A sweeping novel of history, war, and courage in the face of
injustice, Tears of Honor tells the story of the heroic Japanese
American soldiers who fought against Nazi tyranny in Europe, while their
families were imprisoned in America.
Sammy and Freddy are two all-American boys in the summer of 1941,
dreaming of becoming professional baseball players and maybe asking a
girl to the senior prom. But when the war comes, Sammy Miyaki, Freddy
Shiraga, and their families are seen as enemy aliens, not Americans.
In San Francisco and Washington, General John DeWitt and Major Karl
Bendetsen (the actual historical architects of the Japanese internment
order) wage a bureaucratic war to persuade the government to give legal
sanction to their plans to detain the Japanese population.
As the Miyaki and Shiraga families are taken from their homes and placed
in internment camps, Sammy and Freddy decide the only way to prove their
loyalty to America is to join the Army.
Assigned to an all Japanese American combat unit fighting against the
Germans, Sammy and Freddy are placed under the command of the
combat-hardened Lieutenant Young Oak Kim (a real-life person and one of
the most highly decorated American soldiers in history), who leads them
through some of the fiercest fighting of the war. Sammy, Freddy, and
their comrades confront the prejudice of white soldiers and the horrors
of combat, as they come to realize they are fighting not just for the
United States, but for the honor of all Japanese Americans.
