“Battles not only in combat” By Lorraine Oda
The Hawaii Herald (Friday, June 4, 1982)
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the formation of the 100th Infantry Battalion, a highly-decorated World War II military unit comprised of about 1,400 drafted nisei from Hawaii. Recognized for its courageous efforts in combat, the “Purple Heart Battalion” demonstrated the Japanese Americans’ loyalty to the United States. The soldiers who returned from the war — about 730 of them — organized the Club 100 which will celebrate the anniversary with reunion activities June 30 to July 4. In commemoration of the 100th Infantry Battalion, the Herald recounts some experiences and reflections of three of its members.
Jim Lovell was a regimental adjutant at Schofield Barracks in 1941. “The 298th Infantry on Oahu and the 299th Infantry on the three Neighbor Islands were two of four (Hawaii National Guard) regiments called into the service under the National Emergency Act (of October 15,1940),” he said. “The 298th at that time had a few—seven or eight— Japanese American boys but the first draft started at that time and the first contingent of draftees which included a predominance of Japanese Americans went to the reception center at Schofield Barracks. Then, after the training period at the reception center, those soldiers were distributed among the 298th, 299th and the 3rd Engineers.”
Howard Miyake was a graduate assistant in English at the University of Hawaii when he was inducted June 29, 1941, in the third of four drafts before the war. He became a private in the 298th Infantry, which consisted of Oahu recruits. Miyake spoke of his mother’s reaction to the Dec. 7,1941, announcement on the radio of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. “My mother said, ‘Nihon wa bushi no kuni dakara, zettai damashi uchi wa shimasen. ‘ Japan is a country of Bushido. Therefore, she would never pull a surprise attack on an enemy.” Miyake said he believes the U.S. military anticipated the attack but kept it confidential because a catastrophe was needed to create emotional involvement of the citizens in the war effort since parents were reluctant to send their sons overseas.
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‘If you commit any act of cowardice …I would rather have you die than come home alive. ’
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Mitsuyoshi Fukuda said he was teaching vocational agriculture at Konawaena High School on the Big Island when he heard about the Pearl Harbor attack. He reported for duty at the Hilo airport as second lieutenant, a position for which he was trained in the Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps at the University of Hawaii. Fukuda was assigned to F Company of the 299th Infantry, which patrolled the beaches and runways, guarding against invasion by the Japanese.
Lovell said, “On May 31st, I received a wire for Col. (Wilhelm) Andersen which ordered him to assemble all the soldiers of Japanese ancestry on all islands at Schofield to form a provisional infantry battalion. . . Farrant Turner was selected as commanding officer. He was given the privilege of selecting his own executive officer, and I happened to be the one chosen. During the ensuing five days the troops were formed into companies and company officers were selected and assigned to the various companies.”
Fukuda, who was given a promotion to first lieutenant, was among them.
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Fukuda: “Sometimes our boys would be mistaken for Indians.”
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Miyake said that in June 1942 when the Hawaii Provisional Battalion was to leave Honolulu on the S.S. Maui for Oakland, his mother told him, “‘Yoshihiko (loyal refined gentleman), anata no okuni wa Beikoku dakara, senchi dewa ishokemmei doryoku shite agetekudasai. Daga moshimo senchi de Miyake-ke ni kizu o tsukeru yo na hikyona koto o sureba, ikite kaeru yori shinde kaerinasai. ‘ America is your country. When you go to the battlefield, you should serve yourcountry with utmost efforts. However, if you commit any act of cowardice that will bring any disgrace to the name of Miyake, I would rather have you die in combat than come home alive.”
According to Lovell, “Upon arrival at Oakland, we were given our identification as the 100th Infantry Battalion and the troops were divided and transported to Camp McCoy, Wisconsin, on five different trains, all of which traveled different routes.”
Lovell said, “A good rapport was established with the men of the 100th Battalion (and the citizens of Wisconsin) and very little trouble was experienced as far as prejudice was concerned.”
Fukuda said, “My encounter with discrimination was very limited.” He said that in one instance he was standing in line at a hotel cashier window to cash l check. “A lady asked, ’What are you? Are you Chinese?’ and I said, ’No, we are Americans of Japanese ancestry.’ This lady said, ‘I’m British, and you know how the British feel about the Japs. We hate the Japs.’ The cashier in the window said, ‘I’m Irish, and we hate the British.’”
When the marching nisei unit paraded the streets the civilians thought they were being “attacked by the Japs,” according to Miyake. Fukuda said, “The Wisconsin people treated the Indians as not equal to the white people, and sometimes our boys would be mistaken for Indians.”
“The arrival of the 2nd Division at Camp McCoy did cause some problems,” Lovell said. “The 2nd Division (men) were from Texas and Oklahoma” and included “a lot of Mexicans and Indians.” Miyake said the 2nd Division men were jealous of the 100th Battalion men, who would walk down the streets of Wisconsin arm in arm with local Swedish and German blondes. The 2nd Division soldiers were also “heavily indoctrinated into hating the Japs,” he said.
Lovell said the 2nd Division men did things like push the 100th Battalion soldiers off the stools in restaurants. Small group fights resulted, but “nothing was really serious,” he said. “I don’t recall any (incident) that required any disciplinary action.”
One incident Miyake related is the nisei soldiers’ plan to retaliate against the 2nd Division men who had assaulted them with belts. “Camp orders forbade us from wearing a Sam Brown belt,” a thick leather strap with a big brass buckle that could be folded and used as a club, he said. The 100th Battalion men were “anxious to go back to town” with the hilt of a spiked World War I trench knife to use as a brass knuckle against the 2nd Division assailants, Miyake said. In preparation, the men unscrewed the hilts from the blades of their trench knives, but the 2nd Division general alerted Turner so that the nisei soldiers were not allowed to carry out their revenge.
However, the 100th Battalion men proved they were small but mighty. Miyake said that when the Battalion went to Camp Shelby, Mississippi, the fights subsided because the 2nd Division general had forewarned the soldiers there not to bother the 100th Battalion.
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Miyake: “The Haole soldiers weren’t quite sure whether we were serious or whether we were play-acting.”
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Miyake went on to say that during training maneuvers in Louisiana and Texas, the soldiers encountered blood-sucking chiggers and ticks in the brush, water moccasins, edible armadillos, and pigs which the local farmers would let loose to feed during the day and call in at night. In camp, a soldier occasionally woke up to find a brightly colored, foot-long, poisonous coral snake resting in the warm area between his legs, he said.
“On night patrol our men really simulated combat,” Miyake said of his training experience. “The Haole soldiers weren’t quite sure whether we were serious or whether we were play-acting.” He said the authentic tactics of the 100th Battalion soldiers—for example, using the butts of their rifles to knock the helmets off the “enemy”—caused them to “scare the hell out of the Haole soldiers.” As a result, the general issued a command that the patrol men and their “prisoners” would not make physical contact, Miyake said.
He said that in a related incident, “Charlie Company “(to which Spark Matsunaga belonged) was on reserve and saw an ‘enemy’ company taking a rest, so the captain ordered fixed bayonets. He said the soldiers of C Company, pretending to be the Japanese, charged forward with the bare blades, shouting “banzai” and causing the resting troops to flee in terror. Soon afterwards, an order was issued which required all bayonets to be sheathed* Miyake said.
At the end of six months of training, Turner told the 100th Battalion men that they had been under constant surveillance by the FBI, which had not witnessed a single disloyal act among the AJA soldiers. Also, “The military observers from Washington were very pleasantly surprised and amazed at the ’esprit de corps’, the military spirit of the 100th Infantry Battalion,” Miyake said.
The 100th Battalion crossed the Atlantic Ocean to Oran in north Africa, where Turner told the men he received orders from Gen. Marshall that assigned the unit to guard fruit trains. The men rejected the order* and asked for immediate combat duty, Miyake said. The battalion was then sent to Salerno, south of Naples, to assist in battle.
On June 3, 1944, Miyake’s back was badly wounded by a mortar shell which fell behind him. He said the front of his body was protected when he threw himself to the ground before the explosion. His “good luck papers” were in his front pockets, the New Testament in his left and the Omamori in his right. He said he wishes he had worn the papers on his back as well.
Miyake said he remembers being hauled on a jeep and recovering consciousness in an aid station, where the head battalion surgeon said, “Looks like a hopeless case,” to which Miyake replied, “I want to live.” He was transferred to a field hospital, where he was neglected by the doctor for three days until “the head nurse took pity on me” and called the lieutenant colonel, who “took one look at me and said, ‘Oh, my God.’”
Eventually, the bandaged Miyake was flown to a hospital, tied to the underside of a wing of a Piper Cub. “What a harrowing experience, worse than fighting. You’re helpless,” Miyake said of his turbulent journey on the small plane, which hedgehopped to Naples while the enemy fired up at them between the trees.
At Naples, Miyake developed gangrene and the surgeons gave up hope. Miyake said he recalled surviving a serious ear infection at age 16; a recovery he attributed to his mother force feeding him. Thus, he forced himself to eat, despite a high fever, and miraculously, his gangrenous flesh turned pink. Miyake said the doctors told him, “You fought a battle all by yourself.”
Fukuda said, “My contribution to history is that I’m named on one of the task forces as a Fukuda Task Force,” which he said is designated on a combat map in a military history book and is mentioned in Thomas Murphy’s Ambassadors in Arms. Fukuda commanded two companies in a plan to attack the Germans from the back, but “when we got to our destination the Germans had pulled out, so we didn’t need to get into any kind of combat.”
Fukuda said being an officer was “so much easier” because “you weren’t dealing with diverse cultural and racial backgrounds. You were dealing with people from Hawaii who were Japanese and who shared the same interests. . .You could depend on the men being there, being with you.” He cited an example.
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Lovell: “The same concept (of team spirit) experienced in athletics carried over into the actual performance during the war.”
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“When I’d be so tired that I’d be lying down, a guy would dig a foxhole and tell me to get in.” He said it was “a common, mutual feeling of helping each other that drove us in combat and made us stay together in combat. . .I think this also was the reason the boys did so well in combat. We all felt like this was really a common cause. We were there to prove we were loyal American citizens.”
Lovell said, “I came (to Hawaii) in 1930.1 taught at Washington Intermediate School for three years and I taught two years at McKinley. Many students and many athletes on the teams I coached were of Japanese extraction, so in my mind there was never any question of loyalty or willingness to do the job. (The 100th Battalion’s) actions during training and during combat were of no surprise to me, as I had (witnessed) this type of performance” among nisei while coaching. “The same concept (of team spirit) experienced in athletics carried over into the actual performance during the war.”
“The other plus that I found is the close comraderie and friendship that surfaces during your close proximity in training and through the spirit and sacrifice during combat,” he said.
“My overall impression (of the war) is that a definite impact will have been made on every individual because at sometime during the conflict he’s experienced fear. He’s often tested as to how he will handle himself. The result could have a considerable impact on his future. In my opinion, that is the only thing that is gained in the conflict, what it did for the individual,” Lovell said. “Whether a man got religion in the foxhole or whether he moved forward in the face of unknown obstacles often depicts what type of individual he is. That final conclusion really tells what he got out of the war.”
Fukuda said that after the war he didn’t want to return to teaching. “Because of this experience with grown-up men for four years I felt that I wanted to deal with grown-up men and not go back to a situation where I’d be dealing with children.”
Instead, Fukuda joined Castle and Cooke Inc. as assistant to the industrial relations director. He said that after being transferred to several positions, in 1966 “1 was made vice president of Castle and Cooke Inc. and Industrial Relations Director, and that’s where I am now.”
Lovell did not return to teaching either. He worked for Lewers and Cooke Inc. for 28 years following his separation from the armed services in 1945. He eventually retired as president and became the secretary/treasurer on the board of trustees at Crown Corporation. Lovell, who will be the master of ceremonies at Club 100’s anniversary banquet, said he and the athletes of the 100th Battalion get together annually for “bull sessions.”
Miyake continued to win more battles. In the legislature, he was House Majority Leader for 10 years. Now a private attorney, he is the president of the Japanese American Institute of Management Science. Looking back on his wartime experience, he said that when his family heard of his injury, “My sisters were crying. My mother never cried. She told my sisters, ‘Don’t worry. He’ll come back alive.’ She had a strong conviction.” The men of the 100th Infantry Battalion proved the war was not their only victory.