0:00:00.110,0:00:04.539
I'm a veteran of the starship Enterprise.

0:00:04.539,0:00:07.899
I soared through the galaxy

0:00:07.899,0:00:10.635
driving a huge starship

0:00:10.635,0:00:12.034
with a crew made up of people

0:00:12.034,0:00:14.970
from all over this world,

0:00:14.970,0:00:18.420
many different races, many different cultures,

0:00:18.420,0:00:20.264
many different heritages,

0:00:20.264,0:00:22.221
all working together,

0:00:22.221,0:00:25.866
and our mission was to explore strange new worlds,

0:00:25.866,0:00:29.742
to seek out new life and new civilizations,

0:00:29.742,0:00:34.705
to boldly go where no one has gone before.

0:00:34.705,0:00:36.190
Well —

0:00:36.190,0:00:41.654
(Applause) —

0:00:42.906,0:00:47.561
I am the grandson of immigrants from Japan

0:00:47.561,0:00:49.692
who went to America,

0:00:49.692,0:00:53.177
boldly going to a strange new world,

0:00:53.177,0:00:56.013
seeking new opportunities.

0:00:56.013,0:00:59.499
My mother was born in Sacramento, California.

0:00:59.499,0:01:01.940
My father was a San Franciscan.

0:01:01.940,0:01:04.685
They met and married in Los Angeles,

0:01:04.685,0:01:08.406
and I was born there.

0:01:08.406,0:01:10.659
I was four years old

0:01:10.659,0:01:12.489
when Pearl Harbor was bombed

0:01:12.489,0:01:17.231
on December 7, 1941 by Japan,

0:01:17.231,0:01:21.240
and overnight, the world was plunged

0:01:21.240,0:01:24.674
into a world war.

0:01:24.674,0:01:27.627
America suddenly was swept up

0:01:27.627,0:01:31.551
by hysteria.

0:01:31.551,0:01:33.025
Japanese-Americans,

0:01:33.025,0:01:36.185
American citizens of Japanese ancestry,

0:01:36.185,0:01:37.520
were looked on

0:01:37.520,0:01:41.542
with suspicion and fear

0:01:41.542,0:01:44.514
and with outright hatred

0:01:44.514,0:01:47.174
simply because we happened to look like

0:01:47.174,0:01:49.870
the people that bombed Pearl Harbor.

0:01:49.870,0:01:53.340
And the hysteria grew and grew

0:01:53.340,0:01:56.930
until in February 1942,

0:01:56.930,0:01:59.074
the president of the United States,

0:01:59.074,0:02:01.244
Franklin Delano Roosevelt,

0:02:01.244,0:02:03.917
ordered all Japanese-Americans

0:02:03.917,0:02:06.026
on the West Coast of America

0:02:06.026,0:02:08.942
to be summarily rounded up

0:02:08.942,0:02:12.147
with no charges, with no trial,

0:02:12.147,0:02:14.574
with no due process.

0:02:14.574,0:02:17.165
Due process, this is a core pillar

0:02:17.165,0:02:18.778
of our justice system.

0:02:18.778,0:02:21.207
That all disappeared.

0:02:21.207,0:02:23.306
We were to be rounded up

0:02:23.306,0:02:27.567
and imprisoned in 10 barbed-wire prison camps

0:02:27.567,0:02:31.759
in some of the most desolate places in America:

0:02:31.759,0:02:35.186
the blistering hot desert of Arizona,

0:02:35.186,0:02:38.651
the sultry swamps of Arkansas,

0:02:38.651,0:02:42.344
the wastelands of Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Colorado,

0:02:42.344,0:02:47.778
and two of the most desolate places in California.

0:02:47.778,0:02:52.546
On April 20th, I celebrated my fifth birthday,

0:02:52.546,0:02:56.163
and just a few weeks after my birthday,

0:02:56.163,0:02:58.934
my parents got my younger brother,

0:02:58.934,0:03:00.992
my baby sister and me

0:03:00.992,0:03:03.021
up very early one morning,

0:03:03.021,0:03:06.246
and they dressed us hurriedly.

0:03:06.246,0:03:08.240
My brother and I were in the living room

0:03:08.240,0:03:11.303
looking out the front window,

0:03:11.303,0:03:15.147
and we saw two soldiers marching up our driveway.

0:03:15.147,0:03:19.669
They carried bayonets on their rifles.

0:03:19.669,0:03:22.470
They stomped up the front porch

0:03:22.470,0:03:24.989
and banged on the door.

0:03:24.989,0:03:27.094
My father answered it,

0:03:27.094,0:03:31.835
and the soldiers ordered us out of our home.

0:03:31.835,0:03:34.160
My father gave my brother and me

0:03:34.160,0:03:35.902
small luggages to carry,

0:03:35.902,0:03:39.418
and we walked out and stood on the driveway

0:03:39.418,0:03:42.413
waiting for our mother to come out,

0:03:42.413,0:03:45.728
and when my mother finally came out,

0:03:45.728,0:03:48.791
she had our baby sister in one arm,

0:03:48.791,0:03:52.163
a huge duffel bag in the other,

0:03:52.163,0:03:57.305
and tears were streaming down both her cheeks.

0:03:57.305,0:04:01.092
I will never be able to forget that scene.

0:04:01.092,0:04:05.440
It is burned into my memory.

0:04:05.440,0:04:08.231
We were taken from our home

0:04:08.231,0:04:10.749
and loaded on to train cars

0:04:10.749,0:04:13.759
with other Japanese-American families.

0:04:13.759,0:04:15.239
There were guards stationed

0:04:15.239,0:04:18.699
at both ends of each car,

0:04:18.699,0:04:21.398
as if we were criminals.

0:04:21.398,0:04:25.555
We were taken two thirds of[br]the way across the country,

0:04:25.555,0:04:29.767
rocking on that train for four days and three nights,

0:04:29.767,0:04:33.502
to the swamps of Arkansas.

0:04:33.502,0:04:35.515
I still remember the barbed wire fence

0:04:35.515,0:04:38.125
that confined me.

0:04:38.125,0:04:40.712
I remember the tall sentry tower

0:04:40.712,0:04:44.965
with the machine guns pointed at us.

0:04:44.965,0:04:47.654
I remember the searchlight that followed me

0:04:47.654,0:04:49.093
when I made the night runs

0:04:49.093,0:04:52.344
from my barrack to the latrine.

0:04:52.344,0:04:54.504
But to five-year-old me,

0:04:54.504,0:04:56.800
I thought it was kind of nice that they'd lit the way

0:04:56.800,0:05:00.054
for me to pee.

0:05:00.054,0:05:01.947
I was a child,

0:05:01.947,0:05:04.572
too young to understand the circumstances

0:05:04.572,0:05:07.003
of my being there.

0:05:07.003,0:05:11.769
Children are amazingly adaptable.

0:05:11.769,0:05:15.326
What would be grotesquely abnormal

0:05:15.326,0:05:18.180
became my normality

0:05:18.180,0:05:21.794
in the prisoner of war camps.

0:05:21.794,0:05:25.484
It became routine for me to line up three times a day

0:05:25.484,0:05:30.231
to eat lousy food in a noisy mess hall.

0:05:30.231,0:05:32.436
It became normal for me to go with my father

0:05:32.436,0:05:35.384
to bathe in a mass shower.

0:05:35.384,0:05:39.645
Being in a prison, a barbed-wire prison camp,

0:05:39.645,0:05:43.269
became my normality.

0:05:43.269,0:05:44.910
When the war ended,

0:05:44.910,0:05:46.962
we were released,

0:05:46.962,0:05:48.968
and given a one-way ticket

0:05:48.968,0:05:52.534
to anywhere in the United States.

0:05:52.534,0:05:54.435
My parents decided to go back home

0:05:54.435,0:05:57.003
to Los Angeles,

0:05:57.003,0:06:01.384
but Los Angeles was not a welcoming place.

0:06:01.384,0:06:02.780
We were penniless.

0:06:02.780,0:06:05.256
Everything had been taken from us,

0:06:05.256,0:06:07.689
and the hostility was intense.

0:06:07.689,0:06:10.540
Our first home was on Skid Row

0:06:10.540,0:06:15.493
in the lowest part of our city,

0:06:15.493,0:06:18.060
living with derelicts, drunkards

0:06:18.060,0:06:20.080
and crazy people,

0:06:20.080,0:06:22.674
the stench of urine all over,

0:06:22.674,0:06:25.787
on the street, in the alley,

0:06:25.787,0:06:28.108
in the hallway.

0:06:28.108,0:06:30.810
It was a horrible experience,

0:06:30.810,0:06:34.226
and for us kids, it was terrorizing.

0:06:34.226,0:06:36.738
I remember once

0:06:36.738,0:06:39.690
a drunkard came staggering down,

0:06:39.690,0:06:42.207
fell down right in front of us,

0:06:42.207,0:06:43.857
and threw up.

0:06:43.857,0:06:49.174
My baby sister said, "Mama, let's go back home,"

0:06:49.174,0:06:51.480
because behind barbed wires

0:06:51.480,0:06:54.096
was for us

0:06:54.096,0:06:56.939
home.

0:06:56.939,0:06:58.590
My parents worked hard

0:06:58.590,0:07:00.547
to get back on their feet.

0:07:00.547,0:07:01.666
We had lost everything.

0:07:01.666,0:07:04.170
They were at the middle of their lives

0:07:04.170,0:07:05.805
and starting all over.

0:07:05.805,0:07:08.354
They worked their fingers to the bone,

0:07:08.354,0:07:11.632
and ultimately they were able

0:07:11.632,0:07:14.120
to get the capital together to buy

0:07:14.120,0:07:17.285
a three-bedroom home in a nice neighborhood.

0:07:17.285,0:07:18.876
And I was a teenager,

0:07:18.876,0:07:20.670
and I became very curious

0:07:20.670,0:07:23.940
about my childhood imprisonment.

0:07:23.940,0:07:26.980
I had read civics books that told me about

0:07:26.980,0:07:30.691
the ideals of American democracy.

0:07:30.691,0:07:33.356
All men are created equal,

0:07:33.356,0:07:36.267
we have an inalienable right

0:07:36.267,0:07:41.206
to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,

0:07:41.206,0:07:43.440
and I couldn't quite make that fit

0:07:43.440,0:07:46.829
with what I knew to be my childhood imprisonment.

0:07:46.829,0:07:48.910
I read history books,

0:07:48.910,0:07:51.781
and I couldn't find anything about it.

0:07:51.781,0:07:55.685
And so I engaged my father after dinner

0:07:55.685,0:08:00.245
in long, sometimes heated conversations.

0:08:00.245,0:08:03.013
We had many, many conversations like that,

0:08:03.013,0:08:05.792
and what I got from them

0:08:05.792,0:08:07.982
was my father's wisdom.

0:08:07.982,0:08:10.294
He was the one that suffered the most

0:08:10.294,0:08:13.760
under those conditions of imprisonment,

0:08:13.760,0:08:17.737
and yet he understood American democracy.

0:08:17.737,0:08:20.464
He told me that our democracy

0:08:20.464,0:08:22.571
is a people's democracy,

0:08:22.571,0:08:25.630
and it can be as great as the people can be,

0:08:25.630,0:08:30.821
but it is also as fallible as people are.

0:08:30.821,0:08:33.081
He told me that American democracy

0:08:33.081,0:08:37.077
is vitally dependent on good people

0:08:37.077,0:08:41.048
who cherish the ideals of our system

0:08:41.048,0:08:44.548
and actively engage in the process

0:08:44.548,0:08:47.278
of making our democracy work.

0:08:47.278,0:08:51.343
And he took me to a campaign headquarters —

0:08:51.343,0:08:55.134
the governor of Illinois was[br]running for the presidency —

0:08:55.134,0:08:59.822
and introduced me to American electoral politics.

0:08:59.822,0:09:02.183
And he also told me about

0:09:02.183,0:09:03.961
young Japanese-Americans

0:09:03.961,0:09:07.021
during the Second World War.

0:09:07.021,0:09:09.825
When Pearl Harbor was bombed,

0:09:09.825,0:09:12.806
young Japanese-Americans,[br]like all young Americans,

0:09:12.806,0:09:15.304
rushed to their draft board

0:09:15.304,0:09:18.712
to volunteer to fight for our country.

0:09:18.712,0:09:21.144
That act of patriotism

0:09:21.144,0:09:25.462
was answered with a slap in the face.

0:09:25.462,0:09:28.466
We were denied service,

0:09:28.466,0:09:34.328
and categorized as enemy non-alien.

0:09:34.328,0:09:37.372
It was outrageous to be called an enemy

0:09:37.372,0:09:40.590
when you're volunteering to fight for your country,

0:09:40.590,0:09:44.960
but that was compounded with the word "non-alien,"

0:09:44.960,0:09:48.070
which is a word that means

0:09:48.070,0:09:52.111
"citizen" in the negative.

0:09:52.111,0:09:55.761
They even took the word "citizen" away from us,

0:09:55.761,0:10:00.389
and imprisoned them for a whole year.

0:10:00.389,0:10:02.377
And then the government realized

0:10:02.377,0:10:06.747
that there's a wartime manpower shortage,

0:10:06.747,0:10:11.126
and as suddenly as they'd rounded us up,

0:10:11.126,0:10:13.253
they opened up the military for service

0:10:13.253,0:10:16.171
by young Japanese-Americans.

0:10:16.171,0:10:18.838
It was totally irrational,

0:10:18.838,0:10:21.072
but the amazing thing,

0:10:21.072,0:10:23.429
the astounding thing,

0:10:23.429,0:10:25.382
is that thousands of young

0:10:25.382,0:10:28.340
Japanese-American men and women

0:10:28.340,0:10:32.303
again went from behind those barbed-wire fences,

0:10:32.303,0:10:35.760
put on the same uniform as that of our guards,

0:10:35.760,0:10:39.288
leaving their families in imprisonment,

0:10:39.288,0:10:41.602
to fight for this country.

0:10:41.602,0:10:43.563
They said that they were going to fight

0:10:43.563,0:10:46.829
not only to get their families out

0:10:46.829,0:10:49.387
from behind those barbed-wire fences,

0:10:49.387,0:10:52.617
but because they cherished the very ideal

0:10:52.617,0:10:54.840
of what our government stands for,

0:10:54.840,0:10:56.731
should stand for,

0:10:56.731,0:10:59.232
and that was being abrogated

0:10:59.232,0:11:03.145
by what was being done.

0:11:03.145,0:11:05.479
All men are created equal.

0:11:05.479,0:11:09.300
And they went to fight for this country.

0:11:09.300,0:11:10.980
They were put into a segregated

0:11:10.980,0:11:13.202
all Japanese-American unit

0:11:13.202,0:11:15.826
and sent to the battlefields of Europe,

0:11:15.826,0:11:18.897
and they threw themselves into it.

0:11:18.897,0:11:21.742
They fought with amazing,

0:11:21.742,0:11:25.200
incredible courage and valor.

0:11:25.200,0:11:28.962
They were sent out on the most dangerous missions

0:11:28.962,0:11:31.843
and they sustained the highest combat casualty rate

0:11:31.843,0:11:35.649
of any unit proportionally.

0:11:35.649,0:11:38.944
There is one battle that illustrates that.

0:11:38.944,0:11:41.988
It was a battle for the Gothic Line.

0:11:41.988,0:11:44.290
The Germans were embedded

0:11:44.290,0:11:46.877
in this mountain hillside,

0:11:46.877,0:11:48.449
rocky hillside,

0:11:48.449,0:11:50.929
in impregnable caves,

0:11:50.929,0:11:54.200
and three allied battalions

0:11:54.200,0:11:55.978
had been pounding away at it

0:11:55.978,0:11:57.462
for six months,

0:11:57.462,0:11:59.892
and they were stalemated.

0:11:59.892,0:12:02.786
The 442nd was called in

0:12:02.786,0:12:06.108
to add to the fight,

0:12:06.108,0:12:08.274
but the men of the 442nd

0:12:08.274,0:12:11.434
came up with a unique

0:12:11.434,0:12:13.734
but dangerous idea:

0:12:13.734,0:12:15.529
The backside of the mountain

0:12:15.529,0:12:18.190
was a sheer rock cliff.

0:12:18.190,0:12:21.599
The Germans thought an attack from the backside

0:12:21.599,0:12:24.109
would be impossible.

0:12:24.109,0:12:28.480
The men of the 442nd decided to do the impossible.

0:12:28.480,0:12:32.223
On a dark, moonless night,

0:12:32.223,0:12:36.471
they began scaling that rock wall,

0:12:36.471,0:12:40.090
a drop of more than 1,000 feet,

0:12:40.090,0:12:42.737
in full combat gear.

0:12:42.737,0:12:45.581
They climbed all night long

0:12:45.581,0:12:48.631
on that sheer cliff.

0:12:50.279,0:12:52.232
In the darkness,

0:12:52.232,0:12:54.312
some lost their handhold

0:12:54.312,0:12:55.925
or their footing

0:12:55.925,0:12:58.122
and they fell to their deaths

0:12:58.122,0:13:00.203
in the ravine below.

0:13:00.203,0:13:04.630
They all fell silently.

0:13:04.630,0:13:07.195
Not a single one cried out,

0:13:07.195,0:13:10.427
so as not to give their position away.

0:13:10.427,0:13:14.285
The men climbed for eight hours straight,

0:13:14.285,0:13:17.404
and those who made it to the top

0:13:17.404,0:13:21.886
stayed there until the first break of light,

0:13:21.886,0:13:24.965
and as soon as light broke,

0:13:24.965,0:13:26.558
they attacked.

0:13:26.558,0:13:28.212
The Germans were surprised,

0:13:28.212,0:13:29.960
and they took the hill

0:13:29.960,0:13:32.970
and broke the Gothic Line.

0:13:32.970,0:13:35.258
A six-month stalemate

0:13:35.258,0:13:37.463
was broken by the 442nd

0:13:37.463,0:13:40.444
in 32 minutes.

0:13:40.444,0:13:44.080
It was an amazing act,

0:13:44.080,0:13:46.930
and when the war ended,

0:13:46.930,0:13:50.147
the 442nd returned to the United States

0:13:50.147,0:13:52.563
as the most decorated unit

0:13:52.563,0:13:55.480
of the entire Second World War.

0:13:55.480,0:13:58.210
They were greeted back on the White House Lawn

0:13:58.210,0:14:00.816
by President Truman, who said to them,

0:14:00.816,0:14:04.074
"You fought not only the enemy

0:14:04.074,0:14:08.694
but prejudice, and you won."

0:14:08.694,0:14:12.290
They are my heroes.

0:14:12.290,0:14:15.337
They clung to their belief

0:14:15.337,0:14:18.389
in the shining ideals of this country,

0:14:18.389,0:14:22.680
and they proved that being an American

0:14:22.680,0:14:25.890
is not just for some people,

0:14:25.890,0:14:31.323
that race is not how we define being an American.

0:14:31.323,0:14:34.900
They expanded what it means to be an American,

0:14:34.900,0:14:37.224
including Japanese-Americans

0:14:37.224,0:14:41.398
that were feared and suspected and hated.

0:14:41.398,0:14:44.609
They were change agents,

0:14:44.609,0:14:47.091
and they left for me

0:14:47.091,0:14:49.308
a legacy.

0:14:49.308,0:14:51.097
They are my heroes

0:14:51.097,0:14:53.448
and my father is my hero,

0:14:53.448,0:14:55.258
who understood democracy

0:14:55.258,0:14:59.329
and guided me through it.

0:14:59.329,0:15:01.819
They gave me a legacy,

0:15:01.819,0:15:05.181
and with that legacy comes a responsibility,

0:15:05.181,0:15:07.597
and I am dedicated

0:15:07.597,0:15:09.586
to making my country

0:15:09.586,0:15:12.790
an even better America,

0:15:12.790,0:15:15.000
to making our government

0:15:15.000,0:15:18.497
an even truer democracy,

0:15:18.497,0:15:22.237
and because of the heroes that I have

0:15:22.237,0:15:25.859
and the struggles that we've gone through,

0:15:25.859,0:15:27.858
I can stand before you

0:15:27.858,0:15:30.717
as a gay Japanese-American,

0:15:30.717,0:15:33.184
but even more than that,

0:15:33.184,0:15:37.192
I am a proud American.

0:15:37.192,0:15:39.379
Thank you very much.

0:15:39.379,0:15:41.350
(Applause)