Many of them were from Hawai'i, where Nisei made up a substantial portion of the Hawaii National Guard's 298th and 299th Regiments.

Army by the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Were of legal age, and many were drafted, with some 5,000 having been inducted into the U.S. Both of these developments affected Japanese Americans. reinstituted the draft in November of 1940 and also recognized the need to begin training Americans in the Japanese language to serve as translators and interpreters in the event of war. With war clouds on the horizon and tensions with Japan escalating, the U.S. citizenship, a hope that would mainly be dashed. Signed up with the hope that their service would lead to their being granted U.S. Some 838 resident Japanese were drafted in Hawai'i, necessitating an all-Japanese unit, Company D of the National Guard. Making up over one-third of the population of Hawaii by this time, Japanese Americans were among the first to enlist. As early as the Spanish American War, some Japanese immigrants volunteered for military service as an avenue to gaining citizenship.Īmerica's entrance into World War I saw the first large-scale military service by Japanese Americans. One of the most vexing was the denial of naturalization rights, eliminating one of the standard avenues by which immigrants had been able to protect their rights. That saw a variety of legal restrictions promulgated against them. Japanese migrants soon found themselves the target of an Large scale Japanese migration to Hawai'i began in 1885 and to the continental U.S.

As historian Brenda Moore writes, 'racial and ethnic minorities were afforded no more rights than noncitizens many served in the armed services with the expectation of attaining the citizenship rights denied them.' As was the case with many minority groups, Japanese Americans viewed military service as an avenue to upward mobility.

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