E-newsletter

Volunteer project between the Sons & Daughters of the 442nd RCT and the Archives & Manuscripts Department of Hamilton Library, University of Hawaii at Manoa
Contributed by S&D member Jon Ishihara

Since August of last year, a dedicated group of Sons & Daughters members have been giving their time and effort each week for a volunteer project at Hamilton Library of the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

The volunteer project is to digitize the holdings in the Archives & Manuscripts Department of Hamilton Library that were donated to the Library by the 442nd Veterans Club years back and which consists of thousands of documents from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and other material such as the memoirs of Love Company, 3rd Battalion. After digitization, the material will be available to all with Internet access via the Archives & Manuscripts Department’s web pages for perusal and research. Currently, the bulk of the material must be accessed in person by visiting Hamilton Library on the Manoa campus.

The results of this volunteer project will differ from 442nd Regimental Combat Team-related NARA documents currently available online via the Archives & Manuscripts Department and other websites such as the Japanese American Veterans Association (https://java.wildapricot.org/) and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team Legacy website (the442.org) in that the digitization by the Sons & Daughters and the Archives & Manuscripts Department involves creating files by use of optical character recognition (OCR) software that are searchable within the documents themselves. Additionally, the JAVA website and the442.org website each appears to have some of the same documents as the Archives & Manuscripts Department but also different documents in their respective collections. Therefore, it seems safe to state that all three collections are useful to those interested in information about the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

In brief, this story has its roots in the work led by veterans such as Ted Tsukiyama in Hawaii and dedicated persons on the mainland to seek out material in the NARA collections (in Washington, D.C. and Maryland) related to the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the incarceration of Japanese Americans and their Issei parents and family members after the Pearl Harbor attack, the Military Intelligence Service and the WWII period. Copies of the material compiled were donated to the University of Hawaii Library by the 442nd Veterans Club/442nd RCT Foundation where it resides in the Archives & Manuscripts Department.

Our S&D volunteers are re-scanning the thousands of documents to meet accessibility standards, are using OCR software to create the searchable files and are compiling the “metadata” on each document that will be used for identification and discovery. Scanning is the most straightforward task. The OCR step involves checking that each word in a document is correctly recognized by the OCR software and can mean retyping an entire document if the document is of too poor quality to be “read” by the software. Creating the metadata involves inputting a document title, author, date, etc. and also reading the entire document in order to summarize the contents in one or a few sentences. This is a time-consuming effort and to date, approximately 24 of 35 boxes of the NARA documents at the Archives & Manuscripts Department have been scanned. However, our S&D volunteers feel this project is a concrete way to help keep the legacy of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team alive into the future. Each of us is also learning much more about the 442nd RCT and the WWII period than we imagined prior to starting the project.

This is a true win-win situation as the goal of both the Sons & Daughters and Hamilton Library is to make this material related to the 442nd Regimental Combat Team publicly accessible online. The Sons & Daughters volunteers are the manpower and heart of this project and the Archives & Manuscripts Department provides the guidance, equipment and facilities for the digitization. Mahalo Nui Loa to our Sons & Daughters volunteers Juanita Wright Allen, Lynn Heirakuji, Jon Ishihara, Mae Isonaga, Gayle Kawahakui, Steve Migdol, Tracy Sakai, Caitlin Shishido, Laughlin Tanaka, Janice Trubitt and Bill Wright who each volunteer several hours per week for this large undertaking. Mahalo Nui Loa also to Leilani Dawson and the staff at the Archives & Manuscripts Department of Hamilton Library for the training and support of our volunteers. We look forward to seeing the material online.

Selection of photos from the 442nd RCT 10th Anniversary events, 1953

These photos were made available courtesy of the family of the late Kazutoshi Fujino, Easy Company.

(double click on an image to see a larger size photo; you may also be able to right click on an image to save a copy to your device. apologies for the page layout that covers the right side of larger sized photos)

The Champagne Campaign in the French Maritime Alps, Part 2

A brief summary of the “Champagne Campaign” was included in the November 2017 E-newsletter.  The 100^th/442^nd was assigned to protect the right flank of the Sixth Army Group along the French-Italian border in the French Maritime Alps from November 1944 to March 1945.  Despite the use of the term “champagne” and the liberty granted many of the men to Nice, Paris and other French towns and cities, there was still war at hand and daily patrols and fighting took place.

Excerpts from the Headquarters 442D Regimental Combat Team Monthly Historical Report for the month of January 1945 will serve to highlight some of what the men lived through during this “campaign”.

New Year’s Day 1945, the 100^th conducted reconnaissance from Menton to Castillon, the 2^nd Bn did the same from Castillon to Mount Grosso, the 522^nd fired in support of the 2^nd Bn and the 232^nd Combat Engineers laid mines.

January 3, Able Co. and Fox Co. patrols went on reconnaissance and reported no enemy activity, 3^rd Bn organized a reserve line from Roquebrune to Col de Braus, Antitank Co. was on guard duty on roads and at installations, 94 Italian refugees were apprehended and turned over to command in Nice, and new cold-climate sleeping bags were distributed to the companies.

January 10, the Regimental HQ and Medical Detachment moved location by 5 miles, 232^nd assisted Easy, Fox and George Cos. with laying antipersonnel mines and double apron fences, and a ration of beer and candy was distributed to the companies.

January 15, a George Co. patrol departed for Olivetta at 1700 with the intention of capturing prisoners and engaged with enemy troops on the banks of the Bevera River.  The patrol leader was hit and the radio was damaged and inoperable.  The patrol withdrew and S Sgt Rocky Matayoshi went to retrieve his lieutenant and carried him back 300 yards under fire.  The patrol then attempted to move location but encountered a mine field and also could not cross the Bevera River, so spent the night outside.  The next day, five men who were headed to the patrol to evacuate the wounded lieutenant ran into a minefield and two were killed with the other three wounded.

January 21, all personnel were ordered to check and carry gas masks and protective equipment at all times, a Fox Co. patrol had spent the night in the field and returned at 1600 with no enemy contact, Mike Co. guards recaptured two German POWs that had escaped from Nice, the 522^nd fired in support of the 100^th.

January 30, a plaque from the 1^st Bn, 141^st Infantry Regiment (36^th Infantry Division), the “Lost Battalion”, was received by 442^nd HQ and the inscription on the plaque read, “To the 442d Infantry with deep sincerity and utmost appreciation for the gallant fight to effect our rescue after we had been isolated for seven days.  Biffontaine, France, 24-30 October, 1944.”

This was also a period of rebuilding the strength of the 442^nd.  Ten officers and 369 enlisted men joined the 442^nd as replacements during this one month alone, and these replacements brought the 442^nd back to near full strength.  The other side of this is that the replacements were needed because 442^nd men had been killed or injured in combat during the previous months.

Reference: https://library.manoa.hawaii.edu/departments/archives/mss/aja/nara/1945-02-06_MonthlyReport.pdf (accessed 1.15.2018)

This Time in 442^nd RCT History
After the Vosges: The Champagne Campaign in the French Maritime Alps

October 30, 1944 was a Monday but for many with a sense of history it is the day the 442^nd RCT reached the 1^st Battalion, 141 Infantry Regiment in what has come to be known as the “Rescue of the Lost Battalion.”  This is a short summary of the movements of the 442^nd following the brutal fighting in the Vosges Mountains, including the Rescue.

According to historical information in the National Archives, the 100^th Infantry Battalion was detached from the RCT on November 10 and was sent to Nice on the southern coast of France.  The rest of the 442^nd RCT was given relief on November 17 after the more than one month of fighting in the Vosges.  They traveled by truck a distance of 540 miles over four days to St. Jeannet, just a few miles west of Nice in the “Maritime Alps” of France, stopping in Docelles within the township of Bruyeres for one day.  One can only imagine the thoughts of some of the men as they rode in the trucks down from the eastern part of France to the southeast, after the fighting in the mountains and the liberation of the towns of Bruyeres and Biffontaine, and the loss of so many of their friends and comrades.

The RCT reentered duty on November 23, Thanksgiving Day in 1944, having been attached to the 44^th Antiaircraft Artillery (AAA) Brigade, and the men provided defensive duty along the France-Italian border until March 1945.  The 100^th rejoined the 442^nd on November 28.  The duty for the 442^nd was to patrol a stretch of the border.  But because the area is part of the French Riviera and the men were able to avail themselves of the comforts of the resort towns as the units were not engaged in battle, this period has been dubbed the Champagne Campaign.

In spite of the relative peace of this duty compared to front line battle, 11 442^nd soldiers died, 96 were were wounded and others went missing or were injured.  A notable event that occurred in the town of Menton was the capture of a one-man German submarine.  This is reported to be the first time that the U.S. Army captured an enemy submarine, and it was accomplished by soldiers of the 442^nd.  Read more details of the event in the link below to a transcript of stories by Antitank Company Shiroku Yamamoto.

Sources

https://www.goforbroke.org/learn/history/combat_history/world_war_2/european_theater/rhineland_maritime.php

https://nisei.hawaii.edu/object/io_1149149955984.html