Tatsuji Suga - Early Life

Early Life

Suga was born in Hiroshima, the second son in his family. Although the family held Buddhist-Shinto beliefs, his older brother converted to Christianity and became a Protestant missionary: he had a church and founded the YMCA in Hiroshima. As a teenager, Suga played the music in his brother's church, and was profoundly influenced by him. (Hudson Southwell, an Australian missionary interned in Borneo, later wrote: "During our time in the internment camp, Colonel Suga had often come into the church services in the women's section and sat near the back. Once he told Winsome directly, 'I'm a Christian.' This was a startling admission for a Japanese officer to make to a prisoner during wartime.")

Suga graduated from the Imperial Japanese Army Academy in Tokyo, as a Second Lieutenant. At around this time he married a woman with the given name Tern; they were to have two sons and four daughters. Suga was an affectionate father and ensured that all of his children went to university, at a time when only five per cent of Japanese went beyond the fifth or sixth grade. He was an expert horseman and a keen practitioner of kendo.

Toward the end of World War I (during which Japan was an Allied power), Suga served in Siberia, Korea, Manchuria and China. In 1924, he took early retirement as a Major, and decided to pursue a career teaching English. He sailed to the United States, leaving his family in Japan, supported by his pension.

Suga studied to become a certified teacher of English as a second language, at the University of Washington in Seattle. He supported himself by taking a series of jobs, such as dish-washing, and by fishing. He was interviewed in Seattle in 1924 by William Carlson Smith as part of Smith's research on race relations, later used for his book Americans in the Making, which was published in 1939.

Suga taught English in Japan, Korea, China and Manchuria, before he was called back to active service in 1937, to serve in the Second Sino-Japanese War. He became ill with diabetes and retired again in October 1941. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Suga volunteered for service as a prison camp commander, believing that his language skills would prove useful. He was appointed commander of all POW and internment camps in Borneo.