Indecent revisionist history doesn’t occur only by rewriting or misstating what actually happened; it can also occur via deletion and erasure.
So it’s appalling, and chilling, that information-rich postings about the famed 442nd Regimental Combat Team vanished from the U.S. Army’s website; it was partially restored days later only after public outcry. This most-decorated WWII unit helped turn the tide of war for U.S. and its allies, liberated towns in France, and fought so fiercely against the Nazis to prove their American patriotism that it suffered a 314% casualty rate, with each soldier, on average, injured more than three times.
So the reason for the regiment’s downsized presence by its own Army?
The 442nd was comprised of Americans of Japanese ancestry (AJAs) — so it fell under the federal government’s current, and clumsy, anti-DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) purge.
It all stems from President Trump’s January executive orders calling on the departments of Defense and Homeland Security to remove DEI offices from the uniformed services and to scrub away any diversity-related efforts. Very unfortunately, during the Defense Department’s crude auto-removal process, information about myriad breakthrough achievements in U.S. military history have been indiscriminately purged.
The 442nd, with two-thirds of its enlistees from Hawaii, was just one casualty. Others include Air Force webpages on pioneering female pilots being taken offline; the Air Force Times identified at least a dozen deleted pages on the WWII-era Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs).
Further, posts about Navajo Code Talkers have been removed, with the Marine Corps deleting more than a dozen website videos, photos and stories about the Native Americans whose coded messages were integral to helping the U.S. win WWII. In both world wars, in fact, the military deployed units that used Indigenous American languages to secretly transmit information in pivotal battles.
Such ingenuity, bravery and gainful diversity can only be known over generations if contextual records are retained; conversely, if such exploits are systematically erased from official archives, they start to vanish.
Some Code Talkers posts remain up, but reducing the breadth of their contributions — intriguing and risky spylike exploits — from national archives is wrong. Similarly, it’s poor to diminish the 442nd’s official military posting, which now omits important context about the wartime internment of 100,000 Japanese Americans that spurred AJA soldiers into battle to “prove” their loyalty to the U.S.
The Navajo Code Talkers’ online reduction is a particular sting to Indigenous Americans, who have enlisted in the military at a rate five times the national average. That statistic, ironically, is from Trump’s own proclamation in 2018 — when, in his first term, he proclaimed November 2018 as National Native American Heritage Month. Clearly, 2018 was a kinder, gentler presidency and period.
It’s not mere appreciation of history that reveals the dark side of the current DEI purge; the campaign has real-time consequences within today’s Armed Forces. On Tuesday, for instance, a federal court halted the government’s recent ban and expulsion of transgender troops, calling it unconstitutionally discriminatory. That battle continues.
And on Sunday, “60 Minutes” featured an example of unintended consequences: a canceled May concert between select high school musicians and U.S. Marine Band mentors. The event had been coordinated by Equity Arc, which gives talented students “of color” opportunities to play with the pros and connect them with U.S. orchestras, which are 80% white.
“We’re a land that prides itself on being the land of the free, the home of the brave. I believe that just as much as anyone else does,” said Rishab Jain, 18, one of the young musicians. “But for that, we need these different perspectives. We need to see how others think.”
So true. All Americans should want America to remain the land of the free, home of the brave. But that entails a fundamental understanding of who are Americans, and what real bravery means. For that, look up the 442nd soldiers’ valor and sacrifices, on whatever websites that still honor them.
For 442nd Regiment content now deleted from the Army website, see 808ne.ws/442archive.
