Sus Ito shivered as he recalled the march into the pitch-black pine forest of the Vosges Mountains in France in the fall of 1944, on a mission to rescue the “Lost Battalion” — Texans from the 36th Division who had been surrounded by German troops.

His unit  — the 442d Regimental Combat Team,  composed mostly of Japanese-American soldiers — rode to the forest’s edge in the middle of the night, and then set off on foot.