Helen Yamashige holds a photograph of her late husband, Fred Yamashige who was a part of the unique one hundredth Infantry Battalion. Subsequent to her is Leonard Oka president of the Maui’s Sons and Daughters of Nisei Veterans, who introduced lei and a present card to Mrs. Yamashige in commemoration of the one hundredth Infantry Battalion’s formation 80 years in the past. — Picture courtesy of the Yamashige household
After returning to Maui from combating overseas in World Conflict II, Fred Hiromu Yamashige refused to eat hen.
“My mother wouldn’t make hen too usually trigger dad wouldn’t eat,” Yamashige’s son, Eric, lightheartedly recalled on Wednesday.
Eric Yamashige’s late father, a member of the one hundredth Infantry Battalion, advised them that since produce and sure kinds of meat had been laborious to come back by through the struggle, they ate a lot of hen as an alternative. And apparently, he’d had sufficient.
The story is simply one of many few recollections that the elder Yamashige shared together with his household of his struggle expertise. Eric Yamashige stated his father was much like many different nisei veterans, who spoke little or nothing of their confrontations or heroics.
In truth, Eric Yamashige stated he needed to hear from others about how his father, a primary sergeant, saved others. The elder Yamashige, who was awarded the Silver Star for his bravery, by no means spoke about it to Eric, one in every of Fred and Helen Yamashige’s three kids.
1st Sgt. Fred Yamashige — Picture courtesy of the Yamashige household
On Oct. 22, 1944, close to Biffontaine, France, Yamashige “fearlessly led his males by intense 20 millimeter gun hearth to a constructing within the city for the aim of defending his firm’s proper flank and rear,” in keeping with the Sons & Daughters of the 442nd Regimental Fight Staff’s web site.
Yamashige “with full disregard for his personal security, picked up a rifle from a fallen enemy solider and pursued the fleeing Germans.”
“Regardless of intense small arms hearth, he shot one enemy solider and wounded two others,” in keeping with his Silver Star quotation. His “braveness, initiative and management” had been instrumental within the profitable occupation of the city.
Fred Yamashige died in 2020 on the age of 97. On the time, the previous longtime Maui Land & Pineapple Co. worker was the final identified residing Maui resident who was within the one hundredth Infantry Battalion, nicknamed the “One Puka Puka.”
However reminiscences of Yamashige and others within the battalion stay, and the boys’s sacrifices are being remembered this month, the eightieth anniversary of the battalion’s formation.
The one hundredth Battalion was initially comprised of nisei, or second-generation Japanese American troopers from Hawaii, and was shaped as a segregated unit on June 12, 1942, when there was mistrust and animosity towards Japanese People amid World Conflict II. The battalion earned the moniker “The Purple Coronary heart Battalion” due to the excessive variety of casualties it suffered in its first 5 months in battle in Italy.
There are roughly 12 surviving veterans of the unique one hundredth, together with these on the Mainland, in keeping with a information launch from the eightieth Anniversary Commemoration Committee. On June 12, precisely 80 years after the models official formation, descendants of those that fought within the battalion made private visits to the houses of a number of veterans all of whom are practically 100 years or older.
On Maui, since there are not any survivors, private visits and items are being introduced to wives and households this month.
On Wednesday, Leonard Oka, president of the Maui’s Sons and Daughters of Nisei Veterans, introduced lei and a present card to Helen Aiko Yamashige, Fred Yamashige’s widow. Orchids can be given to descendants in nursing houses.
Oka thanked Janice Sakoda on Oahu, a co-chairwoman of the eightieth Anniversary Commemoration Committee, for remembering the Maui households.
“It’s good that I get to fulfill the wives, and in some circumstances I’m assembly or speaking to sons that I’ve by no means talked to earlier than,” Oka stated of organizing the Maui reward displays.
He added that with the remembrances are prompting some members of the family to recall and even analysis what their fathers did within the struggle.
General, Oka estimated that there have been 70 to 80 Maui males who had been with the unique one hundredth Battalion.
Eric Yamashige stated his mom was shocked by the gesture on Wednesday, and that she advised Oka that it might have been good if her husband had been nonetheless round.
In 2017, 4 residing members of the one hundredth Battalion on Maui had been honored, which included Yamashige, Tom Yamada, Ed Nishihara and Willie Goo.
“I’m glad they had been round to be acknowledged,” stated Eric Yamashige, who can also be part of the Maui’s Sons and Daughters of Nisei Veterans.
The youthful Yamashige added that because the survivors cross and generations get additional faraway from the struggle, you will need to not neglect what the boys did and the way it has affected future generations.
“The nisei veterans paved the way in which for our era to learn from the freedoms and alternatives we get pleasure from and all too usually take without any consideration,” he stated.
Eric Yamashige stated he can’t think about doing what his father and others did.
“They’re so targeted to do what they did,” he stated. “They’d one thing to show.”
“They needed to battle the enemy they usually needed to battle their nation, to show themselves worthy. And so they did. That’s why we’re so fortunate.”
As a part of the eightieth anniversary’s observance, there can be a “One Puka Puka” tv rebroadcast in the present day and Sunday.
This system highlights the experiences of the one hundredth Infantry Battalion throughout its first 9 months of fight in Italy, when it was the one Japanese American navy unit combating in Europe.
The 2-hour documentary was written, produced an narrated by the late KGMB News anchor and reporter Bob Jones. It first aired in 1992, on the fiftieth anniversary of the battalion’s formation. Will probably be proven once more for the primary time in 30 yeas as a tribute to Jones, who died in November, and to the veterans.
Immediately’s broadcast can be at 7 p.m. on KGMB and at 3 p.m. Sunday on KHNL.
* Melissa Tanji could be reached at mtanji@mauinews.com.
