CINDY ELLEN RUSSELL / CRUSSELL@STARBULLETIN.COM Jerry Ishimoto and Peggy Obayashi stood during the posting of colors yesterday at the 442nd Regimental Combat Team Veterans' 62nd-anniversary reunion banquet, held at the Sheraton Waikiki.

Iraq war resonates at
WWII vets’ banquet

Veterans of the 442nd dedicate their
reunion to reservists in combat

Seated in a wheelchair, Shigeru Goto, 91, still vividly recalls that April day in 1945 in Carrara, Italy, when an enemy shell exploded nearby.

It blew off his right leg, tore through his left thigh muscles, fractured his arm and killed a fellow soldier.

Back home, his fiancee, Janet, was shocked to find Goto, a 442nd Regimental Combat Team soldier, listed in the newspaper among the wounded.

Goto would return home and marry Janet. He remembers walking down the aisle in crutches.

"Those who attended the wedding all shed tears," said Janet Goto, 83, who said she couldn't help but cry, too.

Her husband is among the few remaining survivors of the highly decorated, all Japanese-American volunteer 442nd Regimental Combat Team that fought in Europe during World War II. Yesterday, some of those who are still alive celebrated the 62nd anniversary of the group's founding at the Sheraton Waikiki Hotel.

Their numbers are dwindling. Goto said three fellow soldiers who survived the deadly

explosion are no longer around. "I'm the only survivor."

CINDY ELLEN RUSSELL / CRUSSELL@STARBULLETIN.COM Army Reserve soldiers waited at the door prior to the presentation of colors yesterday. Pictured are Spc. Eric Schmidt, left, Pfc. Victor Salas, Spc. Nakoa Hoe and Pfc. Kalani Davis.

The 442nd RCT Veterans dedicated the event to the soldiers and families of their namesake, the 100th Battalion, 442nd Infantry Reserves, attached to the Army National Guard's 29th Brigade, serving in Iraq.

Among the 100 family members whose loved ones are or were serving in Iraq was the family of 1st Lt. Nainoa Hoe, killed Jan. 22.

Spc. Nakoa Hoe, Nainoa's brother, serves with the 100th Battalion and was part of the color guard at the event yesterday - as his brother was a few years ago.

"Nainoa would always tell me these guys are his heroes," their father, Allan Hoe, said.

The elder Hoe, who served as a combat medic in Vietnam at age 19, said he is happy his only surviving son, Nakoa, 19, has decided to accept the Army's offer to stay back as part of the 100th Battalion's rear unit.

"I told him I would understand if he wanted to go forward, but his mother said, 'No way,'" he said.

Nakoa was two days away from being deployed to Kuwait and Iraq when he got word his brother had been killed.

Nakoa said he will remain in Hawaii for now, "but I do plan to deploy later."

"Hopefully, when I'm dead," his mother, Adele, piped in. "There's plenty of time and there'll be other wars."

Genro Kashiwa, 81, a 442nd RCT vet, said of the soldiers serving in Iraq, "I'm very grateful for what they're doing, and I know what they're going through because I experienced that."

Despite heavy fighting, Kashiwa said, "I'm one of the very few that was not wounded and survived the war. That's because I was the last man in the platoon."