The Press: The 59th Mission

Before the war, when Ben Kuroki helped his father raise sugar beets and seed potatoes on a farm in Hershey, Neb. (pop. 487), nobody paid much attention to the color of Ben's skin. The day after Pearl Harbor, Kuroki enlisted. On the train to camp, he heard for the first time what became an agonizingly familiar question: "What's that Jap doing in the Army?" To answer it, Japanese-American Ben Kuroki volunteered as an Air Force gunner.

After flying 30 missions in a B-24 over Europe and Africa and winning a pair of D.F.C.s, Sergeant Kuroki came home—where he...

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