Snapp Shots: Oakland hills gathering to honor WWII’s 442nd combat team

It was the telephone call that changed my life. The date was July 9, 1982, and on the line was the unmistakable voice of my friend, Dennis Cavagnero, who was one of my best sources for possible stories.

“Does the number 442 mean anything to you?” he asked.

“Go for broke!” I replied, remembering the motto of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the segregated Japanese American World II outfit that was awarded more medals, man-for-man, than any other military unit in U.S. history.

“Bingo!” he said. “How’d you like to meet them?”

So one week later I met Lawson Sakai, John Togashi, Tad Masaoka and Shig Futagaki, veterans of E Company, 2nd Battalion, 442nd RCT. They had come to Oakland for a planning session to build a memorial at Roberts Regional Recreation Area (Roberts Park) in the city’s hills to their friends who never come back.

What they had in mind was a tiny redwood sapling and a plaque. There was only one obstacle: a rule against private monuments anywhere in the East Bay Regional Park District. However, William Penn Mott, the the park district’s director, knew his history and quickly waived that rule.

These men had fought the best of Hitler’s army and won but at a terrible price. They were known as the “Purple Heart Battalion” for good reason.

They fought for our country even though this country was holding their parents and younger siblings in God-forsaken prison camps back here, where their only “crime” was having Japanese ancestry. Yet they paid back that evil with good. Is there any nobler example of patriotism than that?

The planning meeting went quickly all morning, and soon it was time for lunch, so we went to Scott’s Seafood in Oakland’s Jack London Square. Unfortunately, the waitress was having a terrible day. It’s not that she brought us each other’s orders; she brought us stuff no one had ordered.

At the time, I was dating a woman in the restaurant business, and she had me well trained. “Send it back!” I said, but these guys wouldn’t hear of it. “Hey, I can live with this,” said one. “She must have a tough job,” said another.

I was puzzled by their attitude, but then it hit me: When you’ve done what they’ve done, when you’ve seen what they’ve seen and suffered what they’ve suffered, you don’t have to beat up an overworked waitress to prove you’re a real man. From that moment, my admiration for them knew no bounds.

In 1994 I traveled with them to France and saw some of the cities they liberated, including Bruyeres, which they rescued shortly before saving the U.S. Army’s 141st Texas Regiment of the 36th Division (“the Lost Battalion”) in October 1944.

You’ve heard that the French hate Americans? They sure didn’t hate these guys. Everywhere we went, people showered them with flowers. Young mothers, who weren’t born until decades after the war, held their babies up to them and begged them to bless their children.

These heroes are all gone now, but the people of Bruyeres still celebrate them every year, including a parade down the city’s main street, the Rue de 442.

The men of E Company also returned to Roberts Park every year afterward to visit the redwood sapling and hold a memorial service for their friends who never came back. That tradition has been continued by their families and friends and always takes place on Armed Forces Day, observed in the United States every third Saturday in May.

This year, Armed Forces Day falls on May 17. It won’t be a long ceremony, but it will be heartfelt, and you’re invited you to join us. Roberts Park is the last right off Skyline Boulevard in the Oakland hills on the way up to the Chabot Space & Science Center.

Boy Scouts will troop the colors, a Sea Scouts band will play patriotic music, and there will be an incense offering afterward that you’re invited to join. It starts at noon and ends at 12:30 p.m.

As always, the East Bay park district staff will knock themselves out to make us feel welcome, but remember to bring a jacket because Roberts Park is thick with redwoods that create their own microclimate.

And the redwood sapling? It’s now grown into a mighty tree. I hope to see you there. Go for broke!

Martin Snapp can be reached at catman442@comcast.net.