Nisei War Heroes Receive Long-Delayed Recognition

Dive bombers, torpedo planes and fighters bearing the “rising sun” emblem of the Japanese military were hammering Oahu’s military bases that Sunday morning, Dec. 7, 1941.

High school senior Daniel K. Inouye was racing his bicycle through the narrow streets of the Makiki neighborhood, heading to the Red Cross station where he volunteered as a first-aid trainer. He remembers shouting skyward: “You dirty Japs!”

As the great columns of black smoke rose from the wrecked Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor, Inouye knew that there would be trouble for him and other Japanese Americans, people who, he said, “had wanted so desperately to be accepted, to be good Americans.”

Barney Hajiro, working for 10 cents an hour in the sugar cane fields of Maui, quickly found his ancestry made him a target for other Americans after the attack that dragged the United States into World War II.

“When the war started, they thought we were the enemy,” Hajiro, now 83, said recently. “I didn’t like that.”

Soon he and Inouye were in U.S. Army uniforms--among the thousands of Nisei, or second-generation Japanese, who joined up and soon proved themselves on the battlefields of Europe. Some, including Hajiro and Inouye, stood out with single-handed acts of conspicuous bravery in the face of enemy fire that left them badly wounded.

But their heroism was never fully recognized--until now.

This Wednesday, in a White House ceremony, Inouye, Hajiro and five other Asian American World War II veterans will receive the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest decoration for valor. Fourteen other Medals of Honor will go to the surviving families of dead Asian American heroes.

Those being honored mostly served in the segregated Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team and the 100th Infantry Battalion, which together became the most decorated combat unit for its size in the nation’s history.

The men emerged from seven major campaigns in France and Italy with eight presidential unit citations, 9,486 Purple Hearts and 18,143 individual decorations. The latter included 52 Distinguished Service Crosses, the second-highest award for valor.

As outstanding as these achievements were--especially for units that had a total of 25,000 men during the war--some believed the recognition was incomplete. Only one soldier received the highest award.

“The fact that the 100th/442nd saw such fierce and heavy combat yet received only one Medal of Honor award, and then only posthumously and due to congressional intervention, raised serious questions about the fairness of the award process at the time,” said Sen. Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii).

He decided to reexamine the process and concluded that wartime “bias, discrimination and hysteria” were partly to blame for the withholding of Medals of Honor.

Distrust and even hatred of the traditionally clannish Japanese was almost immediate after the Pearl Harbor attack. Most islanders, and especially the military, believed an invasion was imminent and local Japanese might aid the invaders.

Martial law was declared, short-wave radios and cameras owned by aliens were seized, nightly blackouts were ordered, Japanese bank accounts and income were restricted and two Japanese-language newspapers were shut down. Japanese families were ordered to move away from coastal areas.

All Japanese Americans were reclassified as “4C-enemy aliens.” Japanese Americans in the Army were disarmed and assigned to labor battalions; the Hawaii Territorial Guard and ROTC discharged 1,400 Japanese American members.

On the U.S. mainland, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered 120,000 alien Japanese and Japanese Americans rounded up and placed in relocation camps “for their own safety.”

Meanwhile, when the Army allowed it in 1942, about 1,500 Hawaii Nisei joined the 100th Infantry Battalion being formed in the islands.

Their “go for broke” training at Camp McCoy in Wisconsin so impressed the Army brass that the 442nd Regimental Combat Team was formed, taking thousands more Japanese American volunteers from Hawaii and across the country for training at Camp Shelby, Miss.

By war’s end, 25,000 Japanese Americans had served, including several hundred in Pacific intelligence units as spies, interrogators and interpreters.

In 1996, Akaka persuaded Congress to direct the Pentagon to review the actions of 104 soldiers of Asian and Pacific ancestry who were awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.

That effort was patterned on a 1993 law that led to the upgrading of Distinguished Service Crosses and Navy Crosses won by seven black veterans to the Medal of Honor.

After a three-year review, the Army last month recommended that 21 soldiers--19 Japanese Americans, one Filipino American and one Chinese American--be awarded the Medal of Honor.

Hajiro earned his at a place the GIs called “Suicide Hill” in France’s Vosges Mountains.

It was Oct. 29, 1944, and PFC Hajiro’s platoon in the 100th was under heavy fire from German machine guns, which had killed eight GIs and wounded 21 in the unit.

Suddenly Hajiro picked up his Browning automatic rifle and charged. He wiped out two machine gun nests and killed two snipers before he was hit by a third machine gun, receiving wounds to the body, arm and face.

His action came in the third and final push in the 442nd’s breakthrough to rescue the “Lost Battalion,” a former Texas National Guard unit cut off by the Germans.

“It was 1 a.m. and we took a lot of heavy hits. Some of the guys were only 18 or so, and they were getting hit and were dying,” Hajiro said. “ . . . I was lucky to survive.”

Six months later, on April 20, 1945, Inouye’s turn for heroism came as his platoon in the 442nd came under fire from a German bunker on a ridge guarding a key crossroads near Terenzo, Italy.

Wounded in the stomach, 1st Lt. Inouye crawled up the exposed hillside, tossed a hand grenade into a machine-gun emplacement, then took aim at the fleeing defenders with his submachine gun.

He staggered farther up the hill, threw two more grenades at a second machine gun and advanced to a third position with a grenade ready to throw.

Just at that moment, an enemy grenade exploded near his right elbow. Inouye threw his grenadewith his left hand. He then was shot in his right leg and fell down the hill.

He lost his right arm and hopes for a medical career. Instead, he went to law school and into politics; Inouye has represented Hawaii in the U.S. Senate since 1962.

Until now, the only Japanese American World War II veteran awarded the Medal of Honor was PFC Sadao S. Munemori, a Los Angeles native who signed up for the 442nd after he and his family were sent to the Manzanar internment camp in California.

After making a one-man attack on a German stronghold in the Po Valley in Italy, Munemori sacrificed his own life by falling on an enemy grenade, smothering its blast to save two nearby comrades.

For each man receiving a Medal of Honor this week, the hell of war took a different form.

* Shizuya Hayashi was cited for charging a machine gun position and killing 20 enemy soldiers while taking four prisoners at Cerasuolo, Italy, in November 1943. At one point, Hayashi recalls facing an armed boy, “12 or 13, I think.

“He was crying. He was holding the burp gun, and the one in the back told him it was his responsibility to stop us,” Hayashi said. “But I couldn’t shoot him.” Instead, Hayashi said he yelled “ ‘Get up,’ and they all came up and surrendered. One of them had the Iron Cross and that swastika. I took that away from him, I was so mad.”

* Tech. Sgt. Yeiki Kobashigawa led his platoon in wiping out four German machine gun positions in fighting near Lanuvio, Italy, on June 2, 1944.

“‘Give me all the pineapples [grenades],’ ” he recalled telling his lieutenant. “ . . . I was in a good position.”

He was wounded in the knee and chest two days later.

* Tech. Sgt. Yukio Okutsu was leading a platoon in action on Mt. Belvedere in Italy on April 7, 1945, when the unit was caught in cross-fire from three German machine guns.

After using grenades to knock out two gun emplacements, he moved through heavy fire toward the third. A bullet glanced off his helmet, stunning him momentarily. Then he charged with his submachine gun, capturing the position and its four gunners.

“I was one of the lucky guys in the infantry. I got scratched, but no heavy wounds. I didn’t even get a Purple Heart,” he said.

* Pvt. George Sakato of the 442nd killed five Germans and captured four in his platoon’s assault on two enemy defensive lines before the unit was pinned down by heavy fire Oct. 29, 1944, near Biffontaine, France.

Sitting in his Colorado home, Sakato, now 79, spoke in a wavering voice as he remembered how a friend was killed by a German soldier after he tried to warn him. “Why?” he remembers crying out before picking up his gun and running toward the shooter.

“I was just so mad, I lost control and charged that hill,” said Sakato, a retired postal clerk.

* Staff Sgt. Rudolph Davila’s 7th Infantry artillery unit, moving in from the Anzio beachhead, came upon a U.S. rifle company of 130 men caught in the open by heavy German fire on May 28, 1944, at Artena, Italy.

He sprayed his machine gun at the Germans in the foothills and ordered his men to bring other machine guns into action. He then directed the fire to silence several German positions.

Davila, despite a wounded leg, took cover behind a burned tank and continued firing on the German positions before crawling toward an enemy-held house, where he used a hand grenade and rifle to wipe out two machine guns there.

“To this day, I can’t tell you I killed. I don’t want to think that I killed. I think I scared them away,” he said.

Davila, of Spanish-Filipino descent, said his wife, Harriet, prodded the Army for years to recommend him for the Medal of Honor. She died Christmas Day 1999.

“The experience has a lot of meaning to me but not as much as if she were here. She wanted me to have it so badly,” Davila said.

For Sen. Akaka, the review of the Nisei combatants’ records provided a special dividend.

“The stories documented for each of the 104 DSC recipients,” he said, “will astonish and humble all who read them and underscore our faith in a nation that produces such heroes.”

*

Associated Press writers Dara Akiko Williams in San Diego and Colleen Slevin in Denver contributed to this report.

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Medal of Honor Honorees

Nearly six decades after their battlefield actions, 21 Asian American soldiers will receive the Medal of Honor at the White House on Wednesday.

Living recipients are:

* Staff Sgt. Rudolph Davila, 7th Infantry, who protected a company of 130 men caught in the open by heavy German fire and later silenced two enemy machine guns; at Artena, Italy, May 28, 1944.

* PFC Barney F. Hajiro, 442nd Regimental Combat Team, who wiped out two machine gun nests and killed two snipers before being wounded by a third machine gun; in France’s Vosges Mountains, Oct. 29, 1944.

* Pvt. Shizuya Hayashi, 100th Infantry Battalion, who charged up a hill toward German positions, killed 20 enemy soldiers and captured four; near Cerasuolo, Italy, Nov. 29, 1943.

* 1st Lt. Daniel Inouye, 442nd, who, despite multiple wounds, crawled up a hill and used grenades and his submachine gun to knock out three German machine-gun nests; near Terenzo, Italy, April 20, 1945.

* Tech. Sgt. Yeiki Kobashigawa, 442nd, who led his platoon in destroying four German machine gun positions; near Lanuvio, Italy, June 2, 1944.

* Tech. Sgt. Yukio Okutsu, 442nd, who used grenades and his submachine gun to neutralize three German machine gun positions; on Mt. Belvedere in Italy, April 7, 1945.

* Pvt. George T. Sakato, 442nd, who killed five Germans and captured four as he charged enemy positions that had pinned down his platoon; at Biffontaine in France, Oct. 29, 1944.

Those receiving the medal posthumously:

* Pvt. Mikio Hasemoto, 100th Infantry Battalion, who killed 27 Germans in one battle and four in another; Cerasuolo, Italy, Nov. 29, 1943.

* Pvt. Joe Hayashi, 442nd Regimental Combat Team, who knocked out two machine guns before being killed; Tendola, Italy, April 22, 1945.

* Staff Sgt. Robert T. Kuroda, 442nd, who was killed by a sniper while rescuing a party of litter bearers removing wounded soldiers; Bruyeres, France, Oct. 20, 1944.

* Pfc. Kaoru Moto, 100th, who attacked a machine gun nest and took over a house used as an observation post, defending it despite wounds; Castellina, Italy, July 7, 1944.

* Pfc. Kiyoshi Muranaga, 442nd, who used a mortar with such accuracy and intensity that the Germans withdrew an antitank 88mm gun; Suvereto, Italy, June 26, 1944.

* Pvt. Masato Nakae, 100th, who defended an outpost position; Pisa, Italy, Aug. 19, 1944.

* Pvt. Shinyei Nakamine, 100th, who was killed attacking machine gun nests; La Torreto, Italy, June 2, 1944.

* Pfc. William K. Nakamura, 442nd, who attacked a machine gun nest pinning down his platoon and then was killed holding off enemy gunners as his unit withdrew; Castellina, Italy, July 4, 1944.

* Pfc. Joe M. Nishimoto, 442nd, who was killed in action after leading a breakthrough of a three-day stalemate; at La Houssiere, France, Nov. 7, 1944.

* Sgt. Allan M. Ohata, 100th, who, with a comrade, killed 27 Germans and took one prisoner; Cerasuolo, Italy, Nov. 25, 1943.

* Pfc. Frank Ono, 442nd, who took out a machine gun nest, killed a sniper and helped rescue a wounded man; Castellina, Italy, July 4, 1944.

* Staff Sgt. Kazuo Otani, 442nd, who drew enemy fire while covering his pinned-down platoon’s advance, then was killed while tending a wounded soldier; at Pieve di S. Luce, Italy, July 15, 1944.

* Tech. Sgt. Ted T. Tanouye, 442nd, who, though suffering wounds that would be mortal, stayed with his unit through several firefights; at Molina a Ventoabbto, Italy, July 7, 1944.

* Capt. Francis Brown Wai, 34th Division, who was killed leading a beach assault at Leyte as Gen. Douglas MacArthur returned to liberate the Philippine Islands, Oct. 20, 1944.

A Medal of Honor recommendation for the late James Okubo of Los Angeles was preliminarily approved, but Congress still must waive a statutory time limit for his case. Okubo, an Army medic, saved the lives of members of the 100th and 442nd while repeatedly exposing himself to enemy fire; near Biffontaine, France, October and November 1944.