Combat veterans see a world few of us can imagine, a world where the twist of a bullet, the chance of a footstep or the orders of generals can mean maiming or death. If they're lucky, soldiers survive war with bodies and minds intact, and find the love of family to help them heal and create lives worth living.
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Henry "Hank" Nakada
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Hank Nakada was a lucky man. That was his theme, said his son, Mike Nakada of Homer.
Earlier this month, Henry "Hank" Nakada, 85, came to the end of a life well lived, and died from complications of pneumonia on March 13, 2008, at South Peninsula Hospital.
"I think that's what my father's philosophy was: 'I've seen hell, I might as well make this life what I can,'" Mike Nakada said. "He was never mean to anybody. He was basically just a nice guy."
They could make a movie out of Nakada's life. Well, actually, director Jesse Kobayashi is doing that: "Little Iron Men," the story of Nakada and other soldiers in the 100th/442nd Battalion during the fall of 1944 in the Vosges Mountains. In six days of almost continuous combat, they rescued 200 men of the 141st Texas Regiment, "the Lost Battalion," surrounded by 6,000 Germans four miles behind enemy lines.
Nakada's battalion of Nisei second generation Japanese Americans would suffer 800 casualties, including 140 killed. Nakada's I Company started with 185 and was cut down to just eight.
He could have been killed on the final push to rescue the 141st, Nakada told Peninsula Clarion reporter Hal Spence several years ago. A scout, Nakada would have been at the head of his platoon and leading I Company. Instead, because he knew where a comrade had fallen, he and another soldier went to retrieve the body. Their Jeep hit a land mine, and they got thrown into soft moss.
"Luck is a funny thing. If I hadn't been a scout and knew where that guy was killed, I would have been with that bunch and not survived," Nakada said then.
The fifth of 12 children, Nakada was born Oct. 12, 1922, in Los Angeles to Ginzo and Kagi Ikehara Nagada, Japanese immigrants who came to the U.S. in 1910. He graduated from Covina High School in Los Angeles County, and in 1940 came to Alaska, arriving by steamship in Seward.
Living in a hobo jungle in Anchorage, he got a job working for the Alaska Railroad. On the railroad, he was a gandy dancer, a cook and an avalanche scout, running a pump railcar between Seward and Anchorage. He later got a job at Elmendorf Air Base and after World War II broke out, got fired because of his Japanese ancestry.
After President Franklin Roosevelt issued order 9066 sending Japanese Americans to internment camps, Nakada was offered a choice: go to a camp or join the Army. His parents and sisters were later sent to Heart Mountain in Wyoming.
His father joined the Army, Mike Nakada said and had to lie about his age to get in. All the Nakada sons joined the military. Hank started out in an Army motor pool in Chicago. When a man with no experience was made sergeant of the motor pool, Nakada protested.
"Not only did they (his superiors) say no, they punished him by sending him off to a nastier duty," Mike Nakada said.
That nastier duty was with the 100th/442nd, a battalion made up of Japanese Americans from Hawaii and the mainland. The 100th/442nd fought in Italy and France, and suffered so many casualties it earned the nickname "The Purple Heart Battalion." Nakada got a Purple Heart with a three oak leaf cluster. Mike Nakada said the 100th/442nd got so many medals that the Army said it was too many and became stingier about awarding them.
"That's the way I figure it," Mike Nakada said.
Decades after the war, the Army reviewed some of the medal nominations and decided a lot of soldiers who hadn't received medals deserved them. Nakada got a Bronze Medal five years ago.
Toward the end of the war, Nakada won a big pot in a dice game, and used that money to look up a childhood friend, Mitsie "Mitsu" Hasegawa, who he'd known from church. Mitsu had been at Heart Mountain with Nakada's family, and when Hank Nakada's mother had a stroke, Mitsu, a nursing school student, took care of her. His mother said, "This woman was nice; do something nice for her."
After the war, Mitsu went to Temple University in Philadelphia to finish nursing school. Nakada found her there.
"And I guess they hit it off," Mike Nakada said of his parents.
They married in 1946. Nakada received a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Temple University. He was a research associate at Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation and later a professor of biochemistry at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
At Temple, Nakada talked up Alaska so much that three nursing students in Mitsu's class moved to Alaska.
The husband of one of those nurses joked, "Oh, I'm going to get revenge and get some of Hank's kids up here," Mike Nakada said. Mike and his brothers Chris and Bob moved to Alaska.
When Hank Nakada retired in 1977, he and Mitsu moved to Homer to be with their sons.
"He decided to take an early retirement and go fishing," Mike Nakada said. "He came up, had a great time and had lots of friends."
His dad and mother didn't gripe about the injustice done toward Japanese-Americans.
"They didn't want to be the kind of people who bitch and moan about it constantly, but at the same time, they don't want people to forget," Mike Nakada said. "In both their life stories, they patiently waited for justice."
Eventually, Mitsu got a settlement as part of reparations paid to Japanese-American internees.
Nakada had planned to take his dad to a reunion of 100th/442nd soldiers this summer. Kobayashi said he is in discussions now about possibly getting financing to finish "Little Iron Men." For updates on the film, visit www.littleironmen.com.
After all Hank Nakada had been through, Nakada said he was shocked when his dad died.
"That's what hurt me," he said. "I thought he was going to live forever I'd expected he'd be around a long time."
Nakada was preceded in death by his wife, Mitsu; and his siblings, Saburo, Hannah, Minoru, Aiko and George.
He is survived by his brothers, Yoshio, Yoshinao, James, John and Steve; sister, Grace; sons, Robert and Mike of Homer and Chris of South Point, Hawaii; grandchildren, Jesse, Simone, Genji, Heidi, Mark and Tela and his great-grandchildren, Raiden and Aiden.
A celebration of Hank Nakada's life is at noon April 27 at the Homer Elks Lodge.
Michael Armstrong can be reached at michael.armstrong@homernews.com.
