Allan M. Ohata: The Quiet Soldier Who Held the Line

Allan Masaharu Ohata was born on September 13, 1918, in Honolulu, Hawaii, one of eight children of Sakuhei and Kuma Hayashi Ohata, Japanese immigrants whose family operated a small flower-growing business. Allan and his brothers and sisters helped with the work, but family members later remembered something distinctive about him even as a child: while the other children sometimes complained about chores, Allan simply did whatever was asked of him. He attended Kalakaua Intermediate School, McKinley High School, and a Japanese-language school in Kalihi, growing into a strong, reserved young man who rarely revealed much about what he was thinking. Before the war he worked with his younger brother Donald in a surplus-parts business in Honolulu.

Ohata was already connected to the 298th Infantry of the Hawaii National Guard before the attack on Pearl Harbor, and his formal Army service records place him in uniform by November 1941. Whatever distinction is made between his Guard mobilization and formal induction, there is no question that he was serving the United States before Japanese aircraft appeared over Oahu on December 7. Like the other Nisei soldiers in Hawaii, he suddenly found himself in an extraordinary position. The enemy that had attacked his home was Japan, the country from which his parents had emigrated, and American military authorities soon began questioning whether soldiers like Ohata could be trusted despite the fact that they were already serving in American uniform.

In May 1942, the Japanese American soldiers of Hawaii were separated from their existing units and organized as the Hawaiian Provisional Infantry Battalion. On June 5, more than 1,400 men were secretly shipped from Honolulu to the mainland, many without the opportunity for a proper farewell with their families. After reaching California they became the 100th Infantry Battalion (Separate), an unusual designation reflecting the fact that the battalion had no parent regiment. Ohata became a member of Company B. The men called their battalion the “One Puka Puka,” and although the Army was watching them partly because of doubts about their ancestry, they intended to make their performance answer those doubts.

The 100th trained at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin, and later at Camp Shelby, Mississippi. Its soldiers had already undergone military training in Hawaii, and the long period before deployment allowed them to become exceptionally proficient infantrymen. Their record helped change opinions within the War Department and contributed to the decision to create the larger Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team. While the new regiment trained, however, the original 100th was sent overseas first. In August 1943 the battalion departed for North Africa and soon moved into Italy, where it was attached to the 34th Infantry Division. On September 22, the men landed near Salerno. Within days they were fighting.

Combat immediately stripped away whatever remained of the training-ground world. Company B was among the first elements of the 100th to encounter German troops as the battalion advanced north from Salerno. Roads and bridges had been destroyed, mines were scattered along the routes of advance, and German rear guards used hills, farmhouses, trees, and mountain terrain to delay the Americans. The battalion's first combat death came from Company B when Sergeant Shigeo “Joe” Takata was killed during the opening fighting. From there, the names on the maps changed steadily as the 100th moved through Chiusano, Montefalcione, Caserta, the Volturno River, Alife, Venafro, and the mountain country beyond.

By late November, the battalion had reached the German Winter Line and the approaches toward Cassino. The advance that had begun at Salerno had become a grinding contest for ridges and mountains. German defenders occupied prepared positions overlooking the approaches, and the terrain made supporting artillery difficult. The men of the 100th were tired, wet, and increasingly depleted by casualties, but they continued attacking and defending whatever ground the larger campaign demanded.

Near Cerasuolo on November 29, 1943, Sergeant Allan Ohata and several men from Company B were assigned to defend the left flank of their platoon. A German force of approximately forty soldiers approached their position armed with rifles, machine pistols, and machine guns. Ohata placed an automatic rifleman roughly fifteen yards to his left while he took up his own position and began firing into the advancing enemy.

The automatic rifleman was Private Mikio Hasemoto, another soldier whose actions during the same fighting would eventually be recognized with the Medal of Honor. Enemy fire struck and disabled Hasemoto's weapon, leaving the flank dangerously exposed. Hearing his comrade call for help, Ohata left his own position and ran approximately fifteen yards through heavy machine-gun fire to reach him. Once there, Ohata opened fire at close range, killing ten enemy soldiers while covering Hasemoto as he withdrew long enough to obtain another weapon. The battalion's surviving campaign history and the two men's Medal of Honor records together make clear that this famous stand was not two separate episodes occurring somewhere near one another. Ohata and Hasemoto were fighting side by side.

When Hasemoto returned, the two men continued holding the flank against the German attack. By the end of the engagement, thirty-seven of the original forty attackers had been killed. Ohata and Hasemoto then charged the three surviving enemy soldiers and took them prisoner. The Germans were still not finished. Another force of approximately fourteen men attacked, and the two Americans again held their position, killing four, wounding three, and forcing the remaining soldiers to withdraw. Through the following day, Ohata continued defending the flank as further attacks were repulsed.

The official record naturally emphasizes numbers: forty attackers, thirty-seven killed, three captured, another fourteen attacking later. What those numbers cannot convey is how small the battlefield had become for the men actually occupying it. Ohata had left cover and crossed machine-gun fire because the soldier beside him had lost his weapon. He remained with that soldier while an enemy force repeatedly tried to overwhelm their position. Whatever larger plans commanders had for the Winter Line, for those hours the survival of the platoon's flank depended heavily upon two men refusing to give ground.

Ohata survived Cerasuolo. Hasemoto did not. Fighting continued, and Hasemoto was killed shortly afterward. Ohata received the Distinguished Service Cross for his own actions, but in keeping with the personality his family remembered, he apparently did not consider the decoration something requiring much discussion. His sister Mildred later recalled that the family did not even know he had received the Distinguished Service Cross until newspaper reporters arrived asking questions. Only after she insisted did Allan show them the medal, and then the subject disappeared again.

Cerasuolo was not the end of Ohata's combat service or his development as a leader. The 100th continued through the bitter Italian campaign and later joined the newly arrived 442nd Regimental Combat Team. On August 10, 1944, the 100th formally became part of the 442nd while retaining its historic battalion designation. Ohata received a battlefield commission, becoming an officer, and eventually rose to captain. Records of the 100th show him commanding Company B during later fighting, including the Vosges campaign in France. His advancement from enlisted soldier to company commander was remarkable, but apparently not remarkable enough in Allan Ohata's mind to mention at home. His family later said he never bothered to tell them that he had become a captain.

That silence was characteristic of him. Ohata rarely discussed combat after the war, but one memory escaped. His sister recalled awakening one night when Allan cried out in his sleep. Embarrassed the following morning, he eventually explained that he had dreamed about unexpectedly coming face-to-face with a German soldier on a mountaintop. Ohata had fired first and survived, but the expression of fear and surprise on the dying man's face remained with him long after the war had ended. It was one of the very few glimpses his family ever received into what he carried home from Europe.

After leaving the Army, Ohata used the GI Bill to pursue the education that war had interrupted. He earned an engineering degree from the Milwaukee School of Engineering and built a civilian career in the aerospace industry, first with Northrop Aircraft in Hawthorne, California, and later with Lockheed Missile and Space Company in Sunnyvale. The battlefield sergeant who had risen to captain became an engineer during an era when American aviation and missile technology were moving rapidly into the jet and space ages. Yet the people who knew him in that later life often had no idea what he had done before becoming their coworker. According to his family, some of his friends at Lockheed learned only after his death that Allan Ohata had even served in World War II.

His private nature extended even to illness. Ohata developed colon cancer, but for a long time he told almost no one how seriously ill he had become. His sister later remembered that he seemed unwilling to burden his family or friends with his suffering. Eventually his brother and sister discovered how badly his health had deteriorated and helped him return to Hawaii for treatment. Allan Masaharu Ohata died in Honolulu on October 17, 1977, at the age of fifty-nine. He was buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl.

He died with the Distinguished Service Cross still representing the highest official recognition of the stand he had made at Cerasuolo. More than two decades later, a federal review examined the valor decorations awarded to Asian American soldiers during World War II to determine whether racial discrimination had affected decisions concerning the Medal of Honor. Ohata's actions of November 29 and 30, 1943, were reconsidered along with those of other men of the 100th Infantry Battalion and 442nd Regimental Combat Team. The review determined that his heroism merited the nation's highest military decoration.

On June 21, 2000, President Bill Clinton conducted a White House ceremony recognizing the Nisei soldiers whose awards had been upgraded. Allan Ohata had been dead for almost twenty-three years. His younger brother Donald, the same brother with whom Allan had worked in the surplus-parts business before the war, accepted the Medal of Honor on his behalf. Ohata became one of the twenty-one Medal of Honor recipients now associated with the extraordinary history of the 100th Infantry Battalion and 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

There is an important chronology behind that association. Ohata's Medal of Honor action occurred in November 1943 while he was serving with Company B of the independent 100th Infantry Battalion (Separate), long before the 100th formally became part of the 442nd. Yet unlike some of the early 100th heroes who died before the units were joined, Ohata survived to become an officer and command men within the combined organization. His life therefore bridges both chapters of the story: the original Hawaiian Nisei battalion that went into battle first and the later 100th/442nd whose name became synonymous with Japanese American service in World War II.

The Medal of Honor naturally draws attention to two desperate days near Cerasuolo, but Allan Ohata's character is perhaps clearest in everything he did not say about them. He did not tell his family about the Distinguished Service Cross. He did not bother telling them when he became a commissioned officer. He returned to school, became an engineer, and worked for some of America's most important aerospace companies without making his wartime record part of his public identity. Even when cancer was killing him, his instinct was to keep the burden to himself rather than ask others to carry it.

The quiet child who never complained about chores in his parents' flower garden had become a remarkably quiet man. Yet on November 29, 1943, when the automatic rifleman fifteen yards away called for help and German machine-gun fire filled the space between them, quietness had nothing to do with hesitation. Allan Ohata got up, crossed the distance, and stood beside him.

He spent much of the rest of his life saying almost nothing about what happened next. History eventually said it for him.