The Last Fox: A Novel of the 100th/442nd RCT

The Last Fox is a first-of-its-kind work of military fiction that dramatizes the exploits of the legendary all-Nisei "Go For Broke" Regimental Combat Team, the most decorated unit in U.S. military history that saw action in Italy and France during WWII. Sgt. Fred Murano, the last of the Four Foxes known for their expertise in knocking out the feared MG-42 German machine gun nests, must fight the war on two fronts: the Nazis on the battlefields and racism at home. Known as the best combat troops in the European Theater of Operations, the fighting Nisei are so effective that the Germans are forced to double their defenses whenever they are on the line. Sgt. Murano typifies their esprit de corps. Though severely wounded, he survives the war to confront old age and his own mortality. The rare Indian head penny he finds in the battlefield in Italy ties in with his survival as a soldier and his fate at the end.

Robert H. Kono was a ten-year old boy in the concentration camps of America when the young Nisei volunteered to fight in the great and bloody war. He always wanted to write about them and their heroism. After his retirement in 1996, he began writing in earnest and in ten months wrote The Last Fox, one of four novels he has completed to date (January 2002). Good enough to be agented, the novel begged to be published, and he came out with it himself. He has also completed a collection of 20 short stories called Beyond the River of Time. The author was born in Los Angeles in 1932 and grew up in its environs before the mass evacuation following Pearl Harbor. An English major (Creative Writing Program), he was Editor-in-Chief of the campus literary review at the University of Washington. After teaching briefly at the University of Oregon, he elected to remain in Eugene with his wife and two sons who became lawyers.