How much more is there to a person than what we can see from the outside? I had the opportunity to try to find out recently while sorting through a few belongings left behind in a house after the owner died and the property was sold.
Masao Tamura was 89 years old when he passed away in January 2013. He lived for decades in a well-kept, spacious Lihue home built in 1949 across Kuhio Highway from Walmart, first with his wife, Mine, then alone after she died in 2004.
He worked for more than 40 years as a bookkeeper with Kauai Veterans Express, a trucking company. Friends who knew him told me he was a very nice man.
I never met Mr. Tamura personally, but I almost feel as though I know him a bit after spending time in his home.
He was clearly fastidious and organized, both consistent and desirable for a bookkeeper. From photos it appears that Mine was the love of his life. She is in most of their pictures smiling sweetly and looking effervescent. He being of steadier hand was the household’s photographer.
In the very few photos he is in, his head is always slightly, modestly cocked to one side – except for those in which he is wearing his “Go For Broke” 442nd Regimental Combat Team shirt commemorating his service in World War II – when he is standing perfectly straight.
He strikes me as responsible, stable, a good provider, quiet and above all, humble. But, as with all of us, there was something more.
‘Go for Broke’
I found a page of thumbnail-size photos of Mr. Tamura and his U.S. Army co-inductees taken at Camp Shelby, Miss. where they trained in 1944, when he was 20 years old. They were all members of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a division the Army created for Japanese Americans to fight for America only after the Army had kicked them out of its regular ranks, classifying them as “enemy aliens” solely due to their Japanese heritage.
The 86 young men on that page of photos look so innocent, not ready for war. I can only imagine the faces of all of the 10,000 Hawaii-born Japanese Americans who volunteered to serve in the 442nd.
Those young men demonstrated indescribable loyalty to the United States with their willingness to defend our country against Japan, the country where their parents were born. This after more than 110,0000 people of Japanese ancestry who were living in the U.S., including some of the soldiers’ own family members, were imprisoned by the U.S. government in internment camps across the county following Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
A friend of Mr. Tamura’s, fellow 442nd member and Kauai resident Turk Tokita, once told me how the members of the 442nd came up with their motto, “Go for Broke.” He said, “We decided to go for broke because we knew we weren’t coming back.” Heart-breakingly, that was true for many.
Small in stature as many Japanese men are – Mr. Tamura appeared to have been only about 5 feet 5 inches tall – the men of the 442nd (and the 100th Infantry Battalion, a second Japanese American unit with whom they were combined) fought like giants and suffered tremendous loss of life. They were assigned to some of the bloodiest, strategically impossible battles of the entire war in Europe.
Their three most challenging assignments followed one after another with no rest allowed. First they were ordered to liberate the small French towns of Bruyeres and Biffontaine that had been under German control for four years. Then they were immediately dispatched to rescue a unit from Texas known as the “Lost Battalion” that was caught behind enemy lines.
The 100th/442nd set the two French towns free, half of the soldiers losing their lives in the process. More than 800 of their remaining men died while rescuing 211 Texans of the “Lost Battalion.”
Mr. Tamura was wounded on the second day of the fierce “Lost Battalion” battle, earning a Purple Heart medal, awarded to those who are injured in combat. He also earned a Bronze Star medal, the fourth-highest individual military award, given for acts of heroism in a combat zone.
By the end of the war, the soldiers of the 442nd/100th became the most highly decorated units in U.S. military history. When they returned home to Hawaii, most spoke very little, if at all, about their wartime experiences. It was out of character for most of the men of the 442nd and 100th to draw attention to themselves.
Merci Beaucoup
The residents of the French towns Bruyeres and Biffontaine have remained ever grateful to the soldiers of the 442nd/100th and have felt a close bond with both them and Hawaii ever since.
In 2011, when Mr. Tamura was 88 years old, he traveled to Honolulu to receive the French Legion of Honor award, France’s highest military honor, from descendants of the French families that the 442nd/100th saved. Receiving the honor, he said simply, “I would like to say to the French people, ‘Merci beaucoup.’ ” (“Thank you very much.”)
Later that year, Mr. Tamura and other surviving members of the 100th and 442nd received the Congressional Medal of Honor for their World War II service, along with members of the Military Intelligence Service (Japanese Americans who translated Japanese correspondence for the Allied Forces). Those who were healthy enough traveled to Washington, D.C. for the honor.
Mr. Tamura stayed connected with his Army service to the end of his life, as evidenced by a recent stack of the quarterly Go for Broke BULLETIN in his home; several photos of his military honors on the walls; and his U.S. Army uniform in a closet looking as immaculate as the day he first wore it.
I wish I could have met Mr. Tamura to thank him for his service, for helping guarantee the freedoms that most of us in the United States take for granted. I feel privileged to understand the courage that this quiet man possessed.
We can honor Mr. Tamura’s memory by remembering there is something deeper in all of us than we can see with our eyes, and that we all make a difference in this world.
Scotty and Victoria Shapiro are the new owners of Masao Tamura’s home. In July, Scotty and Victoria will move their business, Scotty’s Music, from Kalaheo to this new location across from Walmart and will rename it Scotty’s Music House. They will honor Mr. Tamura’s life with a pictorial display inside the house for all to see. Scotty’s father, Sidney, 91, is also a World War II veteran.
• Pamela Varma Brown is the publisher “Kauai Stories,” and the forthcoming “Kauai Stories 2.”
