00:00:17 Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey everyone, it is Jared Martinez. 00:00:23 Speaker 2: Before we get into this episode, I wanted to let you know that you can listen to the entire season of Medal of Honor right now ad free with Pushkin Plus. Get all our incredible stories of courage with a Pushkin Plus subscription. Sign up and save on the Medal of Honor show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm, slash Plus. Use the CODEH twenty five for twenty five percent off an annual subscription. 00:00:50 Speaker 1: Okay, now to the episode. 00:00:55 Speaker 2: Joe Soccato was crawling through the mud. Just seconds earlier, he was shouted to a group of American soldiers. He was warning them to watch out for Germans with machine guns. This was nineteen forty four and they were in France, facing the Notes, struggling through a freezing forest, fighting for every inch of ground. The enemy started shooting and Joe washed as bullets hit one of the men and he crumpled to the ground. That was one of Joe's best friends. So Joe scrambled through the dirt and he slid into the shallow trench where his buddy lay. Machine gun fire was still ripping through the air. Splintering the trees. Joe put his arms around his friend. His blood soaked through Joe's clothes and coated his hands. 00:01:44 Speaker 3: And I picked him up, and he's trying to say something to mean I was gurgled in the pretty Soon his body went limp on me. I knew he died. I said that I helped him. Why. 00:02:04 Speaker 2: Joe was a little guy, just over five feet tall, not much of an athlete, and he was exhausted after days of nonsense, stop fighting. 00:02:12 Speaker 1: But now none of that mattered. 00:02:15 Speaker 3: I wasn't quite in my right sense of mind, but I was just mad and crying. I was crying. 00:02:24 Speaker 2: Joe stood up in the trench. He was going to face those Germans head on. 00:02:32 Speaker 1: I'm Jr. 00:02:32 Speaker 2: Martinez and this is Medal of Honor Stories of Courage. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. It's awarded for gallantry and bravery and combat at the risk of life, above and beyond the call of duty. Each candidate must be approved all the way up the chain of command, from the supervisory officer in the field to the White House. This show is about those heroes, what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. This episode is about one man, George Saccado. His friends called them Joe, but it's also about a whole US Army unit, the four hundred and forty second Regimental Combat Team. The soldiers of that regiment were all Japanese American and while they were fighting for freedom in Europe, their families were losing their freedom back home. This story tells us so much about what makes someone go above and beyond the call of duty. Even after being mistreated on that day in nineteen forty four, Josicato knew he was running into a deadly cloud of bullets. He had a broken heart and a deep feeling of injustice, but he used it for a higher purpose. One morning in early December nineteen forty one, Josicato went to work at his family's little grocery store in Redlands, California, a farming town outside La Joe was the middle of seven kids, twenty years old. He had barely graduated from high school, and he had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. And then he turned on the radio and suddenly everything changed. 00:04:32 Speaker 4: Yesterday, the sun Bus sub nineteen forty one, a date which will live in infamy. The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked. 00:04:52 Speaker 3: I heard the newscast fact when Roosevelt said Pearl Harvell was being bombed tonight. Couldn't believe that Pearl Harve's bombed bus. I got, this's what are we going to do now? 00:05:04 Speaker 2: He wasn't the only one asking that question. The government was too, and by February of nineteen forty two, they made a controversial choice. Japanese American citizens like Joe couldn't stay where they were. Here's Milton Eisenhower, the director of the War Relocation Authority, explaining the decision. 00:05:23 Speaker 5: When in the Japanese attacked Pearl Harvard, our West coast became a potential combat zone. Living in that zone were more than one hundred thousand persons of Japanese ancestry. Most were loyal, but no one knew what would happen among this concentrated population if Japanese forces should try to invade our shores. Military authorities therefore determined that all of them, citizens and aliens alike, would have to move. 00:05:52 Speaker 2: So suddenly, Japanese Americans across the West coast discovered that American democracy no longer applied to them. Kids were pulled out of school, everybody lost their jobs, and the government built relocation camps on dusty prairies and dried out farms in the. 00:06:10 Speaker 1: Middle of the country. They looked a lot like. 00:06:13 Speaker 3: Prisons barbaris, fence guard towers on us in each corner, and the machine guns were pointing in, not out. 00:06:23 Speaker 2: So Joe's family decided to move to rural Arizona. At least there they wouldn't be forced into a camp. They only had a few days to liquidate their lives, including their grocery store. 00:06:35 Speaker 3: We just had meatcaseus was eight hundred dollars. We sold it for three hundred dollars through in the store. 00:06:43 Speaker 2: Their whole business sold for just three hundred dollars. Their new life in Arizona wasn't exactly Joe's speed. 00:06:52 Speaker 3: That year, I had to pick up cantalopes one hundred and ten degrees. I weighed one hundred and sixty five pounds. When I graduated that season, I lost thirty five pounds. I was no farmer, I was a city slicker. 00:07:08 Speaker 2: Plus, the war was going on, and this fight everything Joe wanted to do his part serve his country, so he decided to become a pilot. 00:07:17 Speaker 3: A voluntive for the Air Force. Partly draft card says for sea enemy alien animi alien, what do you mean? Animated? American? 00:07:31 Speaker 2: For the first chunk of the war, Japanese Americans weren't allowed to serve at all at all, but a group of them petitioned the government and finally they were allowed to enlist. But Japanese Americans didn't get to go wherever they wanted. They were assigned to one place the army, specifically the four hundred and forty second Regimental Combat Team. All of the officers in this new unit were white, and the four hundred and forty second wouldn't be allowed to fight in Asia, just Europe because you know what if they got to Japan and suddenly decided to switch sides. I mean, that's a crazy idea. But the government was that paranoid and didn't trust their loyalty. When the first group of soldiers arrived at Fort Shelby and Mississippi news cameras were there. 00:08:23 Speaker 6: Boys with Japanese names, Japanese faces, but with mind parts and spirits that are enthusiastically earnestly American. They're trained to make their contribution to victory for democracy and all the democracy means tolerance, freedom, an equal opportunity, regardless of grace their ancestry. 00:08:46 Speaker 2: But while they were fighting for freedom, some of their families were anything but free. Ironic, right. But here's something else to know about the four hundred and forty second. A lot of the guys were from Hawaii. You see, Japanese Americans were a major part of Hawaii's population. They didn't experience the same kind of day to day discrimination that many faced on the mainland, and they didn't know much about the internal camps. At first, the four hundred and forty second had a problem. The Hawaiian guys and the mainland guys couldn't get along. Daniel Enoe was a member of the four hundred and forty second from Honolulu. 00:09:24 Speaker 7: Both sides looked upon the others with some distrust, and fights became commonplace. 00:09:36 Speaker 2: But then one of their leaders had an idea. They took some of the Hawaiian soldiers on a bus to Arkansas to visit an internment camp. 00:09:44 Speaker 7: At the gate were men in uniform with rifles and bayonets, and I thought what in the is happening? Then you look into the camp and there they were, and then it dawned us. 00:09:58 Speaker 1: What had happened. 00:10:02 Speaker 2: It was a prison for families who looked just like them, little kids, old folks, moms and dads. The Hawaiian guys finally understood that what the four hundred and forty second had in common was way more important than their differences. They all had something to prove that they could be as good, make that better than anyone else. 00:10:24 Speaker 7: Overnight the regiment was formed. Next morning you had the for forty second. 00:10:32 Speaker 2: They were well organized, fearless. Their nickname was Gopher Broke. They got to Europe in the spring of forty four and instantly became famous. They pushed back the Nazis in Italy, but the price was high. Over the course of three months, nearly twenty five percent of them, more than twelve hundred men were wounded or killed by that summer. Joe Soccato had also enlisted in the four hundred and forty second. Being turned away from the Air Force didn't deter him. He was going to serve. 00:11:07 Speaker 3: I wanted to show that I'm an American and I should joined the service. I had showed my loyalty to the country. 00:11:16 Speaker 2: The high point of his training was a trip he took on leave. He went to New York City with some of his platoon mates. Joe was like, let's have all the New York experiences before we go off to war. 00:11:27 Speaker 3: So he says, why don't we check the world of a story to say that we stayed at the world of the story. So we each put ten bucks piece cost us forty dollars and we only stayed there three four hours, looking out the windows and stuff like that. 00:11:42 Speaker 2: Listen, that's big money. When these guys only made twenty one dollars a month and they didn't even stay there for the night. They just wanted to say that they'd done it. Right after that, Joe shipped out to Europe and he struggled. It was like the canalopes, but worse. He was pretty out of shape. 00:12:02 Speaker 3: Our first day in battle, we had to climb this hill. I couldn't climb the hill. He had to pool of branches and roots and pull myself up. I had to have somebody else carry my pack up, somebody else carried canteens. When I got to the top, I was the last one up. All I had was my rifle. 00:12:22 Speaker 2: He could barely make it up the hill. But here he was joining the toughest unit on the European front. He would have to pull it together fast. The four hundred and forty second was heading to France. They were going to Hitler's doorstep. In the fall of nineteen forty four, the Allied forces were in the French Mountains, just twenty miles from the German border. The Nazis had occupied that area for four long years, and now the Allies were trying to push them out. These mountains were the Nazis' last line of defense, so Hitler ordered that they must be held at all costs. On October twenty fourth, the first battalion of the one hundred and forty first Infantry got in order advanced to a strategic ridge. Keep in mind this was all held by the Germans. There were about two hundred and seventy men in the first battalion. It was part of the thirty sixth Division, originally from Texas. In other words, not Joe's unit. We'll get back to Joe in a minute. The first battalion set out in the freezing rain, marching on muddy mountain tracks and Most of them had only a day's worth of food, water, and AMMO. They figured the supply trucks would catch up to them, but they went too far and too fast. Five miles into the forest. It was weirdly easy astro toortalm was there. 00:14:12 Speaker 8: We had practically no resistance for those five miles. I mean, little little firing here and there, but we thought, hell, this is really going to be something, you know. But they were finally got up to our objective. The Germans counterattacked and they worked there where on and they cut us off from the rest of the unit. 00:14:36 Speaker 2: They were on a hilltop, the enemy was on three sides, and there was a steep drop off on the other. The battalion was caught in a deadly trap. At dawn the next day, their commander, Martin Higgins, sent out a twenty five man patrol. He wanted to see if they could sneak through the enemy lines. 00:14:56 Speaker 8: And they never made it. I think only about five men came back from that patrol and they said, we couldn't get through. There's too many Germans. So that's when we realized, now we're surrounded. 00:15:08 Speaker 2: They didn't have much AMO, medicals, applies or batteries for their two way radios, and they had almost nothing to eat or drink. So the order went out send in the four hundred and forty second The Gopher Broke guys were told to go rescue the lost Battalion. Different units took different paths through the forest. Joe's company was ordered to take Hill six one seven. It was the high ground overlooking the road to the lost Battalion. Without it, they would never reach those men. They started marching before dawn on October twenty sixth. It was cold, rainy, and muddy, and by mid morning they were already pinned down. You see, the Germans were totally dug in, and they had a deadly strategy. They'd hit the Americans hard, then they'd pause, fall back a little, and force the gis to move forward into machine gun and artillery fire. So for the next two days, Joe's company kept inching towards Hill's six one seven, getting picked off one by one as they were trying and failing to take that hill. Other units of the four hundred and forty second were noticing something weird while they were being sent further in the rest of the one hundred and forty first was staying behind dan Enoey thought he knew why. 00:16:34 Speaker 7: You see, we knew we were expendable. We knew that we were so good that we were requested by other units to serve as shock troops or assault troops. That's what we were. 00:16:51 Speaker 2: Meanwhile, as the days ticked by, members of the Lost Battalion were running out of supplies and losing hope. Jean Earhart was a member of the Lost Battalion. He remembers the thirst most of all. 00:17:05 Speaker 9: They's cut us aalt from food, water and everything. Have you ever been thirsty, Well, think about doing a lout water that period of time. 00:17:21 Speaker 2: Finally, on the night of October twenty eighth, Joe's company reached the base of Hills six one seven. 00:17:28 Speaker 3: We're a cross enemy lines. The forest was so dense you can barely see your hint. So we marched all night and we're now on the back of this ridge, and then a dawn we started attack. We caught the Germans off guard. They didn't know they we were in behind them. 00:17:44 Speaker 2: Now Joe had a machine gun and he used it against the Nazis. 00:17:50 Speaker 3: He chased them out of the fox holes, chased them off the hill, and they scattered the other way. 00:17:57 Speaker 2: But then the Germans turned the tables. Suddenly Joe's company was on the defensive. 00:18:02 Speaker 3: We got surrounded. Now they're going to con attack. Artillery such coming in, so we had to jump into the Germans fox holes. 00:18:09 Speaker 2: This time Oh duck for cover, popping up to shoot at the enemy. Trying to help the rest of his friends who were out there. 00:18:17 Speaker 3: Anything that's moved, I was shooting at it. Next thing you know, I was run out of ammunition, and when Jumans wanted to come up, he's going to throw a grenade at me, So I got the pistol and stopped him in the stuff the no more two women's So I got down on the hold to start filling my clips up. 00:18:41 Speaker 2: He listened for his friends. He knew a guy named Sibruro Tanamachi was nearby. Joe and Tanamachi had been together since training. They both been on that trip to the Waldorf in New York, and they knew all about each other. 00:18:55 Speaker 3: He joined the army because parents wanted him to marry some girl and he didn't like her, so he volunteered with the r says, I don't know why you did that. He didn't want to get married. 00:19:05 Speaker 7: And. 00:19:08 Speaker 2: Just earlier that morning, Tanamachi told Joe that he didn't feel right going into battle. 00:19:13 Speaker 1: His stomach hurt, something was off. 00:19:16 Speaker 3: So I told him stay back, don't go, don't go on the strip noises, he's gotta go. 00:19:27 Speaker 2: The men of the four hundred and forty second didn't stay behind. They went ahead, even when they had their doubts. Once Joe had refilled his gun with mo he scanned the area again and. 00:19:40 Speaker 3: Leaning back when I was looking up the hill, and I seen the group of JIMINSS just going up the hill machinguns. 00:19:46 Speaker 2: And at that same moment he saw Tanamachi with the squad creeping through the trees. 00:19:52 Speaker 3: Oh my god, I hollered at you guys to watch off. The machine guns are taking the hill. Back tana Machi for some reason, he got up a sayd square and he got shot. 00:20:04 Speaker 1: Joe watched Tanamachi crumble down. 00:20:07 Speaker 3: So I called over this, hold him, picked him up, and I except that and he's gurgling and he's trying to say the blood is coming out, and he just swept body wouldn't lived on me. Then I know he died, and I cried oggedn't God, why why. 00:20:38 Speaker 2: Joe gently laid his friend down, and he looked down at his hands. They were covered in Tanamachi's blood. 00:20:46 Speaker 3: I was going to get to be the shot him was died trying. I threw a pack off and picked up Tom and I z exact backed up, run this wind and run the road. Shot two three guys and then white acacis were waving the group of coming out, and I made sure that nobody behind him had a gun house. I had to shoot him. 00:21:15 Speaker 1: The Germans on Hill six one seven were giving up, waving their white handkerchiefs. They'd been stopped cold by Joe's one man stand. The counter attack was over. 00:21:28 Speaker 2: Meanwhile, the rest of Joe's company was right behind him. His anger had pulled them out of their foxholes, and his bravery made them break. 00:21:38 Speaker 3: The rest of the troops come up and took the hill. 00:21:42 Speaker 1: They took that hill. 00:21:44 Speaker 2: Tanamachi's sacrifice meant that they were one step closer to saving the Lost Battalion. 00:21:51 Speaker 1: Joe's loyalty to his. 00:21:52 Speaker 2: Friend and to his country had led the way. On October thirtieth, the day after Joe Saccado helped take Hill six one seven, the Lost Battalion was finally rescued. Marty Higgins, commander of the battalion, remembered how it felt when the four hundred and forty second reached them. 00:22:32 Speaker 10: I was asked by many people, what did I think of these little guys coming through? I swear to God they looked like Jige to us. 00:22:43 Speaker 1: By then, Joe had been injured by a motor show. 00:22:46 Speaker 2: A piece of shrapnel went straight through his backpack into his lung, but he survived. 00:22:53 Speaker 3: I had more than nine lives. 00:22:55 Speaker 1: He was one of the lucky ones. 00:22:58 Speaker 2: After days of intense fighting, the four hundred and forty second was decimated. Jean Erhart from the Lost Battalion remembered the scene as they left the. 00:23:08 Speaker 9: Ridge were moving out of that area. There were trucks. They're floating boys up just like you would cordwood, and trucks that gave their life and someone else could. The one life sacrificed for another. That's why it makes them so great. Unselfishness, dedication. I don't know whether I don't whether I could help. That is dedicated a given spirit. If I had been mistreated in my family, because they were mistreated. 00:23:50 Speaker 2: We don't know the exact numbers of Japanese Americans who died or were injured rescueing the lost battalion, but it's believed that fifty four were killed and approximately two hundred and eighty were wounded. And while the lost battalion was sent back to a hot meal and medical care, the four hundred and forty second was ordered to keep fighting. They stayed on that god forsaken ridge, clearing out the enemy for another nine days, but they succeeded, and the Americans finally punched a hole in the German line. Joe would spend the next eight months in hospitals. Eventually he was transferred by boat to New York Harbor. 00:24:34 Speaker 3: I looked the Statue of Liberty for the ast side I've ever seen. I was happy. 00:24:39 Speaker 2: I was whole, And in nineteen forty six, the last of the four hundred and forty second set sail for home too. It was the most decorated US Army regiment of its size, earning over eighteen thousand awards for bravery that included twenty nine Distinguished Service Crosses, more than three hundred and thirty Silver crosses, and more than two thousand Bronze Stars. That July, they paraded down Constitution Avenue in the rain, but they were going to a reception on the White House lawn. Here's President Harry Truman. 00:25:18 Speaker 5: You fought not only the enemy, but you fought prejudice and you've won. Keep up that fight and we'll continue to win. 00:25:29 Speaker 4: That's great Republic stand for just what his Constitution says. It stands far the welfare of all the people, all the time. 00:25:41 Speaker 2: The welfare of all the people all the time. That's what it means to be American, right, except, of course when it doesn't. Joe got a medal to at Distinguished Service Cross. He heard about it while he was in the hospital. 00:26:01 Speaker 3: It's this letter from the younger brother and he says, me, a newspaper clipping of my hometown, Redlands. So he set up to me and he says, but just tell you you received the dissingle service cluss. I didn't see no dissingle, sir. Well it says yeah, in the paper that they know about it. 00:26:19 Speaker 2: Joe was happy with their recognition, of course, but then he had to make sense of what he had been through, and that was hard because it didn't really make sense. Even Marty Higgins, the leader of the battalion, they saved. Felt like the four hundred and forty second should have never been sent out to rescue them in the first place. 00:26:38 Speaker 10: I think we should have been my passion. I think the entire mission was a big blunder. Well it had killed me. When I came back and read the losses. 00:26:49 Speaker 3: It killed me. 00:26:52 Speaker 2: Was all that sacrifice worth it for the men of the four hundred and forty second. It was painful to think about. Fred Schiosaki was a member of that unit, and he remembers something that happened right after he got back to the States. 00:27:06 Speaker 11: I was on the train by myself, and I was sitting there looking out the window in this GI came out and he stopped and he looked at me, and he looked at my pats. He says, hey, you were there for forty second? 00:27:17 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I. 00:27:17 Speaker 11: Said, we had the lost battalion. 00:27:20 Speaker 9: And I said, yeah, I was. 00:27:21 Speaker 11: He says, I was in there. I could just feel myself getting ready. I was angry God. And I turned to him and I said, do you know how many men we lost getting you guys out of there? You know how many of my friends died in there? And he said, you know, if you guys were in there. We had to come after you, and I thought. I shook my head. He said, anyway, I want to thank you. You know. He put out his hand and I turned away and looked doctor window. I've never been really proud of that, but at the time it was just too fresh. I just could not. I couldn't object his hand. 00:28:00 Speaker 3: You know. 00:28:01 Speaker 11: Well, what comes to mind is seeing his friend shot the head the guys that we left behind on that hill. I know it was irrational, but at the moment there was nothing I could do. If he had said one more thing, I punched him. Might say. 00:28:18 Speaker 2: The guys of the four hundred and forty second were proud to be amazing soldiers. They were proud of their reputation, and above all, they were proud to serve. But that doesn't mean that they were blind to the way that they were treated. They saw the injustice, but they chose to keep moving forward because they loved their country. Joe left the Army. He moved to Denver, Colorado. He fell in love with Bess, the cutest girl he'd ever seen. They got married, had a daughter. Joe decided he wanted to be a mechanic. 00:28:57 Speaker 3: They looked at me and he says, Wow, he's Japanese, so they wouldn't hire me. Not am I doing him? I'm going to the post office has an own discrimination of the post office. 00:29:11 Speaker 2: Joe stayed at the post office for thirty two years until he retired. He kept talking about what happened to him in France. He felt like it helped. 00:29:21 Speaker 3: I have to talk about it. If I had to keep it in here, I think I would go crazy. 00:29:30 Speaker 2: And as the decades passed, a movement began to recognize Joe and the other members of the four hundred and forty second. Think about all those awards the four hundred and forty second got, how is it possible that only one of them had received a Medal of honor? The answer was they had been recommended for medals of honor at the time, but those recommendations had been rejected again and again and again. In nineteen ninety seven, after an exhaustive review, the Senior Army Decorations Board made a decision they would finally give credit to some extraordinary Asian American soldiers. They upgraded twenty one Distinguished Service Crosses and one Silver Star to medals of honor. It was appropriate, but it was late only seven of the twenty two were still alive when President Clinton presided over the Medal of Honor ceremony in two thousand. 00:30:30 Speaker 12: They risked their lives above and beyond the call of duty, and in so doing, they did more than defend America in the face of painful prejudice. They helped to define America at its best. They didn't give up on our country, even when too many of their countrymen and women had given up on them. They deserve, at the least the most we can give, the Medal of Honor. Private Sakanto's extraordinary hair was and devotion to duty aren't keeping with the highest traditions of the military service. I reflect great credit on him is in the United States Army. 00:31:15 Speaker 2: Joe Sicato had traveled across the country to accept this medal, a medal he never really thought of as his, but he cherished it until he died at the age of ninety four. 00:31:27 Speaker 3: I'm no hero, but I worked for the guys that didn't come back. 00:31:35 Speaker 2: He wore it for his friends, the man who had stood up beside him and fought for what was right. And I suspect he wore it for one friend most of all. Thank you all for listening and supporting our show. Over the past year, We've gotten emails from some of you sharing great stories of courage, and we want to shout out Mikayla Ernster's grandfather and granduncles who served in World War Two. 00:32:30 Speaker 1: Peter J. 00:32:30 Speaker 2: Delasandro is also part of our family and received the Medal of Honor in nineteen forty four. 00:32:37 Speaker 1: Thank you, MICHAELA. For sharing. 00:32:39 Speaker 2: If you have stories or people you would like to highlight, email us at Medal of Honor at Pushkin dot fm. Your participation helps us make great episodes, so please follow the show, share it with a friend, or leave a review. These are all zero cost ways to support us. Be sure to find us on social media at Pushkin pods or find me at I AMJR. 00:33:04 Speaker 1: Martinez Medal of Honor. 00:33:07 Speaker 2: Stories of Courage is written by Meredith Robins and produce by Meredith Rollins and Ryan Schweikert. Our editor is Lydia Jane Kott. Sound designed by Jay Gorsky, Our executive producer is Gonstanza Gayadro, fact checking by Arthur Gomperts, and original music by Eric Phillips. Additional editorial support from Karen Shakerji Special thanks to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, the Gopher Broke National Educational Center, the Man's In Our Oral History Project, and Den Show. If you want to learn more about this story, take a look at our show notes, where we list some of the resources we use to put this episode together. 00:33:49 Speaker 1: I'm your host, j R. Martinez