Free Republic

Ben Kuroki, who overcame the American military's discriminatory policies to become the only Japanese American to fly over Japan during World War II, has died. He was 98. Kuroki died Tuesday at his Camarillo, California, home, where he was under hospice care, his daughter Julie Kuroki told the Los Angeles Times on Saturday. The son of Japanese immigrants who was raised on a Hershey, Nebraska, farm, Kuroki and his brother, Fred, volunteered for service after the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor. They were initially rejected by recruiters who questioned the loyalty of the children of Japanese immigrants. Undeterred,...