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Hear the stories of those who were there.
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Bob Dole left the University of
Kansas to serve in the United States Army as a
Second Lieutenant and platoon leader in the legendary Tenth Mountain Division.
In 1945, Dole was seriously wounded while fighting in Italy and spent nearly four
years recuperating. Dole followed his heroic contribution to the war effort with a
distinguished political career, serving in both the United States House of
Representatives and the U.S. Senate. In 1996, Dole ran for the presidency as the
Republican Party's presidential nominee.
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In 1942, Luther Smith, a fledgling fighter pilot from Des Moines, Iowa, joined other
African-American flyers in forming an all-African-American aerial combat unit at
the Tuskegee Army Airfield in Tuskegee, Alabama. From June 1944 to May 1945, the
Tuskegee Airmen flew 200,000 missions without losing a single bomber to the
enemy-a record that was never broken.
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Joe Ichiuji was serving as a US Army Corporal when Japanese forces attacked
Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Within two months of the attack, the Army
discharged Ichiuji, citing "for convenience of the government" as the reason.
Shortly thereafter, Ichuiji and his family, along with more than 100,000 Japanese-
Americans, were ordered to remote relocation centers. Ichuigi remained at a
relocation camp in Arizona until early 1943, when government officials came there
seeking recruits for an all-Japanese-American combat unit. Ichiuji signed on
as an artillery gunner with the 442nd Regimental Combat team, a unit comprised
of 1,500 recruits from the relocation camps and 3,000 Japanese-American
volunteers from the Hawaiian Islands.
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Josette Wingo joined the WAVES, an acronym for "women accepted for
volunteer emergency service," fresh out of Parochial School in Detroit. Wingo
deliberately flunked the Navy's clerical exam in hope of receiving a more
adventurous assignment. She was too short to give parachute instruction, but
just right to teach sailors gunnery at the Armed Guard Center on Treasure
Island in San Francisco Bay.
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Mildred Sargent was a Nashville homemaker who migrated to Detroit to work
in an aircraft plant assembling Navy Helldivers. Sargent was just 21 when she
joined the workforce in Detroit. Like thousands of women across the country, Sargent
made a tremendous contribution on the home front, helping to turn out planes and
ammunition needed for the war effort.
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