Baker Company, 100th Infantry Battalion
![Keijiro Umebayashi, age 21, served in the 100th Infantry Battalion, Baker company. He was a member of the original 100th. He trained at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin and at Camp Shelby, Mississippi. He crossed the Volturno, took the Hills, fought at Cassino, Anzio, Belvedere, Arno, Bruyeres, Biffontaine and in the Vosges Forest. He was awarded a Combat Infantry Badge, a Bronze Star, a Silver Star, and two Purple Hearts. [U.S. Army Signal Corps]](https://www.100thbattalion.org/wp-content/gallery/photos-keijiro-umebayashi/Umebayashi_Keijiro_001x.png "Keijiro Umebayashi, age 21, served in the 100th Infantry Battalion, Baker company. He was a member of the original 100th. He trained at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin and at Camp Shelby, Mississippi. He crossed the Volturno, took the Hills, fought at Cassino, Anzio, Belvedere, Arno, Bruyeres, Biffontaine and in the Vosges Forest. He was awarded a Combat Infantry Badge, a Bronze Star, a Silver Star, and two Purple Hearts. [U.S. Army Signal Corps]")
As a boy, Keijiro loved the ocean. When he wasn’t in school, he was out fishing — cutting bamboo poles from the mountains and crafting his own tackle. “If you wanted to do something, you had to be creative,” he would later recall.
At sixteen, he began commuting daily from Waimānalo to McKinley High School in Honolulu. He remembered the small diner across from campus that sold plate lunches — sweet-sour spare ribs, beef stew, spaghetti — for thirty cents. “We didn’t have that kind of food at home,” he said fondly. Keijiro graduated from McKinley in 1938 and spent the next few years working wherever he could: as a timekeeper on Coconut Island, a mess boy at the state hospital, a laborer paving airfields for Grace Brothers, and even briefly at the Libby Cannery in Iwilei.
On November 14, 1941, three weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Umebayashi was drafted into the U.S. Army’s 25th Division. Basic training took place at Schofield Barracks, where he lived in a “tent city” of eight men per tent. Days began at 6 a.m. with drills, hikes, and rifle training. The food was hearty but strange — no rice, just biscuits, canned meat, and Spam.
In June 1942, he and other Nisei soldiers of the Hawaiian Provisional Infantry Battalion sailed from Honolulu on the Maui, bound for Camp McCoy, Wisconsin. The unit was redesignated the 100th Infantry Battalion (Separate). The long train journey across the mainland was done at night with blackout curtains drawn, a stark reminder of the prejudice Japanese Americans faced even in uniform.
At Camp McCoy, they trained in cold weather, living in tents with wood-burning stoves. Umebayashi earned $21 a month, later $30, and learned the discipline and endurance that would carry him through the war. The unit was sent to Camp Shelby, Mississippi, for advanced training. In 1943, they were deployed to the European front.
Umebayashi landed at Salerno, Italy, in September 1943 as part of the 34th Infantry Division. The 100th fought fiercely through Cassino, Anzio, and the long slog north through Italy. “By the time Cassino ended, we were so battered,” he remembered. Replacements from the newly formed 442nd Regimental Combat Team filled their ranks, uniting Nisei soldiers from Hawaiʻi and the mainland.
In October 1944, Umebayashi fought in France at Bruyères and Biffontaine during the rescue of the “Lost Battalion.” A mortar blast wounded him in the ankle, ending his combat duty. After recovery, he was assigned to guard prisoners of war. Having fought in four major campaigns, he earned enough points to return home in 1945.
His journey home traced a long arc — from France to England, Scotland, Iceland, Newfoundland, and finally back to Hawaiʻi. Enroute, he heard that Japan had surrendered. Supplies ran low aboard ship, and soldiers were served pickled pigs’ feet — a memory he could never quite laugh away.
For Keijiro Umebayashi, the war had been a defining chapter of courage and endurance. An ordinary man from Waimānalo, he served his country with quiet strength and dignity in an extraordinary time.