Isao Nadamoto

Baker Company, 100th Infantry Battalion

Isao Nadamoto was born in 1916 in Honolulu to immigrants from Japan. His family lived in Waikiki where his parents owned a vegetable stand on Cartwright Road. He went to McKinley High School and attended a business school for a short time before enlisting in the Army.

When Isao entered the U.S. Army on November 28, 1941, just days before the attack on Pearl Harbor, he joined thousands of other young men from Hawaii called to serve in a time of sudden uncertainty. A member of the 298th Infantry Regiment of the Hawaii National Guard, he was stationed at Schofield Barracks on Oahu.

On December 7, Isao was playing tennis with a friend on the top of the Moana Hotel. They heard the sirens, looked up and saw the planes. They quickly ended their match, ran home to get their uniforms on and reported for duty.

Standing 5’2” and weighing 121 pounds, Isao began keeping a small 4-by-5-inch diary in early 1942 — an intimate record of a soldier’s life during a pivotal moment in American history. From January through May 1942, Isao’s entries captured the rhythm of military life on an island still gripped by fear of invasion. His days were filled with training on rifles and machine guns, setting up barbed wire, building gun emplacements, and long hours of guard and kitchen duty along Oahu’s eastern shore.

Beyond the drills, he noted small moments of normalcy — buying gifts at the PX for family and friends when regular stores were short on goods. Even in wartime, he found ways to stay connected to home.

Everything changed on May 29, when word came that the “Japanese boys,” as Isao wrote, were to be sent to the mainland. For many of these Nisei soldiers, all Americans of Japanese ancestry, the order brought both pride and uncertainty. As his battalion prepared to depart, Isao recorded his visits with family and friends, preserving the tenderness of those goodbyes before embarking on an unknown journey.

An original member in the 100th Infantry Battalion, serving in Company B, Isao then writes about his experiences as they left Hawaii, sailed across the Pacific, and landed in Oakland, California. From there, a long train ride carried them through dozens of small towns on the way to Camp McCoy, Wisconsin. Isao carefully listed the names of places they passed, tracing their path across the continent as if to hold on to each new sight in this new land.

At Camp McCoy, the soldiers of the 100th Infantry Battalion lived in tents through the summer months, enduring the Midwestern heat and long hours of drills, marches, and weapons instruction. Isao wrote of combat training, map reading, and the discipline that shaped the unit into one of the most storied in U.S. military history. He also recorded his excursions into nearby towns and even to Chicago, noting his expenses with the same precision he gave to military routines.

In combat, Isao participated in the Central Pacific Campaign, Naples-Foggia Campaign, Rome Arno Campaign, and Southern France Campaign. He earned a Purple Heart, Distinguished Unit Badge and Combat Infantryman Badge.

Among his comrades in Company B were men who would become lifelong brothers-in-arms: Fred Kanemura, James Komatsu, Richard Oguro, Yutaka Nezu, Shizue “Bob” Takashige, Toshio Kawamoto, Tokuji Ono, Hachiru Shikamura, Yukio Yokota, James Shintaku, Harold Sugiyama, Masao Hatanaka, Richard Yamada, Francis Shinohara, Choriki Shimabuku, Haruo Doi, and Kewpie (Tom Tsubota). His diary also mentioned his brothers, Ichiro (“Ichi”) and Iwao (“Iwa”), and the acronym “CKC,” or “Cotton Khaki Clothing,” a bit of slang born among Hawaiian soldiers.

After the war Isao worked for the Internal Revenue Service as an auditor. He retired from the IRS in 1972 and began working for First Insurance Company as a Pension Coordinator.

Isao was an athletic man. He enjoyed swimming, bowling and most of all, golfing. He was also active in Club 100 and served as treasurer of the clubhouse and Company B for a short period of time. Isao was part of a bowling league at the Bowl-O-Drome, where he bowled with friends from Club 100. He was also a part of the Golf club where it was all for fun and definitely not competitive. Isao and his wife, Nobuko, were also active in the Green Thumb Club.

He passed away on January 19, 2003 and is interred at Punchbowl with many of his 100th comrades.

View Isao Nadamoto’s Diary

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