![Stanley Izumigawa at the 2011 Congressional Gold Medal ceremony on Maui [Courtesy of Joan Izumigawa]](https://www.100thbattalion.org/wp-content/gallery/izumigawa_stan/izumigawa_stanley_currentx.jpg "Stanley Izumigawa at the 2011 Congressional Gold Medal ceremony on Maui [Courtesy of Joan Izumigawa]")
Stanley Izumigawa enlisted when he was 18 years old and was assigned to the 442nd Regimental Combat Team which was training at Camp Shelby, Mississippi. A year later, he and two friends from his squad were among the first group of replacements for the 100th Infantry Battalion which had been decimated by casualties. They joined the 100th in March 1944 near Benevento, Italy. In his memoirs, written some 50 years later, Izumigawa says: “Why we volunteered I cannot remember, but it was probably a combination of boredom and ignorance.”
Izumigawa came from a family of eleven children. The three oldest were sisters Bernice, Gladys (addressed as Y), and Kay. His daughter Joan said that although Kay was not the oldest, she was like a second mother to her siblings all of her life. Most of his letters were sent to her. Harold (addressed as Hal or Harry) was his older brother. Both enlisted on the same day without telling the other and were assigned to the 442nd. From what is written in the letters, they didn’t see much of each other while in Italy or France.