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S/Sgt. Tatsumi Iwate, a Japanese American Infantryman, who bears a piece of Nazi shrapnel an inch deep in his brain despite two operations to remove it, is on furlough at the farm of his uncle, Tashikaza Wada, Rt. 1, Gill, Colorado, from Hammond General Hospital, Modesto, California, until September 17. He is shown here hanging up his uniform before donning work clothes to help his uncle in the bean field. He was wounded in France last October during the rescue of the Texas Lost Battalion by the Japanese American 442nd Combat Team. Formerly of Lomita, California, Sgt. Iwate, 28, entered service in February, 1942, a month before evacuation of Japanese Americans from the West Coast. Sgt. Iwate is keenly disappointed in his friend, 19-year-old Seiichi, now in a Justice Department Internment Camp after renouncing his American citizenship, and who has lost faith in his country. He wrote him a letter, which was made public by WRA, in which he expressed his surprise and disappointment in his actions and said I am an American to the last drop of my blood, and being a person of Japanese descent, I am aware of discrimination that is practiced by people who dare not see farther than the color of our skin, but I will continue to fight the enemy of my country be it foreign or domestic. Ready for either duty or discharge after 7 months of hospitalization, he says, I may be washed up as an Infantryman, but I'm still willing to tackle any assignment if they decide to keep me in the Army. -- Photographer: Mace, Charles E. -- Gill, Colorado. 7/14/45

Contributing Institution:

The Bancroft Library. University of California, Berkeley.