“Senior officers seriously discussed the possibility of disbanding the regiment. That if we could not work together, how can we ever consider going into combat together?”
By George Yagi Jr.
WHEN JAPAN attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, more than 5,000 second-generation Japanese Americans, or Nisei, were members of the U.S. Army. Their loyalty was almost immediately called into question. Just three days after the raid, Nisei in the Hawaiian National Guard were stripped of their rifles and restricted to their tents. Although their weapons were soon returned, they would go on to be viewed with suspicion. In fact, many found themselves relegated to construction duties.
In May 1942, with the Pacific outpost of Midway facing attack, concerns grew about what Hawaii’s Nisei would do if the islands were invaded by the enemy. Would Japanese American troops fire on their supposed brethren, commanders wondered, or might they rally to the enemy’s colours? Rather than wait to find out, General George C. Marshall ordered 1,432 Japanese American guardsmen to be transferred to the newly created Hawaiian Provisional Infantry Battalion and sent them to the mainland. After the units’ arrival in California, it was renamed the 100th Battalion and dispatched to training exercises in far off Wisconsin in preparation for possible deployment to the war against Germany.
While the 100th prepared to fight, other Nisei were not so lucky — the War Department classified Japanese Americans not already in uniform as IV-C or enemy aliens, effectively barring any from further enlistment in the armed forces. Those in service on the mainland were either immediately discharged from the army or assigned to menial labor.
Given the difference in treatment experienced by the Nisei, debates began over whether they should be allowed to serve. Initially, the Board of Military Utilization of U.S. Citizens of Japanese Ancestry ruled that they were untrustworthy and lobbied against the creation of an all-Nisei unit. However, the Office of War Information disagreed, arguing that the formation of such a force would counter Tokyo’s claims that America was a racist power. Other prominent voices added theirs alongside the Office of War Information, and eventually President Franklin D. Roosevelt agreed to their request. On Feb. 1, 1943, the all-Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team was formed.
A call went out for 4,500 volunteers; some came from Hawaii, others from the mainland.
For the 120,000 Japanese Americans living on the west coast, Executive Order 9066 stripped them of their rights. Many lost their homes, businesses and possessions, before being confined to remote concentration camps scattered across the country. Remarkably, despite their appalling mistreatment, 1,400 young men answered the call from behind barbed wire.
For the Hawaiians who had been spared imprisonment due to their importance to the local economy, there was greater enthusiasm. As many as 10,000 rushed to volunteer, although only 2,686 were accepted. In addition, the 100th Battalion joined the ranks of the 442nd.
Despite that all members of the regiment were Japanese, there was infighting. Hawaiians viewed the mainlanders with distrust. The two groups were separated by language: islanders spoke Pidgin — a mixture of Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese and English. Mainlanders were largely English-speakers and poked fun at the odd-sounding dialect of their Hawaiian comrades.
“Fights became commonplace,” recalled Daniel Inouye, a veteran from the regiment who would go on to become a U.S. Senator. “It got so bad that at one stage during the early days of our training, senior officers of the regiment seriously discussed the possibility of disbanding the regiment. That if we could not work together, how can we ever consider going into combat together?”
Officers struggled to unify the men. Team-building activities, mixers and discussion groups were organized. Only a visit to the concentration camps located close to the regiment’s Mississippi training base seemed to pull the men together.
Each company dispatched a contingent of 15 Hawaiian NCOs to visit camps in Jerome and Rohwer in neighbouring Arkansas. None had any idea of the conditions faced by Japanese American internees. The soldiers, eager to spend the weekend in the company of young Japanese women, dressed up, grabbed their guitars and ukuleles. Shocked by what they encountered on their arrival, Inouye recalled:
I remember when we turned a corner, the bend of the road and the valley came into view and what we saw, row after row of barracks. Now, we thought this was a military camp and that we were gonna pass that to go someplace else. But no, we came up to this camp and stopped. High barbed wire fences, and there were machine gun towers all around the camp, with men there with machine guns, and greeting us at the gate were men in uniform with rifles and bayonets. We are in uniform and I thought, ‘What in the world is happening?’ Then you look into the camp and there they were. Then it dawned on us what had happened.
To accommodate their guests from the 442nd, some families in the camps vacated their barracks; the soldiers refused to take their homes, offering to stay in their trucks or inside the mess hall instead.
Although members of the regiment tried to enjoy themselves and show their appreciation for the hospitality that had been shown to them, many found it difficult to process what they had seen. “When we left the atmosphere was totally different because when we arrived we were all singing and playing ukuleles and having a great time, and when we left it was absolute silence all the way to Mississippi,” Inouye said. “No one talked and I can imagine what was going through their minds, and I think almost all of us must have asked ourselves, ‘Would we have volunteered?’”
Once the soldiers returned to the regiment, word quickly spread about the camps
“When we got back, we could hardly wait to tell the fellas,” Inouye recalled. “This was what they anticipated. So overnight, the regiment was formed. The next morning, you had the 442nd.”
Following the visits to the camps, the Hawaiians and mainlanders united as one. Fired with a common purpose and deeper understanding of one another, they would go on to the battlefields of Europe and fight both the enemy abroad and discrimination at home.
Taking part in some of the fiercest fighting of the war, their most dramatic moment would be the rescue of the “Lost Battalion” in which the 442nd suffered over 800 casualties to rescue 211 men of the 1st Battalion of the 141st Texas Regiment.
Adopting the motto, “Go for Broke” the Nisei were determined to follow the Hawaiian gambler’s adage to risk all in order to win big. To this day, the 442nd remains the most decorated unit in U.S. history. However, their esprit de corps was born inside America’s concentration camps.
Dr. George Yagi Jr. is an award winning author and historian at California State University, East Bay. Follow him on Twitter @gyagi_jr