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Q: Can we move over to the 442? Were they in a way martyrs or sacrificial lambs for the Japanese people?

RD: Many of the men of the 442, certainly not all, but many of the men of the 442 enlisted with a notion that perhaps their service would make it possible for their parents, their wives, their children, their siblings to maintain a normal life after the war. There's one letter I have in a collection from a young man who was killed in Anzio or somewhere around there, written from Camp Shelby in Mississippi which says very simply, "I don't like what I have to do here, but this is the only way that I can see that my folks will be able to return to Berkeley after the war." There certainly is a sacrificial element in it because big hunks of American troops in the Second World War were not in combat arms. But any Japanese person who went into the army, if they weren't in the Military Intelligence unit, went into the l00th Battalion or the 442nd later and that was all combat. So that the chances of an individual Japanese American soldier being killed or wounded were much, much higher than for the average individual. Because all of them who went into the service went into combat units. That was certainly not true for the rest of the American population, there was Quartermaster, there was a large establishment here in the United States, etcetera.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 1983, 2010 Densho and Steven Okazaki. All Rights Reserved.