Veterans pay tribute to fallen comrades

By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer

With gnarled, tanned hands, Kazuo Takekawa gripped a bundle of U.S. flags as he walked from grave to grave looking for the friends who didn't come home. The buddies who died as young men in World War II.

Donald Kameda, a veteran of the Army’s 442nd Regimental Combat Team, clears debris off the grave of his younger brother, Fred, a member of the unit who was killed in combat in Italy, at National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser

Takekawa and a dozen other veterans stuck a flag in every grave they found and the lawn of the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific quickly blossomed with red, white and blue.

"I look forward to this," said Takekawa, a member of the 442nd's I Company.

Takekawa has helped mark the graves for reunions and holidays since the cemetery opened in 1949.

"I think I owe myself to these guys here," Takekawa said over a buzz of lawn trimming equipment. "I came back."

He stared across a few feet of thick grass in Punchbowl's Section D to another place, another time.

"Right here alone there are six I Company people I knew," he said. "We fought together."

Cemetery officials say there are nearly 400 combat casualties from the 442nd and 100th Battalion buried at Punchbowl, most in Section D. They were initially buried in France and Italy, then disinterred and shipped to Hawai'i after the cemetery opened.

An unknown number of veterans from the units who died after the war also are buried there. They are dying off in greater numbers, however. The cemetery buries at least one 442nd veteran a week. Nationally, nearly 1,500 World War II veterans die each day.

The cemetery will host a memorial service for the 442nd beginning at 9 a.m. Saturday.