The Test of Loyalty : Japanese American Vets Say They Fought to Prove Allegiance

Mas Yoshida remembers when the government man asked if he and his friends wanted to join the U.S. Army. They thought he was crazy.

“They came around and said, ‘We’re putting together this outfit of Japanese American soldiers,’ ” said Yoshida, 77. “And here we are in a camp with barbed wire.”

World War II was raging in the Pacific, and Yoshida, his family, and his friends were being held at Camp Amache--an internment camp--in Colorado. They had been taken away from their homes, their businesses, their schools. Yet after talking it over, Yoshida and his friends joined the U.S. Army. As volunteers.

Yoshida of Arleta and three other veterans recalled their experiences, in the detention camps and in the military, during a luncheon at the San Fernando Valley Japanese American Center in Arleta on Friday. They also will be among 1,500 honored during a national salute to Japanese American veterans at the Los Angeles Convention Center on Wednesday.

In brief remarks to about 150 senior citizens and later in interviews, the veterans expressed a range of emotions, from understated pride in their service to surprisingly matter-of-fact descriptions of how they and their families lost their liberty. Whether they volunteered or were drafted, they explained they fought to prove their allegiance to a country that denied their rights as citizens.

“I won’t brag about what we did. But if you ask me,” said James Oda of Northridge, “we won the war. I did a tremendous amount to help win the war.”

Starting in 1940, all young Japanese American men were classified 4-C--unfit to serve--by the military. But after 1,300 men in Hawaii demanded that they get an opportunity to prove their patriotism, the Army formed the 100th Infantry Battalion.

*

In 1943, another 3,000 men from Hawaii and 1,500 from internment camps volunteered or were drafted to form the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

The 100th Battalion and the 442nd fought together in Italy and France. If anyone doubted their loyalties then, they didn’t after the war. The 100th Batallion and the 442nd received 18,143 individual decorations of valor and together became the most decorated unit of its size and length of service in U.S. history.

The 442nd, however, was limited to Nisei, or second-generation Japanese Americans. There was less trust for Kibei--those who were born in America and returned to Japan for some portion of their lives--people like Oda.

But eventually the Army came back looking for men like Oda who could read, write and speak Japanese for military intelligence. They taught Japanese at a military language school in Minnesota, interpreted interrogations of Japanese prisoners, and advised the military about how to tailor their propaganda to Japanese culture.

Printing leaflets boastfully predicting U.S. victory would only strengthen Japanese resolve, the Kibei advised. Better to praise their military valor--while also suggesting they were fighting on the wrong side.

The bravery of the Japanese American soldiers made a tremendous difference, said Phil Shigekuni, 61, a vice president of the Japanese American Citizens League. Shigekuni was active in the movement that sought reparations for those detained in camps. Without the 100th Battalion and 442nd, and those who worked in intelligence, he said, “there never would have been redress.”

Yoshida and Oda volunteered, but not everyone went willingly to war.

Don Yamaoka, now 75 and living in Chatsworth, had managed to get out of a detention camp--leaving his sisters behind--to attend Otterbein College in Ohio. He was enrolled less than one semester when he got a draft notice. He was angry--but he never considered avoiding military service. He wound up in Japan as an interpreter after the emperor’s surrender.

While in Japan, Yamaoka went to visit relatives who lived just north of Hiroshima. He brought presents to the aunts, uncles and cousins he had never met. Dressed in full uniform, he bowed in front of the Buddhist altar for an unknown cousin who died as a kamikaze pilot in the war.

Everything went smoothly until one uncle--the father of the dead Japanese soldier--started yelling at Yamaoka. If they had faced each other in battle, the uncle demanded, would Yamaoka have shot his own uncle?

“How would I know it was you?” Yamaoka replied. “If you had a gun pointed at me, of course I’d try to beat you.”

The fourth veteran, 78-year-old Mits Usui of Northridge, eloquently reflected on his choice to volunteer for the Army. Speaking to a hushed audience, he recalled his thoughts when, at 22, he enlisted: “I am offering you my life to prove that I’m loyal, and that my family is loyal. If this is the only way to prove it, then I’ll fight.”

*

In the 50 years since the war, most of the veterans have been honored for their bravery. But every once in a while someone--frequently children--will wonder why these men fought for the same country that held their relatives prisoner.

After Usui closed his remarks, Shigekuni asked all the veterans in the audience to come to the stage to be recognized. One by one, the old men came up till 14 more veterans stood before the audience. Like Usui and Yoshida and Oda and Yamaoka, there was no doubt they would fight.

“They can’t understand why we didn’t resist, think that we gave in,” Usui said of younger Japanese Americans. “And we didn’t give in. We made a commitment.”