Most Honorable Son

Ben Kuroki was a twenty-four-year-old Japanese American farm boy whose heritage was never a problem in remote Nebraska - until Pearl Harbor. Among the millions of Americans who flocked to military stations to enlist, Ben wanted to avenge the attack, reclaim his family honour, and prove his patriotism. But as anti-Japanese sentiment soared, Ben had to fight to be allowed to fight for America. And fight he did. As a gunner on Army Air Corps bombers, Ben flew fifty-eight missions spanning three combat theaters: Europe, North America, and the Pacific, including the climactic B-29 firebombing campaign against Japan that culminated with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He flew some of the war''s boldest and bloodiest air missions and lived to tell about it. In between his tours in Europe and the Pacific, he challenged FDR''s shameful incarceration of more than one hundred thousand people of Japanese ancestry in America, and he would be credited by some with setting in motion the