442nd Regiment Quotes

They [442nd Regimental Combat Team] did more than defend America. They helped define America at its best...Rarely has a nation been so well served by a people it has so ill-treated.

Charles had perished in Italy, like hundreds of other Japanese-Americans in the 442nd Infantry Regiment, which became known as the Purple Heart Battalion due to the extraordinary number of medals for valor it had been awarded. That regiment, made up entirely of nisei, was the most decorated in US military history,

Daniel K. Inouye, who lost an arm fighting with the 442nd Regiment in Europe, became the first American of Japanese ancestry to win a seat in the House. Inouye,

What was remarkable was that unspeakable treatment did not cause the internees to turn against the country that had treated them so shabbily. Instead, many Japanese internees shamed the nation with their patriotism. In 1943, the War Department finally decided that native-born Americans of Japanese descent were perhaps not “enemy aliens” and were eligible to participate in the war effort. Not in the Pacific, of course—Japanese Americans could not be trusted that much. But the army asked for volunteers for a unit to be assigned to Europe. Almost immediately thousands of young men from both Hawaii and the mainland volunteered. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team, composed of these volunteers, was sent to Italy and fought with astonishing bravery, with more than eight hundred dying for their country and hundreds more wounded.