Combat Chaplain

Prologue

xv WHEN I was a young man, a few months after my twenty-seventh birthday (I am now sixty-eight), association with a remarkable group of men was suddenly thrust upon me: I was assigned to the 100th Infantry Battalion (Separate) as chaplain. The men were Americans of Japanese ancestry (AJAs), and all save a few of the original unit were from the then Territory of Hawaii. Their officers, both haole (Caucasian) and Nisei (AJA), were also from Hawaii. Committed to combat with the Fifth Army in southern Italy in September of 1943, the 100th soon distinguished itself. It earned the title of “The Purple Heart Battalion.”£ £ £ In June of 1944, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, composed of AJAs from both Hawaii and the Mainland, arrived in Italy; the 100th Battalion became the 1st Battalion of the 442nd but kept its own special designation as the 100th. Except for the 100th’s first week in combat, I participated in all of the military campaigns of the AJAs in Italy and France. I have written down the story of this unique experience, using the letters I sent my wife almost daily, the little journal I kept part of the time, and the accounts I have read and heard these past forty years. Who in 1943 could have foreseen that a Lutheran pastor from rural eastern Pennsylvania would be blessed to live and tell such a tale? Israel A. S. Yost Spring of 1984 P R O L O G U E ...