One left, and the mountain would be theirs.
Daniel’s legs were barely holding up his 115-pound frame, but he struggled forward, moving straight for the last nest. The gunner had spotted them, and Daniel’s men had no choice but to crawl, belly first, up the mountain. Dan knew they needed to get close enough for his agile arm to launch a grenade, and he slowly drew closer, closer, until finally he pushed the lever, pulled the pin, and…
Daniel saw a German soldier stand up and squeeze the trigger of his rifle. He heard the boom, but realized this time it wasn’t from his own grenade.
As if in slow motion, Dan looked to his right and saw his arm hanging from his body by a few bloody shreds. He saw his grenade, ready to launch, squeezed in the fist of the hand he no longer controlled, and he knew he only had a few seconds before it would explode and kill him.
“GET BACK!” Daniel yelled, as he used his left hand to pry open the fingers of his right, picking up the live grenade and hurling it at the man who had just destroyed his arm. The Nazi was reloading and didn’t even see Daniel’s grenade coming.
BOOM.
For good measure, Dan squeezed off a few rounds with his gun as his right arm flopped uselessly against his hip.
But the man who severed Dan’s arm wasn’t the last German in the bunker. Another took the dead gunner’s place and fired several rounds at the men of the 442nd. And this time, he hit Dan in the leg, knocking him over and sending him rolling back down the hill they climbed. Dan lay there bleeding and badly wounded, his men hovering over him, debating how to evacuate him.
“Get back up the hill,” Dan ordered. “No one called off the war!”[8]
The men did as they were ordered, leaving Dan alone to wait for a medic. His Red Cross training kicked in, and he tried to apply a tourniquet on his arm but realized there wasn’t enough soft tissue to make it work. He fished around in what was left of his appendage until he found an artery, and he pinched it, keeping himself from bleeding to death while he waited for help.
He had to wait for nine hours. Rescue helicopters were still a thing of the future, and when he finally arrived at the hospital, he saw rows and rows of occupied beds. Nurses triaged patients as they were brought in, sorting them into three categories:
This soldier might be savable, but needs immediate surgery.
You’re not that serious, you’re going to have to wait.
God loves you.
Dan knew what God loves you meant. He saw the nurses and doctor confer and then nod to a chaplain waiting nearby. The religious man approached his stretcher and kneeled down. “God loves you, son,” he said.
“Oh yes, I know that,” Daniel told the chaplain. “I love him, too, but I’m not ready to see him.”
The chaplain stared at him, studying his face. “You’re serious, aren’t you?” the chaplain asked.
“Absolutely. I am not ready to go yet,” Daniel answered.[9] The chaplain ran to get the doctor, pleading Daniel’s case. The medical staff returned and whisked him away for surgery, which they had to perform without any anesthesia. Daniel had already had too much morphine en route, and they didn’t think he could have anesthesia and survive. The rest of his arm was amputated. During the surgery, the doctors discovered that the bullet in his stomach had missed his spine by the merest of margins.
Dan required seventeen units of blood, and each time the doctors would bring the bottle to his bedside, as was the custom, and show him the label. They wanted soldiers to see who had sacrificed for them, to experience the solidarity that came from giving each other blood. Dan saw the name Thomas Jefferson Smith, and realized the blood he was receiving came not from the men of the 442nd, but from the all-Black 92nd, serving nearby. As he lay on the bed, drifting in and out of a woozy unconsciousness, he saw names like Woodrow Wilson Peterson and wished he could hop up and personally thank each man who was giving a part of what gave them life so that he could live.[10]
During surgery, the doctors fixed his arm and his abdominal wound, but no one noticed the fact that he’d been shot in the leg. Several days after his initial surgery, Dan was getting examined by the doctor, who found he was healing well. He mentioned that his leg was hurting and that he didn’t think anyone thought to look at his other extremities. Within ten minutes, they were cutting off his pants, and the next thing he knew, his leg was ensconced in a huge cast.
While Dan recuperated in the hospital, he befriended another soldier who had been seriously injured, a man named Bob Dole, who would later go on to be a senator and the Republican nominee for president. The two became lifelong friends, bonded by the horrors of war. Both had dreamed of being doctors. Both lived out other dreams.
Two weeks after Dan lost his arm, the war ended. He still had two years of rehabilitation ahead of him, but thanks to the G.I. Bill, he finished college and went to law school, determined to do something to give back the way he had promised Dr. Craig.
The 442nd, the all-Nisei military unit that had fought to be able to fight, became the most decorated military unit of its size in history. They had ten unit-wide citations and 3,915 individual citations. Seven hundred men from their unit died, and 3,600 more—men like Dan—were wounded in combat.[11]
Daniel finally returned to Hawaii, East Coast law degree in his left hand. He got involved in politics. Hawaii was not yet a state, but it had a territorial government, which Dan was eager to serve in. Unlike most residents of Hawaii, Dan decided to join the Democratic Party instead of the Republicans. He ignored the advice of people who said he’d never get elected as a Democrat and insisted that the reason he wanted to be a Democrat was that he thought that the Republicans wanted to protect property—what we have—but the Democrats wanted to protect people—who we are.[12]
He resented that in the 1950s, people associated Democrats with communists. “I gave this arm to fight fascists,” Dan said. Gesturing to his one good arm, he shot back, “If my country wants the other one to fight communists, they can have it.”[13]
Daniel met a pretty girl, Margaret, and proposed on their second date. She said yes.
Daniel Inouye became successful in politics. He was elected to Congress, and when Hawaii became a state, he was one of the very first senators to represent the fiftieth state. When he got to Washington, D.C., he remembered his friend Bob Dole, who had grand political aspirations before he did. He sent a telegram that read “Bob. I am here. Where are you?”[14]
Congress was not just a cushy job for Dan: he did things of consequence. If you watched the Watergate hearings, maybe you saw him on TV. But he didn’t just draft legislation. He made friends. A lot of them.
Twenty-one
Norman Mineta1950s
When the incarceration camps closed, the people who had been imprisoned for years were actively discouraged from congregating in groups. Fan out, they were told. Don’t all move back to the West Coast. Try to blend in. Many families decided they would do anything to keep this from happening to them again, so they were going to be 110 percent American. “In the long run, we are going to prove our loyalty to this country,” his father, Kay, told him.[1]
Norm returned from his military service and tried to rent an apartment. He saw an ad for a place that seemed perfect and telephoned the landlord, who said, “Sure, come on over and look at it.”
When he arrived, the landlord took one look at him and said, “Oh, it’s already been rented.” With a sinking feeling that this was about prejudice and not rental status, Norm walked around the corner to a pay phone and called the landlord’s number, pretending to be a different person. “Yes, it’s available,” he was told.[2] Turns out, prejudice wasn’t eradicated when the Japanese surrendered at the end of the war.
He joined his father’s insurance business, but Norm’s true love was politics. He built enough connections in San Jose to get appointed to the city council when a spot became available, and eventually Norm won election to the mayor’s office. His win became international news, and represented a giant step for mankind: voters had elected an Asian American mayor of a major city.[3]
Early in his first term as mayor, an assistant brought Norm a letter. It appeared personal, and when Norm opened it, he found it was a note congratulating him on being elected mayor. The sender had read a newspaper article and recognized Norm immediately.
It was his friend from the pup tent. “Hey Norm,” the letter read. “Remember that fat kid from Cody?”[4]
Norm stared at the letter. He certainly did remember that fat kid from Cody. It was Alan Simpson. And after Norm and Alan had spent time as Boy Scouts in a pup tent, Alan brought shame to his family name. His father was in politics, and Alan was a proper juvenile delinquent who set fire to federal buildings. He and his friends stole bullets from stores and stood opposite one another with guns, shooting at rocks near the others’ heads. They terrorized their Wyoming town, blowing holes in mailboxes with their .22 calibers, killing cows, and shooting up road construction equipment.
Alan was caught and put on federal probation, the judge telling him that he had to make restitution with his own money, which forced him to get a job. One night, as Alan was exiting a pool hall, he saw someone he knew who had been in a knife fight. “What happened to you?” Alan asked, concerned.
The man told him he had used a racial slur and had gotten jumped for it. “Man, that’s dumb,” Alan remarked. As it turned out, his acquaintance didn’t like being called dumb, and he attacked Alan, which led to the police being called for the brawl on the street. When the officer arrived, Alan hit the officer too.[5]
The officer struck Alan with his club and hauled him to jail. Jail was a wakeup call, and Alan vowed to set his feet on the straight and narrow. He served overseas in the military, his six-foot-seven frame towering above the rest of his army buddies. When he returned, his sharp jaw, piercing eyes, and quick wit made him the perfect hire for anyone seeking an attorney in Cody, Wyoming. He started a family, marrying the sweetheart who had refused to bail him out of jail when he got arrested.
