Local Japanese were part of combat team that helped liberate France from German occupation
Published in the March 5- 18, 2014 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Staff Report
Photo by Marty Cheek
Lawson Sakai and Odette Le Pendu at a recent annual meeting. Pendu is helping the soldiers become Knights in the Order of the Legion of Honor.
It has been nearly 70 years since members of the U.S. Army’s 442nd Regimental Combat Team, made up almost entirely of Japanese-American soldiers, helped liberate France from German occupation. The surviving members of that esteemed unit, including many who live in the South Valley region, are now being assisted by a former member of the French Resistance in becoming Knights in the Order of the Legion of Honor, the most prestigious recognition a World War II veteran can receive from the French government.
Odette Le Pendu, who was born in San Francisco to French parents, joined the French Resistance when she was 18. In later years she was awarded entry into the Legion of Honor and last year was named an Officer in the order. At the February 8 annual meeting of the Friends and Family of Nisei Veterans at Morgan Hill’s Buddhist Building, she spoke about the importance of her working to help the members of the 442nd also gain entry into the legion.
“It should have been done before. It’s getting late. That’s why I’m on the path,” she said.
While many of their friends and family members were kept behind barbed wire at internment camps by the United States government, soldiers in the 442nd were putting their lives on the lines in the fight to free France from Adolph Hitler’s Nazi control. Many of the Japanese-Americans saw the genocidal horror of Hitler’s race extermination policy, Le Pendu said.
“They saw the people in the concentration camps,” she said. “Many of these people were beaten to death and many of them looked like skeletons.”
Morgan Hill resident Lawson Sakai served in the 442nd and recalls the invasion of Marseille to liberate that southern France city from the Germans. Among the members of the French Resistance fighters he and fellow soldiers saved from being “annihilated” was a teenager named François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand who later became president of France, he said.
Photo courtesy Lawson Sakai
Lawson Sakai in his U.S. Army uniform circa 1944.
“Historically, we did a lot,” Sakai said. “And after the war, the French government wanted to recognize the Americans who liberated the country of France occupied by the Germans … The Legion of Honor is kind of like the Congressional Gold Medal of the United States. It’s probably the highest honor that can be awarded to any organization or person.”
After seven decades since the war, many of the Japanese-American soldiers who fought in France are facing declining health and the inevitability of death, so the time is ticking for them to receive the honor of entering the Legion of Honor, said Morgan Hill resident Brian Shiroyama.
Le Pendu is helping significantly in the process of the 442nd members applying to the French government, he said.
“You have to be alive to receive the honor,” he said. “There’s a sense of urgency because many of them have passed on and many of them are not in good shape. It’s a very prestigious award. But the (application) process has been very difficult.”
Communication has not been effective, he said. Some members submitted their applications two or three years ago, but never heard back from the French government.
Adding to the bureaucratic wait, the French consulate has been bogged down by all the number of applications because so many Americans veterans are getting older, Shiroyama said.
