Hawaii - James Michener [539]
The report was partially correct. Lieutenant Goro Sakagawa's company, and the unit of which it was a part, was being withdrawn. The boys were willing to try again, but they no longer had enough men to maintain a cohesive company and they had to retreat to repair their wounds. As they passed back through a unit from Minnesota coming in to replace them, the Swedes, having heard of their tremendous effort, cheered them and saluted and one man from St. Paul yelled, "We hope we can do as good as you did."
"You will," a boy from Lahaina mumbled.
So the Germans stopped the Two-Two-Two ... for a few hours, because in another part of the line other units from Hawaii were accumulating a mighty force, and on February 8 Colonel Sep Seigl's intelligence officer reported breathlessly, "The damned Japanese have crossed the river and are attacking the mountain itself!"
With a powerful surge the Japanese boys drove spearheads almost to the top of the mountain. They scaled heights that even their own officers believed impregnable, and they routed out more than two hundred separate machine-gun emplacements. Their heroism in this incredible drive was unsurpassed in World War II, and for a few breathless hours they caught a toehold on the summit of the mountain itself.
"Send us reinforcements!" they radioed frantically. "We've got them licked."
But reinforcements could not negotiate the cliffs, and one by one the Japanese victors were driven back from their dizzy pinnacles. As they stumbled down the steep flanks of Monte Cassino the Germans gunned them unmercifully, but at last the fragments of the force staggered back to camp and announced: "The Germans cannot be driven out." But one fact of triumph remained: the headquarters camp was now on the west bank of the Rapido. The river had been crossed. The way to Rome lay open.
It was in their bruising defeat at Monte Cassino that the Two-Two-Two became one of the most famous units of the war. "The Purple Heart Battalion" it was called, for it had suffered more casualties than any other similar-sized unit in the war. The Mo Bettahs won more honors, more decorations, more laudatory messages from the President and the generals than any other. But most of all they won throughout America a humble respect. Caucasians who fought alongside them reported back home: "They're better Americans than I am. I wouldn't have the guts to do what they do." And in Hawaii, those golden islands that the Japanese boys loved so deeply as they died in Italy, people no longer even discussed the tormenting old question: "Are the Japanese loyal?" Now men of other races wondered: "Would I be as brave?" So although the Prussian Nazi, Colonel Sep Seigl, did exactly what he had promised Hitler he would do--he crushed the Japanese at Monte Cassino--neither he nor Hitler accomplished what they had initially intended: for it was in defeat that the Japanese boys exhibited their greatest bravery and won the applause of the world.
Therefore it is strange to report that it was not at Monte Cassino that the Two-Two-Two won its greatest laurels. This happened by accident, in a remote corner of France.
After the Triple Two's had retired to a rear area in Italy, there to lick their considerable wounds and to re-form with fresh replacements from the States--including First Lieutenant Goro Sakagawa's younger brothers Minoru and Shigeo--the Mo Bettah Battalion was shipped out of Italy and into Southern France, where it was allowed to march in a leisurely manner up the Rhone Valley. It met little German opposition, nor was it intended to, for the generals felt that after the heroic performance at Monte Cassino the Japanese boys merited something of a respite, and for once things went as planned. Then accompanied by a Texas outfit that had also built a name for itself in aggressive fighting, the Two-Two-Two's swung away from the Rhone and entered upon routine mopping-up