CHAPTER 50: A GREATER CAUSE
1
Martin, Boy from Nebraska, pp. 194–95.
2
Ben Kuroki interview with Arthur A. Hansen, October 17, 1994, Center for Oral and Public History, California State University, Fullerton, Japanese American Oral History Project.
3
Martin, Boy from Nebraska, p. 200.
4
Ibid., p. 201.
5
Ibid.
6
“Brushed-Off Japyank Seeks Own Vet Group,” United Press dispatch dated November 4 and printed in the New York Daily News on November 5, 1945.
7
Ralph G. Martin would author or coauthor more than two dozen books over his career, but Boy from Nebraska was his first and it feels rushed and sloppy in places. Martin opens by describing Ben’s postwar homecoming as occurring in January 1946. He ends the book with Ben’s postwar homecoming occurring two months earlier, shortly after Ben’s appearance on the Report to the Nation radio show—an event that occurred on Saturday night, November 3, 1945. Ben’s military records, which I obtained from the National Personnel Records Center under the Freedom of Information Act, show he was discharged from the army on February 16, 1946. It’s unlikely that Ben was in Hershey on a furlough in January 1946, only days before his discharge, as Martin writes. Indeed, all available evidence suggests that Ben’s first trip home after his return from the Pacific took place sometime between November 5 and November 20, 1945.
8
Martin, Boy from Nebraska, p. 203.
9
“News Around the Clock,” New York Daily News, November 23, 1945, p. 52.
CHAPTER 51: FIFTY-NINTH MISSION
1
Details about New York City’s McBurney YMCA around the time that Ben lived there are drawn from “Takes New Post,” Eau Claire Leader, Eau Claire, Wisconsin, December 17, 1944, p. 4.
2
Cal Stewart, “Ben Kuroki’s 59th Mission,” Sunday World-Herald Magazine, Omaha, Nebraska, February 24, 1946, p. 32.
3
Ibid.
4
Mike Masaoka with Bill Hosokawa, They Call Me Moses Masaoka, p. 157.
5
“Charge: Wounded Nisei Treated Like PWs: Japanese American Veterans Forced to Travel in Hold of Navy Transport Hayes,” Pacific Citizen, March 23, 1946, p. 1.
6
“Nisei Veterans Will Speak at Salt Lake Fete,” Pacific Citizen, Salt Lake City, Utah, March 23, 1946, p. 2.
7
Eric L. Muller, “Draft Resistance,” Densho Encyclopedia, https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Draft_resistance.
8
“Nisei War Hero Hits Japanese Americans Who Fight the Draft,” Wyoming Tribune, November 3, 1944.
9
“Segregated Veterans,” Pacific Citizen, Salt Lake City, March 23, 1945, p. 4.
10
“Gen. Bradley to Issue Statement on Appointment of Minority Group Personnel in Regional Offices,” New York Age, May 18, 1946, p. 3.
