The Purple Heart Battalion

Tuesday, April 16, 2024 – Wednesday, May 15, 2024
East Rotunda Gallery

The 442nd Regimental Combat Team

None of us thought we were coming home alive. —Lawson Sakai

Following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Roosevelt administration required people of Japanese descent living on the West Coast to leave their homes and live in camps. 2,100 of the relocated citizens volunteered for military service. Together with Japanese American soldiers from Hawaii, they formed the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

The 442nd fought in seven major European military campaigns. Dubbed the “Purple Heart Battalion,” it is the most decorated American military unit for its size and length of service. The unit received more than 18,000 individual decorations, including 21 Medals of Honor, more than 4,000 Purple Hearts, and the Congressional Gold Medal.

This pocket log was used to keep a record of the Japanese American infantrymen who were killed in action or died of wounds. In all, the 442nd suffered almost 10,000 casualties and 600 deaths.

pocket log of soldier in 442nd

Pocket Log of 442nd Infantry Killed In Action and Died of Wounds
National Archives, Records of the Adjutant General’s Office
View in National Archives Catalog

This Featured Document Display is made possible in part by the National Archives Foundation through the generous support of Verizon.

For more information, click here.

Past Featured Records

Mr. Santa Claus: Romance of the Postal Service
On Display 12/5/2024 – 1/8/2025 This holiday featured film is one of a series of silent movies produced by the Post Office Department in 1921. The mini melodrama shows how the postal service helps make a happy Christmas for a boy and his sister when their “Dere Sandy Claws” letter is answered by a young married couple. https://catalog.archives....
Bring Them Home, Uncle Sam
Soldiers arrive home aboard the S.S. Haverford as the transport ship pulls into Philadelphia, 1918. Records of War Department General and Special Staffs On Display 10/31/2024 – 12/4/2024 More than two million American service members were overseas with the American Expeditionary Forces when the guns fell silent on November 11, 1918, ending World War I. Americans would continue to ...
Betty Ford: Raising Breast Cancer Awareness
On Display 10/03/2024 - 10/30/2024 Just weeks after she became First Lady, Betty Ford was diagnosed with breast cancer. On September 26, 1974, doctors discovered a lump in her breast during a routine medical examination. She underwent a mastectomy two days later. Breaking with social conventions of the time, Betty Ford shared her cancer diagnosis with the public. This ...
Title IX
An Act of June 23, 1972, Public Law 92-318, 86 STAT 235, to Amend the Higher Education Act of 1965, the Vocational Educational Act of 1963, the General Education Provisions Act (Creating a National Foundation for Postsecondary Education and a National Institute of Education), the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, Public Law 874, Eighty-First Congress, and Related Acts, ...
Court-Martial record of Lieutenant Frederick Gotthold Enslin, March 10, 1778.
On March 10, 1778, Lieutenant Frederick Gotthold Enslin became the first U.S. soldier court-martialed for “attempting to commit sodomy” with another soldier. His sentence was to be literally drummed out of the Continental Army by its regiments’ fifes and drums. Enslin was told “never to return.” More than 230 years after Enslin’s court martial, gay men, lesbians, ...