Drawing on the past

Rob Sato has a theory about why so few people know about the 442nd Infantry Regiment, a group of Japanese-American soldiers who fought during World War II and were the most decorated unit in U.S. military history.

Their motto was “Go for Broke,” and they faced heavy combat in Europe while most of their families back home were taken to internment camps. Among other heroics, the 442nd rescued a Texas company from behind enemy lines.

“The answer is complex,” the Sacramento-born artist says. He illustrated 442, a graphic novel, written by Koji Steven Sakai and Phinneas Kiyomura, and released last year.

“Through working on this project I’ve discovered just how obscured from American history it is. It has been unsettling. I grew up with this story being such a solid fact of life and absolutely fundamental to my understanding of America. Being part of the Japanese-American community, naturally it was just a given,” Sato says. “In the past, if you met another [Japanese American] for the first time, you’d ask, ‘What camp—meaning which concentration camp—are you guys from?’And usually a relative, if not many relatives of theirs, had been in the 442 or Military Intelligence Services.”

Eventually though, Sato says he realized most others’ experiences were different. “I grew all the way up and found out that virtually no one else has ever heard of the 442,” he says.

Sato says that part of the problem is race. “Japanese-American faces just don’t look like the Band of Brothers. Even when I show people pictures of my grandfather in what is obviously a U.S. Army uniform, they assume he was in the Japanese military,” he says. “I can tell someone that my Japanese family has been American longer than their Italian one, and it just doesn’t land for some reason.”

In the novel, Sato included a character based on family photos taken in the internment camp who was a composite of his father and his grandfather; the latter, Roy Sato, was in the 442nd.

Many people, Sato adds, would rather avoid the subject, “because it’s uncomfortable and tragic, which are qualities people tend to avoid.”

“I’ve had people tell me they don’t want to hear about the topic because it’s depressing. ‘I like your art,’ they say, ‘but I don’t want to see that 442 thing you’re doing. It’s sad!’”

Sato says another important factor is gaman, a Japanese concept that means “enduring with dignity.” While stoicism helped many Japanese Americans get through the war, he believes they also died angry and sad.

Exposing the past with this graphic novel may help lay some demons to rest, and honors his heritage, Sato says.

“The story of the 442 should be on every American’s list of things to feel genuinely proud of,” he says.–Erika Mailman