Japanese-American vet of vaunted 442nd Regimental Combat Team turns 100
The 442nd Regimental Combat Team was an almost entirely (2nd-generation) Japanese-American unit that fought in the European theater of operations during WWII. It fought all the way from the invasion of Sicily to the battle of Po Valley and was the most decorated unit of its size, not just in WWII but ever. And (not surprisingly) their casualty rate also was off the charts.
Japanese American WWII vet reflects on service, luck, loyalty as he turns 100 in Seattle
Edy Hideyoshi Horikawa cheated death so many times during World War II that the U.S. government assumed he had been killed in action.
The young soldier from Seattle was severely wounded during a bombing in Bologna, Italy. German troops nearly destroyed the hospital in France where he was being treated. And once a bomb went off on the side of a hill, the impact burying Horikawa in dirt.
Others saved him each time. After the Italy shelling, he wound up in a hospital with no one he recognized; he was there for a month. As German troops shot at the hospital in France, a soldier ran outside, commandeered a passing cargo truck, backed it up to the building for Horikawa and others to jump in, then high-tailed it halfway to Switzerland. After the hillside bombing, troops dug him out of the dirt.
“When I hear that, I think someone wanted him to live long, someone wanted to protect him through,” said his wife, Norigiku Horikawa. “I said to him, ‘Thanks to the mighty God and the people around you, people always helped you.'”
In early August, his family and friends helped again — this time to throw him a 100th birthday party, roughly 75 years after the end of the war that should have killed him....
If you'd like to hear Mr Horikawa telling his own war stories, follow this link.
