8stitches 9lives's Reviews > Facing the Mountain: The Forgotten Heroes of the Second World War

Facing the Mountain follows the lives of four young Japanese-American men as they and their families bravely confront harsh new realities brought about by the onset of World War II. It deeply explores the pain and suffering of the men of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, one of the most decorated in American military history, and you cannot fail to be moved by what you read. For the most part the men had grown up just like other American boys: they played baseball and football and made plans to go to college, or work in the family business or run the farm someday; it seemed as if the whole world lay before them but within hours of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941, all of that changed. Within days the FBI was banging on their doors. Within weeks many of them would watch as their immigrant parents were forced to sell their homes. Within months 120,000 of them would be living in barracks behind barbed wire for the duration of the war. By 1943, after more than a year of persistent lobbying for the chance to prove their patriotism, draft-age Nisei (those born in the U.S. to Japanese immigrant parents) could volunteer for “a segregated, all-Japanese American fighting unit” in the U.S. Army.

This is the story of those young men resisting, rising up, standing on principle, laying down their lives, enduring and prevailing. In partnership with Densho, Facing the Mountain grew out of conversations Daniel James Brown had with Tom Ikeda, Executive Director of Densho in 2015. Densho is a Seattle-based nonprofit organization originally dedicated to collecting and preserving the oral histories of Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II to promote equity and justice today. The book starts with the terror of the Pearl Harbor attack, proceeds through the shock and sadness of displacement and crescendos to some of the most brutal fighting you will ever encounter as a reader, as the Japanese-American units battled retreating Nazis in Italy, France and Germany itself. This is a compelling, richly described and exceptionally researched book with a team of historians and archivists involved to identify and develop the real-life storylines of the four protagonists at the heart of tale, as well as to draw a broad and historically accurate history of life in the Japanese-American community before, during, and after the war.

It's brutal, unco, portable but vitally important to tell a story so often hidden from view. It's a definitive and authoritative account capturing a truly regrettable history and an insightful, thought-provoking illustration of immense heroism amid the backdrop of deeply entrenched racist sentiment. The bottom line really should be that if these young men were welcomed with open arms into army units and to fight for the United States, they should at least be recognised as invaluable and every bit a part of society as any other race at that time. Facing the Mountain is an unforgettable chronicle of wartime America and the battlefields of Europe drawing upon the fascinating and inspiring stories and words of Japanese-American elders and ancestors to tell this history in a way that can reach vast audiences. Daniel James Brown has an exceptional ability to tell compulsive, people-centred stories, and he humanises this part of history for a population of readers that may be learning about it for the first time. Highly recommended.