Go for Broke: 442nd Regimental Combat Team. The 442nd Decade [cover title]

[Hawaii, 1953. Very good.. [80]pp. Original textured pictorial wrappers, stapled. Minor toning, soiling, and rubbing to wrappers. A rare and densely-packed program issued for the tenth anniversary of the U.S. Army's 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the highly-decorated Japanese-American unit which played an important role in World War II. The program contains historical background on the 442nd, separate accounts of their basic training and combat experiences, information on the 442nd's Veterans Club in Hawaii, and much more. The centerfold contains the "Official Itinerary" of events for the two-week celebration of the unit, held between July 20 and August (truncated) 1, 1953. The handsomely-produced program is replete with dozens of photographs and legions of advertisements interspersed throughout the work.

The 442nd Infantry Regiment was composed almost entirely of second-generation American soldiers of Japanese ancestry (Nisei). They trained at Camp Shelby near Hattiesburg, Mississippi, not far from places like Rohwer and Jerome, Arkansas, where Japanese-Americans were interned during World War II. When many of their families were imprisoned in camps within the United States, the 442nd fought with outsized courage and uncommon distinction in Italy, Germany, and southern France, living up to their motto to "Go for broke." Over 800 Japanese-Americans would be killed or declared missing in action during their brief stint in the war, an unusually-high percentage relative to their force numbers. But they would also earn unusually-high combat rewards, including seven Distinguished Unit citations, one of them awarded by President Truman himself, who remarked on July 15, 1946, "You've fought not only the enemy...you fought prejudice and won." Japanese-American service members also earned twenty Medals of Honor, 4,000 Purple Hearts, twenty-nine Distinguished Service Crosses, 588 Silver Stars, and more than 4,000 Bronze Stars for World War II alone. Since the Second World War, the 442nd has become the most highly decorated military unit in the history of the United States Armed Forces, with twenty-one Medal of Honor recipients and 9,486 Purple Hearts. OCLC reports just two institutional holdings, at the U.S. Army War College and the University of Hawaii. (Inventory #: 5624)