442nd identifies with Iraq war

By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer

Against the background of today's television war, a few hundred veterans of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team who fought in World War II will hold a 60th reunion here next week.

They fought, President Truman said, not only against the enemy abroad but also against prejudice at home, and they won. Army Gen. Mark W. Clark called them some of the best fighters in the U.S. Army.

The new war, displayed on television screens in the unit's Honolulu clubhouse on Wiliwili Street, has some veterans remembering what it was like to be under fire, sympathizing with soldiers of today, and upset about anti-war demonstrations.

"Many of us ... ex-warriors," are "glued to the television," said Edward Ichiyama, who was a forward observer with the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion attached to the 442nd.

"A lot of us are equating this war with ours," he said.

For the first time in many wars, the United States is again "going for broke" as the 442nd famously did in World War II, committed to continue the battle until Saddam Hussein is toppled, Ichiyama said.

He hopes what soldiers did in World War II made a difference, but he doesn't think that much has changed about human nature since his unit came upon the horror of Nazi concentration camps for Jews at Dachau.

"I hope we learned something from the Holocaust, but then it is still happening wherever you go, in Cambodia, Bosnia, Somalia.

"It means people will have to put their lives on the line, again.

"When I see the live pictures of these guys in action it takes me back almost 60 years ago to when I was 18 or 19 years old."

"War is not too funny when you are being shot at by the enemy," said Ichiyama, an attorney who ran the Social Security system in Hawai'i before he retired.

"I feel particularly bad for the kids when you have dissent at home at this point," he said.

"Once we go to war, whatever your stance may have been before the war, I think we should cease and desist and support the kids."

A veteran of old-fashioned bracketing fire to home in on an artillery target, Ichiyama said he is amazed by modern geo-positioning satellite systems that make it possible for today's soldiers to "hit the needle in the haystack."

The cost in casualties is reduced by the technology, he said.

The 442nd Regimental Combat Team suffered 1,200 casualties in just three days of the campaign to liberate Bruyeres. A week later, they were hurled against the Nazis surrounding the 1st Battalion, 141st Regiment, 36th Division — the "Lost Battalion."

"I don't know how they could have showed that on television," said S. Don Shimazu, co-chairman with Ichiyama for the reunion. "The trees were so thick you couldn't see five yards ahead."

The 442nd was lost, unsure of its exact coordinates, until Shimazu's gun survey team worked up to the front line and gave the infantry their true position — about 1,000 feet from where they thought they were.

"If they had called in artillery based on their original coordinates, a lot of boys would have been killed," Shimazu said.

Many were killed anyway. During four days, fighting tree to tree, against machine-gun nests and tanks and infantry, the 442nd broke through, rescuing the Los Battalion, but 200 of their own were killed in action and 600 men were wounded, more than the number of soldiers rescued.

Today, their numbers are winnowed even more, by time instead of war. Only half of the estimated 1,700 people participating in the reunion next week are men from the unit, accompanied by an equal number of family and friends.

"This is our last hurrah," Ichiyama said.

Retired Family Court Judge Katsugo Miho, also in the artillery, said yesterday the invasion of Iraq on television "reminds us of our invasion in Germany, because the artillery was right behind General Patton and his armored troops."

"From March 12 to May 6, we traversed over 600 miles which was a very rapid advance for that era," said the 80-year-old Miho, who was 22 then.

America should be wary of high expectations, Miho warned. "Some people are always exaggerating that our armed forces are invincible and can do anything they put their mind to," he said.

"People have to realize the facts of life. War is war. People are going to die."

Reach Walter Wright at wwright@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8054.