Ben Kuroki dies

Ben Kuroki, the celebrated World War II hero who was the only Japanese-American to fly over Japan during the war, has died at his home in Camarillo, California, the Associated Press and Los Angeles Times report. He was 98.

Raised on a farm in Hershey, Nebraska by his Japanese immigrant parents, Kuroki and his brother, Fred, quickly volunteered for service after the bombings in Pearl Harbor. Both brothers were rejected by their first recruiter, per the American military policy that discriminiated heavily against the children of Japanese immigrants. But the brothers persisted because, as Kuroki described his experience in an interview for the The Omaha World-Herald during the conflict, “I have the face of a Japanese but my heart is American.”

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