(soft introspective music) - [Announcer] Funding for "Unbroken Honor" provided by Larry and Alice Kitahara Foundation, California State Library and California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, Day Kusakai, Randy Masada, Tamsen Munger, Dale and Deborah Ikeda, Jeanette and Tony Ishii, Dr. Bruce Koligian, Gerald and Rosemary Waters, Rita Crandall, the Central California District Council of the Japanese American Citizens League, and The Masada Family Trust.

The following film contains mature content and images of graphic violence.

Viewer discretion is advised.

(soft solemn music) (soft chanting) - [Lawson] Everything was quiet, and all of a sudden the Germans opened up.

(guns firing) And we were trapped.

Ensminger right away got shot in the forehead, killed immediately.

(soft solemn music) Bullets, mortar shells, artillery.

We weren't prepared for that.

- [Jon] Yeah, you can see we've been looking for signs of battle within the trees.

And these trees would've grown up, you know, quite a bit in 80 years.

And it's interesting when we look at these three trees in this group, there's some similar type trauma or markings on the trees.

And the same elevation right below or right above a foxhole position.

It's right, right back over here.

You can see the foxhole here.

- [Jeff] Some type of, you know, I wonder if this was- - [Jon] German?

- [Jeff] Exactly.

A German vehicle, yeah.

(soft solemn music) (soft chanting) - One of the other committee members, another Japanese American fellow came up to me and said, "Oh, Fudenna, you know, your father's a hero."

And I looked at him and I said, "No, I, I don't think so."

And he said, "Oh, yeah, your father's, he got this, the information on shooting down Admiral Yamamoto."

And that's the first I had ever heard of that story.

(guns firing) (plane roaring) - [Speaker] One of the things that's important about remembering what happened during World War II to Japanese Americans is that 2/3 of the 120,000 people that were confined during World War II were American citizens.

And for me, at the end of the day, Manzanar is really about the fragility of our constitutional rights.

If it could happen to Japanese Americans in 1942, it could happen to any of us.

(solemn introspective music) - I always remember the story that my mother shared with me, that she pulled the blinder up a little bit so she could take a peek out of the bottom of the train window, and she could see these signs from the local racists and bigots saying, you know, get out of California, never come back to Fresno.

And so my mother asked her mom, "Mom, what's gonna happen to us?

Are we gonna have to go through what the Jewish people have to go through in Germany?"

And she goes, "No."

She goes, "This is the greatest country in the world.

All immigrants have to pay a price.

This is the price that we have to pay as Japanese Americans.

So we'll go to these camps, we'll prove how loyal we are, and we'll come back home."

(solemn introspective music) - We wanted to join the military.

It didn't make any difference if they sent us to Japan, they sent us to Europe.

We didn't care.

The war was against the Axis powers.

We want you to volunteer for the 442nd.

The answer was, first, let us out of prison.

Give us our freedom.

We all knew when we volunteer, we're probably not gonna come home.

(solemn introspective music) - This is a bigger position fortified with rock.

And this would've been right at the ridge line looking over the top of the hill and down the other side.

I didn't know we were gonna see this kind of stuff.

In a dense spruce forest in the Vosges Mountains of southeastern France, we walk quietly in the footsteps of soldiers, stopping often to allow a cool October breeze to whisper a story of what happened here 78 years ago.

(solemn introspective music) We've come to this hallowed ground to better understand so that we can better explain how a group of men facing nearly impossible odds fought one of the United States Army's most revered battles in its history.

(guns firing) (solemn introspective music) A battle won by the soldiers of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, made up entirely of second generation Japanese American men, American citizens whose families and they themselves had been wrongfully sent to prison camps not long after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Even prior to World War II, anti-Asian sentiment in racism had been growing in California, Oregon and Washington State as Japanese immigrants began to move to America and settle in the West.

In 1913, California passed the Alien Land Law, prohibiting the ownership of agricultural lands to first generation or Issei Japanese immigrants.

But even as racism towards Japanese were growing statewide, not everyone shared these narrow views.

Many Issei farmers were close friends with their neighboring Caucasian farmers and their families, relationships that would one day prove to be important.

Still, even in times overshadowed by xenophobic judgments of Japanese immigrants, the children of the Issei, the second generation Nisei, born in America and legal US citizens, enjoyed somewhat normal lives, attending high school, going to proms and dances, playing sports, and living the lives of what they were, American teenagers.

But a clear Sunday morning over Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 would change everything.

- [Reporter] A bomb hit caused the Arizona to blow up.

- [Jeff] The surprise attack finally drew the United States into World War II and amplified the hate and paranoia towards Japanese Americans living on the West Coast.

Would any of the 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry living west of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountains, more than half legal borne US citizens, attempt to sabotage, spy, or subvert America's war effort and help Japan?

For the United States government, fear outweighed justice.

And on February 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066.

The order gave full control of all people of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast of the United States to Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt, the leader of the Western Defense Command and US 4th Army.

DeWitt pushed an agenda of war hysteria and suspicion of Japanese Americans that finally persuaded Roosevelt into signing 9066 on the basis of military necessity, even though the Department of Justice refused to support the move.

With the stroke of his pen, Roosevelt crossed a line that had never been crossed before in US history.

Full suspension of the constitutional rights of Americans based on their race and without due process.

By the spring of 1942, all people of Japanese ancestry, regardless of US citizenship, began the two-phase process of being removed from the West Coast.

Phase one was to imprison all enemy aliens, as they were now called, into large assembly centers across the West, most often in fairgrounds.

In Fresno, the Fresno Fairgrounds, enjoyed by Japanese Americans that called the Central Valley home less than six months before were now forced to live in animal stalls with hay-stuffed canvas bags for beds while they waited for the permanent war relocation centers to be completed in the interior of the country.

The shock and disbelief of what was happening to them was overwhelming.

One day American citizens that owned businesses and homes and went to school and were excited about things like high school graduations were now prisoners in concentration camps in their own country, stripped of their rights, their dignity, and any hope.

(intense dramatic music) By the end of summer in 1942, the permanent war relocation centers were nearing completion.

The government was using words like evacuation and relocation to publicly describe what was happening to these Americans.

For those now on trains headed to places like Arkansas, Western Colorado, and the high desert of California east of the Sierra at Manzanar, the truth of what was happening required a much different vocabulary.

For many of the Japanese Americans now confined in these prisons, going along with Executive Order 9066 peacefully and willingly was a show of loyalty to their country and the American war effort.

However, some of the young men would launch campaigns of consciousness against the stripping of their constitutional rights, while thousands of others would go on later to serve their country and eventually die in places like this forest in Eastern France, that for a short time became a battlefield to prove their love and loyalty to America, to ensure a better life and a restoration of freedom for their families they left behind.

This is the story of the young man who fought for a country that had turned its back on them, the Nisei warriors of World War II, men that proved with their hearts, their minds, their bodies, and their blood what it inherently means to be an American.

(intense dramatic music) (solemn violin music) - Well, Sunday morning, December 7th, I was doing homework.

I was a student at Compton Junior College in Southern California.

And when the announcer broke in on my radio and said Pearl Harbor had been attacked, I knew immediately this might be a real turning point for our family.

- [Jeff] In February of 2020, I met Lawson Sakai at his home in Morgan Hill, California.

His wife of 74 years, Mineko, had passed away two weeks before I walked in this modest Bay Area home.

At 97 years old, and with no other family or friends present, he kept his promise to sit with me and tell me stories of a dark chapter in American history and his part in it.

- Immediately, the Hearst newspapers, the Los Angeles Times, the enemy is the Japanese that is farming, that is fishing in our territory.

Do not interact with them.

Right away they are trying to cut off anything between Japanese and the rest of the American population.

So from that point on the, oh, the discriminatory practices were just really awful.

- [Jeff] Lawson's first direct experience with this kind of discrimination came the day after the Pearl Harbor attack.

As a student in college, he and three Caucasian friends decided to pause their education to serve their country and enlist in the Navy.

- So we got together Monday morning, December 8th, and decided let's go down to the Navy base in Long Beach and enlist.

So we got in the car, four of us went down.

Ed Hardy, Roy Kentner, Jimmy Keys, they're Caucasian.

Immediately they were enlisted.

And then Sakai.

"Wait a minute, you're a Jap.

We don't want Japs in Navy.

Get outta here."

That's what they told me.

That was my first experience with discrimination in this country.

- [Jeff] As soon as President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, Lawson's father knew the clock was ticking, and made immediate plans to get out of Southern California before things got worse.

The eventual removal of all people of Japanese ancestry from their homes was specifically for those living on the West Coast.

Lawson's family had the resources and a plan to get east as soon as possible, avoiding imprisonment that was already underway.

- We had a car and a small bobtail truck.

I drove the car and my dad drove the truck.

So we're going down Highway 99 to go east.

Well, somewhere around Bakersfield, my parents say, "You know, all the people about to go where we lived, they're all up in Manzanar, the very first ones to be moved up to one of the concentration camps."

So they said, "Let's go visit them."

And of course we get up in Lone Pine and we're going a little bit uphill.

You can see the camps is elevated, so you can see all these barracks, and above them in the background, there's the Sierras or Mount Williamson.

And I'm not sure if you can see Mount Whitney, but it's back there, too.

Over 14,000 feet.

A lot of the men were climbing those mountains.

Anyway, I drive to the gate and I had this card from the FBI and I explained to the soldier standing guard that we're going in to visit friends, and he opened the gate and we drove into the administration, gave a list of names.

And the people that are working in the offices just told us to turn around and look out there.

See the fence, barbed wire fence?

See the guard tower, see the soldiers?

See the guns, the machine guns?

They're all pointed in at us.

This is a prison.

They're not gonna let you up, but since you just came in, go back and see if they'll open the gate.

So we decided we better not wait any longer.

We turned around, went to the gate, and luckily the same soldier that let us in is still guarding the gate.

So I showed him the pass and said "We're done," and he opened the gate.

Then we were off to Colorado.

(introspective piano music) - [Jeff] After settling with his family in Grand Junction, Colorado, Lawson once again tried to enroll in the Air Force and Navy, and again was denied.

Even though he was an American citizen, the signing of Executive Order 9066 re-designated all Japanese Americans as 4C enemy aliens, and not able to serve in the military.

(introspective piano music) But as early as 1943, as the war raged around the world, changes were beginning to happen out of the simple necessity that the US war effort needed more men.

Author Scott McGaugh is the retired founding marketing director for the USS Midway Museum in San Diego, California, and an expert in the history of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team's battles in Italy and France.

He's written several books on the 442's bravery, like "Honor Before Glory," and World War II stories rarely told in his new book, "Brotherhood of the Flying Coffin."

- Well, in 1943, the Army was still being developed, if you will.

The war was really just getting underway in some respects for America.

We needed to ramp up to 91 divisions.

We had a fraction of that at the time of Pearl Harbor.

So there was a real shortage of soldiers and sailors and so on.

So establishing the 442nd served several reasons.

Perhaps it was a little bit political in some respects, but certainly it was strategic.

We needed men to volunteer and fight for America across the globe.

And the 442nd's establishment of that was part of that.

One of his battalions, the 100th, had already been formed in Hawaii several months earlier, and it wouldn't be long before the 2nd and 3rd battalions would join the 100th to become the 442nd.

- [Jeff] Word of the formation of the 442nd spread fast, and it didn't take long for Lawson to hear the news.

- In February, they formed a special segregated unit composed entirely of Americans of Japanese ancestry to be called the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

Well, it was March, I think, before I heard about it, so I volunteered immediately.

It was May before they called me.

So I didn't get to Camp Shelby till late in May.

- Well, when the 442nd was established, war planners were hoping that 5,000 volunteers would be enough to command the 442nd.

They were overwhelmed when 10,000 Japanese American young men volunteered, approximately 1,500 from behind barbed wires from the internment camps, after having lived a year behind barbed wire, along with their family, after being interred with no due process only because of their ethnicity.

And yet, these young men, 20, 21 years of age, were willing to volunteer for a racist segregated army and died for the country that had put their family behind barbed wire.

- [Jeff] After six months of training in Camp Shelby, Mississippi, Lawson and the 442nd were ready to join the fight.

But General Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces at the time, was still hesitant to bring the all Japanese American force into combat, so the 442nd continued for another six months of training at Camp Shelby.

Finally, in May of 1944, the time had come for the 442nd to fight.

Lawson Sakai would now see combat.

(waves lapping softly) Today, many in America are unaware of the service and sacrifices made by Japanese American soldiers during World War II, and the tragic irony of giving their lives for a country that stripped them of their rights and imprisoned them and their families based solely on race and where they lived.

And while the stories of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and the 100th Infantry Battalion are legendary among historians and military experts, the efforts of another group of Nisei heroes and their stories remain largely unknown.

In fact, their service and mission successes were purposely kept secret until after the war.

(solemn introspective music) And only today are the accomplishments of the Military Intelligence Service in the Pacific Theater of World War II being learned.

Due to the highly classified and secret nature of their missions, knowledge of even the existence of the MIS was kept from the public eye.

But in 1972, the significance of the Military Intelligence Service role in winning the war in the Pacific was learned by the American people when President Richard Nixon signed Executive Order 11652, declassifying all World War II military documents.

The need for secret human weapons to use against Japan was recognized early in 1941, as growing consensus in the military was that a war with Japan was imminent.

(soldiers marching) (crowd clamoring) Having in place dedicated forces fluent in the complex language of Japanese and understanding its military history was seen as taking early advantage of an adversary that showed sophisticated war planning, state-of-the-art military equipment, and a fierce and brutal fighting force on the battleground.

(intense dramatic music) Japanese military leaders early on made a grave mistake in underestimating the willingness and ability of Japanese Americans to serve in the MIS.

They mistakenly assumed the Japanese language and military terminology was too intricate for any Caucasian Americans to grasp, and used rather unsophisticated codes to protect their transmissions.

(intense dramatic music) Both before the Pearl Harbor attack and increasingly after it, the Nisei men that served in the MIS had a tough mission in front of them.

They had to perform dangerous and difficult work while being under a constant cloud of suspicion and fear.

Like the Nisei soldiers of the 442nd, they had to fight the enemy to not only win the battle, but to prove their loyalty as Americans.

(intense dramatic music) So there's a period of time where you didn't even know this existed then?

- [Keith] No.

- [Jeff] Because he had it locked away.

- He had it in a closet somewhere.

You know, he didn't, I don't even remember when he brought this out.

(paper rustling) So this is from 1945.

You see it's pretty old.

- [Jeff] And your father knew this was real when he saw the original because- - Because he said it's written, it's on silk.

And so that's how he knew they were, this was a serious document.

(solemn introspective music) - [Jeff] Talking about the Japanese-American experience in World War II was something culturally most Nisei did not share with the next generation openly.

The Sansei, or third generation, usually found out about the time their parents spent at camp, as it was referred to, were serving in the war much later in life.

For Keith Fudenna of Fremont, California, the story of the role his father played in a critical turning point in the Pacific War wouldn't be known until the 1980s when he was working as an attorney consulting for the Fremont City Council.

A chance encounter with someone after a meeting opened a door to his family's past he never knew was there.

- One of the other committee members, another Japanese American fellow came up to me and said, "Oh, Fudenna.

You know, your father's a hero."

And I looked at him and I said, "No, I, I don't think so."

And he said, "Oh, yeah, your father's, he was, he got the information on shooting down Admiral Yamamoto."

And that's the first I had ever heard of that story.

And so when I- - [Jeff] How did that make you feel when you heard that?

- I, well, I thought he must be mistaken.

I never heard anything like that before.

- [Jeff] The life Keith's father had led during the war was kept quiet for years.

Harold Fudenna graduated from the MIS Language School in Camp Savage, Minnesota in June of 1942, and went to work translating intercepted messages from the Japanese military right away.

Like many of the 6,000 Nisei that eventually served the MIS during World War II, Fudenna was a Kibei, a subset of the second generation that was born in America, moved to Japan for their education, and then came back to the United States.

Because of their better understanding of Japanese culture and language, Kibei were highly recruited by the US Armed Forces to serve in the Military Intelligence Service.

However, Kibei often struggled with identity, being considered outsiders when they were living in Japan and viewed as being too Japanese by their Nisei peers back at home in the United States.

It's estimated that during the war there were roughly 10,000 Kibei and Nisei living in America.

- So I, next time I saw my father, I said, "Dad, you know, I was talking to this gentleman and he said that you got this information."

And my father's response was, "Oh, didn't I ever tell you about that?

I thought I told you that a long time ago."

And I said, "No."

- [Jeff] What Harold Fudenna didn't share with his son for years is today considered a major turning point in the war in the Pacific.

In April of 1943, the 5th Air Force requested Nisei MIS units to join the 138th Signal Radio Intercept Company at Seven Mile Strip on New Guinea.

Not long after, Sergeant Fudenna was on island, monitoring Japanese tactical frequencies on specialized radio equipment.

(indistinct radio chatter) On April 13th, Army and Navy intercept stations in Hawaii and the West Coast picked up Japanese chatter indicating that a high level inspection of South Pacific forces would be happening soon and would be overseen by the commander of the Japanese combined fleet command, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.

Yamamoto was the architect and chief planner of the Pearl Harbor attack, and one of Japan's greatest military minds.

Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander of the US Pacific Fleet, approved a plan to exploit the message and eliminate his Japanese counterpart.

- Intelligence had discovered that Admiral Yamamoto was going to be conducting an inspection of troops, and they knew that he was gonna be in the area, but they didn't know when.

They didn't have his, you know, my father used the term ETA.

- [Jeff] Right.

- And because of the distance that the planes would have to travel, was only a very small time window where an attack could take place.

And so they needed that time of arrival for Admiral Yamamoto.

- [Jeff] News of Yamamotos visit to the South Pacific sparked a flurry of Japanese radio traffic within its own military channels.

The problem for Japan was that the US was listening, and one of these messages was intercepted by the 138th SRIC and its Lone Nisei linguist, Sergeant Harold Fudenna, who translated the communication and passed it to his superiors.

The radio message confirmed that Yamamoto would fly from Rabaul to Balalae Airfield near Bougainville, 430 miles north of American-held Guadalcanal in the Solomon Island group.

The message contained the exact takeoff and landing time for Yamamoto, and that he and his staff would fly on two medium bombers, Mitsubishi G4M Bettys, escorted by six Japanese Navy A6M Zero fighters.

Knowing the exact landing time was the missing key to plan an attack, and with its confirmation, Operation Vengeance was given the green light.

(engine rumbling) To avoid detection by radar and Japanese personnel stationed throughout the Solomon Islands, a low level over water approach to the target would be needed.

This range and mission profile was beyond the capabilities of the F4F Wildcat and F4U Corsair fighters available on Guadalcanal.

(planes rumbling) So the mission was assigned to the 339th Fighter Squadron flying the legendary P-38 Lightning aircraft.

(tense dramatic music) Based on Yamamoto's planned landing time and factoring in air speeds, weather and terrain, an estimated target intercept time of 9:35 in the morning was locked in.

On the morning of April 18, 1943, the roar of engines warming up at Kukum Field on Guadalcanal were heard in the background of a phone call Harold Fudenna would never forget.

- He was on the phone with this general who was in charge of these P-38s, and said, "Okay, well this is what the message was."

And the general said, "All right, Sergeant, I want you to keep this line open and I want you to reread that message and retranslate it and make sure that, you know, make sure that you're reading what you said you said."

And he says, "I'm reading the message, and it says what it says."

You know, and so the general comes back on and says, "All right, Sergeant, listen."

And he's holding up I guess his end of the telephone, and says, "You hear that?"

And he could hear a lot of loud noise.

He says, "Those are the planes taking off."

- [Jeff] Wow.

- (chuckles) Yeah.

And he said, "And Sergeant, you better be right."

And then he hung up on him.

- [Jeff] Two hours after they lifted off and flying radio silent over the Coral Sea at no higher than 50 feet for 400 miles, the squadron of P-38s arrived over Bougainville just as Yamamoto's planes were descending to land.

The P-38s were broken into two groups.

12 planes pulled up to fly a top cover mission at 18,000 feet, ready to pick up any additional Japanese fighters scrambled from below, and a four-plane kill team that engaged Yamamoto's medium bombers and Zero fighter escorts directly.

It was over in a matter of minutes.

The element of surprise that had made Yamamoto a legend in the Pearl Harbor attack would also be his end.

(solemn introspective music) Later, when the crash site was inspected in the jungles below, the body of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was found, thrown clear of the wreckage under a tree, still strapped to his seat upright with two .50 caliber bullet holes through his body and his white-gloved hand clutching his sword.

(solemn introspective music) - The only thing I ever heard him say was observing that here he was, you know, in US Army and, you know, going into the barbed wire, go into the camp and to visit his mom and sisters, and, you know.

There was more than just two of them.

There's a small group of them went to visit in Utah in Topaz.

- [Jeff] For the Nisei soldiers of World War II bravely serving in the military while their own families were still locked up in American concentration camps, the pain of living through this double standard ran deep, so deep that men like Harold Fudenna did not even talk about the full scope of their service and contributions to the war effort.

The impact of the MIS and their service was profound.

General Charles Willoughby, G2 Intelligence Chief, said, "The Nisei saved countless Allied lives and shortened the war by two years."

(solemn introspective music) Harold Fudenna was eventually awarded the Legion of Merit medal for his part in Operation Vengeance, four years after his death.

Today, his son Keith keeps a small treasure of artifacts from his father's time in the war, including extremely rare copies of documents that frame the end of World War II in 1945.

- This is the copy of the Instrument of Surrender that the original of which my father had examined in Washington DC at the request of the Secretary of War.

It's important to tell these stories because for future generations to know that this happened, and be able to be better for it having had happened, you know?

And either for generations of Japanese Americans, generations of any Americans to know that this did happen.

Yeah, and not forget, yeah.

(solemn introspective music) - [Jeff] The 442nd Regimental Combat Team 2nd and 3rd Battalions landed in Anzio, Italy, May 28, 1944.

The 1st Battalion remained in the US to train badly needed Nisei replacements.

Two weeks later, the 442nd joined up with the 100th Battalion north of Rome, forming the full combat team attached to the 34th Infantry Division.

German forces were still well established throughout most of northern Italy, but a changing tide in the war in Europe was beginning.

Lawson Sakai, now a member of the 442nd's 2nd Battalion E Company and his men were moving north into the Tuscany region of Italy just days after the D-Day invasion in France was sending shockwaves through the German battle lines.

With only the 100th Battalion being tested in combat so far, the brave men of the 442nd approached the small town of Belvedere, just north of Suvereto, Tuscany, unaware that they were walking into a trap.

What was it like the first time you got into a battle there?

What was your first, what was it like, your first battle, when you knew this was it?

That to me is always a fascinating moment for any soldier because once you cross that line, you're never the same.

- That's right.

Uh.

- [Jeff] While actual war footage of the 442nd's first battles in Italy is rare, a movie about the 442 called "Go For Broke," the combat's team motto, was made in 1951, dramatizing the real life story of the Nisei soldiers.

(explosion booming) - So, So, give it another 50 yards!

- [Jeff] This film was considered outside the box in Hollywood at the time, featuring Asian Americans in a positive way, highlighting Japanese Americans fighting for a country that had sent their families to prison camps back home.

"Go For Broke" recreated the battle of Belvedere Lawson lived through, but not the real life horrors of warfare he was about to see.

- We're supposed to be well-trained, but we didn't know what it was to fight actual Germans.

This is for real.

2nd Battalion, I'm in E Company.

We're told to go in this direction.

I think the 100th is placed in reserve.

I think the 3rd Battalion was on one flank.

So our company commander, Company E, Captain Ensminger, decided to lead us down, kind of like a draw.

There were higher elevation on both sides, but we went down and there were nothing, no shooting.

Everything was quiet.

And all of a sudden the Germans opened up.

They were up, hidden up above, a little higher than we were so they could shoot down at us, and we were trapped.

Ensminger right away got shot in the forehead, killed immediately.

Bullets, mortar shells, artillery.

We weren't prepared for that.

I remember watching puff of, little puffs of dirt coming toward me, and all of a sudden I hear (mimicking gun shooting).

I didn't know what that was.

It was a German burp gun.

Fortunately, it's such a high velocity gun that it goes like this, they can't hold it down.

So first the bullets were going down, they went right over me.

I could hear the bullets coming.

- [Jeff] At what range was he shooting at you from?

- Probably 50 feet or so, you know?

- [Jeff] Yeah.

- But now you see bodies torn apart, pieces of bodies off, torn off their bodies.

Men dying, men calling for help.

And, you know, you can't worry about them.

That's a medic's job.

You've gotta keep trying to shoot somebody, or you know, you're no good if you're dead or wounded.

When you are pulled off the line far enough where the artillery can't reach you and you set up what they call a bivouac field, your tent.

You hope your tent mate is still alive, 'cause you share half of a tent.

You put it together.

Well, you start looking for your friends, and if they're not there, they're either dead or wounded, you don't know.

And that's the hardest part.

You know immediately what it cost to be in battle.

(solemn introspective music) - Well, the track record of the 442nd, all three battalions in Italy, while relatively short with the 2nd and 3rd coming along a little bit later, was really extraordinary.

They pushed the Axis powers out of several cities much faster than their officers ever expected them to be able to do.

They took on horrific casualty rates of upwards of 25%, but again, met every single mission despite how difficult they were ordered, to where finally it came time for them to be pulled off the line to re-man, replenish, replace and be sent to France for their next major mission.

- [Jeff] The Vosges Mountains of Eastern France create a harmony of landscapes.

Open grassy valleys, thick wooded hills, and small historic villages that saw brutal battles in the later stages of World War II.

Our crew has come to the town of Bruyeres, France, in October of 2022, 78 years to the month that the 442nd began to arrive here on the outskirts of town to rid it of German occupation and push Nazi forces east to the Rhine River Valley.

Adolf Hitler had ordered his troops to hold this town at all costs, knowing that if Bruyeres fell to the Allies, they would be on the doorsteps of the Fatherland next.

(soft introspective music) Bruyeres, like other towns in the area, is surrounded by small steep hills that are densely wooded.

To liberate Bruyeres successfully, the hills would need to be taken before an assault on German forces in the town could be waged.

On October 15, 1944, the 442nd began its attack on Bruyeres.

The hills surrounding the town were labeled A, B, C, D and Hill 555.

2nd and 3rd battalions struck from a more westerly approach while the 100th circled around from the north.

Fighting over the next several days was intense and incredibly close, sometimes at pointblank range from foxholes dug just feet apart.

You can tell, too, right when they got to this position, this was a ridge point.

So this gave them a really good position to protect and move more guys up from the back.

(Jeff exhales) Wow, man.

- [Jon] I mean, you can tell this was legitimately dug 'cause there's rock all around it.

This one over here has rock all built up around it.

- Yeah.

They fortified it.

- [Jon] Yeah.

This is amazing here.

- [Jeff] Surveying the battlefield today is a lesson in contrasts, the still beauty of a forest that has grown lush and green, but with clear signs of the carnage that happened here 80 years ago.

Some type of, you know, I wonder if this was- - [Jon] German?

- [Jeff] Exactly.

A German vehicle, yeah.

- There's more of it down here.

- [Jeff] Now on the edge of town, we use historic photos of Bruyeres to try and match our camera positions today, mapping the movements of the 442nd as they moved into the village on October 18, 1944, pushing the Germans east and towards Hill D where they made another stand.

One of the control points I think we need to look at right now is that this building right here, when you zoom into it, it has this stairstep concrete side to it, and this chimney that's pretty distinctive.

And if you look down range, and we'll get a close up of that in a minute, that building is still there.

So that building that we're looking at here is right there.

It's still there from 1944.

After an agonizing week of battle in Bruyeres and retaking of Hill D outside of town, the 100th and 442 had barely enough time to regroup before heading east.

Catching only a brief rest, they resupplied and prepared for the next battle as German forces pulled back towards the Rhine River Valley.

Commander of the 36th Infantry Division, Major General John Dahlquist ordered the 100th Battalion of the 442 to advance on the town of Biffontaine, about six miles to the east.

The 442nd had joined Dahlquist's 36th ID a few days before the liberation of Bruyeres.

With only one day of rest, all three battalions of the 442nd pushed past the town of Biffontaine, but inexperience in combat tactics and a misplaced zeal to be the first Allied general to have German soil under his boots, Dahlquist sent his 141st Regiment, made up mostly of men from Texas, too fast and too far forward, out of the range of supporting artillery and backup from the 442.

- General Dahlquist wanted to be the first American general to cross the German border.

And of course, General Patton, his 3rd Army, is north of us.

He's doing the same thing.

Well, General Dahlquist is not a military person.

He didn't have that kind of a background.

So he's telling his men, just keep going because there's no Germans out there.

You can make a lot of headway.

Well, the Germans were letting the American group, 141st First Battalion, just keep moving, let 'em.

We were short of Bruyeres.

Biffontaine is six miles away.

The 1st Battalion of the 141st Regiment of the 36th Division was way out there.

And that's when the Germans just surrounded them.

- Obviously, the next mission was to penetrate the Vosges, to start climbing up into those mountains.

One of the first missions assigned was to the 1st Battalion of the 141st Regiment under the command of a first Lieutenant, Marty Higgins.

It was his job to lead 275 men up a logging road to a particular objective overlooking the valleys below.

That was the genesis of the Lost Battalion.

- [Jeff] Of all the successes and sacrifices made by the men of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team in World War II, the rescue of the Lost Battalion is still considered one of the US Army's great battles in its history.

In late October of 1944, with rain, cold temperatures and thick fog impacting a tough, mountainous battlefield, the 442nd was positioned to make a daunting rescue attempt.

The Texas Battalion had now been trapped on this mountaintop just east of Biffontaine, France for almost a week.

They were out of food, water, and running desperately low on ammunition.

- Well, Dahlquist obviously was desperate, not just to get the 442nd to Higgins and his men, but also to resupply Higgins' men in the interim, not knowing exactly how long rescue would take.

One example was they had artillery shells filled with supplies that Dahlquist ordered to be fired as close to Higgins' position as possible.

Another technique was to fill auxiliary fuel tanks with food and supplies and literally bomb Higgins' position with those auxiliary tanks.

Unfortunately, in both cases, more often than not, he was resupplying the enemy surrounding Higgins more so than supplying Higgins' men themselves.

- [Jeff] On October 27th, the assault of the rescue of the Lost Battalion began.

2nd and 3rd Battalions launched a flanking attack while other forces engaged the Germans head on.

For Lawson Sakai, the first day of the assault would be a day that haunted him for the rest of his life.

- Well, I tell people I've cheated death five times, so I'm lucky to be alive.

One was October 27th, and two reasons I'll never forget that.

It was my 21st birthday.

So I became a legal person, and here we are charging up a hill and a German popped up and shot me point blank, maybe nine, 10 feet away, but he missed.

So I just, I'm holding my BAR down there 'cause we're moving.

I just went ta-ta-ta, and I just moving forward, I went up and hit him on the head.

A helmet came off and the face was that of a young boy, maybe 15, 16 years old.

And it's no wonder.

How could he miss point blank?

But he was probably more scared than I was, just, you know, just couldn't control how he shot.

They used everybody that they could to protect their border.

We're going to make a major push to go forward, and the Germans must've suspected what we were doing because they shot artillery for about maybe 30, 25, 30 minutes.

Just boom, boom, boom.

One after another.

And we could not move an inch.

We just had to stay down and hope we didn't get hit.

Guys were getting hit by tree limbs coming down or fragments from the artillery.

That's when one big piece hit me right in the back.

So, I thought I was dead.

A red hot piece of metal just, it just hurt so much.

All you can do is just you curl up in a ball and you can't breathe.

You just, it's hard to explain how painful that is.

And that's when a medic came by and the medic is supposed to make a judgment.

Is it worth trying to save this guy or should I go to the next guy that maybe I can save?

But he shot me full of morphine, 'cause I don't remember anything from that point.

And when I did wake up, I was on a train going to the American hospital in Dijon for surgery.

(soft introspective music) - This wasn't just a rescue mission of fighting against the enemy and taking pot shots, you know, a hundred yards away at a soldier.

This again, was a very intimate face-to-face, chin-to-chin kind of a rescue mission and battle.

There were a couple of instances in which the Japanese Americans had to literally charge up a hill, extremely steep, extremely slick with the mud, almost no cover, and take horrific casualties and losses in order to rouse the enemy.

These bonzai charges, I think, have gone down in Army lore as some of the most brave, courageous, self-sacrificing battles, exchanges in all of World War II.

- Look out, Tommy!

(soldiers rustling) - The price the 442nd paid by the time they reached Higgins is just exorbitant.

One company authorized strength of 185 men.

There were 17 who came back off that hill.

Another company of about the same authorized strength, eight came off that hill.

That's just extraordinary to me to think about the sacrifice following the combat that they had just completed is just beyond belief, so that 211 survivors of the original 275 in the 1st, the Lost Battalion, were able to come back down the hill, as well.

(solemn introspective music) - [Jeff] On October 30th, I Company broke through heavily disabled German defenses and made first contact with the Lost Battalion.

After six days pinned down on the mountain and under almost constant attack from German forces, the men of the 141st were amazed and grateful at the 442nd's heroic efforts to save them from certain death.

The Nisei soldiers rescued 211 Texans of the original 275 that had been trapped.

Of the companies involved in the rescue of the 141st, they averaged less than half of their normal full strength after the battle.

During the time the 442nd fought in France, including the rescue of the Lost Battalion, 150 were killed in action, with 1,800 wounded.

Today, the hillsides that saw most of the fighting and the rescue of the Lost Battalion still hold an ominous air, quietly echoing the horrors of what men can do to other men in combat.

And while the whispers of war seem to drift through the trees here carried by an October wind, once again, a remarkable discovery is made deep in the forest and far from any road.

- We were walking around out here, just checking out these trenches and the foxholes and all the remnants of the battle, and I found a couple of rocks under this tree.

And it looks like somebody from Hawaii, some descendants of the soldiers came and left a little, some stones in here with some writing on it.

- [Jeff] Later research showed us that Torao Hayashi of the 100th Battalion died here on October 28th, 1944 during the rescue attempt, and that John Tsukometo did serve in E Company with Lawson Sakai of the 442.

Weeks after the rescue, General Dahlquist ordered a parade review of the 442 and the 100th Battalion.

When only a small amount of the units showed up, Dahlquist accused the Japanese Americans of not following his orders.

Other Nisei soldiers there informed the general that their ranks were small due to the high casualty rates from the preceding weeks of battle.

Many to this day accused Dahlquist of using the 442 as cannon fodder in the rescue of the Lost Battalion.

Whether that's true or not, the successes and bravery of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team will never be disputed.

They remain today the single-most decorated fighting unit of its size in the history of American warfare.

(soft introspective music) - You know, it's amazing when you step back a little bit and think about the Vosges campaign, how strategic it was and how critical it was, because at that point the Allies were only 40 miles from the Rhine River and the Fatherland, and the 442nd, in about a six-week campaign in the Vosges, after all the losses it had endured in Italy, lost 1,400 men to casualties in about six weeks.

By now, the 100th Battalion was well known as the Purple Heart Battalion because it had earned 900 Purple Hearts just in Italy.

By the end of the war, the 18,000 men of the 442nd total earned more than 18,000 awards for valor and also earned 9,000 Purple Hearts.

When you look at the sum total of their body of work, if you will, their body of sacrifice more appropriately, it really is one of the great stories of World War II, one of the most inspirational stories, one of the most heartbreaking stories of World War II, and that legacy needs to be preserved for future generations.

(solemn introspective music) - [Jeff] Signs of the legacies left behind by the Nisei soldiers of World War II can be found around the world.

They serve as a compass for future generations to know the darkness in our country's past, and the light that became a beacon to follow, illuminated by the sacrifices of American Nisei soldiers and the struggles they overcame.

Today in Bruyeres, markers fill the streets honoring 442 soldiers that fell here, saving the town from the Nazis.

Near Hill 555 just west of Bruyeres, the American monuments honoring the 442nd and their go for broke battle cry stand just beyond the foxholes and woods haunted by what happened here.

In the forest where the Lost Battalion was saved, less than 10 miles away, more signs of the bravery and sacrifice made by the 100th Battalion and the 442nd stand.

(solemn introspective music) A short drive from Bruyeres, the Epinal American Cemetery is hallowed ground and the final resting place for 5,255 Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice during the 7th Army's push through France in 1944 and '45, including 13 members of the 442nd.

In Los Angeles, the Go For Broke National Education Center preserves the stories of Japanese American incarceration and the Nisei men that served their country despite its wrongs.

And in the Presidio of San Francisco, the Military Intelligence Service Historic Learning Center captures the stories of the Nisei that helped win the battle for the Pacific in a building not far from the one where General DeWitt ordered the mass internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans on the West Coast in 1942.

Every October the people of Bruyeres gather and celebrate the sacrifices of the 442nd with a parade through town, passing on the legacy of the 442nd to future generations.

(soft introspective music) - You know, every Medal of Honor nomination for the 442nd was downgraded, usually without explanation, during the war.

It wasn't until 2000 that 22 Medals of Honor were awarded after their cases were re-reviewed by the military.

Unfortunately, only seven of those 442nd veterans were still alive.

The others were accepted by widows, sons, daughters, grandchildren.

To say better late than never hardly does justice to what these men accomplished and the recognition they deserve the day they came home, not 50 years later.

(solemn introspective music) - When the war was over, I had PTSD very badly, and the war ended in May, 1945.

I didn't wanna stay in the Army.

I, you know, we were, most of us that drank, we would get any kind of liquor that we could get ahold of, put it in our canteen cups and drink it till we passed out.

That's the only way we could forget what was on our minds.

It just, it was a horrible thing.

- [Jeff] Lawson Sakai, like many of the Nisei soldiers that served their country and honored their families with their duty and sacrifice, were the best of what America can be.

Not long after my interview with Lawson, he joined his beloved wife Mineko in a place much better than the one he left behind, but the place he left behind was made better by not only what the men of the Military Intelligence Service, the 100th Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team did on the battlefield, but how they lived their lives after they came home.

In some cases, even after leaving friends and their own blood on the battlefield, they still faced racism and hate from those trapped in a poisoned mind.

One of the last things Lawson Sakai spoke into a camera after a lifetime of telling the story of the 442 struck me the most, and is perhaps the most important and basic lesson to learn from the pain of this chapter in our history.

- When babies are born, they're not prejudiced.

Now, they're in the care of their parents, and that's when they learn to become prejudiced children.

So if the parents don't do the right thing, the kids come out wrong.

(soft introspective music) (introspective piano music) - [Announcer] Funding for "Unbroken Honor" provided by Larry and Alice Kitahara Foundation, California State Library and California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, Day Kusakai, Randy Masada, Tamsen Munger, Dale and Debra Ikeda, Jeanette and Tony Ishii, Dr. Bruce Koligian, Gerald and Rosemary Waters, Rita Crandall, the Central California District Council of the Japanese American Citizens League, and The Masada Family Trust.

(introspective piano music)