The 40th Infantry Division in the Second World War
James Kim's Wartime Home
The 40th Infantry Division was James Kim’s home from 1942 to 1945. He had no one else to turn to and nowhere else to go during the war, since his entire family was on the far side of the Pacific Ocean, trapped in Japanese-occupied Shanghai. In the 40th Infantry Division, James Kim grew from a young refugee from Shanghai who had barely started his adult life to a respected veteran officer in the U.S. Army.
With the 40th Infantry Division, James Kim guarded the coasts of California and Hawaii, deployed across the Pacific to Guadalcanal and New Britain, and fought in the liberation of the Philippines. After the war, the 40th Infantry Division would return him to his family’s original homeland of Korea, as part of the postwar U.S. occupation force that ended Japan’s colonization of Korea in September 1945.
Formed in 1926 from National Guard units in California, Utah, and Nevada, the division went to war with the 160th Infantry Regiment and 185th Infantry Regiment from California, the 108th Infantry Regiment from New York, and artillery battalions from California (143rd and 164th Field Artillery Battalions) and Utah (213th and 222nd Field Artillery Battalions). James Kim’s wartime journey with the 40th Infantry Division began in the 222nd Field Artillery in early 1942 and continued in the 160th Infantry Regiment until October 1945.
The 222nd Field Artillery traced its history back to Mormon militias created in Illinois in 1841, before the Mormon migration to Utah. Created in 1941 from the 2nd Battalion, 222nd Field Artillery Regiment of the Utah National Guard, the 222nd Field Artillery Battalion began the war with personnel who were almost entirely Mormons from Utah. Private James Kim joined this unit in early 1942 as an outsider, a new recruit from California that the regular Army assigned to the 222nd as one of its wartime reinforcements and replacements.
The 222nd Field Artillery’s officers identified Private James Kim as an outstanding soldier and chose him out of the 222nd’s hundreds of enlisted men to elevate to the U.S. Army’s commissioned officer ranks. At a time when the state of California was sending Japanese-Americans to internment camps and bureaucrats in Washington had categorized Koreans as Japanese, the 222nd Field Artillery’s officers were ahead of their time in upholding the nation’s ideals and demonstrated the spirit that existed among ordinary Americans in the U.S. Army of the Second World War.
The 222nd Field Artillery Battalion continues to exist as part of the Utah National Guard as the 2nd Battalion, 222nd Field Artillery, equipped with self-propelled 155mm howitzers. The 222nd Field Artillery deployed to Iraq in 2005-06 to fight in the battle for Ramadi, and again in 2011 during the closing months of the war.
The 160th Infantry Regiment, whose history is traced back to California National Guard units of the 1880s, was created in 1917 for the American Expeditionary Force sent to Europe in the First World War. Based in southern California as part of the 40th Infantry Division from its inception, the 160th Infantry was federalized in March 1941 and guarded the California coast after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The entire 40th Infantry Division relocated to Fort Lewis, Washington to train for overseas deployment in April 1942.
Now-2nd Lieutenant James Kim, fresh from infantry officer candidate school in Fort Benning, Georgia, joined the 160th Infantry Regiment in Fort Lewis. The 160th Infantry assigned Lieutenant Kim to command an infantry platoon, making him the commanding officer of a unit whose soldiers were mostly White. He would command this unit as it deployed to Hawaii, then to Guadalcanal and New Britain, and ultimately hit the beach at Lingayen Gulf on the Philippine island of Luzon in the amphibious assault that began the liberation of Manila. He would be one of only a few Asian-American officers to lead American soldiers into combat against Japan.
The 160th Infantry continues to exist as part of the California National Guard as the 1st Battalion, 160th Infantry, an element of the 40th Infantry Division based in Los Angeles. The 160th Infantry Regiment fought again in Korea in 1952-53, and elements of the 1st Battalion, 160th Infantry served in Iraq and Kosovo in 2004-05 and again in Iraq in 2007-08.
This series previews my upcoming book Victory in Shanghai: A Korean American Family’s Journey to the CIA and the Army Special Forces, whose publication is expected by June 1, 2025. You can pre-order it now through Potomac Books, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press, at this link, or through your favorite local independent bookseller.
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