Honor and Loyalty: The Story of Japanese American Soldiers in WWII

On this episode of Our American Stories, they were Americans by birth but treated as outsiders when the war began. After Pearl Harbor, many Japanese Americans were sent to camps under suspicion of aiding the enemy. Yet from those same camps came volunteers who joined the U.S. Army, determined to prove their loyalty. Known as the Nisei, these second-generation Japanese Americans fought in Europe’s bloodiest battles and helped redefine what it meant to be American. Major General James Mukoyama, the first Asian American to command a U.S. Army division, shares the story of these remarkable men in his memoir Faith, Family & Flag: Memoirs of an Unlikely American Samurai Crusader.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Major General James
Mukayama rose from his blue collar Chicago neighborhood to become
the first Asian American to command a US Army division.
General mook As he's known as the author of Faith, Family,
and Flag Memoirs of an Unlikely American Samurai Crusader. Here

(00:33):
he is to tell the story of the Japanese who
fought for the United States in World War Two.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
I have a daily standard mantra, which is every day
is a great day. I have my faith, my family,
and live in the finest country in the world. I
say that every day every chance I get. But although
I am extremely positive and grateful having been born in

(01:01):
the United States, I tell people when I was born here,
I hit the lotto. So when I say that mantra,
sometimes I get pushback about the finest country in the
world part and I say, listen, I've been around the
block a few times. It does help to be around
about eight decades, and so I tell them, you know,

(01:24):
when I joined the military, there had never been an
Asian American admiral or general in our armed forces. Now
I was not the first. That was about the third
or fourth the club isn't real large. Now. Has our
country made mistakes, obviously, but I'll tell you what. Number one,

(01:48):
We're the only country that I know of that had
a civil war to abolish slavery, costing over half a
million lives to settle that situation. And our president, who
ran on that platform was assassinated. He gave up his life,
Abraham Lincoln, knowing full well the risk he was taking.

(02:12):
The military is a perfect example. President Truman in nineteen
forty eight integrated our military services. Prior to that, we
had segregated units, the black units. And World War Two
we had the Japanese American unit, which I might add
was the one hundredth Battalion, four hundred and forty second

(02:34):
Regimental Combat Team, which fought in Europe. To this day,
it's the most highly decorated infantry unit of its size
in late of service. It was a unit that everybody
wanted them as sign to them because of their bravery.
By the way, the combat unit the theater operation like

(02:57):
the European theater of operation. We had nine million guys
who served in that area during the war, and the
reputation of good units spreads like wildfire in combat zones
as well as the bad units and the for forty second,

(03:18):
their reputation was crazy. In fact, there was a back
in the late nineties the Army selected the ten most
important battles in the history of the United States Army,
and one of them was the one in which the
four forty second saved a Texas Army National Guard battalion

(03:43):
in the mountains of France. The Germans had surrounded them.
It was called the Lost Battalion. Hitler had ordered the
annihilation of that unit, and they were in a very
wooded area surrounded, and so they tried to send units

(04:04):
in to rescue that battalion, but nobody could break through.
The one hundred four to forty second had just come
off of that operation, and normally when you have a
major operation, you're given a little rest time to reconstitute
and get replacements and things like that. But the one

(04:25):
hundred four to forty second was ordered to go save
the lost battalion and rescue the lost battalion. They succeeded,
but in doing so, they saved I think two hundred
soldiers from that battalion who were remaining, who were still alive.

(04:50):
In so doing, the battalion took eight hundred casualties in
order to get through. So when that happened, you know,
the words spread like crazy. It was here in this
back in the States too. But you know, so the
veterans after World War Two, when they came back and
they heard people bad mouthing Americans of Japanese ancestry, i e.

(05:14):
Japanese Americans, the veterans would say, stop saying that these
people are loyal Americans, you know. And President Truman uh
honored them at the White House with the with the parade.
Whe awarded their seventh presidential unicitation to them, and he said,

(05:36):
you know, you guys fought to two fights against fascism
but also against racism, and uh so that I'm very
proud to tell you that I had an uncle who
was in that I had relatives who served. And we

(05:57):
had Japanese American soldiers who fought in the Passacific, which
was very Nobody knows a lot about them. Was called
the Military Intelligence Service, and they were translators and interpreters,
and they actually went forward with the Marines and the

(06:17):
army soldiers into battle. They were at Iwo Jima, they're
at Guam, you know, they fought in the Jungles or
the Pacific, and they helped break the Japanese code, the
Imperial Code, which led to our victory at Midway and

(06:41):
turned the tide in the Pacific. In fact, General MacArthur's
chief of intelligence basically said after the war that the
breaking that code shortened the war by two years.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
And you've been listening to major General names Mukayama and
General muk and he's the author of Faith, Family and
Flag Memoirs of an Unlikely Samurai Crusader. And what a
story he tells about Japanese service during World War II,
The story of the American Japanese who fought against the
Japanese World War II. Here on our American Stories. Lee

(07:29):
h Habib here and I'm inviting you to help our
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(07:52):
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