North Apennines Campaign

(September 10, 1944 – April 4, 1945)
North Apennines Campaign
(April 5 – May 8, 1945)
‍Po Valley Campaign
The 100th/442nd (less the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion) at The Gothic Line, March 25 – May 1945
On March 25, 1945, when the 442nd Regimental Combat Team arrived in Pisa, Italy, some of the soldiers thought, “Here we go again.”

Last summer, the 442nd had liberated Pisa. Now, eight months later, the Nisei were back. But during the Nisei’s absence the Allies had not budged in the Apennine Mountains.¹

The saw-toothed Apennines rose up from the Ligurian Sea. Starting from the northeast, the peaks hugged the east coast of Italy and stretched diagonally southward across the Italian boot. To the west, on the other side of the mountains, was the wide, flat Po River Valley that led up to the Austrian Alps-the last barrier to Germany.

Italy

For nine months, German Field Marshal Albert Kesselring directed the construction of the Gothic Line along the summits of the northern regions of the Apennines. The Todt Organization, a civil and military engineer construction company named after its founder, Fritz Todt, and known for its fortifications at Monte Cassino, used 15,000 Italian slave laborers and recruits to build fortifications along the line, maximizing the use of the natural terrain.² They drilled into the solid rock to make gun pits and trenches, which they reinforced with concrete. They built more than 2,300 machine gun nests with interlocking fire.³

The Gothic Line, shown in red. Courtesy of the United States Army Center of Military History.

The Allies faced steep marble mountains, some rising 3,000 feet high, bare of vegetation save for scanty scrub growth. Starting from the southwest and zigzagging northeast, the hills were known as Georgia; Florida; Ohio 1, 2, 3; Cerreto; Folgorito; Carchio; and Belvedere. Allied planes air-bombed it and Allied artillery blasted it, but they could not crack the Gothic Line.

Now, the 442nd, under General Mark Clark’s Fifth Army, 92nd Infantry Division, was ordered to do it. But how? The Germans, safe and snug in their mountaintop observation posts, could see troops coming from miles away.

The 442nd Regiment’s Commander, Colonel Virgil Miller, and the battalion commanders and their staff went over possible plans. Miller, Lieutenant Colonel James Conley (100th Battalion Commander) and Lieutenant Colonel Alfred Pursall (3rd Battalion Commander) made their decision. The plan was to conceal the Nisei approach by moving at night, and then make a surprise pincers attack at dawn.

Colonel Virgil Miller, Commander of the 442nd RCT. Courtesy of the United States Department of Defense and the Hiroshi Mizuki Family.

On the night of April 3, the 100th Battalion moved west of Cerreto. Meanwhile, the 3rd Battalion hiked eastward all night to the village of Azzano, southeast of Folgorito. The Italian partisans guided them through the mountainous terrain. The next day, the battalions hid.

When darkness fell, the 100th moved toward Florida hill undetected. Meanwhile, the 3rd Battalion climbed toward the saddle between Folgorito and Carchio. For eight hours, I and L Company men plus M Company machine-gunners scaled the 60-degree incline. Laden with packs and ammunition, they crawled up the steep, slippery, shale-encrusted slopes. One man fell 300 feet, but didn’t utter a sound.⁴ The success of the entire operation hinged on silence and secrecy.

By dawn on April 5, they reached the top, and were looking into the backs of the German emplacements. Suddenly, bam! The Germans were surprised with a wake-up call. The Nisei killed and captured enemy soldiers and quickly seized gun positions.

The 3rd Battalion attacked across the mountaintops, moving westward. L Company drove off a sharp counterattack and reached the base of Folgorito. I Company drove the enemy into the recesses of Carchio.

At the same time, the 100th Battalion attacked eastward, squeezing the German defenses between the two battalions. The 100th’s A Company faced minefields and heavy grenade and machine gun fire.

Private First Class Sadao Munemori, A Company, made a frontal, one-man attack through heavy fire and took out two machine gun nests. As Munemori returned to take cover in a crater with two squad members, a grenade bounced off his helmet. The live grenade rolled toward his helpless squad members. Without hesitation, he dove on the grenade and smothered the blast with his own body. By his swift and supremely heroic actions, he saved the lives of two men at the cost of his own.⁵ He was four months away from his 23rd birthday.

Sadao Munemori. Courtesy of the United States Department of Defense.

In 32 minutes, the Nisei had driven the Germans from their entrenchments.⁶ But now they were awake. They pounded K Company and the mortar platoon of M Company with heavy mortar fire, killing three Nisei and wounding 40 more.⁷

The battle for the ridges raged on. Allied mortar and artillery fire failed to dent the well-constructed emplacements. The 442nd had to filter through heavy fire to hand-grenade range and destroy the fiercely defended bunkers one by one. The Nisei also faced a new threat: German Schu-mines. These hard-to-detect mines caused more than half of the 100th’s casualties.

By the night of April 6, the 100th and 3rd Battalions had closed in from opposite directions and seized Cerreto. The 2nd Battalion’s F Company took Carchio. The Nisei had also seized hills Georgia, Ohio 1, 2, 3 and Folgorito.⁸

On April 7, the 2nd Battalion pushed toward the wide rolling top of Belvedere. Veteran troops from the formidable Kesselring Machine Gun Battalion battered the attackers. The crack Nazi battalion wasn’t giving up ground. F Company Technical Sergeant Yukio Okutsu broke the deadlock. Twenty-four year old Okutsu single-handedly knocked out three machine gun nests. At the third, he captured four men. His heroism earned him a Distinguished Service Cross.⁹

George Sakato. Courtesy of the United States Department of Defense.

By nightfall, the last of the ridges were in the 442nd’s hands. From April 4-8, the 442nd advanced more than 2.5 miles. The 232nd Combat Engineer Company worked night and day to support the swift-moving infantry. The 232nd cleared debris, built bridges and defused 200 mines, all under dangerous enemy fire. For three days in mid-April, the engineers stopped bulldozing and minesweeping and became infantrymen on La Bandita Ridge. Together with C Company, they fought a strong German counterattack. In this action, 10 C Company men, several engineers and Captain Pershing Nakada, commander of the 232nd, were wounded.From April 9-18, the Nisei continued to push northeast, climbing up and down the 3,000-foot peaks, fighting Germans and taking towns until they arrived south of Aulla. The Nazis were bitterly defending the high ground at Mount Nebbione and the Aulla road junction as it was the last remaining German escape route into the Po Valley.

From April 20-22, the 442nd attacked. Third Battalion’s K Company battled to seize the town of Tendola. K Company Private Joe Hayashi, an acting squad leader, single-handedly silenced three machine gun nests. As he pursued more Germans, he was killed by machine pistol fire. For his bravery, he was posthumously awarded a Distinguished Service Cross.¹⁰

Joe Hayashi. Courtesy of the United States Department of Defense.

Meanwhile, on a fortified ridge called Colle Musatello, Second Lieutenant Daniel Inouye of 2nd Battalion’s E Company took out two machine gun nests. Wounded in the stomach, he dragged himself toward a third nest. He pulled a grenade pin and was about to throw it when his arm was torn apart by shrapnel. Using his good arm, he extracted the live grenade from his shattered fingers and threw it at the third machine gun nest, destroying it. He then shot the surviving German gunners using his Tommy gun, while his right arm flapped uselessly against his side. Again, German gunfire wounded Inouye, but all through the fight he refused help and urged his men to charge the hill.¹¹ He was just 20 years old when his act of extraordinary valor earned him a Distinguished Service Cross.

Daniel Inouye. Courtesy of the United States Department of Defense.

Two days later, the 2nd Battalion men pushed toward the village of Pariana but met stiff resistance from the Bersagliere, a crack Italian mountain unit made up of diehard Fascists. E and G Companies spread out, attacking frontally as well as east and west and eventually killed four bersaglieri and took 135 as prisoners.

On April 25, the 2nd Battalion drove up from the west and a special task force of B and F Companies led by Major Mitsuyoshi “Mits” Fukuda poured in from the east. Aulla finally fell.

The Germans who had fought so skillfully and bitterly from Salerno to the Po were finished. They surrendered by the hundreds. On May 2, 1945, all German forces in Italy officially surrendered.

From the Po Valley campaign, 101 Nisei soldiers died, 922 were wounded, and three were missing in action.¹²

Munemori was posthumously awarded a Medal of Honor, the only Nisei at the time to receive the nation’s highest military honor. More than 50 years later, the Distinguished Service Crosses earned by Inouye, Okutsu, and Hayashi were upgraded to Medals of Honor.For their actions in the Apennines, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and the 232nd Combat Engineer Company were awarded a Presidential Unit Citation.It was signed by Chief of Staff Dwight Eisenhower, who himself had refused the 100th Battalion upon their deployment to Europe, doubting the men’s ability and their loyalty. It read: “The successful accomplishment of this mission turned a diversionary action into a full scale and victorious offensive, which played an important part in the final destruction of the German armies in Italy.”¹³There was no longer any question about the loyalty and combat skill of the 442nd.

ORAL HISTORY CLIPS

James Oura [interview 625]
‍Starts on Tape Four

JAMES OURA:
But you know, on this Lost Battalion —you see on the 27th . . . and this is the 22nd, October 27th . . . only a few more days . . . is just when we started to go out to rescue the Lost Battalion. And every October, this is my feeling, I will take out a manual, a book, a history of the 442nd and I’ll come down to the Lost Battalion. And I’ll read about it and sort of memories come back, you know, keep on coming back, but I shed a lot of tears . . . reading about it. But every October 27th I have this feeling that I have to read and think back of all the guys we lost. But I don’t know when I’ll get over the feeling, but 27th is close by and my books will be ready to be read again.

James Matsumoto [interview 300]
‍Starts on Tape Five, between 14 and 16 minute marks

JAMES MATSUMOTO:
We had a big, big, big battle there at Bruyères. We’d finally liberated that town, but there were so many dead people on the road that they had to bring a bulldozer to push ’em off the road. We lost a lot of men there. We took that town. We battled night and day. And then they finally got rest, but we liberated it, the Germans pulled back. And the line was broken, and that’s when they were—Lost Battalion started. 141st Battalion from the 36th Division got suckered into—the Germans opened up the area there that they were pushed into and opened it up, and then those guys went in there and then the Germans closed them up behind ’em. So we only had a day and a half rest. And they said “Okay, get ready, we got another push. We gotta go rescue this Lost Battalion. They said, “Rescue them at any cost.” So that was our big job.

Rudy Tokiwa [interview 183]
‍Starts on Tape Eight

RUDY TOKIWA:
And I’ll never forget that one of their units got surrounded. And they were about 10 miles in, and I was—they must have got sucked. And, you know, they had three times the men of us besides the ones that we’re in fighting already, because they were a big unit and we were just a small regiment. And—but, no, we were given the orders to go back in and make the rescue. I’ll tell you how long we were back on the rear echelon was, we got to the area we were supposed to rest for the night. So we got out of the trucks, we put our sleeping bags out, and before we know it we’re putting the sleeping bags and wrapping ’em back up and getting ready to move out. And I’ll tell you how dark it gets in the Vosges Forest. On the night when there’s no moon or anything, you walking in the Vosges Forest, if you put your fingers out like that, you won’t see your hand.

Starts on Tape Eight, between 14 and 16 minute marks

RUDY TOKIWA:
And I’ve always felt sorry because, when we were going after—going in to make the rescue of the 36th, there was a regimental battalion out of the 36th that got surrounded in the Vosges Forest, and, you know, the 36th has four times the amount of men we do, but we’re the ones that they want to go in and make the rescue. So we started going in to make the rescue. But we—like the company I was in, we had a little over 300 men when we started out. And we went in and it took us over six days to make the rescue. And I’ll show you how bad the battles were. When K Company came out, there was only 17 people left.

Footnotes

¹Franz Steidl, Lost Battalions: Going for Broke in the Vosges, Autumn 1944 (New York: Random House, 2008), p. 57.
²Ibid.
³Duane Schultz, “American Samurai,” October 5, 2011, History.net.com, accessed on December 2, 2014.
⁴The citation for Hajiro’s Medal of Honor encompasses three separate incidents, including his valor during the rescue of the “Lost Battalion.” The other incidents are as follows: “Private Hajiro, while acting as a sentry on top of an embankment on 19 October 1944, in the vicinity of Bruyères, France, rendered assistance to allied troops attacking a house 200 yards away by exposing himself to enemy fire and directing fire at an enemy strong point. He assisted the unit on his right by firing his automatic rifle and killing or wounding two enemy snipers. On 22 October 1944, he and one comrade took up an outpost security position about 50 yards to the right front of their platoon, concealed themselves, and ambushed an 18-man, heavily armed, enemy patrol, killing two, wounding one, and taking the remainder as prisoners.” See “Private Barney F. Hajiro,” Asian Pacific American Medal of Honor Recipients, US Army Center of Military History, last updated June 27, 2011, accessed on January 12, 2015.
⁵Ibid.
⁶“Private George T. Sakato,” Asian Pacific American Medal of Honor Recipients, US Army Center of Military History, last updated June 27, 2011, accessed on January 12, 2015.
⁷“Technician Fifth Grade James K. Okubo United States Army,” Asian Pacific American Medal of Honor Recipients, US Army Center of Military History, last updated June 27, 2011, accessed on January 12, 2015.
⁸Many accounts give the figure of 800+ casualties. See, for example, Lyn Crost, Honor by Fire: Japanese Americans at War in Europe and the Pacific (Novato, CA: Presidio, 1994), p. 197; C. Douglas Sterner, Go For Broke: The Nisei Warriors of World War II Who Conquered Germany, Japan and American Bigotry (Clearfield, UT: American Legacy Historical Press, 2008), p. 87; Derek K. Hirohata, “Rescue of the Lost Battalion,” Densho Encyclopedia, accessed on January 7, 2015, http://www.densho.org/assets/images/hirohataarticle.pdf ; “The Lost Battalion: Rescue in the Vosges Mountains,” Home of Heroes, accessed on January 7, 2015, http://www.homeofheroes.com/moh/nisei/index7_lost_bn.html, updated in 2018; John C. Fredriksen, The United States Army: A Chronology, 1775 to the Present (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2010), p. 271. Although most accounts give the figure of 800+ casualties, James M. McCaffrey writes that recent figures calculate that number to be closer to 400, including those wounded or killed by mines, sniper fire, heavy artillery, and spraying shrapnel. See James M. McCaffrey, Going for Broke: Japanese American Soldiers in the War Against Nazi Germany (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2013): pp. 269-270. McCaffrey notes, “The two Nisei infantry battalions that had helped rescue the ‘Lost Battalion’ suffered significant losses in the process, but much misinformation has attached itself over the years to the issue of casualties. Earlier works cite eight hundred Nisei killed and wounded while rescuing only a fourth of that number… A close study of the official records of the 442nd Regiment, however, reveals different statistics. They show that for the entire month of October, losses from the combat team amounted to 119 killed or missing in action and 671 wounded. However, during the period between October 26 and October 30, the two Nisei battalions that played an active role in the rescue, the 100th and the 3rd, lost thirty-seven killed. Determining the number of wounded by date is more difficult, but the number does not exceed 410. Although these numbers still represent heavy losses, they are considerably less than eight hundred. And one can only surmise how many of these casualties might have occurred in regular combat actions during this time even if there had not been a trapped battalion to rescue.”
⁹“Private First Class Joe M. Nishimoto,” Asian Pacific American Medal of Honor Recipients, US Army Center of Military History, last updated June 27, 2011, accessed on January 12, 2015.
¹⁰McCaffrey, p. 274.
¹¹Crost, p. 197.
¹²“What Was the 442nd Regimental Combat Team?”, 442nd Regimental Combat Team, accessed on January 7, 2015.
¹³The story is cited several times over, becoming sort of an urban legend, with actual statements varying from source to source. See Masayo Umezawa Duus, trans. By Peter Duus, Unlikely Liberators: The Men of the 100th and 442nd (Honolulu, HI: UH Press, 1987), p. 217; C. Douglas Sterner, p. 95; Duane Schultz, “American Samurai,” History.net.com, accessed on December 2, 2014. Also see Terri DiBono and Steve Rosen, Beyond Barbed Wire, film, directed by Steve Rosen, (1997; New York: Turner), DVD.
¹⁴Landon McDuff, “Remember the Alamo!-Anzio!: The Brave and Controversial Texas Army National Guard in WWII,” Military History Online, March 20, 2011, accessed on December 3, 2014, http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/wwii/articles/texasnationalguard.aspx. Also see “36th Division in World War II: The Lost Battalion,” Texas Military Forces Museum, accessed on December 2, 2014.
¹⁵Kagawa.