The World War II contributions of the Japanese Americans who served as interpreters in the Pacific front are not as widely known as the exploits of the highly decorated 442nd Infantry Regiment who fought in Europe,
-NW

The Japanese-American Translators of World War II
Asianometry
Mar 21, 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR9bwoS6Bgs

Viewer comments:

@nancydelu4061
2 hours ago (edited)

Gookurosama deshita. I grew up next to Herbert Mizukami, his Ookasama, and their 3 kids. Mizukamisan was mostly closed mouthed, except for his Kibei experiences back before the war. I had no idea how precious those recollections were until I went to the mainland for University.

@blanchjoe1481
Dear Asianometry, I was born and raised in Hood River OR USA and I know this story very well, Hood River OR had a quite large community of Japanese-American farmers, many of them quite successful. In High School I went on one of my very first dates with a local girl. My Parents found out, and delicately informed me that it was their wish that I stop seeing her. Having never behaved in such a way before I was taken aback. No she was not Japanese American. When the US Government ( in a fit of racist paranoia as no German Americans went to camps ) sent the Japanese Americans to "...The Camps..." they had to leave their homes, possessions, but worse they had to leave their land, and farmland does not take care of itself.

Often they would sell the land for a $ 1.00 someone in the area who would promise to sell it back when the war was over, and when they came back. The insult to their injury was that for some of them, when they came back they could not get their land back, or if they did, the land had been commercially raped, no fertilizer, no pruning, no care of any kind. The caretaker owners had sold every piece of fruit on the tress, year after year at top US Army prices, and making a small fortune.

@robertlee5456
These Japanese-Americans who worked for the allied cause, only to see their family and friends placed in internment camps. Unjust.