Nisei in the Vosges
Company F, 2nd Battalion, 442nd Regimental Combat Team, on the front lines near St. Dié Area, France.13 November 1944. Image credit: US Army Signal Corps, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
In early June, ceremonies and celebrations marked the 81st anniversary of the Normandy landings that were instrumental in liberating France and other areas that the Nazi regime had invaded during World War II. Across the country to the east, the village of Bruyères and its neighbors in the Vosges Mountains regularly commemorate their liberation in October 1944 by the 100th/442nd Regimental Combat Team of the U.S. Army, which went on to become the most decorated unit of the U.S. military. These French communities continue to maintain close and respectful ties with the descendants of the American soldiers who fought off Nazi occupiers with great bravery and immense personal sacrifice. Bruyères and its 3,000 residents have sustained a sister city status with Honolulu, Hawaii since 1961 in recognition of this special relationship with the home base of many members of the 100th/442nd RCT who were Nisei, Americans born to Japanese immigrant parents.
Street named in honor of 1944 liberators, Bruyères, France. Image credit: Courtesy of Nisei Legacy Tours
Over 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry, most of whom were American citizens, were forcibly interned in government-run camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Young men with Japanese ancestry were initially discharged from active military service and exempted from the draft since they were classified 4C, enemy aliens, based on their ethnicity. In Hawaii, where more than a third of the population had Japanese ancestors, several regiments of the Hawaii National Guard volunteered to assist with military construction projects under the command of the U.S. Army and were eventually sent to the mainland as a provisional group known as the 100th Infantry Battalion. In the spring of 1943, the 442nd RCT was formed when thousands of Nisei, some of whom had been forced into the camps, responded to the U.S. government’s call for volunteers. This segregated unit adopted the motto “Go For Broke” and was deployed to the Italian theatre in June 1944 as replacements for the 100th, which was subsequently integrated into the 442nd. The 100th was allowed to keep its original designation in recognition of its wartime performance in the Allied push into Italy.
The 442nd landed north of Rome and, together with the 100th, engaged in fierce combat as they made their way north through Tuscany. After more than a month of fighting and over 1,000 casualties, the unit was sent to Marseille, France and subsequently deployed to the Vosges Mountains near the Franco-German border. Barely twenty years after reverting to French sovereignty following the Great War, territories amidst the Vosges had once again fallen under German control as World War II broke out on the European continent. The villages of Bruyères, Belmont, and Biffontaine endured this occupation for years until mid-October 1944, when the 100th/442nd attacked four hills surrounding Bruyères while meeting strong German resistance from surrounding forests. Shortly after securing the village, several units were sent to take the nearby village of Biffontaine. and rested only several days in Belmont before receiving orders to rescue the ‘Lost Battalion’, a Texas-based regiment that had been encircled by Nazi forces several kilometers away. The 100th/442nd faced intense resistance again as well as adverse weather conditions but successfully completed their mission. 863 Nisei soldiers were wounded or killed to rescue 211 men.
The American Monument honoring the 442nd RCT in Bruyères, France. Image credit: Philippe POIX, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
In the span of several weeks in France, more than two-thirds of the men of the 100th/442nd RCT were wounded, went missing, or perished while fighting for their country and the Allies. Nisei continued to volunteer, train, deploy, and fight honorably such that approximately 10,000 men served in the 100th/442nd RCT between April 1943 and the end of the war in Europe in May 1945. Members earned more than 18,000 awards during this time, including 21 Medals of Honor, 29 Distinguished Service Cross awards, 1 Distinguished Service Medal, 371 Silver Stars, 22 Legion of Merit Medals, 15 Soldiers’ Medals, 4,000 Bronze Stars, and more than 4,000 Purple Hearts for their actions during the various military campaigns. Decades later, the U.S. Congress bestowed the Congressional Gold Medal on the entire 100th/442nd RCT, 100th Infantry Battalion and Nisei who had served in the Military Intelligence Service. In 2012, the surviving members of the 100th/442nd RCT were made Chevaliers of the Légion d’Honneur of France.
Nearly all of the World War II soldiers of the 100th/442nd are gone now. Some are buried at the American cemetery at Epinal, a short drive from Bruyères. Others returned to the United States where the prejudices that had taken away freedom, property, and dignity from their families were slow to fade. But the gratitude of the French people who were liberated has not waned. A profound sense of dedication to keeping these memories alive is shared among French and American descendants of those who lived and died during the events that tightly connected the Nisei with the residents of Bruyères, Biffontaine, and Belmont.
A stone monument to the 100th/442nd RCT stands in a clearing in the forests that saw heavy fighting decades ago, not far from “The Ties of Friendship,” a sculpture by veteran Shinkichi Tajiri. Through informal exchanges and grassroots groups like the Chemin de la Paix et de la Liberté based in France and the Sons and Daughters of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the heroics of the 100th/442nd in the fall of 1944 continue to be remembered and honored through re-enactments, regular visits and exchanges, and programs to teach schoolchildren about this important chapter in local history.
Activité de français
Bruyères and its neighbors sustain the memory of those who fought and died to free the region from occupation and war over eighty years ago. Watch the English-language video below for a sense of the profound respect and continuing bonds that arose from the bravery of the 442nd RCT in World War II.
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