Dan Snow's History Hit - The Japanese Americans Who Fought in WWII

Episode Date: July 7, 2021

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941, Japanese Americans were put in a terrible position in the USA. Many tens of thousands of Japanese Americans were interned in cruel conditions being classified as enemy aliens and held in suspicion of being agents for Japan. Despite this many thousands of young men, mostly second-generation Japanese Americans volunteered for service in the American Military. They served in all branches of the US military but the 442nd Infantry Regiment was formed almost exclusively from men of Japanese descent. This unit fought with distinction in Europe in the late stages of the Second World War and is the most highly decorated military unit of its size in American military history. Daniel James Brown is today's podcast guest and he has recently authored Facing The Mountain: The Forgotten Heroes of World War II all about this oft-forgotten aspect of the conflict. He and Dan discuss how the 422nd came into being, the experiences of some of the men of the unit, the prejudice faced by its soldiers, and the legacy of the Purple Heart Battalion.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History. I am Dan Snow and today we are talking about the Japanese-Americans who fought for the USA, for their home country, in the Second World War. These were young men, second generation Japanese-American for the most part, who grew up in America, considered themselves Americans, and yet found themselves caught up in a terrible kind of ethnic political conflict within the US following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. Many of their families were interned in cruel conditions under the suspicion of being agents for Japan, of having mixed loyalties. But these young men wanted the opportunity to serve, and they did so, fighting for the US Army, Air Force, and Navy in Europe during the Second World War.

On the podcast to talk about this, I've got Daniel James Brown. He's a best-selling author. He's interviewed many of the protagonists, the families of the protagonists, and he's built up a wonderful picture of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team deployed to France, Italy, Germany, made up of Japanese Americans. They were deployed often in near-suicidal suicidal roles and those young men did their duty determined to prove to their higher command their wider community that they could be both americans and of japanese descent it's a fascinating story if you want to listen to these podcasts without the ads you can go and do so historyhit.tv so it's like a digital history channel i set up it's like netflix for history so all these history documentaries on there, we're adding more all the time, but you also get an audio section

where we put all these podcasts out without ads on them. So it's frankly brilliant for the price of a beer, a cocktail in a nice bar. You can go and get access to the Netflix of history, the world's best history channel. It's right there. Just go to historyhit.tv and check it out. But in the meantime, here is Daniel James Brown. Daniel, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Thanks for having me. The conversation around Japanese-American involvement in the war often focuses on

internment, doesn't it? Yes, it does. I think that's what, at least here in the States, most people immediately associate Japanese Americans, World War II equals incarceration or internment in these camps. That's the first thing that comes to mind, I think. This is a very different story. And how were they both able to exist alongside each other? Why were some Japanese Americans able to serve? Well, originally, the Roosevelt administration refused to let Japanese Americans serve in the military. In fact, when young Japanese American men went down to the Selective Service Office after Pearl Harbor, they were told that they were enemy aliens, even though they were American citizens. So for the next year, they were unable to serve.

But in 1943, the Roosevelt administration reversed course and created an all-Japanese American fighting unit called the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. And did people rush to join up given the, as you outlined in the book, the terrible things that they'd suffered at the hands of the US people, the US government by this point? Yeah, so opinions about that were very divided. In fact, a very large split arose in the Japanese American community. Interestingly, from Hawaii, which nearly a third of the people in Hawaii were of Japanese ancestry at the time, thousands of young Japanese American men from Hawaii rushed to enlist. On the mainland of the United States, it was a much more contentious issue. Many young men refused to enlist and, in fact, spent the war years actively resisting the war in that sense. But even within the camps, there were quite

a few young men who felt that the way that they could prove their loyalty to the United States was to enlist, or at least that if they served in the military, fought and bled, and in some cases died for the country, that at least after the war, perhaps Japanese Americans would be treated better than they had been up to that point. Why did you choose to write this book? Well, it actually arose out of conversations I had back in 2015. There's a gentleman in Seattle named Tom Ikeda, who for 25 years now has been collecting videotaping and collecting the oral histories of Japanese Americans and making them available on a website called densho.org. And Tom introduced me to that

site and I sat down and I began to watch and listen to these oral histories. And I was just mesmerized by a lot of the stories I was hearing. I'm a person who's all about story. I'm really drawn to good, compelling stories. And so many of these were really interesting. They were the kinds of stories that I like. Some of these young men reminded me, although they were Japanese American, of the young men that I wrote about in my previous book called The Boys in the Boat. These were young men confronted with a really difficult situation, having to persevere and make their way through that difficult situation and ultimately overcome it. So I was just drawn to these stories. And so that began a process of trying to

whittle it down to a manageable number of stories to weave together into a book. We know from other countries, other wars, whether it's the Moroccans that were used by the French in the First World War in many of the most dangerous positions on the Western Front, and they suffered higher casualties back after their white comrades. Was there a rationalized way in which these troops were used once they were engaged in that war? You know, that's somewhat a matter of dispute, but certainly many of the survivors of that war, many of the Nisei, Nisei means second generation,

young men who served in the 442nd did feel that they were often tasked with nearly impossible situations. And in fact, they suffered a much higher casualty rate than other American units. They were also the most decorated unit of their size throughout the war. There's no doubt that they were put into many situations that at least gave the appearance that they were being exposed to greater danger than other units. Tell me about their war record.

It was extraordinary. As I say, they were actually the most decorated unit of their size, not just in World War II, but through American military history. And as I say, they also suffered enormous number of casualties. But there's no question they were extraordinarily good soldiers. They fought first in Italy and then on the French-German border against the Nazis. They were always having to fight their way uphill. The Germans always had the high ground. They were always having to fight uphill into the face of withering fire. And that really culminated actually in a battle in the Vosges forest on the French-German border, where they suffered particularly heavy casualties, but also really just demonstrated extraordinary valor. And what did other units make of them, both

on their own side and the Germans opposite? They came actually to be quite well respected by both sides, both other American units. It took a long time for them to earn the respect that they did, but their battle record was so extraordinary that during the course of the war, at least the white officers and particularly senior level officers came to have a very high regard for them. On the German side, actually, the Germans had a, I don't know how to say it in German, but the Germans had a nickname for them. They called them the Little Iron Men. By the end of the war, they downright feared the Japanese American troops. In fact, the last series of battles that the 442nd fought were in northern Italy.

The U.S. Army shipped them from France back to northern Italy in secret under the cover of dark. They spent their days sleeping in barns and other buildings and then moving at night as they approached the German lines because the officer corps wanted to surprise the Germans with the fact that they were back in Italy. They knew that would have a psychological effect on the German troops. They were fighting in Europe. Presumably, the Department of Defense didn't trust them to fight in the Pacific theater. Yes, I think that's largely true. There was a great deal of skepticism in the military, particularly early on about their potential disloyalty, none of which actually ever came to pass. But there were concerns about that. I mean, that's balanced to some extent by there was

some concern that Japanese American troops, if they were captured by Japanese imperial forces in the Pacific theater would be treated particularly badly. So it was a mixture of things. But I should also note that actually some Japanese Americans did serve in the Pacific theater in a different branch of the service, the MIS, the Military Intelligence Service. Those young JapaneseAmerican men who had very good Japanese language skills were pulled out of the 442nd and trained to be interrogators and intelligence officers. So they spent quite a bit of time mostly on ships behind the lines listening to transmissions, but some of them actually were on the battlefield interrogating prisoners also. Some of them actually were on the battlefield interrogating prisoners also.

If you listen to Dan Snow's history, we're talking about the Japanese Americans who served in the Second World War. More after this. Catastrophic warfare, bloody revolutions and violent ideological battles. I'm James Rogers and over on the Warfare podcast, we're exploring the vast history of ferocious global conflict. We've got the classics. Understandably, when we see it from hindsight, the great revelation in Potsdam was really Stalin saying, yeah, tell me something I don't know. The unexpected. And it was at that moment that he just handed her all these documents that he'd discovered sewn into the cushion of the armchair. And the never ending.

So arguably every state that has tested nuclear weapons has created some sort of effect to local communities. Subscribe to Warfare from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. Join us on the front line of military history. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt, and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History,

we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. From your book, you talk about the brutal training they underwent in, I think it was Mississippi. Were they left with an impression that once they put the uniform on, they were treated

as equals to their other American soldiers of different ethnic origin? Well, you know, that was their hope. It clearly wasn't the case, particularly early in the war. Well, you know, that was their hope. It clearly wasn't the case, particularly early in the war. In fact, some of them went to visit one of these internment camps in Arkansas, which was near their base in Mississippi. And although they were U.S. Army enlisted soldiers, they were in full uniform. When they arrived at this camp, many of them wanted to visit relatives who were confined to these camps. They were frisked, patted down whenever they entered or exited the camp as if they were some kind of a hostile force or a threat. So it was pretty dicey for a long while as to whether

they were seen as fully American, even though they were wearing American uniforms. You paint such vivid pictures of the individuals. Tell me about some of them that you found particularly fascinating to write about. Yeah, there's four young men that I write about. One of them was a resister. The other three were young men who enlisted in the 442nd when they were finally able to. One of the ones that interested me a lot was a guy named Katsugo Miho. They called him Cats Miho. He came from the island of Maui in Hawaii. At the time, Maui was run basically as one big sugarcane plantation. It was a very racially stratified system, very brutal work conditions. Most of the young man-like cats who signed up from Hawaii spoke

pidgin English, which is this creole of various languages. Very hard to understand if you're not a speaker of pidgin. Katz actually witnessed the attack on Pearl Harbor. He was a student at the University of Hawaii, and he saw the attack on Pearl Harbor unfold from the rooftop of his residence hall. He immediately rushed across the street to the campus of the University of Hawaii, and he and several hundred other young Japanese American men were quickly formed into what was called the Hawaii Territorial Guard. There was a great deal of concern that Japan was about to invade Hawaii. So they were issued some sort of uniforms. They were issued old 1905 Springfield rifles that they didn't know how to shoot.

And they were sent down to the waterfront in Honolulu. And Katz and these other young men spent the next several weeks, first several weeks of the war, patrolling the waterfront in Honolulu against what was expected to be an invasion that, of course, never materialized. But then a night came when they were all assembled on an athletic field very early in the morning. I think it was four in the morning, still dark. And they were told that because they were of Japanese ancestry, they were immediately to be discharged from the Wai'i Territorial Guard. And only a relatively small number of white soldiers in that unit could continue to serve. This was an absolutely devastating blow to Katz and these other

young men who really wanted to serve. So it was a long year of sort of angst and really horror on his part because he was unable, like other young American men, to serve. Before finally the Roosevelt administration did create this 442nd, Katz immediately enlisted in that, went on to serve in Italy and France, and then ultimately in Germany, a number of these 442 men were actually present as the American army arrived at Dachau, and they helped liberate, ironically, a lot of people from behind the barbed wire of not just the Dachau main camp, but there were a series of slave labor camps built around Dachau, and they helped liberate those camps. We're now accustomed to find the whole thing so shocking and why their patriotism would be

questioned. Within the community, within these recruits, was there any discussion or difficulty about being forced to choose between their ancestral place of origin and their country, their now native country, just as there was in the German-American community? Honestly, there was. A lot of these young men. They were all brought up by Japanese nationals. Often they spoke Japanese at home. Their parents had taught them to honor their mother country. So they naturally had some divided royalties. And part of what's remarkable about the story, though, is that almost universally, despite that, is that almost universally, despite that, they put the country that they had been born into ahead of their ancestral roots. So part of what was kind of heartrending about the story is that in many cases, their royalties diverged from their parents' royalties in very profound ways.

And one interesting thing about it was that their Japanese parents, almost universally, said, well, my heart is with Japan, I am Japanese, but you are American, and you should serve your country. And so they sent their sons off to war against their mother country, even though, and I'm talking about the parents now, even though their loyalties in some cases still adhered to Japan, they believed that their sons should in fact fight for America. And it tore some families apart, but by and large, there was this feeling amongst parents and the children that that was the right thing to do. So it's just a very interesting cultural thing.

In that next generation, was it intergenerational disagreement or did you find disagreement within that second generation Japanese American young kids? There was some disagreement. There was actually a great deal of disagreement about whether to serve or not. I mean, that also tore families apart, particularly among the young men in these camps. There were fierce debates. And several generations later, there are still family members that won't talk to each other over this issue. So there was very, very fierce debate among the young men about whether to serve.

These were American kids, though. young men about whether to serve. These were American kids, though. Their attitudes, their beliefs, their views of the world really were American. They had gone to American high schools. They had studied the Constitution. They had immersed themselves, to whatever extent high school students do, in American history. So they pretty much universally thought of themselves as Americans. The question was, because we're Americans and because our parents are in these camps, what do we do about that? What about the experience of combat, of serving? Is it possible to draw any conclusions about how these young men came out of the military, what it did to their sense of Americanness, and what happened to that cohort? Yeah, so it was, again, not a universal experience. Many of them came home

expecting to be greeted as heroes. As they say, they had had an extraordinary record during the war. The sad fact was most of them came back, particularly those that came back to the mainland of the United States. They arrived back in California or Oregon or wherever they had come from, about the same time that their parents and their brothers and their sisters were coming out of these camps. And unfortunately, for the most part, they met the same level of racism and antagonism that they had experienced before the war.

So this hope that serving in the war would clear away that racism just didn't pan out very well for the most part. So on the mainland, things basically for Japanese Americans continued to be largely as they had been before the war. But interestingly, in Hawaii, it was very different. Hawaii has always been a much more multicultural place, and it was even in the 1940s. So the young men from Hawaii who returned to the islands, they received a much better reception. And in fact, they set about basically to change Hawaii. When they had left, the islands had been run, as they say, as one big plantation, very racially stratified system. A lot of the Hawaii 442 vets immediately went to college, and then many of them

went to law school immediately after that. So by the early 1950s, they were back in the islands, mostly in Honolulu. They were becoming lawyers and government officials and prominent members of society. And over the course of the next decade or so, actually Japanese Americans came to be the preeminent political force in Hawaii and actually remain that to this day. So they sort of took the levers of power in Hawaii. They gained statehood for Hawaii. At the beginning of the war, Hawaii was not a U.S. state. It was a territory. They fought for statehood and then were extremely powerful as a bloc of people in the governance of Hawaii. So they really did change Hawaii. Well, thank you very much for shining a light on this overlooked episode of

World War II history. It's fascinating stuff. What's the book called? The book is called Facing the Mountain, the true story of Japanese American heroes in World War II. Brilliant. Thank you so much. All right. Thanks, Phil. Thank you. Thanks, folks, for listening to this episode of Dan Snow's History. As I say all the time, I love doing these podcasts. They are the best thing I do professionally. I feel very lucky to have you listening to them. If you fancied giving them a rating review, obviously the best rating review possible

would be ideal. It makes a big difference to us. I know it's a pain, but we'd really, really be grateful. And if you want to listen to the other podcasts in our ever-increasing stable, don't forget we've got Susanna Lipscomb with Not Just the Tudors.

That's flying high in the charts. We've got our medieval podcast, Gone Medieval, the brilliant Matt Lewis and Kat Jarman. We've got the ancients with our very own Tristan Hughes, and we've got warfare as well, dealing with all things military. Please go and check those out, wherever you get your pods. Punks.