The True Spirit of ’76.
A touching image, some 80 years ago today, with an almost unfathomable background.
Official period caption: “Lecco, Italy. PFC George Morihiro, Co I, 442nd Inf. Regt., adopted a little orphan, one of the group from the St. Joseph’s orphanage, which attended the 4th of July party at the Red Cross given by the members of the 442nd Regt., for the evening, and made sure that she had plenty of sweets to eat.”
U.S. Army Signal Corps Photo 111-SC-340940 by Menikheim, 3131st Signal Photo Platoon. National Archives Identifier 404791224
Just in case you didn’t immediately grasp it, the famed 442nd “Go for Broke” Regimental Combat Team was made up of Japanese American troops during WWII. One of the most decorated units in U.S. military history– including five Presidential Unit Citations, 21 MoHs, and 18,000 other individual decorations– the second-generation “Nisei” men who filled its ranks often hailed from families shamefully interned by the federal government under armed guard during the war.
PFC George (Ganjiro) Morihiro was one of them.
Born in September 1924, in Tacoma, Washington, to Gunjiro and Tsuru Morihiro, George graduated from high school in Fife, Washington, and was eager to volunteer for the Army prior to Pearl Harbor. Following the start of the Pacific War, his family was removed to the Puyallup Assembly Center and the Minidoka Concentration Camp, Idaho, where 13,000 Americans were detained in the high desert.
Nonetheless, he joined the Army in late 1943, was sent to Camp Shelby, and, in what he thought was punishment for talking smack to a sergeant there, was promptly designated as a BAR man, toting the 21-pound M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle. As anyone can tell you, it sucks to carry a BAR to the range and back, I can’t imagine having to tote one through the gumbo mud of Mississippi or up a mountain in Italy, but George did it.
Earning a Purple Heart in action against the Gothic Line, Staff Sgt. Morihiro returned to Fife after the war. Attending photography school, he worked 20 years for Tall’s Camera Supply and 24 years as owner of GEM Photo Distributors. He was also active in the Nisei Veterans Association, speaking to school groups and community organizations about his wartime experiences, going on to leave a nine-part oral history in 1998.
George passed in 2009, aged 85, and left behind a son and grandchildren. Because, of course, he did.