WEBVTT

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I am a veteran of
the Starship Enterprise.

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(Laughter)

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I soared through the galaxy,

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driving a huge starship,

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with a crew made up of people

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from all over this world,

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many different races,

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many different cultures,

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many different heritages,

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all working together.

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And our mission was to explore
strange new worlds,

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to seek out new life
and new civilizations,

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to boldly go
where no one has gone before.

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Well...

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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I am the grandson
of immigrants from Japan

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who went to America,
boldly going to a strange new world,

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seeking new opportunities.

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My mother was born
in Sacramento, California.

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My father was a San Franciscan.

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They met and married
in Los Angeles, and I was born there.

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I was four years old,

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when Pearl Harbor was bombed

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on December 7, 1941 by Japan.

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Over night, the world was 
plunged into a world war.

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America suddenly
was swept up by hysteria.

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Japanese Americans,

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American citizens
of Japanese ancestry

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were looked on 
with suspicion and fear,

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and with outright hatred --

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simply because we happened 
to look like the people

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that bombed Pearl Harbor.

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And the hysteria grew and grew

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until, in February 1942,

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the President of the United States,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt,

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ordered all Japanese Americans
on the west coast of America

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to be summarily rounded up,
with no charges,

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with no trial,

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with no due process.

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Due process is the core pillar
of our justice system.

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That all disappeared.

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We were to be rounded up
and imprisoned

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in ten barbed-wire prison camps

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in some of the most
desolate places in America --

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the blistering hot desert of Arizona,

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the sultry swamps of Arkansas,

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the wastelands of Wyoming,
Idaho, Utah, Colorado,

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and two of the most desolate
places in California.

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On April 20th, 
I celebrated my fifth birthday.

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And, just a few weeks 
after my birthday,

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my parents got my younger brother,
my baby sister, and me

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up very early one morning,
and they dressed us hurriedly.

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My brother and I 
were in the living room

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looking out the front window,

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and we saw two soldiers
marching up our driveway.

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They carried bayonets
on their rifle.

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They stomped up the front porch
and banged on the door.

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My father answered it,

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and these soldiers ordered us
out of our home.

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My father gave my brother and me
small luggage to carry.

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We walked out and stood on the driveway,
waiting for our mother to come out.

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And when my mother finally came out,

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she had our baby sister in one arm,

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a huge duffle bag in the other,

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and tears were streaming down 
both her cheeks.

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I will never be able to
forget that scene.

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It is burned into my memory.

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We were taken from our home
and loaded onto train cars

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with other Japanese-American families.

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There were guards stationed 
at both ends of each car,

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as if we were criminals.

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We were taken two thirds 
of the way across the country,

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rocking on that train 
for four days and three nights

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to the swamps of Arkansas.

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I still remember the barbed-wire fence
that confined me.

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I remember the tall sentry tower
with the machine guns pointed at us.

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I remember the search light
that followed me

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when I made the night-runs
from my barrack to the latrine.

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But to five-year-old me,
I thought it was kind of nice

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that they'd lit the way
for me to pee.

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(Laughter)

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I was a child, 
too young to understand

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the circumstances of my being there.

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Children are amazingly adaptable.

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What would be 
grotesquely abnormal

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became my normality
in the prisoner-of-war camps.

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It became routine for me
to line up three times a day

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to eat lousy food in a noisy mess hall.

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It became normal for me
to go with my father

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to bathe in a mass-shower.

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Being in a prison,

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a barbed-wire prison camp
became my normality.

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When the war ended, 
we were released

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and given a one-way ticket
to anywhere in the United States.

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My parents decided to go 
back home to Los Angeles.

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But Los Angeles was not a welcoming place.

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We were penniless.

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Everything had been taken from us,
and the hostility was intense.

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Our first home was on Skid Row,
in the lowest part of our city,

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living with derelicts, drunkards,
and crazy people.

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The stench of urine all over,

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on the street,

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in the alley,

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in the hallway.

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It was a horrible experience.

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And for us kids, it was terrorizing.

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I remember, once,
a drunkard came staggering down,

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fell down right in front of us,

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and threw up.

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My baby sister said,
"Mama, let's go back home!"

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Because behind barbed wires
was, for us, home.

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My parents worked hard
to get back on their feet.

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We'd lost everything.

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They were at the middle of their lives
and starting all over.

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They worked their fingers to the bone,

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and, ultimately, they were able
to get the capital together

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to buy a three-bedroom home
in a nice neighborhood.

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And I was teenager,

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and I became very curious
about my childhood imprisonment.

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I'd read civics books,

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that told me about the ideals
of American democracy.

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All men are created equal.

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We have inalienable right

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to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.

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And I couldn't quite make that fit

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with what I knew to be
my childhood imprisonment.

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I read history books
and I couldn't find anything about it.

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And so I engaged my father after dinner
in long, sometimes heated, conversations.

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We had many, many
conversations like that.

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And what I got from them
was my father's wisdom.

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He was the one
that suffered the most

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under those conditions
of imprisonment.

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And yet, he understood
American democracy.

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He told me that our democracy
is a people's democracy.

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And it can be as great
as the people can be,

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but it is also as fallible
as people are.

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He told me that American democracy
is vitally dependent

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on good people who cherish 
the ideals of our system,

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and actively engage in the process
of making our democracy work.

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And he took me to a campaign headquarter.

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The Governor of Illinois
was running for the Presidency

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and introduced me to
American electoral politics.

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And he also told me about
young Japanese Americans

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during the Second Word War.

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When Pearl Harbor was bombed,
young Japanese Americans --

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like all young Americans --

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rushed to their draft board
to volunteer to fight for our country.

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That act of patriotism was answered 
with a slap in the face.

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We were denied service
and categorized as "enemy non-alien."

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It was outrageous
to be called an enemy

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when you are volunteering
to fight for your country.

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But that was compounded 
with the word "non-alien,"

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which is a word that means
"citizen" in the negative.

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They even took 
the word "citizen" away from us,

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and imprisoned them for a whole year.

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And then the government realized that
there is a war-time manpower shortage.

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And as suddenly as they rounded us up

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they opened up the military
for service by young Japanese Americans.

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It was totally irrational
but the amazing thing,

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the astounding thing,

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is that thousands of young
Japanese American men and women,

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again, went from behind 
those barbed-wire fences,

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put on the same uniform
as that of our guards,

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leaving their families in imprisonment,

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to fight for this country.

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They said that 
they were going to fight

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not only to get their families
out from behind those barbed-wire fences

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but because they cherished 
the very ideal

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of what our government stands for --
should stand for --

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and that was being abrogated 
by what was being done:

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All men are created equal.

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And they went to fight for this country.

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They were put into a segregated 
all Japanese-American unit

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and sent to the battlefields of Europe.

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And they threw themselves into it.

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They fought with amazing,
incredible courage and valor.

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They were sent out
on the most dangerous missions,

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and they sustained
the highest combat casualty rate

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of any unit proportionally.

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There is one battle
that illustrates that.

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It was a battle for the Gothic Line.

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The Germans were embedded
in this mountain hillside,

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rocky hillside,
in impregnable caves.

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And three ally battalions had been 
pounding away at it for six months,

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and they were stalemated.

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The 442nd was called in
to add to the fight.

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But the men of the 442nd came up
with a unique but dangerous idea.

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The backside of the mountain
was a sheer rock cliff.

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The Germans thought
an attack from the backside

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would be impossible.

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The men of the 442nd decided
to do the impossible.

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On a dark moonless night,

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they began scaling that rock wall,

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a drop of more than a thousand feet,

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in full combat gear.

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They climbed all night long

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on that sheer cliff.

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In the darkness, some lost
their handhold or their footing,

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and they fell to their death
in the ravine below.

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They all fell -- silently.

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Not a single one cried out,

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so as not to give their position away.

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The men climbed
for eight hours straight.

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Those who made it to the top

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stayed there until
the first break of light.

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And as soon as light broke,
they attacked.

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The Germans were surprised,

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and they took the hill
and broke the Gothic Line.

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A six months stalemate
was broken by the 442nd in 32 minutes.

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It was an amazing act.

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And when the war ended,

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the 442nd returned
to the United States

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as the most decorated unit
of the entire Second World War.

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They were greeted back
on the White House lawn

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by President Truman
who said to them,

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"You fought not only the enemy
but prejudice, and you won."

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They are my heroes.

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They clung to their belief

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in the shining ideals 
of this country,

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and they proved

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that being an American

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is not just for some people,

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that race is not

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how we define being an American.

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They expanded
what it means to be an American,

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including Japanese-Americans

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that were feared
and suspected and hated.

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They were change-agents,

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and they left for me a legacy.

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They are my heroes.

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And my father is my hero

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who understood democracy
and guided me through it.

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They gave me a legacy.

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And with that legacy
comes a responsibility.

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And I am dedicated

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to making my country
an even better America,

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to making our government
an even truer democracy.

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And because
of the heroes that I have

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and the struggles
that we've gone through

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I can stand before you

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as a gay Japanese American,

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but even more than that,

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I am a proud American.

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Thank you very much.

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(Applause)