Commonwealth Club Of California Podcast

In his new book Bridge to the Sun coming out on September 27, 2022, Bruce Henderson, master storyteller, historian and New York Times best-selling author, tells a gripping true tale of the courage of the Japanese-American U.S. Army soldiers who fought in the Pacific theater, while many of their families back home in America were incarcerated behind barbed wire in camps by the U.S. government. Their contribution is one of the last, great untold stories of World War II, kept hidden for decades. The story of the larger, all-Japanese-American 442nd Regimental Combat Team soldiers who were sent to fight in Europe has been covered in many books and media. After Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. military was desperate to find Americans who spoke Japanese to serve in the secret Military Intelligence Service (MIS) in the Pacific war. They soon turned to the Nisei—first-generation U.S. citizens whose parents were immigrants from Japan. Eager to prove their loyalty to America, several thousand Nisei—many