(Editor’s Note: John is the 6th Great Grandson-in-law of Carl Stiehm and Hanna Schloesser)
By Ed Kennedy, ADVERTISER STAFF WRITER
Dr. John Alfred Burden, who helped nisei break through the prejudice barrier among U.s. forces in the Pacific during World War II, has died.
“Capt. Burden is credited with giving the nisei their chance to show what they could do in the US. Military Intelligence Service,” said Ted Tsukiyama, local attomey and historian of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.
Burden died Jan. 2 in Nashville, Tenn. He was 98.
Tsukiyama, who has conducted extensive research on Burden, said the young officer insisted that nisei Japanese-language translators be included in the first combat intelligence team on Guadalcanal, which he led.
“Until he came along, these trained nisei translators were being used for menial jobs because they weren’t trusted,” Tsukiyama said.
Bom of missionary parents in Japan and schooled there, Burden was a plantation doctor on Maui when the war began. An Army Reserve officer, Burden was ordered to report to military intelligence school within a few days of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
He was one of two haoles in the first, 60-member class of the intelligence school. The rest were Japanese Americans, recruited from Hawaii and Mainland internment camps.
Burden was sent to Fiji, in charge of an intelligence team assigned to monitor Japanese communications. While there, Adm. Olester Nimitz sent him to Guadalcanal as an intelligence officer.
Despite institutional resistance, Burden insisted on taking nisei translators.
“Burden and his nisei linguist team were probably the first in the combat zones to engage in intelligence against the Japanese,” wrote Tsukiyama in an article for the “50th Anniversary Album” of the Military Intelligence Service Veterans Club of Hawaii, published in 1993.
Tsukiyama wrote that Burden’s efforts “first opened the eyes of the American field commanders to the immeasurable value of the nisei linguists in the war against Japan.”
MIlitary records show that about 6,000 nisei served in the Military Intelligence Service during the war, half of them from Hawaii.
Following the war, Burden returned to Hawaii to set up practice and went on to become president of the Hawaii Medical Association.
He is survived by two daughters, Barbara Swanson of Nashville, and Betsy Burden of Menlo Park, calif. and five grandchildren.
A private service will be held at a later date. Contributions may be made to Hospice Maui and the Maui Humane Society.
from Honolulu Advertiser, 22 January 1999