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Kuroki’s Life of “Patriotism, Courage, Teamwork, and Tolerance” and a “Lapse into Superpatriotism”

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Although there are no such things as secular books that are definitive, Gregg Jones’ magisterial biography of Japanese American World War II hero Ben Kuroki, Most Honorable Son: A Forgotten Hero’s Fight Against Fascism and Hate During World War II, is certainly as close as possible to being defined by that adjective. This fact is assuredly testified to in full by the laudatory tributes paid to it by the 13 authoritative providers of promotional puffs for the volume that precede the text proper. These are peppered with phrases such as “amazingly well told,” “inspirational read,” “compelling story,” “prodigiously researched and expertly crafted,” “an instant classic,” and “a masterclass in history and biography.”

As one who has at one point in his half-century career in Japanese American studies transacted an oral history interview with Kuroki, authored a published article centered on a highly controversial episode in his life, and contemplated writing a book-length account of his life (all duly mentioned by Jones in his tour de force), I applaud the work here under review for two main reasons, both of signal importance. The first of these is what Jones accomplishes in his prologue, plus the overwhelming majority of the first 54 chapters of his book, and the second is what he achieves for the most part in his 55th chapter and epilogue.

Jones characterizes Kuroki’s life in his prologue as “a saga of patriotism, courage, teamwork, and tolerance.” He thereafter proceeds to devote the lion’s share of his tour de force to relating the full sweep of Kuroki’s remarkable life up through Decmber 6, 1991, when at age 74 he delivered a powerful keynote address at the formal opening in Lincoln, Neb., of the Museum of Nebraska History’s ambitious four-year exhibition, What Did You Do in the War? Nebraskans in World War II.

What takes center stage in Most Honorable Son, however, is what Kuroki, a Nisei raised and schooled in the small farming town of Hershey, Neb., populated with but a few Nikkei families, did in that war (as an heroic Army Air Corps gunner on 58 death-defying bombing missions in North Africa, Europe and the Pacific, including Japan) and his primary rationale for doing it (to prove in no uncertain terms that in spite of his Japanese heritage, he was an American to the very core of his being). Jones also makes space in his bountiful masterpiece for sections devoted to Kuroki’s so-called “Fifty-Ninth Mission” (launching a spirited fight in postwar America against racism and bigotry) and to his concurrent checkered career in journalism as a publisher, editor, and reporter for newspapers located in , Idaho, Michigan, and California.

This brings me to my second reason for proclaiming Most Honorable Son to be a book of rare distinction. Instead of simply lionizing Ben Kuroki as our country’s first Japanese American World War II hero, a prelude to the valorous story of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and its “Go for Broke” motto, Jones explores an episode in Kuroki’s wartime that represents an Achilles’ heel in his otherwise unblemished record as a patriot, a veritable lapse into superpatriotism that militates against seeing that patriotism can be expressed in a variety of different honorific ways.

While attending the 2023 Heart Mountain pilgrimage in Wyoming at the site of one of the 10 World War II War Relocation Authority incarceration camps, Jones meets two people, Gail Kuromiya, the daughter of Yoshito “Yosh” Kuromiya, a Heart Mountain draft resister (and one of some 300 draft resisters altogether in the WRA “gulag”) and Frank Abe, the director of the award-winning 2000 film Conscience and the Constitution, which celebrates the draft resisters as loyal and brave Americans. From Gail Kuromiya, Jones learns about her father’s 2021 memoir, Beyond the Betrayal: The Memoir of a World War II Japanese American Draft Resister of Conscience, and from Abe he heard about both a 1994 oral history interview I did with Kuroki and a 1998 one that he and Frank Chin did with him. All three of these sources dealt with an incident that occurred in the autumn of 1944 at the federal conspiracy trial of the Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee, inspirers and supporters of the Heart Mountain draft resisters like Yosh Kuromiya, who later served two-year sentences in federal prisons.

Kuroki was summoned to testify against these men because he had earlier visited the Heart Mountain site and had verbally tangled with some of the draft resisters who saw him as a tool of the U.S. government and the WRA. Although he never testified at the trial, Kuroki was quoted in a local Cheyenne newspaper as having called the activities of the draft resisters “a stab in the back,” and then vociferously declared, “These men are Fascists in my estimation and no good to any country. They have torn down all the rest of us have tried to do.”

Hearing about this outburst from Kuroki and the events that had precipitated it, Jones could simply have ignored it and not mentioned it in his otherwise paean of praise for his biographical subject. To his great credit, he instead closed his brilliant narrative with these words of wisdom: “With his gallant and selfless service, Ben Kuroki earned the honors and accolades that came his way in time. And in the end, this earnest young man and the principled draft resisters from California, each in their own way, embody the highest ideals of a good and great nation.”

Moreover, in this same spirit, Jones magnanimously dedicated his book “To the memory of Ben Kuroki and Yosh Kuromiya and other Americans of Japanese descent who fought for liberty and justice for all in World War II.”

 

MOST HONORABLE SON: A Forgotten Hero’s Fight Against Fascism and Hate During World War II
By Gregg Jones
(New York: Kensington Publishing Corp., 2024, 368 pp., $28, hardcover)

 

*This article was originally published in the Nichi Bei News on January 1, 2025.

 

© 2025 Art Hansen, Nichi Bei News

Asian American Journalists Association (organization) Ben Kuroki biographies book reviews Heart Mountain Heart Mountain concentration camp heroes Nebraska reviews United States United States Air Force World War II World War II camps Wyoming
About the Authors

Art Hansen is Professor Emeritus of History and Asian American Studies at California State University, Fullerton, where he retired in 2008 as the director of the Center for Oral and Public History.  Between 2001 and 2005, he served as Senior Historian at the Japanese American National Museum. Since 2018, he has authored or edited five books that focus on the topic of the resistance by Japanese Americans to their unjust World War II oppression by the US government.

Updated August 2024


The Nichi Bei News rose out of the ashes of the historic Nichi Bei Times (1942-2009) and Nichi Bei Shimbun (1899-1942) legacy to launch the first nonprofit ethnic community newspaper of its kind in the U.S. in September 2009. From community issues and events taking place in the historic Japantowns and beyond, to entertainment profiles, food, film and book reviews, politics, hard news and commentaries, the Nichi Bei News has you covered. Published by the innovative nonprofit Nichi Bei Foundation, it proudly follows the rich tradition of some 125 years of community leadership through quality media.

Updated Jnauary 2024

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