Posted on: Wednesday, April 2, 2003

EDITORIAL
The 442nd RCT at 60: Patriots, soldiers still

After 60 years, our collective memory of the battles they fought — at home and overseas — begin to fade. So if only for that reason alone, the 60th annual reunion of the famed 442nd Regimental Combat Team this week in Honolulu is important for all of us.

Yes, it is a chance for now-aging comrades-in-arms to get together, swap stories and remember their days in uniform and those they left behind.

There will be banquets, speeches, memorial services and a series of film showings at the Art House Theaters in Restaurant Row.

Because of their age and dwindling numbers, many veterans of the 442nd and the 100th Infantry Battalion know this will be their last big reunion. It will be a chance to remember once more the challenges faced by these young soldiers — most of them of Japanese ancestry. First they had to demand their chance to prove their loyalty at home. and then they had to prove it again on the battlefield.

They taught their lesson well. Perhaps President Roosevelt said it best in 1943 when he announced the formation of the 442nd:

"Americanism," the president declared, " is not, and never was, a matter of race or ancestry."