Jim's Reviews > Facing the Mountain: A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II

From the author of The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics comes a truly fascinating story of Japanese-American men who served in the Army during World War II and their families who were locked behind barbed wire in relocation camps. This an eye opener about a dark period in our history. The story centers around four young men but there were many others just like them.

Even before the attack on Pearl Harbor Japanese-American's faced bigotry and discrimination. Hawaii was not yet a state and plantation owners took advantage of those who emigrated from Japan looking for a new start, a better life. In the continental United States the anti-Asian sentiment was just as strong. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the hatred and fear intensified. Homes and businesses were taken away. People of Japanese ancestry on the west coast of the United States were relocated to camps. Men, women, and children. Hawaii was not included in these relocations for economic reasons. If the government had removed people of Japanese descent in Hawaii there would have been no one left to work the plantations.

By 1943 the United States desperately needed more troops to fight the war on two fronts ... Europe and the Pacific. After intense lobbying draft-age Nisei (those born in the U.S. to Japanese immigrant parents) were allowed to volunteer for a segregated, all-Japanese American fighting unit in the U.S. Army. This was the birth of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, one of the most decorated units in American military history. Their motto was “Go For Broke". Through training, then Italy, France, and eventually Germany itself these men faced bigotry and numerous challenges. They endured, pushed back, rose to every challenge.

One of the men we meet in this story is Gordon Hirabayashi, a Quaker and conscientious objector, who fought his battle in the courtroom. He stood up against the government in defense of his own rights, and the rights of all Japanese-Americans.

The 442nd Regimental Combat Team was often called upon to do the impossible. And they answered the call. Most of them never made it home. Those who did make it back faced more challenges. There were physical and emotional challenges. Today they call it PTSD. But there was still discrimination. A soldier who had been wounded and returned to the United States went to a barber shop to get a haircut after getting out of the hospital. In uniform, with ribbons earned on the battlefield, and on crutches the barber refused to cut the hair of "a Jap". An American Legion post in Oregon blacked out the names on their honor roll if they were Japanese-American.

Highly recommended.