In late October 1944, the 1st Battalion of the Texas National Guard’s 141st Regiment, aka “the Alamo Regiment,” was trapped behind enemy lines in the Vosges mountains of northeast France, getting pounded mercilessly day and night by German artillery being shot from big guns at the treetops that showered razor-sharp shrapnel and millions of tree splinters down on the hapless Texans.

It was foggy, rainy and bitter cold. They quickly dug foxholes and covered themselves with tree limbs, rocks and dirt, but ammunition was running short; they were out of food and water; and they were down to 211 men. Attempt after attempt was made to rescue them, but they were repelled by hailstorms of bullets from the German machine guns known as “Hitler’s buzz saws.”

Hitler ordered that that any man taken prisoner be killed on the spot, and the Texans became known as “The Lost Battalion.” Finally, the U.S. Army turned to its last resort, the 442nd Regimental Team, a segregated Japanese American outfit that had a reputation for achieving the impossible and that is recognized as the U.S. military’s most decorated unit in history.

It took the 442nd five days of brutal, close-quarters combat on muddy terrain to reach the Texans. They fought tree-to-tree and yard-by-yard to reach the top of the mountain, starting out with 3,000 men and taking 1,000 casualties: 800 wounded and 200 killed in action — all to rescue 211 men.

The first soldier to reach the Texans walked up to their commander, Lt. Marty Higgins, nonchalantly pulled out his Lucky Strikes and said, “Cigarette?” Higgins gratefully accepted. After almost a week of sheer terror, he and his men were finally free from the German trap. Thirty-eight years later, one of the survivors, Lou Haddad, told me, “I was never so happy to see anyone in my life!”

In 1962 Texas Gov. John Connally (who was wounded the next year in the assassination of John F. Kennedy), made everyone in the 442nd “Honorary Texans.” People in Houston still hold ceremonies every year to celebrate them, and so do people in Bruyeres, France, which they liberated just hours before the German commandant Klaus Barbie, the notorious “Butcher of Lyon,” was scheduled to hold a mass execution of more than a thousand resistance fighters, including a teenager named Francois Mitterrand, who grew up to become a French president.

The heartbreaking irony is that while they were performing all these miracles for our country, their own families were suffering back home behind barbed wire in what were euphemistically called “relocation camps” for the “crime” of having Japanese ancestry. Even when their own country betrayed them, these men kept the faith.

One of the soldiers who was badly wounded in the rescue of the Lost Battalion was Lawson Sakai. He survived surgery at a hospital in Dijon, France, rejoined his buddies and kept fighting until the war’s end. He was awarded four Purple Hearts and suffered a fifth wound but refused to let his name be put up for a Purple Heart that time because he didn’t think his wound was serious enough. He also was awarded four Bronze Stars, a Combat Infantry Badge and a Congressional Gold Medal.

For the rest of his life he and his buddies — especially John Togashi, Tad Masaoka and Shig Futigaki — dedicated themselves to keeping their fallen comrades’ memories alive by holding annual reunions in Las Vegas, making regular visits to Bruyeres — where the French always greeted them as liberating heroes — and conducting a memorial ceremony every year in Roberts park in the Oakland hills on Armed Forces Day, the third Saturday in May.

He  founded Friends and Family of Nisei Veterans in 2005 to continue the ceremony after he and his friends were gone. He died at age 96 in 2020, but his daughters, Janet and Joanne, are keeping up the tradition.

This year, the memorial ceremony will start at noon May 16. Boy Scouts will troop the colors, a Sea Scouts band will play patriotic music, the speeches will be short but heartfelt and the event will conclude with a Buddhist incense burning.

Roberts Regional Recreation Area is on Skyline Boulevard, the last right turn before you get to the Chabot Space & Science Center. I don’t care how warm it is; bring a jacket or sweater anyway. You’ll be in a beautiful redwood grove that has its own microclimate. See you there!

Martin Snapp can be reached at catman442@comcast.net.