One of the last, great untold stories of World War II--kept hidden for
decades--even after most of the World War II records were declassified
in 1972, many of the files remained untouched in various archives--a
gripping true tale of courage and adventure from Bruce Henderson, master
storyteller, historian, and New York Times best-selling author of Sons
and Soldiers--the saga of the Japanese American U.S. Army soldiers who
fought in the Pacific theater, in Burma, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, with their
families back home in America, under U.S. Executive Order 9066, held
behind barbed wire in government internment camps.
After Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. military was
desperate to find Americans who spoke Japanese to serve in the Pacific
war. They soon turned to the Nisei--first-generation U.S. citizens whose
parents were immigrants from Japan. Eager to prove their loyalty to
America, several thousand Nisei--many of them volunteering from the
internment camps where they were being held behind barbed wire--were
selected by the Army for top-secret training, then were rushed to the
Pacific theater. Highly valued as expert translators and interrogators,
these Japanese American soldiers operated in elite intelligence teams
alongside Army infantrymen and Marines on the front lines of the Pacific
war, from Iwo Jima to Burma, from the Solomons to Okinawa.
Henderson reveals, in riveting detail, the harrowing untold story of the
Nisei and their major contributions in the war of the Pacific, through
six Japanese American soldiers. After the war, these soldiers became
translators and interrogators for war crime trials, and later helped to
rebuild Japan as a modern democracy and a pivotal U.S. ally.
