Four-Four-Two by Dean Hughes

Four-Four-Two is a novel about the American 442nd Regimental Combat Team that fought in World War II. The 442nd, the most decorated unit in American military history, was made up exclusively of young Japanese Americans, many of whom set out to prove their loyalty for a country that imprisoned their relatives, closed their businesses and sent them to desert internment camps. Racial prejudice against Asian Americans, Chinese and Japanese was especially prevalent in American society in the early 20th century. But Japanese Americans were singled out after the bombing of Pearl Harbor as potential traitors and collaborators and labelled as "enemy aliens". President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 which ordered the removal of ALL Americans of Japanese ancestry (AJA) from the west coast. Second generation Japanese Americans, known as Nisei, were American citizens.

There were already  over a thousand Nisei who were members of the National Guard in Hawaii. The government, fearful that these soldiers would desert and fight with the Japanese if Hawaii was ever invaded, sent them to the mainland and segregated them into a separate military unit call the 100th Infantry Battalion. After significant training they were sent to the European theater to fight and distinguished themselves as valiant soldiers. By this time the 442nd Regimental Battalion Combat Team was formed from volunteers from Hawaii and the internment camps.

Hughes focuses on battles F Company (Fox Company) fought. In his preface he states that "the locations, names of military units, weather conditions, and dates are all accurate... Yukus 'Yuki' Nakahara and his friend Shigeo 'Shig' Omura are members of a four-man fire team, which is part of an eight-man squad, and their squad is part of a platoon of thirty-plus men."

The story opens December 1941 with two men paying a surprise visit to the Nakahara family farm. Mr and Mrs. Nakahara are Issei - first generation Japanese immigrants who lease their land to farm vegetables and fruit. Yuki is the oldest and has three younger siblings, a brother Mickeo and two sisters, Amaya and Kayo. The men, FBI agents, take Yuki's father into custody, despite his mothers protests. They are told that he is an "enemy alien" living in a war zone. Yuki's best friend, Shigeo Omura had warned him that those considered to be a "community leader" were being arrested. Since the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese a week earlier, the attitude of their classmates has changed from disinterest to cold stares.

By April 1943, Yuki and Shig along with their families are now living in the Central Utah Relocation Center, a camp called Topaz. Yuki and Shig are now both eighteen years old and Yuki is determined to enlist. He believes this is the only way they, as Japanese Americans will be respected. Shigeo is not so eager because he's not sure he wants to die for people who don't like him. Yuki tells him they won't die but will come home as war heroes. Shig points out that because the white soldiers won't fight alongside the Japanese Americans, the Nisei soldiers are being segregated into separate units. Yuki counters this by telling Shig that Hitler is a problem that will not go away. Shig decides that he needs to speak one more time with his parents.

A Japanese American family at dinner in an internment camp.

Yuki tells his mother after church on Sunday about his intention to enlist and she insists that he obey his father's directive not to. But Yuki tells her that enlisting is something he must do because in this way he can bring back honor to their family. If they are really American, he cannot stay out of the war when other white families have sons who are enlisting. Yuki encourages his mother to give sixteen-year-old Mikeo more responsibility while he's gone.

Both Yuki and Shig enlist and are bused to Salt Lake City to be entered into the United States Army after passing their physicals. They are then sent to Camp Shelby near Hattiesburg, Mississippi for basic training. Basic training proves to be a challenge. The uniforms are too big, the training gruelling and they have to get used to the Hawaiian Japanese who don't much like them. Yuki and Shig are assigned to "Second Platoon of Company F of Second Battalion of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team." Yuki's fire team includes Shig, Billy Yamada, an outstanding athlete and Makota Okida who is a Hawaiian soldier.

Yuki and Shig along with the other members of the 442nd train into the spring of 1944. By this time the 100th Infantry Battalion (made up of exclusively Nisei soldiers from Hawaii) is a significant fighting force in Italy. In March, Yuki and Shig's Second Battalion, along with the Third Battalion of the 442nd is shipped across the ocean to Naples, Italy. There they are attached to the Thirty-Fourth Infantry Division which they will support and fight with, though not as an integrated force. As Yuki and Shig get set to fight their first of many battles, they must find the courage and strength to cope with the unimaginable horrors of war. War is not what they expected and for Yuki it becomes a life-altering experience.

Discussion

Dean Hughes has written a heartbreaking story that realistically portrays war as it was experienced by Japanese American soldiers during the Second World War.  In an effort to prove they were patriotic Americans and in the hopes that their fellow Americans would accept them, many Japanese Americans enlisted. The went to fight for a country whose citizens treated them and their families shamefully, imprisoning them and placing most AJA's in what were essentially prison camps set in the desert surrounded by barbed wire.

Yuki Nakahara enters the war with the belief that serving in the army will be a way to restore honor to his family and that the American people will have to respect him when he returns a war hero. However, war is anything but what Yuki imagined. During his first attack, he is paralyzed with fear. After he kills a man during an attack on German machine-gun emplacement, Yuki is confronted with the reality that he has killed a boy, who looks to be only fourteen or fifteen. "But the soldier didn't look like a Nazi, like the brutal Krauts he had always imagined. He was a kid. He should have been home playing soccer with his friends, or sitting in a schoolroom. And he was not just young; he was...a person."

Later on as Yuki is trying to come to terms with the men killed in his Platoon by the Germans and his sergeant's desire to get revenge, his thoughts return to the boy he killed. "A picture was back in his head: the German boy at the gun emplacement, one arm bent at the elbow, his hand almost touching his cheek -- as though his last act had been to reach for the place where the bullet struck. His cheek had been smooth, like a baby's, the boy still too young to shave." 

In their next battle, Yuki saves the life of Sergeant Mat Matsumoto by running through a barrage of shelling. Billy Yamada loses his life and Yuki can't help but think what he lost, "a chance to go to college, to be a star football player." Later on when he and Shig talk about what happened, Yuki realizes that they have fought over a hill "just a bump on the planet -- and hundreds of men had died or been mutilated fighting over it. He hadn't known about any of this before entering the army, hadn't understood what it would be like." 

Letters from his family at Topaz make Yuki realize "that war was only  an idea to all of them. It was just 'the war'; there was no perception that wars were made of battles and bullets and one day following another." As he sees men he knows and whom he worked with in Utah die, others like Oki seriously wounded, and takes Germans who just want to eat and survive prisoner, Yuki's perception of war changes. He feels fighting a war is not something to be proud of.

His perception of himself also changes; Yuki also believes because of what he's done in the war, he's not worthy of Shig's sister Keiko whom he loves and hopes to marry some day. Yuki believes what he and Shig do every day, killing is brutal and disgusting. "Yuki knew he would have to spend his life trying to remove all this ugliness from his head and hands." 

The actions of the Japanese American soldiers also begin to change the way the white soldiers view them. When Mat Matsumoto is killed in action, Yuki and Shig go against army policy to find his body at the aid station. Confronted by the white staff sergeant, Yuki tells him that the only reason Mat enlisted was because no one in the U.S. would hire him as an engineer, "...he was a Jap in America, so no one wanted to work with him." The sergeant tells Yuki that working with the AJA soldiers has changed his view of Japanese Americans. He didn't care about the AJA's being placed in camps and he felt they had "no business coming over here to fight." But now he recognizes that they are a superior fighting force and he tells Yuki and Shig  they are "respected by those who know what really goes on over here...And you're not just good soldiers; you're good men."

As Yuki becomes battle hardened he discovers several things about himself and about war. First he finds that the killing makes him want to kill for revenge when friends like Mat and Sergeant Koba die. He notes that although "nations" go to war it is actually men and boys who kill men and boys from other nations "...boys he actually had nothing against." Yuki's perception of the German Nazi soldiers has also changed. "Back in training, he had imagined the Germans he would fight -- and they were all brutal Nazis. He had assumed they all hated Jews, hated people of every race but their own...But the German soldiers he had seen looked about like the boys he had gone to high school with: young, not angry, guys who probably missed their families and wanted to get home just like he did. "

Yuki also begins to realize that the war has not brought about a change in attitude towards the Japanese Americans. Instead they remain segregated from the white American troops and the army behaves as if they are expendable, throwing the 422nd into the most difficult battles, including being sent to rescue the First Battalion of the 141st Infantry Regiment, trapped in the Vosges Forest. Through the character of Sergeant Oshira who visits Yuki in the hospital, Hughes doesn't mince words about the battle in the Vosges Forest. The 442nd lost eight hundred to save two hundred men, so many that the 422nd could no longer function as a regiment. Sergeant Oshira tells Yuki that the Stars and Stripes tells the story of the rescue of the "Lost Battalion" but no credit is given to the 442nd and a picture of a white soldier is used in the story.

Although awarded the Purple Heart and the Silver Star, Yuki returns home, forever changed by his experience in the war. He experiences overwhelming guilt and regret at pressuring Shigeo to enlist and then not being able to protect him, and in surviving the war. But it is Shig's parents who show him compassion, love and concern. When Yuki expresses the wish that he had died instead of Shig, Mrs. Omura states, "You must never say this again, never think it. These are things we do not understand. God decides, and in our family, we trust God. Shigeo was a noble boy, and he will be precious in our hearts forever, but we have no regrets about his service. He sacrificed his life for the good of our world." This heart-rending encounter serves to demonstrate that the Japanese Americans were no different than other Americans; their sons died just as horribly, their families grieved just as deeply.
 
Four-Four-Two is by far the best of Hughes' novels. The development of the main and secondary characters is excellent while the intense descriptions of the battles make the reader feel they are part of the action and capture the true terror and gore of battle. Many parts of the book are truly heartbreaking; the death of Shig, the confrontation in the barbershop in Denver, Yuki's tender reunion with his mother, and the meeting with Shig's family.

Hughes has included both a Preface which explains some of the background information on the formation of the 442nd and an Author's Note which details the accomplishments of the regiment and asks readers to be more tolerant of others who are different. A wonderfully written and moving account of a difficult episode in American history.

Book Details:

Four-Four-Two by Dean Hughes
New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers   2016
268 pp.