From Civilian to Soldier

Basic training was hectic for these new soldiers, as it is for every new soldier. Heads buzzed with military courtesy and discipline, close order drill, manual of arms, and the nomenclature and functioning of all the weapons that make the present day infantryman a walking arsenal. Slowly they learned to hit the ground, to take advantage of every fold in the earth, and every bush for cover and concealment, to work as squads and sections. Muscles hardened, backs straighten, and civilians became men who lived war and thought war.

Relations with civilians and other soldiers were not always easy. Most of the men on the post and the inhabitants of the nearby towns accepted the Nisei for what they were and for the job they had undertaken without a second thought. But there were the inevitable few who screamed to the high heavens about “damned Japs.” As surely as one of them opened his mouth he found a hard brown fist in it, for the one thing these men would not tolerate was to be called “Japs.” They lived as Americans, thought as Americans; they had traveled thousands of miles to learn to fight for their country, and now they asked only to be treated as equals.

Next door to the infantry, the 522nd Field Artillery and the 232nd Engineers were learning the same things, the fundamentals of soldiering. But they were learning, too, to ply their trades. The red legs spent long, weary hours with their 105mm howitzers going into action and out of action till they were blue in the face; learning to serve the piece; learning the fundamentals of fuze and trajectory, observation and range. The engineers played dangerous games with high explosives, building bridges and blowing them up, building roads where there had been no roads before, operating their powerful machines.

Weather was not always kind to the Combat Team. During the days the qualification courses were being fired on the rifle ranges rain poured down in sheets, obscuring the targets and soaking men and guns so thoroughly as to impair the functioning of both. In spite of this the regiment qualified 97 percent of its men and officers on the small-arms ranges.

First of the high-ranking officers to inspect the fledging Combat Team was Lieutenant General Ben Lear. General Lear was not pleased with what he saw. However, his inspection had come on June 1, some 20 days after the beginning of basic training, so no one was unduly alarmed, but the men and officers redoubled their efforts to whip the unit into shape. On the 20th of June, Lieutenant Colonel Booth departed for an assignment with the War Department and Lieutenant Colonel Virgil R. Miller was appointed executive officer.

On July 7 a new company was added to the Combat Team. Company S, as it was designated, was made-up of Japanese-Americans from the Military Intelligence Service Language School at Camp Savage, Minnesota. These young men had been brushing up on their Japanese, and had now joined the Combat Team to brush up on the fundamentals of warfare before they left for the Pacific to act as interrogators, translators, and interpreters in units fighting there.

August 23 saw the end of basic training for the majority of the Combat Team, although small groups of new men continued to come in from Relocation Centers. These men were assigned to companies but they took most of their training with a recruit detachment. This unit had been set up especially to bring late rivals up to the proficiency of the rest of the unit by feeding them their basic in concentrated doses.

Third Army testing teams worked from August 23 to 28 to determine the results of basic training in the Combat Team. After a strenuous week of speed marches in small-unit problems under a boiling sun, quizzes on everything from military courtesy to the nomenclature of the gas mask, and microscopic inspections of kitchens, barracks, and supply rooms, the unit rated “excellent” in physical fitness and “very satisfactory” in all other departments.

One inspector, for reasons known only to him himself, spent a great deal of time searching carefully for thumbprints on salt and pepper shakers. Another, and giving the men theoretical situations to meet, always asked them what they would do if they were commanding a squad and German paratroopers started landing on West Drill Field (about 800 yards from where the quiz was given). One soldier (who shall be nameless) snapped to rigid attention and replied, “Sir, I t’ink I lay off the stuff for a while.” This soldier was most unpopular with his company commander for some time thereafter.

There was still time for fun, and time for the men to make a great name for themselves in athletics. A Regimental swimming team went to New Orleans the 24th of August and came home with enough gold medals and watches to last a lifetime, plus the Southern AAU team championship. A little later on the regimental baseball team took the Camp Shelby post championship against the best the 69th Division and a great many smaller units could offer. Some of the men created minor sensations in southern sports pages by finishing well up among the leaders in more than one golf tournament, playing barefooted, They were also great hands at barefoot football, which either strengthened the toes or fractured them.

For those who confined their athletics to elbow exercises New Orleans was handy for the three-day passes. After basic training the men took furloughs in New York, Chicago, Washington, Baltimore and points north, east, south, and west. Some of the Nisei headed west to try to settle family affairs which had become confused in the evacuation, but the results were disappointing.

No story of the 442nd Combat Team would be complete without some mention of Earl Finch, self-appointed godfather of every man in the unit. Early in the war Mr. Finch began entertaining servicemen from Camp Shelby and the nearby gulf ports on his cattle ranch near Hattiesburg, Mississippi. When the Combat Team first arrived at Camp Shelby, he met two or three of the men and casually invited them to have dinner with him. From that beginning to a deep and abiding friendship. The man liked old French and he liked them. He entertained hundreds of nisei soldiers on his ranch. He arranged the answers and entertainment for them, gave them parties at the best hotels in New Orleans. He helped them arrange for furloughs in all parts of the United States. When the 442nd Combat Team went overseas and the wounded began coming back, Earl Finch traveled thousands of miles to different hospitals to see them; when they were out on convalescent furloughs, he got groups of them together for parties. As the Relocation Centers closed, Mr. Finch helped many of the former members of the Combat Team to get their families settled. He has given unsparingly of himself, his time and his money to Japanese-American soldiers everywhere and they are deeply grateful.

Just as the Regiment started in the unit training, some of the lessons bought and paid for in men and equipment in North Africa were being translated into changes in Tables of Organization in the States. A Cannon Company made-up of six light, truck-drawn, 105mm howitzers was activated. These stubby, powerful little guns gave the regimental commander his own artillery which he could use when the 522nd was firing in another mission or needed additional support. He could also shoot through the 522nd’s Fire Direction Center as an extra firing battery. Captain Edwin R. Shorey took command of the company and began to train it.

Meanwhile orders had come in for the Regiment to furnish guards for 500 Germans, late of the Afrika Corps, who were going to harvest the Alabama peanut crop. Some men wondered audibly whether the Combat Team had been activated just so some Krauts could go to Alabama and pick peanuts. However, it turned out to be a necessary and not wholly undesirable job. The oils were vitally needed in the war effort, and the men had a chance to break the monotony of the training routine. They learned a little bit about soldiering from watching the prisoners, too, for these Jerries had been Hitler’s pride and joy, the best of the spit-and-polish soldiers.

But they were still Wehrmacht; you couldn’t convince them that one of these days their buddies weren’t going to come swinging in and turn them loose from their wire cages.

By the middle of October the job was done, the men had said goodbye to their new friends in Alabama and started home in long convoys of trucks piled high with men and equipment.

On October 21, Mr. John J. McCloy, Assistant Secretary of War, and Colonel William P. Scobey, his executive officer, both of whom had been instrumental in securing the activation of the Combat Team, made a tour of the area. Both men expressed great pleasure at the progress the men had made in training and predicted a great future for them in battle. This comment heartened the men immeasurably, for they had been hoping for some assurance that they would eventually have a chance to prove themselves somewhere other than in the “Battle of Hattiesburg.”