Jimmie Kanaya still has the army mess kit that he carried with him as he trudged across Europe as a Prisoner of War during World War II.

“If you didn’t have one, you didn’t eat,” he said.

The metal container sits unobtrusively on a bookshelf surrounded by a row of German steins and a display case full of war medals. He was one of thousands of prisoners captured behind enemy lines who survived to tell his tale.

Kanaya’s story will be aired during the History Channel’s “WWII in HD,” which premieres Sunday and will run through Nov. 19. Each show will begin at 9 p.m. Kanaya’s story is scheduled for Nov. 18-19.

Kanaya was born in Clackamas, Ore., to Japanese parents. He was working as the ward master for army medics at Hoff General Hospital in Santa Barbara, Calif., when Japan invaded Pearl Harbor.

Although medical personnel was invaluable, Kanaya had one little problem.

“I looked like the enemy,” he said. “In the medical department, they were more tolerant of the situation. But those in the infantry had their weapons taken away. They were put into other work, like housekeeping — non-combat positions.”

Japanese-American civilians were packed off to internment camps in the face of a panicked nation. Kanaya’s parents, who ran a produce stand in Portland, Ore., were evacuated and sent to the assembly center at Portland stockyard.

“It wasn’t voluntary,” he said. “They were told if they didn’t go, they’d be moved by force. There was a curfew in Portland from sundown to sunrise. All Japanese-Americans had to be in by sunset.”

In March 1942, 25 Japanese-Americans were moved from Hoff General Hospital. Kanaya ended up working at the station hospital at Camp Crowder, Mo.

The young medic felt helpless.

“There’s nothing you could do,” he said. “This was our country. Whether they were right or wrong, you had to fight for your country.”

Kanaya said he felt caught between a rock and a hard place. He wore his Army uniform on the street, but the atmosphere was strange.

“I felt self-conscious,” he said. “I felt like everywhere I went, people were looking at me.

“Chinese-Americans would wear a button that said, ‘I’m Chinese.’ Personally, I didn’t experience anyone threatening or accosting. We didn’t go looking for trouble. We stayed cool and obeyed orders like anyone else.”

While at Camp Shelby in Mississippi, Kanaya volunteered for the medical detachment of the 442nd Infantry Regimental Combat Team, for which he became a First Sergeant. The regiment was formed by Japanese-Americans.

“I want to make one point clear,” he said. “The regiment was formed for combat duty in Europe to prove our loyalty while our parents were incarcerated.”

Kanaya fell into the hands of the Germans while in enemy territory in the Vosges Mountains in France. He and three other medics volunteered to cross enemy lines to retrieve injured battalion members when they were captured.

Kanaya traveled by foot, train, boxcars and trucks to Oflag 64, a POW officers’ camp in Szubin, Poland. He went from France, through Germany, in a month and a half.

“There were other officers from other divisions captured in North Africa,” he said. “Some said they’d been there for three years.”

The soldiers still had to abide by military laws and answer to their senior officers.

“Just because you’re a prisoner doesn’t mean you’re free,” Kanaya said. “We were still in the Army. If you goofed up, you could be court-marshalled later. We relied on our senior officers as a go-between from us to the German command. Of course, the Germans did whatever they wanted to anyway.”

In January, the prisoners were told to pack up and move out because the Russians were advancing. The POWs trudged across the terrain, cold and miserable, in 18-degree weather. There were thousands of refugees on the move.

“Whole cities were on the move,” Kanaya said. “The Russians were right behind us. You could hear the fighting. Can you imagine them trying to feed all of us?”

The only sustenance they received at the end of the day was hot water poured in their mess kit.

“They said it was potato soup, but I didn’t recall any potatoes,” Kanaya said. “Every once in a while, you’d find a chunk of red meat, like horse meat, floating around. If you were at the head of the line, maybe you got the good stuff, but it always seemed like I was at the tail end.”

Kanaya’s group was taken to a POW camp at Hammelburg, Germany. During that time, General Patton attempted to rescue his son-in-law, Col. Waters. But Patton’s rescue team wasn’t aware they were joined by about 1,100 POWs from the Battle of the Bulge.

“Patton had no idea,” Kanaya said. “They thought there were 400 of us from Oflag 64. The task force was wiped out by the Germans.

“They went over German lines by about 50 miles and couldn’t get back. They were completely surrounded. That created such a ruckus. We were moved to Nuremberg that day.”

With the American Army now closing in on Nuremberg, prisoners were again being evacuated. A nervous Kanaya planned his escape.

“There were thousands of us, and we were the last ones to leave,” he said.

“The scuttlebutt was that the Germans were going to hold American hostages in the Bavarian Alps to use as bargaining chips. I didn’t want any of that.”

As the column of refugees was on the move, they were fired upon by U.S. war planes.

“We all scattered into a wooded area,” he said. “I ran as far as I could and hid in a depression until dark. When they told everyone to get back, I stayed in the woods. I knew I had to get away from the column.”

Kanaya hunkered down in the woods for days, living on stream water and food from a red cross box. At night, it was pitch black and he could hear Germans running around in the woods. He waited for the eminent arrival of the American troops.

“Day after day, nothing happened,” he said. “There was no sign of our troops. After a week of hiding out, there was a bombing raid. Germans were running all around me.”

At that point, Kanaya decided to take his chances back at the well-fortified Nuremberg camp. He laughed when he recalled how he must have appeared after hiding out in the wilderness.

“I waddled out of the woods in this Belgian overcoat with an empty red cross box,” he said. “I went to the gates at Nuremberg and said, ‘I’m a POW, let me in.’ And they wouldn’t let me in.”

The German guards finally figured that if he could speak English, he was telling the truth.

At that point, the camp was in chaos and prisoners were still being moved out.

Kanaya came down with a fever and was looked after by a Serbian doctor who was running the dispensary. The day before the liberation by the Americans, the Germans were moving everybody out who could still walk. Kanaya was certain he was well enough to join the movement. The doctor had a different idea.

“The Germans were pulling guys out of bed,” Kanaya said. “But the doctor put me in a bed and said, ‘You can’t be moved.’

“The next day, we were liberated. From what we heard, those guys who left never made it. I don’t know if that doctor knew it, but I think he saved my life.”

Gig Harbor WWII veteran on The History Channel

Jimmie Kanaya will be joined by 11 other World War II vets who will tell their stories on The History Channel’s premier of “WWII in HD.” The show will air on five consecutive nights at 9 p.m. Sunday through Nov. 19.

The show will feature exclusive footage presented in full high-definition color. Much of the footage was obtained from archives and private collections during an exhaustive worldwide search.