Isle WWII vet WAILUKU >> Too many men died in battle at his side for Barney Hajiro to feel he is a hero.
returns to roots
in Maui parade
Barney Hajiro will be a
grand marshal at the
Maui County FairBy Gary T. Kubota
gkubota@starbulletin.com"I was just lucky to survive," said Hajiro, 85, a Waipahu resident who received a Medal of Honor for bravery in combat during World War II. "Most of the guys were wiped out."
Hajiro, who fought with the Japanese-American 442nd Regimental Combat Team in Europe, will be a grand marshal today during the 79th Annual Maui County Fair on the Valley Isle, where he was born and raised in a sugar camp in Puunene.
The parade starts at 4:45 p.m. at the entrance of Maui Community College, runs mauka on Kaahumanu Avenue, turns right on Kanaloa Avenue and ends at the Maehara Baseball Stadium.
Leading the parade with Hajiro will be Brian Moto, son of the late Maui resident Kaoru Moto, who received a Medal of Honor posthumously.
Traveling to Maui will be a kind of homecoming for Hajiro, a son of Japanese immigrants who earned 10 cents an hour in the sugar cane fields and who quit school after eighth grade to help his family of nine children.
The Maui of his generation did not provide many job opportunities.
Hajiro, a nisei, or second generation of Japanese to live in the United States, recalled the indignity of being drafted into the Army in 1942 and working with other Americans of Japanese ancestry as laborers on Oahu, unable to carry rifles because of unfounded initial doubts about their loyalty to the United States.
On the mainland, Japanese Americans were herded into internment camps.
The 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which included Japanese from Hawaii and the mainland, was activated Feb. 1, 1943.
Hajiro was a 24-year-old private when the 442nd was asked to break the enemy encirclement of a Texas unit called the "Lost Battalion" in France near the German border.
He remembered his platoon and other platoons making a frontal assault against the Germans.
"They were waiting for us," he said.
Some Japanese from Hawaii died near him, including a soldier from Kauai and a bazooka specialist from Maui.
Armed with a Browning automatic rifle, Hajiro killed two German snipers and soldiers manning two machine guns before he was wounded in the arm, face and wrist by a third machine gun.
At the end of the battle, the 442nd had rescued 211 Texans but sustained 800 casualties.
"My platoon got wiped out," Hajiro said.