VETERANS OF THE 93RD BOMB GROUP had begun gathering for annual reunions in the 1950s. In 2002, with the survivors now in their eighties or even nineties, the men of the 93rd and their families converged on Colorado Springs, Colorado, for a reunion. The US Air Force Academy had prepared a plaque commemorating the World War II feats of the 93rd, and the unveiling of the memorial on the academy plaza was to be a highlight of the gathering.
Although Ben had been a dues-paying member of the association for years, he had never attended a reunion. Now, at the age of eighty-five, with Shige at his side, Ben made his first appearance. At the poignant plaque unveiling ceremonies, Ben and his old 409th Squadron commander, K. O. Dessert, represented the group. Ben also delivered formal remarks at the annual banquet. The group’s president, retired colonel Alfred Asch, saluted Ben for his “tremendous contribution to freedom and democracy.”9
At the Colorado Springs reunion, Cal Stewart continued to talk up the idea of securing higher official recognition of Ben’s wartime service. A year later, meeting in New Orleans, the 93rd Bomb Group Association veterans formally set in motion an effort to have Ben’s highest military decoration—the Distinguished Flying Cross with two Oak Leaf Clusters—upgraded. Ben didn’t attend that reunion, but he discouraged talk of nominating him for the Medal of Honor, insisting he didn’t meet the very specific qualifications of the US military’s highest honor. The 93rd veterans resolved to nominate Ben for the army award just below the Medal of Honor, the Distinguished Service Medal.
After two years of diligent work that included writing letters and gathering testimonials, lobbying politicians and senior military officers in Washington, DC, and enlisting the influence of such luminaries as former president George H. W. Bush, the army finally approved the presentation of the Distinguished Service Medal to Ben.
The ceremony was set for Lincoln, Nebraska, on August 12, 2005. On the eve of the presentation, the Los Angeles Times ran a lengthy profile of Ben under the headline “Righting a Wrong, US to Honor WWII Vet’s Bravery.” Ben and Shige flew to Nebraska for the ceremonies, which rivaled the welcome that Ben had received when he had opened up the Nebraska Historical Society’s World War II exhibition fourteen years earlier—an event that Ben had once described as his “last hurrah.” The Distinguished Service Medal was draped around Ben’s neck before a crowd of hundreds of well-wishers, including a former high school student inspired by Ben during his Fifty-Ninth Mission Tour in 1946–47. “I had to fight like hell for the right to fight for my own country,” Ben said in his remarks. “And I now feel vindicated.”10 The ovation was loud and long.
The following day, the Nebraska Press Association bestowed its President’s Award on Ben and the University of Nebraska awarded him an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters. Feted at a luncheon hosted by the University of Nebraska Journalism and Mass Communications Department, Ben said, “My humble life has been on cloud nine and words cannot adequately express my gratitude for priceless friends who do not judge a man by his ancestry. At the ripe old age of eighty-eight, I consider myself the luckiest person on this planet. And these two days in Lincoln, Nebraska will be forever cherished. God bless the University of Nebraska. And God bless America.”11
The honors continued to flow.
In 2006, Ben, Shige, and Julie, their youngest daughter, were guests at the White House State Dinner that President George W. Bush and First Lady Barbara Bush hosted for Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. In 2007, Ben returned to Lincoln, Nebraska, to attend the August 1 premiere of Most Honorable Son, Bill Kubota’s documentary film about his life. The film aired nationwide on PBS later that fall. Sadly for Ben, he flew back to Lincoln two weeks later to deliver the eulogy for Cal Stewart, who had finally succumbed to his battle with cancer.
Ben returned to Washington the following year for more honors. During the White House Asia Pacific American Heritage Month ceremony in 2008, President George W. Bush delivered a heartfelt tribute to Ben. Ben stood and saluted, and President Bush returned the honor.
During that trip, Ben was also the guest of honor at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum for the dedication of an exhibit honoring his service. At a private banquet presided over by the museum’s director, General J. R. Dailey, Bill Kubota’s Most Honorable Son was screened in the Lockheed Martin IMAX Theater. Describing himself as “the luckiest dude on the planet,” Ben concluded, “Your public event is the ultimate tribute and your heartwarming gesture epitomizes the goodness of Americans. Thank you and God Bless America.”12
Julie had become more than her father’s caretaker as he traveled the country to accept various honors. She was Ben’s sounding board and trusted advisor. Her devotion was total. Among her many cherished memories of their time together was her father’s command of the minutia of current events, history, and popular culture that allowed him to cheerfully dominate family games of Trivial Pursuit. He possessed “one of the most wonderful minds I ever met,” Julie recalled. “His thinking ability was so off-the-charts brilliant.”13
By then in his nineties, Ben was among the dwindling number of World War II veterans alive to acknowledge the gratitude of their countrymen. In 2010, Ben received the Audie Murphy Award at the American Veterans Center 13th Annual Conference and Awards Gala in Washington, DC. Two years later, he was inducted into the Nebraska Aviation Hall of Fame.
In the fall of 2014, Ben was ninety-seven when he received an invitation to open a new “Road to Berlin” exhibition at the National WWII Museum in New Orleans. Ben’s children thought the trip was too risky for his health, but Ben was determined to go. He phoned the nephew of a 93rd Bomb Group pilot, Joe Avendano, who had flown with him in 1943 and died in a training accident in England in early 1944. Ben explained his predicament to the nephew, Joe Avendano Duran. “Joe, would you be my escort?”14
Joe Duran thought it over and discussed it with his wife, Phyllis. They both had gotten to know Ben over the previous fifteen years through their research on Joe Avendano. They weren’t sure whether he would survive the rigors of the trip, but they both believed that if Ben Kuroki wanted to go to New Orleans for one more “last hurrah,” he had earned that right.
In early December 2014, Joe Avendano Duran escorted a wheelchair-bound Ben through the Burbank airport to their New Orleans flight. Once aboard, a flight attendant asked Joe for more details about Ben’s story. Later in the flight, the pilot made his way back to see them. “You’re a survivor of fifty-eight combat missions?” the awestruck pilot asked Ben. After a brief conversation, the pilot returned to the front of the plane and then his voice came over the intercom. “We have a special guest with us today,” the pilot announced. He gave a brief synopsis of Ben’s remarkable story. When he finished, the pilot said, “I’d like everybody to give Mr. Ben Kuroki a hand.” The plane erupted in cheers and applause. “Ben couldn’t stand up, but he raised his hand and kind of waved,” Duran said.15
The event at the National WWII Museum came off without a hitch. Once again, Ben was the star of the show. Much to Joe Duran’s relief, Ben survived the journey without incident. “It was a great sendoff,” Duran said.
This was indeed Ben’s last hurrah, or at least his final in-person last hurrah. Within months, his health took a turn for the worse. On September 1, 2015, Ben died at the age of ninety-eight. His passing was noted by several national publications. In a lengthy obituary, the New York Times paid tribute to his epic quest to prove his patriotism in World War II. “Ben Kuroki Dies at 98,” the headline read. “Japanese American Overcame Bias to Fight for U.S.”
EPILOGUE
The doors of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, DC, swing open at 10:00 a.m. every day of the year except December 25, and before closing time, five thousand people on average make their way inside. On the northern fringe of the National Mall, along Constitution Avenue between Twelfth and Fourteenth Streets, the 750,000-square-foot facility has been a magical place for me since my second visit as a nine-year-old in the summer of 1968. Like most visitors, I had always spent my visits wandering through the three main exhibition levels, marveling at such artifacts as Abraham Lincoln’s stovepipe hat or Dixie Gillespie’s trumpet, oblivious to the inner sanctum that occupies two upper levels.
In June 2023, as students on the school year’s final tours vied with tourists in the public rooms, Smithsonian curator and project director Jennifer L. Jones escorted me into her hidden world in the Military History division to examine one of the museum’s lesser-known acquisitions of recent vintage. In 2008, Ben had bequeathed his papers, scrapbooks, and war memorabilia to the museum. I would be the first outside scholar to examine the collection, she said.
Ben’s story had first appeared in my life thirty-three years earlier, in 1990, when I began a quest rooted in my childhood. My mother had endured several scarring traumas early in life, but perhaps the most profound was the disappearance of her oldest brother during a World War II bombing mission. His name was L. H. White, and he was part of the first wave of replacement crews to replenish the depleted ranks of the 93rd Bomb Group in the spring of 1943. Only two weeks before my uncle arrived at Hardwick, Ben had resumed his combat tour with the 93rd after his return from Spain. My Uncle L.H. and Ben were in different 93rd squadrons—L.H. in the 328th, Ben in the 409th—so they weren’t close friends. But they would have known each other by sight from the mess hall and mission briefings.
After the 93rd was deployed to the Libyan desert for the Ploiesti raid in late June 1943, L.H. and his crew flew many of the same raids as Ben. They both flew the 500-plane raid on Rome on July 19, and they both survived the low-level Ploiesti raid on August 1. On October 1, 1943, when the 93rd was flying out of Tunis on yet another temporary assignment to North Africa, they both took off on a long raid to Austria. Their target was the German Me-109 fighter factory at Wiener Neustadt, just south of Vienna. Ben’s pilot, Homer Moran, aborted the raid for mechanical reasons and safely returned to base. My uncle was on the only 93rd aircraft that didn’t make it back that day, a storied B-24 named Jerk’s Natural.
My mother was only eleven at the time, and she and her family endured seven years of agony after receiving the MIA telegram from the War Department the same week that Ben nearly died over Münster on his final mission with the 93rd. In early 1950, three months before Ben graduated from the University of Nebraska and began his career as publisher of the York Republican, two of my mother’s older siblings and her father gathered at a freshly dug grave at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery, on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River south of St. Louis, Missouri. On March 13, 1950, L.H. was buried with eight comrades in a single casket. All the families who were there that raw day left doubting whether their boys had really been found. I grew up with the legacy of those doubts and the enduring pain of L.H.’s loss. Like Ben, I became a journalist, and after a decade of reporting experience, I set out to find answers for my mother and her surviving siblings.
Among the 93rd Bomb Group veterans I interviewed were Cal Stewart and Elmer (Bill) Dawley, the gunner who suffered a head wound on Ben’s first mission in December 1942. Ben was keeping a low profile during those years, and so I never spoke with him. But I did interview more than one hundred 93rd veterans, and several of them mentioned Ben.
When I set out to tell Ben’s story in 2022, I meshed his print interviews over the years with his late-life oral histories and other sources like the Ralph Martin book and the documentary films of Bill Kubota and Frank Abe. I broadened my search for other sources of information and that eventually led me to the National Museum of American History. Jennifer L. Jones made no promises of what I might find as she escorted me into a small office with the first two boxes that Ben had donated. I pulled out an old scrapbook, and Ben’s remarkable story came to life.
It meant a great deal to Ben late in his life that a young Japanese American curator at the Smithsonian, Noriko Sanefuji, had taken an interest in securing his collection for the National Museum of American History. After signing his deed of gift in April 2008, Ben began corresponding with Noriko, and she became a valued friend.
In one of his final letters to her, written in October 2013, Ben asked Noriko if she could find him a copy of the old newspaper photograph that showed Ben and Fred standing before the Army Air Forces recruiter at Grand Island the week after the Pearl Harbor attack, the right hand of each brother raised as they recited the Pledge of Allegiance
Ben had typed the letter himself and he apologized for his mistakes. “This electric typewriter [is] difficult with my shaky hands,” he wrote. He also shared with Noriko a letter he had received from the governor of Nebraska. “A final incredible honor and closure,” Ben wrote. “Gratifying homecoming for a WWII veteran of Japanese ancestry.”1
IN JULY 2023, I DROVE TO LINCOLN County, Nebraska, to see and feel this remote corner of America that had shaped Ben. I stayed in North Platte, and on consecutive days I drove out to the Hershey farm that Sam Kuroki had leased through the 1930s and 1940s. The land was now irrigated and planted in corn, not the potatoes, tomatoes, and sugar beets that Sam and George had cultivated for years. I knocked on the front door of the farmhouse, and a man with a disheveled appearance and nervous manner answered. I explained why I was there and asked whether I might wander around the place a bit. I didn’t expect the man would know Ben’s story. I just described the person I was writing about as the first Japanese American hero of World War II. “You mean Kuroki?” the man interjected. Cutting the conversation short, he curtly told me I needed permission from the property owner back on the main road, and shut the door.
On both days that I drove out to the Hershey farm, I also continued a mile farther up the road to the North Platte River, where Ben used to hunt with his friend Gordy Jorgenson. Even with its reduced summer flow, the river is life-giving as it courses through the arid Lincoln County prairie on its way to merging with the South Platte River on the outskirts of the town of North Platte. From the north bank, I gazed at the deeper eddies along the river’s southern fringe. I imagined Ben and Gordy blasting away at ducks, Ben breaking through the ice as he stepped onto the river’s frozen surface, and then Gordy coming to his rescue.
In the late afternoon, the road across the river came alive with tractors and other machinery as farmers headed back home after their day’s work. When the noise died away, all that remained was the sound of rushing water cutting through the bars of sand and gravel, and the symphony of birds, seen and unseen: common yellowthroats, killdeer, cliff swallows, song sparrows, field sparrows, robins, blue jays, mourning doves, and a lone bald eagle, swooping from a tall cottonwood and skimming just above the water on its way downstream.
After the war, Sam and Naka Kuroki had left country life behind and moved into North Platte, and George had continued to farm the Hershey land. I met a former teacher in North Platte who told me that she used to bring her students out to see George’s potato farm. The only brother who had stuck around to help George with the farm was Fred, a lifelong bachelor. He became a surrogate father to George’s son, Reed. George was a workaholic, and so it was his Uncle Fred who taught him things and told him family stories, Reed told me.
Among the stories that Fred had told Reed was about the Kuroki boys swimming in the ditch that ran along the road in front of the farmhouse. They sometimes caught small carp and minnows in the ditch, and Naka would fry them in a pan and serve them with soy sauce. Fred and Ben both became skilled trappers as teenagers. Fred would never forget one successful year when he amassed a good number of skunk and raccoon pelts. But the family was experiencing hard times and Fred used his profits to buy food for his parents and siblings.
Reed had grown up in the shadow of his Uncle Ben’s legacy, but he had ended up with a more complicated view of his famous uncle. For one thing, Ben and George didn’t get along, Reed said. He didn’t know much more, but it’s easy to imagine the source of the tension. Ben tried to get out of the farm chores whenever he could, and George would spend the rest of his life on the farm, abandoning his college dreams of becoming an engineer because of his filial responsibilities as the oldest son. Julie Kuroki told me that her father “felt his older brother hadn’t welcomed him back” when he returned from the war. Whatever the source of the breach, it lasted for the rest of their lives.2
When Reed went off to the University of Nebraska, Ben’s legacy followed him. Two Japanese American brothers from North Platte lived on the same floor of Reed’s dorm, and they knew all about Ben. Their fathers were Fred and Norman Ugai, and both fought with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team in Europe. Ben’s recruiting work in the camps in 1944 hadn’t set well with the Ugai brothers and some other men who ended up in the 442nd, and the brothers had passed on their animus toward the celebrated Ben Kuroki to their sons.
Reed only saw his Uncle Ben four or five times over the decades. At their last reunion, Ben shared two stories. The first was about Gordy saving him when he fell through the ice during their duck hunt along the North Platte River. And the second was about Ben’s visit with Gordy’s heartbroken mother after the war. “He was pretty broke up,” Reed said.
Ben’s friend Gordy was long gone, but never forgotten. Gordy’s brother, Kenneth, had named his son after his fallen brother, and the nephew Gordy Jorgenson was Reed’s best friend. Reed’s son was in a lawn business with Dustin Jorgenson, the son of the nephew Gordy. The Gordy Jorgenson who had fought and died in the Pacific never earned Ben’s acclaim, but, like Ben, the shadow of his legacy endured.
Not long before I visited North Platte, James Griffin, director and curator of the Lincoln County Historical Museum, had unveiled a new exhibition called “Japanese of Lincoln County.” The exhibition spanned the period from around 1920 to the 1950s. Although Ben would later say he never experienced bigotry growing up in Hershey, anti-Japanese sentiment had deep roots in the area, the exhibits revealed. Nebraska’s Alien Land Law, which mirrored similar laws passed throughout the West in the 1920s, had been proposed by a state representative from North Platte. The law, which prevented land ownership by noncitizens, has never been repealed.
The suspicion that immediately fell on local Japanese and Japanese American residents after Pearl Harbor was also on display. The exhibit included a list “of all Japanese families” compiled by the North Platte police chief on Monday, December 8, 1941, and submitted to the FBI office in Omaha later that day. There were twenty-five typed names on the list. Among eight names handwritten at the bottom of the chief’s list were the names of Ben and George Kuroki.
