Facing the Mountain: A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II

The author describes “meeting extraordinary people who have lived the story you are telling” (1). In 2018, he traveled to Hawaii to meet a “dozen white-haired gentlemen, all in their nineties” in a Honolulu restaurant. Two of them were Flint Yonashiro and Roy Fujii—the veterans of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team (RCT). RCT was the most decorated Japanese American army unit that fought in Europe during World War II.

The men’s lives changed on December 7, 1941, when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. As a result of the war with Japan, Japanese Americans faced the “wholesale forced removal from their homes, deprivation of their livelihoods, and mass incarceration” (5). This experience was rooted in decades of social and legal anti-Asian racism. Despite their treatment, the 442nd members became true American heroes.