Dr. Yutaka Yoshida, a U.S. War Hero of Japanese Descent, Dies at 104
Dr. Yutaka Yoshida, a native Hawaiian and a son of Japanese immigrants, was working as a police officer in Honolulu when Japan bombed the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, plunging America into World War II.
The Territory of Hawaii was placed under martial law that day, and constitutional rights were suspended out of fear of a possible Japanese invasion, sabotage or espionage. (The edict remained in effect until October 1944.)
Dr. Yoshida, a retired surgeon who died on Sept. 13 at age 104 in Honolulu, was 29 then and a veteran of nine years with the police, and he faced a wrenching task on the Sunday of the attack on Pearl Harbor. He was assigned to accompany F.B.I. agents as they rounded up prominent members of the Japanese community in Honolulu, among them a Buddhist priest, whom he helped take into custody.
“Even though it was his job, he still cannot forget how sad it was to point his gun at the tiny old Issei priest,” wrote Masayo Duus, who interviewed Dr. Yoshida for “Unlikely Liberators”, a history of Japanese-American soldiers in World War II originally published in 1983.
“It was a story he always told us,” his daughter, Ann Yoshida, said in an interview on Tuesday. “It was a moment of tremendous conflict for him.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/14/us/yutaka-yoshida-dead.html?ref=todayspaper
= new reply since forum marked as read
