World War II

That Day Everything Changed

On Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, 17 year-old Dan Inouye awakened at his house on Coyne Street as though it were any other day.  There was hardly a cloud in the sky and the sun had already burned off the haze that floated above Honolulu on most mornings.

As was his habit, he clicked on the little radio by his bed.  While buttoning his shirt he heard the words that would change the course of his life:  “This is no test!  Pearl Harbor is being bombed by the Japanese!  I repeat:  This is not a test!”

Dan ran to the side of the house and looked out towards Pearl Harbor, where the U.S. Pacific Fleet was anchored.  Anti-aircraft smoke filled the sky.  A dark gray blanket of smoke was rising from the roaring fires below, obscuring what only minutes before had been a pristine view of the mountains.  Out of the smoke flew a swarm of dive bombers, and even from such a distance, Dan could make out the red circles, plainly visible on the planes’ wings, symbolizing the rising sun of the Japanese Empire.

He was still dazed and disbelieving when he fumbled for the ringing phone.

“How soon can you be here, Dan?”  It was the secretary from the Red Cross station where Dan – who at that time harbored dreams of one day becoming a surgeon – had been teaching first aid.

“I’m on my way,” Dan replied.  The boy grabbed a sweater and a few pieces of bread, telling his terrified parents he’d be back soon.

It would be five days before he returned.

Five days filled with death and devastation.  Five days mending the wounded.  Five days sick to his stomach with shame as he witnessed fifty years’ worth of goodwill painstakingly accrued by Japanese-Americans in their new homeland vaporize in seconds.

A Debt Repaid

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, wherever Dan went, white men and women now sneered when they passed him on the street.  Even Dan’s friends were being taunted with the slur “Jap-lover.”  It was an almost surreal experience – especially for a young man who had been expelled from a Japanese language school as a boy simply for uttering four words:  I Am An American.

Certainly, Dan had adopted certain Japanese traits, but he had been born and raised in America.  He had attended American schools.  He had never been to Japan.  In fact, as a Methodist who played tenor saxophone and clarinet in the school dance band, he exhibited every cultural tag of the typical American teenager.  And as an American, he desperately wanted to be a part of the war effort.

The only problem was – the war effort didn’t want him.  They called the 17-year-old aspiring soldier an Enemy Alien.

As far as the War Department was concerned, there was no difference between a second-generation Japanese-American Nisei like Dan and one of Emperor Hirohito’s fighter pilots.  Nisei were also being summarily discharged from their National Guard and ROTC units and stripped of their weapons.  Even Nisei who previously enlisted in the Army were being forced out of combat duty and directed into labor battalions.

Instead of feeling a sense of relief at not being forced to fight against soldiers from their ancestral homeland, Dan and his fellow Nisei were outraged.  For Dan, as for most Nisei, the Pearl Harbor attack had been a tremendous burden on their consciences; the killing and destruction wrought by the Japanese attack was a shame the Nisei had taken upon themselves.  It fueled their desire to take part in the war and defend the country most of them had been born in, if not yet fully accepted by.  Nisei lobbied relentlessly for a place in the war effort – no matter how menial.

The War Department finally acquiesced.  More than a year after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the War Department agreed to accept 4,500 Asian-Americans and form a full-blown combat team.  And 2,500 of those volunteers would come from the Hawaiian Islands.

In the Territory of Hawaii, nearly 1,000 Nisei volunteered on the first day alone.

Going-away parties and tearful farewells ensued, as $5 and $10 bills were crushed into the palms of these would-be soldiers by parades of aunts, uncles and family friends.  Whispers of “Be a good boy” and “Make us proud” filled the kitchens of Nisei houses across Hawaii.

On a Saturday morning as Dan and his father Hyotaro Inouye were riding the bus to the Nuuanu YMCA , where Dan was ordered to report for duty, Dan’s father asked his son, “Do you know what “on” means in Japanese?”

Dan did.  “On” required that, when one man is aided by another, he incurs a debt that is never canceled and must be repaid at every opportunity.

“The Inouyes have a great “on” for America,” Hyotaro Inouye said to his son.  “This country has been good to us.  And now it is you who must try to return the goodness.”  Hyotaro Inouye went on to remind Dan, the first son of a first son, that although he was precious to his parents, if called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice – death – Dan had a responsibility to give his life. “Do not bring dishonor on our name,” the father said to the son with urgency as the young GI aboard a transport truck, which jerked into motion as the boy-soldier waved to the diminishing figure of his father.

Go For Broke!

Dan was assigned to E Company, 2nd Battalion of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and began his training at Camp Shelby, near Hattiesburg, Mississippi.  The enlisted ranks of the 442nd were comprised entirely of Asian-Americans, the overwhelming majority of them Japanese American.  By the time the 442nd was shipping out in May 1944, they had developed a reputation as a team that gave its all.  “Go for broke!” had become the 442nd’s motto, and their tireless dedication during training was later matched only by their unyielding resolve during battle.

Across Italy, Germany and France, in campaign after campaign, the 442nd fought with uncommon distinction.  The 442nd suffered a casualty rate so high that it ended up taking 12,000 men to fill the 4,500 original slots in the regiment. Dan remembers that as long as a man could stand and hold his rifle, he would go into battle.  In fact, his unit – a group of American G.I.s whose patriotism had been questioned back home – had no recorded incidences of desertion while fighting in the European theater of operations.  The 442nd did, however, have an occasional A.W.O.L problem:  It wasn’t uncommon for a hospital nurse to report that one of her patients from the 442nd was missing – absent without leave – only to discover that the soldier had made an unauthorized return to the battlefield.

Considering how many of his friends he’d seen fall, Dan was feeling very lucky when his first year of battle was coming to a close.

But his luck was about to change.

It was April 1945.  Dan and the men of the 442nd were in Italy, where they had been encountering heavy opposition, most recently from an elite corps of the Italian Army, the legendary Bersaglieri.  A group of highly mobile snipers, the Bersaglieri were both renowned and respected.  Renowned for their distinctive style – they sported wide brimmed hats adorned with black feathers.  And respected for their bravery – the Bersaglieri refused to surrender.

By the third week in April, top American military brass knew the war was not months or even weeks away from ending but days.

But it wasn’t an option to lie low and run out the clock, the commanding officers told their troops.  The 442nd and other regiments were instructed to “keep up appearances” and fight until the bitter end.

And bitter it would be on April 21st, 1945.

And it would be the Germans, not Italians, who would irrevocably change Dan’s life.

The objective that day was to capture territory under enemy control, a heavily guarded ridge called Colle Musatello.

The 442nd had three rifle platoons.  Two were sent up the middle to confront the enemy head on; Dan’s platoon was to come up the left flank.

The 442nd was by this time a well-oiled combat machine.  What little opposition encountered on their ascent up the hill was quickly and efficiently eliminated.  Dan’s platoon had no problem taking out a patrol and a mortar observation post, positioning themselves at the main line of resistance – just under the Germans’ guns.

Since they’d arrived before the frontal assault force, they had the choice of either continuing to move up or of getting out altogether.

Being the 442nd, they decided to move up.

And as they did, three machine guns opened fire on them, pinning them down.

Dan pulled a grenade from his belt and prepared to hurl it forward.  But just as he stood up, he felt a punch in his side and stumbled backward.  He looked around, but there wasn’t a soul near him, so he shook off the punch and threw the grenade, exploding before the enemy in a shower of dirt.  When the stunned enemy gun crew stood up, Dan took them out.  As his men came toward him, one of them yelled, “My God, Dan, you’re bleeding!”  Dan looked down at his stomach and finally understood that he hadn’t been punched – he’d been shot. 

Even then, he kept going.  It was how he’d been trained.  It was the way of the 442nd regiment.

A moment later the unit was pinned down again.  Unless something was done, they would be picked off one at a time by Germans.  There was no time to lose.  
In a burst of adrenaline, Dan charged up the hill again, lobbing two more grenades.  When the gunners saw him, he fell to his knees, pulling himself forward with one hand.  His legs felt like soggy noodles and he couldn’t get his knees to lock in order to stand.

From behind him, Dan heard one of his men yell, “Come on, you guys.  Go for broke!”

Dan managed to make it to his feet, shambling up the flank and drawing his arm back to launch his last grenade, when a German soldier stood up and aimed a rifle grenade at him.  Dan knew he had only a fraction of a second to react.  He cocked his elbow to throw the grenade just as the German fired and instantly hit Dan’s right elbow.

Dan surveyed his limp arm – dangling by only a few shreds of tissue – and focused his eyes in horror on the grenade squeezed in his fist.  He commanded his fingers to release the grenade, but the connection between his brain and his fingers was dead.

Some of Dan’s men rushed over to help him but he yelled for them to get back.  Reaching over with his left hand, Dan pried the grenade out of his clenched fist, managing to throw it, as the German who shot his right arm, was reloading his rifle.

The grenade blew up in the German soldier’s face.

Dan thought the skirmish was over, but there was one last German, a severely wounded one, who managed to discharge a few final rounds before lapsing into unconsciousness or death.

The bullet caught Dan in the right leg, knocking him to the ground.

“Get back up that hill!” Dan yelled, as some of his men came after him.  “Nobody called off the war!”

A medic came, gave the wounded soldier a shot of morphine, then hauled Dan off the battlefield.  It was April 21st.

Two days later, the German resistance in Dan’s sector ended.

Nine days later, the war in Italy was over.

And seven days after that, the enemy surrendered unconditionally.

Home at Last

After many months of surgeries and painful rehabilitation, Dan was finally discharged from the last of two hospitals where he’d been treated and sent home to Hawaii.

It had been a long, hard road for Dan, who had to learn how to do everything one-handed.

He hadn’t seen his family in over two years, and knew it would be difficult for them to see him with one arm.

He arrived in Honolulu just after midnight, waking his parents with a call from the terminal.  Twenty minutes later, after catching a ride in a brigadier general’s staff car, he found himself standing outside of his family home, hardly believing he’d made it back alive.

The door opened and the returning soldier heard his mother call his name.  Within seconds, he had his arm around all of them – his mother, father, his sister, May, and his brothers, John and Bob.  Pride was plain in their faces and Dan was filled with joy and gratitude.

Inside, his house seemed smaller to him, yet it was just the same.  A picture of President Roosevelt hung on the wall, with one of Dan next to it.  He noticed a blue star hanging in the window.  When Dan turned back to face his family, they were all looking at him – taking him in:  the uniform, the ribbons on his chest, and the hook.