StudyQuest

The 442nd Regimental Combat Team

1944Italy, France, and Germany (European theater)high importance

A segregated U.S. Army unit of Japanese American (Nisei) soldiers who fought in Europe during World War II, many volunteering from behind the barbed wire of American internment camps, and became the most decorated unit of its size in U.S. Army history.

Where this fits on the timeline. After Pearl Harbor pulled the United States into World War II, fear and prejudice turned against Japanese Americans at home even as the country asked young Nisei men to fight for it abroad. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team, formed in 1943 and sent into combat in 1944, answered that call from an almost impossible position: many of its soldiers volunteered while their own families sat locked in American prison camps. Their motto was 'Go for Broke,' and few units in history have lived up to a motto so completely.

A country that imprisoned its own

Loyalty questioned, families locked away. In 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which led the government to forcibly remove and imprison about 120,000 Japanese Americans, most of them U.S. citizens, in remote internment camps. They lost homes, farms, and businesses, guilty of nothing but their ancestry. When the Army began recruiting Nisei (second-generation Japanese American) soldiers, thousands stepped forward anyway, many signing up from behind barbed wire. They chose to prove their loyalty to a nation that had just declared them suspect, a decision of extraordinary courage that split families and communities.

'Go for Broke'

One team, forged from Hawaii and the camps. The 442nd absorbed the 100th Infantry Battalion, a unit of Hawaii Nisei that had already earned respect in Italy and was nicknamed the 'Purple Heart Battalion' for its heavy losses. Together they trained hard and adopted the Hawaiian gambler's phrase 'Go for Broke,' meaning to risk everything on one roll. Whether they came from the sugar plantations of Hawaii or the barracks of the mainland camps, these men knew that any failure would be blamed on all Japanese Americans, and any success might help set their families free.

Into the fight in Europe

Rescuing the Lost Battalion. The 442nd fought its way through Italy, France, and Germany, and its most famous action came in France's Vosges Mountains in October 1944. A Texas unit, the 'Lost Battalion' of the 36th Division, was surrounded by German forces and cut off. The 442nd was ordered to break through and rescue them. Over several brutal days of fighting in cold, forested hills, the Nisei soldiers punched through the German lines and saved roughly 200 trapped men, taking far heavier casualties than the number they rescued. It became one of the most celebrated rescues of the war.

Witnesses at Dachau

Liberators of the persecuted. In the final weeks of the war in April 1945, the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion, a part of the 442nd, was among the American units that helped free prisoners from a subcamp of Dachau. Soldiers whose own families were imprisoned in American camps now opened the gates for survivors of Nazi persecution. That moment ties the story of the 442nd directly to the larger horror of the Holocaust and gives it a haunting kind of meaning: men treated as enemies at home became liberators abroad.

The most decorated unit of its size

Honor that could not be denied. For its size and length of service, the 442nd became the most decorated unit in U.S. Army history. Its soldiers earned about 21 Medals of Honor (many upgraded to that rank after a review in 2000 corrected wartime discrimination), thousands of Purple Hearts, and 8 Presidential Unit Citations. Among its most famous soldiers was Daniel Inouye, who lost an arm in combat, received the Medal of Honor, and went on to serve for decades as a U.S. senator from Hawaii. In 2010 the 442nd, the 100th Battalion, and the Military Intelligence Service received the Congressional Gold Medal.

Why they matter

Proof of loyalty, and a lesson about prejudice. The 442nd belongs in the same story of courage as the Tuskegee Airmen, the Navajo Code Talkers, the Six Triple Eight, the Borinqueneers, and men like Dorie Miller, minority Americans who served with distinction while their own country denied them equality. Their record helped discredit the wartime hysteria behind internment, which the government formally apologized for in 1988, and their example fed into the postwar civil rights movement. They had, in the truest sense, gone for broke, and won.

Further reading

Recommended, age-appropriate books to explore this further. Links open a library catalog search.

Key Takeaways

1

The 442nd Regimental Combat Team was a segregated unit of Japanese American (Nisei) soldiers who fought in Europe during World War II under the motto "Go for Broke"

2

Many volunteered from behind barbed wire while their families were imprisoned in U.S. internment camps under Executive Order 9066, which incarcerated about 120,000 Japanese Americans

3

The unit absorbed the Hawaii Nisei 100th Infantry Battalion and fought in Italy, France, and Germany

4

In October 1944 it rescued the surrounded "Lost Battalion" of Texas soldiers in the Vosges Mountains, saving about 200 men at heavy cost

5

Its 522nd Field Artillery Battalion helped liberate prisoners from a subcamp of Dachau in April 1945

6

For its size and service it became the most decorated unit in U.S. Army history (about 21 Medals of Honor) and received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2010

Key Figures