LOS ANGELES — Months after Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government imprisoned Robert Ichikawa in a desolate World War II internment camp.
But the Torrance resident volunteered for the U.S. military anyway. He wanted, he said, to prove his loyalty to his American homeland over his ancestral land of Japan.
More than 30,000 “Nisei,” or second-generation Japanese-Americans, did likewise by volunteering for military service during World War II. Many of them joined the mostly-Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team and 100th Infantry Battalion, whose valor under fire made it among the most highly decorated units in U.S. military history.
Others joined the Military Intelligence Service as interrogators, translators and interpreters, crucial roles credited with shortening the war by as many as two years.
About 300 Nisei women served in the Women’s Army Corps and Cadet Nurses Corp.
Now, as Japanese-American World War II veterans rapidly dwindle in number — many are in their 80s — their supporters are pushing for a commemorative postage stamp in their honor. And they have attracted support from an unexpected quarter: the Jewish community.
At a Los Angeles news conference this week, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Museum of Tolerance pledged support for the campaign and called on the U.S. Postal Service to approve the proposal when its commemorative-stamp review committee meets in January.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper said his Wiesenthal Center has had a long relationship with the Nisei veterans, stemming from an initial friendship with one of them, the late Clarence Matsumura, who helped liberate Holocaust survivors from Dachau concentration camp.
Community organizations, such as the American Jewish Committee and Japanese American Citizens League, have endorsed the campaign. So have numerous federal and state lawmakers, including Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, a veteran of the 442nd who lost an arm in battle.
Proposed resolutions are pending in Congress and in several states, said Wayne Osako, stamp campaign chairman.
Osako said the Postal Service has issued commemorative stamps honoring minority veterans in the past. It issued a stamp in 1984 honoring Hispanic veterans and another a decade later recognizing the black Buffalo Soldiers. The Nisei veterans stamp would be the first to honor an Asian-American military group.
The Postal Service’s citizens’ stamp advisory committee will review the proposal in a selection process that usually takes about three years, Osako said. The veterans stamp could be issued in 2010.
War veteran Henry Ikemoto, 84, who grew up in Stockton, Calif., was attending Baylor University in Texas when he read of the heroic exploits and enormous casualties of the 442nd. Although his teachers urged him to stick with his studies, Ikemoto said, “I just couldn’t stay in school while my friends were going to war and getting killed.”
He signed up for the 442nd and also served in the Military Intelligence Service, where he interrogated Japanese military officers after their surrender.
Ikemoto said he served with pride even though his family members lost their celery business and their possessions when they were interned in Arkansas. A commemorative stamp would signify at last that Americans appreciated that service, he said.
“It will show the American people what Japanese-Americans did — that people who look like foreigners can do so much for this country,” Ikemoto said. “It will say that we’re good Americans.”
But it is a race against time.
Gardena resident Chizuko Ohira, one of the three Nisei women who launched the campaign, said her husband, Ted, a veteran, was an avid stamp supporter. But he died in March 2007, before seeing his dream realized.
“These guys are getting on in their 80s and 90s,” she said, “so we really have to push for the stamp this year.”
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