(Nick) wrote in message . com...
...
During the Second World War, the United States Army was racially
segregated. Daniel Inouye joined the 442nd Regimental Combat Team,
a (soon to be proven in combat) elite unit of Japanese Americans,
who were commanded mostly by white officers.
...
"The 442nd had run up an awesome record. There were those who
called us the most decorated outfit in the U.S. Army. We won
ten unit citations and 3915 individual decorations, including
47 Distinguished Service Crosses and a Congressional Medal of Honor.
But the price was catastrophic. Nearly 700 men were dead,
1700 maimed and critically wounded, and 3600 in all had become
casualties. The only men in the outfit ever captured by the
Germans were a handful of wounded and the medics who refused
to leave them even as the enemy closed in."
--Daniel Inouye (Journey to Washington, pp. 163-4)

In general, the United States Army has respected the right of its
soldiers to exercise their freedom of religion, but its treatment
of many Japanese American soldiers was an exception. During the
Second World War, very many, if not most, Japanese American soldiers
were Buddhists; indeed, a common epithet among other American soldiers
for them was "Buddhaheads". But the U.S. Army evidently regarded
Buddhism as an alien, subversive representative of Japanese culture,
which it did not understand and would not tolerate.

Accordingly, whenever, on official forms, a Japanese American soldier
specified his religion as "Buddhism", the official record was altered
*without* his permission to list him as "Protestant". Moreover, at
least in theory, he would be prohibited from observing his true
religious faith. In practice, however, apparently there often was a
de facto "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Many commanders tended to
be sensible enough to "look the other way" about any discreet Buddhist
observances among their well-disciplined Japanese American soldiers.

--Nick