 setting with such quiet dignity. This mother with her child. All are Americans of Japanese descent. So too is the rest of this audience, which here listens with solemn pride, as the army honors their sacred dead. Japanese-American soldiers killed in action. Afterwards, a wife who has lost her husband is presented with the Silver Star. A father receives the Distinguished Service Cross. His son was killed in Italy, where he and thousands of other Japanese-Americans, including the son of this woman, have produced one of the most remarkable combat records of the war, in decisive battles. And each time, these men of the 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Combat Team have been right out in front. Here, after bitter fighting, they enter Livorno. One more ill-fated town that has been pounded into rubble as the Fifth Army makes its slow, torturous advance of the hot, dry valleys of Italy. Already within the buildings, the dead have begun to stink, as the men deploy cautiously, wary of enemy snipers that have been left behind. And the Nazis, when they're rounded up, were plenty surprised. Suspicious of their own propaganda, Hans believes he's begun to fight Japan, too. Brits thinks that maybe these GIs are Chinese troops recently transferred to the Italian front. The casualties are returned to field hospitals. The seriously wounded immediately undergo emergency operations, while this GI, lying under a tent, has already begun his period of convalescence. Outside, the men walk around, read, talk, and anxiously await the day when they will go back into action. Sometimes they don't wait. But pulling an A-wall in reverse, join their companies on the battlefield before their wounds are completely healed. Sounds crazy? Well, maybe. But these men don't think so. They've got a reason for being one of the top outfits in this war, as one of them testifies. I'm from Seattle. After war was declared, I was evacuated from the Pacific Coast. When the call came for volunteers for a combat team, I volunteered from a relocation center to show my loyalty and to prove that I had the right to live as a good American citizen. That's pretty much the story of all these men. Born in Hawaii or on the Pacific Coast, they've grown up and gone to school in Honolulu, Pomona, Los Angeles, San Jose. They've played football, visited drive-ins, gone to the movies at night. Their memories are the memories of all Americans, as the paper airplanes which they make for these Italian kids so clearly proves. At the same time, these men are also aware of the great prejudice against them because of the war in the Pacific. They know that there are people back home who make no distinction between them and the Japs we have fought at Tarawa, Saipan, and the Philippines. That's why these men originally volunteered and why, for 11 long months now, they've been in continuous combat. They've wanted to prove to other Americans how wrong it is to judge a man by the pigment of his skin or the shape of his eyes. They've wanted to prove that a soldier can fight better as a free man with a belief in God than he can as a slave with a belief in the imperial Japanese religion of Shintoism. Can I know how to? Your battalion has done a wonderful job in this Italian campaign. What are your reasons for fighting? I'm fighting over here for the better things of life and to preserve the American way of living. After their gear is once more in order, the men of the 100th Infantry Battalion march to where they are to receive a citation from General Mark Clark, commander of the Fifth Army. General Clark, as he will tell you, is of Irish English descent. Many of our GIs who once fought against the Italians are of Italian descent. Thousands of our men now fighting on the Western front are of German descent. But as in the case of these Japanese, they are no less Americans, ready to fight for their country and their belief in democracy. All of you Americans of Japanese descent have a right to be proud today. You have demonstrated true Americanism and true American citizenship on the field of battle. You have realized the necessity of coming to this distant land and leaving your homes and your loved ones in order that you could destroy this enemy who would take from you the American way of life and the freedoms which we value so highly in America. You have another right to be proud, for you have reached the high standards of American fighting men. You are always willing to close with the enemy. He has no bluff on you, and you've always defeated him. And let me tell you again, the 34th Division is proud of you. The Fifth Army is proud of you. America is proud of you. And I know that whatever future action you go into, you will conduct yourselves with glory and bring about the peace that we are entitled to. Good luck to you, and God bless you. November 7, 1944, the people left by war in this small Massachusetts town went to the polls and voted in a national election. Very much as people in the United States have voted since the election of George Washington in 1789. The old ballot box in the town courthouse had ticked off votes for Cleveland and Harrison and McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt. The memories of some of the older voters reached far enough back in time to recall how the power of a popular vote had shaped their way of life. A voter in Maryland had once been sold as a slave. A full-blooded Indian could remember the opening of the West. An old man in a Los Angeles park talked about the year 1864 when ballot boxes were brought up to the front lines in the Civil War. 1944 was the second time in our country's history that American voters were soldiers in the field. GIs cast an American ballot and took an American oath in rickety orderly room shacks all over the world. It made you wonder about election day back home. And November 7, 1944 was a good day for remembering the streets of America. You couldn't miss the purpose of the day if you were there. Liquor dealers slept late. Everybody worked to get out the vote and all of it built up to something like the excitement before a big game where the outcome is in the dark and the stakes are a way of life.