A Connecticut Yankee in Nisei King Company's Court: With the Japanese American 442nd RCT in World War II

Abstract

This is the story of a country boy raised on a dairy farm in Gilead, CT who, like many others, was caught up in the struggle to stop the onslaught led by the tyrannical dictators who started World War II. It is a story of how the horrors of war and the experience with the brave, bright, loyal Americans of Japanese ancestry taught me a great deal about the meaning of life -- a meaning that I will seek forever to appreciate more fully.

Many of these young men and their families were literally torn from their homes, loaded into trucks and shipped off to concentration camps. Can you imagine what it was like to be an innocent American deprived of your rights of citizenship? Yet they volunteered and formed the most distinguished, most decorated army unit in the history of the United States. These young Nisei men had three objects in mind: 1) work together as a team, 2) get the damn war over, and 3) go home and take care of their families. Unfortunately, many gave their last full measure of devotion on the blood-stained battlefields of World War II. I know. I was there.