JACL Newspaper

              Wed., March 4,1981     S.F. Progress A7
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BLACK INK, BLACK DAY — The Presidio's Army Museum will open
its "Go fof Broke" exhibit this Saturday, March 7. It's a salute, the
largest ever, to the Japanese Americans of the 100th Battalion and
442nd Regimental Combat Team, World War It's most decorated units.
There's an ironic note. Curator Eric Saul showed a copy of the Army
order of May 5,1942, the one that herded thousands of U.S. citizens
into concentration camps, because of their Japanese blood. Through
the museum windows, a hundred yards away, there's a view of the
headquarters where the order was issued. Dedication of the exhibit is
at 1 p.m., with many veterans of the 100th and 442nd due to attend, including U.S. Senators Daniel Inouye and Spark Matsunaga from
Hawaii. *•§#•»-*«*• •**»*:••»
I San Francisco I
Progress
Fri., March S, 1981       S.F. Progress A3
'Go For Broke'
exhibit opens
at Presidio
ByJimKeUy
"We've had some
good exhibits here
before. But this one.
while we were putting
it together, did
something to me, deep
inside."
Eric Saul, curator
of the Army Museum at
the Presidio of San
Francisco, was talking
about "Go for Broke."
The visual story of toe
18,000 Japanese
Americans who fought
in World War II, who
wrote an unparalleled
chapter in the U.S. Army's combat history,
opens with dedication
ceremonies tomorrow
at lpm.
Saul expects well
over 1,000 of those
veterans to attend,
men from the famed
100th Battalion and
442nd Regimental
Combat Team. "Go for
Broke" was their motto. In Italy and France,
they pulled all stops in
some of the war's
bloodiest battles.
The two units had
•0 per cent casualties.
The 442nd, which eventually included the
100th, had to be re-
manned three tives
over, from officers :o
privates. Half of those
Nisei (second generation from Japan) troops
came home with combat decorations, a
record unmatched by
any American unit.
President Reagan
got an invitation to the
opening and the big
reunion banquet
tomorrow night at the
Fairmont Hotel. For
sure, Saul counts on
seeing two "Go for
Broke" vets who
became U.S. Senators
— Dan Inouye and Tom
Matsunaga from
Hawaii. Also Col.
James Hanley, the
442nd's senior surviving officer, who wrote,
• while their deeds were
still fresh in mind. "A
military commander
could have had no bet-
! ter combat troops than
: the enthusiastic young
Nisei."
Whatever you feel
about war, about U.S.
citizens who sweated it
out in internment
camps because they
happened to be
Japanese, don't miss
the exhibit. It has
- something to say about
courage in battle and
* behind barbed wire.
There's a diorama
« it took Brian Buhl, 28,
a thousand hours to
build. Buhl lives in the
Sunset. The battle
scene is of Georgia Hill
in Italy, where Pfc.
Sadao Minamori won a
■ posthumous Medal of
Honor. It shows him
leaping atop a German
grenade to save the
lives of three comrades' Buhl took mini-
figures of American
GI's and replaced each
Anglo-Saxon head with
one recognizably
Japanese.
You'll see the
hand-scrawled activation order for the
442nd, dated Feb. 1,
1943, at Camp Shelby,
Miss. It's signed by Col.
C.W. Pence, whose
widow will be at tomorrow's ceremonies. The
order assigned duties
to Seiji Takayanagi.
George Itami, Harry
Uno, Susuma.
Kozahaya. Takao
Susuki, and Hayato
Morikado. Thousand
more came to join
them.
You'll see huge
photo blow-ups of com*
bat and historic
moments, e.g., President Truman telling
the Nisei, "You fought
not only the enemy,
but prejudice — and
you won."
If you run into Eric
Saul, he may tell you
why the exhibit wasn't
easy to get off the
ground, at first. He
says the Nisei vets were
bard to approach,
weren't given much to
talking.