His name was Paul Ogawa and he was born in Los Angeles and was in high school when WWII started and he and his family were immediately interned. When he finished high school he was offered a way out of the camp if he joined the Army, which he did. He served in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team in Europe and was wounded twice and received two Purple Hearts as well as other combat decorations.
Ironically his older brother, who was also born in LA, happened to be in Japan when war broke out. He was there helping an uncle who was a Protestant minister and who was also a member of the anti-war party in Japan. They were both arrested and thrown into prison as enemy agents (the uncle was a Japanese citizen). After a couple of years they were released and put under house arrest as the government could no longer afford the expense of having to feed them. They scraped by until the war ended and when the American's occupied Japan Paul's brother came forward and was hired by the US Army as an interpreter since he was a US citizen. He later married a Japanese women and stayed in Japan, working for the World Council of Churches until he retired.
His brother Paul, my old boss, when he left the Army he went to school in Wyoming on the GI Bill and graduated as an engineer and worked for some time in Chicago and eventually ended-up in Saginaw, MI, where I worked for him for several years. He was a very practical person and despite being a Baptist, he still enjoyed a good Scotch-on-the-rocks. He said the parishioners in his church decided to change their covenant, taking out the part about not drinking since they felt that being a hypocrite was worse than having a drink once in a while.
Most Decorated Unit In U.S. History Fought For A Country That Didn’t Accept Them
The 442nd Regimental Combat Team was made up of Japanese-Americans, many of whom served when their families were imprisoned behind barbed wire.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/442-regimental-combat-team_us_5a06209fe4b05673aa593f8f
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