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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Friday, April 4, 2003

'Tradition' opens eyes to fears, pain

By Wayne Harada
Advertiser Entertainment Writer

 •  'A Tradition of Honor'

A documentary by the Go for Broke Educational Foundation

12:30 p.m. Saturday

The Doris Duke at the Honolulu Academy of Arts

$15 general; $12 seniors, veterans, students and Go for Broke Foundation members

(310) 328-0907

"I felt so bad being born a Japanese."

"All of a sudden ... I'm not American. I'm nothing."

"We are men without a country."

As depicted in "A Tradition of Honor," a documentary screening Saturday at The Doris Duke at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, these words reflect and agony of being Japanese during World War II, when America was at war with Japan.

This film, from the Go For Broke Foundation, was produced by two yonseis (fourth-generation Japanese), Craig Yahata (who has family ties in Hawai'i) and David Yone-shige, and is intended as an educational document to spotlight the valor of soldiers who were, at one point in history, victims of racial profiling and targets of national security.

With a war under way, these personal stories of real heroes upholding loyalty and hungry for respect hit a nerve. These stories also have redefined the spirit of America and valor, albeit with tardy reparations by then-president Bill Clinton, who said of these men, "As sons set off to war, so many mothers and fathers told them, 'live as you can, die if you must, but fight always with honor and never ever bring shame to your family or your country.' Rarely has a nation been so well served by a people it had so ill-treated."

Veteran George Morihiro was one of thousands sent to internment camps. He says the loss of freedom was fearful and unforgettable.

"It's like somebody taking a knife and cutting your heart out," says Morihiro, one of scores interviewed for this project. "You fight for the rest of your life, trying to get it back."

"Tradition" packs a lot of such earnest and painful memories as it scopes the survivor lists of three decorated units: the 100th Infantry Battalion, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and the Military Intelligence Service.

It also manages to uncover and share a number of riveting wartime images not commonly shown in similar documentaries tracking the hardship endured by WWII vets. Images of soldiers in trenches, of lineups at camps, of battlefront targets abound — six decades before the current wave of war-via-television assaults us daily on the tube.

Several notable Islanders appear in the film, including U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, whose comments are salient: "I felt my life had come to an end ... obviously, the pilot in the (Japanese) plane looked like me."

In retrospect, the horror for American-Japanese soldiers was simply that their American countrymen were sometimes the enemy, too.