The Longest Day...

[njsteve]

A family friend and a bunch of her entire family are over in Italy right now for the 80th anniversary of the Po Valley Campaign at the end of the war. Her grandfather was a Japanese American. As a teenager, he and his entire family were interned in a concentration camp in Washington State after Pearl Harbor. While there he volunteered to fight for his country.

He was placed in the 422nd Regimental Combat Team. This was the unit made up entirely of Nisei (second generation Japanese Americans). If that unit rings a bell for you historians, yes, he was one of the soldiers who rescued the Lost Battalion of 200+ Texas National Guardsmen that were surrounded by 6,000 Germans in the mountains of France in October, 1944. They got through and wiped out the Germans when no one else could. Their motto was "Go For Broke". Five Medals of Honor were awarded to their men for that battle as well as hundreds of other medals. They suffered massive casualties. Two weeks later, the General (Dahlquist) who ordered them into battle, initially thinking they would just be cannon fodder and he'd be rid of them, ordered a dress review of the unit. When he showed up he got angry because there were only 26 soldiers standing in front of him and said: "I want all your men to stand for this formation." The commanding officer of the unit responded: "That's all of K company left, sir."

Her late grandfather didn't talk about the war. When pressed, he would just say, he was a cook in the army.

In case anyone is interested here's a History.com story on the battle: https://www.history.com/articles/jap...lost-battalion

The unit itself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/442nd_...(United_States)