Ben arrived at the Heart Mountain camp in April 1944 with vague orders from the War Department. A Nisei draft-resistance movement centered in the Heart Mountain camp had prompted an FBI raid and dozens of arrests only days earlier. Among the young men from Heart Mountain being held in Wyoming jails on federal draft evasion charges was the young artist Yosh Kuromiya.
War Relocation Authority/National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
Ben received a hero’s welcome at Heart Mountain. At far left, a poster reads: “Welcome Sgt. Kuroki.” Ben’s hosts quickly made it clear that the purpose of his trip was to encourage draft-age Japanese American men in the camp to enlist in the army for combat with the all-Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team in Italy.
War Relocation Authority/National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
In a series of speeches before groups small and large at Heart Mountain, Ben urged Nisei men to enlist in the US Army and to prove their patriotism and trustworthiness in combat. His message fell flat with the growing draft-resistance movement, whose supporters demanded a restoration of constitutional and civil rights for all camp incarcerees before submitting to military service.
Military Division, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
Ben visited three incarceration camps in the spring of 1944, delivering speeches in which he urged young men to reclaim the honor of Japanese Americans by volunteering for combat duty. Many camp residents viewed Ben as a model Nisei and sought his autograph. Others greeted Ben with hostility and angry questions and accused him of collaborating with a government that had unjustly stripped Japanese Americans of their constitutional rights.
Military Division, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
As soon as he was released from recruiting duties, Ben sought a combat assignment in the Pacific. Ben was jubilant when his quest finally received the personal blessing of Secretary of War Henry Stimson. After a few days at home for a final furlough, Ben returned to his Nebraska base for final preparations. When Ben posed for a crew portrait on November 30, 1944, his long-sought Pacific deployment was only days away. Six days before this photograph was taken, B-29 Superfortress crews based in the Northern Mariana Islands struck the first blow against the Japanese home islands, bombing an aircraft engine plant in the Tokyo suburb of Musashino, ten miles from the Emperor’s Palace.
Military Division, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
In the last week of December 1944, Ben and his B-29 crew landed at the massive B-29 complex at North Field on Tinian Island. Tinian was one of the Northern Mariana Islands from which the climactic air campaign against Japan would be waged. US Army Air Forces (USAAF)/ National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
As US Army Air Forces B-29 bombers roared over Tinian night and day, vestiges of Japanese colonialism and prewar occupation stood alongside vestiges of the island’s indigenous civilization. The Japanese had transformed Tinian into a center of sugarcane cultivation before the war. By the time Ben arrived on the island, the cane fields provided cover for Japanese military holdouts.
US Army Air Forces (USAAF)/National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
Pilot Jim Jenkins had embraced Ben as a member of his crew in the late summer of 1944, and they had forged a close relationship by the time they posed beneath the nose of the Honorable Sad Saki on Tinian in early 1945. After several weeks of training flights, Ben and his crewmates began to log missions against Japanese targets on outlying islands before flying long raids on Japan’s home islands.
Smithsonian National Museum of American History (NMAH).
The B-29 was a luxury aircraft compared to the B-24, but Ben’s Pacific missions had their own particular stresses, including long and perilous hours over the Pacific Ocean. Ben had bonded with two previous crews, and he went through the same process again as the old man of the Honorable Sad Saki crew.
Military Division, National Museum of American History, of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
The firebombing raids on Tokyo and fears of being mistaken for an enemy soldier on Tinian pushed Ben to the brink of a mental breakdown in the spring of 1945. He was hospitalized in Hawaii for a few days, then returned to Tinian to continue flying missions against Japan in the closing months of the war.
Military Division, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
After completing mission number 27 in the Pacific in late July 1945, Ben was interviewed by Technical Sergeant Harold J. Brown for the Fighting AAF radio show. The interview aired on radio stations across America on Sunday evening, August 5—around the same time the B-29 Enola Gay dropped its atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.
US Army Air Forces (USAAF)/ National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
Ben was in a military hospital on Tinian, recovering from a serious head injury, when the Enola Gay landed on Tinian on the morning of August 6, 1945, after dropping its atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
US Army Air Forces (USAAF)/National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
Within hours of arriving in America in October 1945, Ben was flown to New York City to deliver a speech at the New York Herald Tribune Forum. Afterward, Ben received interview requests from major newspapers and radio stations. Among the prominent journalists who interviewed Ben was Ed Sullivan, an entertainment columnist for the New York Daily News. Sullivan later became the legendary host of America’s longest-running television variety show.
Military Division, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
During his visits to Washington, DC in 1945–1946, Ben sat for a portrait by the artist Joseph Cummings Chase. This portrait is among more than one hundred works by Chase that now hang in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington.
