Photo of Lawson Sakai from Flickr Creative Commons by Coreyc23
One of the best known members of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and the founder of Friends and Family of Nisei Veterans has died.
Lawson Iichiro Sakai is dead at the age of 96, Rafu.com reports.
A resident of Morgan Hill, CA, Lawson earned a Bronze Star and four Purple Hearts along with a Combat Infantryman Badge and participated in the rescue of the “Lost Battalion” in France in 1944.
He has spent much of his years retelling his story and educating the young about a sad chapter in U.S. history, the racism encountered by Japanese Americans and the forced incarceration of an entire community during World War II because of their race.
“I was so mad,” he said. “I thought, ‘How dare they attack my country?’” he recalls thinking after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.
He told the East Bay Times he only became angrier when the U.S. Army refused to let him enlist because he had been declared an “enemy alien.”
“Now I was really mad! After all, I was born right here in the United States!”
“We have only few chances to meet a hero in our lives,” said Etienne Pourcher, former mayor of Bruyeres whose town in France was liberated from the Nazis by the 442nd. “Lawson Iichiro Sakai is one of them. He’s my hero. I had the chance to meet him. American, Japanese Americans, his family, all can be very proud of what he did, with other veterans, specifically in Vosges region,” said Pourcher in a memorial tribute to Sakai, reported Rafu.
A memorial service will be held later this year after COVID-19 restrictions are lifted.
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