Excel to iSeries transfer hell

Within the company, there is an Oracle database with a table I have been
trying desperately for the past two days trying to transfer to the iSeries.

Since I do not have access to the Oracle database, I am left with having an
Oracle analyst create an Excel spreadsheet with the data. I can open the
spreadsheet, and everything "looks fine". I created a table on the iSeries
from SDL DDL based on how the columns are defined in the Excel spreadsheet,
but this is NOT working. The one problem I am consistently encountering
with this is that one of the columns is a date field, and there are many
cells in this column that are blank. I've defined the iSeries table with
the date type.

I gave up on that and am finally at the point where I've let the data
transfer function define the iSeries file, but now the generated table uses
a signed 5.0 field for one Excel date field, and a signed 15.5 for the other
Excel date field! Excel date 2008-11-03 = iSeries numeric 39755.

Also, while the data shows up fine via DBU, but the non-numeric data looks
like garbage in interactive SQL and DSPPFM. DBU shows:
Field
Name Type Length Dec
MCCOMP S 2 0
MCSTAT G 2
MCPCOD G 3
MCTGRP G 8
MCPNCD G 3
MCVRCD G 2
MCEFDT S 5 0

What is type 'G'? A graphics type? If I attempt to do an SQL insert of
this data into a table that has these "G" types defined as alphameric, will
the data "convert"?

FWIW, currently, this is intended to be a one-off transfer, however it is
possible we may see a need to do this transfer once monthly.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
- Dan