A Tradition of Honor

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A Tradition of Honor is an 82-minute documentary that follows the story of the legendary Japanese American World War II units: the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the 100th Battalion, and the Military Intelligence Service. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, many people saw Japanese Americans as the enemy. The government reinforced this belief when it forced 120,000 Japanese Americans on the West Coast into internment camps. A Tradition of Honor follows the journey of the 100th Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team from Hawaii and the internment camps as they fight the Nazis from Italy and into France where they successfully rescued the Lost Battalion; one of the ten most significant battles in US history. In one of the more ironic chapters of the war, soldiers who had family members still in the internment camps, help liberate survivors of the Holocaust in the concentration camps at Dachau. In the Pacific Theatre, Japanese Americans serving in the Military Intelligence Service provided information to General MacArthur that surpassed any in the history of military conflict. But their success in the field of battle would be tempered by what they encountered during the reconstruction of Japan. A Tradition of Honor is the story of a generation of Americans whose patriotism in the face of racial prejudice would forever redefine what it means to be an American.