442nd Regimental Combat Team of Nisei

As the United States turned to war in 1941 in the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, many Caucasian Americans, especially along the U.S. West Coast and in the Hawaiian Islands, questioned the loyalty of Japanese Americans. When the draft calls increased, the Selective Service System classified Japanese American males as 4C, or non-draftable as enemy aliens. Many Japanese and Japanese Americans living along the U.S. Pacific coast were forcibly removed inland to internment camps, a sign of the hysteria that affected America in the desperate days after December 7, 1941.

Prior to the outbreak of war, units of the Hawaiian Territorial Guard included soldiers of Japanese ancestry. In the immediate aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Gen. Delos C. Emmons, commanding general of the Army in Hawaii, dismissed all Japanese Americans from the 298th and 299th Guard Regiments. Many of the disappointed soldiers offered to serve in any capacity. These trained and patriotic Japanese Americans cleaned grounds, built new installations, and engaged in other noncombatant and often menial tasks. The U.S. Army soon reversed Emmons's policy, however, and on May 26, 1942, Army Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Marshall established the Hawaiian Provisional Battalion. Soon thereafter, some 1,300 men traveled to the mainland for additional training. They were under the command of 29 Caucasian officers selected for their background in psychological observation because the Army still harbored some doubts about these soldiers’ patriotism. Basic training of what was renamed the 100th Infantry Battalion continued into December 1942, although most soldiers had undergone training as part of the Hawaiian Territorial Guard.

In February 1943, the battalion moved from Camp McCoy in California to Camp Shelby in Mississippi as part of the 69th Infantry Division. Given the sterling record of the battalion, on February 1, 1943 Pres. Franklin Roosevelt announced formation of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team (RCT), comprised of Japanese Americans, to consist of a headquarters company, antitank and cannon companies, a medical detachment, the 100th Battalion, and combat engineers. The expanded unit achieved one of the great combat records in the U.S. Army during World War II.

Given the treatment of people of Japanese ethnicity in America during the war, it was remarkable that any young men of Japanese descent volunteered. These brave individuals wanted to demonstrate that they were as patriotic and as committed to American values as citizens of European ancestry, and they intended to prove they deserved the [Page 292]rights of citizenship by their willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice for the nation.

Problems began to emerge during training, however. Tensions grew between the troops from the Hawaiian Islands and those who came from the mainland. But after the soldiers visited one of the relocation camps and recognized that white Americans regarded them similarly regardless of their regional backgrounds, the unit came together.

The 442nd Regimental Combat Team first went to Italy, leaving Camp Shelby on April 22, 1944, and arriving in Naples on May 28. The men first saw combat with German troops near Suvereto and Belvedere on the Ligurian coast. In September, the 442nd transferred to southern France to help carry out Operation Dragoon, the amphibious assault on southern France. In October and November, they moved up the Rhone River Valley and saw action in the Vosges Mountains, liberating Bruyeres. In their most celebrated action of the war, the Japanese American troops rescued the “lost battalion,” the 141st Texas Regiment. On October 25, 1944, with little rest and in a cold rain, the 442nd launched the rescue operation by fighting some four miles up and down hills, across ravines, through minefields and roadblocks against more than 6,000 fresh German soldiers. By November 17, 1944, when the 442nd was finally relieved, it had saved 211 Texas troops but suffered more than 216 dead and 856 wounded—in just one regiment of approximately 1,500 men.

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