WWII Lessons Come Alive in Japanese Americans' Tales
Veterans Recall Discrimination

By Julie Rasicot
Special to The Washington Post
Thursday, March 6, 2008

In 1942, Mary Tamaki Murakami was 13 years old when she and her family were forced to board a U.S. Army-guarded train that took them from their California home to an internment camp for Japanese Americans in Utah.

Caught in the wave of hysteria that followed the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japan, Murakami's family was among thousands of Japanese Americans living on the West Coast who were forced to live in guarded camps during World War II.

"My parents took pictures and gave them to each of us because they didn't know if our family would stay intact," Murakami told students last week at Wheaton High School.

Murakami, 80, of Bethesda joined three Japanese American war veterans in sharing their experiences with ninth-graders to help put human faces on the students' history lessons about World War II. Their message was simple.

"Imagine, I was your age when this happened to me," Murakami told the students. "As an American, always be alert to the abuse of yours and others' civil rights."

The speakers were invited to the school by U.S. history teacher Lauren Mincher as part of an informal partnership between the county schools, the Japanese American Veterans Association and other groups.

Terry Shima, one of the speakers and executive director of the Japanese American Veterans Association, said the veterans visit schools because they believe it is important for students to be aware of the discrimination they experienced so that it won't happen again.

"We want, by our example, that no ethnic groups suffer the same kind of treatment that we were subjected to," said Shima, 84, of Gaithersburg.

The group also has spoken at Gaithersburg High School and Springbrook High School in Silver Spring, Shima said.

"For us, it is a pleasure, because we want to tell our story," said Shima, a native of Hawaii. "We feel that not enough people know about our World War II experience, and one of our goals is to get the message out. We don't have all that many years to do this."

Most students seemed to listen intently to the speakers, and several had questions. Ninth-grader Monica Gutierrez, 14, of Silver Spring was especially impressed with Murakami's experience in the Utah internment camp.

"For me, it would have been really scary being there," she told Murakami, adding that she would find it difficult to leave most of her possessions behind as Murakami had done when she was sent to the camp.

"I wouldn't be able to do that. I have too many things," Gutierrez said.

Shima and fellow speaker Joe Ichiuji of Rockville told students that they were members of the Army's 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a unit of Japanese Americans from Hawaii and the mainland who fought not only to defeat the enemy, but also to prove their loyalty to their country.

Ichiuji, 89, said he was already in the Army when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. But, after the attack, he was immediately discharged.

"I was suddenly discharged, and I did not know why," he said. "The government that drafted me decided I was no longer fit for service because of my Japanese heritage."

Ichiuji and his family were shipped to an internment camp in Arizona in 1942. When the Army called for volunteers to join the newly forming 442nd Regimental Combat Team of the 100th Infantry Battalion in early 1943, Ichiuji didn't hesitate to sign up.

"I did not want to give up this opportunity to prove I was a loyal American and to serve my country in a time of war," he told the students.

Ichiuji fought in battles in Italy, France and Germany, where he helped liberate a part of Dachau, one of the infamous Nazi concentration camps.

"It's ironic that many of us who came from the American camps would be involved with the liberation of the Jews," he said. But he noted that internment camps were far different in "scope and purpose" from the concentration camps.

"Nothing can compare with the horrors of the Nazi death camps," he said.

Grant Hirabayashi, 89, of Silver Spring also was in the Army when Pearl Harbor was attacked. Because of his fluency in Japanese, he was sent to the military intelligence service's language school to learn military Japanese.

As a member of the Special Forces, he participated in secret missions to gather intelligence in the Pacific, including capturing documents, interrogating prisoners of war and intercepting enemy communications.

"Our service did not end with the end of the war," he told the students. "At the conclusion of the war, our language skills and knowledge of the culture were called upon" during the U.S. military's occupation of Japan.

For Japanese Americans, proving their loyalty was paramount, the veterans said. Shima noted that more than 800 Japanese Americans were killed during the war.

The veterans said that although the 442nd was honored by President Harry S. Truman in a 1946 Washington ceremony, it wasn't until decades later that President Ronald Reagan issued an apology to Japanese Americans for their treatment during the war.

Even with all of his troubles, Ichiuji told the students that he was "proud of my great nation that apologized for a mistake [made] over 60 years ago and vowed to never let it happen again."