Go for broke! - 100th Battalion, 442nd Infantry Regiment made up of Japanese-American soldiers during Second World War

Soldiers Magazine, Nov, 2003 by Heike Hasenauer

WHEN the United States entered World War II following the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, some 5,000 Japanese-Americans were serving in the U.S. armed forces, according to records of the National Japanese-American Historical Society.

In Hawaii, Japanese composed about 40 percent of the population. About 2,000 Japanese-American men in Hawaii, mostly second-generation Japanese known as Nisei, had been drafted into the Hawaii National Guard's 298th and 299th Infantry Regiments before the attack, said Hawaii resident Tokuji Ono, a Nisei war veteran and former member of the 298th.

Ronald Oba, another Nisei veteran from Hawaii, was 17 when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He remembers that on Friday, Dec. 5, his high school teacher told the class that Japan and the United States would be at war before the weekend was over.

"I didn't think much of it," said Oba, who witnessed the attack and told his story to Time magazine reporters for the March 2003 special issue, "Eighty Days That Changed the World."

He saw squadrons of airplanes circling and diving over Battleship Row. "I saw one of the planes drop a torpedo and witnessed the huge explosion that followed. Then I saw two Japanese fighters burning. One of them fell into a macadamia-nut orchard. Some other boys and I went to see what we could see.

"A truckload of soldiers came by and pulled a pilot out of one of the cockpits," Oba said, "and a piece of paper fell from his jacket with a red circle around every target the Japanese intended to hit. The paper also included the name of the pilot."

From Veteran to Senator

Sen. Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii was 18 when Pearl Harbor was attacked. Fresh out of high school, he'd just enrolled at the University of Hawaii, where he planned to take pre-med courses. He'd also been teaching first aid at a Red Cross aid station in Honolulu.

On Dec. 7, Inouye was getting dressed to go to church. When he turned on the radio by his bed he heard the shrill cries of the announcer: "This is no test. Pearl Harbor is being bombed by the Japanese. I repeat, this is no test," Inouye wrote in his book, "Go for Broke," which was the motto of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, to which he belonged later in the war.

Inouye jumped on his bike and raced for a nearby aid station to help care for the wounded and dying.

"An old Japanese man grabbed the handlebars of my bike as I tried to maneuver around a group [of people]," Inouye wrote. "The man asked, 'Who did it? Was it the Germans? It must have been the Germans.'

"I shook my head, unable to speak.... My eyes filled with tears of pity for him and for all [the] frightened people," Inouye wrote. "[The Japanese Americans] had worked so hard. They had wanted so desperately to be accepted, to be good Americans. Now, in a few cataclysmic minutes, [their efforts were] all undone, and there could only be deep trouble ahead."

The day after the attack--and for many days thereafter--rumors abounded that the Japanese in Hawaii had cut a swath in the mountains, in the shape of an arrow that pointed to Pearl Harbor, and that they sabotaged the electric plant and water sources on the island, said Oba.

But a year later, the FBI, having investigated every rumor, reported that there had not been a single case of sabotage or espionage committed by Japanese residents in the islands, Oba said.

But no one had the facts on Dec. 7. All Japanese were suspect, Oba added, whether Issei, first-generation Japanese, or Nisei. That night, at midnight, an FBI agent arrived at the Buddhist temple near Pearl Harbor and arrested Oba's future father-in-law, a Buddhist priest. He was eventually taken to Tule Lake, in northern California, where the government interned Japanese-Americans it considered to be potentially dangerous.

The Hawaii Territorial Guard arrested all Buddhist priests, and any other people who seemed to have an affiliation to Japan, Oba said. Among the 1,800 Issei who were rounded up and sent to mainland relocation camps were Japanese-language teachers, judo instructors, labor leaders, businessmen and newspaper reporters.

The discrimination against Japanese-Americans didn't end there. In January 1942, the War Department announced that all U.S. soldiers of Japanese ancestry would be released from active duty and that all civilians of Japanese ancestry employed by the Army would be suspended. In March, the department announced that Japanese-Americans would no longer be eligible for the draft. Classified as "4-C," they were considered "enemy aliens."

On the mainland, Japanese-American men, women and children were rounded up and placed in detention camps, Oba said.

Soldiers in the Hawaii National Guard were spared, as citizens felt they were desperately needed to defend the islands, said Raymond Nosaka, then a member of the 298th Inf. Regt.

Nosaka had been on guard duty at Schofield Barracks, on Oahu, when the Japanese aircraft appeared without warning over the mountains.

"I could see the bombs dropping and the black smoke filling the sky," Nosaka said. Soon after Schofield Barracks was hit, some 750 soldiers of the 298th were loaded onto trucks and taken to Oahu's Kaneohe Naval Air Station.