Sheeks entered
Harvard University in 1940 on a scholarship. During his third semester in January 1942, the month after the
attack on Pearl Harbor, the
Office of Naval Intelligence recruited him to become a Japanese-language and
intelligence officer because they thought he might have some knowledge of
kanji, which was common to both the Chinese and Japanese languages. Between February 1942 and January 1943, he received intensive instruction in Japanese through
language immersion at the
United States Navy Japanese Language School, which was taught by
Nisei instructors. It was first located at the
University of California, Berkeley but moved to
University of Colorado, Boulder when the instructors were
forced to evacuate the
West Coast because of their Japanese ancestry. After graduating from language school in January 1943, Sheeks was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps and assigned to
Nouméa,
New Caledonia to interrogate survivors of sunken Japanese submarines, from whom he gained intelligence about the new
I–15-class submarines His first combat assignment was at the
Battle of Tarawa in November 1943, where he carried out intelligence-gathering operations. In the battle, the Americans took very few prisoners, most were Korean laborers. Only 17 were Japanese soldiers, most of whom were badly wounded. Sheeks's next assignment was Saipan, which had a large Japanese civilian population. He and his fellow Japanese-language officers had orders to collect intelligence and convince as many civilians as possible to surrender. Based his experience at Tarawa, Sheeks came to the conclusion that many Japanese did not understand how to surrender because of their military indoctrination, which emphasized an
imperial cult loyal to the
Japanese emperor that emphasized death over surrender. To address this problem, he and his fellow Japanese language officers created "Surrender Passes" in Japanese with instructions on how to surrender. The creation of these passes was not directly supported by the military but they got help before the invasion from The
Honolulu Advertiser, who printed thousands free of charge. Sheeks also put together jeep-mounted loudspeakers, funding the project by diverting funds from the unused recreation budget of his unit, the
2nd Marine Division. Sheeks landed on the beaches of Saipan with the first wave of the invasion. He and the other Japanese language officers used a combination of leaflets, speakers, and patrol work to convince people to surrender. The leaflets would be dropped out over enemy territories by artillery spotters who did it as a personal favor. The loudspeakers were more successful than many of the other methods, and eventually higher-ranked intelligence officers would urge that more units have them. Nevertheless, after Saipan, many American soldiers were skeptical about trying to get civilians and Japanese soldiers to surrender, but they let him try. When approaching a potential surrender group, he had the American soldiers put their rifles over their shoulders to avoid looking threatening, and sometimes approached them unarmed. If he wasn't successful, the Marines would continue their assault. Sheeks and his fellow Japanese-language officers not only saved civilian lives, but captured twice the Japanese soldiers than had been captured by
U. S. Marines in the previous two years of the
Pacific War. They also convinced many ordinary American soldiers that they did not have to kill every Japanese or civilian they encountered. Sheeks participated in the Battle of Tinian, saving more civilians, and briefly worked with a Japanese soldier who had surrendered to get other soldiers to give themselves up. He returned to Saipan afterwards, where he and the other Japanese language officers effectively became civil affairs officers who had to oversee the internment camps that the civilians were put in. Once the civilians were separated from the Japanese soldiers, received medical care, and got shelter, they needed work. He convinced his superiors to allow them to work and to feed themselves by collective farming and fishing. The resultant fishing industry was able to feed the civilians, the Japanese
prisoners of war, and supply fish to the military. Soon after the battle, Sheeks tried to change public attitudes about the Japanese, contesting an article on the final days at Saipan by the journalist
Robert Sherrod. In an article in
Time Magazine, Sherrod had implied that almost every Japanese citizen would fight to the death rather than surrender, using the image of the mass suicides that occurred in the last days of battle to make his point. Sheeks wrote an article in response arguing against the idea that Japanese civilians were inhuman fanatics, who would fight to the last person. He pointed out that most civilians surrendered. Suicides accounted for only a minority of deaths, and most of the deaths were due to the fighting between combatants. Because the military didn't want to publish a work contradicting Sherrod, Sheek's article wasn't released for publication until May 1945. The battles of
Peleliu and
Iwo Jima, in which less than four percent of the Japanese soldiers surrendered and the Americans suffered a high casualty rate, made Sheeks's message unpopular. Three of the Japanese language officers–Lieutenants Sheeks,
Charles T. Cross, and Raymond V. Luthy–were awarded a
Bronze Star Medal for their work in broadcasting surrender instructions and rescuing civilians. They, along with others such Army Technical Sergeant Hoichi Kubo and Marine Corporal
Guy Gabaldon, collectively saved thousands of civilians. Sheeks later commented that he was "one of the few people who was decorated during the war in the Pacific for saving enemy lives." ==Post-War Years==