US Army honors Japanese American unit that liberated Tuscany in WWII

ROME — The U.S. navy is celebrating a little-known a part of World Warfare II historical past, honoring the Japanese American U.S. Military unit that was key to liberating components of Italy and France even whereas the troops’ family had been interned at house as enemies of the state following Japan’s assault on Pearl Harbor.

Descendants of the second-generation Nisei troopers traveled to Italy from round the US — California, Hawaii and Colorado — to tour the websites the place their family fought and attend a commemoration on the U.S. navy base in Camp Darby forward of the eightieth anniversary Friday of the liberation of close by Livorno in Tuscany.

Amongst these participating had been cousins Yoko and Leslie Sakato, whose fathers every served within the 442nd Regimental Fight Workforce, which went on to change into probably the most adorned unit within the historical past of the U.S. navy for its measurement and size of service.

“We needed to type of observe his footsteps, discover out the place he fought, the place he was, possibly see the territories that he by no means ever talked about,” stated Yoko Sakato, whose father Employees Sgt. Henry Sakato was within the one hundredth Infantry Battalion, Firm B, that helped liberate Tuscany from Nazi-Fascist rule.

The 442nd, together with the one hundredth Infantry Battalion, was composed nearly totally of second-generation American troopers of Japanese ancestry, who fought in Italy and southern France. Identified for its motto “Go for Broke,” 21 of its members had been awarded the Medal of Honor.

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The regiment was organized in 1943, in response to the Warfare Division’s name for volunteers to type a segregated Japanese American military fight unit. Hundreds of Nisei — second-generation Japanese Individuals — answered the decision.

A few of them fought as their family had been interned at house in camps that had been established in 1942, after Pearl Harbor, to deal with Japanese Individuals who had been thought-about to pose a “public hazard” to the US. In all, some 112,000 individuals, 70,000 of them Americans, had been held in these “relocation facilities” by the tip of the struggle.

The Nisei commemoration at Camp Darby was held one week earlier than the eightieth anniversary of the liberation of Livorno, or Leghorn, on July 19, 1944. Native residents had been additionally commemorating the anniversary this week.

In entrance of members of the family, navy officers and civilians, Yoko Sakato positioned flowers on the monument in reminiscence of Pvt. Masato Nakae, one of many 21 Nisei members awarded the Medal of Honor.

“I used to be feeling near my father, I used to be feeling near the opposite males that I knew rising up, the opposite veterans, as a result of that they had served, and I felt actually like a kinship with the navy who’re right here,” she stated.

Sakato recalled her father naming a few of the areas and cities in Tuscany the place he had fought as a soldier, however at all times in a really “naive” method, as he was speaking to children.

“They had been younger, it will need to have been scary, however they by no means talked about it, neither him nor his pals,” Sakato stated of her father, who died in 1999.

Her cousin Leslie Sakato’s father fought in France and gained a Medal of Honor for his service.

“It was like coming house,” she stated of the commemoration.