The 442nd Regimental Combat Team was organized on March 23, 1943 when 2,686 Japanese-American volunteers from Hawaii and 1,500 from the U.S. mainland received basic training in Camp Shelby, Mississippi.
- In May 1944, the 442nd, attached to the 5th Army under the command of General Mark Clark, drove German forces north in the heavily defended mountainous terrain of northern Italy
- In August 1944, the Anti-Tank Company was separated and sent to France in a glider landing to support the Allied invasion of the Continent
- In France in the winter 1944, the 1st Battalion, 141st Regiment of the 36th “Texas” Division was surrounded by German troops and running out of food and ammunition. After two previous attempts at rescue by other units failed, the 442nd enter the Vosges Mountains. After five days of horrific combat, the Texans were rescued by the Japanese Americans who suffered heavy casualties
- In April 1945, the 442nd led the attack which broke through the Gothic Line, an obstacle that had thwarted Allied efforts for months in northern Italy
- The 100th Battalion/442nd RCT, a segregated unit composed of Japanese-Americans, while compiling an astonishing combat record, suffered an equally large number of casualties – ~ 800 killed or missing in action.