The commandos who trained on Catalina Island were primarily attached to the OSS’s Maritime Unit, assigned to insert into enemy territory by sea for reconnaissance and sabotage. To fill its ranks, the agency recruited top swimmers from throughout the armed forces. Korean prisoners of war, released after showing a commitment to fighting the Japanese, also participated in OSS training on Catalina.
Recruits with Japanese ancestry, such as Hamada and Yempuku, were invaluable as linguists and translators, and for their ability to infiltrate Japanese-controlled territory. Hamada grew up in Hawaii where, on December 7, 1941, he’d aimed a telescope at the sky and witnessed swarms of Japanese aircraft attacking Pearl Harbor. Even as Japanese Americans like him were being locked in internment camps by the U.S. government, he’d volunteered to serve his country as a member of the OSS—despite rumors that commandos had a 10 percent chance of survival.
To improve those odds, the recruits drilled in hand-to-hand combat, cryptography, map reading, and radio operations. For conditioning, they did calisthenics on the beach and took long runs up Catalina’s peaks and along its ridges. They also participated in multi-day survival exercises. Equipped with just a knife and a length of fishing line, the men built primitive shelters in the mountainous interior and hunted the island’s wild boar and feral goats. (Catalina also had a large bison herd, which had been brought to the island for a Hollywood film shoot in 1924. There is, however, no record of an OSS man ever bagging a bison.) Yempuku, another native of Hawaii, had trapped animals as a boy and proved adept as a survivalist, even catching the fast-moving quail that skitter through Catalina’s chaparral. Hamada was less enthusiastic, particularly when his team had to skin and gut a goat. “That was kind of nauseating,” he said. He preferred using a grenade to detonate his dinner, recalling: “You drop a hand grenade in the ocean and you’d see all kinds of fish…crab, abalone.”
Source: Remembering the World War II Frogmen Who Trained in Secret off the California Coast – Atlas Obscura
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