The Journeyof the

Kashiwagi Siblings

Bob, George, June and Tom

Christine Umeda

Incarceration to Liberation

Tatsu and Frank

Kashiwagi

George, Robert and Chiyo Kashiwagi - Hayward, CA -

1926

Amache, Colorado – Granada Relocation Center

100/442nd RegimentalCombat Team (RCT)

U. S. Army made up of Americansof Japanese ancestry

442nd Infantry Regiment 100th Infantry Battalion 552nd Field Artillery Battalion 232nd Combat Engineer

Company

1943 volunteered

442nd RCT,552nd Field

Artillery Battalion

George Kashiwagi

1943 volunteered – 442nd Infantry Regiment,1st Platoon, Company K

Robert Kashiwagi

November 1943 -

U.S. Army Nurses Corps

Iseko June Kashiwagi

1944 - drafted General Patton’s,

3rd Armored Battalion,

(tank division)

Tom Kashiwagi

552nd Field Artillery Battalion - Fastest/most accurate fire - US Army

Late April 1945 - forward observers – opened path through enemy positions –

supported 7 different Army Divisions/units

April 29, 1945 Liberation of Dachau Sub-Camp

by 552nd Field Artillery Battalion

552nd liberates sub-camps at Dachau

George (552nd) takes down the German flag after the opening of the gates to Dachau

Tom (3rd Armored) supports 552nd Brothers meet at Dachau George gives the flag to brother,

Tom for safe keeping

“Unintentional Liberators”

“We weren’t supposed to be there”

Staff Sgt. George Oiye

Helping Dachau Survivors

Photo by Lt. Sus Ito

Seeing Asian Soldierson “death” march to Dachau

Ernie Hollenback – Asian looking soldiers in American uniform racing towards Dachau

Yanina Cywinska – blindfolded – heard men speaking in unfamiliar English – Hawaiian Pidgin. Surprised to see very short Asian soldiers in US uniforms.

S. Donald Shimazu

“To this day, there are some who are beginning to say Dachau never happened, and there’ll be those who will try to distort things in the future, too. But we were there, and we saw it. We saw the people with our own eyes. And so if anybody says it never happened, we will say they don’t know what they’re talking about.”

Biggest Ironies of WW II

WWII – idealized as a war of democracy over fascism yet ironic that some of the liberators were American people of color.

552nd members volunteered/drafted from incarceration centers.

Buchenwalk liberated by African American soldiers few weeks before Dachau.

Tom and George

meet each other after

VE Day

George Kashiwagi, Tom Kashiwagi, Bob Kashiwagi

Resource and References

“Go For Broke” – 1982, Go For Broke, Inc. Go For Broke National Education Center, LA,

CA U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, LA, CA Museum of Tolerance, New York “552nd Vets bear witness to Dachau horror” –

Star Bulletin, Hawaii Liberation of Dachau by Japanese Americans

552nd Field Artillery Battalion 442nd RCT April 29,1945 – Burt Takeuchi

Personal accounts: Robert and Tom Kashiwagi