Japanese-Americans Dedicate ‘Statue of Liberty’ : The Message--It Could Happen Again

The crowd, in their Sunday finery, had melted away. The white lawn chairs had been stored. And all the American flags had been carefully folded, when a girl skipping through Little Tokyo Square paused to glance at the bronze sculpture that had been unveiled an hour earlier.

“Look, Mommy!” she yelled. “It’s the Statue of Liberty.”

The child wasn’t entirely mistaken.

The sculpture, depicting a man’s raised hand clutching a lit torch, was dedicated to this nation’s liberty. But the Japanese-American veterans responsible for the Nikkei Veterans Monument’s creation also erected it as a reminder that liberty, unless it is constantly protected, can disappear as quickly as an ice cream bar on a hot afternoon.

So for the 250 or so who attended the dedication ceremony Sunday, it was a morning of star-spangled patriotism mingled with painful memories of World War II, when liberty evaporated for more than 110,000 West Coast residents of Japanese descent. In the wartime hysteria, Japanese-Americans were shipped to relocation camps scattered throughout the West.

“We must look back in history and be reminded what happened to the Japanese-American soldiers . . . so future generations will be reminded when there is a breakdown in our constitutional guarantees,” said Motomu Nakasako, Los Angeles County director of Military and Veterans Affairs, during a dedication speech.

As a 17-year-old, Nakasako was forced to leave Los Angeles in 1944 for a detention camp in Heart Mountain, Wyo. But he and several thousand others got a chance to prove their loyalty, and create history at the same time, when a combat unit made up entirely of second-generation Americans of Japanese heritage was formed.

In the history of the U.S. Army, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, for its size, remains the most decorated combat unit. The soldiers of the 442nd received 15,447 medals, including 9,486 Purple Hearts.

And along the way, the soldiers even became honorary Texas citizens by rescuing a Texas battalion surrounded by Germans in French mountains. The Japanese-Americans saved 275 Texans, but at a tremendous price--200 in their ranks were killed and 600 others wounded.

While wanting to remember the injustices, many of the veterans, most of whom had served in World War II, preferred not to share their experiences in the camps or why they volunteered for the Army.

“I won’t say I was doing it just for patriotism. I’d be lying,” said Hiroshi Tadakuma, co-chair of the monument project, who strung telephone wires in combat zones in Italy and France. “Most won’t talk about it. It doesn’t matter why. It’s what happened afterward, what we accomplished that matters.”

Honors Veterans

Planning for the sculpture, which stands 54 inches tall on its pedestal, began five years ago when a successful businessman, who wished to remain anonymous, donated $40,000 for a monument to honor Japanese-American veterans of all wars. The monument was designed by Karl Oike and sculpted by Marlee Wilcomb.

East met West during the ceremony. After patriotic songs and the pledge of allegiance, eight Buddhist priests blessed the monument and chanted while several veterans placed incense in a black lacquer box. On the altar, a candle holder depicting a crane standing on a turtle symbolized the wish that the monument survive for 11,000 years.

For Rodney Kamiya, 68, a career Army man, the ceremony gave him an excuse to remember back to 1946 when, as a young soldier in Hawaii, fresh off a sugar plantation, he was not allowed to go near Pearl Harbor. Army officers, he explained, “didn’t trust us.”

Could those times ever be repeated? Kamiya nodded his head. “I’m sorry it can happen, if we are apathetic, it can happen again.”