Fighting the enemy was difficult, especially when you were mistaken for them.
April 5: National Go For Broke Day – Honoring the 100th / 442nd Regimental Combat Team / Military Intelligence Serivce
At the start of World War II, many Japanese Americans in Hawai‘i were already serving in the U.S. Army.
But on the mainland, Nisei were quickly barred from service, reclassified as 4-C “enemy aliens,” and denied the chance to fight for their country.
Even in Hawai‘i, some eager young men found themselves diverted into labor and janitorial duties instead of combat.
It didn’t matter that many were born in U.S. territory. It didn’t matter that they pledged allegiance to the same flag. To the U.S. government, their ancestry still outweighed their citizenship.
Yet even in those menial assignments, they served with such discipline and pride that military leaders could no longer ignore what they were capable of.
Many young Japanese American men were eager to prove their loyalty after Pearl Harbor, but at first they were barred from military service.
100th Infantry Battalion Veterans
Soldiers of the Hawaiian Provisional Battalion, the unit that became the foundation of the 100th Infantry Battalion, one of the most decorated fighting forces in U.S. history.
Courtesy of Seattle Nisei Veterans Committee and the U.S. Army
Private First Class Billy Takaezu hanging his laundry dry, 1944
Courtesy of the Bettmann Archive
Many young Japanese American men took the oath of military service while still incarcerated with their families in U.S. camps.
Courtesy of the Honolulu Star Bulletin
Thousands gather to bid 442nd RCT farewell as they left for Camp Shelby, Honolulu, 1943,
Bayonet training at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin. For the Nisei soldiers of the 100th Infantry Battalion, this wasn’t just about combat — it was about proving they belonged.
Signal Corps Photo
442nd Regimental Combat Team training in Camp Shelby, Mississippi, 1943
Fighting For Acceptance
But when that same government finally allowed them to fight — they didn’t hold back.
Thousands of young Nisei men — second-generation Japanese Americans — volunteered to serve, including many from behind barbed wire in U.S. incarceration camps.
Their families had been stripped of their homes and locked away.
But still, these men raised their hands and said, “I’ll fight.”
Go For Broke
They were organized into the 100th Infantry Battalion and later the 442nd Regimental Combat Team — which merged into a single unit that would go on to fight in some of the most grueling battles of the European campaign.
They faced not just the Axis powers — but the weight of proving their loyalty to a country that had betrayed them.
They adopted a motto:
“Go For Broke” — risk everything for a single shot at victory.
And they lived up to it.
Courtesy of Seattle Nisei Veterans Committee and the U.S. Army
442nd Regimental Combat Team climbs into a truck in France
Signal Corps Photo
German storm troopers surrender to 100th Infantry Battalion, Oriciano area, Italy, 1944
A replica of 100th Infantry Battalion Distinctive Unit Insignia
For months, Allied forces failed to break through. When the 100th Infantry Battalion was sent here, Monte Cassino was one of the deadliest battles of World War II.
Signal Corps Photo
The Lost Battalion were surrounded by Nazi troops for six days until the 442nd broke through. 211 of them were saved at the cost of over 800 Nisei casualties.
Some wounded soldiers were known to "reverse AWOL," going back to the front line against medical advice
Courtesy of The National WWII Museum, New Orleans
The Purple Heart, awarded to soldiers wounded or killed in combat, became synonymous with the 100th Infantry Battalion after its devastating losses in Italy.
The Purple Heart Battalion
The 100th Infantry Battalion had earned the nickname “Purple Heart Battalion” in Italy, after taking devastating losses at Monte Cassino and Anzio.
In France, they helped rescue the “Lost Battalion,” a group of 211 soldiers from a Texas unit surrounded by German forces.
To reach them, the 442nd had to fight through heavily fortified enemy lines and suffered massive casualties.
They suffered over 800 casualties to save 211.
It was one of the most selfless and heroic acts of the war.
So many of them were wounded, the 100th Battalion became known as the “Purple Heart Battalion.”
The Most Decorated Units
By the end of WWII, the 100th/442nd had earned over 18,000 individual decorations, including:
- 4,000 Purple Hearts
- 848 Bronze Stars
- 371 Silver Stars
- 7 Distinguished (now Presidential) Unit Citations
- 21 Medals of Honor
They became — and remain — the most decorated unit in U.S. military history, for its size and length of service.
Courtesy of the Library of Congress
Undersecretary of War Robert Patterson congratulates Lt. Masanao Otake
Pvt. George Sakato charged through gunfire, taking command after his squad leader was killed. He earned the Distinguished Service Cross, later upgraded to the Medal of Honor.
President Truman walking past troops standing attention during his review of the Japanese-American 442nd Regimental Combat Team, Washington DC, July 15, 1946
Inside a secret classroom at the Presidio. In the fall of 1941, just weeks before Pearl Harbor, Japanese American students quietly studied military Japanese in this room.
Two Nisei soldiers of the MIS interrogate a captured Japanese prisoner. Armed with language skills and cultural fluency, they helped to save lives and shorten the war.
The Silent Service
While the 100th and 442nd fought in Europe, thousands of Japanese American soldiers served in the Military Intelligence Service (MIS) across the Pacific.
They translated captured documents, interrogated prisoners, intercepted communications, and helped persuade enemy soldiers and civilians to surrender.
Their language skills saved countless American lives and helped shorten the war.
General Charles Willoughby later called the MIS contribution worth the equivalent of several divisions.
Like the men of the 442nd, many MIS soldiers served while their own families remained behind barbed wire in America.
Multiple Battle Fronts
But they didn’t just fight the war.
They fought racism. They fought doubt. They fought for the right to be seen as Americans.
Their legacy isn’t just medals. It’s the quiet courage of fighting for a country that questioned your right to fight at all.
Today, on Go For Broke Day, we honor the Nisei soldiers of the 100th/442nd/MIS — and the example they set for all Americans. They risked everything to prove that freedom wasn’t about ancestry. It was about action. They went for broke.
So we could remember what it means to stand for something.
Signal Corps Photo
While many of their families remained imprisoned, soldiers of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team became some of the most decorated in U.S. military history.
Nisei soldiers pay their respects to a fallen comrade. Behind every medal and battlefield honor was a cost measured in friendship, sacrifice, and lives that never made it home.
Courtesy of UC Berkeley / Bancroft Library
Kazuo Komoto shows his Purple Heart to his younger brother at Gila River, where their family remained incarcerated during the war.
Nisei "Go For Broke" soldiers received the Congressional Gold Medal on November 2, 2011
Interesting how all the issues we went through during WWII are now being told! My family lived on a farm in Half Moon Bay, California — my parents, four brothers and five sisters. We were first taken to the Tanforan race track in San Bruno which had been quickly converted into a camp which they referred to as an “assembly center” rather than a prison! Because we had such a large family, we were lucky to be assigned two adjoining rooms in a barrack. Others were put into the horse stalls which had been quickly converted into living units — but the smell of horse dung was still present!
After several months, we were taken to Topaz, Utah where we stayed until the end of WWII in 1945. However, all my brothers were subjected to being drafted into the Army! My oldest and youngest brothers ended up in Germany — the second oldest brother found out that he had kidney failure and was 4-F – so he did not serve. Brother #3 was sent to the Army language school at the Presidio in San Francisco and then shipped to Japan. That turned out to be a positive issue for him because he was the only one that got the opportunity to meet our maternal grandmother!
Thank you so much for sharing your family’s story, Midori. Your family’s journey from Half Moon Bay to Tanforan, Topaz, and ultimately military service mirrors so much of the contradiction of this history.
May we never forget.