Months after Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government imprisoned Robert Ichikawa behind barbed wire in a desolate World War II internment camp. But the Torrance resident volunteered for the U.S. military anyway. He wanted, he said, to prove his loyalty to his American homeland over his ancestral land of Japan.
More than 30,000 Nisei, or second-generation Japanese Americans, did likewise by volunteering for military service during World War II. Many of them joined the mostly-Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team and 100th Infantry Battalion, whose valor under fire made it among the most highly decorated units in U.S. military history.
Others joined the Military Intelligence Service as interrogators, translators and interpreters, crucial roles credited with shortening the war by as many as two years. About 300 Nisei women served in the Women's Army Corps and Cadet Nurses Corp.
Now, as Japanese American World War II veterans rapidly dwindle in number -- most are in their 80s -- their supporters are pushing for a commemorative postage stamp in their honor.
And they have attracted support from an unexpected quarter: the Jewish community.
At a Los Angeles news conference Thursday, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Museum of Tolerance pledged support for the campaign and called on the U.S. Postal Service to approve the proposal when its commemorative-stamp review committee meets next month.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper said his Wiesenthal Center has had a long relationship with the Nisei veterans, stemming from an initial friendship with one of them, the late Clarence Matsumura, who helped liberate Holocaust survivors from the Dachau concentration camp.
Last month, Port Hueneme City Councilman Murray Rosenbluth successfully sponsored a city resolution supporting the campaign. He, too, was moved by the mostly-Nisei 522nd Field Artillery Battalion's aid in liberating Dachau. It was a "good deed that resonated with me," Rosenbluth said at the City Council meeting.
Rabbi Shmuel Novack of Chabad Southside in Jacksonville, Fla., joined the campaign because his grandfather, Lt. David Novack, commanded many of the Nisei soldiers as an officer in the 100th Battalion. The younger Novack traveled to a Las Vegas reunion of Nisei war veterans last month, hearing for the first time their stories of his grandfather's bravery, including shattering his leg on a land mine.
