05/25/2020
The incredible story of a 100th veteran nicknamed Spud
He was described as a very strong family guy, a son who loved his mother very much. When he died that day for his country, a photo of his mother, now bloodstained, was found in his pocket.
“Sadao Munemori was born on August 17, 1922, to Kametaro and Nawa Munemori, immigrants from Hiroshima prefecture, in Glendale, California, a suburb of Los Angeles, the fourth of five children. He attended Fletcher Drive Elementary School and Lincoln High School, graduating in 1940,” according to Densho Encyclopedia.
In November 1941, Munemori volunteered for the U.S. Army. He would be the only Japanese American to be awarded the Medal of Honor during or immediately after World War II.
“Seventy-five years ago, Sadao Munemori was silently climbing in total darkness up Mount Belvedere in Italy, along with other members of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the Japanese-American World War II unit that is the most decorated unit in U.S. military history,” according to writer Martin Snapp. “Their mission was to attack one of the best outfits in the German army, the Kesselring Machine Gun Battalion.”
“It was April 1945, Munemori and his tough fellow soldiers broke the German's back by penetrating the heavily fortified Gothic line, high in the mountains over Pietrasanta,” according to ABC News.
“After his squad leader was wounded, Munemori assumed command,” according to the National Park Service (NPS).
“Munemori fought gallantly, single handedly taking out two enemy machine gun nests,” according to writer David Ono.
“Under murderous fire and showers of grenades, [Munemori then] made his way back to a shell crater where two of his fellow soldiers were taking refuge,” according to Snapp.
“Then, that fateful moment when a grenade lands at the feet of his comrades,” according to Ono.
“Without hesitation, [Munemori] dived for the missile,” wrote Snapp.
“Two weeks away from his 23rd birthday, Munemori threw himself on a German grenade,” according to NPS.
“Private First Class Munemori fought with great gallantry and intrepidity near Seravezza, Italy,” according to his Medal of Honor citation. “By his swift, supremely heroic action Private First Class Munemori saved two of his men at the cost of his own life and did much to clear the path for his company's victorious advance.”
That’s when the beloved photo of his mother was found.
This is a part of a series on the Peace Page this month honoring Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
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His Army buddies called Munemori “Spud” because he preferred potatoes over rice. They described him as always “laughing, happy, cheerful.”
But, his family remembers another side of him, when he used to be teased and called “good-for-nothing,” according to Ben Tamashiro, in The Hawaii Herald.
Another memory was when “Young Sadao had excitedly dashed off to go swimming at the community pool with his friend, a Norwegian lad,” wrote Tamashiro. “But when he returned he went straight to his room without a word to anyone. They all wondered why and, after a while. [his sister] went to check and found him on his bed, face down, but not asleep . . . he hadn't even gone swimming! Reluctantly, the boy explained that there was a big sign at the entrance to the pool: NO JAPS ALLOWED. But there were no tears in him.”
When he joined the Army, he said he wanted to prove himself.
“Despite the fact that they and their families had been forced into internment camps, thousands of the American sons of Japanese immigrants responded by volunteering to serve in the United States armed forces during World War II,” according to Google.
Munemori fought “for a country that was incarcerating his family behind barbed wire in a prison camp, merely for having Japanese ancestry,” wrote Snapp.
As military historian Bill Yenne writes, "It was their country, and they wanted to serve, just like anyone else their age. These young Japanese Americans thought of themselves as Americans, and they wanted to prove it."
“Spud was from L.A., I was from Berkeley,” remembers a friend, William Shinji Tsuchida in 100th Infantry Battalion Veterans. “Like many from the West Coast, we were determined to erase the stigma of being a ‘Jap’, enemy aliens, [but] in spite of our patriotism, we ran into difficulties proving our loyalty. We suffered suspicious stares and racial insults from our haole NCOs The all-purpose pejorative for Asians was ‘chink’. Of course the term “Jap” became a part of the American lexicon in a few more months.”
Sadao had written to his sister that "the scenery is very beautiful here, but all the beautiful forests remind me of now is terror, destruction and the painful cries of my buddies in agony. We all hate the Nazis over here,” he said, but added they respected the German soldier.
He said in another letter, according to Tamashiro, that he would listen to the young recruits cry at night, for “not having taken advice from their parents." He concluded, "Your mother is NEVER wrong."
He would compare himself to those "kids" as he called those 19-through-21 year olds and confessed, "I haven't cried because you know what kind of guy I am. I'm just a good-for-nothing.”
When his family no longer heard from him, “his mother, Nawa, had a dream that Sadao was lying on a snow-covered peak—not dead, but alive,” according to the Smithsonian.
She would receive the telegram while she was still at Manzanar that Sadao had been killed in action in Italy on April 5, 1945.
Later his mother would find the photo, blood-stained from the battlefield, among her fallen son’s personal belongings.
When the Medal of Honor was posthumously authorized on March 7, 1946, the family was in San Pedro. The actual medal was handed to his widowed mother a week later, along with his personal belongings, including the photo of his mother that he kept close to him.
At the time, Sadao Munemori “was the only Japanese American to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, the country's highest military award, for his service in World War II,” according to the Densho Encyclopedia.
The small Italian town Munemori and the 100th/442nd helped liberate would remember Munemori and the rest of the 100th/442nd by erecting a statue to recognize them, but it wouldn’t be until 2000 when 20 more Medal of Honors were issued after it was “revealed [there was] prejudice within the selection process.”
“The Japanese American GIs of the 442nd earned 21 Medals of Honor and 9,486 Purple Hearts, while their outfit was awarded eight Presidential Unit Citations,” according to Yenne.
In all, “the unit earned more than 18,000 awards in less than two years, including 4,000 Bronze Star Medals. In 2012, all surviving members were made chevaliers of the French Légion d'honneur for their actions contributing to the liberation of France and their rescue of the Lost Battalion.
In a column earlier this year, Snapp wrote, “I have to thank Spud and the other G.I.s who gave their lives. Spud died so I could live . . . He gave up all his tomorrows so I could have mine.”
“How can I repay him? The answer is I can’t,” Snapp wrote. “All I can do is try to lead my life in a way that would make him feel his sacrifice was worth it.”
Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian
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