honoluluadvertiser.com

Sponsored by:

Comment, blog & share photos

Log in | Become a member
The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Saturday, April 5, 2003

Battle took toll in Nisei ranks

By Will Hoover
Advertiser Staff Writer

Veterans of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, accompanied by their families and led by USS Missouri tour guide Martha Lorenson, got a close look at the historic battleship yesterday at Pearl Harbor. A highly decorated Japanese-American unit, the 442nd proved itself on the battlefields of Europe during World War II, which ended on Sept. 2, 1945, with the signing of the Japanese articles of surrender aboard the Missouri in Tokyo Bay. The 442nd veterans, holding their 60th anniversary reunion in Honolulu, will gather at 9 this morning for a memorial service at National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. The reunion concludes tomorrow with a luncheon in Waikiki.

Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser

After the 442nd Regimental Combat Team rescued the "Lost Battalion" in the French Vosges Mountains in 1944, Maj. Gen. John Dahlquist of the 36th Division, to which the battalion from Texas was attached, asked to convey his personal thanks to the victorious unit.

But when the general arrived to review the 442nd, he encountered a couple of hundred troops instead of the expected 3,000 or more men. "Where are the rest?" the startled general wanted to know. "That's all that's left, sir," responded Col. Virgil Miller, the regimental executive officer, choking back tears. The others had been killed or were hospitalized.

The 60th anniversary reunion of the 442nd runs through tomorrow. For further information, call the 442nd Veteran's Club at 949-7997.