Stanley Masaharu Akita of Kahala, three-time president of the 100th Battalion Veterans Club, died Monday at Tripler Center for the Aging, a day after attending a memorial service for his wife, who had passed away 16 days earlier.

Akita, 84, was admitted to Tripler Center for the Aging on the day he died.

The Big Island native from Honomu served in World War II with C Company, 100th Infantry Battalion.

He was one of many 442nd Regimental Combat Team soldiers selected to be replacements for the badly battered 100th Infantry Battalion from Hawai'i, fighting in Italy in 1944. According to Bob Jones, an honorary 100th Battalion Veterans Club member and friend, Akita fought at Anzio Beach and northward, eventually entering France.

On Oct. 24, 1944, in his eighth month of combat in Europe, Akita was among 17 nisei soldiers ordered to take 27 German prisoners captured in Biffontaine and wounded GIs back to the unit's headquarters. But the American group was captured after losing their way in the dense Vosges Mountains and were eventually sent to Stalag 7-A, a prison camp 45 miles east of Munich which held 80,000 allied prisoners.

In April 1945, the Americans liberated the prison camp where Akita spent nearly six months.

Akita said the Germans never mistreated the nisei prisoners.

In a June 18 Advertiser story, he recalled, "They were so curious of us being Japanese and fighting for America. Anytime a high-ranking German official came who would speak English we were interrogated. They wanted to know if we went to Japanese school, what we learned, why we were fighting for the United States. 'You should be fighting for us, not against us,' they would say. I heard that so many times."

After the war, Akita married the former Yukie Hayashida. He retired as a civil engineer with the state Highways Division.

"He was a little, short guy — about 5-3 to 5-5 — but a great, gregarious person," said Jones, who remembers Akita falling in love with Italy on a tour Jones hosted for 442nd veterans more than 40 years after the war.

"We met with the Alpini (former Alpine soldiers in Northern Italy) and he was the guy who got up and sang Italian songs with them," Jones said.

When he died, Akita's daughter, April Sachiko Yukitomo, was playing a CD of Italian music at his bedside, Jones said.

Akita is also survived by daughter Cynthia Tamiye Murphy; brothers Wendell and Burton; sister Helen Yugawa, and a grandson, Andrew Yukitomo.

Service at Hosoi Mortuary Wednesday at 4 p.m. with visitation at 3 p.m. Inurnment will be at 2 p.m. Sept. 7 at the National Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl.