WEBVTT 00:00:00.110 --> 00:00:04.539 I'm a veteran of the starship Enterprise. 00:00:04.539 --> 00:00:07.899 I soared through the galaxy 00:00:07.899 --> 00:00:10.635 driving a huge starship 00:00:10.635 --> 00:00:12.034 with a crew made up of people 00:00:12.034 --> 00:00:14.970 from all over this world, 00:00:14.970 --> 00:00:18.420 many different races, many different cultures, 00:00:18.420 --> 00:00:20.264 many different heritages, 00:00:20.264 --> 00:00:22.221 all working together, 00:00:22.221 --> 00:00:25.866 and our mission was to explore strange new worlds, 00:00:25.866 --> 00:00:29.742 to seek out new life and new civilizations, 00:00:29.742 --> 00:00:34.705 to boldly go where no one has gone before. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:34.705 --> 00:00:36.190 Well — 00:00:36.190 --> 00:00:41.654 (Applause) — 00:00:42.906 --> 00:00:47.561 I am the grandson of immigrants from Japan 00:00:47.561 --> 00:00:49.692 who went to America, 00:00:49.692 --> 00:00:53.177 boldly going to a strange new world, 00:00:53.177 --> 00:00:56.013 seeking new opportunities. 00:00:56.013 --> 00:00:59.499 My mother was born in Sacramento, California. 00:00:59.499 --> 00:01:01.940 My father was a San Franciscan. 00:01:01.940 --> 00:01:04.685 They met and married in Los Angeles, 00:01:04.685 --> 00:01:08.406 and I was born there. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:08.406 --> 00:01:10.659 I was four years old 00:01:10.659 --> 00:01:12.489 when Pearl Harbor was bombed 00:01:12.489 --> 00:01:17.231 on December 7, 1941 by Japan, 00:01:17.231 --> 00:01:21.240 and overnight, the world was plunged 00:01:21.240 --> 00:01:24.674 into a world war. 00:01:24.674 --> 00:01:27.627 America suddenly was swept up 00:01:27.627 --> 00:01:31.551 by hysteria. 00:01:31.551 --> 00:01:33.025 Japanese-Americans, 00:01:33.025 --> 00:01:36.185 American citizens of Japanese ancestry, 00:01:36.185 --> 00:01:37.520 were looked on 00:01:37.520 --> 00:01:41.542 with suspicion and fear 00:01:41.542 --> 00:01:44.514 and with outright hatred 00:01:44.514 --> 00:01:47.174 simply because we happened to look like 00:01:47.174 --> 00:01:49.870 the people that bombed Pearl Harbor. 00:01:49.870 --> 00:01:53.340 And the hysteria grew and grew 00:01:53.340 --> 00:01:56.930 until in February 1942, 00:01:56.930 --> 00:01:59.074 the president of the United States, 00:01:59.074 --> 00:02:01.244 Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 00:02:01.244 --> 00:02:03.917 ordered all Japanese-Americans 00:02:03.917 --> 00:02:06.026 on the West Coast of America 00:02:06.026 --> 00:02:08.942 to be summarily rounded up 00:02:08.942 --> 00:02:12.147 with no charges, with no trial, 00:02:12.147 --> 00:02:14.574 with no due process. 00:02:14.574 --> 00:02:17.165 Due process, this is a core pillar 00:02:17.165 --> 00:02:18.778 of our justice system. 00:02:18.778 --> 00:02:21.207 That all disappeared. 00:02:21.207 --> 00:02:23.306 We were to be rounded up 00:02:23.306 --> 00:02:27.567 and imprisoned in 10 barbed-wire prison camps 00:02:27.567 --> 00:02:31.759 in some of the most desolate places in America: 00:02:31.759 --> 00:02:35.186 the blistering hot desert of Arizona, 00:02:35.186 --> 00:02:38.651 the sultry swamps of Arkansas, 00:02:38.651 --> 00:02:42.344 the wastelands of Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, 00:02:42.344 --> 00:02:47.778 and two of the most desolate places in California. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:47.778 --> 00:02:52.546 On April 20th, I celebrated my fifth birthday, 00:02:52.546 --> 00:02:56.163 and just a few weeks after my birthday, 00:02:56.163 --> 00:02:58.934 my parents got my younger brother, 00:02:58.934 --> 00:03:00.992 my baby sister and me 00:03:00.992 --> 00:03:03.021 up very early one morning, 00:03:03.021 --> 00:03:06.246 and they dressed us hurriedly. 00:03:06.246 --> 00:03:08.240 My brother and I were in the living room 00:03:08.240 --> 00:03:11.303 looking out the front window, 00:03:11.303 --> 00:03:15.147 and we saw two soldiers marching up our driveway. 00:03:15.147 --> 00:03:19.669 They carried bayonets on their rifles. 00:03:19.669 --> 00:03:22.470 They stomped up the front porch 00:03:22.470 --> 00:03:24.989 and banged on the door. 00:03:24.989 --> 00:03:27.094 My father answered it, 00:03:27.094 --> 00:03:31.835 and the soldiers ordered us out of our home. 00:03:31.835 --> 00:03:34.160 My father gave my brother and me 00:03:34.160 --> 00:03:35.902 small luggages to carry, 00:03:35.902 --> 00:03:39.418 and we walked out and stood on the driveway 00:03:39.418 --> 00:03:42.413 waiting for our mother to come out, 00:03:42.413 --> 00:03:45.728 and when my mother finally came out, 00:03:45.728 --> 00:03:48.791 she had our baby sister in one arm, 00:03:48.791 --> 00:03:52.163 a huge duffel bag in the other, 00:03:52.163 --> 00:03:57.305 and tears were streaming down both her cheeks. 00:03:57.305 --> 00:04:01.092 I will never be able to forget that scene. 00:04:01.092 --> 00:04:05.440 It is burned into my memory. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:05.440 --> 00:04:08.231 We were taken from our home 00:04:08.231 --> 00:04:10.749 and loaded on to train cars 00:04:10.749 --> 00:04:13.759 with other Japanese-American families. 00:04:13.759 --> 00:04:15.239 There were guards stationed 00:04:15.239 --> 00:04:18.699 at both ends of each car, 00:04:18.699 --> 00:04:21.398 as if we were criminals. 00:04:21.398 --> 00:04:25.555 We were taken two thirds of the way across the country, 00:04:25.555 --> 00:04:29.767 rocking on that train for four days and three nights, 00:04:29.767 --> 00:04:33.502 to the swamps of Arkansas. 00:04:33.502 --> 00:04:35.515 I still remember the barbed wire fence 00:04:35.515 --> 00:04:38.125 that confined me. 00:04:38.125 --> 00:04:40.712 I remember the tall sentry tower 00:04:40.712 --> 00:04:44.965 with the machine guns pointed at us. 00:04:44.965 --> 00:04:47.654 I remember the searchlight that followed me 00:04:47.654 --> 00:04:49.093 when I made the night runs 00:04:49.093 --> 00:04:52.344 from my barrack to the latrine. 00:04:52.344 --> 00:04:54.504 But to five-year-old me, 00:04:54.504 --> 00:04:56.800 I thought it was kind of nice that they'd lit the way 00:04:56.800 --> 00:05:00.054 for me to pee. 00:05:00.054 --> 00:05:01.947 I was a child, 00:05:01.947 --> 00:05:04.572 too young to understand the circumstances 00:05:04.572 --> 00:05:07.003 of my being there. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:07.003 --> 00:05:11.769 Children are amazingly adaptable. 00:05:11.769 --> 00:05:15.326 What would be grotesquely abnormal 00:05:15.326 --> 00:05:18.180 became my normality 00:05:18.180 --> 00:05:21.794 in the prisoner of war camps. 00:05:21.794 --> 00:05:25.484 It became routine for me to line up three times a day 00:05:25.484 --> 00:05:30.231 to eat lousy food in a noisy mess hall. 00:05:30.231 --> 00:05:32.436 It became normal for me to go with my father 00:05:32.436 --> 00:05:35.384 to bathe in a mass shower. 00:05:35.384 --> 00:05:39.645 Being in a prison, a barbed-wire prison camp, 00:05:39.645 --> 00:05:43.269 became my normality. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:43.269 --> 00:05:44.910 When the war ended, 00:05:44.910 --> 00:05:46.962 we were released, 00:05:46.962 --> 00:05:48.968 and given a one-way ticket 00:05:48.968 --> 00:05:52.534 to anywhere in the United States. 00:05:52.534 --> 00:05:54.435 My parents decided to go back home 00:05:54.435 --> 00:05:57.003 to Los Angeles, 00:05:57.003 --> 00:06:01.384 but Los Angeles was not a welcoming place. 00:06:01.384 --> 00:06:02.780 We were penniless. 00:06:02.780 --> 00:06:05.256 Everything had been taken from us, 00:06:05.256 --> 00:06:07.689 and the hostility was intense. 00:06:07.689 --> 00:06:10.540 Our first home was on Skid Row 00:06:10.540 --> 00:06:15.493 in the lowest part of our city, 00:06:15.493 --> 00:06:18.060 living with derelicts, drunkards 00:06:18.060 --> 00:06:20.080 and crazy people, 00:06:20.080 --> 00:06:22.674 the stench of urine all over, 00:06:22.674 --> 00:06:25.787 on the street, in the alley, 00:06:25.787 --> 00:06:28.108 in the hallway. 00:06:28.108 --> 00:06:30.810 It was a horrible experience, 00:06:30.810 --> 00:06:34.226 and for us kids, it was terrorizing. 00:06:34.226 --> 00:06:36.738 I remember once 00:06:36.738 --> 00:06:39.690 a drunkard came staggering down, 00:06:39.690 --> 00:06:42.207 fell down right in front of us, 00:06:42.207 --> 00:06:43.857 and threw up. 00:06:43.857 --> 00:06:49.174 My baby sister said, "Mama, let's go back home," 00:06:49.174 --> 00:06:51.480 because behind barbed wires 00:06:51.480 --> 00:06:54.096 was for us 00:06:54.096 --> 00:06:56.939 home. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:56.939 --> 00:06:58.590 My parents worked hard 00:06:58.590 --> 00:07:00.547 to get back on their feet. 00:07:00.547 --> 00:07:01.666 We had lost everything. 00:07:01.666 --> 00:07:04.170 They were at the middle of their lives 00:07:04.170 --> 00:07:05.805 and starting all over. 00:07:05.805 --> 00:07:08.354 They worked their fingers to the bone, 00:07:08.354 --> 00:07:11.632 and ultimately they were able 00:07:11.632 --> 00:07:14.120 to get the capital together to buy 00:07:14.120 --> 00:07:17.285 a three-bedroom home in a nice neighborhood. 00:07:17.285 --> 00:07:18.876 And I was a teenager, 00:07:18.876 --> 00:07:20.670 and I became very curious 00:07:20.670 --> 00:07:23.940 about my childhood imprisonment. 00:07:23.940 --> 00:07:26.980 I had read civics books that told me about 00:07:26.980 --> 00:07:30.691 the ideals of American democracy. 00:07:30.691 --> 00:07:33.356 All men are created equal, 00:07:33.356 --> 00:07:36.267 we have an inalienable right 00:07:36.267 --> 00:07:41.206 to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, 00:07:41.206 --> 00:07:43.440 and I couldn't quite make that fit 00:07:43.440 --> 00:07:46.829 with what I knew to be my childhood imprisonment. 00:07:46.829 --> 00:07:48.910 I read history books, 00:07:48.910 --> 00:07:51.781 and I couldn't find anything about it. 00:07:51.781 --> 00:07:55.685 And so I engaged my father after dinner 00:07:55.685 --> 00:08:00.245 in long, sometimes heated conversations. 00:08:00.245 --> 00:08:03.013 We had many, many conversations like that, 00:08:03.013 --> 00:08:05.792 and what I got from them 00:08:05.792 --> 00:08:07.982 was my father's wisdom. 00:08:07.982 --> 00:08:10.294 He was the one that suffered the most 00:08:10.294 --> 00:08:13.760 under those conditions of imprisonment, 00:08:13.760 --> 00:08:17.737 and yet he understood American democracy. 00:08:17.737 --> 00:08:20.464 He told me that our democracy 00:08:20.464 --> 00:08:22.571 is a people's democracy, 00:08:22.571 --> 00:08:25.630 and it can be as great as the people can be, 00:08:25.630 --> 00:08:30.821 but it is also as fallible as people are. 00:08:30.821 --> 00:08:33.081 He told me that American democracy 00:08:33.081 --> 00:08:37.077 is vitally dependent on good people 00:08:37.077 --> 00:08:41.048 who cherish the ideals of our system 00:08:41.048 --> 00:08:44.548 and actively engage in the process 00:08:44.548 --> 00:08:47.278 of making our democracy work. 00:08:47.278 --> 00:08:51.343 And he took me to a campaign headquarters — 00:08:51.343 --> 00:08:55.134 the governor of Illinois was running for the presidency — 00:08:55.134 --> 00:08:59.822 and introduced me to American electoral politics. 00:08:59.822 --> 00:09:02.183 And he also told me about 00:09:02.183 --> 00:09:03.961 young Japanese-Americans 00:09:03.961 --> 00:09:07.021 during the Second World War. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:07.021 --> 00:09:09.825 When Pearl Harbor was bombed, 00:09:09.825 --> 00:09:12.806 young Japanese-Americans, like all young Americans, 00:09:12.806 --> 00:09:15.304 rushed to their draft board 00:09:15.304 --> 00:09:18.712 to volunteer to fight for our country. 00:09:18.712 --> 00:09:21.144 That act of patriotism 00:09:21.144 --> 00:09:25.462 was answered with a slap in the face. 00:09:25.462 --> 00:09:28.466 We were denied service, 00:09:28.466 --> 00:09:34.328 and categorized as enemy non-alien. 00:09:34.328 --> 00:09:37.372 It was outrageous to be called an enemy 00:09:37.372 --> 00:09:40.590 when you're volunteering to fight for your country, 00:09:40.590 --> 00:09:44.960 but that was compounded with the word "non-alien," 00:09:44.960 --> 00:09:48.070 which is a word that means 00:09:48.070 --> 00:09:52.111 "citizen" in the negative. 00:09:52.111 --> 00:09:55.761 They even took the word "citizen" away from us, 00:09:55.761 --> 00:10:00.389 and imprisoned them for a whole year. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:00.389 --> 00:10:02.377 And then the government realized 00:10:02.377 --> 00:10:06.747 that there's a wartime manpower shortage, 00:10:06.747 --> 00:10:11.126 and as suddenly as they'd rounded us up, 00:10:11.126 --> 00:10:13.253 they opened up the military for service 00:10:13.253 --> 00:10:16.171 by young Japanese-Americans. 00:10:16.171 --> 00:10:18.838 It was totally irrational, 00:10:18.838 --> 00:10:21.072 but the amazing thing, 00:10:21.072 --> 00:10:23.429 the astounding thing, 00:10:23.429 --> 00:10:25.382 is that thousands of young 00:10:25.382 --> 00:10:28.340 Japanese-American men and women 00:10:28.340 --> 00:10:32.303 again went from behind those barbed-wire fences, 00:10:32.303 --> 00:10:35.760 put on the same uniform as that of our guards, 00:10:35.760 --> 00:10:39.288 leaving their families in imprisonment, 00:10:39.288 --> 00:10:41.602 to fight for this country. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:41.602 --> 00:10:43.563 They said that they were going to fight 00:10:43.563 --> 00:10:46.829 not only to get their families out 00:10:46.829 --> 00:10:49.387 from behind those barbed-wire fences, 00:10:49.387 --> 00:10:52.617 but because they cherished the very ideal 00:10:52.617 --> 00:10:54.840 of what our government stands for, 00:10:54.840 --> 00:10:56.731 should stand for, 00:10:56.731 --> 00:10:59.232 and that was being abrogated 00:10:59.232 --> 00:11:03.145 by what was being done. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:03.145 --> 00:11:05.479 All men are created equal. 00:11:05.479 --> 00:11:09.300 And they went to fight for this country. 00:11:09.300 --> 00:11:10.980 They were put into a segregated 00:11:10.980 --> 00:11:13.202 all Japanese-American unit 00:11:13.202 --> 00:11:15.826 and sent to the battlefields of Europe, 00:11:15.826 --> 00:11:18.897 and they threw themselves into it. 00:11:18.897 --> 00:11:21.742 They fought with amazing, 00:11:21.742 --> 00:11:25.200 incredible courage and valor. 00:11:25.200 --> 00:11:28.962 They were sent out on the most dangerous missions 00:11:28.962 --> 00:11:31.843 and they sustained the highest combat casualty rate 00:11:31.843 --> 00:11:35.649 of any unit proportionally. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:35.649 --> 00:11:38.944 There is one battle that illustrates that. 00:11:38.944 --> 00:11:41.988 It was a battle for the Gothic Line. 00:11:41.988 --> 00:11:44.290 The Germans were embedded 00:11:44.290 --> 00:11:46.877 in this mountain hillside, 00:11:46.877 --> 00:11:48.449 rocky hillside, 00:11:48.449 --> 00:11:50.929 in impregnable caves, 00:11:50.929 --> 00:11:54.200 and three allied battalions 00:11:54.200 --> 00:11:55.978 had been pounding away at it 00:11:55.978 --> 00:11:57.462 for six months, 00:11:57.462 --> 00:11:59.892 and they were stalemated. 00:11:59.892 --> 00:12:02.786 The 442nd was called in 00:12:02.786 --> 00:12:06.108 to add to the fight, 00:12:06.108 --> 00:12:08.274 but the men of the 442nd 00:12:08.274 --> 00:12:11.434 came up with a unique 00:12:11.434 --> 00:12:13.734 but dangerous idea: 00:12:13.734 --> 00:12:15.529 The backside of the mountain 00:12:15.529 --> 00:12:18.190 was a sheer rock cliff. 00:12:18.190 --> 00:12:21.599 The Germans thought an attack from the backside 00:12:21.599 --> 00:12:24.109 would be impossible. 00:12:24.109 --> 00:12:28.480 The men of the 442nd decided to do the impossible. 00:12:28.480 --> 00:12:32.223 On a dark, moonless night, 00:12:32.223 --> 00:12:36.471 they began scaling that rock wall, 00:12:36.471 --> 00:12:40.090 a drop of more than 1,000 feet, 00:12:40.090 --> 00:12:42.737 in full combat gear. 00:12:42.737 --> 00:12:45.581 They climbed all night long 00:12:45.581 --> 00:12:48.631 on that sheer cliff. 00:12:50.279 --> 00:12:52.232 In the darkness, 00:12:52.232 --> 00:12:54.312 some lost their handhold 00:12:54.312 --> 00:12:55.925 or their footing 00:12:55.925 --> 00:12:58.122 and they fell to their deaths 00:12:58.122 --> 00:13:00.203 in the ravine below. 00:13:00.203 --> 00:13:04.630 They all fell silently. 00:13:04.630 --> 00:13:07.195 Not a single one cried out, 00:13:07.195 --> 00:13:10.427 so as not to give their position away. 00:13:10.427 --> 00:13:14.285 The men climbed for eight hours straight, 00:13:14.285 --> 00:13:17.404 and those who made it to the top 00:13:17.404 --> 00:13:21.886 stayed there until the first break of light, 00:13:21.886 --> 00:13:24.965 and as soon as light broke, 00:13:24.965 --> 00:13:26.558 they attacked. 00:13:26.558 --> 00:13:28.212 The Germans were surprised, 00:13:28.212 --> 00:13:29.960 and they took the hill 00:13:29.960 --> 00:13:32.970 and broke the Gothic Line. 00:13:32.970 --> 00:13:35.258 A six-month stalemate 00:13:35.258 --> 00:13:37.463 was broken by the 442nd 00:13:37.463 --> 00:13:40.444 in 32 minutes. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:40.444 --> 00:13:44.080 It was an amazing act, 00:13:44.080 --> 00:13:46.930 and when the war ended, 00:13:46.930 --> 00:13:50.147 the 442nd returned to the United States 00:13:50.147 --> 00:13:52.563 as the most decorated unit 00:13:52.563 --> 00:13:55.480 of the entire Second World War. 00:13:55.480 --> 00:13:58.210 They were greeted back on the White House Lawn 00:13:58.210 --> 00:14:00.816 by President Truman, who said to them, 00:14:00.816 --> 00:14:04.074 "You fought not only the enemy 00:14:04.074 --> 00:14:08.694 but prejudice, and you won." NOTE Paragraph 00:14:08.694 --> 00:14:12.290 They are my heroes. 00:14:12.290 --> 00:14:15.337 They clung to their belief 00:14:15.337 --> 00:14:18.389 in the shining ideals of this country, 00:14:18.389 --> 00:14:22.680 and they proved that being an American 00:14:22.680 --> 00:14:25.890 is not just for some people, 00:14:25.890 --> 00:14:31.323 that race is not how we define being an American. 00:14:31.323 --> 00:14:34.900 They expanded what it means to be an American, 00:14:34.900 --> 00:14:37.224 including Japanese-Americans 00:14:37.224 --> 00:14:41.398 that were feared and suspected and hated. 00:14:41.398 --> 00:14:44.609 They were change agents, 00:14:44.609 --> 00:14:47.091 and they left for me 00:14:47.091 --> 00:14:49.308 a legacy. 00:14:49.308 --> 00:14:51.097 They are my heroes 00:14:51.097 --> 00:14:53.448 and my father is my hero, 00:14:53.448 --> 00:14:55.258 who understood democracy 00:14:55.258 --> 00:14:59.329 and guided me through it. 00:14:59.329 --> 00:15:01.819 They gave me a legacy, 00:15:01.819 --> 00:15:05.181 and with that legacy comes a responsibility, 00:15:05.181 --> 00:15:07.597 and I am dedicated 00:15:07.597 --> 00:15:09.586 to making my country 00:15:09.586 --> 00:15:12.790 an even better America, 00:15:12.790 --> 00:15:15.000 to making our government 00:15:15.000 --> 00:15:18.497 an even truer democracy, 00:15:18.497 --> 00:15:22.237 and because of the heroes that I have 00:15:22.237 --> 00:15:25.859 and the struggles that we've gone through, 00:15:25.859 --> 00:15:27.858 I can stand before you 00:15:27.858 --> 00:15:30.717 as a gay Japanese-American, 00:15:30.717 --> 00:15:33.184 but even more than that, 00:15:33.184 --> 00:15:37.192 I am a proud American. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:37.192 --> 00:15:39.379 Thank you very much. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:39.379 --> 00:15:41.350 (Applause)