"Most Honorable Son" by Gregg Jones

You’re a Japanese American living in Nebraska in 1941. The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, sending the United States into war. What do you do?

At 24 when war broke out, Nebraskan Ben Kuroki enlisted to fight for his country. Ben joined the Army Air Force along with his brother. 

In Most Honorable Son by Gregg Jones, Kuroki’s unique wartime experience is related.

Ben Kuroki not only flew a staggering 58 combat missions as a gunner on Army Air Force bombers but battled racism and resentment on the home front.

Despite anti-Japanese sentiment running rampant in America, Kuroki not only persevered in his desire to serve but also challenged the U.S. policy of forcing some 100,000 Japanese Americans into internment camps during the war.

After his 30th mission—a raid on Munich, Germany that was nearly his last when shrapnel from an enemy shell barely missed his head—Kuroki was dispatched to three of the internment camps to encourage enlistment in the service. By 1944, Jones said, the U.S. military was seeking Japanese Americans to serve in the all-Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team in Italy.

In a series of speeches at the Heart Mountain camp in Wyoming, Kuroki urged Nisei men to enlist but his message fell flat with the camp's growing draft resistance movement. Camp supporters demanded the restoration of constitutional and civil rights for all camp residents before submitting to military service.

Ben also spoke at the Topaz War Relocation Center in Delta, Utah, and the Minidoka Relocation Center near Hunt, Idaho. Before these speaking engagements, Kuroki had only a vague notion about the fate that had befallen West Coast residents of Japanese descent.

He came away shaken by the sight of men, women, and children who looked like him packed into flimsy wooden barracks in wilderness areas guarded by rifle-toting Army soldiers. Kuroki became aware of the deep divisions within the camp when Heart Mountain hecklers interrupted him during his speeches.

But even after flying 30 missions in Europe, Ben wasn’t through with the war. His next stop was the Pacific where he joined the 505th Bomb Group. The mission? To bomb Japan. 

Like others whose job it was to drop bombs on targets during the war, Jones said individuals often “compartmentalized” their actions, not thinking of the damage being done down below. But the author said Kuroki had reservations after seeing the orange glow of Tokyo receding in the background after an intense incendiary raid on the Japanese capital. 

Kuroki suffered his most serious injury of the war—not on a plane—but at the hands of a fellow soldier in August of 1945. When good-natured banter turned ugly, Ben’s head was slashed open with a knife. 

U.S. medics saved his life as Kuroki recuperated on Tinian, the tiny Pacific isle that U.S. forces had used as a launching pad for bombing runs over Japan—including the mission flown by the Enola Gay that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Kuroki was still recovering from his injuries when Japan’s surrender was announced.

After the war, Kuroki returned to making speeches—opposing discrimination in all forms. He later turned to journalism. The shy Nebraska farm boy became a progressive crusader who came to terms with the fact that the same country he defended had rounded up and imprisoned Japanese Americans during WWII.

“Kuroki once said he looked Japanese but had the heart of an American,” said Kevin Maurer, author of No Easy Day, the inside story of the Bin Laden raid, co-written with former Navy SEAL Mark Owen. Kuroki’s story “reminds us that America is everyone,” noted Maurer.