Horace “Stanley” Kango Sagara

Able Company, 100th Infantry Battalion

 
Horace Kango Sagara, also known as Stanley, was born in April 1921 in Naʻalehu, on the southern tip of the island of Hawaiʻi. He was the 10th of 12 children born to Gisaburo and Kesa (Honjo) Sagara. In the years leading up to World War II, Stanley found himself far from home: at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941, he was living in Los Angeles, California. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in May 1943 from the Granada Relocation Center (also known as Camp Amache) located in southeastern Colorado — one of the incarceration camps where Japanese Americans were forcibly relocated in World War II.

Stanley was assigned to Company A of the 100th Infantry Battalion, a unit composed largely of Japanese American (mostly Nisei) soldiers from Hawaii and the mainland. The 100th, which fought in Italy beginning in September 1943 and was later integrated into the 442nd Regimental Combat Team in August 1944, earned an extraordinary reputation for bravery, discipline, and sacrifice in the European theater.

On October 23, 1944, during the 100th/442nd’s fierce battle in France, he was captured by German forces and became a prisoner of war. The trauma of captivity stayed with him long after the war ended.

Upon returning from Europe, Sagara returned to civilian life. He settled in San Francisco, California, where he built a second career, and retired as the owner of Berti Produce, a wholesale produce market.

His niece, Jan Sakoda, recalled an anecdote about his character: As an employee of the market, each week, for a few weeks, Stanley would get more money in his pay envelope than he was owed. Each time, he would tell the owner of the error and return the extra money. Finally, the owner told him that he had been giving extra money to each of the employees to see what the response would be. Unbeknownst to him, the owner had been testing the honesty of his employees, because he wanted to sell his business and retire. Since Stanley was the only one to return the extra money, the owner wanted Stanley to have the first chance of buying the business.

Despite his service and sacrifice, Sagara remained private about his wartime experiences. According to his son, he would never talk about his war years. When his son was assigned to interview a World War II veteran for a college course, Stanley refused. Even reunion efforts met his resistance: when a fellow 100th Battalion soldier learned Stanley was in Honolulu for a visit and contacted Stanley to get together, Stanley refused the invitation and abruptly hung up the phone. He refused to have anything to do with the military, his wartime comrades, or the Veterans Administration (VA).

Sadly, Stanley’s reticence had consequences: his lifelong refusal to engage with the VA made it hard for his family to secure veterans’ medical care and long-term care benefits for him when they were needed. With Stanley unable to participate mentally, his family had to prove to the VA that he had been a POW. Tragically, much of the evidence of his suffering came only later. A VA audiologist, examining his hearing, looked at the family with tears in his eyes and concluded that Stanley had definitely been a POW, noting that his severe inner ear injuries were consistent with the kinds of torture wounds often seen in prisoners of war.

It is understood that many men with military histories similar to Stanley’s spent their lifetime as if their past did not exist. In honor of Stanley Sagara’s service and sacrifice all those years ago, the U.S. Army did not forget him.

Stanley “Kango” Sagara passed away in July 2012 at a VA hospital in Livermore, California. His remains were inurned with military honors at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (Punchbowl) in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi.