Tanaka, Chester. Go for Broke. Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1997. (Reprint of 1982 edition originally published by Go For Broke, Inc.)

ISBN 0-89141-630-7
172 pages

Order of Battle; Author's Note; Recipients of the Distinguished Service Cross; Acknowledgments; Introduction; photos; maps; photos; References.

Crost, Lyn. Honor by Fire: Japanese Americans at War in Europe and the Pacific. Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1994.

ISBN 0-89141-521-1
346 pages

Acknowledgments; Preface; photos; maps; Endnotes; Selected Bibliography; Index.

This pair of titles from Presidio goes far toward offering a complete picture of the wartime military record of Japanese Americans, both in the relatively well-known 100th Battalion and 442nd Regimental Combat Team in Europe as well as service in the more obscure Military Intelligence Service in the Pacific.

The first book, Tanaka's Go for Broke, focuses entirely on the 100th and 442nd while Crost's Honor by Fire takes a broader view of Japanese Americans in the military. (Neither title covers in more than passing the forced relocation of Americans of Japanese ancestry to internment camps.)

Tanaka, a decorated veteran of the 3rd Battalion of the 442nd, has written a rather nostalgic, affectionate account of his old unit with a large number of photos and many sidebars contributed by his old comrades in arms.

Crost's is more of a journalistic account, although she occasionally slips into familiarity and reminisces about the men she has known for over half a century.

Both books discuss the formation of the Japanese American units, the suspicions and prejudice they had to overcome, their training, and their sterling record in combat in Italy and France. Both distinguish between the "buddaheads" from Hawaii and the "kotonks" from the mainland, although the accounts are not always entirely in synch.

From Tanaka:

The 442d Combat Team left Anzio on the 9th and arrived at Civitavecchia, north of Rome, on the 10th. The Germans were dug in a few miles away. The 442d was attached to the 34th "Red Bull" Division. The 100th Infantry Battalion, which had been assigned to the 34th Division, now became attached to the 442d Regimental Combat Team, taking the place of the 1st Battalion left behind in Camp Shelby.

The 100th Infantry Battalion was allowed to retain its separate designation because of its outstanding battle record. It had started out with 1,300 Japanese Americans from Hawaii. By the time they joined the 442d, they had suffered over 900 casualties. Many of the replacements for the 100th had been "mainlanders" from the 442. Now the two Japanese American fighting units were united.

For a brief period of about two weeks, brothers, cousins, and old acquaintances mingled and "shot the breeze" amidst field briefings on the enemy and final brush-up training sessions together.

From Crost:

Because of its distinguished record through nearly nine months of bitter fighting, the 100th Battalion was allowed to retain its original designation in this new combination. The Nisei fighting unit was officially known as 100th/442nd Regimental Combat Team....

As the 100th and the 442nd began working together, animosities again flared between the two outfits. It took a while for the men to resolve these problems and become a cohesive unit. Added to old feuds, men of the 442nd were angry about unit loyalties. It seems that many of the replacements they had sent to the 100th Battalion after the Battle of Cassino preferred, like the 100th, to wear the Red Bull insignia of the 34th Division rather than the regiment's "Go For Broke" insignia. For their part, the 100th men felt that their record in training and in combat had inspired formation of the 442nd and given its men the chance to see combat, but that now the 100th would become swallowed up by this larger group. And the 442nd men were proud of being volunteers, whereas men of the original 100th Battalion had been draftees-- even though they had been stationed throughout Hawaii that unforgettable night of December 7, 1941, and had proven themselves ready to fight any attempted enemy invasion.

Crost devotes more than half of Honor by Fire to MIS operations in the Pacific. Japanese Americans in these units were responsible for a variety of important tasks such as interrogating POWs, translating enemy documents, preparing Psychological Warfare material, eavesdropping on Japanese communications frequencies, and so on.

By the time the 100th Infantry Battalion reached the U.S. mainland in June 1942 to train at Wisconsin's Camp McCoy, Japanese Americans of the Military Intelligence Service (MIS) had begun spreading through the Pacific to fight with a special skill of crucial importance: knowledge of the Japanese language. Hundreds were termed Kibei-- American-born Japanese who received their education in Japan but returned to the United States. Most of these men were also Nisei-- the first generation of Japanese born in the United States. They would be the eyes and ears of Allied forces around the world. Those who claimed that Japanese Americans would never fight "their own people" had never heard about the MISers, as they called themselves. Japan never guessed they existed, and they remained an American weapon of utmost secrecy.

The Japanese Americans of the MIS were attached, in teams of ten, to 150 units, including the Alaska Defense Command, Dutch Harbor, Alaska; Central Pacific Command, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; Southwest Pacific Command, Brisbane, Australia; European Command, Paris, France; CONUS (Continental U.S. Command); and PACMIRS (Pacific Military Intelligence Research Section). The Japanese Americans of the MIS served with military forces of the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and China. And they served in every major campaign and in every major battle in the Pacific.

They were at the front interrogating captives for immediate information, and in the rear interpreting captured documents. They parachuted into inaccessible areas with the troops. In radio intelligence squadrons, they monitored communications between Japanese fighter planes and towers at Japanese airfields.

Because Japan thought its language was so complicated that foreigners could never cope with it, many Japanese military communications were not coded. As a result, Nisei linguists could translate them, along with thousands of Japanese soldiers' diaries and other captured documents, to give Allied commands information about enemy plans, movements, the condition of troops, and technical descriptions of weapons. The Nisei presence at the front was also vital to learn from captured soldiers details of enemy plans that could be put to immediate use in winning battles. So they were shot at, wounded, and killed, along with other GIs.

While neither of these volumes qualifies as rigorous, scholarly history, both are quite interesting, popular accounts and complement each other very nicely in presenting the story of the fighting Japanese Americans.

Available from mail order booksellers, local bookstores, or directly from Presidio.

Thanks to Presidio Press for providing these review copies.