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(Oceanside, CA) 3 September 1943 -- U.S. Military officials are still expressing shock and confusion when a Japanese-American nissei (second generation Japanese) corporal stationed at Camp Pendleton with the 9th Marine Regiment, suddenly shouted "Tenno Heika Banzai!" ("May The Emperor Live 10,000 Years!") before gunning down 13 fellow Marine recruits inside an on-base theatre showing "Lady Takes A Chance" featuring John Wayne. Early reports are now confirmed that Cpl Hiroshi Nakayama emptied two M1911 Browning semiautomatic pistols, reloading prepared clips and shooting nearly 100 times, before being shot down himself by a drill instructor. An additional 30 Marines and some civilians were wounded and rushed to local area hospitals.
Initial investigation shows colleages of Cpl Nakayama, a nissei whose parents and siblings currently are housed in the Manzanar Detention Facility in California, were worried about him for his numerous efforts to tell comrades that Japan was justified for bombing Pearl Harbour, that he thought the "banzai" suicide attacks against US troops by Japanese Imperial soldiers were honorable as they were only defending their homeland. He gloated over stories coming into the base from relatives of those on the Bataan Death March, saying Japanese military were in their rights to force the march and obedience of the captured Allies. Nakayama had been spotted several days earlier in a small neighborhood grocery wearing traditional Japanese sarashi, tabi, happi and a sarashi Japanse "hissho victory cloth" wrapped around his head. Other eyewitnesses said Nakayama stated on multiple times to Marine colleagues that the US should just stay out of the Pacific Region, end the war and give Asia to the Asians, and that he had extreme loathing at the prospect of being sent to the Pacific theater as a battlefield interpreter. He is now reported to have had correspondence with Domei News agency of Tokyo, and also before the war had been a frequent worshipper at a Shinto Shrine in Los Angeles, even joining an extreme Imperialist Japan support group, the Black Dragon Society in support of Tojo's expansive measures in the Pacific.
All the while, superiors kept the complaints confidential and did not confront Nakayama over his viewpoints, apparantly in fear of their own military positions and advancement prospects. Secretary of War Stimson is promising a full investigation. Major news outlets in the US, led by the New York Times and NBC News (Blue Network) have disavowed any potential connection of the assailant to Imperial Japan or seditious activity or philosophy, simply stating that the Cpl. was probably troubled about various aspects of his work and the prospect of being sent to the Pacific theater as a field Japanese translator for US troops.