[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 157 (Wednesday, October 11, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1921]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE END OF WORLD WAR II

                                 ______


                           HON. J.D. HAYWORTH

                               of arizona

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, October 11, 1995

  Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of 
World War II, I want to honor an Arizona National Guard Unit, the 158th 
Regimental Combat Team [RCT] or ``Bushmasters'' as they called 
themselves, which fought in the Pacific campaigns. When the war ended, 
they had spent 4 years overseas, 312 days in combat, and suffered 
approximately 1,600 casualties in three campaigns. While they went 
unnoticed with the public, they were recognized by the Commander of the 
Army in the Pacific, Gen. Douglas MacArthur. The Bushmasters had earned 
three campaign streamers with two arrowheads, a Presidential unit 
citation, and the unending praise from General Douglas MacArthur. He 
proclaimed: ``No greater fighting combat team ever deployed for 
battle.''
  Arizonans already knew what General MacArthur discovered about the 
Bushmasters because they were our soldiers. They were our husbands, our 
fathers, and our sons. They were citizen-soldiers who came from cities 
such as Phoenix and Tucson, from the many Indian Nations in Arizona, 
from the mining communities of eastern Arizona, from the timber and 
railroad towns up north, and from the ranch country in the south.
  Before World War II, the Bushmaster Regiment already had a colorful 
past. The unit charged up San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt's Rough 
Riders, secured the border when Poncho Villa raided the border towns, 
and fought in France during World War I. Arizonans had many reasons for 
joining the unit. Some of them joined for the camaraderie. Some joined 
because the unit was colorblind and it gave them dignity and equity 
that they did not have in civilian society. The unit had some of 
Arizona's more famous people come through its ranks, including the late 
Senator Carl Hayden and Pima Indian Chief Antonio Azul.
  When the Bushmasters reported for Federal service, they proved their 
value during the Louisiana maneuvers in 1940. The regimental commander 
Col. J. Prugh Hernadon, a bookkeeper from Tucson, tried a new form of 
communication with his radios. He had native American members of his 
unit transmit messages in their native languages to keep the enemy from 
intercepting their radio transmissions.
  The Bushmasters performed so well that the Army shipped them to the 
Panama Canal Zone shortly after Pearl Harbor was attacked. They were 
given the task of defending the canal from sabotage. A year later 
General MacArthur personally requested the Bushmaster Regiment to help 
him capture the island of New Guinea from the Japanese. In January, 
1944, the 2d Battalion, under Lt. Col. Frederick Stofft of Tucson, were 
the first soldiers of the Bushmaster Regiment to enter combat.
  The Bushmasters developed a reputation for their fighting skills. In 
the Philippines Capt. Bayard W. Hart, a Cherokee Indian, and his men of 
Company G from Safford, AZ, were awarded the Presidential unit citation 
for capturing a Japanese gun emplacement without a loss of life to his 
men. In Dutch New Guinea, they beat the battle-hardened Japanese Tiger 
Marines. Shortly after the battle they became feared by their enemy. 
Japanese shortwave broadcasts referred to them as ``the butchers of the 
Pacific'' for the rest of the war. It was no surprise to the 
Bushmasters that they were selected to lead the assault of the invasion 
of Japan.
  When the war ended, the Bushmasters returned home to Arizona, going 
back to the lives they had known before the war. They may have come 
from different cultures, spoke different languages, and grown up in 
different traditions, but they fought for the values they all shared as 
Americans: freedom, democracy, and justice.
  Mr. Speaker, Americans can best remember their sacrifice by striving 
to live by those values that they were so willing to fight and die for.

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