Decorated for saving enemy lives

"I know that I have a new appreciation for the veterans of previous wars, those men and women who came back from those conflicts and returned to daily life. They are invisible to us now in many ways ..."

- Army Reservist Sgt. Matthew Mendonsa in his "Iraq Journal" entry, following his return to Sonoma County after combat duty in Fallujah.

Robert Sheeks, 82, of Santa Rosa is one such invisible man. It's not that he's transparent. It's that he is a veteran, and, as Mendonsa noted, they are not always easy to spot. As President Bush said at the dedication of the National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., in May, Sheeks was among the many "who fought and worked and grieved and went on."

And now blend in every day with the rest of us.

On Veterans Day Thursday, I had the privilege of sitting in the living room of Bob Sheeks' Bennett Valley house hearing him tell his Pacific War story with the aid of the sepia-tinted images in his photo albums.

"I always got great photo coverage during the war because the photographers always wanted to get pictures of the enemy," Sheeks said with a laugh. "And they knew the best way to get a picture was to follow me."

At that moment he was pointing to a picture of himself in combat gear crouching before a Japanese mother with two infants. They were among the many Japanese civilians and soldiers who hid in caves and ravines after American forces landed on the Japanese-occupied island of Saipan in 1944. Sheeks was awarded a Bronze Star for, among other things, convincing many to come out of hiding.

"I'm probably the only Marine who got decorated for saving enemy lives," he says.

I can't begin to do justice to his tale in this space. Fortunately others have done it for me. Bob Sheeks' experiences are included in a newly released book titled "Pacific War Stories: In the words of those who survived" published by Abbeville Press.

Sheeks, born in Shanghai to American parents and a Harvard student at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, was a Japanese language officer for the U.S. Marine Corps during the war. His job was to help find and interrogate military prisoners - sometimes under impossible odds and often under enemy fire. His job put him in the front lines of the invasions of the South Pacific islands of Tarwa, Saipan and Tinian.

But perhaps his greatest achievement was his success at getting soldiers to surrender. He did so with the help of a lot of improvising and creativity. When it became clear that he could not communicate to the enemy over the din of war, he mounted loud speakers on a jeep, borrowed a generator and began broadcasting surrender appeals.

He also managed to recruit captured soldiers to help him talk their comrades out of their fox holes and caves - before the troops moved in and killed them.

"They had no familiarity with our customs involving surrender, like using white flags," Sheeks writes in the book. "In fact, the Japanese didn't think surrender was even an option. The top brass had indoctrinated the troops that no Japanese in all of history had ever surrendered."

On Saipan, Japanese civilians believed that they would be raped and tortured by Americans, which is why dozens, sometimes whole families, jumped from the island cliffs to their deaths after the Americans took over.

"We really needed somehow to let Japanese troops know that survival and surrender were feasible, that some troops had already surrendered safely, and that the idea was not unthinkable," Sheeks wrote.

Sometimes his biggest obstacle was in getting help from his own troops.

"I would go around and try to propagandize about the importance of saving Japanese prisoners. And they would say, 'Are you out of your (bleeping) mind?'" Sheeks said. But some of the information he was able to glean from captured soldiers was helpful in saving American lives, in the long run, he said.

He noted one case where they were trying to coax Japanese soldiers out of a cave on Saipan. "The colonel was skeptical of my kind of tactics," but he was willing to let Sheeks do his thing.

"What happened after that was just remarkable," he said. "Finally, one young lad, maybe 16 or 17, came out and the other Japanese soldiers began firing at him because they didn't want him to give up."

The young man was so angry at his fellow soldiers for shooting at him that he ended up being the person who tossed explosives into the cave - when the others refused to come out.

"That kid was very cooperative," said Sheeks.

Many times soldiers could be convinced to give themselves up with the promise of water and food. And once they saw that they were being treated well by the Americans - in contrast to what they had been told - they were more willing to help others come out as well.

Sheeks, a man with a disarming smile and a house-full of art objects from the Far East, acknowledges that it's been 60 years since he saw combat. But he says he has been paying close attention in recent days to what has been happening with the Marines engaged in the intense street-fighting in Fallujah.

"It's of special interest to me," he said. "I get glued to the TV whenever possible. I have my heart over there with the Marines. I'm not sure exactly why. But there's a certain camaraderie."

It's a camaraderie that's clear to veterans like Sheeks and Mendonsa who deserve our thanks - and deserve to have their stories put in words.