Ask Shigeru "Stu" Tsubota what he's most proud of, and he starts talking about his five children — not his rare experience during World War II.

One son holds a doctorate and runs the biological sciences department at the State University of New York College at Brockport. Another became a dentist. One of his daughters is a physical therapist and two others have master's degrees in fine arts and library science, respectively.

He's proud of the fact that all of them earned graduate degrees.

"They make good money," he said, smiling.

But what Tsubota, 88, may not talk about is that he was one of a few Japanese-American officers serving in the 100th Infantry Battalion.

When the unit was activated in June 1942, most of its lieutenants were Caucasian noncommissioned officers from Hawai'i.

Tsubota, who had spent several years in ROTC at the University of Hawai'i, was sworn in as a second lieutenant in the Army in January 1940, nearly two years before Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese.

"I didn't aspire to make the military my career," said Tsubota, who retired as a lieutenant colonel in January 1963 and lives in Wai'alae. "But I did very good in those (ROTC) courses."

After the attack, Tsubota was assigned to the newly formed 100th Infantry Battalion with other Japanese-American soldiers from Hawai'i. In June 1942, he was sent to Camp McCoy, Wis., for combat training.

"It was too cold for us up there," he said.

'I WAS LUCKY'

In January 1943 the 100th Infantry Battalion left wintry Wisconsin for Camp Shelby, Miss., where the soldiers met up with the Japanese-American volunteers of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

"We were very cohesive," said Tsubota, who, despite his rank, didn't consider himself any different from the enlisted men from Hawai'i.

"Of course, there were some fights between us and the 442nd. We had a lot of pride."

But the two units blended as well as they could, finding common ground in the feeling they had to prove their loyalty to a country that deemed them "enemy aliens."

"We were young, we were gung-ho," Tsubota said of his battalion brothers. "We had to prove we were loyal. We had to prove we would fight."

He remembers being sent to Oran, Algeria, in September 1943 to guard supply trains from Casablanca, Morocco, to Tunisia. The soldiers were transported from New Jersey aboard the James Parker, a former banana and tourist boat.

The 100th Infantry Battalion patrolled the train route for less than a month before being ordered into combat in Italy.

In September 1943, Tsubota suffered wounds to his right shoulder and leg during the capture of Benevento, an important rail center and road intersection. His corporal, who was walking behind him, took the brunt of an explosion and died.

"I was lucky," Tsubota said, quietly.

He spent the next year in a hospital in North Carolina, he said. His injuries required skin grafts; the wounds were so bad, he said, the skin would break open every time he took a step.

OFF TO HOKKAIDO IN '46

After his release from the hospital, Tsubota spent four months at a military intelligence service language school at Fort Snelling in Minnesota. Then he was sent to a counterintelligence school in Maryland, where he met his first wife, a nisei from Seattle.

In 1946 Tsubota was sent to Hokkaido, Japan, to work in counterintelligence for three years. When he returned he moved his family to Novato, Calif.

About 20 years into their marriage, Tsubota's wife was diagnosed with scleroderma, a chronic connective tissue disease that affects the skin and, in more serious cases, the blood vessels and internal organs.

She couldn't digest food, he said, and got weaker and weaker. In 1986, she died.

Saddened by the loss, Tsubota remained in California, visiting Hawai'i often to play golf.

One night while staying with his sister in Nu'uanu, Tsubota asked about an old girlfriend, Mieko. He found out she was a widow.

So he called her and they met for breakfast at Kahala Mall.

"The first thing she did was take out all the pictures of her kids," Tsubota said, laughing. "I think she was nervous. ... I wasn't nervous, of course."

During the next few months, they exchanged letters and talked on the phone. She flew often to California to visit him.

In 1988, with no formal proposal, they were wed and lived on an acre of land in California. Twelve years later the couple moved back to Hawai'i.

LIFE'S LONELIER NOW

But in late 2006 Mieko Tsu-bota was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died several days later.

"It's been lonesome," he said. "We always did things together."

Tsubota has spent a lot of time helping with the 100th Battalion Veterans Club, running the annual banquet and memorial service.

He believes the legacy of the 100th Infantry Battalion extends beyond the unit's service to the country during World War II. He hopes people remember their contribution to the community through service projects after they returned home.

Whenever he gets an invitation to an event as a veteran, he rarely turns it down.

"We should always go and be a representative," Tsubota said. "So they don't forget about the 100th."

Reach Catherine E. Toth at ctoth@honoluluadvertiser.com.