…ericans of Japanese ancestry from Hawaii, they were more curious and asked questions about Pearl Harbor. Guess we impressed the people of Wisconsin, for we were invited to their homes for Sunday dinners, or went bowling with us, and even took some of us around to see the countryside. Then when autumn rolled around we saw the beautiful leaves changing colors. The people in Wisconsin call it Indian Summer. Beautiful hillside, all full of red, yellow…

…chools, Mac wrote her a letter. It was a hard letter to write. Mac was his company commander’s bodyguard. (The company commander was Captain T. Suzuki, of Honolulu, who was wounded about three days after Mac, and is at Walter Reed Hospital.) The first they knew of contact with the Germans was when the Nazis opened up with mobile artillery and pinned down Mac’s company for an hour. It was their first time under fire, and most of them were pretty fr…

…en she retired in 1975, she enrolled in the paralegal program at Kapiolani Community College. Although it meant commuting to Honolulu overa two-year period, Ted encouraged her. He himself began to take courses at Maui Community College in elderly concerns and became heavily involved in that activity. Last month’s Herald article on “Lifeline” explained how an electronic communication system serves as a safety net for the elderly and disabled. Ted H…

…o be told, because I feel that in time, the greater glory of the 100th may come to be – not the circumstances under which it was formed, or the heroisms and sacrifices of its members, or even the test of Americanism – but the fact that they were out to do a job the best way they knew how . . . and in the doing, reaffirmed a truth about independence, about themselves, about all of us: that under the skin, we are brothers all. That is the significan…

…nd three months later they were joined by the newly formed 442d Regimental Combat Team, composed mostly of Japanese American volunteers from the islands as well as the mainland. (The 100th did not actually meet the 442d in Camp Shelby until June, because the battalion had been out on extended field maneuvers.) Whereas the 100th was intended to segregate Japanese Americans already in the Army in Hawaii, the 442d was presented as an opportunity for…

…tlefield graves. Graves now in Punchbowl, our neighbor islands, elsewhere: Comrades-in-arms who fought and died so nobly on ships and planes and on the battlefields — May you rest in peace, heroes of our generation. We remember. And there were the many others, men and women everywhere, who gave of their services or were called up in the draft: Plantation sugarcane worker, fisherman, auto mech, salesman, YMCA worker, a minister or two, to name but…

…apepe. Yamada was asked to lead the Kauai chapter of the Emergency Service Committee, an organization of young Nisei who helped develop the local AJA population’s response to the crisis. When the 442nd Regimental Combat Team was formed in 1943, the unit learned that Caucasian chaplains had been assigned to them. Reverend Yamada convinced Hawaii military officials that they needed to broaden their thinking and volunteered to serve as the unit’s cha…

…as, the Amache Relocation Camp in Colorado and finally to Seattle, Washington in November 1944 where he boarded a ship back to Hawaii. In his oral history Iwasa recalls the emotional visits he had with his father while he was training and also after he returned from the combat zone and was recovering from an illness. Read Walter Iwasa’s Oral History interview Download Walter Iwasa’s interview PDF Note: The interview was done in 1985, but was not t…

…d services and drafted him for clerk duties, which he could do. He used to obtain permission from the guard in the compound after his evening chores were done and play the accordion for us. One evening I asked him if he would teach me to play the accordion, and without hesitation he said, “Sure.” And the lesson began. I knew how to read simple music notes for I used to be in the high school band in Hilo and reading a simple music sheet was not unf…