A LOOK BACK:Above and beyond: a true Orange County hero

Over the past several years I was fortunate to have attended several Memorial and Veterans Day activities in Huntington Beach, during which members from our local American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars reminded us of the sacrifices their comrades have made to keep America free.

Invariably, Stan Cohen would be standing proudly at attention while the Pledge of Allegiance was given, and in the audience would be one veteran from the Kazuo Masuda VFW Post.

Who was this boy and why is he regarded as a true Orange County hero?

This week we’ll look back to see what Kazuo Masuda did to become an American man among men.

Kazuo Masuda was born at the end of the First World War in 1919, the son of Gensuki and Tamae Masuda. He had four brothers, Takashi, Mitsuo, Masao and Joe, and four sisters.

The Masuda family lived in Talbert (Fountain Valley) and attended Huntington Beach High School where Kazuo graduated with his class in 1936.

With the war in Europe in full swing, Kazuo and his brother Takashi volunteered for the army on Oct. 16, 1941, not knowing that in less than two months America would be plunged into a world war with the bombing by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor.

Kazuo would receive his basic training at Camp Roberts after which he would be assigned to the Japanese-American 442nd Regimental Combat team. He would be transferred overseas in April 1944. Kazuo would become a member of the 34th Red Bull Division as part of the U.S. Fifth Army in Italy.

Meanwhile back home in Talbert, his family, being of Japanese ancestry, was removed from their home and relocated by the War Relocation Authority along with most Japanese families here in Orange County, to a place far from sunny California.

Back in Italy, his Japanese regiment was storming the German army’s main line near the Italian town of Castellina. A steady barrage of artillery fire from the Germans prevented the American army from advancing.

Masuda and his six-man mortar squad was operating from a forward observation post, but because of tremendous enemy fire, the post was rendered useless.

Kazuo’s squad was called to silence the enemy’s guns.

Unwilling to risk the lives of his mortar crew, Kazuo filled his ammunition pouches. Carrying a mortar tube with about 20 rounds of ammunition under his right arm and an extra steel helmet in his left, Kazuo dashed up a slope toward a barrage of German gunfire.

Alternating between running and side-stepping as he had done on his high school football team as a halfback, Kazuo reached the top of the slope. There he filled the extra helmet with dirt as a base plate for his mortar and, wrapping his legs around the mortar tube, he began firing his weapon at the enemy.

When his ammunition ran out he returned to his main line for more.

He would again climb the slope, this time with two cases of ammunition that he began firing into the enemy’s position. This time the Germans retreated to another location in mass confusion.

Weeks later Kazuo preceded his squad and found himself only five yards from the enemy at Casino and, covering his men with his machine gun, he ordered his men to withdraw.

The next day, Aug. 27, 1944, his comrades found him dead, his machine gun still in his hand and facing the enemy. They found that he was lying over the body of a dead German soldier.

His brother Takashi had been wounded in action in France.

After the war ended his family returned to their Fountain Valley home from a war relocation camp at Fort Missoula, Mont., where five hoodlums that tried to frighten the family into leaving Orange County confronted Kazuo’s sister, Mary.

But Mary was not to be terrorized by these thugs, even after they told her they would send her to Los Angeles, but “maybe she would never get there alive.”

On Dec. 8, 1945, a lone plane from Washington, D.C., landed at El Toro Marine Base carrying General Joseph W. “Vinegar Joe” Stillwell and his wife.

The general and a military party traveled to the Masuda residence in Fountain Valley to personally present the family with the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army’s second-highest award.

On the steps of the family’s home, Stillwell pinned the medal onto Mary’s the black dress while some 200 people watched the ceremony, including several top Orange County officials.

Mary thanked the general on behalf of the family in a short speech, using notes hidden in her handkerchief.

When Mary finished speaking, she unpinned the medal from her dress and slowly pinned it on her mother’s dress.

Stillwell then summed up the feelings of the American people when he said, “we want to convey to you the deepest respect and admiration of every decent American,”

Today the name of Kazuo Masuda lives on with a school named in his honor as well as a VFW Post in San Pedro.

All this in memory of that Huntington High student who went above and beyond his duty and gave his life for his men and his country.