As I recently found out, Ikuta had immigrated to the U.S. — California — early in the last century. He went to school in Berkeley, eventually married an American girl, and had at least one child by that woman. Sometime before the war, he divorced and moved back to Japan, where he married a Japanese woman, and ended up on Saipan.
At the time of the American landings, according to Manny T. Sablan, Ikuta was held in the jail because he was found to have a radio in his possession, and I suppose because of his American connection, he may have been suspected of spying.
To date, nobody knows what happened to Ikuta, although according to Wakako Higuchi on Guam, he does have a son who survived the fighting on Saipan and was living in Japan when she interviewed him. Ikuta’s daughter by his first marriage, Erina who lives in California, is interested in finding out what happened to her grandfather. I wonder if any of your readers might recall this individual?
BRUCE M. PETTY
New Plymouth, New Zealand
