12/30/2023 0 Comments Battalion wars 2 intro song![]() As one soldier later recalled, “it was blacker than the inside of a wolf.” A devastating rescue campaign - “Was it because we were Japanese?” They trudged through miles of heavily mined fields and steep ravines in the mud and icy rain, each holding onto the man ahead of him because the fog was too thick to see more than a few feet ahead. So in the early, pre-dawn hours of October 25, 1944, the 442nd set out to reach the Lost Battalion. ![]() ![]() A fighter squadron had tried airdropping supplies to the men, but most of the packages landed in German-occupied positions. By the time the Nisei soldiers were recalled, the Lost Battalion had been under siege by German troops for two days and was already running dangerously low on food, water, ammunition, and medical supplies. But unlike the 442nd, attempts by the 141st’s other two battalions to rescue the stranded soldiers were unsuccessful. The 1st Battalion was soon cut off from the rest of the regiment and surrounded. And like the 442nd, their concerns that the human cost of the mission outweighed its strategic importance were ignored by higher-ups. The 141st Regiment, like the 442nd a few days earlier, had been ordered to march beyond the nearest Allied troops to capture more French territory. Photo courtesy of the Seattle Nisei Veterans Committee and the U.S. The steep, heavily forested terrain throughout the region made for especially strenuous conditions before, during, and after the rescue of the Lost Battalion. Japanese American soldiers climbing a hill in Bruyères, France, October 24, 1944. It was the first time most of the men had slept in over a week, barely a day-and-a-half after the brutal Bruyères-Biffontaine campaign. Instead, they were roused up in the middle of the night and ordered back to the Vosges mountains to rescue 275 lost Texans trapped behind enemy lines. The men were supposed to have five days of well-deserved and much needed rest-a time to, as Fred Shiosaki bluntly put it, “no longer worry about, this guy gonna take a shot at you, or artillery shell’s gonna land or something.” But that rest would be short-lived. They held out in the cellars of abandoned houses for two days, until help arrived from the 3rd Battalion. Perhaps foreboding events to come, the Japanese American soldiers of the 100th Battalion (which was by then part of the 442nd) was at one point ordered to march beyond the nearest friendly troops and cut off from the rest of the unit. When the 442nd was ordered to attempt the rescue of the Lost Battalion, they had just finished nine straight days of fighting against German troops entrenched in the densely-forested Vosges mountains. The 36th Infantry Division-which included both the 442nd and the ill-fated “Alamo Regiment”-had spent most of October 1944 in eastern France, engaged in heavy fighting on harsh terrain. But more than 75 years and at least three generations of war later, I hope we can also recognize it as a story of the hazards of careless and ego-driven leadership, the ways some lives are appraised at higher value than others, and the unequal sacrifices demanded of Japanese Americans during WWII. It’s a story of what people are capable of when their survival is on the line. The rescue of the Lost Battalion is a story of immense courage in the face of a terrifying, impossible situation. While there is certainly much more nuance and complexity to the story, that mythos is easy to understand.
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