The Road to Sand Hills

George Suyama, like many young American soldiers who died in combat, did not live long enough to leave lasting memories for loved ones. With no grave marker, all that remains is his name etched into the Wall of the Missing at the Epinal American Cemetery in France and engraved on a small plaque attached to the city hall of Biffontaine. The author, in studying the details of the Vosges campaign of the 100th/442nd Regimental Combat Team in WWII, learned of the only Nisei soldier who was declared MIA and whose body was never recovered. The author became intensely curious about this man and began researching his life. Who was George Washington Suyama? Where did he come from? What did he experience in his brief existence? And how did he come to be on that fatal battlefield? The Road to Sand Hills, based on historical facts, begins with George's father, Ichiro, who immigrates in 1900 from his subsistence farm in Japan to a new life in northern Montana where George and his three siblings are born. The story traces George through farm life and family tragedies and heartbreak. The bombing of Pearl Harbor and the resurrection of dormant prejudices spur him to enlist in the U.S. Army. In 1944, George leaves the safety of a stateside assignment guarding German POWs to join the 100th/442nd Regimental Combat Team as a replacement -- just as the unit begins its storied liberation of the German-occupied town of Bruyères and the miraculous rescue of the "Lost Texas Battalion." George Suyama represents one of the thousands of ordinary men who have served as front-line combat soldiers in virtually all our country's conflicts. These often faceless and forgotten men have carried the security and freedom of this nation on their backs and often into early graves. This story is tribute to these men.