50th Anniversary of Pearl Harbor

In response to “In Hawaii, a Moment of Irony,” Dec. 4:

As a third-generation American of Japanese ancestry, I found the section that refers to the participation by Japanese-Americans from Hawaii in the 100th/442nd U.S. military combat unit misleading because it appears to not acknowledge that mainland Japanese-Americans also comprised a significant portion of this segregated combat unit.

Japanese-Americans, whether from Hawaii or the mainland, served their country with distinction. While the 100th/442nd unit at maximum strength was composed of 4,500 men, 33,000 served in this unit. The unit received 18,000 individual decorations, including 9,486 Purple Hearts and 5,200 Bronze Stars. During a period of 20 days of all-out fighting in France, the unit was awarded five Presidential Unit citations. To at least one Japanese-American serving in the 442nd, the warmest acknowledgement came not from fellow American soldiers but from an Australian soldier, “Nice going, Yank.”

Additionally, 5,000 Japanese-Americans from Hawaii and the mainland served in the U.S. military as translators, interpreters and “cave-prodders.” Their contributions were said to have shortened the war by at least two years and to have saved at least a million lives.

JOYCE H. MORITA

Glendale