The Japanese Americans Who Fought in WWII

Dan Snow's History Hit

History Hit

History

4.7 • 12.9K Ratings

🗓️ 7 July 2021

⏱️ 22 minutes

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Summary

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941, Japanese Americans were put in a terrible position in the USA. Many tens of thousands of Japanese Americans were interned in cruel conditions being classified as enemy aliens and held in suspicion of being agents for Japan. Despite this many thousands of young men, mostly second-generation Japanese Americans volunteered for service in the American Military. They served in all branches of the US military but the 442nd Infantry Regiment was formed almost exclusively from men of Japanese descent. This unit fought with distinction in Europe in the late stages of the Second World War and is the most highly decorated military unit of its size in American military history. Daniel James Brown is today's podcast guest and he has recently authored Facing The Mountain: The Forgotten Heroes of World War II all about this oft-forgotten aspect of the conflict. He and Dan discuss how the 422nd came into being, the experiences of some of the men of the unit, the prejudice faced by its soldiers, and the legacy of the Purple Heart Battalion.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Everybody, welcome to Dance Know's History. I am Dance Know and today we are talking about
0:04.7	the Japanese Americans who fought for the USA, for their home country in the Second World
0:10.5	War. These were young men, second generation Japanese American for the most part, who grew
0:15.0	up in America, considered themselves Americans and yet found themselves caught up in a terrible
0:18.8	kind of ethnic political conflict within the US following the Japanese attack on Pearl
0:23.5	Harbor. Many of their families were interned in cruel conditions under the suspicion of being
0:28.7	agents for Japan of having mixed loyalties. But these young men wanted the opportunity
0:33.4	to serve and they did so fighting for the US Army Air Force and Navy in Europe during
0:39.0	the Second World War. On the podcast to talk about this, I've got Daniel James Brown,
0:43.4	he's a best-selling author, he's interviewed many of the protagonists, families of the
0:48.7	protagonists. And he's built up a wonderful picture of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team
0:54.3	deployed to France, Italy, Germany, made up of Japanese Americans. They were deployed
1:01.0	often near suicidal roles and those young men did the duty, determined to prove to their
1:06.9	higher command, their wider community that they could be both Americans and of Japanese
1:12.7	dissent. It's a fascinating story. If you want to listen to these podcasts without
1:17.1	the ads, you can go and do so, HistoryHit.TV. So it's like a digital history channel I
1:21.7	set up. It's like Netflix for history. So all these history documentaries on there,
1:25.2	we were adding more all the time, but you also get an audio section where we put all these
1:29.3	podcasts out without ads on them. So it's frankly brilliant for the price of a beer,
1:34.8	a cocktail, in a nice bar. You can go and get access to the Netflix of history, the world's
1:40.5	best history channel. It's right there. Just go to historyhit.tv and check it out. But
1:45.8	in the meantime, here is Daniel James Brown. Daniel, thank you very much. Come on, the
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