Ben Kuroki
Ben Kuroki, a Nisei Japanese American, was born in Gothenburg, Nebraska in 1917. His father worked as a farmer, and he encouraged Kuroki and his younger brother to volunteer for the United States Army following the outbreak of World War II. Due to a War Department regulation that prohibited Japanese Americans to fly in combat during World War II, his brother was transferred without warning to a combat engineer’s group in Arizona, but Kuroki was somehow overlooked and stayed on at the training base in Texas. He fought for his right as an American citizen to be in the U.S. Army Air Corps (later the U.S. Army Air Forces), and he was granted an exception by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson. He was assigned to his squadron at Barksdale Field, Louisiana. Kuroki trained at Fort Myers, Florida, and recalls feeling depressed and discouraged during that time.
