Posted on: Monday, October 14, 2002

442nd veteran Tooru Kanazawa dead at 95

Los Angeles Times

Tooru Joe Kanazawa, a pioneering journalist and novelist who was one of the oldest members of World War II's legendary Japanese American fighting unit, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, died Oct. 2 at his home in Topanga, Calif. He was 95 and had emphysema.

Kanazawa, who grew up in Seattle and Juneau, Alaska, escaped the World War II detention of 110,000 Japanese Americans in the western United States when he moved to New York in late 1940 to further his writing career.

A year later, disturbed by the federal government's mass internment of Japanese Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he went to work for the Japanese American Citizens League in Washington, D.C. As the civil rights group's eastern representative, he advocated reversing federal policy to allow Japanese Americans to serve in combat.

More than 3,000 Nisei, second-generation Japanese Americans, fought in the 442nd, including several hundred who volunteered from the internment camps.

Kanazawa was, at 36, one of the oldest volunteers when he joined the regiment in 1943. He served until 1945, earning a Bronze Star for meritorious service as a radio operator for the regiment's Cannon Company.

He was the author of two books: "Close Support, A History of the Cannon Company of the 442d Regimental Combat Team" and "Sushi and Sourdough," a novel taught in many Asian American studies courses.

His 1989 novel, completed when Kanazawa was 83, was extensively autobiographical, offering a glimpse into the insulated world of Japanese immigrants struggling for a piece of the American dream in Alaska's salmon canneries during the 1920s. It describes the central character's conflicts as a Nisei straddling two worlds, who faced discrimination as well as delicious freedoms on the Alaskan frontier.

"He captured in fiction a piece of our history that is not well known, and at the same time he talked about the universality of the immigrant experience," said Phil Tajitsu Nash, who teaches Asian American studies at the University of Maryland and knew Kanazawa for 40 years. "It's a nuanced book, not rah-rah America, or America is unfair to immigrants."

Born in Spokane, Wash., in 1906, Kanazawa moved with his family to Alaska when he was 6. They lived in Douglas and later in Juneau, where his father was a barber.

Kanazawa worked in the canneries as a youth, but dreamed of a life as a writer. He enrolled at the University of Washington, graduating in 1931 with a degree in journalism. He sold some stories to the Christian Science Monitor and a magazine called Thrilling Sports.

But most mainstream newspapers were not interested in hiring Japanese American reporters, so he went to work for the English-language edition of the Los Angeles newspaper Rafu Shimpo, for which he covered the 1932 Olympic Games.

He was already living in New York when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. When the federal government ordered the evacuation of Japanese Americans from the West Coast, his mother, two sisters and their children were sent to a relocation camp in Poston, Ariz.

His brother died in a detention camp in Lordsburg, New Mexico. Kanazawa would later tell his family that his brother's spirit was crushed in the camp.

Among the rights and responsibilities lost in the national hysteria over Japanese Americans was military service: Nisei were reclassified 4-C, the category reserved for declared, undeclared and enemy residents. Many of the 5,000 or so Japanese Americans already in uniform were discharged after Pearl Harbor.

Kanazawa left New York for Washington "because he wanted to do something about getting Japanese Americans into the Army," said his daughter, Teru Sheehan of Topanga.

The 442nd Regimental Combat Team, organized at Camp Shelby in Mississippi in February 1943, was overwhelmed by volunteers. Kanazawa was one of the first.

The 442nd helped fight major campaigns in Italy and France and, with its "Go for Broke" motto, became one of the most decorated combat units in history.

Kanazawa is survived by his wife of 54 years, Mae; daughters Teru and Joy; a son, Mark; and several grandchildren.