

Of the men highlighted in the book. Facing the Mountain grew out of conversations Brown had with Ikeda in 2015.įacing the Mountain is an unforgettable chronicle of wartime America and the battlefields of Europe. The virtual event will feature a conversation between Brown and Densho Executive Director Tom Ikeda, who has conducted oral histories with many Join Densho on May 11 for the official launch of Facing the Mountain, a new book about WWII Japanese American incarceration and the 442nd RCT by Daniel James Brown, NY Times bestselling author of The Boys in the Boat. This book is a tribute to those men, who by their heroism reestablished for all Japanese Americans their personal dignity as full citizens in the country of their birth.Reading and Viewing Corner: Reviews of 442 nd RCT-related books and mediaįacing the Mountain by Daniel James Brown It portrays them as individuals confronting the multiple crises of war and social rejection and it shows that their greatest achievement was not their victory over a foreign enemy, but over prejudice at home.

It is an absorbing and personalized account of young men suddenly separated from their families and friends, often confused and sometimes suspicious about what the army wanted from them. The final part of the story focuses on the battle in the Vosges forest, where the 442nd fought fiercely to rescue the "lost battalion" of Texans hopelessly cut off by the enemy.īased on extensive research in War Department archives and nearly three hundred interviews with veterans of the 100th and 442nd, Unlikely Liberators first appeared in serialized form in Japan, where it won the Bungeishunjusha Reader's Prize. She recounts their experiences in training and during the early battles in Italy, including the conflicts between Japanese American and Caucasian troops. Masayo Duus begins her story with the formation of the Japanese American units, which were an outgrowth of America's ambivalent attitude toward the entire Japanese American community at the outbreak of the war. They provided ample evidence of their patriotism to a country that had questioned their loyalty. At the end of the war, the 100th and the 442nd emerged as America's most decorated units. They nevertheless engaged the enemy with astonishing heroism, winning battle after battle at Anzio, Salerno, Cassino, and in the Vosges Mountains. In the eyes of their own government and the Europeans they liberated, they were an unlikely group of fighting men. Not trusted to fight in the Pacific, these sons of Japanese immigrants were sent instead to the European theater. Unlikely Liberators is the action-filled story of the men of the 100th Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.
