The Northwest Times

442d RCT's Major Orville To Speak
At Nisei GI Memorial Day Rites Oct. 31
WASHINGTON
(JACL)

Former 442nd Regimental Combat Team Major Orville C. Shirey will be the guest speaker at the annual Nisei Soldiers Memorial Day services which will be held Sunday morning, October 31, at Arlington National Cemetery. It was announced today by Ira Shimasaki, chairman of the National JACL Arlington Cemetery Committee.

The traditional services will begin at 11 o'clock, Sunday morning, October 31, just ten years after the famed Nisei combat team rescued the Lost Texas Battalion in the Vosges Mountains of Northeastern France.

They will be held at the gravesites of Privates First Class Saburo Tanamachi and Fumitake Nagato, in Section 12, near McClellan Gate, the first Nisei GIs to be interred in Arlington National Cemetery.

Major Shirey is one of the original officers of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, seeing action with the Nisei outfit from its training days, through combat, and until after its occupation duties had been completed. He was G-2 or intelligence officer of the Combat Team during its heroic action which culminated in the relief of the beleaguered Texas unit. As unit historian after the war, he wrote "Americans—The Story of the 442nd Combat Team," which was published by the Infantry Journal as the official history of the Japanese American Combat Team.

Noting that Hiroshi Miyamura, only living Nisei Medal of Honor winner, as chairman of the National JACL Veterans Committee, had issued the invitation to all JACL chapters to observe Nisei Soldiers Memorial Day with appropriate ceremonies, Shimasaki recalled that the Washington, D.C. chapter on behalf of the national organization had sponsored services at Arlington since October 31, 1949, when the first Nisei Soldier Memorial Day was observed.

"The tenth anniversary of the rescue of the Lost Texas Battalion, which represents the high-water mark of the achievements of the 442nd in World War II, is a most appropriate time for all Issei and Nisei to pause and pay tribute to those who, by their gallant and exemplary exploits, made possible our welcome acceptance today as Americans," chairman Shimasaki said.

He expressed the hope that chapters throughout the nation would join the Washington, DC chapter in its observance of this special memorial day which is dedicated to the Nisei soldiers, living and dead, who demonstrated on the battlefield of war that loyalty to the United States is "a matter of the mind and heart, and not one of race or ancestry."