Ben kuroki biography

Please visit the official "Most Honorable Son" site at pbs.org

After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Army recruiting offices filled with young Americans volunteering for war.  Among them came many Nisei—Japanese-Americans whose parents were Japanese immigrants.  Though they were American citizens, most Nisei were turned away.  But in Nebraska, a 23-year-old Nisei with a passion for flying named Ben Kuroki demanded to serve his country.

The next four years of his life would be amazing: a B-24 aerial gunner flying against Axis forces on three battle fronts, an escape attempt from the Spanish army, moments of shame, fame and frustration when he saw his own American countrymen held behind barbed wire because their Japanese ancestry. 

As a lone Nisei in the Army Air Corps, Kuroki flew over the oil fields of Ploesti, Rumania, where one thousand men were lost.  Kuroki watched friends and colleagues fall from the sky in flames. At the end of hi