ROME– The U.S. military is celebrating a little-known part of History of World War IIin honor of the Japanese-American U.S. Army unit that played a key role in liberating parts of Italy and France, even after the troops’ families were interned at home as enemies of the state after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Descendants of second-generation “Nisei” soldiers traveled to Italy from across the United States – California, Hawaii and Colorado – to visit the sites where their relatives fought and attend a commemoration at the U.S. military base at Camp Darby ahead of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of nearby Livorno, in Tuscany, on Friday.
Among the participants were cousins Yoko and Leslie Sakato, whose fathers both served in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which became the most decorated unit in U.S. military history, considering its size and length of service.
“We wanted to follow in his footsteps, find out where he fought, where he was, maybe see the areas he never talked about,” said Yoko Sakato, whose father, Staff Sgt. Henry Sakato, was in the 100th Battalion, Company B, which helped liberate Tuscany from Nazi-fascist rule.
The 442nd Infantry Regiment, including the 100th Infantry Battalion, was composed almost entirely of second-generation American soldiers of Japanese descent, who fought in Italy and southern France. Known for its motto “Go For Broke,” 21 of its members received the Medal of Honor.
The regiment was formed in 1943 in response to the War Department’s call for volunteers to form a segregated Japanese American combat unit. Thousands of Nisei—second-generation Japanese Americans—answered the call.
Some of them fought while their relatives at home were interned in camps established in 1942, after Pearl Harbor, to house Japanese Americans deemed a “public danger” to the United States. In all, about 112,000 people, 70,000 of them U.S. citizens, were held in these “resettlement centers” until the end of the war.
The Nisei memorial at Camp Darby was held a week before the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Livorno, also known as Livorno, on July 19, 1944. Local residents also commemorated the anniversary this week.
Yoko Sakato laid flowers for family members, military officials and civilians at the memorial to Private Masato Nakae, one of the 21 Nisei members who received the Medal of Honor.
“I felt connected to my dad, I felt connected to the other men I knew growing up, the other veterans, because they had served, and I really felt a kinship with the military men and women who are here,” she said.
Sakato remembers her father mentioning some areas and towns in Tuscany where he had fought as a soldier, but always in a very “naive” way, when speaking to children.
“They were young, it must have been scary, but they never talked about it, neither he nor his friends,” Sakato said of her father, who died in 1999.
Her cousin Leslie Sakato’s father fought in France and won a Medal of Honor for his service. “It was like coming home,” she said of the memorial.