Raymond Nosaka became "bait" early in his 100th Battalion career to train dogs in an experiment to determine whether Japanese smelled differently from others.
He dismissed the prejudice he encountered in the Army and never had regrets, according to his family.
Nosaka’s daughter Ann Kabasawa said the discrimination only made him stronger.
"I know he was very strong," she said. "I think it made him even stronger in terms of teaching us values and everything like that. You know: ‘Don’t let prejudice be in your way. We’re all equal.’"
Nosaka went on to win the Purple Heart, Bronze Star and Congressional Gold Medal and became president of the 100th Infantry Battalion Veterans Club.
He died June 14 in Honolulu at age 98.
Born in 1916, the second oldest of eight children, Nosaka was drafted in 1940 and assigned to E Company, 298th Regiment, Schofield Barracks.
He witnessed the attack on Pearl Harbor while on guard duty.
From her home in Washington state, daughter Patti Osebold recounted, "I guess they were on the other side of the island on guard duty, he and a friend of his. … They saw the planes flying over and thought it was one of ours until he saw that they had the symbol of Japan, Japanese service, so then he knew it wasn’t theirs and then they started shooting."
At some point after the Pearl Harbor attack, according to Osebold, Nosaka came home to find his house a mess.
"He said the FBI, they had come in and tried to see if they could find anything (that connected him to Japan)," she said.
In 1942 Nosaka was activated to the newly formed 100th Infantry Battalion that was created from the Hawaii Territorial Guard. During his time in the battalion, he was sent with 24 other Japanese-American soldiers on a secret mission to Cat Island, Miss.
According to a 1995 Honolulu Star-Bulletin article, the Army believed Japanese smelled differently from other races, and the soldiers were used to train dogs to be scouts, messengers, trackers, sentries and attack dogs.
"They said to ‘train the dogs,’ but we called it ‘dog bait,’" Nosaka recounted in the Hawaii Nisei Story, a research project by the University of Hawaii and nisei veterans. "We were the bait."
The battalion was one of the best-trained outfits in the Army and was well prepared when it went overseas. Nosaka’s first assignment was the invasion of Italy, an experience he described to the Hawaii Nisei Story as a "nightmare of plane attacks, descending bombs and unpredictable ‘screaming meemies.’"
In 1943 at Hill 600 in the town of Santa Maria Oliveto, Italy, Nosaka was wounded by an artillery shell and crawled into a cave. He spent the night with a dog that kept him warm.
"It was tough but I came out alive, so I feel very grateful," he said.
Among the many ways his time in the Army influenced him, Kabasawa says, was his humility, a trait he passed on to his three children.
But above all, he wanted the best for them.
"He demanded a good education from us," Osebold said. "He wanted us to go to college, and he wanted us to learn things about life. He was always pushing for things like that and wanted us to experience different things."
Nosaka and wife Akiko were married in 1944, and he was honorably discharged a year later. He took up ukulele and boxing.
"He was an entertainer," Osebold said. "He was always wanting to get up on the stage and guitar playing, hula, loved that and singing. So we would never have to ask him twice to get up on the stage. And I think we learned that from him."
After the war he worked for the Internal Revenue Service, the Veterans Administration and for the state of Hawaii as a social worker. In an interview with the Hawaii Nisei Story, Nosaka said his time in the Army allowed for his children to have better job opportunities.
"It was no regret as far as what he did," Osebold said. "I think he did everything in life that he wanted to do."
In addition to his wife and daughters, Nosaka is survived by son Jonathan, sister Teruko Akizuki, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Services have been held.
