by Dean Hughes
The absurdity of it all had been pressing into Yuki’s mind since that first battle back in Italy, but now, as though he were waking up for the first time in his life, he thought he could see more clearly: People—the ones back home—loved war, no matter what they said. They loved to hear the bands play and see the flag wave. That’s why war never stopped. Why couldn’t they understand what they were cheering for? Shig was dead.
“Our Four-Four-Two boys got through to that cut-off battalion,” Sergeant Oshira said. “We saved more than two hundred lives.”
Yuki nodded. He needed to believe that what they had done in the Vosges Forest had had a purpose.
“The trouble is, our regiment lost a lot more than the two hundred we saved.”
“How many?”
“More than eight hundred casualties. I don’t know how many of that number were killed.”
“Eight hundred of us went down saving two hundred?”
“Sure. That’s a fair deal. Four of us for each ‘true American.’ The generals probably figure that’s a good trade-off.”
“What about my squad? How many of them?”
“I’m not really sure, Yuki. Some were wounded. I don’t think anyone was killed—except for Shig.”
“What about Fujioka?”
“He was okay the last time I saw him. But he wasn’t acting like a big shot.”
Yuki nodded. He was relieved to know his prediction for Fujioka hadn’t come true. Maybe he had said the right words to him.
“But here’s the thing,” Sergeant Oshira said. “That grenade you tossed did hit home. It knocked out that machine gun. Your guys were in big trouble. You saved their lives.”
That was good. But eight hundred casualties—it was unthinkable. “We had to do it, didn’t we, Sarge?”
“Someone did. We don’t abandon our own men, no matter what.”
That was how Yuki wanted to think about it. He didn’t want to think about AJA soldiers saving white soldiers; he wanted to think of brothers saving brothers. “It’s something we can be proud of, Sarge. It’s what we had to do.”
“Yeah, I guess so. But the Stars and Stripes just came out with a story about the gallant soldiers who saved the ‘Lost Battalion’—that’s what they’re calling them now. The only photograph they used was the smiling mug of some white soldier. The article never mentioned that it was the 442nd that broke through to save those guys.”
Yuki felt the insult, but he told Sergeant Oshira, “We can’t worry about that. We know what we did.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Are you going to be okay?”
“No. Not really. This elbow never will work right, they tell me. My feet are getting better, but they’re going to be a problem too. Still, I get to have a life. You do too. A lot of our friends gave up everything. So I’m not going to complain too much.”
Yuki knew that his own body would take a long time to feel right. Along with the new wounds, his feet still hurt, and he had some scars on his face and a slice taken out of his arm. But none of that really mattered to him. He didn’t want to feel sorry for himself either, but he had the feeling that nothing was left of him, that he had been killed out on Hill 617, and that for the rest of his life he would have to pretend he was still the kid named Yuki who had joined the army.
After the sergeant left the room, Yuki tried to tell himself that he would simply have to find a way to feel better in time. But he couldn’t think past Shig. He kept seeing Shig lying on his back, his face blank. And he saw his own hands pressed against the gaping wound, blood pumping between his fingers and flowing across his shirt. He tightened his eyes, tried not to see that image, but blood seemed to be flowing everywhere, filling up his vision, spreading across everything.
CHAPTER 17
Yuki was still in the army hospital in Belmont, but he was getting up each day, moving around pretty well. He simply had no stamina. Part of his problem was that he wasn’t sleeping well. His brain had stored up all the things he had seen in the last six months and was now running all those scenes back through his dreams. What he saw was chaotic: explosions; bodies cartwheeling like acrobats; blood dripping, running, coating his hands. And often he would see the young German boy, or someone similar, lying on his side like a child sleeping.
Noises filled his head too, and not only woke him but scared him. There were times when he curled up and waited for the next shell to drop, or even thought a shell had burst very near, next to his bed. Yuki knew that nurses sometimes discovered him shaking and mumbling and surely told the doctors, who came to his room and asked him whether he was “managing all right.” He would tell them that he was fine or admit that he had only had a bad dream. He knew—and surely they knew—that he wasn’t fine, but no one forced the issue, and Yuki kept telling himself he would be all right before much longer.
Sometimes Yuki tried to envision his future, to figure out what he wanted to do when he got back to civilian life. But he still couldn’t see anything in front of him. He could only remember. Word had gotten around to him that the Four-Four-Two had been pulled out of the Vosges Forest and had been sent to a place called La Houssière. He fantasized about walking from the hospital, going AWOL, and finding a train that would take him back to the men of Fox Company. He knew they were getting some rest, and he longed to be with them. But he also knew that the war wasn’t over for those guys, and he wondered how many more of them would die.
In December, the Germans made a desperate attempt to strike back against the Allies. German forces drove hard across the border into Belgium and momentarily routed American and British units in the Ardennes forest. For a time, the front line of battle bulged toward the west; the outbreak was being called the “Battle of the Bulge.” But after about three weeks, the Allies defeated the Germans and pushed them back, and from all Yuki was hearing, the German resistance was breaking down.
Yuki couldn’t imagine himself in battle again, but in January, as his strength was returning, he began to ask his doctors whether he could or would be returned to his unit. “No, Sergeant,” one doctor finally told him. “The war is winding down in Europe. You won’t be well enough in time to go back.”
“But what about Japan?”
The army doctor was a lean young man with reddish hair. He looked like he ought to be a schoolboy, not a soldier. He peered through his wire-rimmed glasses, and Yuki knew exactly what he was thinking: They wouldn’t send you to fight the Japanese. But the doc didn’t say that. He said, “I think, in time, you’ll be just fine. But when a bullet passes through your chest like that, and damages so many muscles and ribs, it takes a long time to heal entirely. The army will continue to take care of you for a few more weeks—until they think you’re well enough—and then you’ll get your honorable discharge.”
Yuki accepted that. He thought of saying that he would rather go back to the war, but he knew he didn’t really want that, and he decided not to make such claims.
Sergeant Oshira came by often and the two shared the rumors they heard. They talked about going home, but they rarely said anything about the battles they had fought together. Then one day, Sergeant Oshira showed up in Yuki’s ward with another man, a colonel. He was a stout, studious-looking man wearing a Class A uniform, his hat tucked under his arm. He seemed to be a desk jockey, not a warrior. Sergeant Oshira introduced him as Colonel Orton.
The colonel didn’t chat, didn’t ask Yuki how he was feeling. He merely said, sounding formal, “Sergeant Nakahara, you have been awarded the Purple Heart medal for the wound you received.”
Yuki didn’t smile, but he thought it was silly to make a big deal out of a Purple Heart. It seemed as though most of the Nisei soldiers had at least one. It was no great achievement to get shot or to catch a piece of shrapnel.
“In addition,” the colonel said, “you have been awarded the Silver Star Medal for gallantry in action. I’ve been asked to make the presentation here, since you won’t be returning to your unit.”
&n
bsp; Yuki was astonished. He stared at the man. “Why?” he asked.
“Why were you awarded a Silver Star?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll read the official statement, and that should answer your question.” He pulled an envelope from the inner pocket of his tunic, extracted a sheet of paper, and read a paragraph about Yuki’s bravery under fire in racing up Hill 617 and risking his own life to eliminate an enemy machine-gun emplacement, “saving the lives of many of his fellow soldiers by his actions.”
When he had finished, Yuki could think of nothing to say. He glanced toward the other beds in the room and saw that some of the patients had been listening. He didn’t want that. Every guy in the ward probably deserved a medal as much as he did.
“I won’t pin these medals on you, since you’re not in uniform, but you should wear both of them on your uniform when you are ready to travel.”
“I’ll make sure he does,” Sergeant Oshira said.
“But it’s a mistake,” Yuki said. “We all knocked out machine-gun nests at different times. It’s what we had to do.”
“That may be true,” Colonel Orton said. “But your company commander felt that you went beyond the call of duty. According to him, this was just one example of the way you led and protected your men. Early on, for instance, you carried one man off the field of battle under heavy artillery fire.”
But that was Mat, his friend. Did people still not understand that? Yuki looked at Sergeant Oshira. “You wrote me up for this medal, didn’t you?”
“I may have started the ball rolling, but everyone in our company agreed that you deserve the honor.”
“How can I wear a Silver Star for doing the same sorts of—”
“Sergeant, stop right there,” the colonel said. “You might be right. Maybe other soldiers are also deserving, but when you’re honored this way, you also represent what the men of your unit achieved.”
Yuki was thinking of all kinds of things he could say—about war, and about bravery—but he decided to let it go. He just wasn’t sure he would ever put that medal on his uniform. Still, he took the little box Colonel Orton handed him and opened it. It was a gold five-point star suspended from a ribbon with vertical red, white, and blue stripes. In the middle of the gold star was a small silver one. Yuki had once dreamed of receiving such an honor, and he was not unappreciative of having it now, but he made up his mind quickly: He would take it home, put it away, and remember that his leaders thought him worthy of it—but he would never brag about it, never mention it to anyone.
Two weeks later, Yuki was preparing to be driven to the south of France, and from there, to fly back to the United States. He had dressed in his uniform for the first time since leaving the battlefield. Sergeant Oshira came to visit him again. “Let me pin those medals on you,” he told Yuki.
“No. I’m just going to—”
“You need to wear them, Yuki. For all of us in the Four-Four-Two. It’s what people back home can understand. They need to know that we fought for our country and we gave it our best.”
So Yuki let the sergeant pin the medals on his jacket. He just wasn’t sure how long he would leave them on.
“And I’ll tell you something else. You are brave. You fought as courageously as any man I know.”
“I don’t know what that means, Sarge. They killed Shig. And the rest of us were in trouble. I had to do something.”
“I know, Yuki. I get that. But you didn’t curl up and hide. You thought of your men, saw what you had to do, and you did it.”
• • •
Yuki flew to Washington, D.C., where he entered the Walter Reed General Hospital. He was checked over, processed, and told he needed to rest for a while before the long train trip across the country. He wrote to his mother, still at Topaz, that he would be coming home soon. He got a letter back telling him that his father had been released from prison and had joined the family at the camp. Part of her letter read:
You will need to have a long talk with your father, Yuki. He was so deeply shamed by being called a traitor. He has lost both his countries now, or at least he thinks so. But the army sent us a letter and told us that you received a medal for bravery. He will not say it, but he is pleased about that. For him, I feel sure, it saves the honor of our family. I am proud of you too, but for me the best thing is that you are alive and are coming home to us. I often feared that would never happen. What I hope is that you are feeling well. When you get here, we need to make many decisions. We can leave the camp now, if we choose, but we do not know where we will go or what we will do. You can help us make a plan.
What Yuki had wanted his mother to say was that she would look after him for a time, that she would help him think through his own future. But if his father was broken by his experience, Yuki would have to help his mother figure things out for the family. The problem was, he still found himself unable to concentrate. He would have to take one day at a time for now, and try to trust that he would eventually become himself again.
He stayed at the hospital another three weeks, and then, early in March, he received his discharge papers and his train tickets. He sent a telegram to his parents that he would soon be on his way but that he didn’t know exactly what day he would reach the camp. Then he boarded the train and began the long cross-country ride. He rather liked the monotony of it, liked watching the countryside, and he liked letting the world come back to him a little at a time. He didn’t sleep well, but sleep was something he had learned to fear anyway. He was still having dreams, almost every night, and most of them put him back in the battles he wanted to forget.
Yuki didn’t say much to the travelers on the train, and no one seemed overly eager to talk to him. What he noticed, however, was that most people, though not exactly friendly, were at least polite. He thought maybe that had more to do with his uniform than anything else, and he did notice that some people, particularly other soldiers, looked at his service medals, especially his Silver Star. One man said, “I haven’t seen many Silver Stars. You must be quite a soldier to earn that.” Yuki decided to accept the compliment. He only said, “I did my best.”
It took Yuki two days to reach Denver, and he learned there that he would have a few hours to wait for a train to Ogden, Utah. With time on his hands, he asked a man where he might be able to get a haircut. He knew how thin and weak he looked; he might as well not show up with scruffy hair.
He followed the man’s directions and walked down a nearby street to a barbershop. It was a big place, with six occupied barber chairs and seven or eight men waiting their turn in straight-backed chairs lined up along the wall. Yuki caught the smell of hair tonic as he walked in and was reminded of the barbershop in Berkeley he had always gone to. He liked the memory.
He spotted an empty seat and took a couple of steps toward it, but just then the barber standing behind the first chair spoke up, loudly. “Sorry, soldier, but we don’t cut Jap hair here. You need to turn around and walk back out that door.”
Yuki stopped. He felt as though he had been shot in the chest all over again, even felt a kind of weakness come over him, as though he might sink to the floor. But he wasn’t angry. He was humiliated. He didn’t look at anyone, even though he knew that all the customers were staring at him.
Nothing had changed. It was obvious to Yuki that he would never be accepted. This man had only said what people had been telling him all his life.
So he didn’t speak, didn’t show contempt. He simply turned and stepped toward the door.
And then a loud voice reverberated through the room. “Wait just a minute, Sergeant.”
It felt like a command, as though an officer had spoken, and Yuki’s response was to spin around and stand at attention. But a bulky man was walking toward him—and he wasn’t dressed in a uniform. The man was looking at the barber, not at Yuki.
“I think I misunderstood what you just said, mister. Because it sounded like you just told a decorated war hero that you wouldn’t cut his hair
.”
Yuki glanced at the barber, who was standing straight, his scissors in one hand, a comb held high in the other.
“Do you recognize a Silver Star when you see one?”
The barber’s hands dropped a little, but he didn’t respond. He was a small man, bald headed.
“That is a Silver Star on the sergeant’s chest, and it means he fought with valor, that he performed acts of bravery that went beyond the normal expectation for a soldier.”
The barber gave a slight nod.
“Do you know a Purple Heart when you see one?”
Another little nod.
“I don’t think you do. It means that while you were working here, being careful not to cut yourself with a pair of sharp scissors, this man was shedding his blood for his country. Now, tell me where you get the nerve to tell him that you won’t cut his hair.”
“It’s just . . . something . . .”
The big man looked at Yuki. “Sergeant, I see by your shoulder patch that you were a member of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.” He stepped forward. “My name’s Blaine Austin. I’m proud to meet you.”
He held out his hand and Yuki shook it, as firmly as he could. “Thank you,” he said. “My name’s Yukus Nakahara.”
Mr. Austin looked back at the barber. “Do you know that for the size of their regiment, the Japanese soldiers who fought with this sergeant have received more decorations than any other unit in the American army? I fought alongside their troops in Italy, and I’ll tell you, they are brave soldiers.” He pointed a finger at the barber. “Now, listen to me. You cut this man’s hair right now, and when you’re finished I want you to thank him for the honor.” He nodded to the man in the barber chair. “Why don’t you step down from that chair for a few minutes? Let the sergeant sit down and get his hair cut first.”
