442nd Infantry Regiment (United States) - 522nd Field Artillery Battalion

522nd Field Artillery Battalion

From March 20 to 22, the 442 and the 232 shipped off to Italy from France but the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion was sent to another part of Europe. They traveled 600 miles (970 km) through the Rhone Valley and stopped at Kleinbittersdorf on the east bank of the Saar River. The 522nd aided the 63rd Division on the Siegfried Line defenses south of St. Ingbert from March 12–21. The 522nd became a Roving Battalion, supporting nearly two dozen army units along the front traveling a total of 1,100 miles (1,800 km) across Germany and accomplishing every objective of their fifty-two assignments. The 522nd was the only Nisei unit to fight in Germany. On April 29 scouts of the 522nd located a satellite camp of the infamous Dachau concentration camp next to the small Bavarian town of Lager Lechfeld, adjacent to Hurlach. Scouts from the 522nd were among the first Allied troops to release prisoners from the Kaufering IV Hurlach satellite camp, one of nearly 170 such camps, where more than 3,000 prisoners were held.

“As we came around the way, there were a lot of Jewish inmates coming out of the camp, and I heard that the gate was opened by our advanced scouts. They took a rifle and shot it. I think it was a fellow from Hawaii that did that. I think it was a Captain Taylor, Company B was one of them, but another person from Hawaii, he passed away. They opened the gate and all these German, I mean, Jewish victims were coming out of the camp.”

“Then, when we finally opened the Dachau camp, got in, oh those people were so afraid of us, I guess. You could see the fear in their face. But eventually, they realized that we were there to liberate them and help them.”

“They were all just skin and bones, sunken eyes. I think they were more dead than they were alive because they hadn’t eaten so much because, I think, just before we got there the S.S. people had all pulled back up and they were gone. But, we went there, and outside of the camps there were a lot of railroad cars there that had bodies in them. I had the opportunity to go into the camp there, but you could smell the stench. The people were dead and piled up in the buildings, and it was just unbelievable that the Germans could do that to the Jewish people. I really didn’t think it was possible at all actually.”

The only thing the Nisei could really do was give them clothing and keep them warm. Nisei soldiers began to give the Jewish inmates food from their rations but were ordered to stop because the food could overwhelm the digestive systems of the starved inmates and kill them. As they continued past the subcamp, they discovered the path along which Jewish inmates near Waakirchen had been driven on a death march to another camp.

“No, my first encounter was these lumps in snow, and then I didn’t know what they were, and so I went and investigated them and discovered that they were people, you know. Most of them were skeletons or people who had been beaten to death or just died of starvation or overworked or whatever. Most of them I think died from exposure because it was cold.”

They discovered more subcamps and former inmates wandering the countryside. Following the German surrender, from May to November, the 522nd was assigned to security around Donauwörth, which consisted of setting up roadblocks and sentry posts to apprehend Nazis that were trying to disappear. The 522nd returned to the United States in November 1945.