Synopsis
This book comes from an idea of Pietro Maghelli, a longtime friend and great collector of militaria, who soon convinced me of the validity of the project: to collect all available photos of the 442nd U.S. Regimental Combat Group during what the Americans call the “Po Valley Campaign” and we in Italy remember as the breakthrough of the Western Gothic Line in the Apuan area.
The images connect over time to the battlefield visits of veterans and later their descendants, in a thread that demonstrates a love for their military traditions and an enduring respect for the deeds of soldiers in war and later for what their ancestors accomplished.
Current images, Marco Bertini’s maps and veterans’’drawings, and the presence of the historical diary of the 442nd RCT, supplemented by veterans and revised in place names by the author, are helpful in contextualizing the period photos. The roll of the fallen has also been carefully screened, adding names that escaped the drafters and eliminating two names that given as missing, were actually captured by the Germans and were eventually able to return home.
Also presented in the volume is the list of the most significant decorations that are the result of extensive archival research to find the reasons for them.
Finally, there are some letters from veterans, selected from a larger personal archive.
The 442nd RCT was a unit formed exclusively by Nisei (second generation in Japanese). They were in fact the first descendants of the emigration from Japan in the late 19th century to seek work in the United States in times of famine.
Of Japan they retained traditions such as very strong ties to the family, which was never to be dishonored by acts of cowardice, lack of discipline or disrespect for the adopted homeland. This was not an easy task because after the raid on
Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, ethnic Japanese were ostracized in the United States, locking up the community in internment camps on the mainland and subjecting the population of Asian descent in Hawaii to close surveillance.
Despite this, the 100th Battalion was formed from a battalion of the Hawaii National Guard, which after proving itself in the field in the first phase of the Italian campaign of exceptional military valor, enabled the creation of two more battalions and artillery, technical and logistics departments that formed the 442nd Regiment. In the field, the numbers state unequivocally that this regiment is the most decorated in U.S. history. It was only beginning in 1996, with the administration of President Bill Clinton, that incarceration and racial discrimination were repaired with public apologies, revision of the motivations for valor that in many cases were upgraded upward, with pensions bestowed on those who had been interned.
For the author, the bond with the Nisei and now their descendants is contextualized in more than 30 years of field and archival research to reconstruct the battle of the Western Gothic Line. This means not only the production of books, articles, documentaries, and exhibitions, but also the preservation of historical memory through the creation of historical trails and battlefield guidance to military posts that have been preserved and made usable through marked and marked routes. For the operational use of the 442nd RCT, the Mount Folgorito trail and the trail on Mount Belvedere east of the city of Massa are currently active.
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