♪♪
[ Mid-tempo orchestral music plays ]
-They are hero stories because each laid down their life
for a righteous cause,
laid down their life for people they did not know and never met.
The fallen are made holy by their sacrifice.
And the Earth in which they lay cannot be dedicated
to be more sacred,
and we cannot erase the debt we owe
to these men and women of uncommon statue.
[ Music continues ]
-In 1924, Frank Nishimura was born in Seattle, Washington,
to Ritoji and Kiku Nishimura.
Frank was the youngest of six children
and the only one with an American name.
His other siblings were Toshimi, Shizuko,
Hiromi, Yukie, and Toyo.
Both his mother and father were good businesspeople
and bought and sold hotels.
Since Japanese nationals were not permitted to purchase land
in Washington State by law,
a trusted Jewish attorney
purchased the property in his name,
but when Toshimi came of age,
the title was transferred to him.
The family acquired the Puget Sound Hotel
on Sixth and Dearborn Street and lived on the fifth floor.
It was the second largest hotel in town, with 444 rooms.
Frank attended Cascade and then Bailey Gatzert School.
He was in the last 8th-grade class
that graduated from Bailey Gatzert in 1938.
In the fall,
he started classes at Broadway High School,
which is now Seattle Central College.
In the summer, Frank drove his friends to the beach
and parks for climbing and picnicking.
In the winter, they skied Snoqualmie and Mount Rainier.
Frank's teen years were carefree and fun.
-100th Battalion and the Military Intelligence Service,
if you're here today, please raise your hand or stand.
[ Applause ]
-All that changed on December 7, 1941.
-On December 7, 1941,
Shorty, a couple of friends, and I
went up to Mount Rainier for winter skiing.
Shorty turned on the radio.
When the static cleared,
we heard that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.
[ Radio tuning ]
-From the NBC newsroom in New York,
President Roosevelt said in a statement today
that the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii,
from the air.
I'll repeat that. President Roosevelt says...
-Shortly hollered...
-Holy cow, this is war!
-From the NBC newsroom in New York...
-I was angry because they attacked my country.
I remembered what Miss Mahon, principal of Bailey Gatzert,
had always told us about being proud Americans.
It felt like 1,000 eyes
were watching us on the way home.
Everyone was relieved to return to the security of Japantown.
I ran up five floors to our family room.
Mother said...
-Did you hear the news?
-There was a look of shock
on the faces of my mother, father, and older brother
as they huddled around the Motorola radio.
Dad said...
-There is going to be war with Japan.
-In grade school Miss Mahon always reminded us
that we were American citizens,
but I worried because my parents were Japanese citizens
and could not become naturalized U.S. citizens by law.
-Remember, Frank, you are an American
-Right after Pearl Harbor, Japanese community leaders
were taken by the FBI.
The community did not know where the people were detained
or how long they would be gone.
Rimban Suzuki, the Buddhist priest,
leaders of the Japanese Gold Club,
and others were taken.
Japanese families lived in fear
about what would happen next.
A tension in the community rolls
when all Japanese and Japanese-Americans
were ordered to turn in shortwave radios, cameras,
and weapons to the Seattle Police Department.
Many burned their Japanese books, family photographs,
and anything that showed a connection to Japan.
Shorty was afraid they would keep his ham radio,
so he asked if I could hide it.
I said, "Okay."
We buried it under a canvas tarp
and piles of old suitcases in the basement.
We were sure no one would find it.
FBI men drove up in the black sedan.
They wore fedora hats, suits, and shiny shoes.
I thought they were going to take my father away,
but instead they wanted to talk to me.
I felt the blood drain from my face and gulped
when they said...
-Ham radio.
-I was shaking as I walked them to the basement.
All that time,
I was hoping I wouldn't go to prison.
Toshimi, my older brother,
yelled at me for being so careless.
He said that we should lay low
and not draw attention to ourselves.
Anxiously, we waited every day for a week
to see if the FBI would return.
Luckily, they didn't.
After this incident, Dad knew things would get worse.
Dad and Toshimi talked after dinner
about what might happen next.
-Will they take Japanese citizens?
What would become of the children?
-Who would run the hotel,
and how much cash should we set aside if our assets are frozen?
-The piers were off-limits to Japanese,
and on December 8th,
I lost my delivery job with a P.I. newspaper.
A policeman saw us at the waterfront
and told us to leave and not come back.
We were unable to say goodbye to our customers
or even get paid.
-The larger problem --
the uncertainty of what would happen among these people
in case of a Japanese invasion still remained.
That is why the commanding general
of the Western Defense Command
determined that all Japanese within the coastal area
should move inland.
-In April 1942,
the government issued the orders for all Japanese aliens
and non-aliens within 150 miles from the coast
to be forcibly incarcerated within a week.
Flyers were posted on telephone poles all over Japantown.
Many Japanese were selling or storing their possessions
as they packed what they could carry.
Dad leased the hotel to Mr. Wu,
a Chinese business friend.
Then he rented a large Mayflower moving trailer and truck.
Our destination was Mead, Washington, near Spokane,
where Toshimi had leased 100 acres of land.
Two other families joined us, and we headed east
over the mountains beyond the 150-mile exclusion zone.
The three families pitched a tent,
and we began building a house, stringing electrical wire,
and constructing an outhouse.
We pumped water up from the river for bathing
and irrigating our garden.
After a few months,
the rest of my siblings relocated elsewhere,
away from Mead, leaving me alone with Mom and Dad.
Dad insisted that we could live near Spokane,
away from potentially unfriendly neighbors.
Japantown was empty, and all the Japanese
were in the temporary incarceration center
on the Puyallup Fairgrounds
under the guard of the army.
The soldiers took everyone --
the very old, orphans,
healthy adults, and children.
[ Horse neighs ]
We bought two horses to haul wood, plow fields,
and harvest hay.
But it turned out they were racehorses and ran away.
Hey! Come back here!
We spent the whole day rounding them up
and returning them to the farmer, their former owner.
I was used to the city life,
with friends, picnics, dances, churches,
Chinese restaurants, and Japanese furo bathhouses.
I knew that the Japantown life was gone,
but I felt isolated and missed my friends.
My cousin in Spokane said that the U.S. Army is was accepting
Japanese-American volunteers.
I had images of going to Europe
and seeing the places I had only imagined.
I was afraid of what my parents will say,
but I volunteered for the Army anyway
and just needed to pass the physical.
Dad worried I might be sent to fight against Japan.
Also, he was concerned about losing the son
who drove them to town for groceries.
Eventually, after I left, both of my parents
moved into a proper house
with running water and indoor plumbing in Post Falls, Idaho.
[ Train whistle blows ]
Because the train to Mississippi was full
and all the seats were taken,
I sat on the train stairwell for the whole trip...
[ Train whistle blows, bell clangs ]
...and watched the countryside go by.
[ Mid-tempo orchestral music continues ]
Because the 100th Infantry Battalion from Hawaii
was suffering heavy casualties at Monte Cassino,
the sergeant asked if anyone would volunteer
to be a replacement.
I raised my hand, as did about five others.
The Hawaiian boys knew we volunteered,
so they treated us well.
Because I was youngest, they called me "Junior,"
which came out to be "Jun-yah" in pidgin English.
[ Mid-tempo ukulele music plays ]
Private Mutts, a dark and wiry fellow,
became my buddy and protector.
He wore his cap crooked on purpose
and always wore shorts in the barracks.
Mutts would say...
-Hey, Jun-yah, I teach you play pool today.
-Over the weeks,
I learned about rifles, grenades,
basic first aid, poker, craps,
ukuleles, fish, hula, and poi.
[ Somber orchestral music plays ]
After basic training, we shipped out and zigzagged
across the Atlantic to avoid the German Subs.
There were 400 of us on a Liberty ship,
which is really an old rust-bucket freighter.
We were assigned to the cargo hold,
stacked with bunks five to six high.
I'll take the top one.
At first, the troops were eager,
but their enthusiasm didn't last as we began to rock and roll
in the Atlantic for weeks.
Most got seasick.
This went on for about a month, until we reached Italy.
Even though the Hawaii boys were tanned,
many of them looked pale or green the entire trip.
When we landed, I was assigned as a radio man.
The radio was a large pack with an antenna
that weighed almost as much as I did,
plus I had my rifle plus ammo, canteen, and gear.
Usually, the biggest guy carried the radio.
Immediately, I thought this was my punishment for hiding
Shorty's ham radio in Seattle.
[ Gunfire ]
At Anzio, I was assigned to Company B.
There was a fellow named Curtis
who had a Chinese girlfriend back home.
His parents objected because she was not Japanese,
but he wanted to marry her and asked for our advice.
We told him to follow his heart.
He was happy and wrote a letter telling her
he wanted to marry her when he got home.
[ Music continues ]
[ Explosion ]
The next day, near the Mussolini Canal Battle,
the ground was shaking from our artillery fire.
Curtis took a peek and caught a bullet between the eyes.
It was sad to see his life and dreams disappear so quickly.
Later, I met Yoshito from Seattle,
and we shared a foxhole.
We talked about good times growing up.
To my surprise, he had dated my sister.
I was shocked and amazed.
"You dated my sister?" I asked.
After that, he became like a brother to me.
Yoshito was the best point man,
and everyone followed him single-file
through the terrain and forest.
Being up front was the most dangerous assignment.
He was so good at sneaking up on the enemy
that he earned the nickname "The Shadow."
Sadly, fate caught up to Yoshito...
[ Gunshot ]
...when a sniper's bullet killed him.
I heard...
-Shadow's down!
-By the time I reached him,
someone had already covered his body with a poncho.
I didn't have a chance to say a last goodbye.
The captain used me as an interpreter
since I took German at Broadway High School.
We came upon a farmhouse, and my squad leader
told me to tell the Germans to surrender.
I crawled through the grape vineyard and hollered,
"Kommen un Hingabe!" --
"Come out and surrender!"
I saw the window open,
and a potato-masher grenade came flying out.
[ Object clatters ]
I was scared and ran like crazy.
I got hung up in the grapevine wires,
which held me firm and helpless.
[ Explosion ]
The explosion and concussion blew me to the terrace below.
I stood dizzy -- couldn't hear a thing
out of both my ears.
My buddies continued to attack,
and we were able to capture the Germans.
But I lost my hearing.
Gradually, some of it came back,
but I was never the same.
Next we were ordered to rescue the Texas Lost Battalion.
The trees in the Vosges Forest were so tall,
it was dark even during the day.
[ Music continues ]
[ Whistling, explosions ]
We took mortar fire,
and a shell exploded in the trees.
[ Whistling, explosion ]
-Medic, three down!
[ Music continues ]
-Our first man was wounded in the back,
the second in the head,
and I caught shrapnel in the shoulder
and ended up in a military hospital outside of London.
Since I could walk and get around,
I was able to visit London.
[ Air-raid sirens blaring ]
No one told us that German V2 missiles were blasting London
and no one knew where they would land.
I thought, "I better get back to the hospital,"
where it was safe.
I rejoined my unit in the Riviera area,
and our next battle would be the German Gothic Line campaign.
The plan was to climb Mount Folgorito
and hit the Germans from two sides.
-Shh! Be quiet on this climb.
-The trail was narrow,
and one of our pack mules fell off a cliff.
We held our breath as it fell.
It must have broken its neck instantly
because it didn't cry out and give away our position.
Quietly, we climbed and surprised the Germans.
It wasn't long before the European war was over.
Next, I volunteered to fight in the Pacific,
against the Japanese.
By the time we organized,
the atom bombs had dropped and the Japanese surrendered.
[ Music continues ]
After the war, I returned to Seattle
and worked at the hotel part-time
and became a full-time postal letter carrier.
On Memorial Day some years after the war,
I visited Washelli Cemetery in Seattle
and discovered Yoshito's grave.
I said my goodbye and finally had time
to feel the sadness of my loss.
As I stood by his grave,
I thought how thankful I was to have a life.
I thought about how many of my buddies
did not have a chance to marry, have children,
watch the rain fall,
or picnic on Alki Beach
with kids playing tag or making castles in the sand.
On the beach, I sip tea from a thermos
and enjoy the rice ball
with a pickled red plum inside.
[ Music continues ]
On Memorial Day,
I think about my army buddies from Seattle and Hawaii
who fought by my side and made me a better person.
Thank you, my friends.
I will never forget you.
[ Wind blowing ]
[ Taps playing ]
[ Mid-tempo orchestral music playing ]
[ Music continues ]
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