Joseph E. Dynan, interned in Japan
On the evening of Nov. 25, 1940, the ocean liner Tatuta Maru departed Honolulu for Japan. Among those on board was Joseph E. Dynan, a 28-year-old newspaperman who was headed to Tokyo to work for the Japan Times and Advertiser.
Though the attack on Pearl Harbor would come just over a year later, the situation in Asia was a growing cause for concern among United States officials. Another passenger on the ship, Max Hill of the Associated Press, emphasized to the Honolulu Advertiser how difficult it was to get the State Department to authorize travel to the region. Hill, who was headed to Tokyo to become the AP’s bureau chief there, was not permitted to bring his family on the voyage.
That was just as well, for on Dec. 8, 1941 — Dec. 7 United States time — Dynan would arrive home in Tokyo to find his house filled with policemen. The following day, Dynan, Hill and other U.S. citizens in the capital were officially interned by the Japanese government.
Joseph Elkhart Dynan was born Sept. 6, 1912 in Chicago but grew up in Kansas City, where his father worked as a railway official. He graduated in 1934 from Rockhurst College, where he wrote for the school newspaper and served as a campus correspondent for the Kansas City Star.
Dynan would remain in journalism his entire life, but he wouldn’t spend much more time as a resident of his hometown. Beginning in 1936, the young reporter jumped from the San Antonio Express to the Daily Oklahoman to the Honolulu Advertiser over the next few years before shipping out to Japan. After a few months with the Japan Times and Advertiser, Dynan joined Hill in the AP’s Tokyo bureau on Aug. 15, 1941.
He had a special treat when he turned 29 three weeks later, speaking to his parents and two younger brothers back home over the telephone. This was a sufficiently unique technological feat that the Kansas City Star ran a brief item about it in the following day’s paper, headlined “SON’S VOICE FROM JAPAN.” The story said it was the first time his parents had heard Dynan’s voice in two and a half years.
While all parties involved undoubtedly cherished the opportunity, Dynan’s mother Clara would later say she believed Japanese censors were on hand during the call, as her son’s answers to questions were curt at times. A subsequent letter home that arrived in mid-October would reference the preparations for war Dynan saw around him in Japan.
Dynan sent his parents a cable on Nov. 19 confirming he had received a package from them, and that was the last they heard from their son until August 1942.
On the day of the Pearl Harbor attack, Dynan and United Press correspondent Robert Bellaire were “held incommunicado” by Japanese authorities and spent the day listening to radio broadcasts touting the nation’s military triumphs.
The next day another policeman arrived, telling them to take food for three days and a change of clothing and blankets. They would end up spending about seven months at an internment camp. Dynan had it easier than some — including his colleague Hill, who spent weeks in solitary confinement — but one moment during his captivity stuck out.
That memory would lead the next story he wrote for the AP, the following summer:
Gen. Doolittle’s raid on Japan provided the thrill of a lifetime for a group of Americans at an internment camp midway between Tokyo and Yokohama.
One of the United States planes flew directly over our camp and the music of its motors was sweeter than Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, which our phonograph was playing at the time.
It was shortly after noon on April 18 that the big thrill came. We were having coffee and toast when the police rushed into our camp excitedly and told us to extinguish the fires in the stoves and close the windows because there was an air raid.
We thought it was only a drill, even when we heard two tremendous explosions in the direction of the Kawasaki industrial area. A few seconds later, however, we saw a large twin-motored plane flying very low. Bursts of anti-aircraft shells were streaking after it. The raider dropped down 200 feet to skim rooftops and escaped.
To Dynan, the Doolittle raid achieved its main aim: sending a message.
“Aside from the reactions of individual Japanese,” he wrote, “the tone of the press indicated that Japanese complacency was shaken considerably by the American thrust into Japan’s supposedly invulnerable defenses.”
As much as Dynan and the others appreciated the gesture, it would be a few more months before indications emerged that they might find their way home.
In mid-summer, the correspondents at the camp were taken to a luncheon at a Tokyo hotel. After the meal, Japanese officials got to the point.
Our hosts first asked, then demanded, that we write statements on various assigned topics, mine being internment conditions in Japan. When I refused a home officer struck me twice, knocking out a dental bridge, which a Japanese dentist later replaced without charge.
This undoubtedly was the method used by the Japanese to obtain fantastic quotations from other American prisoners. They threatened to keep me in Japan unless I wrote a statement. I finally performed.
Under duress, I told the Japanese police that internment conditions were “as good as could be expected.” Now, on my way back to the United States, I can explain that I had no illusions about what could be expected.
Dynan wrote those words from Lourenco Marques, Portuguese East Africa — now Maputo, Mozambique — on July 24, 1942. He was one of hundreds of passengers aboard the Swedish liner Gripsholm on a repatriation voyage.
They would later stop in Rio before pulling into New York Harbor on Aug. 25. Dynan’s mother and grandfather were there to greet him after he wrote home from Brazil to provide details of his arrival.
Dynan had some time off before the Associated Press sent him to Puerto Rico, where he reported on the situation around the Caribbean for about months before shipping out to North Africa in 1943.
He covered the invasion of southern France the following year before setting up shop in Paris. He returned to the U.S. in April 1945 to cover the two-month San Francisco Conference that served as the foundation for the United Nations but was back in Europe by mid-summer.
Dynan worked in Paris through 1958, when he moved to Beirut for a two-year stint covering the Middle East. After seven more years in Paris, he became chief of AP’s Cairo bureau in 1967, then moved to Lisbon in 1971.
Dynan returned to Paris in the spring of 1974 and soon began treatment for stomach cancer. He never fully recovered, dying Dec. 10 at the American Hospital in suburban Neuilly. He was 62 years old.
I have fond memories of my father and Joe working together in Paris and hearing stories about their adventures in the Paris AP bureau, It's always nice to come across articles or mentions of Joe Dynan in the media, as it brings back memories of a special time in my life. Thank you for writing this article and paying tribute to my godfather and my father's friend.
Patrick Dynan McNulty
San Clemente, California
I am a niece of Joseph E. Dynan, and the last family member to see him before his death. His global adventures and WWII experiences became legendary in our family. Thank you so much for keeping his story, and that of his interned colleagues, alive. His boss, Max Hill, wrote a book about their internment when they returned to the safety of the US. The title is Exchange Ship, and it's possible to find old copies online from time to time.