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A two-year project started by an Indiana middle-school teacher to help her students develop a respect for the nation's veterans will be on display here for the first time next week.
Indiana students craft a quilt
honoring Japanese Americans
who fought in World War IIBy Gregg K. Kakesako
gkakesako@starbulletin.comThe story of Leila Meyerratken and 500 students of two middle schools in Lafayette began as a misunderstanding and developed into a quilt that tells the story of the nation's Japanese Americans and their struggles following the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor.
Meyerratken is a teacher at Sunnyside and Tecumseh middle schools in Lafayette whose eighth-grade students made the 12-panel quilt measuring 19 by 41 feet.
She said her students, who had never met a nisei (second-generation Japanese American) veteran, "just wanted to tell the story of the Japanese-American soldiers of World War II on quilt because they had become emotionally involved with the sacrifices made by Japanese Americans in proving their loyalty to the United States. It took a tremendous amount of research on the part of the students to come up with the details that are being included in the quilt project."
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Last August, Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye, a member of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, recognized the achievements of the Indiana students in a speech on the Senate floor.Inouye recalled then that "500 students, often working after school and on weekends, contributed their time, energy and inspiration to the school project. Mrs. Meyerratken herself gave up holidays and leave to see the project through.
"Its creators intended the quilt to honor Americans of Japanese ancestry who volunteered to fight for their country in order to prove their loyalty, in spite of the detention of their family members in internment camps. The students expressed hope that the tapestry will teach others how Japanese Americans, by making sacrifices on the field of battle, rose above the indignities they suffered."
Besides dog tags of nisei veterans and other World War II memorabilia, the quilt contains two poems written by the students and more than 20,000 names of nisei soldiers. The quilt's 120,000 tassels represent the number of Japanese Americans incarcerated in relocation camps.
The quilt's dimensions of 19 by 41 feet were chosen to represent the year 1941, when World War II officially began for the United States.
Meyerratken and seven of her students will be on hand March 25 when the quilt is displayed on Oahu. The teacher will speak at 9 a.m. at the Hawai'i Convention Center. The quilt will then be hung at Honolulu Hale for two days beginning March 27.
"The quilt is very special because it comes from the heart," Meyerratken said. "To us it is a sacred, priceless piece of art. The best part of the project, for me, was when I noticed my students develop utmost respect for all veterans, upholding strong patriotic beliefs and carrying a desire to make things better.
"When I started, most of my students didn't know how to turn on a computer; others didn't know where to place a stamp on an envelope, let alone compose a letter or conduct advanced Internet research. Some who were Hispanic couldn't speak English. I was able to reach high standards to meet the needs of all these children."
Meyerratken and state Sen. Colleen Hanabusa are scheduled to speak at the 59th 442nd Regimental Combat Team's memorial service, to be held at the National Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl beginning at 2 p.m. next Sunday.
More than 500 people are expected to attend the unit's annual memorial banquet, which will be held Saturday at the Sheraton-Waikiki Hotel. Speakers at the luncheon will include Lt. Gen. E.P. Smith, U.S. Hawaii Pacific commander, and Los Angeles attorney Ronald Yamada, whose father served in the 442nd.
FOLLOWING A TRIP TO JAPAN in the summer of 1998, Meyerratken began teaching Japanese to eighth-graders when some of her students "comically began to pull their eyes toward their ears, push down on their noses and stuck their teeth out.
"I ignored it all, really, until one student shouted, 'Yeah, we nuked 'em!' A few students stood up and gave a high five. I froze to the ground."
Meyerratken decided she need to teach the students about the Japanese-American internment and the prejudice these people faced during the war. She said that her students also didn't know there was a difference between Japanese and Chinese.
Meyerratken, who been teaching foreign language in the Lafayette school system for nearly 10 years, said initially her classes studied only the exploits of the 442nd RCT, which was organized on March 23, 1943, in response to the War Department's call for volunteers to form an all-Japanese-American Army combat unit.
But the quilt and a Japanese garden at the school were developed as she and the students became more familiar with the other World War II nisei units, as well as with the hardships and the discrimination those left in relocation camps and other places on the home front were forced to endure.
The 100th Infantry Battalion, composed mostly of Japanese Americans, led the way in 1942. After nine long months of bitter fighting from Salerno to Anzio, it was joined in Rome by the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.
Thereafter the two Japanese-American units remained as one through the bloody fighting in northern Italy and France to the end of the war.
With its battle cry, "Go for Broke!" the 442nd/100th earned the honor and distinction of being the most decorated unit of its size and length of service in battle in U.S. military history.
