The Story of the Japanese Americans Who Fought Against Imperial Japan in WWII

On this episode of Our American Stories, Major General James Mukoyama rose from his blue-collar Chicago neighborhood to become the first Asian American to command a U.S. Army division. General “Mook” is the author of Faith, Family & Flag: Memoirs of an Unlikely American Samurai Crusader. Here he is with the story of the Japanese Americans who fought for the United States in WWII.

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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
said 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 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,

(01:45):
but I'll tell you what Number one, 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,

(02:08):
knowing full well the risk he was taking. 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

(02:31):
hundredth Battalion, four hundred and forty second 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, a sign
to them because of their bravery. By the way, the

(02:54):
combat unit the theater operation like the European theater of operation.
We probably 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, their reputation

(03:19):
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 in the

(03:43):
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 in to rescue

(04:06):
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 hundred four to forty
second was ordered to go save the lost battalion or

(04:31):
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. In so doing,
the battalion took eight hundred casualties in order to get through.

(04:57):
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. Japanese Americans, the veterans
would say, stop saying that these people are loyal Americans,

(05:22):
you know. And President Truman uh honored them at the
White House with the with the parade, why awarded their
seventh presidential unicitation to them, and he said, you know,
you guys fought to two fights against fascism but also

(05:43):
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 had Japanese
American soldiers who fought in the Pacific, which was very
Nobody knows a lot about them. Was called the Military

(06:06):
Intelligence Service, and they were translators and interpreters, and they
actually went forward with the Marines and the army soldiers
into battle. They were at Iwo Jima, they're at Guam.
You know, they fought in the Jungles or the Pacific,

(06:30):
and they helped break the Japanese code, the Imperial Code,
which led to our victory at Midway and turned the
tide in the Pacific. In fact, General MacArthur's chief of
intelligence basically said after the war that the breaking that

(06:54):
code shortened the war by two years.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
And you've been listening to Major General jam 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 in World War Two. Here on Our American Stories,

(07:29):
this is Lee Habib, host of Our American Stories, the
show where America is the star and the American people,
and we do it all from the heart of the
South Oxford, Mississippi. But we truly can't do this show
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(07:50):
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