The motto of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team was “Go for Broke.
Two Vancouver veterans were among the Japanese-American soldiers who left their families behind in World War II internment camps to join some of the most decorated military units in the nation’s history.
Their sacrifice and courage was saluted Wednesday when Eisaku “Ace” Hiromura and Teruo Yamashita joined hundreds of other WWII veterans in Washington, D.C., for an award ceremony at the Capitol.
At the event, the Congressional Gold Medal was presented collectively to the U.S. Army’s 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the 100th Infantry Battalion and the Japanese-Americans in the Military Intelligence Service.
The award is the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Many of them signed up while those then-young men and their families were behind barbed wire. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, U.S. officials rounded up almost 110,000 Japanese-Americans and sent them inland to internment camps.