NOTE TO READERS: Throughout the book, battalions are identified with their regiments; for example, the 1st Battalion of the 141st Regiment is shown as 1/141. Military time (using a 24-hour clock) is also used throughout the book.
Copyright © 2016 by Scott McGaugh
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Marjorie,
who shows me every day
how to fight life’s biggest battles
with spirit and style
CONTENTS
Preface
Cast of Characters
PROLOGUE
1A STRONG FORCE WILL FOLLOW
2BACK TO THE FRONT
3FIRE FOR EFFECT
4COMBAT EFFICIENCY: POOR
5KEEP THEM COMING
6ABOUT TO DIE
7NEED ANY CIGARETTES?
8PATHS TO PEACE
9HONOR BESTOWED
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
ORGANIZATIONAL DIAGRAM AND MAPS
36TH INFANTRY DIVISION ORGANIZATIONAL DIAGRAM
EUROPEAN THEATER OF OPERATIONS, ITALY AND SOUTHERN FRANCE, 1943–1945
LOST BATTALION RESCUE, OCTOBER 24–30, 1944
PREFACE
EVERY DAY IS VETERANS DAY FOR ME. IN 2004 I BECAME THE founding marketing director of the USS Midway Museum. I work with and welcome veterans of all stripes aboard the museum in San Diego every day, including World War II veterans. More than 1.3 million visitors a year join them, to walk in their shoes for a few hours and experience service and sacrifice for America aboard an aircraft carrier.
I see World War II veterans approach a teenage U.S. Marine who graduated from boot camp earlier in the day to thank the youngster for his service. I listen to Vietnam veterans sharing their prisoner-of-war (POW) stories with visitors from around the world. I see Afghanistan veterans roll aboard in their wheelchairs. You would pass most of these veterans in the grocery store and have no inkling how much they have sacrificed for America.
I’ve discovered how so many of these otherwise “ordinary” Americans were remarkably brave under horrific circumstances, how they somehow maintained their humanity when surrounded by barbarism. Honoring the legacy of those who served and sacrificed for our nation has become my passion. Their legacy must be preserved for future generations.
Honor Before Glory is my seventh book and was the most difficult to write. The story begins a few months following the attack on Pearl Harbor when America incarcerated more than 100,000 Japanese Americans living in Seattle, Los Angeles, San Diego, and elsewhere only because of their ethnicity.a Remarkably, a year later thousands of them volunteered for combat in a segregated army. Some served with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team (RCT) in Europe, and others reported to the Military Intelligence Service in the Pacific.
This is the true story of just one of the remarkable feats of the 442nd: the rescue of a battalion surrounded by Germans on an obscure mountain ridge near the German border for nearly a week. It is the story of how the 442nd succeeded where other battalions had failed. The 442nd not only reached 211 surrounded men but by the end of the war also became the most decorated regiment of its size in World War II.
Honor Before Glory chronicles the best of America and, in some ways, the worst of the nation. I hope readers will pause and reflect on an American spirit that spawns incredible bravery and one that allows discrimination and hatred born of fear and revenge. This book is largely based on previously unpublished and rarely seen oral histories recorded by the men who were there. It builds on other chronicles of the 442nd with new insights from those who often fell bleeding on a remote mountain ridge in eastern France in World War II.
To be sure, this is not the big story of World War II in Europe. It is a small story—a single rescue mission—that tells a much larger story. And that is the story of the millions of Americans who fought and sacrificed in Europe—each man’s sacrifice for a larger cause. It is the story of Japanese American citizens’ devotion to duty and their acceptance of sacrifice for a country that for a time considered them enemies. It also sheds light on a postwar debate that has simmered for decades. Some came to question the use of the Japanese Americans’ combat regiment, questioning whether their commanding general treated them as dispensable “cannon fodder” or relied on them as one of the army’s bravest and most accomplished regiments.
Nearly all of the participants have passed away or are in their nineties. More than one hundred of their oral histories recorded in the last decade of their lives are a treasure trove, as are obscure army documents. Spending nearly a week on the ridge where the rescue mission took place and working with two French residents of the Vosges Mountains who are experts on the mission were invaluable. There was no substitute for personally examining the length of the ridge where the rescue mission took place or for sitting in the foxholes dug by 442nd soldiers more than seventy years ago. To look down and see both American and German machine-gun cartridges in the same foxhole was chilling.
This is the story of young Japanese American men in a remote forest, in their foxholes, at the aid stations, on suicide charges, and in the command posts. Their legacy was one of unparalleled service and sacrifice, one man at a time, for a greater cause.
a Contemporary accounts at the time called it the “evacuation” or “relocation” of Japanese American citizens, without due process, into guarded camps on prairies and in deserts in a hysterical response to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Seventh Army
Lieutenant General Alexander Patch
Commanding Officer
VI Corps
Major General Lucian Truscott Jr.
Commanding Officer
Major General Edward Brooks
Commanding Officer
Germans
General Hermann Balck
Army Group G
General Friedrich Wiese
Lieutenant General Wilhelm Richter
716th Volksgrenadier Division
Colonel Walter Rolin
933rd Grenadier Regiment
Major Franz Seebacher
Commanding Officer, 201st Mountain Battalion
Captain Erich Maunz
Commanding Officer, 202nd Mountain Battalion
36th Division
Major General John Dahlquist
Commanding Officer
Colonel Charles Owens
Chief of staff (later commanding officer, 1/141)
Colonel Oran Stovall
Commanding Officer, 111th Engineer Battalion
Lieutenant Colonel Fred Sladen
Operations Officer
Lieutenant Wells Lewis
Aide to Dahlquist
143rd Infantry Regiment
Colonel Paul DeWitt Adams
Commanding Officer
141st Infantry Regiment
Lieutenant Colonel William Bird
Commanding Officer
1st Battalion, 141st
Colonel Carl Lundquist
Commanding Officer
Lieutenant Martin Higgins
Company A
Lieutenant Harry Huberth
Company B
Lieutenant Joseph Kimble
Company C
Lieutenant Gordon Nelson
Weapons company
Lieutenant James Gilman
Sergeant Jack Wilson
Rifleman
Sergeant Harold Kripisch
Sergeant Edward Guy
Sergeant James Comstock
Communications
Staff Sergeant Bruce Estes
Rifleman
Private Robert Camaiani
Private Joe Hilty
Erwin Blonder
Forward observer
Eason Bond
Rifleman
Burt McQueen
Rifleman
Al Tortolano
Rifleman
442nd Regimental Combat Team
Colonel Charles Pence
Commanding Officer
Executive Officer
Tech/4 Victor Izui
Medic
Colonel Jimmie Kanaya
Medic
Tech/4 Kelly Kuwayama
Medic
Staff Sergeant Jim Okubo
Medic
100th Battalion, 442nd
Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Singles
Commanding Officer
Lieutenant James Boodry
Operations Officer
Captain Young Oak Kim
Sergeant Harry Kamikawa
Staff Sergeant Itsumu Sasaoka
Sergeant George Suyama
Private William Yamaka
Sergeant Al Takahashi
Chaplain Israel Yost
2nd Battalion, 442nd
Lieutenant Colonel James Hanley
Commanding Officer
Private Kenji Ego
Private George Sakato
3rd Battalion, 442nd
Lieutenant Colonel Alfred Pursall
Commanding Officer
Private Nobuo Amakawa
Captain Joseph Byrne
Company commanding officer
Private Barney Hajiro
Rifleman
Sergeant Lawrence Ishikawa
Tech Sergeant Rocky Matayoshi
Scout
Sergeant James Oura
Private Mutt Sakumoto
Scout
Private Shuji Taketomo
Private Kenji Takubo
Private Jim Tazoi
Private Rudy Tokiwa
Messenger
Private Ernest
Uno Radioman
Tech Sergeant Jim Yamashita
Private Matsuichi Yogi
522nd Field Artillery Battalion
Lieutenant Baya Harrison
Commanding Officer
Captain Moyer Harris
Corporal Nelson Akagi
Forward observer
Lieutenant Susumo Ito
Forward observer
Private Kats Miho
Gunnery corporal
Staff Sergeant Don Shimazu
Forward observer
405th Fighter Squadron
Captain Gavin Robertson
Pilot
Major John Leonard
Pilot
Lieutenant Robert Booth
Pilot
Lieutenant Edward Hayes
Pilot
Lieutenant Milton Seale
Pilot
Lieutenant Paul Tetrick
Pilot
Lieutenant Eliel Archilla
Pilot
Note: Some ranks listed reflect the final rank upon discharge or retirement after a career in the military.
Source: Sons & Daughters of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.
36TH INFANTRY DIVISION ORGANIZATIONAL DIAGRAM
Source: 442 Veterans Club (Sons & Daughters Chapter of the 442nd RCT), http://442sd.org/category/442nd-organizational-chart/.
European Theater of Operations, Italy and Southern France, 1943–1945
Lost Battalion Rescue, October 24–30, 1944
GO FORWARD
BY LAUREN IRIE WEST TORRANCE HIGH SCHOOL, CALIFORNIA
One suitcase, each family, all else left behind
Dignity, freedom, liberty: were those left too?
Trapped, alienated, segregated, confined
Stripped from their red, white, and blue.
Is this the American way?
Citizen or alien? Friend or foe?
Should I fight or should I stay?
Are you a yes-yes or a no-no?
Yet the great sea crashing against the shores
Grasping, clasping the land of both of homes
Engulfed in sweat, sorrow, and war
Treated like monsters in this world we roam.
Our freedom and families we defend
Don’t take back a single stroke
Never give in, until the final end
We all stand strong: “go for broke.”
I, a Japanese American, stand free today
Thanks to the sacrifice of those before
The courage of every soldier, every child, every Nikkei
Who plowed through the demands of war.
Go, go, go, forward, go forward
Fight for our freedom, liberty, our pride
Never take another step backward
Strength in every leap, every march, every stride.
Courtesy of the Go For Broke National Education Center.
PROLOGUE
HE REEKED OF CIGARETTE SMOKE, WET WOOL, FEAR, GUNPOWDER, rubber, and sweat. So did the others in the primitive foxholes and trenches they had dug nearby. No one had showered in days. To Mat suji “Mutt” Sakumoto, everything stunk on the morning of October 30, 1944, in the Vosges Mountains of eastern France. For nearly one hundred hours he had battled German machine gunners, snipers, and artillery in near-constant rain almost cold enough to become snow. For five days he had fought from dawn to dark and then had lain sleepless in waterlogged trenches as German artillery pounded his position through the night. A hot meal had become a distant memory. Yet images of mangled bodies and body parts in trees were only hours old.
Hundreds of men had been killed or wounded in less than a week on the rescue mission. Vicious fighting had limited each day’s advance to little more than the length of a few football fields. But all that mattered to Sakumoto’s commanding general was reaching the American battalion from Texas that had been surrounded by the enemy somewhere in the dense forest ahead. No matter the cost, Sakumoto and his 442nd Regimental Combat Team had to rescue them. His unit was limited to Japanese American soldiers, commanded only by Caucasian officers, in a segregated army. To Sakumoto and others, that stunk, too.
THREE DAYS EARLIER LIEUTENANT ROBERT BOOTH’S THUNDERBOLT aircraft had approached the remote ridge where the trapped battalion had dug in. The surrounded troops had exhausted their food and medical supplies. They were critically low on ammunition. His mission was to resupply it from the air. As he made a treetop approach across a valley from the southwest, it became obvious the dense cloud cover ahead on the ridge would make the airdrop impossible. He had pulled hard on the stick to get his aircraft’s nose up. He flew into the thick clouds and perhaps had become disoriented before his aircraft exploded on the side of the ridge.
On the same day a few miles away, Nobuo Amakawa and a comrade had charged a machine-gun nest that had pinned down their unit. His bravado was so unnerving that the Germans abandoned their post. More heroic deeds followed that day and the next, before he was shot in the neck and died of his wounds two days later. Amakawa wa
s twenty-two years old. He would be awarded the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and Purple Heart.
Even though he wasn’t a medic, Kenji Takubo had crawled fifty yards across open ground to aid a wounded soldier during the rescue mission. He hauled the man onto his back and then crawled thirty yards through enemy fire to a more secure position. A few hours later Takubo died in a shower of wooden daggers when an enemy artillery shell exploded in a fir tree almost directly above him. Takubo was twenty years old. He would be awarded the Silver Star.
Early on October 29 infantryman Takeyasu Onaga had felt an ache deep inside. Another suicidal advance loomed, the latest in a series of impossible orders that had been passed from foxhole to foxhole before dawn. He turned to a buddy and offered him his weapon if he died. Later that day Onaga lifted a tree off a wounded comrade to free him and then single-handedly destroyed an enemy machine-gun nest. When wounded in the neck, he ran across open ground to a medic to keep him out of danger. Onaga then lay down and bled to death. He was twenty-three years old. He would receive the Silver Star.