Most Honorable Son

Book excerpt: The first comprehensive biography of unjustly forgotten war hero Ben Kuroki, a Japanese American farm boy from Nebraska who flew fifty-eight combat missions, fighting the Axis powers during World War II and battled racism, injustice, and prejudice on the home front. 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 honor, 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 Forces 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 debate that reversed a grave national dishonor. In the euphoric wake of America’s victory, the decorated war hero used his national platform to carry out what he called his “fifty-ninth mission,” urging his fellow Americans to do more to eliminate bigotry and racism at home. Told in full for the first time, and long overdue, Ben’s extraordinary story is a quintessentially American one of patriotism, principle, perseverance, and courage. It’s about being in the vanguard of history, the bonding of a band of brothers united in a just cause, a timeless and unflinching account of racial bigotry, and one man’s transcendent sense of belonging—in war, in peace, abroad, and at home.