When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7 1941, there was mass hysteria
in the United States against all persons of Japanese ancestry. We were viewed as
enemy alien, we were viewed as saboteurs, and collaborators of Imperial Japan. We
were disowned by our government. We had a difficulty impressing my father that
there was going to or there was war between Japan and the U.S. Until that
evening when we looked at our window and saw the U.S. Army surrounding us, they were
all lined up and they were pointing their guns towards us. Well I was drafted in
October 1944 much after the the 442nd regimental combat team was formed but
when war broke out they were already 5,000 Japanese-Americans
in the U.S. Army but they were a group of 60 and while these 60 boys were
reviewing Japanese the language already in the army their families were packing
up to go to camp. Not one of the 60 broke ranks and quit in protest. They all
served. We were sent to Topaz, Utah our family of seven was supposed to be in
one large room and when we started in (inexplicable) we lost our identity and we
became family to 2416 I was the letter E because that was my place in birth in
my family. A continuing a brigade side was here what size was formed consisting
of four thousand so they issued the call for volunteers 2,500 volunteer from
Hawaii and 1,500 volunteered from the mainland
many of them from internment camps. In all the camps they decided to question
our loyalty we thought we were loyal going into the camps without complaining.
It broke up families because some of them men decided to volunteer for the
Army to show their loyalty and this was the beginning of the 442 with the men
leaving volunteering the men and women who wanted to prove their loyalty and my
brother had just finished high school so, he was drafted out of the camp. The
government should have allowed parents at least to go on the side of the barbed
wire so they could say goodbye to their sons but, they kept us on one side and I
could still picture my parents on one side of the barbed wire saying goodbye
to my brother. The 442nd's mission was to liberate the towns a
Brewers be Fontaine and bBelmont which they did. They took such huge casualties
that the press had dubbed them the Purple Heart battalion this is the 100th
infantry battalion. One company ended up which normally has a 180 men ended up
with 16 men standing, another company eight men standing, and what they did was
they smash the German fortress in the in the Bulge forest which now gave the 7th
Army a clear shot into the german homeland. They asked for combat duty for one
purpose or two purposes: one is will help win the war but the other purpose was to
prove that they were loyal to the country that distrusted them. The
Japanese-Americans were the only ethnic group that went into combat during World
War II for that purpose. We were too marched on Constitution Avenue and be
reviewed by the President at the ellipse and he told the boys you fought the
enemy abroad and you fought prejudice at home and you want the
bad performance record of the 442nd. Help set up the climate in Washington for the
reforms after the war. More recently the selection of a Japanese-American to
serve as President pro-tempore of the United States Senate. Deposition
constitutionally that put him 3rd in line for the Presidency but only 17
years ago, the same Japanese-American was classified for see alien unfit for
military duty. The Japanese-American story speaks at the greatness of America.