Hal Leith, a member of OSS Operation Cardinal to liberate 1443 Allied prisoners from a Japanese prison camp in Manchuria
https://www.academia.edu/1703035/Hal_Leith_An_American_Spy_Before_the_CIA

Hal Leith, a member of OSS Operation Cardinal to liberate 1443 Allied prisoners from a Japanese prison camp in Manchuria


FREEDOM Allied prisoners liberated from a Japanese POW camp in August 1945. Photo: Getty Images


“I was the fourth one out the B-24’s jump hole,” Staff Sgt. Harold “Hal” Leith told me. It was his first glimpse of China’s northeast, a region then known as Manchuria. As the young American looked down, all he saw were cabbages. “The next sound I heard was applause and happy yelling. It was a bunch of Chinese farmers. They seemed to be enjoying the air show.”

Seventy years ago this week, Leith and his team took off from central Xi’an before dawn on Aug. 16, 1945, only 17 hours after Emperor Hirohito had announced Japan’s surrender. Dubbed Operation Cardinal, theirs was a daring secret mission to liberate 1443 Allied prisoners from a Japanese prison camp.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-daring-rescue-mission-to-manchuria-1439398744

Abstract

Harold “Hal” Leith [Annotator’s Note: as a member of the Office of Strategic Service (OSS), the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency] returned to Mukden [Annotator’s Note: to the former Japanese POW (prisoner of war) camp in Mukden, which was formerly in Manchuria but is now in China] because he was an expert in both the Russian and Chinese languages. He was able to enter Mukden because the Russians had departed. A Nisei Japanese [Annotator’s Note: nisei means “second generation” in Japanese; a person born to Japanese immigrants in the United States] told Leith that he had found Colonel Matsuda [Annotator’s Note: the former commandant of the POW camp at Mukden] who had escaped from the Russians.

After an inconsequential interrogation of the enemy officer, Leith entered the room and Matsuda passed out [Annotator’s Note: Colonel Matsuda had surrendered to Leith after the POW camp was liberated]. Leith sent the former commandant to Tokyo and the war crimes trials there. Despite 300 POWs being killed at his camp, Matsuda only received a six-month imprisonment as punishment.

General MacArthur [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area was in overall command of the occupation of Japan and related events] was responsible for that sentence. Leith did not have a high regard for MacArthur. The POW camp at Mukden had 1600 prisoners. Conditions for the POWs were very poor and uncomfortable. The prisoners were treated badly. The guards forced them to disrobe in weather 40 degrees below zero. Some POWs contracted pneumonia. The inmates were very happy to see Leith when he arrived. He is still invited to their reunions. The prison guards took the arrival calmly, but the Russians eventually got rid of them.

?Leith managed to get food for the former prisoners and some of the Nisei Japanese family members. Planes dropped plenty of food and supplies for those tended by Leith. Communications were not an issue on site or back to base. Communication supplies were parachuted into the camp. He was in the camp between August and October, but returned in December [Annotator’s Note: all in 1945] when Chinese Communists began to show up there. He did intelligence work in the latter period on the Soviets until they left, and then the Chinese Communists when they entered the area.

General Wainwright [Annotator's Note: US Army General Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright, IV surrendered Corregidor and the Philippine Islands in May 1942] was in a camp called Xi’an [Annotator’s Note: Xi’an, Manchuria is now Liaoyuan, China] which was 150 miles northeast of Mukden. Leith went there with a doctor assuming that the POWs would need medical treatment. A group of Japanese soldiers accompanied them as guards. After a long train journey, they group reached the camp and rested before having a meeting with the POWs. The doctor and the Japanese squad returned to Mukden. A futile attempt was made to get a trainload of aid to the POWs. The Russians entered and aid was provided for the former prisoners. They were returned to Mukden.

Leith denied to the Russians that he was a spy. At the time, he had received a promotion and a Soldier’s Medal which was the highest decoration for non-combattants. The Chinese were very helpful as Leith worked with them. Leith communicated with Wainwright and General King [Annotator’s Note: General Edward King surrendered the American and Filipino forces on Bataan in the Philippines in April 1942]. The former was grateful and nice to Leith. He discussed having to surrender the Philippines and thought he would be unpopular at home. Leith assured him that he was a hero to Americans. The General was grateful to hear that. Leith had more discussions with General King than with Wainwright. Leith maintained communications with King after returning home. A plane was sent to return Wainwright to the American forces. Leith also assisted members of the French delegation in departing Xi’an. They flew to Beijing [Annotator’s Note: Beijing, China].

https://www.ww2online.org/view/hal-leith#liberation-of-pows-and-aftermath


Harold Leith Oral History Interview?

JAMES LINDLEY: This is Dr. James Lindley. Today is the 8th of October 2010. I am interviewing Mr. Harold B. Leith, L-E-I-T-H, via the telephone.?

HAROLD LEITH: I usually use the name Hal, H-A-L.?

JL: All right, Hal B. Lee. This interview is taking place via the telephone from the National Museum of the Pacific War, Fredericksburg, Texas, to the home of Mr. Hal Leith in Golden, Colorado. This interview is in support of the Center of Pacific War Studies, the Archives of the National Museum of the Pacific War, and the Texas Historical Commission for the preservation of historical information related to this site. The purpose of the National Museum of the Pacific War Oral History Project is to collect, preserve, and interpret the stories of World War II veterans, home front experiences, the life of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, and the old Nimitz Hotel by means of audio and video recording devices. The audio and video recordings of such interviews become part of the Center for Pacific War Studies, the Archives of the National Museum of the Pacific War, and the Texas Historical Commission. These recordings will be made available for historians and academic research by scholars and others. The undersigned have read the above and voluntarily offer the National Museum of the Pacific War full use of the information contained on the audio and/or video recordings and written text of the oral history, for research purposes. In view of the scholarly value of this research material, we hereby assign rights, title, and interests pertaining to it to the National Museum of the Pacific War and the Texas Historical Commission. If you would please indicate that you understand. (off-topic; dialogue not transcribed) If you understand what I said and agree that we may use this interview for these purposes –?

HL: Yes, you may.?

JL: And you give permission for experts of my oral history to be used in the Nimitz Foundation publication, The Nimitz News, programs, publications, and exhibits at the museum. And say you do.?

HL: Yes.?

JL: Now we can begin. Please tell us your full name, where you were born, a little bit about your early history, your education, and how you came to serve our country during World War II. And then tell us your wartime stories. We would certainly appreciate it. What I’d also like to stay at the beginning is I understand and appreciate your long service to our country. And I am most grateful for what you have done for our country. And I want to thank you for that service. If you would begin, I would appreciate it.?

HL: My technical name is Harold B. Leith, L-E-I-T-H. My nickname is Hal. I was given that name when I worked for the government. I was born in Bute, Montana. Then we moved shortly thereafter, back to where my mother was born, here in Golden, Colorado. I was here in Golden in 1919 for a few months. And then we went to Salt Lake City. I went to school there, regular high school. I had relatives who thought that I was very good with music. So they were after me to do something with the music conservatory. And I also spent two years in Los Angeles with a music background and did some language study. I found a teacher who came to Salt Lake City, and she gave me lessons in one year for three different languages, Russian, French, and German. She taught them to me and I learned all of them fluently. So later, when the war started, I had background knowledge of different countries and so on from studying languages.?

JL: Where were you on December the 7th, 1941??

HL: That’s when the Japanese –?

JL: Attacked Pearl Harbor.?

HL: Yeah. I was at the US Library of Congress. That’s where I was working. Then I moved to San Francisco, where my mother was, and joined the Army. In the Army, I did a lot of work helping to check people on their languages and to keep going. This was about 67 years ago. While I was in the Army, I was in a camp where they were going to have a USO hostesses do a dance with Xavier Cugat playing. And that’s where I met my present wife, Helen. I met her 67 years ago. While I was at that camp, they talked me into learning Chinese. So I went to the University of Chicago for one year. And I was able to memorize 2,500 Chinese characters. So that worked out pretty well. And (inaudible) years ago on October 30th, that’s when Helen and I were married. We’ve been married for 66 years. At the time that I graduated from the Chinese class, OSS came and interviewed those of us that had graduated. I was asked to take a trip to China for them, to join OSS.?

JL: Were you still in the Army but were detached to OSS??

HL: I was in the Army. But I was an Army member that was working for OSS. I spent a few months learning Intelligence things, how to do things, secret things.?

JL: Trade craft.?

HL: Then when I finished that, I had to leave and go to China. And I ended up in Kunming in May of ’45. While I was there, I worked a lot on who the Nationalist Chinese were and who the Communist Chinese were, Mao Zedong and so on. I also was asked to study paratrooping. I hadn’t done that before. I learned to paratroop. And then when we dropped our atomic bomb on Japan, we had a meeting there. And they asked me particularly if I would volunteer to help with POWs, because I was a paratrooper and we’d have to go into this area where POWs were. General Wainwright was there. I was the only paratrooper that spoke all the different languages. The ones that I needed particularly in Manchuria were Chinese and Russia. So that went on. A day later, we flew up to Sian in Northwest China. And the next morning, we left early and flew up to Manchuria. About 10:30, we parachuted a group of us. There were five Americans and one Chinese. We jumped out of the plane. And then the plane continued on and turned around, came back and dropped all of our supplies and food. At that point, I had talked to the Chinese who were working in the fields there, farmers. One of them said that he knew where the POW camp was and that we could walk there in about an hour. He offered to show. So four of us started the walk.?

After we had walked for maybe half an hour, a group of Japanese with weapons came down in front of us, kneeled down, cocked their rifles, and pointed them at us. We had one Nisei Japanese who was from Hawaii who was able to talk to them. And they absolutely refused to surrender to us at that time. We had a doctor with us at that time, and they wanted to send the doctor back to where the supplies were. They tied us up for a bit and blindfolded us but thought that what we needed to do is to go into town where the Kempeitai, which is the Japanese secret police -- by the way, the Chinese guy, after we jumped in, turned and ran away because he was afraid the Japanese would kill him. Anyway, we met the colonel in charge of Kenpeitai. He said that he had no instructions to surrender but that he would call up that night and the next morning and ask that we stay in the Yamoto hotel.

Yamoto Hotel

Then he let us go out to the camp in a truck. And we were able to see Colonel [Matsuto?]. He refused to let us talk to anybody. And he told us that he had no instructions to surrender, so we would have to do what the Kenpeitai said to do, and sent us back to the hotel. The next morning, we met the head of the Kenpeitai. When he saw me, he walked up to me and bowed and said, “I have been instructed to surrender to you now. I would like to commit hara-kiri. Would you like to watch?” I told him I didn’t want him to do hara-kiri.?

JL: What day was this? How many days after the official surrender was this taking place?

HL: Fifteen of August. One day. The next day, when he had made the surrender formal, he started to get ready to send us out to the camp to tell them, because he had informed Colonel Matsuto that they were all to surrender to us. So that was a very nice thing. Out of the camp, the first day, I waved a lot of the POWs. You could easily tell who they were, because they were so scrawny. On the next morning when we were there, we went into Colonel Matsuto’s office. And called for the senior American Officer. That was General Parker. So we told General Parker that we were looking for General Wainwright. He said, “They’re about 150 miles away from here.” So at that point, we decided that the doctor and I would take a train and go up there the next day and make the complete surrender, and then try and make arrangements to get back to Mukden.

JL: What was it like when you found the camp? Do you remember the name of the camp where Wainwright was found??

HL: It was called Shian, S-H-I-A-N. It doesn’t have that name anymore. It’s now called Shenyang, S-H-E-N-Y-A-N-G. The names of a lot of these have changed. Anyway, it took all day and most of the night. About 4:30 in the morning we got to the prison camp and were given a chance to lie down and sleep for a couple of hours. And then at about 8:30 in the morning, we had the meeting with all of the senior officers who were there. There were 30 senior Officers. Some of them weren’t senior. Some of them were Corporals and so on, who were doing work and taking care of their boss. But we were able to tell General Wainwright that we were going to get him out of there, that the camp commander had to surrender to us. But when we asked for a train to get to -- oh, yes. In this camp, there were American, English, and Dutch. Some were Generals. Some were governors and things like that. But they could not get a train to come in there at that point. So we were told we’d just have to stay and wait. And the doctor that we had said that he would go back with a truck, a car, with the people, the Japanese who guarded this while we went up to Shian. And so he was going to go back to Mukden and get all the arrangements made. So he left the next day. And I spent several days talking with all these Generals and governors and so on. After several days -- if you had my book, you would find all these things I’m telling you are in that book already.?

JL: Right. We want to hear, though, this in your words.?

HL: Yes. Well, I’ve given you my word. After those few days, the camp was up on the hillside. And we saw a bunch of big trucks move in. They had red flags. So we figured they were Soviets. I went down to talk to the Soviets, and there was a two-star general that was in charge of this group. When he found out that I was not a POW, that I had come to rescue, he was really surprised. He said to me, “How is that you are speaking fluent Russian and you don’t have a Russian name? I don’t like that.” They didn’t like it. They were very annoyed with me. They said, “What we will do, because you can’t use the train, is have a squad of Soviet soldiers come out to the camp that evening. And then we will get a couple of buses and trucks, and we would start and drive all the way back to Mukden.” We left about 6:30 that night. We were able to get all the buses and stuff. It had been a rainy time, so we had a little trouble driving on the roads. They were slippery. When we needed to cross a river, we found that there were no bridges for trucks and buses. We would have to go up on a railroad bridge and work our way across, which we did. We got to a nice Chinese city the first evening, and they fed us and took good care of us. Whenever we had trouble with the cars slipping or getting stuck a little bit, we would just ask the Chinese and the Chinese would help us. So all along the way, we had help from the Chinese. And the Soviets were there to help us. General Wainwright, as we all got on the buses and trucks, he called everybody together and said, “Leith here is in charge. You’ll do whatever he tells you.” So I was in charge. And it took us a full three days and nights to get all the way back to Mukden. When we got near where the big railroad tracks were, we met with the Japanese that were there and the Russians that were there. And they said they would let us take the train and go into Mukden. We get there that evening. So we got on, and it took us all evening, until 12:30 in the morning. Then we all ended up at the railroad station. That was 30 of us.?

JL: Let me ask you a question. When you first met General Wainwright, did he have any inkling that the war was going to be over or that it was over before you got there??

HL: They had heard some rumors. But the camp commander did not admit it.?

JL: They didn’t have any of the secret radios that some of the POWs had??

HL: No. We did, but that was back in Mukden. One of our guys was a Radio Operator. He was able to contact Shanghai and Kunming when necessary. About 12:30, I got General Wainwright, King, and Moore, and took them to the Yamoto hotel in Mukden, where we got dinner. And then the next morning, about 8:30, after everybody had had breakfast, I got General Wainwright and King and Moore and took them out to the airport we had and was able to get them on a plane. So they went back to Shian. This was the Northwest China Shian, a different one. When they got there, they were able to make arrangements. Finally, General Wainwright was invited to join in the surrender tactics on the Missouri ship. And General MacArthur wasn’t very happy with General Wainwright, because Wainwright had surrendered to the Japanese and MacArthur hadn’t. But Wainwright was supposed to be getting the highest medal that there was, the Congressional Medal of Honor. Fortunately, our President at that time, President Truman, when Wainwright made it back to the States, he gave him the medal. Even Wainwright thought, when I was first talking to him at the camp, that everybody would think he was a traitor because he had surrendered to the Japanese. I told him we all considered him a hero. He liked hearing that.?

JL: Did he have much knowledge at all of the events during his captivity? Had he been able to gather any idea of what might have been going on??

HL: He did not have much knowledge at all. They were pretty much isolated in this camp.?

JL: How long had he been in that camp??

HL: He had been the camp... I forget. I’d have to look it up. A year or so. He was glad when he got to Mukden that I was able to get him on a plane (inaudible). They were able to get back, completely free. One day when I was with General Wainwright at the camp, everybody knew that it was his 62nd birthday. They made him a cake, and I gave him the cake. I had one of the guys use my camera to take pictures of General Wainwright and me. I was standing there, and I weighed 173 pounds. I was five-foot-ten-and-a-half. When you looked at General Wainwright, he was as tall or taller than I am, and he weighed 98 pounds. And that was the way it was with the POWs. The POWs in Mukden amounted to 1,600, the Dutch and (inaudible) so on. So I was grateful that I was able to get General Wainwright involved.?

JL: When you were there with the POWs and saw them, what kind of a diet did they describe that they had been fed??

HL: They didn’t get much. They had food there in a cabin that had been furnished by the Red Cross. But they had not given them any of it. It was not until I got there that I was able to get plenty of food for them. A lot of them just didn’t have enough food to eat at all. Just on the outside of the main gate of the camp, there was a place where there were burials of 300 people. They had all died in the camp because of very bad care. I remember one group told me that one of the Japanese guards there had gotten annoyed, and so this group of Americans were taken outside and made to take their clothes off, even though the temperature out there was 40-below. That was a cold area. A lot of them got pneumonia. Some made it; some didn’t. I was very grateful that I was able to help save these people and make arrangements.?

JL: Did our Air Force then bring and drop food into the camp? How were you resupplied??

HL: We were able to find food that had been sent in with the Japanese. We got all that. Then we had airplanes bring food in for everybody. We were grateful that we could help feed them.?

JL: How long was it before you were able to fly them out of there??

HL: They couldn’t all be flown out. We had to take a number of them by train down to the seaport there. Then they got on ships and went out there. Primarily people of senior rank were put on planes. Not everybody got to get on a plane. It was about two to three months to get them all out of there. It took a while.?

JL: Did the Russians harass you at all during that time??

HL: Yes. Matter of fact, they kicked me out. After everybody had left, I stayed on because I was keeping track of what the Russians were doing and what the Chinese communists were doing. So I was pretty knowledgeable about all of that. The 1st of October, the General [Kovensankevich?], he was the commander for all of the Mukden troops. He said, “We would like to send you to Siberia. If you can get out of here any other way, all right. But we’re ready to send you to Siberia.” There were a few of us there, including the French consulate general from France. And I got these people together. We made a call and were able to get a plane in. When I was talking to General Kovensankevich, he said, “You don’t have a Russian name. But you speak absolutely fluent Russian. You must be a spy.” I denied it, but it was true.?

JL: What was your impression of the Russians and the communist Chinese??

HL: The Russians were very annoyed that I had been there first. Our American president, Roosevelt, and Stalin had made arrangements to permit the Soviet troops to go in there. So they were behaving pretty bad. And there was a lot of killings that they did, too, with people. It was a very dangerous sort of thing. The Chinese communists were not anxious to let us go. And all of those people were glad to see me go. What they didn’t know is that when we left we went to Beijing. And I was a short period of time in Beijing and different places, Shanghai and so on. And I was still working on primarily Chinese communist stuff. And I was able to get to know quite a bit about them. Then I went back into North China. And I was asked by a full colonel in their army there if I would go back and work with them. They wanted somebody who could speak Chinese and Russian. So I agreed and went back in around Christmastime of ’45. We were able to get some of the servants that were up in Mukden to come down and help, cooking for us. About that time, we found that the Soviets had left. So we were able to move up into Mukden. And we lived there. I think it was March. The agency asked me to get out of the Army. They had me going as a civilian in what was -- well, it wasn’t the OSS anymore. It was SSU. Later one, when I got back to Washington, D.C., it changed to CIG and then CIA. I was given a civilian ranking the equivalent of a Colonel and was able to do quite a few things. In 1958, we were sent to Iran. And then was in Tehran for about three years. Then I was concentrating and able to work on what the Soviets were doing up along the border. I would talk to some of the Soviets. Most of the Soviets when they were there were very difficult to talk to. There were a few of them who liked me speaking language. In fact, one of them saw me taking pictures with the Kodak camera. And he said, “That’s not a good camera. You should have a Leica. Here, I’ll give you mine.” And so he did. So I had some friends, too, amongst the Soviets. But mostly they were very mistrustful. The amount of time that I was in the Army and then in the agency -- and I retired from the agency in ’74 -- I had 33 years of Army and intelligence work.?

JL: I know the agency does a lot of interesting things. And much of it none of us need to know or can know. But I am grateful for what you have done and those men and women who serve us in that capacity.?

HL: We lived for about three years in Jakarta. Then we went to Pakistan. We were there for a couple of years, then came back to the States. We were living in Arlington. The last year that I was there, I spent over 10 months traveling back and forth around the world, helping people to do things that I was knowledgeable about because I had studied those things.?

JL: I would like to ask one more question. When you first began your activities in OSS, could you comment within reason on the trade craft changes during your years of service??

HL: Well, I sort of concentrated on Chinese and Russian, no matter what country I was sent to. It was something that I enjoyed doing and I spent a lot of time studying.?

JL: Were you fluent in Arabic??

HL: No, all I could do was say the as-salaam alaikum and things like that. I learned Indonesian. It took me about nine months to learn the language. So I was fluent in Indonesian, too. In Iran, I found that I could use French quite a bit; a lot of the people there spoke French.?

JL: Did you learn any Farsi when you were there??

HL: Just greetings and things like that. I had no problem at all talking in French with the people that I was dealing with. They were the higher-ranking Iranians. A lot of them were fluent in French.?

JL: Well, I thank you so much for your time. And I appreciate all that you have done for our country.

END OF AUDIO FILE


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