National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Documents
Volunteers from the Japanese American Veterans Association (JAVA), based in Maryland, have been spending years at the NARA facility to identify archived documents about the Nisei soldiers during World War II. Their research was instrumental in the upgrading of originally awarded medals to Congressional Medals of Honor in June 2000 for twenty 100th Infantry Battalion and 442nd Regimental Combat Team soldiers.
For the first ten years, the volunteers – Sus and Fumie Yamamoto and Maggie Ikeda – copied the documents. One set was sent to the 442nd Club in Honolulu and another to Hamilton Library at the University of Hawaii-Manoa. With the encouragement of Ted Tsukiyama, a veteran of the 442nd and Military Intelligence Service, the 442nd Club supported JAVA’s efforts as it began to scan and catalog new documents that were discovered. A protocol for searches of key words has been established by the JAVA team. These scanned documents are available on the JAVA website.
NARA documents for the 442nd from July 1944 are also available at the Japanese American Veterans Collection, University of Hawaii at Manoa Library. The 100th was formally attached to the 442nd in August 1944 so its records would also be included.