A Japanese American Legacy: How a Bay Area Resident’s Family Inspired My Patriotism

Editor’s note: This story is part of KQED’s Youth Takeover. Throughout the month, we’re publishing content by high school students from all over the Bay Area.

Ted Iijima presented me with two of the best gifts of my life in December.

First, a Ziploc bag of six hoshigaki, which are candy-sweet, Japanese-style dried persimmons. Second, a rich history about how his Japanese American family has lived in — and served — the United States for generations.

Iijima is a third-generation Japanese American and son of Shori Iijima, a World War II veteran who served in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, an infantry unit made up almost entirely of American-born sons of Japanese immigrants.

Four of Iijima’s uncles also served in the 442nd, and a fifth served in the top-secret Military Intelligence Service. Iijima honors their service by volunteering as a docent at the USS Hornet’s 442nd Nisei Exhibit in Alameda.

Iijima, 75, guided me through the exhibit’s diverse artifacts. For example, the back room of the museum boasts six garlands of origami cranes folded from paper American flags. In Japanese culture, origami cranes came to symbolize peace, resilience and healing after a young survivor of the World War II atomic bombing developed leukemia and folded 1,300 paper birds before her death.

Sitting near the cranes for our interview, Iijima was decked out in an American battleship baseball cap and his Friends and Family of Nisei Veterans sweater vest. He spoke passionately about his family’s history with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and the 100th Infantry Battalion that preceded it.

As he spoke and I listened, I was stunned to learn that 14,000 men became the most highly decorated military unit in U.S. history — according to the Army — in just four years.

The soldiers, who averaged 5-foot-3 and 125 pounds, were swift fighters and emerged victorious from battles once thought impossible.

Japanese American families like Iijima’s inspired me to create a documentary film that explored the unique past of the 100th and 442nd soldiers. I learned that the 100th was originally a segregated unit of second-generation Japanese American men, or Nisei, from Hawaii.

After witnessing the success of the 100th, then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced the formation of the 442nd, a larger unit of Nisei soldiers. As the Nisei fought, over 120,000 people with Japanese ancestry were incarcerated, mainly on the West Coast in remote camps with harsh climes.

Iijima’s Oakland-born father, as well as other Japanese Americans, were accused of spying for the Japanese Empire.

“The reality was all these places were terrible. They were miles from the closest town. It was below freezing in the winter. It was near 100 every day in the summertime, and there was dust everywhere,” Iijima said, describing what his parents had shared with him.

Many Japanese Americans felt blindsided and developed complex feelings about patriotism. Few Japanese American men initially volunteered for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, so the U.S. military issued a loyalty questionnaire to second-generation Nisei.

“Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty, wherever ordered?” was question No. 27 on the survey. The subsequent question: “Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any and all attacks by foreign and domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or disobedience to the Japanese Emperor, or any other foreign government, power, or organization?”

According to Iijima, most Nisei were unaware of who the emperor of Japan even was.

Young men who answered “no” to questions No. 27 and 28 on the survey were dubbed the “no-no boys” and sent to the Tule Lake Segregation Center, while those who answered “yes” were drafted into the military.

The 100th and 442nd fought with great intensity, demonstrating their loyalty and patriotism. Many, tragically, sacrificed their lives, earning the 100th the title of “The Purple Heart Battalion.”

“Many of [the Japanese American soldiers] came back with either mental injuries or physical injuries that prevented them from living a full life. Today, we call it PTSD. Many of them [had] missing legs, arms, eyesight, ears, whatever the case may be,” Iijima told me.

“But that’s what it took to prove their loyalty.”

While working on my documentary, I interviewed several descendants of 100th Infantry Battalion and 442nd Regimental Combat Team soldiers. The Nisei soldiers’ service and sacrifice should be an inspirational story for all Americans.

But just days after finishing the first draft of my 10-minute film, President Donald Trump’s anti-DEI executive order resulted in the United States Army removing the Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders Heritage page from its website. The story of the 442nd seemed to have vanished from America’s official military history, including images and video clips that I had included in my film that were suddenly inaccessible online.

Thankfully, after advocacy work from Japanese American organizations and politicians from Hawaii, the page was restored a day later.

Deleting important history was harmful — not just for Japanese Americans, but for all Americans. Not many know about the Nisei soldiers. As I worked on the documentary, I would tell people at my high school about my research, and just one person knew about the 100th or 442nd before I explained it to them.

It was my U.S. history teacher.

Because of how important diverse stories are for our nation, I am concerned about Trump’s attempt to criminalize and demonize DEI initiatives.

Though Trump has asserted that diversity, equity and inclusion efforts are discriminatory and problematic, I believe that my experience learning about the 442nd provides a counterexample.

Because of this story, I realized that being an American is more than waving a flag. As a young, third-generation American of Taiwanese descent, I sometimes feel disconnected from my American nationality. Yet, the 100th and 442nd have inspired me to demonstrate my deep love for my country by dedicating myself to tangible, serious actions that uplift my fellow citizens.

The most patriotic action, I have learned, is fighting for the American ideals of liberty and justice for all. For Iijima’s relatives, this fight meant physically putting themselves on the battlefields of Italy, France and Germany. Today, pursuing this task can take many forms — from volunteering and voting to self-education and social activism.

The men of the 100th and 442nd — and their families who stayed behind — remind me to love my country even when it doesn’t love me back, to serve when its leaders fail my loved ones and to trust that future generations may learn about today’s fight for social progress in a museum exhibit.

Iijima told me that his relatives dedicated themselves to defending America in spite of being stripped of their freedoms back home.

“You’re fighting for America, even if you don’t like what America has done to your people or to you personally,” he said. “You’re an American, and so you’re going to fight for America even if you don’t like [it]. It’s the only country that you have.”