoria Cross, awarded posthumously to Second Lieutenant Te Moananui-a-Kiwa Ngarimu for bravery against German forces in Tunisia.30 Māori in other units also distinguished themselves. Among the best known is Porokoru Patapu (John) Pohe, a bomber pilot who flew more than twenty missions over Europe until his plane went down and he was captured. He was one of the tunnelers who took part in “The Great Escape” from Stalag Luft III in March 1944, and was among those executed by the Gestapo after being recaptured.31
As we saw in chapter 2, Māori leaders’ goal in supporting the war was not to further assimilation, but to bolster the struggle for autonomy. The effort, especially the achievements of the Māori Battalion, impressed the government and the public, which became familiar with its motto, “Kia Kaha” (“stay strong”) and other Māori combat traditions. The battalion performed haka in formal contexts (a famous photo shows it in Egypt at a ceremony for the King of Greece, figure 4.2) and at least once in battle. Homecoming ceremonies for the battalion, funeral rituals for the dead, and especially a months-long series of activities culminating in the awarding of Lieutenant Ngarimu’s Victoria Cross to his parents showcased Māori cultural revival. Though more Māori served in the regular armed forces, the well-publicized Māori Battalion has dominated historical memory to become an important symbol of both New Zealand and Māori identity.32
Patricia Grace, a major contemporary Māori writer, creates the experiences of a young man in the Māori Battalion in Tu (2004). In this novel we see soldiers in North Africa and Italy applying Māori culture in new contexts, as they etch their rifle stocks and paint their faces with traditional tattoo designs, use haka chants and songs, and combine chants and Christian prayers to honor their dead. In Vatican City, they slip tiki (greenstone pendants) from home into boxes of rosaries to be blessed by the Pope. They compare Italian culture to Māori (both appreciate music and performers). As they ponder lessons from elders and worry about kinsmen, the characters reflect the common experiences of all soldiers and also their uniquely Māori viewpoint. Grace’s novel shows how the war era continues to resonate for Māori today.
British military forces drew recruits from throughout the empire, sending many Pacific Islanders to faraway war zones. Fijians served across the globe, including in the Royal Air Force, as infantry in North Africa, and as merchant seamen. The Fiji Defence Force served as home militia, and after chiefs requested a Fijian unit be sent overseas, it supplied commando units for the Allies in the Southwest Pacific.33 The troops Americans called “South Pacific Scouts” included several regular units of Fiji infantry and Fiji Commandos, plus attached units of Solomon Islands Defence Force and the Tonga Defence Force. Alongside US Marines, they fought in numerous engagements on island battlefields. Fijians received many military decorations, including a Victoria Cross (posthumous) awarded to Corporal Sefanaia Sukanaivalu for bravery in action on Bougainville in November 1942.34 Lieutenant Henry Taliai, an officer with the Fiji Commandos, died on New Georgia in April 1943, the first Tongan killed in action in the war. Two Tongans won US Silver Stars and British military medals in the Southwest Pacific, and six served with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force in Egypt.35
French Pacific Islands also raised colonial units for service abroad, in addition to home defense formations. De Gaulle’s Free French organized a Pacific Battalion to fight in Africa and Europe. By the end of 1943, home militia in French territories and Pacific Battalion volunteers totaled 1,200 Europeans and 1,500 Melanesians; Tahitians and New Caledonians fought in North Africa, Italy, and southern France.36
Indigenous people in the Japanese Empire also were sent overseas. Ainu men fought as members of the regular army and navy throughout China, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands. The Battle of Okinawa (April–June 1945) included IJA units with significant Ainu representation; an estimated thirty-one Ainu died there. A war memorial commemorates Ainu soldiers who protected local residents from Japanese troops, reflecting a sense of connection between Ainu and Okinawan cultures.37
Takasago-Giyutai, Indigenous Taiwanese military/labor units (chapter 2), were recruited for overseas service beginning in 1942. Eight corps were dispatched, along with other “special volunteers” units, perhaps a total of five to eight thousand youths. They served in the Southwest Pacific, initially in transport and supply but later in combat. Officers praised their patriotic service, especially in the desperate conditions of the starving Japanese Army in New Guinea near war’s end. Detail on these units is scarce, partly due to lack of documentation, destruction of records, and official secrecy, but also because Indigenous identity was masked behind Japanese names and further hidden when returnees were assigned new Chinese names and faced condemnation as “traitors” in postwar Taiwan—a silence not lifted until the 1980s and 1990s, when new research began to reveal this wartime history.38
From Japanese Micronesia, a few small groups of volunteer non-combatants were sent to aid the Japanese advance. About twenty volunteers from Pohnpei were selected to supervise work gangs in New Guinea; they arrived in August 1942, as fighting was underway. Only three survived to return home a year later.39 Ubai Tellei joined the group from Palau, motivated by patriotic education and confidence in Japanese victory. When Allied troops invaded their work areas, some of the Palauan men decided to remain with local people, while Tellei and others followed retreating Japanese troops as the empire’s perimeter contracted.40
As we saw with Sámi in Finland and the USSR, some groups sharing an Indigenous identity ended up on opposing sides of the conflict. Chamorros on Guam and on the Marianas Islands to the north shared language, culture, and family ties, but were split by US-Japanese control. Japan’s colonial administration in the Northern Marianas had employed local Chamorros from its start, following common imperial policy. After Japan invaded Guam on December 8, 1941, intending permanent occupation, authorities brought some seventy-eight Chamorros from Saipan and Rota as interpreters and police assistants. Their interactions with Guam’s Chamorros varied, from simply doing their duties properly, to abuse and exploitation. But even those who were sympathetic or who had kin on Guam were trapped by the fact that the two groups of Chamorros were “enemies” by reason of global war.41 Their actions reverberated after the war, intersecting other tensions between Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands (chapter 11).
Phillip Mendierra (Menjo Kyukichi), from the island of Rota in the Northern Marianas, was one of these assistants. The son of a village headman who had immigrated from Guam, he completed the five-year schooling allowed for Islanders, with its emphasis on patriotic education. As he recalled his feelings at the time, “We would like to become Japanese soon, and also have a go at becoming soldiers.” He began working for the police in 1941, and in February 1944 went to Guam as a civilian staff member of the secret service. He wore civilian clothes and criticized the Japanese military to gain trust to conduct his duties, which included searching out anti-Japanese activities and tracking down escaped POWs. In the US invasion on July 21, 1944, he fled to the jungle, was captured but avoided execution, and returned to Rota.42
A consistent theme for those deployed abroad is that their sense of patriotism was engaged, while their Indigenous identity never disappeared and was often accentuated. That was the experience of Jakov Oktavov, a Sámi soldier with the Soviet Army in Norway, where he was amazed to meet other reindeer herders: “I was so surprised. Just think, Lapps like me living in Norway. I would never have believed it.”43 Being overseas offered new experiences and insights to Indigenous servicemen. It did the same for their compatriots, the millions of other men and women sent abroad to pursue the war. When foreign soldiers were stationed in Indigenous lands—as we see in the next chapter—local people learned more about the world’s major powers, and the troops’ homefront public came to know unexpected allies on distant battlegrounds.
. Chapters 3–10 are the descriptive heart of the book, exploring Indigenous lives during the war years, in military roles when war came to their homelands (chapter 3), or when they served in faraway battles or when foreign soldiers flooded into their territory (chapters 4 and 5). Whether deployed at home or abroad, Indigenous distinctiveness persisted in military service. Combatant powers used their skills on the battlefield and also used images of “primitive” peoples in propaganda (chapters 6 and 7). Chapters 8 and 9 explore non-combat effects of war. Indigenous peoples, like others across the globe, suffered from relocation, forced labor, militarization, and disrupted economies. Those near front lines endured invasion, bombing, and occupation, as foreign armies advanced and retreated around and over them. The war both built and destroyed Indigenous homelands, and logistics affected even areas far from combat (chapter 10).
1. Medicine Crow (2003, 114–117).
2. On Indigenous Canadians’ overseas service, Gaffen (1985), Lackenbauer and Mantle (2007), Sheffield and Riseman (2019), Summerby (2005). Gaffen (1985, 40–57) and Summerby (2005, 21–33) contain many instances of valor awards, including Prince’s.
3. Townsend (2000, 150); Bernstein (1991) also lists distinguished Native American servicemen. Since they were classified as white in integrated units, and some were not enrolled in a tribe, accurate numbers are not known. The US Department of Veterans’ Affairs lists five Native American Medal of Honor awardees in World War II: Second Lieutenant Van T. Barfoot (Choctaw), Second Lieutenant Ernest Childers (Muscogee [Creek]), First Lieutenant Jack C. Montgomery (Cherokee), Private First Class John Reese, Jr. (Cherokee), and Commander Ernest Edwin Evans (Cherokee/Creek). The first three fought with the 45th Infantry (“Thunderbird”) Division in Italy (Whitlock 1998), Reese in the Philippines, and Evans at Leyte Gulf. Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma is named after Major General Tinker.
4. J. Franco (1999, 63), Holm (2007, 146–147).
5. MacDonald (1993, 60).
6. Medicine Crow (2003, 120–121). Joseph Medicine Crow became an historian, educator, author, and tribal leader; among other honors, he was awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.
7. Prairie Indians, Gaffen (1985, 70); Navajo and Zuni, Adair and Vogt (1949); Ojibwe, shortage of men, Ritzenthaler (1943).
. 8. Examples in Adair and Vogt (1949), Carroll (2008, 118–122), Echohawk (2018), J. Franco (1999, 119), Gaffen (1985, 47), Holiday and McPherson (2013, esp. pp. 76–95), Meadows (1999, 2002), Sheffield and Riseman (2019, 130), Townsend (2000, 141). Holm (1996, 166–167) describes Native American soldiers in Vietnam continuing traditions valued by warriors.
9. Pyle, Townsend (2000, 137–138); Kelwood, Price et al. (2013, 202).
10. Medicine Crow (2003, 103–106).
11. Nez (2011, 10–11, 16). Navajos were particularly affected by cultural rules against dealing with the dead. US Marine Paul Blatchford’s war experiences inured him to the fear; after the war, he took on the task of handling burials at home (Gilbert 2008, 58).
12. Medicine Crow (2003, 105); Nez (2011, 186–187). Similarly, families of Māori Battalion Company C soldiers dried local specialties such as seaweed and fermented corn to send overseas (Awatere 2003).
13. Hilger (1971, 106), also Kojima (2014, 111) on Ainu prayers for soldiers.
14. Orochen, Brandišauskas (2017, 234); Māori, Awatere (2003), Gardiner (1992, 151).
15. Medicine Crow (2003, 119–123); Echohawk (2018, 214-215), Stabler (2005, 125); Zuni, Adair and Vogt (1949, 549–550). Sheffield and Riseman (2019, 237–270) discuss homecoming for Indigenous Native Americans, Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders. Other rituals dealt with those who did not come home. Private First Class Clarence Spotted Wolf (Standing Rock Sioux), who died near Luxembourg in December 1944, left a detailed request for his burial ceremony, commemorated in a well-known painting by Potawatomi artist Woody Crumbo, “Spotted Wolf’s Last Request,” showing the young warrior, holding aloft a US flag, ascending from a flag-draped traditional burial scaffold (Perry 2009, 131–132).
16. Nez (2011, 142, 223–224, “war had climbed,” p. 215). Townsend (2000, 141) comments that whites took items from battlefields as souvenirs; Indians needed them for cleansing rites (see chapter 7). Navajo veteran Samuel Holiday addressed recurring problems in the years after the war, eventually undergoing three Enemy Way ceremonies (Holiday and McPherson 2013, 181–207).
17. Carroll (2008, 118–122). Holm (1996, 192–193) discusses how ceremonies helped some Native American Vietnam veterans return to civilian life in the 1960s and 1970s.
18. Revivals of warrior societies and ceremonies, Carroll (2008, 129–130), Holm (1981, 75), Howard (1951), Meadows (1999), Nash (1985, 136–140). Howard (1951) describes a 1947 Dakota victory dance that honored veterans of former wars as well; it included a naming ceremony for a Women’s Army Corps veteran.
19. Powwow revival, Meadows (1999, 341–343). War songs recall events such as D-Day or the Bataan Death March, recognize war mothers, honor the US military, praise veterans, and lament their hardships and sacrifice; examples in Carroll (2008, 11–13, 123–129) and Meadows (1999).
20. Barsh (1991), Sheffield (2004), Zissu (1995).
21. Stereotypes, Townsend (2000, 135); “Dan Waupoose,” Bernstein (1991, 45).
22. One Skunk, Stabler (2005, 77–78); Mauldin, DePastino (2008).
. 23. Sheffield (2004) documents the shift, arguing that the changed imagery and awareness of Indigenous military service allowed public support for postwar reform to First Nations policy.
24. Carroll (2008, 115).
25. J. Franco (1999, 120–148). On Collier and BIA publicity, Hauptman (1986a, 7–9) and Rosier (2009, 72–73, 84–93). Nazis also used Native Americans for propaganda, either to disparage US racism or in an unsuccessful effort to attract Native American support (J. Franco 1999, 1–39; Rosier 2009, 73–77; Townsend 2000, 31–60).
26. Swastika, Townsend (2000, 127); publicity photo of Hopi, Apache, Navajo, and Papago representatives signing the ban, Bernstein (1991, 20). ATG poster, Gruening (1969, 6); the poster was created by Swedish-American artist and ATG officer Magnus C. “Rusty” Heurlin.
27. J. Franco (1999, 120–148), e.g., for Iroquois, Hauptman (1986a, 6–9).
28. . Australian knitters, Harman (2015, 239); Ainu women, Kojima (2014, 111).
29. Coughlin (2018).
30. Orange (2000), Soutar (2000), Winegard (2012, 265). Cody’s (1956) official history and Gardiner (1992) detail the Māori Battalion’s service from the time it was sent to England during the Battle for Britain to combat in Greece, Crete, Libya, Egypt, and Italy; see also https://28maoribattalion.org.nz/. Cook Island men and Samoans in New Zealand joined the Battalion and other New Zealand forces after their governments declined to form overseas units (Anderson 2016, 244; Bennett 2009a, 138). Biography of Lieutenant Ngarimu, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/5n9/ngarimu-te-moananui-a-kiwa. Then-Captain Arapeta Awatere (2003, 157–173) recalls seeing him “double” during the battle, a sign of impending death.
31. McGibbon (2004, 187–191).
32. Gardiner (1992), Sheffield and Riseman (2019, 138–142). Use of haka on Crete, Sheffield and Riseman (2019, 129), citing Māori historian Monty Soutar’s (2008, 148–149) history of the Battalion’s C Company; also Awatere (2003) on haka as entertainment, morale-building, and fitness for Māori and Pakeha troops. Gardiner (2007, 74–88) reviews the history of haka in the New Zealand military and in the Second World War VC award events.
33. Bennett (2009a, 134–138), Great Britain Colonial Office (1946, 37–41), Lal (1992, 108–135), Ravuvu (1974, 5–17, chiefs’ request, p. 19). The first Fijian fighter pilot (a nephew of Ratu Sukuna) Sergeant Isikeli Doviverata Komaisavai, trained in Canada, served in the RAF, and died of illness in England in 1944; https://michaeljfield.tumblr.com/post/128309292098/fijis-forgotten-wartime-fighter-pilot-michael.
34. Firth (1997a, 300–304); Ravuvu (1974, pp. 30–42 on Solomons, pp. 43–56 on Bougainville); Ready (1985, 69–71, 186–196); numbers, Lal (1992, 117). Corporal Sukanaivalu https://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/2166745. , Griffin, Nelson, and Firth (1979, 84–85), Ravuvu (1974, 43–56).
35. Bennett (2009a, 135), Great Britain Colonial Office (1946, 53–61), Hixon (2000, 128).
36. Munholland (2005, 61–83), Firth (1997a, 301).
. 37. Siddle (1996, 144–145). Figal (2001, 62) describes the monument’s inscription, “provided in 1966 by Teshi Yoshiji, an Ainu veteran of the 24th Regiment.” Perhaps this is the man Yoshimi (2015, 128–129) names as Teshi Toyiji, sent to Okinawa in August 1945, where he rescued orphans, convinced a group of nurses not to commit suicide, and returned the dead to their homes—“memorable deeds” that showed a sense of connection between his own Ainu culture and Okinawans.
38. Huang (2001) outlines the Takasago program. Yoshimi (2015, 146) tells the story of a Taiyal man, Awi (Matsuoka Tsuneo) who at eighteen joined a Takasago unit in 1943 as a naval civilian worker. He worked in the Philippines and Rabaul before being reassigned to the army on Bougainville, where Taiwanese Aborigines were put into the front line. Anthropologist Futuru C. L. Tsai gathered accounts of Amis who worked in Palau, New Guinea, and the Philippines, and has produced two films about their New Guinea links (2011, 2017). See Poyer and Tsai (2018) for additional sources on Takasago oral histories.
39. Higuchi (1991), Nero (1989), Peattie (1988, 301–302), Poyer, Falgout, and Carucci (2001, 68–72).
40. Tellei (1991). Palauans were among the most loyal Japanese subjects in Micronesia (Koror was the Mandate capital). Scores of men volunteered, and the names of nineteen who died were inscribed on Koror’s Shinto shrine (Murray 2016, 112–114). Falgout, Poyer, and Carucci (2008, 110–117) includes songs from Palau and Pohnpei commemorating the work groups.
41. Camacho (2008; 2011, 136–145; 2019), Rogers (2011, 160). In postwar US war crimes trials on Guam, accused Rota and Saipan Chamorros who had worked for the Japanese were determined to have no nationality; nine who were found guilty were sentenced as civilians, not as POWs (Camacho 2019, 89-115).
42. Yoshima (2015, 132–133). Camacho (2008, 2011) presents other personal histories of Chamorro interpreters and police assistants during the war and on Guam; also Camacho (2019) on Guam war crimes trials involving them.
43. Evjen and Lehtola (2020, 41 n. 29).
