…vin Shimogaki, his mine detector disabled by a bullet, crawled in the mud, searching with his hands for trip wires, and cleared a path five feet wide and fifty yards long…from Thomas D. Murphy’s “Ambassadors in Arms.” Combined with the rains and a dam blown by the Germans, the Liri was a flooded valley as the 100th jumped off after midnight on the 24th of January 1944. Able and Charlie companies were at less than half their normal strength. Calvin…

…st daily until his stroke in 1981. Shimogaki remained close to Chaplain Yost after the war. When the chaplain, his wife and their eleven children lived for four years in Honolulu in the 1960s, Alvin remembers the whole family coming over to their house for lunch. Calvin Shimogaki passed away in 1984 and was laid to rest at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (Punchbowl) among his many friends and comrades of the 100th Infantry Battalion….

…ory project interviewed over 1,200 veterans and can be accessed at: http://www.goforbroke.org. Interviews with 100th veterans reside in this website’s archive, especially articles for the Hawaii Herald newspaper that Ben Tamashiro, a 100th veteran, wrote about fellow comrades whom he had interviewed. As interview transcripts and/or resulting articles are made available, they will be added to this website. The following is a list of the 137 veteran…

…CD can be ordered by contacting the Japanese American Living Legacy http://www.jalivinglegacy.org/main.cfm?stg=home The JALL received permission from the University of Hawaii to use “Ambassadors in Arms: The Story of Hawaii’s 100th Infantry Battalion” by Dr. Thomas Murphy to insert the dates and names of the soldiers who were killed after the appropriate passages in the book. Dr. Murphy was a professor at the University and chairman of the Hawaii…

…ent leaders before and during World War II on behalf of the local Japanese community. As chairman of the Morale Committee established by the FBI chief in Hawaii, he traveled to Washington, D.C. to meet with President Franklin Roosevelt and others about the problems affecting the Japanese Americans in Hawaii and in the armed forces. His efforts, along with the other community leaders he worked with, prevented the mass evacuations of the Japanese po…

…the attack on the Pearl Harbor naval base. Initially he was assigned to E Company, but as the casualties increased in Italy, E and F Companies were disbanded and the remaining men assigned to other companies of the battalion. Because of his radio knowledge, he was assigned to Headquarters Company as a radio operator. His experiences in the war made him forever grateful for everything else that happened in his life. While he was in Italy, Hidenobu…

…was a large contributing factor for the activation of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, comprised of Americans of Japanese ancestry, on February 1, 1943. On April 6, 1943, Eugene participated in field maneuvers with the 100th at Camp Claiborne in Louisiana. They completed their training, and returned to Camp Shelby on June 9, 1943. Eugene said that the 442nd had arrived at Camp Shelby during their absence, and were quartered next door to the 100th…

…the college had already decided that those who may be drafted could take a comprehensive exam and be given a degree if they passed. So Nagata was drafted in Des Moines and spent the first year in and around army camps in Arkansas. And when he heard that the 442nd was being formed, he immediately volunteered for the unit which is how a Maui boy, by way of Iowa, came to be in Brindisi that June with Headquarters Battery of the 522nd. “We had to cros…

…It was while he was away at law school that the Islands underwent its greatest political change since becoming a territory. At the forefront of the Democratic revolution were the returning AJA veterans from the battlefields of World War II. In 1946 there were half a dozen AJAs in the legislature. Six years later they had won half the seats in the House, then half the seats in the Senate in the subsequent biennial elections. Miyake returned home t…

…xam for all. June 20, 1942. First baseball practice. June 21, 1942. Headline from La Crosse Tribune — “Strangers Take Over Sparta; Residents Stay Home Evenings.” June 23, 1942. Pvt. Larry M. Ochiae of Company C passed away at 0418 in Tomah Hospital after an appendectomy operation. June 30 1942. Victory Rally in Madison. Platoon from Headquaters[sic] Company shined in Parade….