Sadao Munemori carried his mother’s photograph through the war. After he died in Italy, she received it among his belongings, stained with her son’s blood.
Before any medal, monument, or military citation, there was a young man who wanted his mother close. He was 22 when he gave his life to save two other Americans.
His family called him “Spud,” because he preferred potatoes to rice. Born in Los Angeles, he grew up to become a mechanic, a son with ordinary interests and a future still taking shape.
His widowed mother, Nawa, played a big role in those plans. In a wartime letter, he explained that he had arranged insurance so she would receive $80 a month for life if he died. Even while preparing for battle, he was thinking about who would take care of Mom.
America had given his family a painful reason to question its promises. While Munemori wore the country’s uniform, the government confined his mother and siblings at Manzanar because of their Japanese ancestry.
He visited them before going overseas. A soldier preparing to fight for freedom had to say goodbye to his family inside an American incarceration camp.
From the U.S. Army National Museum:
Owing in part to generalized animosity toward Japanese Americans, Munemori spent his first months in the Army doing menial labor, constructing barracks, and cleaning bedpans at military hospitals. Finally, in November 1942, Munemori attended the Military Intelligence Service Language School at Camp Savage, Minnesota. While Munemori was at Camp Savage, the Army began forming an all Nisei, or second generation Japanese American, combat unit named the 442d Regimental Combat Team (RCT). Munemori volunteered for the combat unit, instead of staying in school, despite the reduction in rank from technical sergeant to private that came with the reclassification.
Munemori visited his family at Manzanar in March 1943, before heading to Camp Shelby, Mississippi, for infantry training. Unbeknown to him, this would be the last time he saw his family. After training at Camp Shelby, Munemori shipped overseas to join the 442d as a member of Company A, 100th Infantry Battalion. Munemori joined the unit in 1944 as it fought in the Rome-Arno Campaign and the rescue of the “Lost Battalion” in the French Vosges Mountains. After nine months, the unit shipped south to Italy, where it joined the Allied effort in April 1945 to break through the Gothic Line, Germany’s last major defensive position in Italy, a maze of minefields, trenches, and barbed wire that stopped American and Allied attacks for months.
Nawa hung a Blue Star flag in her barracks for her son. He kept her picture with him, carrying a connection to home that the Army couldn’t issue and the war couldn’t replace.
Munemori served with Company A, 100th Infantry Battalion, part of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. He fought in Italy and France, including the operation to rescue the surrounded American “Lost Battalion” in the Vosges Mountains.
He also thought about what would come afterward. Writing from France, he discussed visiting his Hawaiian friends after the war. Such plans belong in the story, because a sacrifice costs a man every ordinary day he expected to have.
On April 5, 1945, his unit fought near Seravezza, Italy, against German mountain defenses. Machine-gun fire pinned the Americans down, and a wounded squad leader left Munemori in command.
He attacked alone through enemy fire, and knocked out two machine gun positions with grenades. Having done enough to fill a citation already, he began withdrawing under fire toward a shell crater where two comrades sheltered.
A German grenade bounced off his helmet and rolled toward the men. Munemori rose into the gunfire, threw himself onto the grenade, and absorbed the explosion with his body.
Both comrades survived. He didn’t. The fighting would end in Europe the following month, but Munemori would never reach the peace he had helped make possible for others.
From the U.S. Army National Museum:
The metal clang of a German grenade against his helmet caught Pfc. Sadao Munemori’s attention. He was steps from safety in a shell crater high on the Apennine Mountains in Italy where two of his comrades awaited him. He watched as the grenade rolled toward his friends in the crater. Instead of diving toward safety, Munemori dived onto the grenade, placing his body between the men and the lethal explosion. As Munemori smothered the grenade, it detonated, killing him instantly, but the protection afforded by his sacrifice saved the other two Soldiers from serious injury. For his heroism and sacrifice on April 5, 1945, Munemori became the first Japanese American to earn the Medal of Honor. His choice exemplified the call to service and willingness to sacrifice that pervaded every member of the 442d Regimental Combat Team in World War II.
We can’t supply his thoughts during those final seconds. The record gives us his action, and the action tells us enough: he put himself between an exploding grenade and two men who still had a chance to live.
Every day they lived afterward carried the consequence of his choice. Whatever peace they found after the war began with a young soldier surrendering his own future beside them.
His mother received his Medal of Honor on March 13, 1946, at Fort MacArthur, where his Army journey had begun. Munemori became the first Japanese American awarded the nation’s highest military decoration.
As a father, I can understand the pride in knowing your child saved someone. I can’t make that knowledge equal to having your child back, hearing his voice, or watching him walk through the door.
He had wanted his mother with him while he was away. She had to spend the rest of her life without him.
Sadao Munemori’s Medal of Honor Citation:
He fought with great gallantry and intrepidity near Seravezza, Italy. When his unit was pinned down by grazing fire from the enemy’s strong mountain defense and command of the squad devolved on him with the wounding of its regular leader, he made frontal, one-man attacks through direct fire and knocked out two machine guns with grenades. Withdrawing under murderous fire and showers of grenades from other enemy emplacements, he had nearly reached a shell crater occupied by two of his men when an unexploded grenade bounced on his helmet and rolled toward his helpless comrades. He arose into the withering fire, dived for the missile, and smothered its blast with his body. By his swift, supremely heroic action Pfc. Munemori saved two of his men at the cost of his own life and did much to clear the path for his company’s victorious advance.
