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Sunday, November 6, 2011
[OOC] The Singing Swans
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You might want to work on the grammar of your intro for I didn't quite completely understand the plotline. Was there originally 4 musicians? That's my main question. I think I got the rest.
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This topic is an Out Of Character part of the roleplay, ?The Singing Swans?. Anything posted here will also show up there.Topic Tags:
Forum for completely Out of Character (OOC) discussion, based around whatever is happening In Character (IC). Discuss plans, storylines, and events; Recruit for your roleplaying game, or find a GM for your playergroup.This is the auto-generated OOC topic for the roleplay "The Singing Swans"
You may edit this first post as you see fit.
I am the beginning of sorrow, and the end of sickness. You cannot express happiness without me, yet I am in the midst of crosses. I am always in risk, yet never in danger. You may find me in the sun, but I am never out of darkness.
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peachyme123 - Member for 0 years
You might want to work on the grammar of your intro for I didn't quite completely understand the plotline. Was there originally 4 musicians? That's my main question. I think I got the rest.
Oh I would like to reserve a girl.
I am not weird, I am gifted.-
Zodia195 - Member for 0 years
How old would you like the girls to be?
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SlightlyInsane - Member for 0 years
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2012 race likely to be close, tough, maybe brutal (AP)
WASHINGTON ? One year to go until Election Day and the Republican presidential field is deeply unsettled, leaving President Barack Obama only to guess who his opponent will be. But the race's contours are starting to come into view.
It's virtually certain that the campaign will be a close, grinding affair, markedly different from the 2008 race. It will play out amid widespread economic anxiety and heightened public resentment of government and politicians.
Americans who were drawn to the drama of Obama's barrier-breaking battle with Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the up-and-down fortunes of John McCain and Sarah Palin, are likely to see a more partisan contest this time, with Ohio and Florida playing crucial roles as they did in 2000 and 2004.
Republicans have their script; they just need to pick the person to deliver it. It will portray Obama as a failed leader who backs away when challenged and who doesn't understand what it takes to create jobs and spur business investment.
Obama will highlight his opponent's ties to the tea party and its priorities. He will say Republicans are obsessed with protecting millionaires' tax cuts while the federal debt soars and working people struggle.
On several issues, voters will see a more distinct contrast between the nominees than in 2008. Even the most moderate Republican candidates have staked out more rigidly conservative views on immigration, taxes and spending than did Arizona Sen. McCain.
Democrats say Obama has little control over the two biggest impediments to his re-election: unemployment and congressional gridlock.
The jobless rate will stand at levels that have not led to a president's re-election since the Great Depression. Largely because of that, Obama will run a much more negative campaign, his aides acknowledge, even if it threatens to demoralize some supporters who were inspired by his 2008 message of hope.
The tea party, one of the modern era's most intriguing and effective political movements, will play its first role in a presidential race. After helping Republicans win huge victories in last year's congressional elections, activists may push the GOP presidential contenders so far right that the eventual nominee will struggle to appeal to independents.
"It's going to be extremely different, with much more hand-to-hand combat, from one foxhole to another, targeted to key states," said Chris Lehane, who helped run Democrat Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign.
Republican consultant Terry Holt agreed. "You can expect a very negative campaign," he said. "In 2008, Barack Obama was peddling hope and change. Now he's peddling fear and poverty."
Obama and his aides reject that characterization, of course. They say the Republican candidates are under the tea party's spell, noting that all of them said they would reject a deficit-reduction plan even if it included $10 in spending cuts for every dollar in new taxes.
Both parties agree that jobs will be the main issue. The White House predicts unemployment will hover around 9 percent for at least a year, a frighteningly high level for a president seeking a second term.
GOP lawmakers, who control the House and have filibuster power in the Senate, have blocked Obama's job proposals, mainly because they would raise taxes on the wealthy. The candidates, echoing their Republican colleagues in Congress, say new jobs will follow cuts in taxes, regulation and federal spending.
With the economy struggling and Obama hemmed in legislatively, his advisers sometimes say the election will be a choice between the president and his challenger, rather than a referendum on the administration's performance.
"That's a very genteel way of saying `We're going to rip your face off,'" said Dan Schnur, a former aide to McCain and other Republicans, and now a politics professor at the University of Southern California. Obama has little choice but to try to portray the GOP alternative as worse than his own disappointing record, Schnur said.
Some Republican candidates would be tougher targets than others. Texas Gov. Rick Perry promotes his state's significant job growth, leaving Democrats to grouse that he was a lucky bystander rather than the cause.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney says his years in the private sector make him best suited to lead an economic expansion. But Obama's allies have gathered details of jobs that were eliminated when Bain Capital, a takeover firm that Romney headed, restructured several companies.
Obama can't fine-tune his strategy until Republicans pick their nominee, and that may take months. So he's spending part of this year traveling to some of the most contested states, telling disappointed liberals he still deserves their strong backing and trying to convince centrists that he can revive the economy.
Obama's overall job-approval rating was 46 percent in an Associated Press-GfK poll from October. Only 36 percent of adults approved of his handling of the economy, a worrisome number for any incumbent.
Yet 78 percent said he's a likeable person, which forces Republicans to be careful. It's possible Obama will run a more cut-throat campaign than will his challenger. For now, anyway, Romney calls Obama "is a nice guy" who doesn't know how to lead.
Republican insiders see Romney as their most plausible nominee. He has run the steadiest and best-financed campaign thus far, relying on lessons and friends picked up in his 2008 bid.
But the GOP race has been unpredictable, and Romney has struggled to exceed one-fourth of the support in Republican polls. Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota emerged as his main challenger last summer, only to be supplanted by Perry. A few halting debate performances hurt Perry, and former pizza company executive Herman Cain replaced him at or near the top of the polls, along with Romney.
Last week, Cain tried to swat down allegations of sex harassment from the 1990s. Party activists are waiting for the impact. Some, however, think Cain's lack of political experience and his unorthodox style, which includes largely ignoring Iowa and New Hampshire, are more likely to bring him down.
Two schools of thought run through Republican circles. One holds that Romney is the logical nominee and will consolidate the party's somewhat grudging support after conservatives stop flirting with longshots such as Bachmann and Cain. Republicans have a history of nominating the runner-up from previous primaries, and Romney fits that bill.
The competing theory holds that Americans are angrier at government and the two parties than political pros realize, and the tea party is just the start of a potent, long-lasting movement. Under this scenario, Romney can never placate conservative voters because of his establishment ties and the more liberal positions he once held on abortion, gay rights and gun control.
If this view is right, the shifting support for Bachmann, Perry and Cain is more than a flirtation, and someone will emerge as the "non-Romney" who wins the nomination.
Veterans of past presidential campaigns tend to doubt this outcome. But even with Obama's economic woes, plenty of Republican insiders worry that Romney's inconsistency on important issues and voters' doubts about his authenticity could let the president slip away.
Romney should have put his GOP rivals "in the rear-view mirror" by now, said Mike McKenna, a Republican lobbyist who has tracked focus groups and polls in various states. "The problem is, a huge part of the party views him as a third Bush term."
McKenna said pundits don't realize that the tea party movement was as much a rejection of the high-spending, high-deficit practices of President George W. Bush and Republican lawmakers as it was a reaction against Obama's health care plan. With his ties to New England and the party establishment, Romney "looks like the lineal descendant of Bush," McKenna said.
He said he fears that a lot of conservatives will sit out the 2012 election if Romney is the nominee.
Plenty of strategists reject that view. They think conservatives' deep antipathy toward Obama will cause them to overcome their misgivings and fully back Romney.
David Axelrod, Obama's top political adviser, points to issues Obama can cite success on, from health care and undermining al-Qaida to reviving the auto industry and ending the Iraq war.
"We're going to have a very robust debate," he said. "The Republicans say if we just cut taxes and spending and regulations, we will grow. And I think the American people understand it's more complicated than that."
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Saturday, November 5, 2011
U.S. blames China, Russia for cyber espionage (Reuters)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? China and Russia are using cyber espionage to steal U.S. trade and technology secrets to bolster their own economic development, which poses a threat to U.S. prosperity and security, a U.S. intelligence report said on Thursday.
So much sensitive information and research is on computer networks that foreign intruders can collect massive amounts of data quickly and with little risk because they are difficult to detect, according to the report to Congress titled "Foreign Spies Stealing US Economic Secrets in Cyberspace."
Foreign intelligence services, corporations and individuals increased their efforts to steal U.S. technologies which cost millions of dollars to develop, according to a report by the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, a U.S. government agency. The report covers 2009-2011.
"The nations of China and Russia, through their intelligence services and through their corporations, are attacking our research and development," National Counterintelligence Executive Robert Bryant said.
"That's a serious issue because if we fuel their economies on our information, I don't think that's right," he said at a news conference.
Intelligence services, private companies, academic institutions and citizens of dozens of countries target the United States, the report said. But it only named China and Russia.
"Chinese actors are the world's most active and persistent perpetrators of economic espionage," the report said.
Russia was also singled out. "Russia's intelligence services are conducting a range of activities to collect economic information and technology from US targets," the report said.
It acknowledged the difficulty of determining who exactly is behind a cyber attack. U.S. companies have reported intrusions into their computer networks that originated in China, but U.S. intelligence agencies cannot confirm who specifically is behind them.
"To a certain degree that's determined by the sophistication of the attack," Bryant said. "If it's a very sophisticated attack we basically assume that either a foreign intelligence service or a government sponsor is somewhere involved."
'QUIET MENACE'
Information and communications technology, military technologies such as unmanned aerial vehicles, and civilian technologies such as clean energy, and healthcare and pharmaceuticals are areas that may be of interest as foreign cyber espionage targets, the report said.
The National Science Foundation said research and development spending by U.S. government, industry and universities was $398 billion in 2008. But there are no reliable gauges for how much is stolen through cyber spying.
"This is a quiet menace to our economy with notably big results," Bryant said. "Trade secrets developed over thousands of working hours by our brightest minds are stolen in a split second and transferred to our competitors."
Intelligence officials say it is part of the national policy of China and Russia to try to acquire sensitive technology which they need for their own economic development, while the United States does not do economic espionage as part of its national policy.
The State Department in June said it had asked Beijing to investigate Google's allegation of a major hacking attack that the Internet giant said originated in China.
China is often blamed for cyber attacks, but Beijing's response has been that it is unfairly accused by countries unhappy with its economic rise and that it has also been a victim of cyber attacks.
House intelligence committee Chairman Mike Rogers, a Republican, said the report confirmed what he is constantly hearing. "This once again underscores the need for America's allies across Asia and Europe to join forces to pressure Beijing to end this illegal behavior."
The intelligence report said some U.S. allies and partners use their access to U.S. institutions to acquire sensitive economic and technology information, mainly through human spying tactics. But they were not named in the report, which included input from intelligence agencies, the private sector, and academia.
The pace of foreign economic and industrial espionage against the United States is accelerating, the report said.
"We judge that the governments of China and Russia will remain aggressive and capable collectors of sensitive US economic information and technologies, particularly in cyberspace."
China and Russia are "motivated by the desire to achieve economic, strategic, and military parity with the United States," the report said.
The intelligence report was released publicly to raise awareness of the issue in the hopes that public, private and academic partnerships can find solutions, officials said.
"This is a national long-term strategic threat to the United States of America," Bryant said. This is an issue where "failure is not an option."
(Editing by Mohammad Zargham and Doina Chiacu)
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Slaying plunges Colombia rebels into uncertainty
FILE - In this April 28, 2000 file photo, Alfonso Cano, a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) commander who will head the Boliviarian Movement, a new clandestine political party for the rebels, attends a practice ceremony for the political party opening outside of San Vicente del Caguan in the FARC controlled zone of Colombia. According to Colombian military authorities, Cano, the top FARC commander, was killed in a military operation on Friday Nov. 4, 2011. (AP Photo/Scott Dalton, File)
FILE - In this April 28, 2000 file photo, Alfonso Cano, a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) commander who will head the Boliviarian Movement, a new clandestine political party for the rebels, attends a practice ceremony for the political party opening outside of San Vicente del Caguan in the FARC controlled zone of Colombia. According to Colombian military authorities, Cano, the top FARC commander, was killed in a military operation on Friday Nov. 4, 2011. (AP Photo/Scott Dalton, File)
Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos greets journalists at a military base where he spoke to and shook hands with soldiers who took part in the operation that led to the death of Alfonso Cano, 63, the top leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, in Popayan, Colombia, Saturday Nov. 5, 2011. Cano was killed in a military raid in a remote area of the southwestern state of Cauca. The rebel leader's body was taken to a morgue in Popayan. (AP Photo/Carlos Julio Martinez)
EDS. NOTE GRAPHIC CONTENT - In this photo released by Colombia's Defense Ministry, the body of Alfonso Cano, the top leader of the Revolutionary Armed of Colombia, or FARC, is seen after being killed in a military operation in Suarez, Colombia, Friday Nov. 4, 2011. Colombia's Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon confirmed that Cano was killed Friday in a military raid in the country's southwest. Cano, the head of the FARC, had been the top target of Colombian authorities since September 2010, when they killed the insurgency's military chief, Jorge Briceno, in a bombing raid. (AP Photo/Colombian Defense Ministry)
Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos talks to the press in Cartagena, Colombia, Friday Nov. 4, 2011. Santos confirmed that the top leader of Colombia's main rebel group, Alfonso Cano, was killed Friday in a military raid in the country's southwest. Cano, the head of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, had been the top target of Colombian authorities since September 2010, when they killed the insurgency's military chief, Jorge Briceno, in a bombing raid. (AP Photo/Pedro Mendoza)
Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos talks to the press in Cartagena, Colombia, Friday Nov. 4, 2011. Santos confirmed that the top leader of Colombia's main rebel group, Alfonso Cano, was killed Friday in a military raid in the country's southwest. Cano, the head of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, had been the top target of Colombian authorities since September 2010, when they killed the insurgency's military chief, Jorge Briceno, in a bombing raid. (AP Photo/Pedro Mendoza)
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) ? President Juan Manuel Santos on Saturday called on fighters of Latin America's only major rebel force to accept the killing of their top leader as proof the movement is doomed and to surrender.
"This is the moment to decide to lay down your arms because, as we've said many times, the alternative is prison or a tomb," Santos told combatants of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia a day after troops killed their 63-year-old chief.
But analysts don't believe Cano's death will lead the drug-funded rebels, known by their Spanish initials FARC, to crumble. While it's a body blow to the insurgents, the rebels remain potent. They have depth in their leadership and resilience steeled in a half century of armed revolt.
Santos expressed satisfaction but said it's "not a moment for triumphalism" after meeting Saturday with the military high command behind closed doors in Popayan, the southwestern provincial capital where Cano's body was taken.
He said Cano's ranks were infiltrated by rebel defectors, but refused to discuss details.
Santos added that "my eyes moistened" at the news of Cano's death, "a few tears of emotion."
The rebels, estimated at 9,000 fighters, have suffered devastating losses and record desertions since February 2008. Cano was the fourth member of the FARC's ruling seven-man secretariat, a Politburo of sorts, to die a violent death in the interim.
He was the first FARC commander to be tracked down and killed.
Nearly a decade of U.S military and intelligence assistance and training have hamstrung the FARC's communications abilities, undermining its ability to coordinate attacks and mesh strategy among its widely dispersed units.
Yet the rebels continue to sting the military with hit-and-run attacks, killing hundreds of security force members a year. Just last month, FARC attacks claimed the lives of 20 soldiers in two separate ambushes.
The FARC's backbone of support is among peasants with few other opportunities in a country of deep inequality where land ownership is concentrated in few hands. It is unlikely to disappear unless the government seriously addresses the underlying social issues.
Cano, a bookish anthropologist with a middle-class Bogota upbringing, said in an interview published in July by a Spanish newspaper that the FARC arose in 1964 to fight a "violent oligarchy" of big landholders and remained intent on attaining social justice.
Santos, a military hawk but social liberal, is addressing that issue. A law enacted this year seeks to redress wrongs suffered by about 4 million victims of Colombia's conflict, including peasants whose land was stolen by militias working on behalf of land barons.
Even Cano praised Santos's initiative in a New Year's message.
It will take about a decade to carry out, however, and cost billions.
There has been considerable speculation that Santos has sought secret exploratory talks with the FARC, with whom peace talks have failed in each of the last three decades.
Asked about the subject in an August interview with The Associated Press, Santos was cagey.
"If there were, I wouldn't tell you," he said, smiling.
Most victims in Colombia's internal conflict have been killed or dispossessed in a dirty war by far-right militias known as paramilitaries, who were created in the 1980s to counter kidnapping and extortion by the FARC.
Now that Cano is dead, the insurgency will name a new commander, a process bound to take time. It is also apt to try to prove it is anything but defeated.
"The FARC aren't done. The FARC are going to react in some way because it's important for them to show that the death of a leader doesn't mean a process of desertion or surrender," said Camilo Gomez, who was peace commissioner under President Andres Pastrana and took part in failed negotiations with FARC from 1998-2002.
"The middle-ranking commanders are not going to negotiate over the cadaver of Cano," said Ariel Avila, an analyst with the Nuevo Arco Iris think tank. "Their peace intentions are going to be paralyzed for a time. There's no lack of unity in the FARC's interior."
Analysts mention two potential leaders, veteran rebels known as Ivan Marquez and Timochenko. Both belong to the secretariat and Colombian military officials say both have been living recently in Venezuela.
Cano was felled by three bullets in a remote area of Cauca state along with three other rebels, two men and a woman, after his hideout in forested hills was bombed, officials said Saturday.
He was found unarmed, said Maritza Gonzalez, director of the chief prosecutor's office's investigative unit, wearing black pants and a blue shirt. Her agents positively identified the body by fingerprints.
Cano had shaved off his trademark beard.
The rebel leader had spent all day Friday in hiding after the morning bombing raid and was killed in combat after being sighted by soldiers at night, said Gonzalez. Air Force commander Gen. Tito Pinilla said the military used night vision goggles in the operation.
Gen. Gabriel Rey, chief of the army's aviation arm, said the small group of guerrillas guarding the FARC chief fired back with homemade mortars, wounding one soldier.
A senior security official, speaking on condition he not be further identified, said Cano was caught trying to break through a security cordon.
Troops recovered seven computers and 39 thumb drives belonging to Cano as well as a stash of cash in currencies including U.S. dollars, euros and Colombian pesos, said Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon.
Cano, whose real name was Guillermo Leon Saenz, had been the top target of Colombia's armed forces authorities since September 2010, when they killed the insurgency's military chief, Jorge Briceno, in a bombing raid in the southern Macarena massif.
Cano had always declared his readiness to negotiate a resolution to the conflict, something Santos and his predecessor Alvaro Uribe have rejected that as long as the FARC continues hostilities including ransom kidnappings.
Santos reiterated the stance on Saturday.
"We need clear signals and we need terrorism to cease," he said. "The door to dialogue is not locked."
Among kidnap victims the rebels are believed to currently hold are four Chinese oil workers seized in June.
Alfredo Molano, an analyst who knew Cano as a student in the late 1960s and early 1970s, said he doesn't expect the FARC to do much in the near term but dig in.
It's important to understand, he said, that its senior leadership, composed of about 20 top rebels, will collectively set the movement's course for now.
And that could mean months of indecision.
Cano's death, he said, "if indeed it is a military triumph, could be a political error."
____
Associated Press writers Vivian Sequera in Bogota and Frank Bajak in Lima, Peru, contributed to this report.
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Appeals panel sides with CBS over Super Bowl fine (AP)
PHILADELPHIA ? In the latest court battle over the steamy 2004 Super Bowl halftime show, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that CBS should not be fined $550,000 for Janet Jackson's infamous "wardrobe malfunction."
The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals held its ground even after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a review in light of the high court's ruling in a related Fox television case. In that case, it said the Federal Communications Commission could threaten fines over the use of even a single curse word uttered on live TV.
But Circuit Judge Marjorie Rendell said the Fox case only "fortifies our opinion" that the FCC was wrong to fine CBS over the halftime show.
The three-judge panel reviewed three decades of FCC rulings and concluded the agency was changing its policy, without warning, by fining CBS for fleeting nudity.
"An agency may not apply a policy to penalize conduct that occurred before the policy was announced," Rendell wrote.
CBS argues that the FCC had previously applied the same decency standards to words and images ? and excused fleeting instances of both.
Rendell said that long-standing policy appeared to change without notice in March 2004 ? a month after the act at the Super Bowl, held in Houston.
The ruling involved rock star Bono's use of profanity on the Golden Globe Awards show the prior year. An FCC enforcement bureau had called it a fleeting, non-sexual utterance and declined to issue a fine. The full commission reversed the ruling in March 2004 but declined to issue a fine because it would have been allowed under the prior standard.
Rendell sees the same issue at play in the Janet Jackson case.
"The same logic implies that the FCC erred in imposing a fine on CBS in this case, as the chronology of events that are the subject of these cases demonstrates," she wrote.
CBS said it was grateful for the decision.
"We are hopeful that this will help lead the FCC to return to the policy of restrained indecency enforcement it followed for decades," the network said in a statement.
The FCC said that it was disappointed by the ruling and that the court overturned the fine on "narrow procedural grounds."
"The FCC will continue to use all of the authority at its disposal to ensure that the nation's broadcasters fulfill the public interest responsibilities that accompany their use of the public airwaves," a spokesman said.
The 3rd Circuit panel had been unanimous in its 2008 ruling. But Judge Anthony Scirica reversed himself after the Supreme Court's Fox ruling, issuing a dissent Wednesday that said CBS could be fined if the FCC finds the network knew about the alleged stunt.
The FCC argues that Jackson's choreographer had suggested that something might be up. During the act, Justin Timberlake ripped off Jackson's bustier, exposing her breast for nine-sixteenths of a second. It was explained away as a "wardrobe malfunction," a term that has since become part of the lexicon.
"There were considerable alarm bells about deviating from the script," FCC lawyer Jacob Lewis argued before the 3rd Circuit last year. "CBS had a duty to investigate."
The panel ruled in 2008 that the FCC had "arbitrarily and capriciously departed from its prior policy," and reached the same conclusion Wednesday.
A law firm that represents the Center for Creative Voices ? a coalition of producers, writers and directors ? and filed an amicus brief in support of CBS said the ruling is less critical to the industry as a whole than it was in 2008.
"It was a big fine for CBS, so that matters, but because the Supreme Court is looking at the constitutionality of the FCC policy itself, this ruling is much less significant than it was ... the first time they ruled," said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, senior vice president and policy director of the law firm, the Media Access Project.
___
Associated Press writer Randy Pennell contributed to this report.
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Congress to honor Japanese-American soldiers (AP)
WASHINGTON ? In the days following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, Lawson Sakai learned how much the world had changed for Japanese-Americans in 1941. Sakai and some of his buddies drove to the local Navy recruiting station and tried to enlist. While his white friends were quickly accepted, Sakai was told he was considered an "enemy alien" and could not join.
Sakai then watched as the FBI rounded up some of the leading Japanese-American men in Los Angeles. When the federal government authorized the relocation of people with Japanese ancestry, a sister and some of his friends were sent to internment camps.
"We were blackballed," Sakai said. "Basically, they took away our citizenship."
Sakai's story is similar to thousands of other "Nisei," or second-generation Japanese-Americans. Eventually, they ended up serving as part of three distinct military units during World War II.
Nearly 70 years later, lawmakers voted to award those veterans the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor given by Congress. A ceremony marking the occasion will take place Wednesday at the Capitol.
In all, about 19,000 Japanese-Americans served in the three units being honored: the 100th Infantry Battalion, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and the Military Intelligence Service.
Sakai served in the 442nd, which consisted of volunteers, about two-thirds from Hawaii and the rest from the mainland. The 442nd experienced some of the most horrific fighting in Europe and became the most decorated unit in U.S. military history for its size and length of service. In just 10 months of combat, more than 700 were killed or listed as missing in action.
Sakai, 88, was wounded on four different occasions and would receive a Bronze Star and Purple Heart. He said the years following the war were difficult and that he often drank to deal with the brutality of the war. Now, he said, he's able to take pride in his peers' accomplishments and the subsequent congressional recognition.
"We certainly deserved the record that we produced. It was done by shedding a lot of blood. As far as I know, we didn't give up an inch of blood. We were always attacking and the Germans were always on the higher ground," he said.
The 442nd fought in eight major campaigns in Italy, France and Germany. One of the units attached to the 442nd was the 100th Infantry Battalion, which was comprised exclusively of Japanese-Americans from Hawaii who had been drafted prior to Pearl Harbor. After the attack, they guarded Hawaii from a possible land invasion. They subsequently underwent training on the mainland and hit the beaches of Salerno, Italy, in September 1943. They received the nickname the Purple Heart Battalion because of the tremendous number of casualties they endured.
Even as they fought in Europe, many Japanese-American troops had family members who would spend much of the war in U.S. internment camps. American officials, citing concerns that those of Japanese ancestry could be security risks during war with Japan, sent men, women and children to camps around the country.
While undergoing training, Susumu Ito would visit his parents and two sisters 200 miles away at the Rohwer Internment Camp in Arkansas. Despite the injustice of being forced to relocate from Stockton, Calif., Ito said, his parents took great pride in their son fighting for the U.S. military. However, he ignored his mother's request in her weekly letters to avoid hazardous duty. He said he wanted to be on the front lines, as did his peers. The motto of the 442nd was "go for broke."
Ito said that mentality reflected the mindset of Japanese-Americans in general.
"This spirit of overcoming any objection was ingrained in mind," Ito said.
About 6,000 Japanese-Americans served in the Military Intelligence Service, on the front lines and behind the scenes, translating cables and interviewing prisoners of war. Many also served during the postwar occupation of Japan, providing a bridge between Japanese and American officials.
President Harry Truman welcomed home many of the Japanese-American soldiers in 1946: "You fought not only the enemy, but you fought prejudice, and you have won."
George Washington was the first recipient of the Congressional Gold Medal, in 1776. In recent years, Congress has honored athletes, astronauts and civil rights trailblazers. They've also granted the award to the Tuskegee Airmen and to Native American code talkers who transmitted secret messages sent during World War II.
Sen. Barbara Boxer and Rep. Adam Schiff, both Democratic lawmakers from California, were the original co-sponsors of the legislation honoring the Japanese-American soldiers. The legislation was signed into law last year, and Wednesday's event is the award ceremony.
Last week, the House approved legislation to honor the first black Marines and the Senate is expected to take up a similar bill.
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