Honor Before Glory Read online

  NOTE TO READERS: Throughout the book, battalions are identified with their regiments; for example, the 1st Battalion of the 141st Regiment is shown as 1/141. Military time (using a 24-hour clock) is also used throughout the book.

  Copyright © 2016 by Scott McGaugh

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address Da Capo Press, 44 Farnsworth Street, 3rd Floor, Boston, MA 02210.

  Designed by Trish Wilkinson

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  Cataloging-in-Publication data for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

  ISBN: 978-0-306-82446-3 (ebook)

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  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To Marjorie,

  who shows me every day

  how to fight life’s biggest battles

  with spirit and style

  CONTENTS

  Preface

  Cast of Characters

  PROLOGUE

  1A STRONG FORCE WILL FOLLOW

  2BACK TO THE FRONT

  3FIRE FOR EFFECT

  4COMBAT EFFICIENCY: POOR

  5KEEP THEM COMING

  6ABOUT TO DIE

  7NEED ANY CIGARETTES?

  8PATHS TO PEACE

  9HONOR BESTOWED

  Bibliography

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  Index

  ORGANIZATIONAL DIAGRAM AND MAPS

  36TH INFANTRY DIVISION ORGANIZATIONAL DIAGRAM

  EUROPEAN THEATER OF OPERATIONS, ITALY AND SOUTHERN FRANCE, 1943–1945

  LOST BATTALION RESCUE, OCTOBER 24–30, 1944

  PREFACE

  EVERY DAY IS VETERANS DAY FOR ME. IN 2004 I BECAME THE founding marketing director of the USS Midway Museum. I work with and welcome veterans of all stripes aboard the museum in San Diego every day, including World War II veterans. More than 1.3 million visitors a year join them, to walk in their shoes for a few hours and experience service and sacrifice for America aboard an aircraft carrier.

  I see World War II veterans approach a teenage U.S. Marine who graduated from boot camp earlier in the day to thank the youngster for his service. I listen to Vietnam veterans sharing their prisoner-of-war (POW) stories with visitors from around the world. I see Afghanistan veterans roll aboard in their wheelchairs. You would pass most of these veterans in the grocery store and have no inkling how much they have sacrificed for America.

  I’ve discovered how so many of these otherwise “ordinary” Americans were remarkably brave under horrific circumstances, how they somehow maintained their humanity when surrounded by barbarism. Honoring the legacy of those who served and sacrificed for our nation has become my passion. Their legacy must be preserved for future generations.

  Honor Before Glory is my seventh book and was the most difficult to write. The story begins a few months following the attack on Pearl Harbor when America incarcerated more than 100,000 Japanese Americans living in Seattle, Los Angeles, San Diego, and elsewhere only because of their ethnicity.a Remarkably, a year later thousands of them volunteered for combat in a segregated army. Some served with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team (RCT) in Europe, and others reported to the Military Intelligence Service in the Pacific.

  This is the true story of just one of the remarkable feats of the 442nd: the rescue of a battalion surrounded by Germans on an obscure mountain ridge near the German border for nearly a week. It is the story of how the 442nd succeeded where other battalions had failed. The 442nd not only reached 211 surrounded men but by the end of the war also became the most decorated regiment of its size in World War II.

  Honor Before Glory chronicles the best of America and, in some ways, the worst of the nation. I hope readers will pause and reflect on an American spirit that spawns incredible bravery and one that allows discrimination and hatred born of fear and revenge. This book is largely based on previously unpublished and rarely seen oral histories recorded by the men who were there. It builds on other chronicles of the 442nd with new insights from those who often fell bleeding on a remote mountain ridge in eastern France in World War II.

  To be sure, this is not the big story of World War II in Europe. It is a small story—a single rescue mission—that tells a much larger story. And that is the story of the millions of Americans who fought and sacrificed in Europe—each man’s sacrifice for a larger cause. It is the story of Japanese American citizens’ devotion to duty and their acceptance of sacrifice for a country that for a time considered them enemies. It also sheds light on a postwar debate that has simmered for decades. Some came to question the use of the Japanese Americans’ combat regiment, questioning whether their commanding general treated them as dispensable “cannon fodder” or relied on them as one of the army’s bravest and most accomplished regiments.

  Nearly all of the participants have passed away or are in their nineties. More than one hundred of their oral histories recorded in the last decade of their lives are a treasure trove, as are obscure army documents. Spending nearly a week on the ridge where the rescue mission took place and working with two French residents of the Vosges Mountains who are experts on the mission were invaluable. There was no substitute for personally examining the length of the ridge where the rescue mission took place or for sitting in the foxholes dug by 442nd soldiers more than seventy years ago. To look down and see both American and German machine-gun cartridges in the same foxhole was chilling.

  This is the story of young Japanese American men in a remote forest, in their foxholes, at the aid stations, on suicide charges, and in the command posts. Their legacy was one of unparalleled service and sacrifice, one man at a time, for a greater cause.

  a Contemporary accounts at the time called it the “evacuation” or “relocation” of Japanese American citizens, without due process, into guarded camps on prairies and in deserts in a hysterical response to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Seventh Army

  Lieutenant General Alexander Patch

  Commanding Officer

  VI Corps

  Major General Lucian Truscott Jr.

  Commanding Officer

  Major General Edward Brooks

  Commanding Officer

  Germans

  General Hermann Balck

  Army Group G

  General Friedrich Wiese

  Nineteenth Army

  Lieutenant General Wilhelm Richter

  716th Volksgrenadier Division

  Colonel Walter Rolin

  933rd Grenadier Regiment

  Major Franz Seebacher

  Commanding Officer, 201st Mountain Battalion

  Captain Erich Maunz

  Commanding Officer, 202nd Mountain Battalion

  36th Division

  Major General John Dahlquist

  Commanding Officer

  Colonel Charles Owens

  Chief of staff (later commanding officer, 1/141)

  Colonel Oran Stovall

  Commanding Officer, 111th Engineer Battalion

  Lieutenant Colonel Fred Sladen

  Operations Officer

  Lieutenant Wells Lewis

  Aide to Dahlquist

/>   143rd Infantry Regiment

  Colonel Paul DeWitt Adams

  Commanding Officer

  141st Infantry Regiment

  Lieutenant Colonel William Bird

  Commanding Officer

  1st Battalion, 141st

  Colonel Carl Lundquist

  Commanding Officer

  Lieutenant Martin Higgins

  Company A

  Lieutenant Harry Huberth

  Company B

  Lieutenant Joseph Kimble

  Company C

  Lieutenant Gordon Nelson

  Weapons company

  Lieutenant James Gilman

  Sergeant Jack Wilson

  Rifleman

  Sergeant Harold Kripisch

  Sergeant Edward Guy

  Sergeant James Comstock

  Communications

  Staff Sergeant Bruce Estes

  Rifleman

  Private Robert Camaiani

  Private Joe Hilty

  Erwin Blonder

  Forward observer

  Eason Bond

  Rifleman

  Burt McQueen

  Rifleman

  Al Tortolano

  Rifleman

  442nd Regimental Combat Team

  Colonel Charles Pence

  Commanding Officer

  Lieutenant Colonel Virgil Miller

  Executive Officer

  Tech/4 Victor Izui

  Medic

  Colonel Jimmie Kanaya

  Medic

  Tech/4 Kelly Kuwayama

  Medic

  Staff Sergeant Jim Okubo

  Medic

  100th Battalion, 442nd

  Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Singles

  Commanding Officer

  Lieutenant James Boodry

  Operations Officer

  Captain Young Oak Kim

  Sergeant Harry Kamikawa

  Staff Sergeant Itsumu Sasaoka

  Sergeant George Suyama

  Private William Yamaka

  Sergeant Al Takahashi

  Chaplain Israel Yost

  2nd Battalion, 442nd

  Lieutenant Colonel James Hanley

  Commanding Officer

  Private Kenji Ego

  Private George Sakato

  3rd Battalion, 442nd

  Lieutenant Colonel Alfred Pursall

  Commanding Officer

  Private Nobuo Amakawa

  Captain Joseph Byrne

  Company commanding officer

  Private Barney Hajiro

  Rifleman

  Sergeant Lawrence Ishikawa

  Tech Sergeant Rocky Matayoshi

  Scout

  Sergeant James Oura

  Private Mutt Sakumoto

  Scout

  Private Shuji Taketomo

  Private Kenji Takubo

  Private Jim Tazoi

  Private Rudy Tokiwa

  Messenger

  Private Ernest

  Uno Radioman

  Tech Sergeant Jim Yamashita

  Private Matsuichi Yogi

  522nd Field Artillery Battalion

  Lieutenant Baya Harrison

  Commanding Officer

  Captain Moyer Harris

  Corporal Nelson Akagi

  Forward observer

  Lieutenant Susumo Ito

  Forward observer

  Private Kats Miho

  Gunnery corporal

  Staff Sergeant Don Shimazu

  Forward observer

  405th Fighter Squadron

  Captain Gavin Robertson

  Pilot

  Major John Leonard

  Pilot

  Lieutenant Robert Booth

  Pilot

  Lieutenant Edward Hayes

  Pilot

  Lieutenant Milton Seale

  Pilot

  Lieutenant Paul Tetrick

  Pilot

  Lieutenant Eliel Archilla

  Pilot

  Note: Some ranks listed reflect the final rank upon discharge or retirement after a career in the military.

  Source: Sons & Daughters of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

  36TH INFANTRY DIVISION ORGANIZATIONAL DIAGRAM

  Source: 442 Veterans Club (Sons & Daughters Chapter of the 442nd RCT), http://442sd.org/category/442nd-organizational-chart/.

  European Theater of Operations, Italy and Southern France, 1943–1945

  Lost Battalion Rescue, October 24–30, 1944

  GO FORWARD

  BY LAUREN IRIE WEST TORRANCE HIGH SCHOOL, CALIFORNIA

  One suitcase, each family, all else left behind

  Dignity, freedom, liberty: were those left too?

  Trapped, alienated, segregated, confined

  Stripped from their red, white, and blue.

  Is this the American way?

  Citizen or alien? Friend or foe?

  Should I fight or should I stay?

  Are you a yes-yes or a no-no?

  Yet the great sea crashing against the shores

  Grasping, clasping the land of both of homes

  Engulfed in sweat, sorrow, and war

  Treated like monsters in this world we roam.

  Our freedom and families we defend

  Don’t take back a single stroke

  Never give in, until the final end

  We all stand strong: “go for broke.”

  I, a Japanese American, stand free today

  Thanks to the sacrifice of those before

  The courage of every soldier, every child, every Nikkei

  Who plowed through the demands of war.

  Go, go, go, forward, go forward

  Fight for our freedom, liberty, our pride

  Never take another step backward

  Strength in every leap, every march, every stride.

  Courtesy of the Go For Broke National Education Center.

  PROLOGUE

  HE REEKED OF CIGARETTE SMOKE, WET WOOL, FEAR, GUNPOWDER, rubber, and sweat. So did the others in the primitive foxholes and trenches they had dug nearby. No one had showered in days. To Mat suji “Mutt” Sakumoto, everything stunk on the morning of October 30, 1944, in the Vosges Mountains of eastern France. For nearly one hundred hours he had battled German machine gunners, snipers, and artillery in near-constant rain almost cold enough to become snow. For five days he had fought from dawn to dark and then had lain sleepless in waterlogged trenches as German artillery pounded his position through the night. A hot meal had become a distant memory. Yet images of mangled bodies and body parts in trees were only hours old.

  Hundreds of men had been killed or wounded in less than a week on the rescue mission. Vicious fighting had limited each day’s advance to little more than the length of a few football fields. But all that mattered to Sakumoto’s commanding general was reaching the American battalion from Texas that had been surrounded by the enemy somewhere in the dense forest ahead. No matter the cost, Sakumoto and his 442nd Regimental Combat Team had to rescue them. His unit was limited to Japanese American soldiers, commanded only by Caucasian officers, in a segregated army. To Sakumoto and others, that stunk, too.

  THREE DAYS EARLIER LIEUTENANT ROBERT BOOTH’S THUNDERBOLT aircraft had approached the remote ridge where the trapped battalion had dug in. The surrounded troops had exhausted their food and medical supplies. They were critically low on ammunition. His mission was to resupply it from the air. As he made a treetop approach across a valley from the southwest, it became obvious the dense cloud cover ahead on the ridge would make the airdrop impossible. He had pulled hard on the stick to get his aircraft’s nose up. He flew into the thick clouds and perhaps had become disoriented before his aircraft exploded on the side of the ridge.

  On the same day a few miles away, Nobuo Amakawa and a comrade had charged a machine-gun nest that had pinned down their unit. His bravado was so unnerving that the Germans abandoned their post. More heroic deeds followed that day and the next, before he was shot in the neck and died of his wounds two days later. Amakawa wa
s twenty-two years old. He would be awarded the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and Purple Heart.

  Even though he wasn’t a medic, Kenji Takubo had crawled fifty yards across open ground to aid a wounded soldier during the rescue mission. He hauled the man onto his back and then crawled thirty yards through enemy fire to a more secure position. A few hours later Takubo died in a shower of wooden daggers when an enemy artillery shell exploded in a fir tree almost directly above him. Takubo was twenty years old. He would be awarded the Silver Star.

  Early on October 29 infantryman Takeyasu Onaga had felt an ache deep inside. Another suicidal advance loomed, the latest in a series of impossible orders that had been passed from foxhole to foxhole before dawn. He turned to a buddy and offered him his weapon if he died. Later that day Onaga lifted a tree off a wounded comrade to free him and then single-handedly destroyed an enemy machine-gun nest. When wounded in the neck, he ran across open ground to a medic to keep him out of danger. Onaga then lay down and bled to death. He was twenty-three years old. He would receive the Silver Star.