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Medal of Honor For Asian American WWII Veterans

Wed, 06/28/2000 - 12:00am — Karen Stevenson
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President Clinton honored 22 Asian-American veterans of World War II this week. In honoring these brave men, he said, in part, "Immediately following Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans in the United States military were forced to surrender their weapons. National Guardsmen were dismissed; volunteers were rejected; draft-age youth were classified as 'enemy aliens.' Executive Order 9066 authorized military commanders to force more than 100,000 Japanese Americans from their homes and farms and businesses onto trains and buses and into camps, where they were placed behind barbed wire in tar-paper barracks, in places like Manzanar, Heart Mountain, Topaz...

The astonishing fact is that young men of Japanese descent, both in Hawaii and on the mainland, were still willing, even eager, to take up arms to defend America. In 1942, a committee of the Army recommended against forming a combat unit of Japanese Americans, citing -- and I quote -- 'the universal distrust in which they are held.' Yet, Americans of Japanese ancestry, joined by others of good faith, pressed the issue, and a few months later President Roosevelt authorized a combat team of Japanese American volunteers...

They created a custom of reverse AWOL -- wounded soldiers left their hospital beds against doctor's order to return to battle. They were veterans of seven brutal campaigns. They fought in Italy to overwhelm entrenched German positions that blocked the path north. They fought in France and liberated towns that still remember them with memorials. They took 800 casualties in just five days of continuous combat in southern France, to rescue the lost battalion of Texas which had been surrounded by German troops...

Rarely has a nation been so well-served by a people it has so ill-treated. For their numbers and length of service, the Japanese Americans of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, including the 100th Infantry Battalion, became the most decorated unit in American military history. By the end of the war, America's military leaders in Europe all wanted these men under their command. Their motto was 'Go or Broke.' They risked it all to win it all."

President Clinton honored 22 Asian-American veterans of World War II this week. In honoring these brave men, he said, in part, "Immediately following Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans in the United States military were forced to surrender their weapons. National Guardsmen were dismissed; volunteers were rejected; draft-age youth were classified as 'enemy aliens.' Executive Order 9066 authorized military commanders to force more than 100,000 Japanese Americans from their homes and farms and businesses onto trains and buses and into camps, where they were placed behind barbed wire in tar-paper barracks, in places like Manzanar, Heart Mountain, Topaz...

The astonishing fact is that young men of Japanese descent, both in Hawaii and on the mainland, were still willing, even eager, to take up arms to defend America. In 1942, a committee of the Army recommended against forming a combat unit of Japanese Americans, citing -- and I quote -- 'the universal distrust in which they are held.' Yet, Americans of Japanese ancestry, joined by others of good faith, pressed the issue, and a few months later President Roosevelt authorized a combat team of Japanese American volunteers...

They created a custom of reverse AWOL -- wounded soldiers left their hospital beds against doctor's order to return to battle. They were veterans of seven brutal campaigns. They fought in Italy to overwhelm entrenched German positions that blocked the path north. They fought in France and liberated towns that still remember them with memorials. They took 800 casualties in just five days of continuous combat in southern France, to rescue the lost battalion of Texas which had been surrounded by German troops...

Rarely has a nation been so well-served by a people it has so ill-treated. For their numbers and length of service, the Japanese Americans of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, including the 100th Infantry Battalion, became the most decorated unit in American military history. By the end of the war, America's military leaders in Europe all wanted these men under their command. Their motto was 'Go or Broke.' They risked it all to win it all."