Oct

Today in Smithsonian History: October 1, 1987

Curator Tom Crouch and part of the exhibition “A More Perfect Union.” (Photo by Richard Strauss, as featured in the Torch, September 1989 )

October 1, 1987 A More Perfect Union: Japanese Americans and the United States Constitution opens at the National Museum of American History. The exhibition is designed to focus attention on the Bicentennial of the Constitution and explores a period when racial prejudice and fear upset the balance between the rights of citizens and the power of the state and led to the internment of some 120,000 Japanese Americans for much of World War II.

The exhibition also includes a section on the men in the 100th Battalion/442nd Regimental Combat Team, an all-Japanese American unit of the U.S. Army. Never numbering more than 4,500 men, the 100th/442nd consisted of extraordinarily aggressive fighters. By war’s end, the combined unit, composed almost entirely of Japanese Americans, was the most decorated U.S. military unit for its size and length of service. The soldiers of these units earned a total of 18,143 individual decorations and took a casualty rate of 300 percent.

President Harry Truman stood in a driving rain near the White House to present the Presidential Distinguished Unit Citation to the 100/442nd Regimental Combat Team. July 15, 1946. The President stated: ‘You fought not only the enemy, but you fought prejudice — and you won. Keep up that fight, and we will continue to win — to make this great Republic stand for just what the Constitution says it stands for.'” (Photo courtesy of the National Archives)

Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution Archives