Japanese American soldiers climbing a hill in Bruyères, France, October 24, 1944. It was the first time most of the men had slept in over a week, barely a day-and-a-half after the brutal Bruyères-Biffontaine campaign. Instead, they were roused up in the middle of the night and ordered back to the Vosges mountains to rescue 275 lost Texans trapped behind enemy lines. The men were supposed to have five days of well-deserved and much needed rest-a time to, as Fred Shiosaki bluntly put it, “no longer worry about, this guy gonna take a shot at you, or artillery shell’s gonna land or something.” But that rest would be short-lived. They held out in the cellars of abandoned houses for two days, until help arrived from the 3rd Battalion. Perhaps foreboding events to come, the Japanese American soldiers of the 100th Battalion (which was by then part of the 442nd) was at one point ordered to march beyond the nearest friendly troops and cut off from the rest of the unit. When the 442nd was ordered to attempt the rescue of the Lost Battalion, they had just finished nine straight days of fighting against German troops entrenched in the densely-forested Vosges mountains.
The 36th Infantry Division-which included both the 442nd and the ill-fated “Alamo Regiment”-had spent most of October 1944 in eastern France, engaged in heavy fighting on harsh terrain. But more than 75 years and at least three generations of war later, I hope we can also recognize it as a story of the hazards of careless and ego-driven leadership, the ways some lives are appraised at higher value than others, and the unequal sacrifices demanded of Japanese Americans during WWII. It’s a story of what people are capable of when their survival is on the line.
The rescue of the Lost Battalion is a story of immense courage in the face of a terrifying, impossible situation. While there is certainly much more nuance and complexity to the story, that mythos is easy to understand.
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