BACK TO S AY 'THANK YOU' Area's Warm Welcome To Nisei Troops At McCoy In '42 Is Recalled Here By SANFORD GOLTZ IT COULD HAVE BEEN a Veterans Day story, I suppose. that Andy Fraser of Hopkins. Minn., brought to La Crosse, because that was about the time he was here to see some old friends and talk to the La Crosse Kiwanis Club. But it makes a good Christmas story, too. because of his reason tor coming and what he had to say. Fraser grew up in Hawaii. He was a young shavetail in the Hawaiian National Guard —also known as the “pineapple army”—when the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor. Understandably everyone began looking askance at any Japanese in the islands, including the Nisei born there who had never seen Japan. And there w’ere thousands of Nisei in the Hawaiian National Guard when war broke out. SIX MONTHS LATER, in May of ’42, all Guardsmen of Japanese ancestry were put into a special training unit, loaded aboard ship, and headed for the states. They were practically smuggled into San Franci co. transferred to Pullmans with the shades drawn, and headed for W isconsin. “We got off the train and marched off to the old area of Camp McCoy,” Fraser recalls. “On the way, we passed the barbed wire compound for German prisoners of war. And our boys began to wonder if they’d been sold out.” They soon learned differently. PEOPLE AROUND MCCOY —in Sparta, Tomah, La Crosse —took the Hawaiians into their homes, took them to church, had them out to civic affairs. A service officer rounded up 900 pairs of ice skates for the newcomers, who’d never seen snow or ice. They were nuts about baseball; somehow they got the equipment for that. Midwest food was a drastic change. The QM traded potatoes fcr all the rice to be found. They raided Milwaukee for soya sauce. And La Crosse merchants found them Boy Scout shoes—the Army issue wasn’t small enough for Nisei who averaged five-feet-two. Not that there was so much time for socializing, or worrying about misfit uniforms. The 1.500 members of the 100th Infantry Battalion were training day and night. BY THEN THEY KNEW they were Americans, fighting an American war. By war’s end the rest of the country knew it: the 100th racked up 4,340 decorations in combat, including more than 1,700 Purple Hearts, a Medal of Congress winner, and 24 Distinguished Service Crosses. It was the most-decorated unit in U.S. Army history, and still is. “It was the tremendous hospitality and understanding by the wonderful people of La Crosse and the currounding territory,” said Fraser when he was here last month. “You maue us feel welcome, and none of us ever forgot it.” And so Andy Fraser, who helped the Orient-based Nisei of Hawaii and the European- stock Wisconsinites understand each other, was back in La Crosse 21 years later to say thank you. And he brought the Kiwanis Club a 50-star flag, for Hawaiian Statehood still means much to him as it does to his wartime buddies of the 100th Bn. BROTHERHOOD, understanding, respect for others, the helping hand: these are what Andv Fraser and his far-from-home Nisei remembered about La Crosse and its neighbors. Perhaps these things come with the common effort of war. Certainly they are a part of the holiday season, when “being good” comes easier to adults as well as to toddlers We are indebted to Andy Fraser for recalling a time when the community and the stranger gained so much from an outstretched hand.