JACL Newspaper

              1   SMOKING   I
ROOM      »
l»_S»a»»*«J
ItOMY
The weather forecast for
Saturday was "showers." That
threat did not materialise,
luckily, as the "Go For Broke*
Exhibit opening event in front
of the Presidio Army Museum
was conducted with proper
pomp and ceremony including a
17-gun salute.
After eompletion of the
ceremonial portion of the
afternoon, Mike Masaoka took
ever the M.C. chores for the
second portion of the program.
He had just introduced the Issei
Chorus from Wataonville and its
seniors had just started to sing
"God Blew America* #when
there appeared from the crowd
a big muscular man, who looked
like a truck driver, walking up
briskly toward the podium
shouting something unintelligible. The many in the audience
thought he had shouted "Peral
Harbor" or something like it
and imagined that there was a ,
croakpot among the crowd of ;
2,000 or more. The man was
grabbed quickly by another tall
man in the audience and was led
away. The demonstrator was
turned over to the M.P.. who
handcaffed the man and led him
away from the crowd.
It turned out that the
demonstrator was a crackpot,
all right, but he was not
shouting "Pearl Harbor" or
anything like it. He was
shouting about "Viet Nam" and
demonstrating against war as it
was reported in the Sunday
Examiner. (Set it* reprint
elsewhere on this page.) The Issei
Chorus from Watsonville
continued to sing while the
incident was taking and finished
it beautifully.
But just imagine:1, suppose
there was a meeting of San
Franciscans 40 years ago at the
same place in the Presidio with
Gen. DeWitt ("A Jap is a Jap")
presiding, demanding evacuation of the entire Japanese
population from this city, and
there appeared a man from the
crowd shouting "Shame!
Shame!" He would have been
arrested quickly as a crackpot
Any person showing any
sympathy for Nisei was
considered a "crackpot" at that
time 40 years ago.
What an irony!
Gen. DeWitt is gone In his
Slace as commander of the U.S.
ixth Army headquartered at
the .S.F. Presidio is Col. F.
Whitney Hall, Jr., praising the
valor of the Nisei evacuees and
making soul-searching comments on the great social
incident that took place in San
Francisco and other cities along
the West Coast 40 years ago.
And the Army Museum is now
holding an exhibit to show what
kind of Americans were the
Nisei in spite of everything that
took place during a national
hysteria.
I think "Uncle Sam* has said
"uncle," already.
It is not manly of any person
or group to continue to thrash a
person * or, a nation — when
he, or it has said "uncle." The
greatness of a person or group
lies in the magnanimity of
forgiveness. Most of the Nisei
fee! that way, I think.
Howard M. IaaaxeJd
HOKUBEI H MAINICHI
TUESDAY. MARCH 10, 1961
Presidio Army Museum Opens
With 442nd War Memorabilia
Nisei Vets Have Their Day
By BILL BOLDENWEEK
(S.F. Exasniaer)
It was a proud, bittersweet,
moment as the members of the
442nd Regimental Combat Team
and the 100th Infantry Battalion
gathered at the Presidio yesterday (Saturday).
The gathering, marking the
dedication of the 442nd's exhibit
at the Presidio Army Museum,
was part of the largest reunion of
Japanese-American veterans
ever held on the mainland.
They are proud of their units
and their accomplishments. But
there were many traces of
bitterness as the speakers
recalled that many of the members of the units were recruited
behind barbed wire in "American
style concentration camps."
And several remarked that the
men had paid for their citizenship
and their children's with their
own blood.
The record of possibly the
most remarkable unit in the
history of the nation can be
partly-illustrated with a series of
numbers.
One Medal of Honor. 52
Distinguished Service Crosses,
560 Silver Stars with 28 Oak Leaf
Clusters noting second awards,
15 Soldiers Medals for saving
life. 4,000 Bronze Stars with
1,200 Oak Leaf Clusters, and
9.486 Purple Heart Medals in
token of battle wounds.
Those were the individual
medals. The unit also piled up
seven Presidential Unit Citations
and a slew of other unit honors,
including 18 decorations from
allied nations.
The 100th and the 442nd
combined were the moat decorated unit for its size and
length of service in the history of
the United States.
On the speakers platform were
two of- the three Jspenese-
Amerieana in the U.S. Senate,
both of them veterans of the
units.
The ceremony was marked
with suitable military pomp as
cannon fired the 17-gun salute
appropriate to honors for a U.S.
senator, the Sixth Army Band
'played stirring marches and the
national anthem, and a spH-and-
polish firing squad fired a
precision volley of three shots.
Then a bugler played Taps"
and the poignancy of the soft, sad
call was doubled by an echoing
bugler serosa the field.
After the honors to the dead
comrsdes, the speakers recalled
the past Mike Masaoka, the
master of ceremonies, was not
inclined to mince words.
MWe had a general living in
this Presidio at that time (December 1941) who said. 'A Jap's s
Jap* regardless of his citizenship," Masaoka recalled, "and a
colonel who said. If you're
one- 16th Japanese you have to
move away from your home and
work and live in a camp.'
"Even Hitler, with what he did
to the Jews, only took it to
one-eighth Jewish blood."
Masaoka said there were two
ways to look at the evacuation,
as the government-ordered mass
migration and camp confinement
was called: with bitterness, or
with positive feelings.
Yesterday's gathering, he
said, was s positive function.
But he noted. "We had to
purchase the right to live as
Americans, not only for ourselves, but for our children's
children...
"We had to prove that the
blood of Japanese-Americans
flows as red as that of any
other Americans, and that when
we're shot, we die."
He said. "Many of us had to
fight our way into the Army.
And then they took us to Camp
Shelby, Miss., and for the first
time in our lives we aw separate
washrooms, one for the whites
and one for the blacks, and we
didn't know which one to use."
He added that as the troop
trains pulled into stations in the
South the soldiers went hungry
at many of the stations because
food vendors would refuse to sell
to them.
"As Genera] Stiliwell said, we
have purchased with our blood
the right to be American citizens," he concluded.
He introduced 18 members of
the Japanese-American Senior
Citizens Club of Watsonville,
who, he noted, were between 74
and 92 "and couldn't even own
land in California until 1952."
They sang s soft, moving, "God
Bless America."
It was during the song that a
- young man strode down the
middle aisle and shouted, *Tm
with Vietnam Veterans Against
the War. What's going on here is
part of preparing for World War
in."
That was as far as he got
before a sizable man in the
audience grabbed him by the arm
and started trying to lead him
away.
Several military police in plain
clothes arrived and hustled the
demonstrator away.
Mayor Feinstein observed that
it is important to hear about the
evacuation of the Japanese-
Americans to concentration
camps "because to forget such
things is to make it possible for
them to happen again."
Sens. Spark Mstsunaga and
Daniel Inouye. both of Hawaii
and both veterans of the unit
spoke with pride of the history of
the 100th and the 442nd. but
Inouye took care to remember
the white officers who led the
"There were three types of
men in the 442nd," he said, "the
National Guardsmen who were
activated at the very beginning
of the war, those who enlisted in
the camps and the non-Japanese.
"These officers were all volunteers who stepped forward and
risked their careers and endured
the jeers of their fellow officers."
He   introduced   Col.   James ^
Haniey, Ret., one of the regiment's leaders, and the widow of
Col.  Charles  W.   Pence,   first
commander of the regiment.
Then the ribbon was cut to
open the exhibit which will run
for a year. The museum is open
from 10 s.ra. to 4 p.m. Tuesday
through Saturday.