Go for Broke

Every Fourth of July, I post a humble tribute to those who've served. The unifying theme is the narrator's evolution from child to adult, which is what happens when you take the oath. I try to highlight lesser-known contributors to ensure that they are also memorialized, and this year's story certainly fits that bill. Before researching this, my only knowledge of the 442nd RCT came courtesy of Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid, which is disturbing, since those were real-life heroes and this is their story. I hope you enjoy it.

Now for the fine print... For you, category Nazis, this is in Loving Wives because it has all the classic elements of unjust loss of a lover to a despicable bad guy. Be forewarned if that bothers you. More relevantly, I have posted the tributes from the past four years in this category. And that is where the seven people who regularly read me expect to find me. So, once more unto the breach, dear friends... DT

GO FOR BROKE

The old man walked between the abandoned structures, kicking up desert dust as he went. His progress disturbed a big lizard, which skittered onto the broken-down steps of a mostly demolished building. The lizard crouched and stared balefully at the old man, like it was wondering what a human was doing in such a godforsaken place.

The temperature hovered in the hundreds, and the sun was merciless. The old man stopped and gazed toward the bleak, heat-blasted mountains that loomed in the distance. It was as if he were orienting himself. Then he nodded and walked purposefully toward a building whose roof had collapsed but still retained some of its former barracks-like exterior.

The old man paused in the doorway and looked down the length of the structure, which, in its time, had been the living quarters for dozens of families. A tiny lost dolly lay sprawled on a pile of rusting bed frames. Curious, he picked it up and looked at it. But it held no significance. So, he gently placed it back on the rubble.

The remains of the fallen roof blocked most of the old man's view. But he remembered the noise and smell of too many humans living too close to each other, as well as the pitiful sounds of people crying in the night. He shook his head in resignation, turned, and walked back into the dusty sage-brush strewn area between twenty similar buildings. The sight was no worse than it'd been back then--only different.

He reached into his pocket and produced an ancient Kodak Brownie. The camera was as much an anomaly as the old man. He snapped a series of pictures. It was as if he were trying to preserve something of great significance. But it had happened too far in the past to understand its meaning.

The sun was intense, and the heat was so overwhelming that it felt like a giant hand was pressing down on him. He would never have imagined the limitations of old age when he was young -- how powerless he would feel. He could detect the weakness down to his very bones. It was as if the stark reality of the approaching inevitable was tapping him on the shoulder.

The old man had an old-fashioned Army canteen slung over his left shoulder. He took it, unscrewed the top, and drank greedily. Then he carefully put the top back on and screwed it shut. He laughed at himself. He had always been so ridiculously meticulous. It was something bred into him by his culture.

The old man took one last look around. Then he turned and began to plod slowly toward the ruins of an abandoned masonry building. He remembered the long days that he'd spent in that building, trying to squeeze the last few drops of meaning out of his life.

A warning sign was posted on one of the adobe pillars. It said, "Beware of Bees." The old man snorted in amusement. He knew from experience that there were a lot worse hazards than bees in that area - like scorpions, ten-foot rattlesnakes, Gila monsters, and the occasional coyote or wolf. THOSE features of the deep Sonoran Desert were an eye-opening experience for a kid who had spent his entire pampered childhood in suburban Los Angeles.

He walked several steps inside the roofless wreck and stood there trying to orient himself. Then he took a few measured paces to his left and stopped, reached into the florist's box he was carrying, pulled out a single perfect red camellia, kissed it, and dropped it at his feet.

In the hanakotoba -- the flower language of Japan -- the camellia symbolizes painful love and unwavering devotion. He gazed at the beautiful thing as it lay there in the dust and ruin, reflecting. Then he muttered under his breath, "fitting," turned, and walked sadly out of the building.

His granddaughter was standing next to a white Mercedes EQE sedan, patiently waiting for him to emerge. The old man snorted again... electric... really??! He searched his memory, trying to recall whether he had ever imagined being driven around in a high-end electric car - nope... nothing, nada. He didn't expect there to be.

The old man's granddaughter was stunning. A flawless face, an elegant figure, and the grace and sophistication of a woman who, at age twenty-six, had the world by the nuts. She was wearing a white linen dress that contrasted with her dusky skin, and her long, smooth black hair was styled back in one of those refined waterfalls that only the truly wealthy can afford.

It was evident that she adored her Gramps. She rushed around the vehicle to open the passenger side door, fussing like a mama hen over her chick. She said, "Get in quick before you have heatstroke... I've got the air conditioning turned up."

The old man had another one of his far too frequent ironic thoughts, "The kids have absolutely no idea. It's probably best that they don't. The current generation wouldn't survive in a world before technology. But then again... nobody in their right mind would ever live here--willingly!"

The old man sat in the plush leather of the Mercedes as his granddaughter drove them out of that place. He gazed through the elegantly tinted passenger window as if he were watching a movie. His granddaughter said, to make conversation, "Why in the world did you want to come to this awful place?" The old man said, "It's a long story, and it is probably worth telling, my dear one."

*****

The count was three and two, and I knew the pitcher would have to come in with the next one, or risk walking in the winning run. I was the worst player on an arguably bad team. But they didn't have any pinch hitters left. So, the manager had sent me up to the plate with the sage advice, "Try to get beaned."

That was hurtful. But getting hit by the pitch was probably the only way I would be able to get on base. Their pitcher was a brute. He had been throwing high heat all day. But maybe he was getting tired. Because Mikey had smoked him for a sharp single to right, and then the guy had walked two after that.

The game was tied at the bottom of the ninth, mainly because our pitcher was good, too. Now it was all up to me, a tall, gangly kid who sat on the far end of the bench only because his dad was a rabid baseball fan. I was a reader and a thinker, not a doer, and I hated baseball. I was a disappointment.

The world is full of all kinds of people, and my lot in life was to be awkward. Still, that was who I was. I was also cleverer than most. Their pitcher had thrown five pitches to me, two strikes and three close misses. While that was going on, I had not as much as moved the bat off my shoulder. I could hear my dad's voice above the rest of the fans yelling, "Hit it out of the park, Sabby." I loved the guy. But he was a long way from being realistic.

I knew that the next pitch would be right across the middle, and it would be thrown carefully, not hard, like the freak on the mound had been doing. Overpitching was what had put the last two guys on first and second base. So, yes... the pitch floated in, just as I expected, and I was waiting with my right hand moved way up the bat... to bunt it down the third base line.

I wasn't so utterly uncoordinated that I couldn't put a piece of hickory in front of a slowly incoming ball. The other team, who'd seen how hopeless I was, was caught totally off guard. So, they had no play on me. I was scampering up the line toward first as Mikey streaked across the plate to score the winning run. And that was the first time I realized that anything was possible.

Our guys mobbed Mikey at home plate, while the other team walked disgustedly off the field. My dad mobbed me after I finished my run to first base. My girlfriend Yuki was with him. Yuki was cute as a button, a little Japanese doll ... all five-one and one hundred pounds of her. They were both just as excited as the fifteen other players celebrating ninety feet away.

My dad was short and stocky, like the rest of us. I mean, seriously... I had no idea where tall and skinny came from. Whoever contributed those genes must have done so before the Meiji restoration... generation-wise, that is. Since nobody else in the family was tall, and I was Japanese to the core.

Yuki and I were the first generation born in the United States. Our grandfathers had been recruited as cheap labor to replace the Chinese, who had laid down the Transcontinental railroad and worked the gold mines of California. And the new Japanese immigrants brought their children with them. Those children were our parents.

American business always needs foreigners to exploit... from the Irish beat cops, through the Italians in the construction trade, and the Poles in the factories. We Japanese replaced the Chinese... who were unceremoniously booted out of the U. S. by the Exclusion Act of 1882. Nonetheless, we had a special talent for growing things in small spaces, and we quickly became dominant in the vegetable markets thanks to our small truck farms.

Naturally, we also did fishing better than anybody else. So, the best fishing fleets and canneries were located over on Terminal Island. The Japanese owned them... or we owned them as much as we could... since we still had to work around our neighbors' prejudices.

Both Yuki and I were brought up in Little Tokyo, in an upper-middle-class lifestyle that our Japanese forefathers could never have imagined. Her Dad owned half a dozen fishing boats, and my dad owned the cannery. Both of our parents had inherited those things from their parents. Who had leveraged our ability to fish into a vast empire.

All of us Japanese had arrived as legal immigrants, and thanks to the Fourteenth Amendment, my generation was American from birth. But we still ran into the same prejudice the Chinese had faced. The Anglos didn't want us living among them... after all, we were the "Yellow Peril." So, Little Tokyo was formed and thrived separately from the rest of LA.

We built schools, temples, and churches, as well as markets and restaurants - right there in our little, unsettled corner of the LA basin. We adopted American traditions, things like baseball, hot dogs, and apple pie. However, we added a Japanese American cultural twist to them. So, the Baptist church sponsored children's sumo tournaments, and the Buddhist temple organized a Boy Scout troop, while our school's white teachers observed Japanese holidays.

Why do I use the term "white" to describe the people we lived with? Well... most residents of LA looked more or less similar to one another. However, we Japanese have our distinctive Asian features. So, the majority lumped us in the category of "different," not to be trusted or socialized with unless they wanted something from us.

LA wasn't like it is now. It's just one concrete sprawl today. But places like Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, and even West Hollywood had a distinctive identity in those days, and there was real green space separating the various locations. Our extensive and complex Japanese American community was centered on First Avenue, just east of downtown. However, individual Japanese families lived all over the Los Angeles Basin in fishing towns, farming villages, and suburban neighborhoods, from Pasadena to Long Beach and down to Terminal Island.

There was a lot of overt discrimination. But that merged into the background as you grew older. I was nineteen, and I felt that being discriminated against by low-life white trash was way down my list of worries. My life revolved around the two things that absorb every teenage boy... sex and school.

My girlfriend Yuki was a gorgeous little woman with the same hormone problems I had. So, whenever our parents weren't watching, we would sneak off to Venice Beach. We could get there because I had a 1932 Ford roadster. It cost my dad $150 with 40,000 miles on it. That was expensive, but as the only male heir in my family, I'd grown accustomed to the benefits that came with it.

My Yuki was a classic Bijin beauty, with flawless, light skin, long, smooth, and abundant black hair framing a perfectly proportioned oval face and a high-bridged nose, so prized by Japanese men. Yuki was slim and petite, approximately five one and perhaps 100 pounds. But she had an hourglass figure, everything in miniature, including a twenty-one-inch waist. That was how exquisite she was.

Both of us were Nisei. Our parents, who were called Issei, came over as children, with the first wave of Japanese immigration at the start of the Twentieth Century. But Yuki's parents had been a little older when they arrived - old enough to have already adopted rigid Japanese cultural attitudes. Hence, Yuki was supposed to display the traditional Japanese virtues of modesty, tidiness, courtesy, and compliance. And, under no circumstances should she EVER question the judgment of men. That ultimately caused our undoing.

My Yuki was a Japanese woman, and it's a trait of our culture that you never know what's behind the Kabuki mask. Sweet, deferential Yuki was a perfect illustration of that axiom. She did a good job of hiding her feelings about being treated like a family asset. But she had a rebellious streak. Most of which was channeled into devious ways to spend time with me.

For instance, it would be unheard of for two nineteen-year-old Japanese kids to be seen together unchaperoned at night. But it wasn't odd for Yuki and her best friend Akane to go over to the USC main library for an evening of serious study. Of course, if Ichiro, Akane's boyfriend, and I happened to be studying in the same library, well... what a coincidence!

Most evenings, we would sit around a table and work on our class assignments. We were all in our sophomore year at the University of Southern California, and the courses were challenging. But we could hold hands and make goo-goo eyes at each other while we were studying. Sometimes, there was even a stolen kiss and a little fondling in the stacks.

It was an enjoyable life... until it wasn't.

A kid's reality is shaped by their experiences growing up. And all that Yuki and I had ever known was a privileged teenagerhood. So, I mean really!! Who could blame us if we didn't understand that greed and self-aggrandizement are fundamental aspects of life? Nonetheless, fate was about to teach us a painful lesson.

My introduction to actual reality - I mean... life the way it is, rather than the way I wanted it to be... happened one fateful evening in mid-November. Yuki and Akane arrived for our usual study session, looking like they were mourning a death in the family. Yuki's eyes were red from crying, and Akane was buzzing around her friend like a honeybee around a hollyhock. That was a bit disturbing.

Yuki and Akene were standing in the cavernous entrance hall, which was packed with people. So, they didn't see me approach. They both jumped when I said, concerned, "What's wrong?" Yuki looked sorrowfully at me. Then she did something unheard of in Japanese culture. She threw her arms around my neck and buried her head in my chest, crying.

That immediately began to attract attention, which was the last thing I wanted. So, I said, "Let's take this into the stacks." We'd done that numerous times when we wanted to have a little privacy for making out.

Yuki said, "No, this is too important... follow me."

My girlfriend then turned, strode out of the library, and headed through Crocker Plaza, across Exposition Boulevard, and into the trees fronting the Exposition Park Rose Garden. I trailed behind, bewildered. This was getting weirder by the second.

It was after 9 p. m., and the sky was getting dark. You could hear the city sounds. I was growing increasingly anxious as we walked to the center of the grove. Then Yuki turned. The look she gave me was pure regret. She grabbed the back of my head and dragged me into an open-mouthed kiss unlike anything we'd ever shared and said with simple sincerity, "I love you."

Now THAT was astonishing. Japanese men grow up expecting their women to wait for directions. So, Yuki's forthrightness was both unexpected and unsettling. But of course... I was a naïve piece of crap back then, totally unaware of how shitty the world was. However, I was about to be enlightened, and it was in the most painful possible way.

To understand my puzzlement, you would have to realize how far over the traditional line Yuki had just gone. I stood there looking down at my love's perfect pale face framed by its lush curtain of hair and said, "I love you too. But what brought this on?"

Yuki composed herself and said with a little sob, "Last night, my family informed me that I am to marry Sado Sakamoto at the beginning of next month."

If this had been summer, there would have been nothing but the sound of crickets. But it was late Fall. So, I just stared into Yuki's distressed eyes, my mouth open, flabbergasted and uncomprehending.

I finally got enough brain cells together to say, "I'm sorry. Did you say that you and Sado Sakamoto are getting married?" Yuki nodded her head sadly.

I said in an embarrassingly whiney voice, "But how could this happen? We love each other. We're going to get married and raise a crop of babies."

Yuki said sadly, "My father's business has suffered setbacks since he lost those two boats in last Fall's storm. Tadeo, Sado's father, will loan my father the money to get back on his feet if he gives me to his son."

I was an American of Japanese descent. So naturally, I knew about Omiai. It was something cooked up four hundred years ago by the samurai class to preserve bloodlines and cement alliances. But this was Twentieth Century America, not Feudal Japan. And forcing an innocent girl to marry a stranger was just plain morally wrong, no matter how ingrained the concept of arranged marriage might be within Japanese culture.

I knew Sado. We called him "damasu," which means "fool." He was a useless piece of shit who happened to be the only son of the guy who owned the bank. His father would never put the guy in charge of any real financial management, because he was as incompetent as he was stupid. Instead, Sado's role was to serve as the gatekeeper in his dad's loan operation. There... he was remarkably talented at cold-blooded cruelty. Whether you got the loan or not depended on how willing you were to debase yourself to him.

Sakamoto was also several years older than Yuki and me, and he was a bully... big, fat, loud, and obnoxious. I couldn't think of a worse match for sweet, pure, eager-to-please Yuki. I could feel the rage building. I growled, "You don't love him. He'll make your life miserable."

Yuki gave me a look of pure anguish and said, sadly, "I know."

I said, "There must be something we can do."

Yuki said, her voice deepened by hopelessness, "I have no choice. It would be unthinkable to say no."

Yuki was right, of course. The heads of two families had agreed on the deal. And naturally, they didn't bother consulting Yuki because her opinion didn't count. There was no way for Yukia and me to fight ingrained cultural attitudes. So, the weight of a thousand years of tradition, as well as deep-seated Japanese beliefs about obedience, conspired to wed my love to a kaibutsu... a monster.

First-time heartbreak is a special kind of pain, one that you don't think you'll ever survive. Yuki and I held each other and cried in that dark, earthy slice of the big city. It would be almost eleven months before I saw her again, and that was in a different world.

Shinto-Buddhist weddings are private affairs, typically attended by blood relatives and a select group of VIPs. So, I wasn't invited. I heard that Yuki was gorgeous in her shiromuku - a bride's over-kimono. I could have gone to the reception, but I knew that the sight of my love docilely serving that pig, as a good Japanese wife should, would be too much to bear. And thoughts of what was going to happen to Yuki after the reception were driving me almost literally insane.

I honestly believed that Yuki's wedding day, Saturday, December 6th, was the most excruciatingly painful day of my life. Of course, I was only nineteen, and I didn't have a clue that life could hold much more agonizing things than a lovelorn heart. But I was quickly educated.

*****

The next day, my dad and I were watching a California Winter League game at Anderson Park over in Boyle Heights. The Los Angeles White Sox were one of those all-black teams that thrived in the West Coast's year-round baseball environment. The Sox were good. They played and beat everybody from Major League teams to minor leaguers and club teams. Now, they had a stadium.

The Sox's big star was Oscar Charlston, who was one of the best baseball players of any color in the entire Country. My dad wanted his autograph, so we were seated in the expensive box seats right next to the dugout.

As expected, the Sox were up five runs in the third inning. That was when there was an odd stirring among the spectators. It was as if something noteworthy had just happened. The muttering began as a low murmur and accelerated to a full-throated cacophony of conversation.

I looked around to see what had caused the stir and noticed that the crowd's eyes were all focused on my dad and me, sitting conspicuously next to the dugout. I had no idea what the problem was. But it didn't look good. So, I said, "Uh, Dad. I think we ought to leave. He said, "No! I haven't gotten Charleston's autograph yet."

The first hot dog hit him as he said that, followed by a beer bottle that whizzed by his head. What the actual fuck? I had no idea what was going on. But the crowd had the look of a lynch mob. My dad was frozen in astonishment. I grabbed his hand and towed him out of the stadium, walking briskly toward Rindge Lane, where our car was parked. Debris and threats followed in our wake.

We were both mystified as we drove my old man's Packard 180 back to our house. That crowd had obviously targeted us. But why us? Well, that question was answered by every newsboy we passed. All of them were hawking special editions of the LA Times with four-inch headlines proclaiming, "Japs Open War on U. S. With Bombing of Hawaii!!"

You had to be there to appreciate the dread that triggered in the Japanese community... as it quickly became apparent that the white folks all viewed us as enemy agents. Of course, we all knew that we were loyal Americans, even if we happened to look like the people who had bombed Pearl Harbor. But that didn't cut any ice with the overwhelming majority of the population.

So, overnight, my happy life went from pleasant and predictable to one consumed by anxiety. The sense of hopelessness increased when the FBI began arresting our community leaders. It looked like their agents were working from a list. Over a thousand Japanese men were taken into custody in those two days.

My dad was one of those detainees. His arrest on Tuesday, December 9th, was unexpected. There was a polite knock. My father opened the door to find a suit and two soldiers standing on our porch. The man showed my dad some credentials and asked him to accompany him. It was all very civilized. But I didn't see my father again for five months.

The cataclysmic shift in my life's arc was total and unforeseen. In less than three weeks, the genteel existence that I had taken for granted became a nightmare of suspicion and repression. First, the love of my life was snatched away from me by an archaic Japanese tradition. Then my father, the head of our family and breadwinner, vanished. Needless to say, Christmas 1941, which we observed like every other American family, was bleak.

New Year's Eve was spent huddled in our temple while representatives from the government outlined the harsh reality of the upcoming new year. I looked at my mother, whose face was a mask of resolve. While my younger sister kept sobbing, "This can't be happening."

To some extent, the paranoia of our white neighbors was understandable. The Empire of Japan had knocked the U. S.'s main battleship fleet out of the war in one day. Which made the Japanese look terrifyingly invincible. And the residents of America's west coast could reasonably presume that they were next. Hence, Japanese American loyalty became a national security issue.

I hear you asking, "Why wasn't that the case with German Americans and Italian Americans?" Well, the President himself said the quiet part out loud when he wrote, "Because Japanese immigrants are not capable of assimilation into the American population, they cannot be trusted." In contrast, Germans and Italians blended right in with all the other white faces.

Shortly thereafter, we Japanese Americans were officially classified as "an enemy people," which, I might add, is the only time in US history that a people's citizenship was revoked on the grounds of race. And the inherent civil rights of all Japanese American citizens simply vanished.

The culmination of the anti-Japanese sentiment was Executive Order 9066. That occurred in early February, two months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was a Presidential Directive that dictated that all Japanese Americans must be removed from the West Coast to "prevent collusion with the enemy." That order made our hopeless situation real.

First came the curfews, and then the bulletins, informing us where and when we should report for "evacuation." The ironic part was that... those orders were initially written in Japanese, which most of us couldn't read. The government instructed us to bring only bedding, clothing, and personal effects when we reported to temporary "assembly" centers. They gave us two weeks to do it.

Imagine how you would feel if you were told to pack your life into a suitcase and permanently abandon everything that you owned - including your businesses, homes, pets, furniture, and any other item that you couldn't carry. The sense of material loss was crushing.

As a result, in a mere fourteen days... everything that two generations of Japanese Americans had worked to build was either given away or sold for pennies to unscrupulous white "investors." In total, approximately $400 million in Japanese American wealth just evaporated in those two weeks. That was in 1942 dollars. It would be closer to $9 trillion today, including my father's lucrative cannery business.

The smartest thing that I did during that period was to immediately rush down to the bank and withdraw our family's life savings... before all Japanese accounts were frozen. So, most of my single suitcase was stuffed with cash rather than clothes. That money made a big difference in the quality of my family's lives in the camps and afterward.

I had the palpable sense that I was entering a brave new world of suffering, as I locked the door of the home where I had been so lovingly raised. We Japanese all went quietly and willingly. Everything that had happened to us at that point was manifestly unfair, and the fact that our entire world had been unjustly altered had broken our spirit. I also suppose that most of us were still trying to prove that we were good Americans by cooperating. I know... foolish.

My mother, sister, and I, minus my father, gathered at the designated transportation center in downtown LA. There, I found myself immersed in a milling crowd of frightened people and carrying one pathetic suitcase, while a line of armed soldiers herded us onto buses. We were Japanese, and most of us were Shinto Buddhists. So, there was very little outward display of emotion. But I assure you, we were all terrified.

The government had scooped us up so quickly that the "relocation" centers weren't finished. Instead, we took a half-hour ride up to Santa Anita Racetrack. Santa Anita was the habitat for all of the clubby horse-racing set. But it was a race track, not a resort. So, when we got off the bus, a smiling Anglo "tour guide" led our small group to a building whose former occupants had been of the four-legged variety.

A stable was a radical transition from the happy homes we had left that morning. The living situation was ghastly. We were housed in individual stalls, so the noise of people, especially at night, made it hard to sleep. The place itself was filthy, which, if you know Japanese culture, was particularly offensive. The toilet facilities were a hole with a plank over it, where your only option was to squat and play bombs away. The people on that end of the building also had to endure the stench.

The one good thing was that my father eventually returned to us. They had been holding him in the Men's Central Jail, downtown, regularly questioning him about Japanese intentions. Of course, my father had no idea what the residents of an entirely different country, which he had left as an infant, were planning to do. So, he was branded "uncooperative."

They didn't torture him or do anything physical that could be documented. But they also didn't feed him much. So, Dad was in bad shape when he wandered into our stall one sunny morning. The sounds of surprise and delight from my mother and sister were heartwarming. But I knew from looking at my broken old man that I was now the head of the family.

We lived like animals for three months. Then, in late May, groups of us were loaded on trains to be taken to our new home. Needless to say, the "relocation centers," as they called them, were not situated on prime real estate. In our case, the malevolent demon who had destroyed our lives had a bleak sense of disdain because my family was shipped to the Poston Relocation Center in northern Arizona.

I watched out the train window as the civilization of the LA basin slowly turned to empty, mountainous terrain and then deep desert. The train dropped us at Needles, which was as close as the railroad got to the ass end of nowhere. Then, we were loaded on buses and trucked to our new abode.

The camp was an unendurable shithole, especially for people who were used to Los Angeles's relatively mild climate. The temperature as we got off the buses was in the nineties, and the sun was merciless. The cracked earth of the desert landscape seemed to stretch to the horizon, where mountains loomed. But there were also geometrically perfect green spaces, like a checkerboard, surrounding the camp. The Colorado River was three miles away, and they were using it for irrigation. We were the unpaid help.

The camp that we were herded into was newly built. You could smell the fresh lumber and tar paper. The government tried to spin it that we were all given brand new houses, which was valid to the extent that the buildings had just been constructed. However, although the government played with the semantics, and the name didn't hold the implications that it did for the Jews, it was clear that we were living in a concentration camp.

The people in our group were taken to a large building containing row upon row of beds... ahhh, home sweet home. The Japanese are accustomed to living in limited spaces. We all came from a relatively small island. So, we coped. Family groups slept in the same general space within those uninsulated buildings, which were furnished only with cots and coal-burning stoves. Barbed wire enclosed the entire area. Each barracks had a shared bathroom that everyone used, as well as laundry facilities; however, hot water was limited.

My family had four cots aligned in a row. We were early arrivals, so we got a prime location under a couple of windows. Open windows were a necessity if you wanted to sleep at night because the daytime temperature was in the hundreds. The nighttime desert temperature was in the fifties, which might seem bone-chilling. But it cleared out the heat of the day.

The camp itself was surrounded by ten-foot fences, which were patrolled by armed guards who had instructions to shoot anyone who tried to leave. Of course, where could we go? Since there was nothing but a barren desert everywhere you looked. They didn't even bother to put up guard towers at Poston because they knew that nobody could survive the trek out of there. The Spanish Conquistadors called that area the "Jornada del Muerto" -- the Dead Man's Journey.

We did our best. There was a familiar sense of Japanese community, which resembled the collective bonds we had before the camps. We were allowed to live in family groups, and we even followed the same customs we had back in our old lives. Children played sports and engaged in various childhood activities. We had our churches, newspapers, and even little farms, and our talent for growing things in small places provided a variety of fresh vegetables. But education was another thing.

We were Japanese. We valued education above all else, and none of the parents wanted their children to fall behind during their internment. Accordingly, the camp executives decided to build a permanent schoolhouse. That building was the largest structure in the camp. Its walls were fashioned out of adobe blocks, not wood framing, and the outside was finished with a layer of adobe plaster. Fortunately, they had plenty of dirt and water at Poston.

The next challenge was to find teachers. So, a call went out to anybody with a college background. If that request had been made today, there would have been herds of people responding. But higher education was a luxury reserved for the wealthy in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Hence, there were very few people with college degrees anywhere, and only a handful among the internees.

I got the word via a short article in the Poston Chronicle -- and yes... we published a weekly newspaper. The article outlined the qualifications, which amounted to education beyond high school. I felt like I qualified, since I had a whole year and a half at USC. The meeting was in the camp's administration building at the top of the road that bisected the camp.

As I walked into the room, I could tell by the sparse number of voices that very few people had shown up. There might have been individuals in the camp with the right qualifications. But it was a volunteer job, and teaching is hard work, especially in the heat of the day.

Yoshisaku Hirose had been in charge of the project. He was there with seven other people, four of them were matronly Japanese women who had obviously been teachers in their old lives. There were a couple of guys who looked like college fraternity types -- fellows who liked to party. But it was the seventh person who nearly caused my chest to implode. It was Yuki!! I actually staggered as I entered the room.

I hadn't seen Yuki since that fateful night. Seriously!!? Was that only eleven months ago!!? She looked different. It was as if all of the sparkle and vitality had been sucked out of her. Meanwhile, the woman I still desperately loved was covering her face with both hands. It was as if she couldn't bear the sight of me.

Yuki was as beautiful as ever, which explained why the two fraternity boys were sitting on either side of her in a room with seven people and twenty-five chairs. I bowed respectfully to Yoshi and said, "Saburu Sakai at your service, Yoshisaku-san. I was at USC before the troubles."

Then I walked over to take the end chair in the front row, the row that Yuki and her admirers presently occupied. But I made sure that it was well to her left. The meeting was short and straightforward. A range of grades had to be covered. The four professional teachers were all elementary school specialists, so that left Yuki, me, and the boys as the high school faculty.

I had always had a talent for math and science and had been studying engineering at USC. So, my assignment was a no-brainer. Yuki had majored in English literature, and that was what she was asked to teach. The two frat boys had spent three years at UCLA, mainly trying to get laid. However, one had basic historical background. So, he took history, and the other was a political science major, so he took civics.

Let me assure you... There is nothing more uplifting than finding a sense of purpose in chaos. That's why the opportunity to commit myself to teaching was a shining light in that godawful slough of despond. Galvanized by the chance to do something meaningful, I was so geeked that I was already running through topics and lesson plans as the meeting droned on.

Nevertheless, I still had one giant pachyderm to deal with. That was Yuki. So, as soon as the meeting broke up, I walked over to where she was standing, seemingly cornered by the treehouse boys. Yuki's attention shifted to me the moment I sauntered up. I said, embarrassed by how commonplace I sounded, "Hello, Yuki. How have you been?"

I mean, what else could I say? Yuki had been the love of my life. Now she was the wife of another man. To my astonishment, she got a distressed look, turned, and fled out of the room. Her two suitors gave me a "way to fuck things up" look and walked disgustedly in the other direction.

I was torn. On the one hand, I wanted some concrete closure. Seriously!! I still loved the woman. But I hadn't seen her until today, even though Yuki and her husband had been in the same camp. That must mean something. Furthermore, Yuki and I would be working together, and I didn't want any baggage from our idyllic past to get in the way.

So, I bolted out of the administration building, searching for my love in the crowded street. There were a lot of people milling around out there. At its peak, Poston hosted over 17,000 Japanese internees, making it the third largest "city" in Arizona. And nobody but the sick or aged spent the day inside the barracks. It was too hot indoors. It was hot outside, too, but there was always a breath of air stirring. So, people sat in whatever shade they could find, chatting with one another.

I saw a smooth, shining cap of lush black hair turn into a barracks at the far end of the row. My family's quarters were at the opposite end of the same row, a half mile away, which might've explained why I hadn't run into Yuki or her husband in the five months I'd been there.

So, without the slightest idea of what I was going to say, I headed down to Yuki's barracks. I knew that I needed to say something. Yuki had been an essential part of my pre-internment life, and I had to clarify where we stood, even if it pissed off her asshole husband. I was a head taller than he was, and I was hoping that he would object in a way that would lead to a beating.

Yuki's barracks was stifling, just like all the others. So, there was almost nobody inside, especially in the area around the cot where Yuki was collapsed in a ball of tears. I was American to the tip of my asshole. But I was also aware of the dictates of Japanese culture -- bilingual in that respect. So, I stood respectfully beside Yuki's cot and said in my politest and most soothing voice, "I don't know what the problem is, my love. But please let me help."

Yuki almost immediately stopped crying, sat up, and wiped tears and snot off her face. My heart melted. She looked like she was about six years old. She said, tentatively, "You don't hate me?" I laughed out loud, which was perhaps the most inappropriate thing I could have done, and said, "I loved you deeply before your marriage. What makes you think that would have changed?"

Yuki's face brightened considerably as she said, "But I'm another man's woman now. How could you still love me?" I said flippantly, "The heart knows what the heart knows." I added, glancing around curiously, "By the way, where is your husband? Why is he letting you walk around without a tsukisoi -- a Japanese chaperone?"

Yuki gave me a bitter look and said, "He's still back at our mansion in Bel Air."

For the second time in a momentous year, I stood there like an idiot. Yuki's revelation had raised several mind-blowing questions. First, how had Sakamoto avoided being interned, and then, following that puzzlement, what was he doing? Then, the more evident and incriminating question was, why was Yuki interned when her husband wasn't? Or more relevantly, why did the worthless piece of shit allow something like that to happen?

I wasn't going to drop all that on Yuki. She was far too fragile to deal with my outrage. But I needed to get some answers -- for the sake of my sanity. Plus, Yuki and I were going to work together, and I didn't want any misunderstandings messing that up.

I looked at Yuki's wan face, veiled by suffering and acquiescence, and thought back a year ago. Both of us had been snappy dressers, then. Now we were wearing the internee's uniform. Yuki was in a cheap cotton dress that she had sweated through, and I was in a short-sleeved shirt and khaki pants combo that I occasionally took off to wash. It only stank a little bit.

Yuki was as delicately beautiful as ever with her huge shojo eyes and that perfect face. She had lost weight, as the rest of us had, but she still had her hourglass proportions and her boobs were just as perky as ever,

As a means of establishing the rules of our new friendship, I said, "Would you like some tea?" Okay... it might be out of the blue, but I needed to change the subject. I mean... it was Lipton's and had almost no taste. But it was tea -- an essential part of our heritage. I added lamely, "We scored some from a guy who picked it up in Parker."

Parker was the nearest town. Japanese went there at their peril since the friendly locals tended to express their sentiments with signs like, "Japs keep out, you rats!" However, work gangs would occasionally be taken in there to perform menial chores, like loading supplies onto trucks, and luxuries would be picked up. Those items were then sold on at exorbitant prices, which my family could afford thanks to the money that I had stashed under my cot.

Yuki perked up, "I haven't had tea in months." I said, in a jolly tone of voice, "Well, come down to our barracks. My family would love to see you." Then it struck me. I said, "Where's YOUR family?"

Yuki went back to her desolate look, as she said, "They're at Manzanar. Sado and I lived in Bel Air, which was a different district when the deportation decisions were being made. So, they took me based on where I was living, rather than where my family lived. And since then, I've been here, alone, while my husband stayed back in LA."

I had to ask it!! I said, "How did your husband escape being deported to a camp?"

Yuki got a look of absolute contempt as she said, "The authorities made an exception to the deportation order for Sado and his dad, because the bank served the LA area at large. So, they were kept in their positions as a matter of national security." Aha! "National Security," The last refuge of scoundrels.

What that meant was that a lot of money had changed hands between the Sakamotos and whoever was making the decision, which was to be expected. Corrupt enterprises attract vermin, and there was nothing more corrupt than the unjust removal of perfectly loyal people from their homes and businesses. I don't imagine the Sakamotos went out much after that, because questions would have been raised. But hiding out in a mansion in Bel Air certainly beats sweating in a concentration camp.

Of course, the most accurate gauge of Sakamoto's value as a man was his craven willingness to let his beautiful, young wife be interned without him. Japanese culture might be quaintly paternalistic. But the reverse side of Bushido is that there is the knightly obligation to protect your womenfolk. That is built into the samurai code, and you lose your honor if you fail to do that.

Hence, the fat pig's willingness to allow his exquisite little wife to be sent to the camps, while he kept his comfortable lifestyle, made him a person without mentsu... face. There is no worse insult for a Japanese man than to be judged fumeiyo - dishonorable. Sakamoto's only option after that would be to commit seppuku... to atone for the shame that he had brought on himself.

Yuki and I had reached our barracks by then. The whole family was gathered around a small sagebrush fire that they'd built in the space between the building and the eight-foot, barbed wire fence at the back. There was a slight breeze and some shade there. They were all watching a small iron teapot that had traveled inside my mother's suitcase, because tea is a lot more important than clothing.

Needless to say, Yuki's reappearance was a joyful surprise to my entire family. My mother and sister couldn't stop hugging her, and even my father, who had been seriously withdrawn since returning to us, showed some positive emotion.

We got down to the tea that I had promised. My family's first question was about Sakamoto. I said, matter-of-factly, "He's still back in Los Angeles." My tone of voice said, "No more questions about Yuki's marriage." That had the full weight of the head of the family behind it.

They could all guess what had happened. But it would have been the height of bad manners to attempt to interrogate Yuki about her marriage situation. The Japanese sense of puraibash? - absolute privacy, prevented that.

My mother said to me, "How did you find her?" as she nodded in Yuki's direction. I said, "I answered the call for volunteer teachers, and Yuki was there too. We are both going to teach in the new school."

That was said with considerable pride. Interned Japanese American workers performed most of the labor required to maintain the camp infrastructure. We also grew a wide variety of crops in addition to raising chickens, hogs, and flowers. Likewise, inmates engaged in paid "home front" labor, such as making camouflage nets under contract. But given our culture's respect for education... Yuki and my position as teachers was a point of honor for the family.

Yuki looked more and more depressed as I walked her back to her barracks. It didn't take a genius to figure out why. Hell... I was as depressed as she was. She must have felt terrified and alone, dropped among strangers in a place where you had to keep the legs of your cot in Mason jars to avoid scorpions in your bed. I tried to sound nonchalant as I said, "Would you like to join us in our barracks?"

I could square it with the administration. I was a member of the camp council. I was put there because I was the head of a family, and the people running the place wanted Niesi. They thought we were closer to "real" Americans... which, of course, drove a wedge between us and our Issei parents. That might have been the plan all along -- who knows how low the bureaucracy was willing to stoop in our case?

Yuki's face changed from gloomy to shining in an instant.... She said, desperation in her voice, "Could I?" I said, "Sure... we can move our cots around to fit you in."

My family was overjoyed when I reappeared thirty minutes later, carrying the cot, with Yuki carrying her bedding and her little suitcase. The concept of family is so profoundly rooted in Japanese culture that the minor sacrifice of cramming one additional cot into our allotted space was an honor and a privilege, not a burden.

My mother, who was the arbiter of all things proper, arranged Yuki's cot between hers and my sister's to avoid impropriety. However, Yuki's marital status alleviated any ideas about unseemliness. We were essentially providing omotenashi -- hospitality - for a married woman.

That didn't prevent Yuki and me from having long talks. She was much stronger than the little Japanese doll persona she had publicly adopted. Japanese men -- hell!... probably all men... tend to view women as the "weaker" sex, which couldn't be further from the truth. Yuki might have been a hundred pounds of delectable female. But she had already withstood some life challenges that would have left the average guy curled up in the fetal position sucking his thumb.

First of all, she had had to be a properly deferential Japanese wife to a man who had no self-control. Yuki's husband had urges, and they had to be satisfied instantly! So, Yuki would serve up mounds of rich food, which the porker would gorge while she knelt ready to refill his sake cup, or fetch requested things.

Yuki was also expected to keep their Bel Air mansion, which was filled with heavy, unfamiliar American furniture and knick-knacks, spotless. And Assbreath wasn't above touching her up if he found something in her housekeeping that displeased him.

But that type of humiliation paled in comparison to what happened in the bedroom. Their wedding night could best be characterized as a series of rapes, which was just a precursor to the rest of their marriage. The man had a taste for sadistic sexual acts, including bondage and toys.

Yuki unloaded all of that on me one night as we were sitting on a tree trunk watching the desert moon rise over the mountains. It was as if she was trying to exorcise her akuma -- Japanese demons, by telling me about her sex life.

Of course, all of the graphic detail nearly killed me. Since I was still a virgin and more relevantly, deeply in love with Sakamoto's wife, fortunately for her, it was dark, as the desert is before the moon is up, so she didn't see the violent emotions that played across my face as Yuki told me her story.

As a result... it would now be a point of honor for me to kill her husband -- and it would be a long, slow, painful death. Then I would commit seppuku, because I could not bear to live with the knowledge of how profoundly the love of my life had been violated. I guess that goes to show that you can take the boy out of Japan. But you can't take Japan out of the boy.

In the meantime, I put my arm around Yuki as she silently wept. I could feel her shivering even though the temperature was still in the eighties. We sat there for several minutes, just comforting each other, and then the inevitable happened. Our faces turned, and the kiss was as sweet as it always was.

We held that for a few seconds. I could feel Yuki starting to get aroused. She was experienced in sex, I wasn't. We would have fucked right there in the dirt, but Yuki was married. So, I broke the kiss. It was the hardest single thing I had done to that point.

Yuki's face was a mask of passion as she said, "Don't stop. I need you."

I said in a strangled tone of voice, "There is nothing I want more than that. But you are married, and that's a line I would never cross."

Yuki said, "But I am going to divorce my husband as soon as I return to civilian life. He is bakemono," which roughly means a beast.

I said, "Nonetheless, you are still married to the man, and we cannot violate your marital vows without diminishing ourselves in return. It's a matter of principle. I know that you were betrayed in the most shameful fashion possible. And you are perfectly within your rights to divorce the cowardly bastard. But both of us are too decent to do something we both know is morally wrong.

Yuki's face fell. I knew she thought that I was brushing her off as damaged goods. But she couldn't have been more wrong. I turned her sad little face toward me so that her huge, bottomless eyes looked directly into mine and said, "I love you, and I feel like I have a husband's obligation to protect you. But I cannot have a husband's privileges until I am officially your spouse. The only thing I ask in return is that you commit to me as I have to you."

Yuki's face got a beatific glow as she said, "I am yours for eternity. No other man will touch me. I pledge that on my sacred Giri -- honor." Which has a much more profound meaning than the English word. We were bonded for life. And just like that, the pain and suffering of my internment was all worth it.

*****

I taught high school physics and mathematics from December of 1942 to January of 1944. Those thirteen months were an uplifting experience. The students hung on my every word, which was an artifact of a culture built around respect for people in positions of authority, as well as the value of education. Yuki was equally happy to contribute to the well-being of the citizens of the Poston camp. It was a perfect arrangement.

Every morning, Yuki and I would breakfast in the communal mess hall. It was staffed wholly by Japanese women, so we ate healthy and nutritious meals prepared from our little farms. Then the two of us would walk through the developing heat of the day down to the imposing masonry building that was the schoolhouse.

The building was divided into several spaces, each designed to demarcate a specific grade level, ranging from kindergarten to 12th grade. Each space had the necessary equipment to conduct class, including chairs and a teacher's desk that our expert woodworkers handcrafted.

We utilized the Japanese model for classroom management. At the start of each day, the students would rise and bow to me, and I would bow to them in return. The subject matter comprised basic physical science concepts that I had only recently mastered myself, and there were very few books available, which we all had to share. We WERE still living in a concentration camp, after all.

Yuki and I were together every minute we were not in class. Yuki had her sparkle back. But she had deepened, or perhaps she was just more willing to show her authentic self. It was as if the experiences of her marriage had convinced her to confront life rather than be subservient to it.

In my mind, her newfound independence made this version of Yuki more attractive. Nevertheless, my attitudes were much less traditional than those of most Japanese men, who would have viewed Yuki's newborn self-concept as insubordinate.

Yuki and I had never touched in any sexual fashion since the night we pledged ourselves to each other. But the tension was in the air, so much so that it practically crackled with sensual energy. We kept ourselves strictly off limits to each other physically, because both of us knew what would happen if we took even one step down that road.

Even so, Yuki's addition to the family changed the dynamics. She provided my mother with a helper when it came to dealing with domestic issues, specifically my little sister. Akemi was advancing into her middle teens, and to her, every boy in the camp was a potential white knight. So, she had to be kept on a short leash, or we would have had an undesired addition to the family.

Yuki had probably had more sexual experience than my mother. So, she was constantly monitoring Akemi to ensure that she obeyed the basics of common sense -- and I am not talking about the strict tenets of Japanese morality either. In turn, Akemi idolized Yuki, who was, in reality, only four years older, as a source of all knowledge about men.

All in all, it was as good a life as I could ever expect. I had a woman I loved and planned to marry, and a strong family to support me. I was doing meaningful work and making a positive contribution to my community.

Okay, we were living in a concentration camp in the middle of the Sonoran Desert. But notwithstanding that fact, what could go wrong?

And at that moment... the entire Kotoamatsukami -- the Japanese pantheon -- began to laugh their collective asses off.

We rarely got mail. I mean, everybody we knew was already with us, behind barbed wire. The letter was eventually dropped off by Jimmy Matsumoto, who worked in the camp's administrative offices. I was puzzled. Who could be writing me here? In fact, how did anybody know where I was? Our deportation wasn't exactly publicized. It raised too many questions about truth, light, justice, and the American way.

So, I opened it. Yikes! It was from the President of the United States... Roosevelt himself. It ordered me to "Hereby report for induction into the Armed Forces of the United States"... Oh my!!

I shouldn't have been surprised. I had registered for the Selective Service when I turned eighteen. Of course, that registration was in a different world where I was living the privileged life of a recent high school graduate. I hadn't yet been classified as a potential enemy asset... not had my civil rights and citizenship revoked... and then been shipped off to the desert to bake in a camp full of my fellow Japanese Americans. Apparently, the people who had put me in that camp needed more cannon fodder, and they had the happy idea that we yellow folk were just the ticket.

In fact, by 1943, some of the more enlightened souls in the government had actually figured out that a few of us Japanese could be trusted, especially the Nisei of draft age. So, they began recruiting us from the camps. We were to serve in an all-Niesi unit under "white" officers, not unlike the units of colored troops created by the Union during the Civil War. Lucky me... I was one of the fellows the draft lottery chose for the "honor." I've always been a loser when it came to gambling.

I was given ten days to report to a temporary induction center in Needles, where I would be given a physical, and if I were found to have a pulse, I would be loaded on a train to Camp Shelby in Mississippi. Needless to say, the news of my impending departure was devastating to my family, especially my mother. She had lost her husband and her happy domestic life to unfathomable government actions, and now she would lose a son to the war. It finally broke her.

That was when Yuki surprised us all. My sweet, deferential Japanese wife-to-be gathered my dad, mom, me, and my sister together. Her voice had always been so soft and gentle. Now, it had a razor edge, as she explained that until I returned from the war, she would be responsible for the family's needs.

I was astonished by the power behind Yuki's Kabuki mask. You never know what it hides, since it depicts the way you want people to perceive you. Thus, it's always deceptive... naturally. As far as I knew, Yuki was a compendium of all the feminine virtues -- gentle sunlight and nurturing kindness. But I was seeing my love as she wanted me to see her, not as she really was.

The actual Yuki was an Onna-Musha, the legendary Bushido warrior wives, trained in the use of weapons to protect their household, family, and honor while their men were away at war. I knew that my family would be safe... shielded by a gentle, loving, brave, and fierce little person. I couldn't respect this exquisitely beautiful woman more.

I had ten days before I was to be loaded on the bus to Needles. The draft notices had been distributed as a batch, mainly because the authorities knew where to find us... since we were all sitting behind barbed wire. Accordingly, they scooped us up in one fell swoop -- easier to arrange transportation that way.

That approach didn't go down so well in the camps, where there was a massive and understandable draft resistance movement. I mean, a lot of us felt that it was a bit tone deaf to be told to fight for a country that had so thoroughly ruined our lives. But the rest of us wanted to prove how unjust our incarceration had been by being the best soldiers we could be. I was in that group.

My first problem was finding somebody to take over my teaching responsibilities. In the end, I discovered that the old man who sat on the barracks steps all day was an engineer at Lockheed before he was deported. He knew about my situation because he had overheard me talking. He also knew that I had things organized with the kids. So, I played the "going off to war" card, and he eventually folded.

My situation with Yuki was an entirely different matter. We had been talking about ways for her to divorce Sakamoto so she could marry me. Their ceremony was a Buddhist-Shinto rite, not a Christian one. Hence, the religious covenants that are associated with conventional Christian ceremonies didn't apply to her.

Accordingly, then, the question was how Yuki could terminate a Shinto-Buddhist wedding? The solution was simple. Buddhists don't view marriage as a sacrament, like Christians do. Instead, they understand it as the Buddha sanctioning a pragmatic agreement between two people to marry. Which, if you see it from a rational standpoint, sums up the marital decision in all cases.

In essence, both people agree to be together for life. So, with Buddhists, it simply requires mutual consent to negate the marriage.  Therefore, the question was, "Had Sado, in effect, consented to end the marriage by agreeing to allow his wife to be deported while he stayed behind in LA, which constituted an inexcusable breach of faith in any culture, not just Buddhist. If he had, then he and Yuki were de facto divorced by mutual consent, since Yuki's only desire was to see her husband burn in hell.

Nevertheless, we still needed somebody official to certify that interpretation. Yuki gave me the name of the person who had performed her wedding rite. He was a Buddhist lay priest in the old Los Angeles community. Meaning he wasn't a monk. So, the priest would've been scooped up with the rest of us when the government did their sweep through Little Tokyo.

I was a member of the camp council. Hence, I had the authority to go through the camp roster, which was not as easy as you might suppose, because there were seventeen thousand names on it. But it was alphabetized, and one of the names was a single word, "Bhikkhu." Bhikkhu is not a name. It is the title of a non-monastic Buddhist priest.

Yuki and I tracked him down in the mess hall. I had expected a wizened old fellow, like in the movie Shangri-La. But the guy wolfing down his noodles and pork was maybe fifty. We approached him politely. He looked up, and I could see that we were in the presence of a holy man, as out of place as he might have been sitting on a wooden bench wearing a t-shirt and chinos.

He had calm, gentle eyes. Considerable self-awareness lay behind them. Yuki and I both bowed, and she said, "Can we have a moment of your time, Obousan?"

He put down his chopsticks and waited attentively. Yuki continued, "Two years ago, you officiated at the wedding between Sado Sakamoto and me. He has broken our marriage agreement by allowing me to be interned here, while he stayed back in Los Angeles."

The priest didn't say anything. He nodded. Still, it was apparent that he was aware of Yuki's situation, which wasn't surprising. There are no secrets in a community as tight as ours, and Sakamoto's actions were especially reprehensible in Japanese culture.

Yuki continued, "Since I no longer wish to be married to him and he has abandoned me, to this," and she gestured around her, "Does that formally release me from our marriage agreement in the eyes of the Buddha?"

The priest said, "Have you informed your husband of your thoughts?" Yuki answered, "I have written him several letters expressing my displeasure at being abandoned. But he has not written back to me." The priest said, "How much time has passed since the first letter?" Yuki was toting up the months in her head as she said, "Almost two years -- I wrote him as soon as I arrived here, and he has never responded. It is as if I don't matter."

The priest seemed to withdraw into his mind. It was as if he were mentally researching the question. Finally, he said, "Because you have expressed your desire to part with him and he has not responded in a reasonable period, we can assume by default that he consents to your request. However, there is one practical question remaining."

Yuki said warily, "And what is that Obousan?" The priest said, "Did you register your marriage with the Los Angeles County Clerk?" Now that was the kind of worldly thinking that one would expect from a lawyer, not a Buddhist monk. This guy had a razor-sharp intellect.

Yuki said, trying to suppress her glee, "That never happened because Pearl Harbor took place the next day and all access to government services was shut off for us." I thought that at least something good came out of that dark day.

The priest said mildly, "Then you are no longer married in the eyes of the Buddha, and you were never married in the eyes of the civil authorities. I could provide a written statement to that effect if you like. Is that all you require?"

At that... I eagerly blurted, "I've been drafted, and I am leaving next week. Can you marry us before I go?" I heard Yuki's gasp and turned to her. I took her two dainty little hands into mine and said, "I want to make you legally mine before I leave. Would you consent to that?" Yuki's eyes were shining as she said, "All I ever wanted to be was your wife."

And so, it came to pass... Yuki and I stood several paces inside the vestibule of the school. We chose that place because there are very few Shinto-Buddhist shrines in the Sonoran Desert. Also, it was the largest building in the camp. Plus, both Yuki and I worked there. My father, mother, sister, and all the teachers from the school were in attendance, including the two fraternity boys. Yuki's parents were behind barbed wire at Manzanar, so they sent their regrets and best wishes.

Shinto weddings are deeply personal and private. But we were in a concentration camp. So, there were no traditional kimonos or veils for the bride. Yuki was in her threadbare dress, and I was in my only shirt and pants. We underwent the San San Ku Do purification ritual, which involved the two of us exchanging three cups of sake, and I recited the vows.

Then the entire wedding group drank sake as a benediction. The priest and my father made an offering to the kami, thanking them for their blessings, and Yuki and I exchanged rings. The world in which our wedding occurred was far removed and alien to the culture from which it was derived. But the effect was the same. Yuki was my wife in the eyes of our religion and the legal stipulations of American law. And I could now kiss the bride.

The honeymoon wasn't in Palm Springs or even at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. That night, we WERE allowed to move our cots next to each other since we were legally married. Yuki later told me that, even though we spent our wedding night packed into a small space with ninety people, it was infinitely better than what she had endured after her first wedding. I had no thoughts about that except violent images and a thirst for revenge.

That didn't mean Yuki and I weren't able to consummate the marriage. Healthy people need to have sex. Hence, there were private places, both inside and outside the camp, where couples could go to satisfy their human desires. Everybody understood what the function of such places was and respected the necessary boundaries.

It was understood that if two people were seen entering such a place, they would be given the required privacy, as it was considered the ultimate breach of manners to attempt to spy on lovemaking. Conversely, it was like premier night at the movies if any of our guards, who were just kids themselves, spotted a couple sneaking off to make love. They would cluster around, laughing and exchanging comments.

The outbuilding where camp supplies and other essentials were stored was one of the most popular places for couples to make love. There were big soft bags of oats and wheat to lie on, and the relative coolness of dirt floors. So, Yuki and I retired to one of those the following day. A few Japanese surreptitiously stationed themselves to ensure that we were not disturbed.

In some respects, that weathered old shed was very romantic. It was dark and considerably cooler inside. The smell of stored spices perfumed the air, and little shafts of light, coming through the cracks, lit the darkness like Japanese lanterns.

The moment had arrived to consummate our bond, and I was beyond nervous. I was a Japanese man, expected to be dominant in the act of sex. But I was a twenty-one-year-old virgin. Okay... that wasn't by choice. It was a consequence of the only woman I'd ever loved being given to another man, followed by two years spent behind barbed wire.

However, the fact remained that I was inexperienced. At the same time, my new wife was an unwilling expert in every form of carnal exercise. So, there was no pressure there. Even so, I knew how to kiss, and that's how I chose to initiate the process. I closed the door and turned to Yuki. She was heartrendingly beautiful, standing there in her simple cotton dress, her exquisite Japanese face framed by her abundant, long hair.

I pulled her to me, and she molded like she was boneless. I know women are a lot more flexible than men. But it was as if she had become a part of me. I looked once more into my wife's huge, intelligent eyes, and the hunger lurking there was intimidating. Our lips met, and Yuki emitted an almost feral moan of sensation. It was as if she had been waiting for this moment since before the trouble began.

Our lips touched, and Yuki's mouth opened wide. Then she made an inarticulate sound and dragged me down onto one of the oat bales. There was a moment of fumbling as she removed her panties and frantically undid my pants. Then the part of me that had never experienced the act was bathed in heat and lubrication.

When it comes to sex, the word "abandoned" has loaded connotations. But that is the only way I can describe how Yuki gave herself to me. I was perplexed. Maybe ALL women acted like that? Actually... I was probably lucky that I had never had sex before because my inexperience slowed my release a lot.

I knew my part. I mean, the motion is instinctive, and guys talk. But my moves were modest. Yuki, on the other hand, provided all the action. She would writhe, buck, shout, and quiver wordlessly. Then she would go right back to throwing her hips up at me.

That went on for an interminable period, Yuki kicking, shouting, and quivering. I finally looked at her face. She had the drawn expression of somebody who was right on the ragged edge of losing it. She was exhausted.

My wife started pleading with urgency in her voice, "Cum Sabby, you have to cum in me NOW. I can't take it any longer. Please cum. PLEASE!!!" Those must have been the magic words because I pounded on my new wife's delicate frame like I was trying to break her. Meanwhile, she took me to the hilt, making hoarse grunting noises as I came.

I rolled off Yuki and lay next to her, trying to catch my breath. She was lying there, her delectable chest rising and falling with great intensity, and her nipples like little brown acorns. She came back to me slowly, like she had been someplace long ago and far away. I considered that a good sign. She must have enjoyed herself. Yeah -- I know I was assiduously naïve back then.

Then those incredible shoji eyes focused, and she said with wonder in her voice, "What did you do to me? I have never experienced anything like that in my life." I shrugged lamely and said, "I don't know. I've never had sex before."

Yuki started to cry. She said, "Do you think I'm a whore, now? I pretended it was you through all of those times with that horrible pig, and it helped me survive. The fact that it finally IS you makes me wild with desire."

I laughed and said, "All it does is remind me that I have a lot of catching up to do. However, I'm a quick learner, and I intend to practice extensively before I leave. I love you and I have always loved you. That will never change."

I added in my sincerest tone of voice, "Part of the joy of marriage is blending our different experiences into a life together. You have learned a lot about sex, unwillingly, I might add, and you bring that to the marriage. I would be a total hypocrite if I didn't see your enthusiasm and sexual abilities as a bonus."

And with that, my wife turned on her side, snuggled her little, round, rock-hard buns into me, wrapped my arms around her, and said, "Hold me while I get used to the idea that it's you."

I lay there for a while, sensing my wife's enticing smells and feeling her little jerks. I think she might have fallen asleep. But a new feature was arising. I had generated a hard-on that must have been using up ninety percent of the blood in my body. And it was jammed in the crack of her exquisite round ass.

I was trying to figure out a way to shift Yuki when she moved and what had been an embarrassing poking of her butt-crack became an extremely stimulating poking of her nether lips. As soon as I touched the entrance to her hole Yuki moaned loudly and said, "Ahhhh yesss that's it." and she arched her back, pushed her ass at me and I was suddenly hilted in a very hot and soaked pussy.

That produced a snort of epic proportions, and Yuki's head turned to look back toward me, eyes wide and clouded by lust. She moaned loudly and threw her top leg over mine and her body back against me so that she was mainly lying on top of me.

Then SHE started to violently shove herself back against me in a frantic thrusting motion that ended perhaps 30 seconds later in her loudly yelling, "Oh God YESSSSSS!!!!" And the high-frequency quivering started again. It was like she was being electrocuted.

As my wife worked through her orgasm her butt cheeks were frantically clenching on top of my lower stomach and her passage was fluttering with little nips and ripples. Yuki was experienced in sex. But I was catching up quickly. Finally, she just lay limply on top of me, panting.

I was still hard as a rock, but I had no desire to cum. I just wanted to worship her. I couldn't imagine the kind of feminine spirit and inner fire that could generate that kind of sexuality. I slowly withdrew. She moaned loudly as I withdrew from her.

My wife rolled off of me to lie back on our big burlap sack of oats. I propped myself up on one elbow and looked into the perfect face. She was looking back at me with apprehension, again. It would take a while to dispel the malignant shadow of her former marriage. I said, "You are much more than I deserve. I believe that, and I will cherish the time we are together."

Yuki looked at me like I was an idiot and said merrily, "You are mine and I will never let you go. We are going to be together forever."

*****

My wife and my entire family saw me off on the bus to Needles. Maintaining our impassive Shinto mask was killing us all. I kissed Yuki one last time and rushed up the steps into the Greyhound. I had to move quickly because my mask was slipping, and everybody who was seeing me off knew it.

There were eighteen of us dispersed around the thirty seats. Looking around, I could tell that I was the oldest man in the group at twenty-one. Most of the rest were still in their teens. All of us were wrapped in our thoughts.

A kid was sitting in the window seat next to me, trying to look "gaman," which is a Japanese word that means a lot more than stoic. He was failing miserably at it. I would need friends if I were going to survive this. So, I turned toward him, stuck out my hand, and said, "Sammy." We used our anglicized names when we were outside the community.

That seemed to drag him back to reality. He said, "Ike." So, another Ichiro. That was my best friend's name. I asked him where he was from, and he said, "Salinas." Whoa!! That was a farming town way up north near Monterey. They were truly locking up every Japanese on the West Coast.

It turned out that several of the guys on the bus were friends of Ike's. They were all three years younger than I was and unmarried. So, we were socially different. But we were all voyaging off into the scary unknown, and it was comforting to have a few friendly acquaintances around you while you were doing that.

The ride from Poston to Needles on modern highways only takes an hour. But the road was dirt back then. So, it was almost three hours and a bumpy bus ride before they dumped us at the induction center. It was a temporary Quonset hut, hastily set up to process the Japanese draftees from Poston.

The interior featured tables and barriers designed to get us from the front door to the back door of the building as fast as possible. We all shuffled along in our underpants, holding our clothing in brown paper bags. They listened to my heart, hoisted me on two fingers, and told me to cough. We were all out the door and onto the train in a matter of twenty minutes.

We were herded into the same "special" rail car as a group. It was special because there were soldiers on it, I assume to keep any of us from jumping off. The journey took us through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Louisiana, finally depositing us at a large train station in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. It might have been impressive to Ike and his friends, but it was nothing compared to Union Station in LA.

The ride itself was close to two days, and we were all in a cried-out, sleepless daze when we stepped out into the heat and humidity of Hattiesburg in the summer. It was a breath of fresh air for those of us from Poston, since the temperature was a balmy eighty-four, twenty degrees lower than we were accustomed to.

They loaded us into deuce and a halfs and trucked us to the camp, which was 20 miles outside of town. When we arrived, the cadre hustled us into a company-size formation. The draftees, still in their civilian clothes, were all Japanese. The cadre, sergeants, and drill instructors were all white. It was clear what they thought of us by the many colorful terms they used... monkeys being the least insulting.

We were told what the next six hours would look like as we were in-processed -- loudly, I might add. It added to the intimidation factor. Japanese, in general, read yelling as aggressively hostile, and perhaps it was. But that seemed to be the way everybody in that place communicated.

We had been drafted because the 100th Infantry Battalion, which was composed of Nisei soldiers from the Hawaii National Guard, had been fighting in Italy since November of '43. That unit had done such heroic things and suffered such horrific casualties that it became known as the Purple Heart Battalion. In fact, in the end, the 100th would lose four times its actual number to wounds and KIA.

So, the Army began drafting replacement Niesi troops to replenish the 100th ranks. That draft process pulled in 4,000 Niesi volunteers and draftees from the camps. So, the 100th Battalion became the first battalion of a whole regiment of Japanese American soldiers, designated the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

The commander and company-grade officers of the 442nd were white. Sergeants and enlisted were Nisei. There were three infantry battalions in the 442nd, plus the 522nd Field Artillery and the 232nd Engineer Company. The reconstituted 442nd had been fighting in Italy since the Anzio landings, and they had amassed an impressive record. We were the "Go for Broke" boys.

Why that motto? Well... we felt like we had nothing to lose after being classified as enemy aliens, having our civil rights removed, and then being marched off to a concentration camp. Thus, the old crapshooters' cry of "put it all on one throw of the dice" seemed appropriate... win or die, there was no in-between for us.

By 1944, basic training ranged from three to seven weeks, depending on your specialty. We got seven weeks and then some because there was only one deployed unit overseas that they could send us to, and the boys in logistics were still working out the replenishment details. The additional AIT just meant more tactical training and time with the pugil sticks. That training time would have an unexpected payoff later in the Vosges.

The living conditions at Camp Shelby would be excruciating for the normal recruit... bunking in a hot barracks with a bunch of strangers. However, it was business as usual for the Niesi from the camps, as that was the way they had been living for the previous three years.

I had always been meticulous, which nicely aligned with the Army's concept of discipline. It was a learning experience for the cadre to discover that a lot of the things they had to instill into the white recruits were already baked into us Japanese. Things like attention to detail, cleanliness, and neatness came naturally to us. Hence, our beds were tight enough to bounce the proverbial quarter off, foot lockers were perfectly aligned, and boots were neatly arranged under the bed.

Besides Army discipline... Basic taught us the usual infantry things, tactics, marksmanship, and specialty skills like grenade throwing. It was during that time that I was introduced to the Browning Automatic Rifle, also known as the BAR. I think that was because I was taller than the rest and the training regimen had finally put some muscle on me, and for whatever reason, the Captain and Sergeant both thought I should be the man in my squad to carry the Beast.

The Beast was four feet long and weighed twenty pounds. Whereas the M1 Garand, which was the standard infantry rifle of the time, was six inches shorter and weighed about eleven pounds. The BAR was the squad automatic weapon, firing 600 rounds per minute as compared to the Garand's fifty. The Beast's standard magazine only held twenty rounds, so there was a selector switch that allowed you to fire it semi-automatically or full auto.

The Beast demolished targets that the rest of the squad could only poke holes in. But you would deplete a clip in about five seconds. Hence, you carried a lot of extra magazines. The weight of the BAR and all of the extra ammo put considerable strain on my shoulders and knees during route marches. But I was young and full of it back then, and the pain of carrying that load was a macho point of pride for me. You never think about the long-term consequences of being stupid when you're twenty-one.

I made some friends in basic and the subsequent AIT, which was rare for me. I was introverted growing up, a reader and a dreamer, not one of the gang. I was naturally serious. So, I was never out there on the playground mixing it up with the other guys. Horseplay didn't hold any attraction for me. Yuki was like that, too. It was why we had initially gotten so close.

Then, later... everybody in the camps was on their psychic island. There was just too much shit going on for you to open yourself to others. That's why Yuki's husband's allowing her to be dumped alone and friendless in one of those places was such a heinous act of cowardice. Yuki had nobody to turn to. Only a strong person could survive the dire loneliness.

My situation at Camp Shelby built me a circle of friends. Infantry training emphasizes teamwork, so it's natural to form bonds with the guys you share a life-and-death situation with. I had particularly connected with Ike, who was a kind and simple soul. His family situation was similar to mine. They had been truck farmers in a little patch of land in the middle of nowhere until the authorities arrived and mother, father, and six siblings were spirited away to Poston.

Also, I had surprisingly -- to me at least -- gotten a lot tougher and more realistic when it came to dealing with the world and all of the assholes who inhabited it. That included most of our white officers, who seemed to fall into two categories. They were either narcissists or fools... sometimes both. I'm sure that the cadre were the exception, not the rule. Most of the white guys in the ranks were regular fellows. But our officers were not happy about commanding a regiment of "Japs." So, they treated us like we were a subspecies.

The best of the officers stayed on script, and their decisions were easier to accept... as nonsensical as they might be. The officers I had the most problems with were those who had a movie playing in their heads, where they were the bold and brave hero. Patton was the leader of that cult, but at least he was smart. The ones in charge of leading us were the kind of idiots who could get us all killed.

I kept my opinions to myself if any of the white cadre were nearby. But I wasn't shy about sharing my thoughts about the way we were treated with the kids who made up my platoon. Hence, the word got out that I was the guy who understood how things worked. Being a malcontent usually gets you in trouble. However, in my case, my reputation for being the go-to spokesperson for the platoon led to my promotion to sergeant.

That was an unexpected bonus, as it gave me a bit of say in things that affected my life. More importantly, a pay increase was involved. I was sending every cent that I could spare to Yuki because she was never far from my mind. We wrote back and forth. But it was sporadic, and it was heartrending to know that I may not see my beloved for years--or forever... which far exceeded any fear of death. That's the price every soldier pays.

Yuki told me that life in the camps was getting easier as the government figured out that perfectly normal Japanese American citizens like my wife and family were not potential saboteurs and fifth columnists. Of course, we Japanese had nowhere to go if we left the camps. Our homes and businesses were under new ownership, and it wasn't like there was much gainful employment in the middle of a howling wilderness, which was where all of those camps were located.

Meanwhile, there was stirring at Camp Shelby as the Army began preparations for deploying the latest tranche of replacement troops. We, of course, could only be assigned to the all-Japanese 442nd RCT, which was presently outside of Rome.

None of the Niesi units went to the Pacific. There were a few Japanese in the Pacific theater -- most of them in translator roles, or as spies, and all of them from Hawaii. However, the government could trust us to do our duty regarding the Germans. That led a few of us -- ahem! me - to ask why German Americans were fighting in Europe. But that was always muttered under my breath since I knew what the answer was.

It was late July by then, and rumors were circulating that something significant was being planned. So, the 442nd needed speedy replenishment. That was us. Hence, on the 23rd of June 1944, we were loaded on the SS Abner Doubleday in Hampton Roads-- no shit... named after the inventor of baseball, who was also a Civil War general. My company was among the Nisei replacements who would bring the 442nd back up to its full operational complement. It had lost many men in the fighting around Anzio and Rome.

The hold of a Liberty troop ship is indescribable. There were 550 of us in a vast, sweltering space, stacked in bunks eight ranks high. Needless to say, privacy was impossible, and boredom was high. The voyage was almost two weeks at a measured eight knots. The only entertainment we had was watching our destroyers occasionally depth charge the shit out of something that they'd found lurking out there in the ocean depths.

Afterwards, the escorts would sort of poke around like a pack of hunting dogs, making sure of their kill, while the merchant ships tiptoed past the site. We had a five incher in the stern and a three incher in the bow along with four Oerlikons for antiaircraft work. So, we could defend ourselves. But we had to count on the cans to keep the wolfpack at bay,

We arrived at Civitavecchia to find a huge bivouac of troops. It was clear that something was afoot. But none of us replacements had a clue. The 100th had already lost enough men that the remains of the third battalion were squeezed into the all-Hawaiian Hundredth, which became the 442nd's First Battalion. The Second Battalion was composed of experienced troops from the Italian fighting, and our five companies of greenhorns became the new Third Battalion.

The veterans treated us politely, but it was also clear that they didn't trust us. Or they wouldn't trust us until we'd proven ourselves. We had a couple of weeks of exercises to get us all acquainted with each other and establish tactical coordination. It was rough at first, but by the end, you couldn't tell the veterans from the recruits -- at least when nobody was shooting at us.

Then they loaded us back on the troop ships, and we all headed north. We had come over in a convoy. But this collection of vessels was something different. It was an armada of big-gunned warships and troop transports spread out as far as the eye could see. There were barrage balloons overhead, and an occasional swarm of two-engine bombers would pass by, looking like wherever we were going was about to get a pasting. It was the beginning of Operation Dragoon -- the invasion of southern France.

*****

The 442nd landed in Marseilles on the thirtieth of September. The strategic goal of Operation Dragoon was to create a second front that would eventually link up with the forces advancing south from the Normandy invasion beaches. Then we would combine and push the Germans completely out of France.

Dragoon was highly successful, mainly because all of the Wehrmacht's best divisions were up north near Paris. So, we were fighting Ostlegionen volunteers and conscripts from the bottom of the barrel. Unfortunately, though, there was one top-line division left down south. That was the 11th Panzer Division. Our 36th Division, which was where the Go-For-Broke boys had been attached, drew the short straw. So, we fought them. That was the story of my life.

Of course, no dogface soldier sees the big picture. You march and camp and fight, and your only worries are the odd, almost glutinous mud and the constant rain. The movements of armies, or even small units, are concerns that never enter your mind. Your understanding of things is constrained by what you see and experience... that's all. And you don't see much except what's right in front of you.

You wake up from a fitful sleep thinking, "Today might be the day I die," which is pretty heavy stuff for a soon-to-be 22-year-old, and then you spend the rest of your miserable time shivering under your rain poncho and trying to stay alive. You have your buddies to share the experience with, which is comforting, to some extent. You josh and play around with each other to banish the recognition of how deadly dangerous your situation is. But you can't escape reality for very long.

The initial deployment of the 442nd was toward Espinal. That was 500 miles northeast of the invasion beaches, which were near St. Tropez. Our first and second battalions made the trip on deuce-and-a-halfs. But they were the veterans. The third rattled up the Rhone Valley in a weird assortment of "40 and 8" boxcars.

Some had roofs to keep out the constant drizzle, others didn't. Mine was clearly of the horse transporter variety. Fortunately, after Santa Anita, I already had plenty of experience living in a stall. What is it with me and horses?

We got a three-day breathing period before we were put into the line. Then our veteran first and second battalions were ordered to secure the key rail center of Bruyeres. My battalion was held in reserve behind the first battalion, which, as I mentioned, was the old Hawaiian 100th. Meantime, the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion provided fire support, and the 232nd Combat Engineer Company played its usual role, lifting mines and reducing roadblocks.

The attack on Bruyeres was where we were all introduced to air bursts in the trees. Those were a particularly insidious force multiplier since it rained shrapnel and wood splinters down on the soldiers below. I clearly remember walking past one of the Salinas' draftees who had a long tree branch pinning him to the ground like a bug in a collector's display case. He was screaming, but it was clear that wouldn't last much longer since the wood was blown right through his guts and into the ground.

The Germans were also tricky. They would play dead after the initial attack. Then, after the attacking force had passed, a few diehards would jump up and empty their Schmeisers into the support troops. That was a tactic that would have grave consequences for us later on.

The first and second battalions had done most of the work on the first day. We were to get our first blood on the second. During the night, the third battalion was led around the left flank of the German main line of defense, which was anchored on a conical hill. From there, we took up positions on the enemy's left rear. It was cold enough to freeze the balls off that legendary brass monkey. However, we couldn't light fires because we had to preserve the element of surprise. We just had to endure.

Waiting nervously for your first action is a unique experience. You can't imagine that tomorrow might be your last day because at age 21, you know you're immortal. So, instead, you concentrate on not letting your mates down. It's what the Army training and discipline instills in you. I spent the entire sleepless night sitting in a foxhole, thinking of Yuki. That was good enough for me.

We were formed up in the cold and drizzle of dawn's wolf light. As soon as we heard the beginning of the conventional assault feint by our other two battalions, we launched a surprise attack up the back of the hill, screaming like madmen. Our sudden appearance at the German rear drove a shocked group of Krauts out of their advantageous positions and right down the other side of the hill -- directly into the guns of the second battalion. And with the loss of the high ground... the strategically important villages of Belmont and Biffontaine fell into our hands.

The fighting had been costly. Some of the casualties were wounded but not hospitalized. I, for one, got my first medal at Belmont. The BAR was invented to provide what the French called "feu-de-marche" -- walking fire. The idea is that the enemy won't stick their heads up to shoot back if enough bullets are flying at them. My job was to deliver those bullets.

So, there I was marching up the damned hill in front of my platoon firing from the hip with my BAR on full auto. It was suppression fire, not aimed fire. So, I was running through clips as fast as I could. That, naturally, attracted the attention of the Germans who weren't in the area that I was lighting up.

One of the things you don't get in war movies is the constant high-pitched zipping, shooping noises that close misses make. I was hearing vicious Ziiiip! Ziiiip! Ziiiip sounds like a squadron of bees passing close to my head, when I heard a clang! And my helmet flew off.

I wasn't around to note that loss because I was out colder than a mackerel. My guys had reached the top of the hill by that point, yelling, "Banzi!!," which was not something invented by World War Two propaganda comic books. It means "Ten thousand years" and was first used during the Russo-Japanese War. It's our equivalent of "Long live the King," or in our case, "Emperor."

Rather than being ashamed of our heritage, we embraced it. We were letting friend and foe alike know that we were Japanese Americans. The code of Bushido was in our blood. I suppose we also had something to prove. And taking a well-defended position was one way to make the statement. Maybe it was the Samurai spirit or just not having anything left to lose. But those four days of fighting led to a Presidential Unit Citation.

The first thing I knew about any of that action was when I opened my eyes, confused, and saw the concerned face of my buddy Ike looking at me with horror. I had an instant jolt of anxiety. I must've been wounded. You try not to think about the consequences, but you are always aware that there are plenty of ways to be shot. And you don't recover from most of them.

I slowly moved my arms and then my legs. It felt like everything was there. But the top of my head was killing me. I gingerly felt up there, and my hand came away soaked in blood! I had to get to an aid station. I started to get to my feet, but Ike, who had been trained as a medic, told me to lie still until the stretcher party got around to me.

The last thing I wanted was to be stretchered to the forward aid station. The ride is so bumpy, moving around obstacles under fire, that you can arrive in worse shape than when you started. I didn't feel that bad. So, I continued to stand up. Ike retrieved my helmet. It had a hole from front to back at the very crown.

He said matter-of-factly, "The bullet grazed the top of your head and dug a little trench. You probably have a concussion, but it's nothing that you won't be able to live with". He laughed and added, "But you're going to have a permanent part."

I said, "Lend me your shoulder, buddy," and leveraged myself to my feet. Ike supported me. I must have been a scary sight when we got to the aid station. The blood dripping from the wound at the very top of my head had made my face into a gory mask. A corpsman came rushing up, and they got a doctor over to take a look. Things calmed down once they discovered what had happened. I was washed up, sewn up, treated with sulfa, bandaged, and held overnight. Then they discharged me.

I was one of the lucky ones. There had been horrible wounds as a result of the frontal assault. Of course, you never see those kinds of casualties unless they happen right in front of you. But the insane bravery of the Niesi soldiers had a steep butcher's bill.

Because of our losses, we were relieved by the 1st Battalion,  141st Infantry,  which was initially a Texas National Guard unit. Then we moved back to the vicinity of Belmont. The area we were withdrawn to was still under occasional shell fire from the Germans' heavy guns. But you could hear the incoming shells, which sounded like a freight train, and the Germans rarely hit anything. So, after being pulled off the line and back into reserve you could unclench your asshole and contemplate what you'd become.

Thinking back... I was astonished by how much I had changed. Four years ago, I was a naive child, living out the expectations of my parents. Now, I was my own man. The fiery cauldron of the camps and then military service had tempered me into a person I could respect. I suppose Nietzsche got it right when he said, "What does not kill you makes you stronger."

I'd come to understand a few things about life, too... Primarily, how essential building blocks like selflessness and dedication to others are in shaping a man. Those had made me a person of respect. Things were looking up when we were unexpectedly and hastily pulled back to the front. I mean, of course!! One nasty surprise after another.

The 1st and 2nd Battalions of the Texas 141st had relieved us. Their job was to secure the right flank of the Division near St-Die. But the Germans were tricky, and Major General John Dahlquist was a guy who got other people killed because his ego made him stupid. So, Dahlquist pushed the 1st Battalion of the 141st to over-extend itself four miles down a long, heavily wooded ridge that continued southeast and dominated the valley from Biffontaine to La Houssiere.

Then, once the Texans were firmly in the jaws of the trap, the Huns closed it, which turned the 1/141 into World War II's equivalent of the Lost Battalion. The other two battalions of the 141st had spent a couple of days frantically trying to break through the German cordon to rescue their brethren. But they'd run into a stone wall.

The 275 trapped Texans were getting supplies airdropped by P-47s, but their situation was quickly deteriorating. So, Dahlquist called the 442nd back on the line to do the job. The third, which I was in, and the first battalions pushed off from Belmont, moving quickly in the rainy Vosges Mountain night. We passed through the remainder of the 141st in pitch darkness and formed up in battalion abreast, with the 1st Battalion on the right.

Once there was enough light to see, we launched our attack. Progress was slow throughout that miserable day. The terrain was next to impossible, heavily forested and carpeted with a dense growth of underbrush, and the rain was unrelenting. Given the Germans' propensity for surprises... every tree and every bush had to be investigated before we moved on.

We had made reasonable progress until the Germans hit the left flank of my Battalion with an armored car and a Mark IV panzer. The SD Kfz 234 was easy prey for the bazooka guys, but the Mark IV presented a different challenge. It came clanking over a misty ridge, looking like the unstoppable juggernaut that it was.

But it was only invincible as long as it had an infantry screen to protect its flanks. So, there was a full squad of Panzergrenadiers assigned to keeping us from getting at the fucking thing. So, I pulled the same trick on the Germans that they had been pulling on us. I hid behind a tree until the Mark IV ground past.

Letting the tank go past me was an insane thing to do. I was now behind enemy lines. But I was so pissed by that time that I no longer gave a shit. You get that way when it feels like the world is conspiring against you. There were six German riflemen. Two guys were servicing an MG-42. There was the squad leader, and three riflemen were walking on my side of that armored monster.

The machine gun crew, along with the squad's Gefreiter, were in a group directly behind the tank. The automatic weapon was the most dangerous. So, I stood and ripped off an entire clip of twenty rounds at them. That settled that.

The three German infantrymen on my side were reacting as I reloaded. Their first shots were panicked and unaimed, as I suspected they would be, and they never got off a second because I devoted the next clip to them.

The Mark IV was turning in my direction, its 7.62 hull gun blazing, when Joe Nishimoto, who had the same idea that I had, bolted out of cover. He ran right up to the tank, and with a shit eating grin, pulled the pins on two grenades and tucked them neatly next to the front sprocket of the slowly rotating right tread. He got a posthumous Medal of Honor for that.

The resulting explosion blew the tread off the rollers, and the tank juddered to a halt. The rest of the platoon immediately swarmed the disabled tank, dropping grenades into the engine hatch. The explosion detonated the ammunition stored in the back of the turret, which blew the turret twenty feet up into the air, and the Panzer was neutralized.

What followed was three hours of brutal fighting in the pouring rain. We Japanese were outnumbered and physically smaller than the Germans. But they lacked our unit coordination and ferocity. So, after the Germans withdrew, there were plenty of Kraut bodies and one smoking tank. Nobody in either Battalion wanted to go any further. We were utterly exhausted.

The Germans responded to our chasing them off the ridge with heavy artillery and mortar fire, and our casualties got unsustainably high, mainly because of the tree bursts, from which there was no escape. Our 75s and 4.2 mortars fired back, but the Germans were dug in, while we Niesi were up on a ridge. And so, at the end of the day, we found ourselves 1,500 yards closer to the "lost battalion." But only at a terrible cost in men and materiel.

Biting cold and rain during the night kept us from sleeping. We endured, huddled under our ponchos and shivering. The thing that helped me make it through that terrible night was dreaming of Yuki and a house with a white picket fence filled with kids. A lot of guys suffer that way, thinking of the people awaiting them at home.

The next morning, we shoved off hollow-eyed. We immediately ran into the enemy's main line of resistance, which was on another ridge that was so narrow that we couldn't use our standard infantry assault tactics to advance.

First, we tried to turn the enemy's right flank, but the bluff there was so steep that the Companies assigned the task couldn't maneuver. Hence, the only option was a direct frontal assault. The word came down that the Texans were running out of time. So, it had to be done immediately.

Our cannon and mortar units pounded the Germans with the help of a couple of tanks, and then we advanced a little ways, but were pinned down by relentless gales of small arms fire which left us unable to advance, or retreat. We were now trapped like the Texans.

That was when a miracle occurred. I don't know who said it first. But somebody yelled, "Honor the code, Go for Broke!" Every Japanese kid knew what that meant. It was the code of Bushido, which had the force of a thousand years of obedience, duty, and self-sacrifice behind it.

Sometimes you reach a point where death is far preferable to surrendering. So, all up and down the line, the Japanese American soldiers of the 442nd rose to their feet and charged the German guns, screaming like madmen. Our armament was the bayonet, a fitting weapon for a samurai warrior. I found myself yelling "Banzi" as I ran madly, firing from the hip. Men around me fell... others took their places. Our dead lay inches from enemy foxholes, draped over enemy gun barrels, inside enemy dugouts.

The spirit of Bushido overwhelmed the Germans. Panicked, they abandoned their positions and fled down the ridge... where they ran directly into the guns of the 2nd Battalion, who had sneaked around their right rear while we overwhelmed them with an insane bayonet charge.

Even though the back of the German resistance had been broken, their artillery kept pouring in. But finally, at 1500 hours that day, with both the 3rd and the 1/100th moving abreast, a patrol from the Third's I Company, led by Sergeant Takeo Senzaki, contacted the "Lost Battalion." Shortly thereafter, the 141st and the 442nd linked up.

In what has become a famous exchange, Mutt Sakumoto, the first Japanese American to reach the trapped Texans, casually offered them a cigarette. In four days in late October, we had achieved the impossible. The 442nd had cracked German defenses that other units couldn't dent and rescued 211 trapped Texans. I thought back to the day in a universe long gone when I had bunted in the winning run.

After the battle General Dahlquist, who had initially caused the problem, ordered the 442nd to gather for a parade review and then proceeded to get pissed because there were so few of us in attendance, "Damn Japs!! You can't trust 'em!!". Yeah, I know...

That was when it was pointed out to him that our numbers were so small because so many of us had been killed or wounded.  For instance, Company I of the 3/442nd went into the fight with 185 men; 8 came out unhurt.

My Company K engaged the enemy with 186 men; 169 were killed or wounded, including me, with another grazing wound to my left arm and a bullet through my shoulder. Then again, personal accountability for grim numbers is always in short supply among the people in charge.

*****

Seven months passed, and the Germans had long since surrendered. Then, two bombs in August ended the contest with the Empire of Japan. I was checking my Adjusted Service Rating Score, which we dogfaces called the point system.

Under that scheme, every US soldier was awarded a certain number of points based on stuff like how long they had been overseas, how many decorations they'd received, how many campaigns they had taken part in, and how many children they had.

The total points had to add up to eighty-five to go home. I didn't have any kids, but I had been in the Army for eighteen months and overseas for twelve, fought in four major campaigns, from Operation Dragoon to the Po Valley. Those were worth five points. But that only got me to fifty. I needed thirty-five more to get on that troopship.

Fortunately, you also received points for medals, and I had three purple hearts --superficial wounds, but they counted. So, there were only twenty points left to punch my ticket home. We got five points for each medal of valor. I had three bronze stars from the engagements at Belmont, St Die, and Bruyeres. That left me five points short, which meant I would have to wait five more months before seeing Yuki. The realization made me utterly depressed.

Then another miracle occurred. I was called to the Quonset that contained the offices of Col Miller, our Battalion commander. He had a reputation for being a stickler for discipline, so I stood in front of his desk, rigid as a statue. He shuffled some paper, harumphed, and said, "Apparently, you were the one who cleared the squad protecting the tank that we encountered outside St-Die."

I just stood there at unblinking attention. He harumphed some more and said, casually, "Well... you were recommended for the Silver Star, which has been granted. Here's the box... and well done." Then he went back to rearranging his desk. Our senior officers didn't care much for us Japs.

And I cared not a whit about getting more stuff to pin on my chest. No combat infantryman does. We do what we do for our brothers in arms, not some theoretical concept of patriotism and the American way. That's for the politicians. All I cared about was that this final award punched my ticket home.

*****

My separation from the military was processed in - of all places... Indiana. Because we were the most decorated unit in the entire war, a bunch of 442nd soldiers got discharged at the same time. Hence, a big group of Japanese were gathered together at the processing center at Camp Atterbury, which served as an Army HR command center.

The natives didn't know what to make of the arrival of so many of us... "Ain't we at war with them fellers?" and after our discharge, we couldn't get out of Indianapolis fast enough. I'd been in touch with Yuki and my family, both through letters and a costly long-distance telephone call that I made once I returned to the States. Hearing her dear voice after two years apart brought tears to my eyes.

Yuki told me that Poston was closed, and she and my family had moved back to a place they had found near Little Tokyo. The money that was left in my suitcase, plus all the salary I was sending home, had allowed them to purchase a small bungalow. It was nowhere near as luxurious as the house we had been forced to leave when we were deported. But it beat a barracks in the Sonoran Desert, and it DID have a white picket fence.

There were a lot of building owners in Little Tokyo who had vacant property after the Japanese were deported to the camps. Fortunately for those owners, our departure coincided with the arrival of a large number of southern black people who had come to LA for wartime jobs. LA was still segregated back then, with a limited number of residential areas open to people of color. So, the incoming black workers were stuffed into our former community like sardines, and Little Tokyo's population quadrupled, almost overnight.

That gave Little Tokyo a new nickname, "Bronzeville." Nonetheless, the wartime employment boom had ended for the African American workers once the war was over, and the white soldiers began coming home. The price of real estate skyrocketed, and most of the black population relocated to cheaper, less populated areas outside the city, such as Watts and Compton.

At the same time, the Japanese Americans were slowly returning to the Little Tokyo area. The white building owners preferred Japanese tenants because we tended to improve the places where we were living. Therefore, preferential terms were arranged for both purchases and rentals. That's how my family was able to afford a house, whereas other Japanese Americans had to make do with rentals or move elsewhere.

I will never forget the sunny day that the Southwest Chief rolled into Union Station. I hopped cheerfully off with my M-1929 duffle bag on my shoulder, eager to greet my beloved. But Yuki wasn't there!!? The only person waiting for me was my little sister Akemi. Akemi was nineteen now and just as much a flibbertigibbet as she had always been. But I could tell from her face that something serious had occurred.

Akemi hugged me and blurted, "Something terrible has happened!" Sigh!! Welcome back from the war, soldier.

We had an ancient Model A, which was a long way from my Dad's Packard, but at least it ran. Akemi had parked it out on Alameda Street. It was a very short drive down Alameda to our new house, which was just west of the traditional Little Tokyo area. Akemi filled me in on the ride there.

The long and short of it was that Sado Sakamoto still considered Yuki to be his wife. He had lost track of her after he had weaseled his way out of the camps. The ensuing years of separation didn't bother him much because he was busy spending most of his time and money dodging the draft. But once the camps closed and the war ended... Sado Sakamoto wanted his wife back.

It took from August to December of 1945 for the sadistic fucker to track Yuki down. It was the purchase of the Sakai family domicile that eventually alerted Sakamoto's private eye to Yuki's location, since her name was on the deed. I'd insisted on that.

Thus, Sakamoto showed up at our door just as family was making plans for my coming home party. That incident occurred on Saturday, and it was Monday now. Both of my parents had become frail. The camps contributed to some of it, and the rest was due to my service. So, Akemi opened the door.

At five feet seven and two hundred and eighty pounds, Sakamoto must have looked like a giant toad squatting on our porch. Sakamoto blustered, "Where is my wife! Where's Yuki?" My sister threw up her hands, screamed, and fled, leaving five-foot, hundred-and-ten-pound Yuki to deal with a man who felt righteously aggrieved by her "abandonment" of him.

Akemi was hiding in the kitchen. But she overheard everything that happened. Yuki snarled, "Do not come into this house. You are not welcome here, and if you do not leave, I will call the police and have you removed."

Sakamoto laughed, stepped aside, and beckoned to the police cruiser parked at our curb. He said, taunting, "They're already here. They've come to help return you to your rightful husband." At Sakamoto's signal, two LA cops got out of their prowl car and sauntered up the walk to join him on our porch. They were doing a little off-the-books work for him.

That was when Yuki lost it. She screamed, "We were never married from the standpoint of the law, and the Bhikkhu who married us has given me a sworn statement that we are no longer considered married in the eyes of our religion. I am legally and happily married to a true yusha... hero. He will be home in the next few days, and I am preparing to greet him with all my heart."

Sakamoto laughed and said, "That fool has no money, no power, no influence. I do. So, start behaving like a proper Japanese wife, or I will have these two officers beat it into you." At that, he turned to the two grinning LA cops and said, "Could you please escort my wife to my car?"

Yuki tried to fight them. But it was hopeless. She was thrown roughly into the front seat of Sakamoto's 1940 Cadillac Deville, and they all drove away, leaving Akemi and my two broken parents to mourn her loss. That had happened a day and a half before my arrival.

The thought of the love of my life in the clutches of that reptile would have shattered the younger me. But on hearing what had happened... my only emotion was relief. Why relief? Well, I was going to have to do something about Sakamoto anyhow, Honor demanded it. Now that Sakamoto had forced my hand, I could get down to the delightful business of extracting suitable payback... sooner than later.

The fact that the turd was probably raping my beloved wife under the heading of his marital privilege only made me wilder. I had lived through the maelstrom when so many others had died, yet I had survived by being clever and decisive. So, I instantly changed gears from happy homecoming soldier to angry predator. That personality change had been business as usual for me over the prior two years.

Careful tactical planning is one of the first things that you learn in war... or in the words of Sun Tzu, "If I know how you choose to defend yourself, then I know how to attack you.". But that takes painstaking reconnaissance, and I didn't have the time to do much preparation. It took until sunset to calm my family and gather what I needed.

The art of Shinobi is something that every Japanese kid has either practiced or is familiar with. I had used it numerous times in the Vosges to scout German positions. Now I was going to put it to use where it counted. If you wanted to stay invisible, light-absorbing clothes are the essence of the art. That included a black balaclava to minimize the shine of my face. In that outfit, I was nothing but a vengeful wraith.

Bel Air's selling point back in that era was the green space between the dwellings -- it still is, for that matter. That made Sakamoto's place easy to approach. So, just before the sun set, I drove my beaten-up old Ford the 18 miles up to the UCLA campus in Westwood, parked it, and hiked two miles up Stone Canyon Road. It was quiet and nearly pitch-black up high in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Sakamoto's mansion was located on a ridge overlooking the LA basin. If anybody had noticed me walking up the road, they would have thought that I was an unremarkable returning soldier carrying his duffle bag. There were a lot of us in the area at the time. When I got there, I dropped into a ditch and took what I needed out of the duffle. My destination, which was three hundred feet above me, lay right on the edge of the canyon cliff.

Needless to say, I was ready to fuck somebody up. I was virtually invisible in the dark. My black balaclava, my black T-shirt, and dark olive BDU pants blended into the night. I had my trusty Ka-Bar in a sheath and a Bo strapped to my back. Why a Bo? A Japanese fighting stick? I'm not a martial arts expert. I was hopelessly awkward as a kid. But the Bo works just like a pugil stick, and I had had far too much experience with that implement during basic training.

I started the two-hundred-foot climb. The approach was easy enough. The canyon wall was nowhere near as steep as the bluff at Belmont, and there were no German pillboxes to work my way around like in the Vosges. I emerged on a little promontory about 50 feet from the Sakamoto mansion. The place was lit up like there was a party inside. So, I Army crawled through the lush landscaping to reconnoiter.

The windows on that side of the building were floor-to-ceiling, and I could see and hear everything inside. Sakamoto was perched in a sectional couch, celebrating with two other guys. I didn't know who they were, but they were white and had the burly look of cops or bodyguards.

I still didn't know where Yuki was. Patience is the essence of Shinobi. So, I just sat listening and watching, but my blood was boiling. Sakamoto helped me out by loudly bragging, "I'm going in that bedroom, now" and he gestured behind him with the hand that was holding his drink, "and rip off some of that hot little piece of ass. You boys hold the fort while I do it."

Shinobi or not, that statement almost ended my vigil. Especially when Sakamoto added, "It's a husband's right to fuck his wife any time he wants. I don't think the little cuck she's married to will try anything. But you can never be safe enough."

The three of them had a nice laugh at that witticism. Sakamoto added, "She keeps crying and fighting me. She doesn't seem to understand that overcoming her feeble attempts to defend herself adds supaisu--spice to the sex."

Army training instills discipline and focus, which I had to fall back on; otherwise, I would have blown the surprise I had planned. So, I calmed myself and waited as that fat pig waddled casually into the nearby bedroom, preparing to despoil the love of my life. I was sure that one of Sakamoto's goons would position himself outside, and the other would be inside guarding the door. I had to deal with them first.

The two had a good chuckle as the screams began in the bedroom. Then they flipped a coin, and the loser walked outside. It was a beautiful night with the lights of LA glowing in the distance. So, it was no hardship for the guy to stand there listening as the pitiful sounds of pleading began. That is... until I appeared like a phantom out of the dark and shoved the butt of the Bo into his throat just beneath his jaw.

That was the death blow they taught us in AIT, except there was no padding on the end of the Bo. The force of the impact, which was delivered with all of the hatred I had for Sakamoto and anybody associated with him, probably snapped the first goon's neck. At any rate, he dropped like a stone, and the thug in the house was none the wiser.

Normal people would be disturbed by causing the death of another human being. But I was hardened to killing. Since I'd already done a lot of it as part of my duty, that's the problem with warfare. Every major religion justifies it based on its righteous purpose, which is to overcome evil and achieve a just peace. But fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity. It's a paradox. And I was far from being a virgin in that respect.

So, if you've already done enough justifiable killing, one more death in the cause of righteousness doesn't affect you much. I should have felt some compassion for my victim, particularly because he wasn't a faceless target like most of the people I'd gunned down. But this man was complicit in the kidnapping and violation of my wife. And he paid the price because of it.

The thug inside the lounge was going to be more of a problem because I couldn't surprise him in the dark, and I didn't want the noise of my dispatching him alerting Sakamoto that the Onry? - the Japanese Demon of Revenge - had come for him. So, I silently worked my way around the building until I found a door with a window in it. I broke the glass with the end of the Bo and reached in to open the door.

The thug in the lounge must have heard the noise because he came creeping into the room, which appeared to be a kitchen, gun in hand, calling "Who's there?" I stood motionless and invisible in the dark as he passed me. A downward sweep of the Bo whacked the gun out of his hand, and a reverse counter knocked him out.

Now, it was time to redeem Yuki's honor. As I sprinted across the great room, I heard the loud thumping of what sounded like a wrestling match going on in the bedroom. I heard Yuki weeping. I put my well-worn M-43 combat boot to the flimsy door, and it flew open. Fatso and Yuki were both naked on the bed and Sakamoto was in the process of handcuffing Yuki's right hand to the ornate headboard. Yuki was wailing and crying, begging him to stop.

I had planned for Sakamoto to suffer. So, I should have been more subtle. But the depraved scene in front of me enraged me to the point that I lunged and violently jammed the end of the Bo into the one spot on Sakamoto that was the most available and vulnerable, the exposed space between his balls and his asshole. I used the two-handed thrust that they drilled into you over and over in basic.

Sakamoto had Yuki spreadeagled, leaning forward, entirely on top of her. He had his legs spread wide to hold Yuki's legs open as he reached forward to snap on the handcuff. Accordingly, the area of the Bo strike was totally unprotected, and the thrust had all my rage and strength behind it.

The impact was catastrophic. The pain must have been unbearable. Because Sakamoto scorpioned back, mouth open in a silent scream, face grimacing in extreme agony. Then he flopped backward in a crumpled heap on the floor at the foot of the bed. His departure had been so sudden that my wife was still begging him to stop.

Surprisingly, Yuki reacted to Sakamoto's disappearance with a whining, "NO!!" I was puzzled for a second. Then I realized that Yuki thought the evening's entertainment involved a different hole. It infuriated me so much that I gave Sakamoto's corpse a violent kick... and he was indeed a corpse, now. The man was morbidly obese. He probably had all kinds of heart problems. Hence, it was no surprise that the shock and pain of the Bo strike blew up his circulatory system.

Sakamoto's sudden and relatively painless demise was a bitter disappointment to me. But in some ways, it was fortunate. I'd been planning a much more excruciating exit for him. Even so, it would have taken longer and would have left too much evidence. More importantly, what I had in mind would have dragged me down to his level.

Now, Sakamoto's death looked like natural causes. All I had to do was arrange the body so that the heart attack that had killed him would be evident to whichever authorities responded to the case. Yuki was still lying there begging whoever the new intruder was not to hurt her. I took a gander up and down her exquisite little body -- hey... I'd been gone for two years - before I said in my most soothing voice, "It's over, my love. He won't bother you anymore."

Yuki froze, like she couldn't believe what she had heard. She turned in wonder, still bathed in sweat from her exertions, and a look of profound wonder and adoration crossed her face. It was something I would remember to my dying day. She said, hesitantly, "Is it you?" It was like she couldn't trust her eyes.

I pulled the balaclava off my head. Yuki gasped in recognition. Then I took the handcuff key off the bedside table and unlocked my wife's wrist. Yuki was sobbing pitifully as I sat down on the bed. I took her naked body in my arms and said, "I'm sorry that I got back too late to save you from this. But I'm here now, and I will never leave you again."

*****

Sado Sakamoto was big news in LA for a couple of days after his death. The articles were accompanied by a picture of the two police patrolmen who had discovered the body. According to them, they had come to Sakamoto's residence to do a simple welfare check, at which point they had found him unresponsive.

The Medical Examiner concluded that Sakamoto had died of natural causes. Which, in effect, he had. To my astonishment, the cops who claimed to have found Sakamoto were the two goons I'd dealt with before Sakamoto's untimely demise. My initial thought was, "So, I didn't kill the first one after all."

The lack of mention of a mysterious ninja intruder was explainable by the fact that that would have raised painfully embarrassing questions about what they were doing when they'd encountered me. Hence, it was easier all around to chalk Sakamoto's death up to overeating and unhealthy living... the cops didn't lose their jobs, and I got off scot-free.

Yuki was another story entirely. The abuses that she had endured in her first marriage might have been written off to culture. Yuki had a clear-cut, conventional role to play as a Japanese wife. And if it included obscene sexual practices... well, that's the price for marrying the dude. So, she could easily and genuinely forgive herself for the violations that she'd endured.

But her kidnapping was an abuse of her personal self. And that isn't something you can dismiss under the heading of "shit happens." So, instead of the happy homecoming that most returning soldiers got, I had to deal with a significant psychological breakdown of my beloved wife. Hey... by that point I accepted being shit on from a very great height.

My wife was almost comatose as we left Sakamoto's mansion. So, I had to carry her the two miles back to my car. I would have carried her willingly, even if Yuki had weighed as much as Sakamoto. But she was as delicate as a summer breeze. It was the middle of the night when we finally reached our house. The lights were on, and the whole family was sitting nervously in the living room.

I said, "Where is Yuki's bedroom?" They all pointed to the large room at the back of the house. I carried her in and laid her gently in bed. I had wrapped her in a blanket from Sakamoto's house to keep her warm and cover her nakedness. I took it off her and substituted one of our blankets. I would burn that foul remnant in the morning.

Yuki slept for a little over twenty hours while I bunked on the floor next to her bed. And believe me, the floorboards of my own house were a paradise compared to a foxhole in the freezing rain. I did everyday things after I awoke, to adjust to the freedom of being a civilian. Going from the structure of military life to the unstructured world of everyday existence was like visiting a brave new world. I also needed to adjust to the changes in my family.

Akemi was still an insubstantial little songbird. But she was a woman now, with all the problems that come with being young and pretty. It would be a while before I trusted her judgment. She was now working in a flower shop, making intricate arrangements, which was a sign that she might be finding herself. However, it also put her on display for any predator who might pass idly by. So, I would have to keep an eye on her.

Mainly, however, I was shocked by how badly my parents had declined over the relatively short period that I'd been gone. The change was understandable; they had devoted their years to building a happy life, only to have it snatched away by Executive Order.

Now they were faced with rebuilding from nothing. I was young and vigorous, with plenty of time in front of me. While my parents were old, they had most of their lives behind them, and the loss of everything that they had worked for made their entire existence seem, in effect, meaningless.

That was the family's situation when Yuki shuffled into the kitchen on a bright and sunny LA day. I was tucking into a plate of bacon and eggs - it must have been the smell of the bacon that had lured my wife out of bed. She was dressed in the ratty old robe that I'd seen hanging in her room, and she had that scuffed, woolly look that you get when you sleep too long, but at least she was functioning.

Yuki poured a cup of coffee without saying anything. Then she walked over and sat opposite me at the breakfast table. I put down my fork and looked attentive. Yuki said softly, "Thank you." I didn't need to ask what she was talking about.

I said, concern in my voice, "How are you feeling?" I wasn't talking about her physical state. My parents were both sitting in the living room, listening to Fibber McGee on the radio, and Akemi was at her work with the local florist. So, it was just the two of us.

Yuki said, quiet enough for only me to hear, "I dreamed of this reunion for two long years, and I am not going to let Sado Sakamoto ruin one second of the joy that I feel sitting here with you." I laughed and said, "Mr. Sakamoto is dead. The papers say it was a heart attack." Yuki's huge eyes were obsidian as she said, "Good."

This was the first face-to-face conversation between Yuki and me since I got on the bus to Needles, and I had thought a lot about what I was going to say. The vile circumstances that had marred my arrival had robbed me of the joyful hugs and kisses a soldier usually receives from his wife. Instead, we were in full-blown crisis mode.

But strong marriages are forged in the crucible of life's challenges. That's when two people join together to overcome whatever shithole the gods have chosen to drop them into. In the short term, only Yuki could defeat the demons hacking at her soul. But I was going to do whatever it took, for as long as it took, to support her in that fight, and I told her that.

I said, matter of fact, "I understand that what happened is devastating. But I want you to know that I will do whatever it takes to help make you whole again, no matter how long that might be." I might have sounded more insightful than normal because I also had a few issues to put behind me, like suicidal bayonet charges and the violent loss of friends.

Traumatic things had happened, and there is no getting over them. They have to be lived with... beaten into an escape-proof box, which you then store in the warehouse of your memories. Yuki said, skeptically, "It doesn't bother you that that vile creature despoiled me?"

I said, with grim sincerity, "It bothers me a lot. That's why I killed him. However, my only concern is for you and your health and happiness. So, the more appropriate question is... do you think you can get past this and return to a normal life?" Yuki said resolutely, "If it's for you... I can do anything."

And THAT, my friends, sums up a good marriage. You are never alone in the struggle. Whatever you face, you face it together. Yuki was my consort battleship... smart, strong, and, best of all, she had the personal courage that comes from a sense of self-worth. I could trust my wife to do the right thing in every situation that required personal strength and character. Together... life wouldn't defeat us.

*****

We were tentative at first. It was partly my presence at Yuki's humiliation. She told me that... at first, she was so mortified that she couldn't even bear to look at me. I, on the other hand, wasn't going to raise any specters of the righteously dead Sakamoto until Yuki did. I knew that she would come to me when she was ready to talk.

Yuki was wrestling with her demons. So, we danced around each other for a week. But it was also apparent that something would have to happen, because we couldn't go on like that forever. Hence, I came into the living room one night, after the old people had gone to bed, and found Yuki waiting for me.

Her beautiful Shoji eyes were different, less guarded, more open, shining with excitement. She said, "Let's take a little walk." Our house was located just north of Figueroa, which was the boundary of Little Tokyo, in the Vista Hermosa Park area. Hermosa Park was a ten-acre patch of undeveloped green space, with little paths cutting through its woods and meadows. It's there today, although it has been urbanized.

I followed Yuki's swaying bottom across Toluca Street into the park. I had the ironic thought that she always led me into the underbrush when something significant was about to occur. We walked through the trees and up a hill until we came to the edge of a meadow that was full of yellow dandelions. I've always considered those things pretty, not weeds.

The view of downtown LA from our elevated perspective was spectacular. There were all of the busy sounds of a hot summer night around us. The smell was of woods and earth. The full moon cast an unearthly light on the surrounding trees.

Yuki was wearing a simple white dress. Her gorgeous, slim legs were extended in front of her. With her perfect face and huge dark eyes, she looked like a classical Japanese Kuzuryu -- wood nymph. She sat gracefully and patted the grass next to her. I sat. Except, I plopped clumsily on the ground because I'm a guy. I gave her an apologetic grin, and she smiled.

Yuki said, "We need to come to an understanding." I didn't like the sound of that. I said warily, "Understanding? About what?" She looked at me like I was an idiot and said simply, "Our future as man and wife. We haven't had sex since you've been home. Why is that? Do I disgust you, now?"

I had a sudden foreboding thought. Had I been overthinking things? I'd just assumed that Yuki would need time to heal from her kidnapping. So, I was trying to be sensitive to her feelings... by actively avoiding anything that might remind her of the experience, specifically, sex. Instead, Yuki had interpreted that as my not wanting her because she'd been despoiled by Sakamoto... females!!!

I knew a few things for sure. First, there would never be another woman in my life but Yuki. She was the whole package: smart, beautiful, and tough, a true lifetime companion. I also knew that I wouldn't find two Yukis in this world. She had been kidnapped and violated by an insane ex-husband, but she didn't hate, or mistrust men - or perhaps the better term is ALL men.

I said simply, "I'm an idiot. I've wanted to have you twice a day and three times on Sundays. But I was forcing myself to avoid sex with you until you had gotten past your experience with Sakamoto." Yuki gave me a warning look, like I needed to tread very carefully. I did a little chuckle and said bashfully, "So, you're telling me that you are ready to have sex again?"

Yuki exploded with laughter as she said, "You really are an idiot. Making love to you is healing to me, not hurtful. I want you to fuck me until death do we part." We came together at that point. The sexual tension that had been building for a week surfaced in a spontaneous kiss. Yuki moaned, plastered herself to me, and her mouth opened wide while our tongues dueled.

We kissed like that for what seemed like an eternity, melding against each other as if we were making a four-legged human. Then we rolled apart, both of us astonished at the colossal wave of passion that we had unleashed. I looked at Yuki, and her eyes were wild with yearning.

We went back to kissing. But this time, I rolled on top of her. She hyperventilated, her legs spread wide, knees raised, feet dangling. Maybe she did it. Maybe I did. All I know is that the final connection was made without me having the slightest memory of how it happened, and then we were one with each other.

I found, to my utter astonishment, how easy it was to drop all internal barriers if you are making love to the right person. And I was lost in some fleeting otherworldly paradise with Yuki. The Vosges mountains were nothing but a dim memory, and I was home.

Yuki is tiny and exquisite, much smaller than I am. But her body is almost voluptuous in proportion to her size. Her breasts wouldn't seem that big on a larger woman. But on Yuki, her tits looked like two big hills. Her waist was so small that I was close to spanning it with two hands, and her hips and flanks were hard and muscular. But her legs were her crowning glory. Yuki's legs were long, slim, and so perfectly sculptured that they belonged in a museum.

Yuki's dress was around her waist, and her panties had somehow disappeared. The sensation was wet, hot, and pheromones. I was inserted into Yuki to the hilt, not moving, holding myself on my arms and staring into my love's fathomless black eyes.

Her eyes shone with a profound, feminine spirit. Her loyalty and devotion were rooted in them, along with her promise of fidelity. For my part, I assured her that I was hers eternally and that I would die to avoid hurting her. Still, inevitably, the spiritual link had to give way to something more basic. Yuki moaned, her eyes rolled into her head, and she emitted a groan that originated in the depths of her soul.

It all happened very fast. Yuki's head rocked back, and she slammed her legs around my butt. Her hands slapped on my back, and her hips shot up to seat me as far inside herself as she could get. I was not even close to rational at that point. So, I don't recollect the love making in detail, and it was love, not sex. But I do recall that Yuki was insanely enthusiastic, taking and giving in equal measure.

There wasn't anything remotely tentative or even subtle about the mating. It was two young people vigorously bridging a spiritual gap between themselves through an intimate physical connection. We both knew this would be a historic milestone in our lives. From this day forward, it would just be her and me together against the world.

We did the passionate dance of love for an indeterminate period, and then Yuki began to move restlessly underneath me. Her legs started to shake relentlessly, and her hips began to undulate. That finally culminated in a loud sigh. Then the rhythmic clenching of her inner self began.

Yuki set off on a bout of uncontrollable quivering, and she started muttering over and over in Japanese -- Motto! Motto! I didn't need a translator to recognize that she was urging me not to stop. When my moment arrived, it was like a window opened to a proper understanding of the essential things in life.

We lay there side by side, gasping. I finally got enough awareness to take her little hand, and she squeezed mine. I was never going to let her go. I said, "There will not be another woman. I would die without you." There were tears in her voice as she said, "That's all I ever wanted. We will have a long marriage together."

*****

The GI Bill eased my return to life in booming postwar America. USC gave me credit for the classes that I had taken in 1940-41. However, I wanted to retake them to ensure that I had mastered the basics of the engineering profession. So, I started over as a freshman. The VA covered the tuition. I took my learning very seriously, just as I did everything else in my life. You're right... I'm a fussy little nerd. But that's what you want in an engineer... careful and meticulous.

I also used my VA benefit to buy a larger house for Yuki and me, right up the street from our current one. It had the same picket fence as the one that we had all been living in. But now my parents would have their own space, which restored their pride and honor and did wonders for their health. Now, flowers surrounded their house, and their backyard contained row upon row of vegetables, carefully tended by two elderly, yet very robust, Japanese.

My parents might have lost everything, but the life they were living now was filled with joy. Their happiness was further enhanced by the news that Yuki was pregnant with their first grandchild. We had planned on having many more after that, which is why we needed a bigger house.

Unlike now, fathers were verboten in the delivery room. So, I practically wore a groove in the floor walking back and forth until the nurse came to get me. It was a bright and sunny late-fall morning on a gorgeous LA day, almost exactly three years after my ordeal in the Vosges. My-my-my... that felt like it happened a century ago.

I walked into the delivery room and saw Yuki. She looked like she'd spent the night wrestling a grizzly bear. But she had the most radiant look on her face as she cuddled what I swear was one of God's brightest angels. The tiny little girl's eyes were fixed on me, and the instant she saw me, her little face broke into a smile. They say that babies can't see and that the smile was gas. But I know what I saw.

A good marriage is emotionally additive, in that each new face exponentially increases your happiness. That was what little Viola brought to us. What??! Do you think that every third-generation Japanese kid has to have a Nipponese name? This was post-war America, and we Japanese were back to being citizens of the United States... now... not despised aliens, only fit to be put in concentration camps.

Robert, who we called "Sluggo," was next. He got that nickname because he was so big and rambunctious. We knew where he got his size from... me... but we had no idea where he got his -- shall we say, "aggressive" -- personality. Yuki and I were both readers and thinkers, not people who would make the Mongols look like a peaceful group of wandering holy men. But my dear son Robert was a relentless little terror from the day he arrived.

Then there was sweet Nancy, who was just as demure and deferential as her mother was... or used to be. Those must have been the Japanese genes because nobody in the family was submissive... now. Life with a big brother eventually changed Nancy's attitude about civility. By the time she was six, she was as cunning as Machiavelli, and Sluggo spent a lot of time being accused of things he didn't do

I graduated Summa from USC in the Spring of 1954. It had taken me twice as long as a traditional college student because I had work and a family to support. As soon as I got the sheepskin, I went looking for jobs other than a landscaper -- you know, we Japanese... we like to grow things.

I was introduced to semiconductor technology by a physics professor at USC, and I wanted to explore this new phenomenon, as it was an alternative to vacuum tubes that enabled every electronic device on the planet. I mean, transistors looked like a serious growth industry. The hard part was getting all those little silicon micromodules to cooperate in the same way as they had in the much larger vacuum tube chassis. That was what I was an expert in.

In early 1955, Bill Shockley took his racist but brilliant ass to Mountain View California, to be nearer his aging mother. Since Shockley was essentially the Godfather of the transistor industry, he also founded a small company, which he modestly named the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory. Shockley's little factory produced silicon-based transistors, which also spawned a new name for the valley in which it was located.

I was convinced that transistors represented the future. So, I signed on with Shockley's merry band. It was a gamble that I never regretted. Yuki and the kids moved from our home in Vista Hermosa up to Los Altos, which was costly. However, the real estate prices in LA had become downright unusual, and we already had a significant amount of equity built up. So, we could afford it.

William Shockley might have been the worst boss I've ever worked for, and remember, I spent time laboring under the haplessly lethal management of General John Dahlquist. Shockley was a loon, autocratic, domineering, erratic, and difficult to please, with an increasingly paranoid nature. Eventually, his shenanigans drove me and seven other top researchers to quit and form our own company, Fairchild Semiconductor, which got us the nickname "the traitorous eight."

That nickname had no impact on us at all. That was partly because Shockley's reputation for being a few bubbles out of plumb was the justification for the move. Shockley's company folded almost immediately after we left, while I spent thirty years with Fairchild, becoming extremely wealthy on stock options and patents in the emerging semiconductor industry.

After I retired from the business, Yuki and I moved up the peninsula to a little Victorian jewel of a house in Presidio Heights. Viola, who was her daddy's pride and joy, had followed in my footsteps at Fairchild and had already ridden the ups and downs to the C suite.

At the same time, Sluggo was living off the millions he made with the 49ers. A six-foot-four, two-hundred-and-fifty-pound Japanese linebacker, who hit like the meteor that ended the dinosaurs, might be a genetic freak. But my boy Robert was also a white supremacist's worst nightmare.

Finally, my sweet little Nancy was a media personality in the Bay Area Market. That was a surprise given how shy she had been growing up. But Nancy had her mother's strength and smarts, and she was still as devious as she was when she was six. She scored exclusive interviews with everybody. Nobody knew how she did it. I was proud of my little kitten.

As for Yuki and me... a good marriage is a true union between individuals. You share the good times. But that's not what it's all about. Life is a bitch -- no matter how comfortable and secure you might be. And it involves compromises for the sake of marital harmony... even if it comes directly out of your hide. But that is a small sacrifice compared to the connection that you've forged with another soul.

By the time you reach serious old age, sex has very little to do with it. Nor is your partner's fading beauty a problem. Yuki, to me, was as exquisitely beautiful as she was the day I met her. But realistically, her black hair was as white as the cotton end of a Q-tip, and her weathered face had lost its youthful silkiness.

So, what is this mysterious force that keeps two people devoted to each other, even after the bloom is off the rose? It's the interweaving of a lifetime of experience into a single tapestry, which is your life together. And you are never alone in that respect... until you are.

One of the two of you will eventually die; it's unavoidable. Which creates a bizarre competition... in which the winner is the first one to pass away. While the loser is left to survive without an integral part of their existence. Losing your arm is a bad analogy. It's more like losing your whole self.

The chance that somebody as physically perfect as Yuki might have a defect lurking somewhere in her body was inconceivable. But I was reading Herb Caen's column on one auspicious day, as the sun burned off the morning fog. Yuki was sitting next to me on our sectional couch, reading her copy of the Chronicle... just as we had done together for the past fifty-five years.

Some couples prefer different rooms at that point in a marriage. But Yuki and I didn't like being apart. It was just who we were. I mean, seriously, who would want to be separated from the one person you drew your strength from? That was when Yuki interrupted our peaceful moment by uttering a startled, "OH!" She sounded distressed.

I glanced idly in her direction, and she looked like she had fallen asleep. I said, "Wake up, sleepyhead." She didn't stir. I touched her, growing ever more desperate. There was no response. I pulled out my phone, the one with the printed circuit technology that I had helped pioneer, and with shaking hands, I dialed 911.

It was an aortic aneurysm, like the finger of God. Nobody could have anticipated it, nor could they have saved my wife once it happened. It was about as quick and painless a death as you could hope for. But it took my soul. I know that sounds hyperbolic. But after that, I could see no option in front of me except the empty nothingness of the void.

I had endured the camps, and I had survived the Germans, and the pain and uncertainty that I felt in both of those horrific instances was minor compared to the way I felt after the loss of my wife. Sometimes you march and sometimes you die. There was nothing left for me now but the latter.

Even so, there was one thing I had to do before I joined my love in the great beyond. That was to memorialize our life in the place where it had all come together -- the Poston Internment Camp. I was never particularly religious. Shintoism is more a way to properly live your life than it's about spending the odd Sunday reveling in ostentatious rigamarole.

But like every other follower of Shinto, I DID believe that the soul is separate from the body. So,  death isn't necessarily the end of existence. I was sure of that... And Yuki and I would be together again if there were any equity in this universe.

Epilogue

The Mercedes rolled silently through the slowly opening gates. Every inch of the property was landscaped, and the fall flowers, Zinnias, Verbena, and Alyssum, were in full bloom. The granddaughter pulled carefully into the nearest bay of the three-car garage. Her expensive, dark blue BMW X6 was parked in the circular drive, where she had left it three days earlier.

The old man climbed stiffly out of the vehicle, his aches and pains betraying his aged status. He said wryly, "I should have taken better care of myself." Then he walked slowly and painfully up the steps of the garage entrance to his house. He turned at the top and waved a thank you to his granddaughter. It was almost like a benediction. She blew him a kiss in return and headed out to her car.

The old man closed the garage door. Then he stood lost in thought. It was as if he were reviewing what he had just done. He had honored his marriage at the place where it had happened... in the oppressive heat and dust of the old classroom building at Camp Poston. He said, under his breath, "It's over." Now, he had nothing left but to wait.

The temperature outside was authentically San Francisco in the fall. It's the reason why wool in its many incarnations is so fashionable there. The old man walked over and adjusted the thermostat a few degrees. Then he went into the living room, with its fifteen-foot ceilings, huge bay window, and the superlative views of the Golden Gate and Marin County beyond.

He stood for a moment, taking it all in. Then he turned, walked to an old oak cabinet, and pulled out the bottom drawer. There was a collection of medal boxes inside -- eight in all: three Purple Hearts, three Bronze Stars, a Silver Star, and the Congressional Gold Medal that the surviving members of the 442nd were awarded 60 years after the war. He muttered under his breath, "Banzai!! -- Go For Broke." Then he took the small stack into the splendid bedroom of his house.

He carefully laid each box on the mahogany bedside table, opening it as he did. Then, fully clothed, he lay on the bed. He had been having spells recently, a profound, sick, woozy-headed feeling, like the floor of his existence was falling out from underneath him. Typically, he would have seen a doctor about it. But those moments of approaching mortality gave him a spark of hope.

The old man had decided against seppuku, which was a Japanese practice, and he was an American. It would have to be a natural death. Hence, he was hopeful each time that he felt one of those spells coming on. He would lie back on the bed, close his eyes, and mutter, "I'm coming, my love." Then he would wait.

This had been a ritual he had faithfully followed since the spells began. Every time he sensed the impending darkness, he would lie there on the bed, sometimes even doze off. Then, when nothing had occurred, he would stand up, disappointed, and walk dispiritedly out of the room.

This time, however, he felt a much stronger sensation of falling. That was when he heard a sweet voice say, "I've been waiting for you, my love." The people who discovered the old man said he had the most intense look of joy on his face.

Author's Notes

This tale is real history, and everything that occurred is depicted accurately. I am not allowed to embed a link in these posts. But if you want a touching cinematic illustration of this, Google up Mr. Miyagi's drunken scene from the first Karate Kid. It says it all.

I wrapped a personal story around the events. But the fact is that Executive Order 9066 (February 1942) condemned approximately 120,000 people of Japanese descent to one of ten concentration camps located in California, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and Arkansas. The deportations occurred almost immediately thereafter, without any form of due process. Two-thirds of the people who were deported had always been U. S. citizens.

The camps themselves were a harsh contrast to the internees' accustomed way of life. The surrounding terrain was rustic... to say the least. The camp was enclosed by a barbed wire fence, which encompassed a group of hastily built, overcrowded, uninsulated barracks buildings with minimal furnishings. The internees were prohibited from taking more than a single suitcase with them. As a result, they were forced to sell their existing homes and businesses. That is... if they could find anybody willing to buy them.

I chose the Posten Internment Center because it was arguably the most notorious of the ten camps. It was built on the reservation lands of the Mohave,  Chemehuevi,  Hopi, and Navajo tribes over the strenuous objections of their Tribal Council. The tribes remembered what had been done to their ancestors in the previous century, and they refused to be part of any confinement based on an individual's race, thereby retaining their honor.

The soldiers of the 442nd RCT came directly from those camps -- exactly as I've described here - except for the First Battalion of the 442nd, which was unofficially nicknamed the Purple Heart Battalion. It was composed of Niesi members of the Hawaiian National Guard. Hawaii was not a state at the time and did not impose the same restrictions on its Japanese citizens as the continental United States did.

The 100th Infantry saw combat at places such as Monte Cassino before it was attached to the 442nd in June 1944 as the 100th Battalion -- in effect, the 1st Battalion, 442nd Infantry.  The other two battalions of the 442nd were made up of Nisei volunteers and draftees recruited from the camps.

And man... could those guys fight!

It remains a matter of historical record that... for its size and length of service, the 442nd RCT is the most decorated unit in the history of the United States military. Three battalions of Niesi infantry and one of artillery, plus an engineering company, were awarded eight Presidential Unit Citations, five of them in a single month.

The individual members of the 442nd earned over 18,143 awards, all of which were achieved in less than two years. Among those awards were 21 Medals of Honor, 29 Distinguished Service Crosses, 560 Silver Stars, more than 4,000 Bronze Stars, along with more than 4,000 Purple Hearts. Then, finally, in 2011, sixty-seven years after they had fought and bled in the Vosges, the 442nd received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award granted by the United States.

Despite their courage and sacrifice, the Japanese Americans of the 442nd faced the same old racist attitudes when they got back home. None of that was news to the returning veterans. They reacted to the mindless abuse with their usual good grace and quickly got on with leading productive lives without any recrimination or fuss. Just like the hero of this story did.

It wasn't until forty-three years after the fact that the U. S. formally apologized for the internment camps and recognized the 442nd's heroics in World War II. That was a politically expedient step. It was well after any outrage associated with the injustices of Japanese internment had been lost in the march of history. And so, like all the other actions that we, as a society, choose to sweep under the rug, the camps were noted in passing and then forgotten.

In 1962, Texas Governor John Connally awarded honorary Texan status to the 442nd for saving the Lost Battalion. Which was only fair, given that eight hundred Japanese Americans were sacrificed to rescue two hundred and eleven Texans. For those of you doing the math... let me remind you that those were different times... perhaps.

However, courage and valor never change, and in the annals of American military history, no unit displayed more old-fashioned patriotism, devotion to duty, honor, and pure guts than the Japanese Americans of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team -- Go for Broke!!

Copyright: Daniel Tiberius Iverson, Ann Arbor, Michigan