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With Allied Fifth Army, Italy (UP) - Japanese-American soldiers played an important role in the recent battle at Benevento where the Germans suffered heavy losses, it can be revealed.
They were under fire four days. Once, during the operation, Sgt. Yutaka Nezu from Waimanalo, Hawaii, led a squad into no man's land to rescue 2 American paratroopers cut off behind German lines for 16 days.
"This was really our own little fight, and we went into it with all our heart," Capt. Taro Suzuki, commander of the company, said. "We took a lot of enemy machine-gun fire but I think we took it well. One hero of the action is dead. We want him to get a posthumous decoration. He volunteered to wipe out a German machinegun nest and led the attack. After being wounded in the head by a shell, he kept alive long enough to inform the platoon sergeant of the details of the machinegun nest and then dropped dead."
Some of the officers in the battalion are from the United States mainland and not all are of Japanese descent.
Copyright 1943. Watsonville Register-Pajaronian. Reproduced here by permission.
Executive Order 9066 & the Residents of S.C. County:
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