SAN FRANCISCO--Either fighting for a country that labeled them “enemy aliens” or unable to leave their ancestral homeland, Japanese-Americans experienced the destruction of war from both sides and on two continents. 

Buster Kozo Ichikawa, 98, a second-generation Japanese-American, was relocated along with his family in 1942 to the internment camp at Tule Lake in northern California close to the Oregon border.

The camp was bitterly cold in winter and unbearably hot during summer. But no matter how cold it got, those incarcerated only had a coal stove to keep them warm.

“I think we tried to make the best of it,” Ichikawa said.

He was later drafted and joined the all-Nikkei 442nd Regimental Combat Team. After basic training in Mississippi, Ichikawa boarded a ship in New York that took him to Scotland. He and his unit entered France by crossing the Dover Strait.

The immortalized motto of the 442nd, created in 1943, was “Go for Broke.”

It participated in the search for the “Lost Battalion” of Texas that was surrounded by German troops in eastern France and later became one of the most decorated U.S. Army units during the war.

In a past interview, Ichikawa said the 442nd was trying “to prove Japanese-Americans are just as good, if not better, citizens as the rest of the United States.”

But the soldiers of the 442nd paid a heavy price, with about 600 killed among the 14,000 or so unit members as well as another 9,400 or so wounded.

On April 5, 1945, the first day of the Po Valley campaign in a mountainous region near the northern Italian city of Pisa, the 442nd was part of the offensive. 

Ichikawa responded to the call for volunteers.

As they were proceeding into the valley, they were attacked by German troops farther up the mountain. Ichikawa thought he would be safe behind a large boulder, but a mortar shell flew over his head and fragments from the blast tore into his arm.

His fellow soldiers three meters away bore the direct brunt of the explosion.

Ichikawa was taken to a hospital.

“My forearm wouldn’t heal, so I wasn’t able to return to the front lines,” Ichikawa said. “The doctors found they had left a stitch or two in and so they removed them, but by that time, the war was over.”

A year after World War II ended, members of the 442nd paraded in uniform along a major street in Washington, D.C.

Ichikawa still remembers the large number of people along the street who celebrated their return home.

“It was a very proud moment for the Japanese soldiers,” he said.

Later, the members of the 442nd were met near the White House by then President Harry S. Truman who told them, “You fought not only the enemy, but you fought prejudice--and you have won.”

With their families still in the internment camps, some Japanese-Americans may have been hesitant about serving in the U.S. military.

But Ichikawa said, “It was my country so I should serve when called.”

UNEASINESS ABOUT LOYALTY PLEDGE

During World War II, Japanese-Americans were asked to pledge their loyalty to the United States.

After graduating from high school, Koji Ozawa, 95, who was incarcerated at the Topaz internment camp near Delta, Utah, faced the two questions all Japanese-American men were asked--was he prepared to enter the U.S. military and would he pledge unconditional loyalty to the United States and swear to give up allegiance to the Japanese emperor.

“No” answers to both questions led to harsher treatment because the individual was considered disloyal to the United States.

Ozawa and most other young Japanese-Americans answered “yes” to both questions.

Ozawa worked as a translator for U.S. military intelligence and spent a year in the Philippines.

“It gives me a little funny feeling every time I think about it, you know,” he said. “But we had to do it. We are American citizens.”

JAPANESE-AMERICAN IN HIROSHIMA ON AUG. 6, 1945

One Japanese-American who had a rare look at World War II from outside an internment camp or within the U.S. military was Jack Dairiki, 90.

In the summer of 1941, Dairiki left his home in Sacramento, California, and went to Hiroshima, where his father’s family home was.

He was unable to return to the United States after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

Unable to speak Japanese, Dairiki was viewed suspiciously as a spy. He was under constant surveillance by police and called “gaijin” by those around him.

In the summer of 1942, the Red Cross sent a telegram addressed to Dairiki’s father. The telegram said Kenji George, Dairiki’s 8-year-old younger brother, had died in an internment camp.

That was the first time Dairiki and his father realized that their family were no longer living in Sacramento, but had been placed in an internment camp.

Dairiki said he was “shocked” by that reality.

During the war, he was mobilized to work at a factory of what is now Mazda Motor Corp.

He was standing in an inner yard of the factory on Aug. 6, 1945, when he saw three planes flying above. He and others were surprised because there was no air raid siren when a massive explosion occurred.

He covered his eyes and ears after being thrown to the ground. He felt himself being lifted into the air by the bomb blast that blew out all the nearby windows.

He fled to a bunker on a hill and looked back to see a mushroom cloud rising above Hiroshima. Dairiki had been about six kilometers from ground zero when the atomic bomb was dropped.

He was only able to return to the United States in 1948 when he was 17.

“The war is always a bad history, especially the atomic bomb,” he said.

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This story is the third of a four-part series about Japanese-Americans and their memories of World War II on the 80th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.