World War II Database

Full Title: A Shanghai American: From an American Childhood in Shanghai to Marine Combat Interpreter on the Pacific Island Battlefields of WWII

A Shanghai American is the semi-biographical World War II memoir of Dan Williams. In the interests of full disclosure, the main reason I picked up this book is because I have known Dan Williams all my life. I grew up in a house four doors down from where Dan had settled to raise his family after the war. Our families had always been friendly and I chose this book because I wanted to learn more about his experiences in World War II. Though written with co-author Gerald Meehl, the book was written in Williams' first-person in an easy, conversational style that was very genuine to Dan's own speaking style.

The book describes how Williams' family hailed from Alabama but his childhood was spent in Shanghai, China because his parents had gone there as Baptist missionaries. Shanghai, in the 1920s and 1930s, was perhaps second only to Paris as the most cosmopolitan and international city in the world. The family lived in the city's French Concession and the children attended the Shanghai American School. Classes at the American School were in English but, of necessity, Williams still learned a certain amount of Chinese. In 1936, at a time when the Japanese influences in China were growing, Williams returned to the United States to attend college. The book describes Williams' journey through the Soviet Union on the Trans-Siberian Railway, through Europe, and then across the Atlantic.

By the time Williams graduated from the University of Alabama, the Pearl Harbor Attack had already happened and the United States was at war. Out of the blue, Williams received an invitation to travel to Washington, DC for an interview with the US Navy. Williams met with the head of the Navy's Japanese language section who had heard about Williams' background in Asia and wanted him as a Navy Japanese Language Officer. The Navy knew full well that Chinese was not Japanese but felt his familiarity with the Asian lifestyle and customs would still be useful to the Navy. Williams accepted the offer and he was sent to Colorado University in Boulder for the Navy's one-year intensive Japanese language program. Upon completion, most students were commissioned as Naval officers but Williams used a little-known option to request a commission in the Marine Corps. As far back as his boyhood days in China, Williams had long been enthralled with the 4th Marines assigned to the American legation in Shanghai.

At the outbreak of war, the 4th Marine Division Williams had known in Shanghai had been transferred to the Philippines and were largely eliminated through the Battle of Bataan and the subsequent Death March. By the time Williams was commissioned as a Marine Corps Second Lieutenant, the 4th Division was being reconstituted in San Diego, California and Williams was assigned there as an intelligence officer. In early 1944, the division shipped out to the Pacific for the invasion and occupation of Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands. Before even getting to the islands, a Japanese picket boat was intercepted and sunk. An injured Japanese sailor was brought aboard the command ship for medical treatment and a Japanese Language Officer was summoned. Thus, Dan Williams became the first 4th Marines Japanese Language Officer to interrogate a Japanese Prisoner of War. After the landings, besides interrogating more Japanese prisoners, Williams also recovered Japanese maps and other documents that he translated for their intelligence value. He did the same things during the division's next operations at Saipan and Tinian in the Mariana Islands and later on Iwo Jima. In between operations, the 4th Marines regrouped at Maui in the Territory of Hawaii. As part of the intelligence section, the language officers spent those periods at Pearl Harbor attached to the Intelligence Command. In his retelling, Williams described in some detail what life was like for a junior officer in 1944 Honolulu.

When the war ended, Williams was sent back to China as part of the occupation force. In the book, he described the many changes the war had brought to Shanghai. Gone was the city's cosmopolitan culture having first been replaced by the Japanese and then, right before his eyes almost, by the Chinese Communists. Williams returned to the United States and mustered out of the Marine Corps. He made his career in the banking and brokerage world and settled in the San Francisco area.

My impressions of this book are probably influenced by my personal connection with the author, but I found the book both enjoyable and informative. A Shanghai American is clearly a World War II narrative but written from a perspective few other WWII books can offer. For those who would be attracted to this perspective, I would readily recommend this book.