November 5, 2009
“I’m no hero, but I wear it for the guys that didn’t come back.” — George “Joe” Sakato
George T. Sakato is the great-great-great-grandson of a samurai. Perhaps that explains his father’s choice of a birth name. Sakato says, “Dad wanted to call me Jyotaro Sakato, after a sword-bearer for Musashi samurai.” But when the doctor submitted the vital statistics for the baby, “Jyotaro” became “George.” An unassuming man, Densho’s interviewee says simply, “All my life I’ve been called Joe.” On October 29, 1944, in the Vosges Mountains of France, Private Joe Sakato’s warrior ancestry saw him through a critical juncture in the storied Battle of the Lost Battalion.
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