"JUST AMERICANS: How Japanese Americans Won a War at Home and Abroad"
BY ROBERT ASAHINA

Author Robert Asahina will be appearing at Barnes & Noble Book Store at 21500 Hawthorne Blvd., Torrance, Calif. on May 24, 2006 at 7 p.m.

In "JUST AMERICANS: How Japanese Americans Won a War at Home and Abroad" (Gotham Books; Release Date May 22, 2006; $27.50; Hardcover), Robert Asahina presents a compelling history of the 100th Battalion/442d Regimental Combat Team. Meticulously researched and filled with gripping interviews and personal accounts, JUST AMERICANS is more than a fascinating military history, it is the remarkable and poignant story of a group of young men whose astonishing bravery not only helped defeat fascism in Europe but also helped turn the tide against racism in America.

Asahina follows the 100th/442d from basic training to deployment in Italy and France, where in 1944 the combat team accomplished one of the most heroic and legendary missions of World War II葉he rescue of the "Lost Battalion" of the 36th "Texas" Division, which had been cut off and surrounded by Germans in the Vosges Mountains in France. After four days of intense fighting葉he climax of two bloody weeks that cost the unit more than 800 casualties葉he 442d succeeded in saving the stranded soldiers. The Lost Battalion rescue was a crucial turning point not only in winning the war in France, but in closing the camps and restoring the rights of Japanese Americans in the U.S. "So in the end, it was the Japanese Americans in uniform whose heroism had shamed their own government into doing the right thing," Asahina writes. "After fighting their way up the slopes of the Vosges, the 100th/442d had unarguably occupied the moral high ground. It was not demonstrations in the camps or arguments in the courts, but bullets on the battleground that won the fight for civil rights."

JUST AMERICANS also reveals that despite their tremendous accomplishments in battle, the men of the 100th/442d could not escape prejudice and discrimination at home. Many veterans were denied basic services and some even faced violence when they returned from the war and their families came back from the camps. As the decades passed, attention focused more on the suffering in the camps than on the heroism of the soldiers. And despite numerous accolades, it was not until 2000, 55 years after the end of the war, that the heroes of the 100th/442d received long overdue Medals of Honor葉he nation's highest military honor擁n recognition of their valor.

As Asahina argues, the racial injustices that Japanese Americans endured have been obscured by both liberals and conservatives for decades. Drawing parallels between Pearl Harbor and 9/11 and moving beyond partisan politics, he examines the social and political forces underlying the rationale for "relocating" Japanese Americans to the camps. "The most important lesson we can learn from the 100th Battalion and 442d Regimental Combat Team is that individuals and their actions matter葉hey are the driving force of history," Asahina writes. "In telling the story of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor, writers and historians have been blinded by abstractions and missed the significance of what specific people actually did in making concrete choices. Liberals have been too busy defending Roosevelt and the New Deal, and conservatives too busy rationalizing 'military necessity,' to see the truth for what it is."

JUST AMERICANS is a brilliant examination of how and why the 100th Battalion/442d Regimental Combat Team fought so valiantly for America and why their achievements still command our attention. "The significance of the rescue of the Lost Battalion, then as now, was not just military," Asahina writes. "It had united men as Americans, not as hyphenated Americans. In so doing they had helped liberate their own families and loved ones from camps surrounded by barbed wire in their own country. And sixty years later, the circle was closed when Army veterans joined forces again as just Americans."

About the Author:
Robert Asahina has been an editor at George, Harper's, The New York Times Book Review, GEO, and The Public Interest; a film critic for The New Leader and The American Spectator; and a theater critic for The Hudson Review. He has also been editor in chief and deputy publisher of Broadway Books, president and publisher of the Adult Publishing Group of Golden Books, and a vice president and senior editor of Simon & Schuster. His articles and reviews have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Art International, Yale Theater, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, The Washington Post Book World, and other periodicals. Currently a Visiting Scholar at the Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program at NYU, he lives in New York City.

Go back to the main eTorch page