<Begin Segment 22>

FA: Now, tell me about Ben... great. Tell me about Ben Kuroki's visit to Heart Mountain. He's a war hero already...

FA: Let me at least tell about that a little bit. Ben Kuroki, after experiencing a lot of discrimination, finally gets enfolded into a crew in the air force. And he ends up becoming a, a crew member in various capacities but he fights in Germany and North Africa in the required twenty-five different missions. But he doesn't quit after that. I mean, most people do; they throw their hats up in the air and say, "Hallelujah, I'm out." He re-ups, which shows how strong his sense of patriotism -- if you ever want an example of 200 percent patriotism, here it is. And this is, he goes in for another five battles, and at that point -- which is in late 1943 -- he cycles back to the United States and he's resting up, resting up here.

[Interruption]

FA: What was Ben Kuroki known for when he got to Heart Mountain?

AH: Ben Kuroki was known for being a war hero, and a war hero attached to a very elite sort of role. This is not a foot soldier, this is somebody up in the air. It's a very visible symbol. And he got a lot of acclaim, and when he came back to the United States this acclaim was capitalized upon by the government through the War Department with the urgings, in my opinion, of the Japanese American Citizens League. This was a way to really sell participation in the war effort. And so he became a stalking horse and I think a protean symbol for the things that the JACL wanted to put across. And he was sent on a tour of duty, as I construe it, to three different camps in the spring of 1944. And the first camp he was sent to was not an accident, it was Heart Mountain. It was where the most dissent was and where they were having the most problem trying to put over the idea of the draft. And even though some of the fights had already been fought within the camp, there was still a group of people that were going to be getting their draft notices. And so he comes to that camp, etcetera, and he meets a very mixed reception. He got so much publicity in advance by the Heart Mountain Sentinel, he got so much publicity by the Pacific Citizen, he was really elevated to incredible heroic proportions. Now, the 442nd hadn't really started to get into battle in a serious way before and so that group later is going to become the symbol of military success and heroism, but at that particular point it was Ben Kuroki. So it's one person who's the carrier of Japanese American honor.

And he comes to Heart Mountain and then he goes to Minidoka and then he goes to Topaz. And at every one of those places he meets with a mixed reception. The young kids and particularly the teenage girls, of which there were plenty, lionized him, and I think a lot of the draft age people looked at him with suspicion. And the Issei in particular looked askance at what he represented, because he had a kind of a rhetoric that was a result of him not really knowing anything about Japan or knowing anything about Japanese Americans and he says all of the wrong things as far as the Issei go. I mean, although it's Nisei protesting this draft, there's a lot of Issei involved in that whole sentiment. And he comes in talking about bombing the rice out of our honorable -- dishonorable ancestors in Japan and everything, and he just, you know, sounded like a puppet. I mean, he sounded like he had been wound up by the right people to say the right things and in some cases it was applauded and in other cases it was just absolutely ridiculed and reviled. And so he became a very mixed symbol, and I don't think they were counting on that. I don't think that the JACL understood how deeply layered was the resistance to the resumption of the draft. I think they just thought it was some leaders and the Fair Play Committee and that was it, and it was more than that.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 1998, 2005 Frank Abe and Densho. All Rights Reserved.