1. “TRUTH, JUSTICE AND THE AMERICAN WAY…”
by Richard Hawkins
…very gently he said to me, “Tell them, we believed in our country when our country didn’t
believe in us”.
I had joined their WWII veterans group back in 1999 because I thought their story was
interesting. And, they had an oral history program. Immediately I volunteered to hear more of
this story of theirs, but, each guy I interviewed was reticent to talk about themselves. They saw
their lives and experiences as fairly insignificant and told me so. I changed my approach and
asked them to talk about the stuff of their lives, the little things they did not think important
enough to mention. I kept after them, kept asking. And in all those little things not so important,
I began to hear a story about big things that are important. I began to hear the heartbeat of their
story. And that heartbeat inspired me to get to know them better. I went to their banquets,
barbeques or just hung out; spent a lot of time with them joking and listening and talking or
simply helping with cleaning or taking out the trash. I grew to know them beyond their
interviews and I liked them. And they liked me. Despite being half their age with roots and a
cultural background as far from theirs as East is from West, they had accepted me. Then, on a
day not so long ago, the unexpected happened.
He and I were brushing off dirt as we walked around the black granite panels engraved with
names when he stopped to point to his own. His is one of just over 16,000 names engraved, each
one an individual story that collectively tells a monumental story. Standing beside him at that
moment, I suddenly felt the weight and magnitude of what all of them had been through. So
many had given me the stories of their lives, I felt a responsibility to them. And in that spirit I
asked him in the future what I should say when people ask me about them. “What is the most
important thing you want me to tell them?” He just stood there looking back at me as though he
did not understand the question.
“Turn up your hearing aid”, I said loudly, which he did, then repeated, “When they ask me about
you guys, what is the most important thing you want me to tell them?” He lowered his head and
paused for quite some time. Finally, he looked up and very gently he said to me, “Tell them, we
believed in our country when our country didn’t believe in us”.
It was my turn to stand there looking as though I did not understand. His words triggered an
epiphany, although, I did not immediately recognize it as an epiphany; more like confusion,
something I had known all along but was only now trying to understand. His words gripped me
because I knew his story.
I knew the man who said those words was only 10 years old when his mother died in childbirth. I
knew that his widowed father, with no extended family to help raise nine young children, took
them all back to the old country where the 10 year old boy did not fit in. I knew that even
though he physically looked like his classmates, they bullied him because he was an American
boy who struggled with their language, their culture and, compared to their burr cuts, his hair
was long. At 10 years of age, he was a motherless child thrown into a society he did not
2. understand, searching to find his place. But the boy endured all the while dreaming of returning
to America, his country, the place where he knew he belonged.
After many years, his dream finally came true. He followed his elder brother Harry back to his
birthplace of Turlock, California and immediately enrolled in the local school. Having lived so
long in the old country, he had forgotten much of his English language so he was placed back in
the eighth grade to catch up. He was much older and taller than his classmates but that was okay
with him because he was back in America where he belonged.
In those days, the eighth grade was when teachers taught citizenship, the basics of the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He dutifully learned, “We hold these truths
to be self-evident that all men are created equal…” and, “We the People of the United States, in
order to form a more perfect union, establish justice…” Even though he did not understand most
of those two documents, he knew they said he belonged and he believed they were his as much
as anyone else’s. They were his birthright because he was born in America, in Turlock,
California. But what you are taught is supposed to be, is not always the way it is.
Outside his eighth grade classroom, war on a world scale was brewing and boiling and then it
exploded. And when it exploded, he became a casualty, collateral damage when the Japanese
navy committed an act of war against his America at Pearl Harbor. When word of the attack
reached Turlock, his fellow Americans looked at him with suspicion. He was branded a danger,
a threat, someone to be feared. He had not attacked anyone. But he was guilty of ancestry
because he was Kenjiro “Ken” Akune, an American of Japanese ancestry. He looked like the
enemy.
His government decided that he and his kind were so great a threat that they needed to be
removed from society, put in prison camps, penned in by barbed wire and stood watch over by
soldiers in towers with guns. When his government told him it was time to go, he went
peacefully with 110,000 other Americans of Japanese Ancestry to the assembly centers then on
to the prison camps. But what pained him most, however, was being categorized 4-C, enemy
alien. That meant he no longer belonged. His government was telling him the Declaration and
the Constitution was no longer his. He had lost his birthright and his identity again, just as he
had at the age of 10 when his father took him back to the old country.
But he never forgot the enemy was Japan. And he never forgot who he was. Down deep, way
down deep, he knew America was still his country no matter what his government said or did to
him. He could not be moved off this belief. And so he waited for things to change.
Within the year, his government came to ask for help. They sent a representative to his prison
camp asking him and other American boys of Japanese ancestry to join the U.S Army and
fight. He was only 19 and recruits had to be 21 years of age so his older brother Harry, who was
imprisoned in the same camp as he was, signed paperwork which allowed him to
enlist. Together, Ken and Harry left the prison camp and went into the army to fight for America.
After training, the brothers were sent to different theaters of war. Harry fought in combat,
gained notoriety and was awarded medals while Ken fought a more “quiet” war as an
3. interrogator of Japanese POWs. Both served America, did their part along with the rest of the
soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines as well as millions on the home front who worked in the
Arsenal of Democracy. And with so many doing their part, the war finally did end.
Afterwards, both Ken and Harry were assigned to occupied Japan and met up there. One of the
first things they did was to visit their father and younger brother, both of whom had stayed in
Japan during the war. In fact, their younger brother had been trained as a Kamikaze pilot in the
Japanese Navy, but the war ended before he could fly what would have been his one and only
mission. Their visit was pleasant except for one moment. Ken and Harry nearly came to blows
with their younger brother when conversation turned to who was right in the war between the
United States and Japan. The only thing that settled them all down was their father’s loud and
firm voice reminding the three brothers that it was over.
On another visit, Ken was asked to speak about Democracy to the Japanese citizens in his
father’s village. The Japanese were very curious about this thing called freedom because it was
new to them and they were being told from now on that is how they should live. Ken confided in
me that he did not tell the Japanese about him being sent to the prison camps in
America. Instead, he explained that freedom doesn’t mean you can do anything you
want. Freedom ends when you infringe on somebody else’s. He told me he wanted them to
know that freedom is a responsibility too.
His brother Harry soon left occupied Japan and went home to Turlock, but Ken stayed on
working as an interpreter to help win the peace. And it was during that time he met Alice. Alice,
an American of Japanese ancestry just like Ken, had been visiting family in Japan before the war
broke out and missed the last boat home. She was born and raised in America but was trapped in
Japan for the duration of the war. They took a liking to each other, married and returned to
America together.
Back in California, segregation made it difficult to find a home. But a fellow citizen, who did
not see race as a good reason not to, sold his house to Ken and Alice. They raised a family there
and still live in the same place. They taught their children the same values their parents had
taught them; always be honest and work hard; always be humble and polite; do not bring shame
to the family or community; and the nail that sticks out the furthest gets pounded first. Ken
supported them all by working at Hughes Aircraft until he retired.
After Ken gently said to me, “Tell them, we believed in our country when our country didn’t
believe in us”, his whole story flooded through me. I tried to make sense of it all knowing not
just Ken’s, but every name engraved on those black granite panels, just over 16,000, were
Americans who had fought for their identity and struggled for acceptance and…suddenly, I saw
it.
I saw how fragile we all are, dependent on one another for the inalienable rights of life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness. A nearly suffocating sadness swept over me because those ideals
shine only in as much as each of us decides. And back then they did not shine for a young Ken
Akune except in his heart. And what I understood is that his unfaltering confidence and steadfast
belief in those ideals is not just a matter of the heart. It is also the soul of America. It is who we
