Imagine this. It’s December 1941 and you are 17 years old. You are halfway through your senior year of high school. Your world is centered around baseball, playing cards with your friends, and your mom and pop who have worked very hard to provide a good life for you and your family. Life is good.
Then one Sunday, planes seemingly out of nowhere come raining down out of the sky in Pearl Harbor and wreak massive destruction. A surprise attack. Those planes are Japanese and you, an American boy of 17, are also of Japanese descent. It instantly turns your world upside down.
Flash forward a few months. It is March 1942. By executive order of the President of the United States you and your family are sent to an internment camp. Your friends from school and their families are also sent across the country to different camps. Your parents and your friends’ parents lose their homes, their jobs, their businesses, and their freedom.
And then imagine that despite all of these hardships somewhere deep inside you is an instinct and desire to prove your loyalty to your country. You and your friends push as hard as you can to volunteer for combat service. The War Dept says no, so you push harder. After months of pressure they relent and let you in. You train and enter service to become part of the 100th Infantry Battalion, then later you merge with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. You and your brothers at arms nickname it “Go For Broke” after your love of playing cards — Hawaiian poker slang for, “all in.”
You become a band of Nazi-killing badasses, with exploits and victories in Africa, Anzio, and Monte Cassino. Along the way you become the most decorated combat unit in Army history. Can you imagine doing this, all while your friends and family are imprisoned by the very country you serve? I can’t. I absolutely cannot.
Today on Veterans Day I am thankful for the service of all veterans of America’s armed services but especially for the ones who defied all logic and reason in pursuit of the American spirit and the everyday freedoms we enjoy in this country. Thank you, 442nd Regimental Combat Team from the bottom of my heart.
