Facing the Mountain: A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II

“Many of the Japanese pilots brought their planes in so low that morning that people on the ground could see the pilots looking back at them, making eye contact, sometimes stone-faced, sometimes grinning, sometimes even waving at them as they passed overhead. And those pilots, looking down, could not help but see that the faces looking back up at them in astonishment looked, in many cases, very much like faces they might see back home in Japan.”

At the time of Japan’s Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941, approximately a third of Hawaii’s residents were of Japanese descent. Japanese Americans witnessing the bombing firsthand were shocked to realize that those attacking them were from their ancestral homeland. Many Japanese immigrants maintained close ties with Japan but chose to live in America. The complex issue of identity—ethnocultural, racial, and national—is one of the key themes in this book.

“But perhaps equally, the Miho kids modeled their behavior on their father’s disregard for another widely held Japanese tenet, otonashi, the necessity of keeping one’s place, remaining quiet, avoiding the appearance of knowing too much or voicing too many opinions. The Miho kids were all about getting involved, voicing their opinions, taking charge. And keeping their place was the last thing they intended to do.”

Katsuichi Miho was a first-generation Japanese immigrant in the United States. Three of his eight children were born in America. He was a prominent member of Hawaii’s Japanese community. However, he did not adhere to all Japanese customs, such as keeping one’s place. Here, the author foreshadows Katsuichi’s behavior during his imprisonment, such as demanding the release of his fellow Issei, as well as the brave military service of his son Kats.

“’The Japs.’ ‘The dirty Japs.’ ‘The dirty yellow Japs.’ This time, though, the word wasn’t coming from adolescent bullies on the streets of Hillyard; it was coming from adults, from stern-voiced news announcers, from military officials issuing emergency proclamations, from figures of respect and authority. It was serious, sober, cold, official, and it seemed to be coming from the heart of America itself.”

The race-based removal and detention of Japanese Americans during World War II was not a single event. It had roots in the long history of anti-Asian racism in the United States, which was underpinned by eugenic ideas linking culture, behavior, and blood. However, after the US officially entered the war against Japan in December 1941, this racism bubbled to the surface and even came from reputable media and officials.

“He understood that his activities aimed at keeping Japanese culture alive among his fellow immigrants would likely look nefarious to American authorities on the lookout for spies and saboteurs. It was the price of being in America but not an American. Prohibited, in fact, from becoming an American.”

This quotation highlights two important issues. First, prior to 1952, first-generation Japanese Americans like Katsuichi Miho were prohibited from becoming naturalized US citizens even if they were law-abiding residents who had lived in the US for years. Second, in the context of the 1930s and World War II, the US federal government interpreted maintaining one’s culture and keeping in touch with family and friends in Japan as a hostile act. The latter highlights an identity clash—local, ethnocultural, national—for Japanese Americans at this time.

“When agents opened the family’s steamer trunk and found Jisuke’s World War I uniform, one of them held it up and said, ‘What’s this?’

‘That’s my uniform,’ Jisuke replied quietly.

‘This is an American uniform.’

‘Well, I was in the American army. I went to France.’

‘Aw, the American army never took no Japs.’

They threw the uniform on the floor and trampled it underfoot as they continued to search the house.”

Jisuke Tokiwa was a first-generation Japanese immigrant who resided in the US for decades and even served in the army during World War I. Yet none of his contributions mattered after Roosevelt’s Executive Order to inter Japanese American: He was treated with racism and contempt after the Pearl Harbor attack. This experience shows that negative perceptions based on race prevented the full social acceptance even of war heroes.

“Oshima began running along the space between the fences, then turned and started climbing the second fence, shouting again, ‘I want to go home!’ As he reached the barbed wire at the top, he paused, apparently perplexed. The other inmates shouted, ‘Don’t shoot him. He is insane!’ The guard hesitated, but a second guard pulled a pistol and fired. A bullet struck the back of Oshima’s head, and he dropped immediately to the ground, flat on his back, dead.”

After up to 120,000 Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from the Pacific coast exclusion zone and placed in remote concentration camps, where conditions were Spartan. They lived in harsh climates in flimsy barracks. However, the greatest harm was psychological—the injustice and the uncertainty of their situation. While the example of Kanesaburo Oshima’s killing is extreme, it demonstrates the harsh pressure on this community.

“These fundamental moral rights and civil liberties are included in the Bill of Rights, US Constitution, and other legal records. They guarantee that these fundamental rights shall not be denied without due process of law […] If I were to register and cooperate under these circumstances, I would be giving helpless consent to the denial of practically all of the things which give me incentive to live. I must maintain my Christian principles. I consider it my duty to maintain the democratic standards for which this country lives. Therefore, I must refuse this order for evacuation.”

This quotation is an excerpt from Gordon Hirabayashi’s “Why I Refuse to Register for Evacuation” letter to the FBI. In May 1942, Gordon, a second-generation Japanese American, chose to wage a one-man civil rights battle against the US government because he considered the wartime measures against Japanese Americans to be unconstitutional. He valued his principles over his physical freedom.

“On the evening of the Fourth of July, Rudy Tokiwa and his family found themselves under guard, sitting in a darkened railway car, traveling south through a country busily but quietly celebrating the birth of liberty.”

In the first half of 1942, Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from the Pacific Coast exclusion zone, losing their homes and livelihood, and relocated into remote concentration camps. Here the author highlights the irony of celebrating the Fourth of July—a holiday celebrating liberty—while traveling to such a camp. Rudy Tokiwa was one of many Japanese American citizens to whom the standard constitutional protections did not apply under the guise of wartime measures.

“The way Kats saw it, someone needed to represent the family in the war effort. Honor demanded it. The Japanese ethics their father had taught them required it, even though the enemy now was Japan itself. Their oldest brother Katsuro had glaucoma; the next oldest brother, Paul, was at divinity school.”

For second-generation Japanese Americans, whether to join the US Army was a complex question. For some, it was a matter of proving loyalty to the US while living under suspicion during World War II. For others, the notion of serving in the army while their families remained in camps was offensive. Kats Miho’s thinking here demonstrates a blend of traditional Japanese values like honor with American patriotism.

“Language wasn’t the only problem. The mainlanders who had volunteered for the army out of concentration camps arrived angry, fueled by a grim, righteous determination to prove themselves as patriotic Americans. On the whole they were serious, reserved, clean-cut, earnest, well behaved, soft-spoken, conservative with their money, and prone to respect authority, as their parents had taught them to do. The Buddhaheads, on the other hand, were, for the most part, casual and happy-go-lucky.”

The author unpacks the complexities of Japanese American identity throughout this book. There were not only generational differences between immigrant parents and American-born children, but also between Hawaiians and mainlanders. In many cases, mainlanders’ families were removed from the exclusion zone and placed in camps, whereas Hawaiian families were able to stay in their homes. Initially, the clashes between the so-called kotonks and the Buddhaheads threatened the unity of the 442nd RCT.

“For the most part, Geneva County’s white citizens appeared to be more at ease with the presence of the Germans in their midst than they were with American boys with Japanese faces, even though not long before these same Germans had been doing their best to kill Americans in North Africa. And the tolerance shown the POWs in Alabama was not unique to that state. The presence of nearly 400,000 German POWs in America, in fact, led to some staggering ironies across the country.”

During World War II, the US housed Nazi German POWs from North Africa. According to the author, Americans in some states often had a positive opinion of these prisoners because they were white and blond, while harboring suspicion toward the second-generation Japanese Americans getting ready to fight and die in Europe for American values. Their racial prejudice trumped the facts of the war.

“The people beyond the fence had Asian faces, and the reality suddenly dawned on the men. Kats was shocked. They were all shocked. The guns in the towers were aimed inward, toward people moving around inside. Although he had just visited his father, imprisoned at Fort Missoula, Kats couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing here. These weren’t Issei men—Japanese nationals—behind the wire. These were Americans. Like himself.”

To improve the relationship between mainland and Hawaiian Japanese Americans in 442nd, the chaplains organized field trips to expose the Hawaiians to the realities of Japanese American concentration camps. This passage narrates Kats Miho, a Hawaiian, seeing the federal government’s overreach and the absurdity of the policy—imprisoning some Japanese American citizens but not others purely based on geography.

“Gordon was far from the only young Nisei man for whom the renewal of the draft and the required oaths of allegiance that attended it provoked a new crisis of conscience that spring. For hundreds of them, particularly those incarcerated in the WRA camps, the questions again arose: Why should they be compelled to fight for a nation that had removed them from their homes and denied them the rights and liberties afforded to other citizens?”

The majority of Japanese Americans complied with both their relocation from the exclusion zone and with the army draft. However, some, like Gordon Hirabayashi, challenged the draft on the same constitutional grounds as Executive Order 9066. They considered these measures to be racist and illogical. As a result, some ended up isolated and imprisoned as “disloyals.”

“Then he made a mistake. He pulled the soldier’s wallet out of his coat pocket and rifled through it. Inside were three photographs—a little boy and two little girls. The children’s ages appeared to range from about two to seven. Looking into their eyes, seeing the smiles they put on for the camera, Rudy felt his stomach lurch. It wasn’t just a soldier he’d killed; it was a father. Back in basic training, they had told him never to go through the personal effects of enemy dead. Now he knew why. And it shook him.”

The author describes the Nisei soldiers’ first experience with killing and death in combat after their deployment in Europe in the summer of 1944. By opening the dead German soldier’s wallet to see his family photos, Rudy humanized the enemy and experienced greater emotional turmoil than necessary in war. As time went on, the soldiers became hardened to something that would have seemed unfathomable in the past.

“It was one of those boys, still little over fifteen, who must have led some sixty Italian civilians and shot them—men and boys in cold-blooded murder—and left them screaming in one of the towns we passed. It may have been your boy that a paesan lady told me raped her daughter and murdered the father. And yet he looked so young and sweet your boy. Instead of bringing him up yourself you gave him to Hitler. He became a fiend—and yet when he died he did not cry ‘Hitler,’ he cried ‘Mama.’ He really did not want Hitler—he wanted his mother from his childhood. But no, you sent him to the SS group and felt proud. He cried for his mother.”

This quotation is an excerpt from a letter that the 442nd’s chaplain Hiro Higuchi imagined writing to the mother of a German soldier. The letter, sent to Hiro’s wife Hisako in Honolulu, was motivated by German atrocities the Allied troops encountered in Italy, in which approximately 7,500 were murdered. Personal correspondence is one of Brown’s key sources for this book. Brown also describes other incidents in which dying soldiers cried out to their mothers, which may be based on what Higuchi saw. The inhuman atrocities that Nazi German soldiers committed and the universally human urge to cry out to one’s mother are antithetical—a contrast that shows some of Brown’s novelistic techniques in this book.

“Within a few days, hate began to fill the newlyweds’ mailbox. Most of the letters were anonymous, and most of the venom was directed at Esther, whom the writers repeatedly labeled a ‘traitor to her race.’ There were crude drawings of Gordon with absurdly slanted eyes, accompanied by vicious racial epithets.”

On July 29, 1944, Gordon Hirabayashi married Esther Schmoe. The local media and even the Associated Press covered the event. As a result, the newlyweds, especially Esther, described as “an attractive white girl” (304) by AP, began to receive hate mail. Interracial marriage was legal in Washington State, but the media coverage and the public response highlight US racist attitudes at this time, which underpinned political decisions made targeting Japanese Americans.

“But two days later, another Western Union telegraph boy appeared at the front door of the house in Massachusetts, bearing grim news from the secretary of war. And not long after that, Kiichi’s final letter to George showed up back in the mailbox, returned with the word ‘Deceased’ scrawled across the front of the envelope. Two of Kiichi Saito’s sons had now fallen in the ranks of the 442nd.”

First-generation Japanese American Kiichi Saito lost two sons, Calvin and George, in World War II in 1944. After Calvin’s death, George attempted to keep his father’s spirits up by writing him optimistic letters. Then he was killed too, and his father did not immediately learn about his death. Such tragic loss in a single family shows the sacrifices that Japanese Americans made fighting in the US Army.

“‘I’m ordering you, you will attack! I want you to fix bayonets and attack. That’s an order!’ Dahlquist spat at Pursall. Pursall, risking a court-martial now, grabbed Dahlquist by the lapels of his bloodied shirt and leaned into him: ‘Those are my boys you’re trying to kill. Nobody kills my boys like that. Nobody.’”

The famous rescue of the Lost Battalion, mostly Texans, in the Vosges mountains of France in the fall of 1944 was a dangerous mission. The 442nd succeeded in accomplishing this objective, but suffered significant casualties. This debate between General Dahlquist, who sent the Nisei on this mission, and Lieutenant Colonel Pursall, who considered it too dangerous, demonstrated that the lives of white Texans seemed more important than those of Japanese Americans to Dahlquist.

“‘Colonel, I told you to have the whole regiment out here. When I order everyone to pass in review, I mean the cooks and everybody will pass in review!’

Yamada, standing nearby, watched Miller’s face tighten, his jaw clench. Dahlquist glowered at him. A long, awkward silence ensued. Finally, Miller, standing ramrod straight, pivoted slowly, looked the general in the eye, and, his voice wavering, croaked, ‘General, this is the regiment. This is all I have left.’”

General Dahlquist, who sent the 442nd on a dangerous mission to rescue the Lost Battalion, did not immediately realize the losses that the Nisei took. The most famous historical photograph of the 442nd shows somber-faced soldiers being awarded medals for their heroism, as the general finally sees how few uninjured soldiers remain.

“Lest there be any doubt about the intended message, the post’s commander, Jess Edington, stated it bluntly: ‘We simply want to let them know that we don’t want them back here.’ Eight other American Legion posts promptly followed the Hood River post and removed the names of Japanese American servicemen from their honor rolls for no other reason than their ancestry.”

As the news of the 442nd’s heroism gained publicity in the United States, not everyone supported them. Some vandalized Legion Post No. 22 in Hood River Valley by removing the Nisei’s names from positions of honor. This act showed overt racism and tarnished the hopes of Nisei that showing their loyalty to America by serving in its armed forces would finally be enough to be accepted as authentic Americans.

“Retreat wasn’t an option. The only real option lay directly before them. They rushed forward and began to scale Monte Folgorito. And as they started up the steep slope, waves of Nisei soldiers—the entire Third Battalion—began to follow them up the mountain, determined to flood into the breach opened by the initial assault.”

This is the moment in the book that the author singles out in Chapter 21 and the Epilogue as the literal embodiment of Facing the Mountain. The soldiers had to climb Monte Folgorito in Italy to create a diversion. However, they achieved the impossible—breaking through the Gothic Line to allow the Allies to destroy what was left of the German army.

“In the end, they arrived at headquarters with the German POW still alive. As he walked back to rejoin K Company, Fred thought about it. He was glad he hadn’t shot the man, but he grappled with how keenly he had wanted to, and how close he had come to doing it. It was a moment of clarity for Fred. He was still Fred Shiosaki, but he sure as hell wasn’t the same kid who had left Spokane on a train two years before.”

Fred Shiosaki considered shooting an unarmed German POW in the back as revenge—a war crime. He managed to gain control over his emotions, and the POW remained unharmed. However, at this moment Fred realized the extent to which the horrors of war changed him.

“He stood still for a while. He wanted to lie down on the roadway and let the SS have their way. He understood now that he was ready to die. Death could not be worse than this life, and it would be so much easier than walking on. But he did walk on. Something in him demanded it.”

Solly Ganor, a teenage Holocaust survivor, was forced into the Dachau Death March in late April of 1945. He saw others die from exhaustion, the elements, or getting shot by SS guards. Yet he kept walking. His drive to survive demonstrates the physical and psychological torments to which victims of the Holocaust were driven—and the bravery it took to overcome them.