White House Photo, Lawrence Jackson President Barack Obama image:66419:2::0 
 
 The new law will recognize over 6,000 Japanese-Americans born of immigrant parents who served our country and fought in battles in Europe and Asia.Oregon Public Broadcasting reports the Neisi Veterans will soon receive the prestigious Congressional Gold Medal award. Nisei refers to Japanese Americans born to immigrants who went overseas to fight for the United States, while the U.S. government kept their families locked in detention camps for the duration of the war“While some Japanese-Americans were being wrongly interned due only to their ethnicity, these brave men stepped forward to defend our nation," Sen. Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii) said. "Their bravery helped to not only win the war, it paved the way towards a more tolerant and just nation. It will be a truly historic moment when President Barack Obama signs this honor for the Nisei veterans into law."The Congressional Gold Medal will honor the 100th Infantry Battalion and 442nd Regimental Combat Team and the Military Intelligence Service for their heroic service and sacrifice during World War II.The 442nd, made up of Americans of Japanese ancestry who volunteered to fight, is the most decorated Army unit of its size and length of service in the history of the United States. The Military Intelligence Service provided the U.S. with valuable language and cultural knowledge, translating intercepted intelligence and helping the U.S. achieve victory in the Pacific reports the office of Daniel Akaka.The Congressional Gold Medal is one of the highest civilian honors presented to people who serve the security and national interests of the United States. Past honorees of the Congressional Gold Medal include the Wright Brothers, Rosa Parks, Navajo Code Talkers, the Tuskegee Airmen and the Dalai Lama. ||||| Tuesday, President Obama signs a bill authorizing a prestigious award for some of the nation’s Nisei veterans. 
 
 Nisei refers to Japanese Americans born to immigrants. In the case of World War Two, many Nisei went overseas to fight for the United States, while the U.S. government kept their families locked in detention camps for the duration of the war. 
 
 Now, the Congressional Gold Medal will be presented to the so-called “Go for Broke” veterans – that is, men who served in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, and other cohorts. 
 
 A number of these surviving vets live in the Northwest. April Baer reports. 
 
 It’s been a long time since the Go For Broke vets came home. In fact, this Thanksgiving marks the 65th year since Art Iwasaki returned from Europe. 
 
 Art Iwasaki “In my company - half of them were from the Hawaiian Islands. They were professional people, dentists, doctors. They were all still in school.” 
 
 Iwasaki was drafted in April of 1942. He took basic training at Fort McClellan, Arkansas, then learned he, along with thousands of other young Americans born to Japanese parents, had been labeled 4-C, or “enemy aliens”. Ultimately it was decided they could serve — with limitations. 
 
 Art Iwasaki “They told us we couldn’t carry arms, and we were treated differently – just like a prisoner of war. That was very disappointing.” 
 
 April Baer / OPB 
 
 These young men were among the best the Northwest had to offer. 
 
 Kenji Yaguchi was class valedictorian, quarterback of his high school football team in Fife, Washington. Winter of 1942 found him at the Minidoka War Relocation Center in Idaho. 
 
 Kenji Yaguchi “I wasn’t in camp very long. I was there probably five, six months. I got there in August. From there I got so bored I formed the Boy Scout troop. We were allowed to leave the compound for field trips. In December there were rumors we may be called to volunteer for the 442nd.” 
 
 The 442nd Regimental Combat Team was an all-Japanese-American regiment, it was formed mostly of young men whose families had been shipped to detainment camps because of their race. Still, these young men stepped forward in great numbers. The Army sought 2000 volunteers, but one historian estimates 10,000 Nisei answered the call. 
 
 Kenji Yaguchi “I was one of the first to volunteer. Because I wanted to prove I was just a good as anybody else. No better, no worse.” 
 
 Basic training was hard. Some men had to go through it twice, first with their integrated units, then again in segregated units after the 442nd was formed. 
 
 Art Iwasaki’s brother Akira, or Ike was in the 442nd, too. Ike says he felt very much like the Oregon farm boy he was, thrown in with so many other young men from big, cosmopolitan cities all over the West Coast, like Seattle and San Francisco. 
 
 Ike Iwasaki “Before I was inducted in service I was at home here, I never socialized much, so when I was inducted in service and exposed to other people it was a challenge. Very lonely experience. Not having been away from home.” 
 
 The 442nd, and a component Battalion, the 100th, which preceded it, joined the ranks of the most decorated regiments of World War II. 
 
 Soldiers in the Go For Broke regiment gained a reputation for toughness in France and Italy. They became famous for the rescue of so-called “Lost Battalion”, a unit of Texas National Guardsmen who’d been cut off behind German lines. And Kenji Yaguchi says they captured Germans, baffled by the 442nd. 
 
 Kenji Yaguchi “They looked at us, and they thought Japan was fighting against them. First we said Yes, we were! After that, we said, no, we’re Americans. They were surprised.” 
 
 The 442nd suffered terrible losses. Art Iwasaki’s company, which had started with about 200 men, was decimated to eight, by the end of the war in Europe. 
 
 After the war, Ken Yaguchi became a chiropractor and settled down in Ontario. 
 
 Ike and Art Iwasaki went back to farming in Washington County. Of the eight members of Art’s company who survived the war, only five are still around. He downplays the heroism he and his fellow soldiers showed. 
 
 Art Iwasaki “I felt it was my duty. I was born and raised in America.” 
 
 Congress honors veterans of the 442nd with the Congressional Gold Medal this week. Members of the 100th Battalion and translators and interrogators with the Military Intelligence Service will also be honored. 
 
 The Gold Medal is one of the three highest civilian honors presented to people who serve the security and national interests of the United States. ||||| Sgts. William Shemin, left, and Henry Johnson posthumously will receive the Medal of Honor at the White House on June 2, 2015. (Photos released by the U.S. Army) 
 
 Army Pvts. Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts were serving as sentries under cover of darkness in France’s Argonne Forest in 1918 when reality set in: The two soldiers were surrounded by more than a dozen Germans, and in danger of being killed or taken prisoner. The German raiders opened fire on the the two men, wounding Johnson three times and Roberts twice, but Johnson fought on with an aggression that shocked the Germans even after his weapon wouldn’t fire anymore. 
 
 An account of what became known as the Battle of Henry Johnson was documented in a letter to the soldier’s wife, Edna, and read into the Congressional Record a few months later. His commanding officer, Col. William Hayward, credited the 5-foot-4 Johnson — nicknamed “Black Death” — with stopping the Germans in the early hours of May 15, 1918, from dragging away Roberts. 
 
 [Ceremony coverage: Obama: ‘We are a nation — a people — who remember our heroes‘] 
 
 Johnson concussed one German with the butt stock of his rifle, and then sunk a heavy bolo knife he was carrying into another’s head, killing him. He stabbed to death at least one more attacker who was beating Roberts, allowing the Americans to toss hand grenades that prompted the rest of the Germans to flee. 
 
 Henry Johnson left the Army as a sergeant. (Photo released by the U.S. Army) 
 
 Johnson is one of two World War I soldiers who posthumously will receive the Medal of Honor, the nation’s top award for combat valor, at the White House on Tuesday. The other is Sgt. William Shemin, who braved enemy fire repeatedly on Aug. 7-9, 1918, in France to recover fellow American soldiers who had been shot until he himself was wounded. Though praised by their fellow soldiers at the time, they were both denied the Medal of Honor for generations. 
 
 Concerns about racism have permeated both cases: Johnson and Roberts, both black men, received the prestigious Croix de Guerre for their valor from the French government, but went unrecognized by the U.S. military for decades. Johnson’s French award included a gold palm, indicating unusually great valor. Shemin, a Jew, received the Distinguished Service Cross, one step below the Medal of Honor, but little explanation was provided why the higher award for which he had been nominated was not approved. 
 
 The efforts to get the two men recognized have been filled with starts and stops, and the work handed down by generations of supporters. In Johnson’s case, it was bolstered by the office of Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D.-N.Y.), who submitted a 1,258-page recommendation for the award in May 2011 after numerous new documents were discovered. In Shemin’s case, his daughter Elsie Shemin-Roth, 86, collected records and enlisted the help of Missouri’s congressional delegation. 
 
 [Alwyn Cashe, the Medal of Honor and why heroism gets undervalued] 
 
 “A lot of people advocated for this over a long period of time, so for this to happen now nearly 100 years later, it’s pretty incredible,” said a former staff member of Schumer’s, Caroline Wekselbaum, 32, who plans to attend the ceremony Tuesday and estimated that she spent thousands of hours on Johnson’s case. “This wasn’t my only job, but I dedicated a lot of time to this, and a lot of people did.” 
 
 A source in Schumer’s office said a local historian and Vietnam veteran, John Howe, came to them with the story in 1999, but died a few years later. The effort to get Johnson the Medal of Honor was blocked in 2003 by Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who wanted more evidence, Schumer’s office said. The Army approved a Distinguished Service Cross, but Schumer’s office kept looking for more documentation of the soldier’s valor. 
 
 Schumer’s office credited Wekselbaum, in particular, with uncovering new evidence. One of her finds was a cablegram from Gen. John J. Pershing, the top U.S. general during the war. He cited the heroism of Johnson and Roberts in a memo to Washington while denying German propaganda that alleged that black American soldiers serving overseas were being mistreated, and said they faced a force of some 20 men. 
 
 
 
 This screen grab of a cablegram released by the office of Sen. Charles E. Schumer shows Gen. John J. Pershing citing the bravery of two black soldiers — including Henry Johnson — while defending the treatment of black soldiers in World War I. (Screen grab) 
 
 “Before day light on May 15 Private Henry Johnson and Private Roberts while on sentry duty at some distance from one another were attacked by German raiding party estimated at 20 men, who advanced in 2 groups attacking at once from flank and rear.” Pershing wrote in the May 20, 1918, message. “Both men fought bravely in hand to hand encounters, one resorting to use of bolo knife after rifle jammed and further fighting with bayonet and [rifle] butt became impossible.” 
 
 [6 modern troops whose extreme heroism didn’t get the Medal of Honor] 
 
 The source called Pershing’s memo “the holy grail” in the case, and expressed frustration with the way Johnson was treated. As a black soldier in World War I, he and his colleagues in the 369th Infantry Regiment were loaned to the short-handed French military, but not allowed to fight in the U.S. force. 
 
 “The guy was a second-class citizen,” the official in Schumer’s office said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the case candidly. “He wasn’t even allowed to fight under our flag.” 
 
 
 
 Sgt. William Shemin, second from left, is shown here with fellow soldiers and a pup tent. (Photo released by the U.S. Army) 
 
 Shemin-Roth said in a recent news conference in Missouri that a wrong has been righted, and all is forgiven in her family. She credited retired Col. Army Erwin A. Burtnick, a leader in the Jewish War Veterans of the U.S.A. organization, with urging her to seek the upgrade, and Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R.Mo.) with helping. 
 
 “Though my father always told me that his war experience was never about medals, I knew in my heart that he was deserving of the highest military award for valor, the Medal of Honor,” she said. “When the president called me last month to tell me that he had approved the Medal of Honor, I felt an enormous sense of pride as an American Jew, and for him, and for our family, and for the entire Jewish community.” 
 
 [U.S. soldiers get the Medal of Honor, decades after heroism in Vietnam] 
 
 Shemin served in the 4th Infantry Division’s 47th Infantry Regiment, and suffered shrapnel wounds while earning the Medal of Honor. He later sustained a gunshot wound to the head, but recovered and went on to play college sports at Syracuse University and raise a family with three children. He died in 1973. 
 
 Elsie Shemin-Rot will accept the Medal of Honor at the White House on Tuesday on behalf of her father, Sgt. William Shemin, for his efforts during World War I. He was denied the Medal of Honor for generations. (Defense Media Archive) 
 
 Johnson’s life after World War I was filled with highs and lows. A member of the New York National Guard, he deployed with an all-black unit that became known as the “Harlem Hellfighters,” the 369th Infantry Regiment. The soldiers were honored with a parade when they returned to New York, but the injuries that Johnson sustained were never properly documented, so he did not receive a Purple Heart or the medical benefits he had earned. He died destitute in July 1929, 11 years after his heroism. 
 
 Correction, June 2: An earlier version of this story reported that Johnson had a son named Herman, citing earlier news accounts. As noted in this new Checkpoint piece, the Army no longer believes that is the case.
– President Obama today signed legislation to honor Japanese-American soldiers who fought on behalf of the Allies during World War II—even as some of their families were kept in confinement in the US. This long-awaited bill will open the door for more than 6,000 soldiers known as Nisei veterans to collectively receive the prestigious Congressional Gold Medal. For more on the vets, see the Digital Journal or Oregon Public Broadcasting.