Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: One-Puka-Puka in town

Tuesday, June 20, 2000 | 9:10 a.m.

Mike O'Callaghan is the Las Vegas Sun executive editor.

SOME OF AMERICA'S finest fighting men and patriots are gathering in Las Vegas to visit and recall past relationships and experiences. They are the men from three troop trains moving into Camp McCoy, Wis., 58 years ago. It had been a long trip for them from Hawaii aboard a crowded troop ship and then on equally crowded trains from Oakland, Calif., to the farmlands of Wisconsin.

The book "Remembrances" relates the feeling of one of the soldiers:

"Arriving at McCoy, one of them stops at a siding. The men look out the window. Across the track stands what looks like an internment camp. There are watch towers, iron fences topped with barbed wire surrounding the camp. One of the men studies the camp very carefully. He knows that his parents are interned in a camp somewhere in Wisconsin. He feels apprehension and anxiety. He has a strong urge to get out of the train to search for his parents. The men harbor a 'funny kine feeling' and wonder if this indeed is their fate. ...

"As if playing out a macabre scene, the train slowly backs away from the siding and comes to a dead stop in the right area of the sprawling camp. Later, the soldier who wondered about his parents learns that yes, indeed, his parents were in the very camp he saw through the train's windows."

This was the beginning of a saga that will live forever in the hearts and minds of Americans then facing the combined threat of Germany and Japan. The troops arriving from the territory of Hawaii were Japanese Americans who had already seen the devastation of Pearl Harbor by bombers from Japan. They were soldiers of the 100th Battalion.

Masayo Umezawa Duus, in her book "Unlikely Liberators" about the men of the 100th and 442nd Regimental Combat Team, tells readers:

"But the 100th belonged neither to a regiment nor a division. It was a 'bastard battalion' without a legitimate parent.

"The unit's designation as the 100th showed that the army did not know quite what to do with it. The Japanese Americans did not hide their dissatisfaction and anxiety at the strange-sounding battalion designation. Being a bastard battalion really meant that no one wanted them. The army, many felt, was discriminating against them. Wryly the troops began calling themselves the 'One-Puka-Puka.' In Hawaiian puka means 'hole' -- and also the zero in a telephone number."

This Wisconsin farm boy and hundreds of others living in and around Camp McCoy soon learned to respect the soldiers from those faraway islands. So did a division of soldiers from Texas who didn't want to give them room on the sidewalks of nearby towns. Almost three dozen went to the hospital one night when the smaller men had enough. My father, only five feet eight inches tall himself and a World War I veteran, became a cheerleader for the new troops. He followed their heroic exploits with great interest as they fought their way across Europe.

It wasn't long before the men of the 100th were viewed like our own local men then serving in the military. Their ability in sports, especially baseball, was appreciated by the country people where every town had a team playing on Saturdays and Sundays. When the troops shipped out for advanced training in Mississippi they left behind many friends and fond memories. The men of the 100th had fought several battles for the opportunity to fight in mortal combat against the enemy and now they were on their way.

Heavy combat in Italy resulted in more than 900 casualties before the 100th Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team were joined together. Now the "Remember Pearl Harbor" battalion and the "Go For Broke" regimental combat team were together.

The combat record of the 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team was unequaled. The cost was heavy and resulted in 9,486 Purple Hearts. Heroism was an accepted fact of life and death that the men faced during seven major campaigns in Europe. Among them was Las Vegan Young Oak Kim, who will be one of the hosts during the reunion here in Las Vegas. Colonel Kim, then a lieutenant and later a captain, received one of the unit's 52 Distinguished Service Crosses, the Silver Star and the Purple Heart with three oak leaf clusters.

The accomplishments of the young Japanese Americans during World War II, both in Europe and as military intelligence people in the Pacific, have placed them high on the list of American patriots.