Tribute to
Japanese Americans’
sacrifice stirs emotions

An Arkansas exhibit looks at
the history of two internment
camps that were in the state

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. » Leaving their families in barbed-wire-encircled internment camps, hundreds of Japanese Americans enlisted in the Army to fight in Europe during World War II.

Arkansas is paying tribute to the sacrifice this weekend in a four-day event commemorating the history of two camps in the southeastern part of the state, the only ones in the South. Eight camps were in the West.

"These guys were special. It is amazing that they would volunteer from behind barbed wire," said Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye, himself a member of the Japanese-American 442nd Regimental Combat team, the most decorated unit for its size in the European Theater.

More than 120,000 Japanese Americans were sent from the West Coast and Hawaii to 10 internment camps in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. Between 1942 and 1945, the Arkansas camps -- at Jerome and Rohwer -- held 16,000 detainees.

Inouye said he had more freedom living under heightened security in Hawaii than others forced into the camps. He saw the Rohwer camp for the first time in 1943.

"Rohwer has haunted me. I have always asked myself that if I were in that camp, would I have volunteered," Inouye told more than 1,000 people gathered at Little Rock's MacArthur Military Museum. Inouye was on hand Friday to help open a special exhibit on Japanese-American World War II military history.

The event was part of the Life Interrupted National Conference, which continues through today.

Among little-known accomplishments of Japanese-American units in the war is the liberation of the concentration camp in Dachau, Germany. The 552nd combat unit was operating in advance of Gen. George S. Patton's tanks when its soldiers found the camp.

Inouye said the story was classified by military officials who did not want the public to know the role of Japanese Americans in liberating the camp.

Hiro Nishikubo left his mother in a California internment camp when he enlisted, and went on to fight his way through Italy with the 442nd.

"My dad said, 'This is your country and you have to fight for it,'" Nishikubo said.

Woodrow Crockett served with the Tuskegee Airmen, a segregated black unit. He said he came to Arkansas to support his fellow vets because he understood the conflicting circumstances of Japanese Americans who fought in the war.

"If you removed the barbed wire, there was no difference in us," Crockett said. "I was segregated all my life."

Randy Masada, of Fresno, Calif., said his family decided to hold its reunion in Little Rock to coincide with the conference. Relatives ranging in age from 30 to 83 traveled from across the country.

Masada's father spent time at the Arkansas camps; his grandfather was the first person to die in the camps.

"Sometimes hardships strengthen families," he said. "This is part of our family history and we want to make sure the story is told."