Japanese Americans Get Affirmative Action Medals Of Honor
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Another interesting statistic emerges. There were 589 Army combat regiments in World War II, and, as mentioned above, 301 Army Medals of Honor awarded. The average was 0.51 MOH awards per regiment. It is recognized that circumstances of battle were different and not all regiments had equal exposure to conditions conducive to acts leading to DSC or MOH awards. As a result of the recent upgrades, the 100/442nd RCT now stands with a record number of 22 Medals of Honor whereas the Army average was less than 1 per regiment. No one contests the fact that the 100/442nd was a crack unit. Yet, is it reasonable to believe that its heroic exploits deserved 20 times the number of Medals of Honor as the average regiment? Moreover, if re-evaluations of ALL original Army DSC’s (not just those awarded to Asian-Americans) had been authorized by Section 524 of the 1996 Defense Authorization Act, and assuming current upgrade standards had been used, is it not likely that there may have been an equal percentage of Medal of Honor upgrades given Caucasian awardees of the Distinguished Service Cross?
Perhaps the best evaluation of the claim that Asian-Americans were discriminated against in the original wartime awards process is summed up by the words of Army Command Historian James C. McNaughton in his final report on September 30, 1998. He wrote “What did we find? We found that the Army accepted Asian-Americans into its ranks in World War II, when other services were reluctant to do so. American society at the time was far from perfect, and the Army then, as now, was a reflection of that society. But the statistics tell an important tale…in the Army awards process we found no evidence that award recommendations were rejected or downgraded on the basis of race.” (Emphasis added)
Despite such review board findings, the Senior Army Decorations Board, the Secretary of the Army, Secretary of Defense and the President jointly approved 22 upgrades of Asian-Americans from Distinguished Service Cross to Medal of Honor. The logical question is: How can a group of Y2K-era military officers and politicians, more than 55 years after the fact, with no evidence of discrimination found in the original DSC awards, justify overruling the judgment of WW II combat award officers whose original decisions that the Distinguished Service Crosses, not Medals of Honor, were appropriate at a time when the facts were fresh and corroborating witnesses alive and on hand to verify them?
The inescapable conclusion is that the current upgrades reek of political
expediency. That is not to say that the original awards of the DSC were
undeserved. They were deserved and their recipients were heroes. But
all such awardees were heroes – Caucasian as well as Asian-American. If
an upgrade review was called for, more than half a century after World War
II, is it not discriminatory to exclude from that review all DSC award winners
who were Caucasian? Syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin, writing on
the eve of the recent White House ceremony, summed up the recent Medal of Honor
upgrades in these words: “Color-coded badges of honor corrupt tradition,
damage morale and lower standards of bravery and exceptional service for all.” They
do indeed.
End Notes by Lee Allen added 4/07
Eventually, the number of upgrades to Medal of Honor was increased to 21, after Cmdr. Hopwood wrote this piece, when another member of the 442nd RCT had his Silver Star, the third highest award for valor, upgraded to Medal of Honor on the pretext that the unit did not know at the time of the original award that a combat medic could be recommended for an a higher award, which of course is ludicrous.
The racial aspect of the review process was highlighted when of the 54 Filipino recipients of the DSC not one was upgraded to Medal of Honor. Nor was the DSC awarded to one of the most highly decorated members of the 442nd RCT upgraded. He happened to be a Korean.
For decades prior to the MOH upgrades it was claimed that the 442nd was the most highly decorated unit in the history of the army, or words to that or similar effect. One must wonder how the unit achieved this widely publicized acclaim if there had been discrimination in awarding medals for valor.
Exaggerated and fabricated claims of service and achievement are common to Japanese Americans in World War II. See this report for some examples. However, the 100th Battalion did serve throughout the Italian campaign. The 442nd RCT began its combat service only after the fall of Rome, in late June, 1944. Thus while many units saw combat service throughout much of the war, the 442nd RCT was only involved in the last 10 months of the war.
It is useful to consider the ratio of Medals of Honor to Distinguished Service Crosses awarded. There were 301 MOH awarded by the Army in WW II. There were 4,434 DSC’s awarded. The ratio of MOH to DSC’s is about 1 to 15. The 32nd Infantry Division during the bloody battle at Buna in New Guinea, for example, earned 100 DSC’s and 2 MOH for a ratio of 1 to 50. With the upgrades given Japanese-Americans in the 442nd RCT the ratio was 23 MOH to 30 DSC’s, or 1 to 1.3.
Curious in this matter of awards, as in other fabricated claims of achievement by Japanese Americans in World War II, is the utter absence of voices in dissent. There seems to be no shame when credit is claimed for the achievement of others, when false claims are made or when accomplishments are exaggerated.
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