by Sonu Munshi
April 22, 2012
Arizona Republic News
Aug. 22, 1942. On a blazing hot Arizona afternoon with a little dust
kicking up, thousands scrambled to find a spot to call home. For MAS INOSHITA’S
family of five brothers, four sisters and their mom, it was Block 54, Row 6,
Barracks 3 and 4 in the brand-new camp built in the unforgiving desert. Just
three months prior, the 22-year-old American citizen was a hardworking
California farmer in some ways grateful for the war. He couldn’t hold on to any
of the cabbage and carrots he grew on leased farmland. It all went to the
Allies in Europe. Inoshita made money “hand over fist.”
But halfway through World War II, the battle for people of Japanese
descent in the country had only just begun. Pearl Harbor had been attacked.
Shortly thereafter, some 110,000 Japanese-Americans, including many citizens
like Inoshita, were rounded up into 10 internment camps. Inoshita’s new home:
Gila River Relocation Camp, 30 miles southeast of Phoenix. It housed 13,348
Japanese-Americans at its peak. Enemy aliens, they were called. But none of it
made sense to Inoshita, who thought himself as American as the next blue-eyed
blond.
Three months into a tedious existence, the U.S Army came looking for
Japanese translators. Inoshita, who had wanted to join the Army even before
internment, volunteered immediately. He and 28 other internees left in the dead
of the night, for fear of being physically harmed as they left behind a camp of
Japanese-Americans divided over how to deal with their prisoner-like status.
The young man didn’t even tell his family. His father, held in a separate
internment camp without any contact with his family, wouldn’t have approved.
Inoshita didn’t question going to fight for the same country that was
treating his family as the enemy. “I felt if we paid our price, the country
would have no excuse to question our loyalty; then we’d have a legitimate shot
at fighting back after the war,” Inoshita said.
He now is 92 and spends his days tending snow peas, bok choy and
strawberries in his daughter’s sprawling Phoenix backyard.
The loyalty is no longer in question. In November, veterans from the
100th Infantry Battalion, 442nd Regimental Combat Team and Military
Intelligence Service, segregated Japanese-American Army units, were honored
with the Congressional Gold Medal. This includes Inoshita.
The Arizona chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League on Sunday
honored 25 local veterans. The medal, the nation’s highest civilian honor, also
has been bestowed upon Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa and the Tuskegee Airmen.
Inoshita said he is grateful. “I see it as the culmination of my
belief as a 22-year-old that my country is what’s most important; I’m glad that
others also recognize that we were on their side,” Inoshita said.
Receiving
honors
After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Japanese-Americans were barred from
joining military service. But as the need for trained linguists to translate
Japanese documents and interrogate prisoners of war rose, the Army started
recruiting, such as from Inoshita’s internment camp.
Thousands of Japanese-Americans served the nation, attached to numerous
Allied combat units. The existence of the Military Intelligence Service, which
is what Inoshita joined, was kept secret during the war and for nearly three
decades after. In 2000, the intelligence service was honored with the
Presidential Unit Citation.
The 100th Infantry Battalion, mainly comprised of Japanese-Americans
from Hawaii, was already participating in the war in Europe. It was later drawn
into the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. The battalion remains the most decorated
unit of its size and length of service in U.S military history. The Nisei (second
generation) soldiers, known for their motto “Go For Broke,” earned 21 Medals of
Honor, the nation’s highest military honor, more than 18,000 individual
decorations for bravery and about 9,500 Purple Hearts.
The
bitter war
After joining the Army, Inoshita traveled to Australia, Sri Lanka and
then India, where the ration of liquor he got each month came in handy. India’s
tight regulations in those days about sale of hard liquor heightened demand.
Inoshita would walk up to a room of soldiers and ask, “What’s this Scotch
worth?” The anti-malaria pills and Lucky
Strike and Camel cigarettes he got in return came in handy for interrogating
sickly, war-beaten Japanese prisoners. “They
thought I was the Buddha and gave me all kinds of information just for being
treated like a human,” Inoshita said.
Inoshita still has a worn, brown leather satchel that belonged to a
Japanese soldier. The satchels were valuable as they often contained documents
and maps. Stationed in Burma, Inoshita had to search bodies for bags like these
to ferret out information. Time hasn’t entirely erased the smell of rotting
flesh and the sight of untreated wounds.
After he returned, Inoshita wouldn’t
eat certain meats that reminded him of those smells. Seventy years later, at
times he still screams as he sleeps.
Seeing
Hiroshima
The most haunting memories were formed shortly after Aug. 6, 1945. The
atomic bomb had flattened Hiroshima, instantly killing an estimated 75,000
people. A lieutenant curious to know what defenses the city had, if troops had
landed, sent Inoshita and another partner to survey the decimated city. They
found only men, women and children, flesh hanging from their bodies. “You knew
he or she wasn’t going to live long,” Inoshita said with a quiver in his voice.
He still questions the need for using “Little Boy,” the code name for
the atomic bomb dropped on the Japanese city. “It was an overkill,” he
continued. “You begin to doubt the mind of a president that says, ‘I had to do
it. I had to show Russia what a terrible thing we have. I had to do it to end
the war.’
“To end the war? They could have walked in any place in the whole of
Japan because the war was over as far as they (Japanese) were concerned.”
Inoshita, a staff sergeant by then,
took early release after that visit. He returned only to be reminded of the
battle he had left behind in Arizona. The internment camp was closed. His
family took shelter in barracks set up by a local Buddhist temple for families
in transition. “When I saw my own people still struggling for justice, I felt,
‘What a stinking situation to be in.’”
Still, he moved on with regular life, married and had children.
He remains proud to have served his country, but his relationship with
his father, who was upset that he left his family and fought against Japan, was
never the same.
It is a lesson he wants to leave
behind for future generations: “Sometimes tough choices have to be made.”
Source: http://tucsoncitizen.com/arizona-news/2012/04/22/japanese-american-wwii-veteran-faced-tough-choices/
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