This country is at war with Germany. We shall go on to the end. I remember the sheets of

plane which came up and almost blinded us for my guns.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the World War Two podcast Sarmangus

After the attack on Pearl Harbor over 125,000 Japanese Americans living in the continental

United States were incarcerated in prison camps. The majority of these people were born in America

and US citizens. This was authorized by an executive order from President Roosevelt.

The Japanese Americans complied and spent years in the camps even though incarcerated,

they remained loyal Americans and when the call came for volunteers for the army,

first the hundredth infantry battalion was formed and then the 442nd Regimental Combat Team,

a unit in which thousands of Japanese Americans volunteered to serve. Between them,

these two units were awarded over 4,000 Purple Hearts and 21 men received the Medal of Honor.

In post-war America, the narrative of the treatment of Japanese Americans shifted and in 1988,

President Ron Reagan signed into law the Civil Liberties Act, which officially apologized

for the incarceration on behalf of the US government. Joining me today is Mitchell Makai.

Mitchell is the President and CEO of the Gopherbroke National Education Centre,

non-profit organisation dedicated to preserving the legacy and lessons of the NISI World War Two veterans.

And he is also the author of achieving the impossible dream how Japanese Americans

obtained redress. Mitchell, we should perhaps start by looking at the history of Japanese

migration to the US. When did the Japanese migrants start to arrive? Were they looking for a new

life in America? The earliest immigrants from Japan actually landed in Hawaii about 150 years ago

in the 1870s and so forth. And they were adventurers at that particular time. But the first real

wave, if you will, of immigrants starts in the late 1800s. And they're primarily men who are

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