442nd Combat team comes home from Europe

07-03-1946. The news program not in great shape so the clarity of the images is not good.

The news reel opens by noting that they were in France and Italy for three years and got a rousing welcome when they got back to New York. It adds that the unit is made up of Japanese-Americans, many from Hawaii.

Their slogan was "Go For Broke" and the film notes they were in some very tough fights.

The film then notes that the unit was "much decorated, a team with a battle history unsurpassed by any outfit of comparable size."

The unit earned 3,600 purple hearts and 2000 other decorations. It was the group that rescued the "lost battalion" that was surrounded by the enemy and actually took more casualties saving the group then there were men in the group they saved.

The next part of the film.

The boat comes into Yokohama harbor with wives and families of occupation troops.

It's interesting to note how gushing the reporter is over the battalions return, especially when you consider the previous five years and how the Japanese-Americans were put into internment camps, kicked out of the military, and then drafted into the military.



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