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Japanese American Soldiers in WWII: The 442nd Regiment, Racism, and the Cost of Loyalty · Japanese America

• 0:00
  During World War II, Japanese Americans were told to prove their loyalty to a country that had imprisoned many of their families, and even when they tried to serve, some were told they didn't look American enough to be soldiers.
• 0:12
  I said, why can't I be a regular soldier?
• 0:15
  He said, no, no, no. Wake up, wake up.
• 0:18
  He says, uh, you got the wrong shaped eyes.
• 0:21
  You got the wrong skin, he says.
• 0:23
  He says, uh, everything is wrong.
• 0:26
  He says, you can't be a soldier.
• 0:28
  People like you aren't soldiers.
• 0:31
  And getting into uniform didn't mean that question stopped.
• 0:35
  Some men still had to defend their right to call themselves American.
• 0:40
  Then he says, do you feel like an American?
• 0:43
  Oh yes, I do, sir. Well, do you know that a cat born in a fish market isn't a fish? So I told him yes, but the cat belonged to the fish market.
• 0:54
  Like I belong to the United States.
• 0:55
  You know.
• 0:57
  A cat born in a fish market.
• 0:58
  Imagine having to explain to somebody why you belong in your own country.
• 1:02
  And that's before you get to what these men were being asked to do for that country.
• 1:08
  Welcome to Japanese America.
• 1:09
  Today, we're looking at the 442nd Regimental Combat Team through the voices of the people who lived it, not just the battlefield stories, but the racism, the impossible choices, and the things that were hard to talk about after the war.
• 1:22
  We are drawing on first hand interviews from the Japanese American National Museum documentary Looking Like the Enemy.
• 1:29
  These stories complicate the familiar image of the 442nd as an all American story of heroism. They don't make the soldiers courage any less extraordinary.
• 1:40
  They help us understand what that courage cost.
• 1:44
  I'm Koji Steven Sakai.
• 1:46
  And I'm Michele Miyazaki.
• 1:48
  We're releasing this episode in November around Veterans Day.
• 1:50
  It's also the season when people remember one of the best known episodes in the 442nds history, The rescue of the Lost Battalion in late October and early November 1944.
• 2:01
  The 442nd fought its way through German lines to reach the trapped men of the Texas 36th Division. That rescue came as a terrible cost more than 800 casualties during the operation of the 275 men originally trapped, 211 survived.
• 2:21
  And November 2nd, 2011, was the presentation of the Congressional Gold Medal to the 100th Infantry Battalion, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, and the Military Intelligence Service.
• 2:31
  A couple episodes ago, we talked about draft resisters and the no no boys men who refuse to serve under the conditions that the government had imposed on them and their families.
• 2:39
  Today, we're looking at the men who served, often while wrestling with those same injustices. Michelle. Growing up in Japan, did you hear much about Japanese American soldiers like the 442, or was that history mostly absent from what you learned about World War Two?
• 2:51
  I, you know, I took history class in Japan because it's a requirement.
• 2:55
  I had to study history like few times from like the, you know, beginning of Japan like 2000 years ago, 3000 years ago till present time.
• 3:04
  And somehow we always run out of time when it comes to World War Two.
• 3:09
  And then maybe just like fast forward in the school year's over and it's all over again 2000 years ago.
• 3:19
  So no, the answer is no then.
• 3:20
  No, no. And then I came here to America to study.
• 3:24
  And first semester I took a history class.
• 3:26
  And same thing too, like we started.
• 3:29
  It's an American history and we started from 200, you know, back then, 50 years ago or 220 years ago.
• 3:36
  And then, um, by the time we got to World War Two, we got like hurried and like the semester was over.
• 3:46
  Yeah, that's pretty common, I think.
• 3:47
  So I never, you know, actually, I never heard of 442nd till mid 30s.
• 3:53
  Wow. Okay.
• 3:54
  It's easy to tell this story as if every Japanese American man was eager to volunteer.
• 4:00
  The reality was more complicated.
• 4:02
  Some men wanted to serve.
• 4:04
  Others couldn't understand why they should fight for a government that had taken away their family's freedom.
• 4:11
  Miyake of Los Angeles said volunteer?
• 4:16
  Heck no. Why should I volunteer when my my wife, my children and my parents are in relocation camps?
• 4:25
  So he didn't volunteer.
• 4:26
  He got drafted.
• 4:27
  It's hard to argue with that question.
• 4:28
  If your family is behind barbed wire, what does it mean to be asked to risk your life for the government that put them there?
• 4:34
  And some men decided to serve anyway.
• 4:37
  Listen to how one veteran describes what they believe they were being asked to give.
• 4:42
  But we all knew that we had to be as good as any other Caucasian outfit, and we all had to toe the line and do our best that that we all knew.
• 4:53
  And we knew that we had to shed blood.
• 4:57
  That was the price we were going to pay, and we all had to be prepared to pay that price. normal thing would probably have said, to hell with the United States. You won't do this to me. I don't want to fight. You know, I'm not going to risk my life.
• 5:11
  Uh, you don't give me my constitutional rights to begin with.
• 5:15
  So why should I follow the Constitution?
• 5:18
  But. Hey, that's normal thing to do.
• 5:24
  But to the Japanese American community, it was it was abnormal times.
• 5:29
  It was, it was it was a time that we had to do things that were not normal.
• 5:33
  They knew what the government had done to their families.
• 5:36
  They knew they were being treated equally.
• 5:39
  And they still had to decide what serving their country meant under these circumstances.
• 5:45
  For many recruits, military training brought another lesson in how race worked in America.
• 5:50
  The 442nd trained at Camp Shelby in Mississippi, where Hawaiian born Japanese Americans encountered the segregated world of Jim Crow.
• 5:56
  We had to go to the restroom and there was only the colored and whites only.
• 6:02
  And as the white line was so long, the Hawaii boys started to use the colored section indiscriminately.
• 6:11
  Uh, like in Hawaii, there was no discrimination.
• 6:15
  So after several weeks, the colonel called the companies together and said that, uh, the people of Hattiesburg are very disturbed that we are using colored section in the buses, colored section in the restrooms, etc., and that we should use the whites only.
• 6:39
  So one of the boys says, why?
• 6:41
  The colonel says, because you're more white than black.
• 6:46
  Koji, what goes through your mind hearing a commanding officer tell Japanese American recruits they are more white than black?
• 6:54
  When I hear that, and I've heard stories from veterans about that.
• 6:58
  It's really just confusing to me on how race is, how race is perceived in America.
• 7:05
  I know, and even in South Africa, there used to be three bathrooms.
• 7:08
  There was the white bathrooms, the colored bathrooms, and then the mulatto bathrooms, which was the people that were mixed. And it's just very it's just very odd.
• 7:15
  And honestly, if I were, you know, going back to the South during that time, I would assume I'm going to the black bathroom because I don't want to go to the white bathroom because I don't want to get killed if I in the wrong if I'm in the wrong bathroom, you know? So it's just, it's just funny to me that that race is that how people perceive race.
• 7:33
  And, and I will say one thing, you know, that that I think is really important to know about humans and race is that we're all pretty much the same.
• 7:41
  The fact that we could all mate and have babies still means that genetically we're exactly the same. So I think all the a lot of the differences between people is just on the surface and how we look and how our genes are expressed.
• 7:54
  But basically we're the same people. So I think a lot of these people are being silly in, in how they, uh, how they're doing it.
• 8:01
  In South Africa in the 80s.
• 8:03
  I learned that the Japanese were allowed to use the white bathroom.
• 8:09
  Yeah. And I, I thought that was kind of weird because like a white bathroom because I was, you know, I was born and raised in Japan.
• 8:19
  We only got one bathroom for everybody or a Japanese people.
• 8:23
  So, um, I, I thought that was so weird, but I didn't know they had the, they had three bathrooms.
• 8:29
  Yeah. I mean, there was, I mean, I don't know how it was in the 80s, but I know at one time that that's the way they would have had it.
• 8:34
  Wow. Yeah. More more bathroom.
• 8:36
  You have to clean more bathrooms.
• 8:42
  The men of the 100th and 442 became known for their combat record in Europe.
• 8:45
  They also drew on the language and culture they brought with them.
• 8:48
  One veteran remembers how Hawaiian pidgin helping them communicate in a way German listeners couldn't easily follow.
• 8:54
  Mostly, though, the enemy.
• 8:57
  In my company is heavy weapons outfit.
• 8:59
  So we usually get into position by telephone or by walkie talkie, and somehow they will catch on with us.
• 9:05
  So they must have had English speaking German boys.
• 9:10
  After we found out we used our own language.
• 9:12
  Hawaiian word. Hey, go mauka makai or the machi already this kind of talking and they couldn't catch on. For example, uh, a guy would say, we do it Hawaiian all the time. He would say, uh, you keep going. I'll be there along with you say you go say go.
• 9:25
  And I go, come on, I go say come.
• 9:28
  That's Hawaiian pidgin, you know, you go say go.
• 9:30
  Then you keep going. I will be coming after you.
• 9:33
  You go. Stay, go and I will stay.
• 9:35
  Come now, this kind of talk and and the other thing you don't understand.
• 9:39
  That's a great example of the men using a language they already shared to make communication harder for the other side to understand.
• 9:48
  But Japanese American military service wasn't only happening in Europe.
• 9:51
  Men in the military intelligence service worked in the Pacific using their Japanese language skills in the war against Japan.
• 9:57
  For some, that meant confronting people whose lives could have taken a very different path from their own. Here's Taka Takajiro Higa's describing an encounter with a former classmate.
• 10:06
  If you meet him today, do you think you'll recognize him?
• 10:10
  No, I don't know. Maybe we haven't seen each other for 4 or 5 years now.
• 10:14
  I see. So you don't know him?
• 10:18
  So at that time, I looked at them squarely and I said, God damn, don't you recognize your own classmate?
• 10:26
  He said. And that took me real hard because as I mentioned earlier, I literally ran away from Okinawa when I was 16.
• 10:36
  See, if I didn't run away or if I went back to Okinawa in 1940, I might be in the same boat.
• 10:44
  So that kind of hit me real hard.
• 10:48
  So three of us grabbed each other's shoulder and we had a little cry.
• 10:53
  I don't mind telling you.
• 10:56
  He could see how easily their lives might have gone in another direction.
• 11:00
  They were on opposite sides of a war, but they weren't strangers to one another.
• 11:06
  And sometimes the division reached right into a family. One veteran describes meeting his brother at Punchbowl Cemetery in Honolulu after the war. His brother had served in the Imperial Japanese Navy.
• 11:15
  During the sanctity of Punchbowl.
• 11:19
  He and I discussed our past.
• 11:23
  You know, not about the war, but not who won or who lost, but utter futility of wars.
• 11:29
  Here I look at him. That's the first time I really talked to him.
• 11:33
  Now, he's been to Hawaii a few times, but that's the first time I gathered enough courage to ask him point blank what happened.
• 11:40
  Then I look at him. I look at his wife and tears came down.
• 11:43
  Mine says, here he is.
• 11:45
  He's my enemy. He suffered just as much as me.
• 11:49
  He suffered. You know, he was captured by the Dutch.
• 11:52
  He was bombed by the allies and his wife is receiving medical treatment and all that.
• 11:57
  I said, hey, let bygones be bygones.
• 12:00
  And I thought I suffered because my father suffered.
• 12:04
  I saw his suffering. My wife was interned, and I have six of us in the family, my brother and I and four brothers in laws, all in the four 42nd.
• 12:16
  All of us wounded in combat.
• 12:18
  And all of us were Purple Heart veterans, you know.
• 12:22
  So I said to myself, and as I'm shaking his hands and both of us cry and say, gee, the art of futility, of war, nobody wins.
• 12:32
  Michelle, what strikes me most about the story of the two brothers who end up in opposite sides of the war.
• 12:36
  I just can't imagine, like, you know, it's not even.
• 12:39
  It's your brothers fighting for opposing military and and then they end up meeting again and oh my gosh, all that, all the things that they believe in, not believe. And they see the brother.
• 12:54
  They are brothers, so they are like similar face and feet, you know, feature of the face.
• 12:59
  And like they are, they were enemies and they are not enemies.
• 13:03
  That's so strange and sad and like, why do we have to fight?
• 13:09
  Yeah. And could you imagine family reunions?
• 13:12
  Do Japanese people do family reunions?
• 13:14
  Is that a thing in Japan?
• 13:15
  Well, usually in Obon we might.
• 13:18
  Yeah, because Obon is the season when all the family gather.
• 13:23
  So that could be considered family reunion.
• 13:26
  But not like the way the Americans do it, right?
• 13:28
  Oh, no. Like no barbecue.
• 13:30
  Well, even just like I mean, like a party or like they don't really do, like where everyone comes from, all the different places.
• 13:36
  We do have a party at the Jika, like a the main family.
• 13:41
  So like the family tree, the main the oldest brother's house.
• 13:46
  Oh, okay.
• 13:47
  Yeah.
• 13:48
  Well, could you imagine how that if you're, if you have a family reunion and two brothers fought on different sides of the war, That would be very dramatic. I don't know if I want if I want to deal with that.
• 13:57
  I mean, I already have enough drama with my own brother. I couldn't imagine having even soldiers.
• 14:02
  Yeah. Like, even without the war, we have enough drama going on in the war.
• 14:11
  Ah. That's so. So it's it's so sad that we have to fight.
• 14:16
  And I agree with you. I think it's just silly. I mean, these guys are like, you know, on both sides. The governments don't really care.
• 14:21
  I don't think about the people that much. And we're just kind of pawns in this bigger war.
• 14:25
  Yeah. And yeah.
• 14:26
  For what? You know?
• 14:28
  Yeah. For what exactly. And I think both sides are being, you know, propaganda and they're being told crazy things that, you know, that I don't think necessarily have anything to do with each other. No.
• 14:38
  Yeah. So the war ended and these men came home.
• 14:40
  Some were celebrated as heroes, but returning home didn't necessarily mean they could explain what they'd lived through, not even to their own families.
• 14:46
  How can you tell someone?
• 14:48
  Pop, don't be proud of me.
• 14:51
  Don't be ashamed of me.
• 14:52
  Because I did what I thought I had to do.
• 14:54
  But don't be proud of me because we got nothing to be proud of over there. What we're doing. But you don't. At least I couldn't say that to my family.
• 15:03
  So you just shut up.
• 15:06
  You just shut up. For some veterans, silence was the only way they knew how to live with what happened.
• 15:13
  But silence can also leave the story to people who weren't there.
• 15:17
  Listen to how another veteran connects that silence to the way war gets remembered.
• 15:23
  It's so horrible they can't talk about so and so.
• 15:28
  Their silence, in a sense, makes possible wars.
• 15:34
  Because the people who write about wars glorify it, they honor it. They make it like as if it's some great, great thing. And it's not, it's not at all.
• 15:46
  And, uh, and so, uh, for every third generation or second generation young kids are ready to go to war again. And.
• 15:56
  And they think they're going to be another John Wayne and Rambo. Except when the first bullet flies, all of a sudden they realize, hey, this isn't what I thought it was, and it isn't what I'm looking for.
• 16:05
  And what I asked.
• 16:06
  Koji, how do we honor the bravery of the 442nd and still be honest about the injustice these men faced and the realities of war?
• 16:15
  Michel, that's a great question.
• 16:18
  The challenge with with it is that when I imagine the 442, I imagine these bigger than life GI Joe, but Japanese American, you know, six feet, seven feet tall muscles, you know, everything. But when I saw these photos taken by this veteran named Suz Ito, I saw that they were just kids, you know, 18, 19 years old. And they look so small and so young.
• 16:48
  It made me realize that war is terrible.
• 16:53
  And that that we were sending these babies to fight for us and that these babies and and on top of that, some of these babies felt like they had to prove their loyalty by dying for this country. That's wild to me.
• 17:08
  And I think the story of 442, the I think the story, the legacy of the 442 isn't just that what they did was so brave, but it's that they were willing to do so at such a young age.
• 17:22
  And it's a reminder why we need to make sure that people don't have to make that decision again. The story of the 442 isn't just a story of battlefield heroism.
• 17:32
  It's also a story of men who served a country that has treated them and their families unjustly, and who carried experiences that weren't always easy to put into words.
• 17:41
  Listening to them means holding both parts of that history at once, the courage it took to serve, and the cost of being asked to prove you belonged.
• 17:51
  Before we go, let's bring the history a little closer to home. If you could preserve one everyday object from your family in a museum or time capsule, something that says something about your family's journey in America, what would you choose? Michelle, what would you put in that box?
• 18:03
  Well, I would put my Koseki paper, the family registry from before when I was a Japanese person. And after I become a former Japanese person in a box.
• 18:17
  Why would you put. Why would you put in there?
• 18:19
  I understand the role, but I still feel Japanese.
• 18:24
  And when my name was changed from kanji to katakana, my identity was really.
• 18:31
  I never like my Japanese name, but when it become katakana.
• 18:37
  Ah, I felt so lost. So I need to put those in there.
• 18:44
  If you like to hear the full oral histories we feature today, check out JANM's documentary, Looking like the enemy.
• 18:52
  We've linked that film in our show notes.
• 18:54
  Join us on December 10th for season three, episode 11, Ink and Echo. Nikkei, poets and Belonging and Becoming will move from wartime stories to the literary world and explore how Japanese American poets have used verse, language and memory to reclaim identity across generations.
• 19:09
  Subscribe to Japanese America on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen, and leave us a review and tell us what you put in your family time capsule.
• 19:20
  Until next time, take care and learn our history and go for broke.
• 19:24
  Bye, everyone.
• 19:25
  Later.