Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American
people up next. Major General James H. Mukayama Junior rose
from humble, blue collar Chicago roots to becoming the first
Asian American to command a US Army division. General Mook
(00:31):
is the author of Faith, Family, and Flag Memoirs of
an Unlikely American Samurai Crusader, a book printed under retired
Navy Seal JACKO.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Willocks Publishing Company. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
So my grandfather came here in nineteen oh one because
he had invested in the Japanese futures market sake and
in US has lost the half of the family fortune.
So he decided to come to the States to gain
back that money and then return to Japan. Well, now
(01:07):
it's eighteen years later and my grandmother is by herself
with the five children, and my grandfather is still in America.
So my father is now eighteen years old, and my
grandmother says, you get on a boat, you go to
America and get your dad to come back. So that's
(01:30):
what he did. He gets out a boat, comes through Seattle, Washington,
and finds his father in Kearnie, Nebraska. They moved to
Colorado and my grandfather buys a boarding house. But what
happened was there were waitresses who were serving the meals. Well,
(01:51):
it turns out the waitresses were more than waitresses, but
my grandfather didn't know that when he bought the boarding
house because my grandfather was a Christian, which was highly,
highly unusual for Japanese in those days. And so my grandfather,
when he found out this socide operation going on in
(02:13):
his boarding house, he shut it down. Needless to say,
he lost a lot of clients, and so my father
convinced him to sell it and take the money and
go back to Japan. But my father stayed here in
the States. He had a love for America. Frankly, he
(02:34):
wanted to come here for the opportunity and the freedom
we have. When he was in grammar school, English was
a mandatory language when my father was an elementary school
in the nineteen hundreds. In fact, he had the memorize
in English the Gettysburg Address when he was in grammar school,
(02:56):
and so he had instilled in him early his life
the feelings of democracy and freedom and opportunity. So he
came here and wound up in Chicago in the late twenties.
Keep in mind these were legal immigrations. I might add
(03:17):
we were here before the war actually, and that was
a big plus for us, because there weren't a lot
of Japanese in Chicago at that when the war broke out.
I mean, there were less than four hundred total in
the whole city, and so we did not have to
go to camp. And by the way, when I say camp,
(03:39):
during World War Two, President Roosevelt signed the Executive Order
nine zero sixty six, which ordered all people of Japanese
descent to be forcibly removed and put in camps in
the interior of the United States, namely in god forsaken
desert areas. These were your standard concentration camps. They euphemistically
(04:04):
referred to them as relocation centers. But anyway, so we
had assimilated so well into the community. My dad was
known by everyone. Our neighbors actually sent a telegram to
our congressman vouching for the loyalty of my dad as
a US citizen. They didn't even know he wasn't a citizen.
(04:26):
They just assumed it. But our friends were truly friends
and neighbors, truly rallied around us. And keep in mind
there were one hundred and twenty thousand plus that were
removed and put in camps, two thirds of whom were
American citizens for three years. So you lose everything, you know,
(04:52):
if you had a business, you obviously couldn't run your business.
If you couldn't pay for your mortgage for your homes,
you lose your home. So after the war, when they
released all these people from the Cavs. In our case
in Chicago, we were a blue collar. We never owned
(05:15):
a home. We always lived in a tenant apartment building.
My lawn was a concrete sidewalk. But I never felt
poor because my mom and dad had not only assimilated
into community, but they became very strong parts of it.
My father joined the Chamber of Commerce. He had a
(05:35):
small retail business. My dad helped with Boy Scouts. We
became members of our church and my neighborhood, frankly was
we were the only minority family. We went to a
grammar school of nine hundred kids. My brother and I
were the only minority. You know. We had German, Italian, Polish,
(05:57):
we had some Jews in I never felt poor because
we had such a strong nuclear family, and we all
took care of ourselves. And likewise, in the neighborhood, the
local neighborhood patrol were the mothers, because in those days
(06:17):
a lot of the mothers were stay at home mothers.
The church was the main center of our activities. I
actually was a choir boy, and then I was in
Cub Scouts, and I was in Boy Scouts, a great
organization because the motto of Scouting was for God and country,
(06:40):
and the Cub Scout pack and the Boy Scout troop
were sponsored by our church.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
And you've been listening to Major General James Mukayama, General
Mook telling the story of his family's journey to America,
starting with his grandfather just trying to recoup some investment
losses to his father while just deciding to stay even
as his grandfather returned home. And it's the story of
(07:07):
America in the end, this immigrants tale. He was the
only minority in his ethnic neighborhood. And as he said,
we didn't know we were poor because we had a
nuclear family, and so many other families around us did too.
When we come back. More of Major General Mukayama's story
here on our American stories. This is Lee Habib, host
(07:30):
of Our American Stories, the show where America is the
star and the American people, and we do it all
from the heart of the South Oxford, Mississippi. But we
truly can't do this show without you. Our shows will
always be free to listen to, but they're not free
to make. If you love what you hear, consider making
a tax deductible donation to our American Stories. Go to
(07:51):
our American Stories dot com. Give a little, give a lot.
That's our American Stories dot com. And we continue with
our American Stories and the story of Major General James H.
(08:15):
Mukayama and the story of his family and how they
came to be Americans, and my goodness, the story he
told about the internment camps. Look, not all of America's
story is perfect or good, and this was a pretty
wretched part of our past. And many Japanese suffered for
no good reason but that they were Japanese.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Let's pick up where General Mook left off.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
I have a daily standard mantra, which is every day
is a great day. I have my faith, my family
and live in the finest country in the world. I
say it every day. In fact, I do our grocery shopping.
And so when I go to the Jewel grocery store
here in the Midwest, all the cashiers want me to
(08:59):
come to their stations because they know what I'm going
to say. But when I was born here, I hit
the lotto. And so when I say that mantra, sometimes
I get pushback about the finest country in the world part,
and I say, listen, I've been around the block a
few times.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
You know.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
It does help to be around about eight decades. And
so I tell them when I joined the military, there
had never been an Asian American admiral or general in
our armed forces. Now I was not the first, that
was about the third or fourth. The club isn't real large.
(09:40):
But I've seen in my lifetime alone the improvements in
our society when it comes to racism. We have elected
an African American as a president and re elected him. Now,
has our country made mistakes, obviously, But I'll tell you what.
(10:02):
We're the only country that I know of that had
a civil war to abolish slavery, costing over half a
million lives to settle that situation. And our president, who
ran on that platform was assassinated. He gave up his life,
Abraham Lincoln, knowing full well the risk he was taking.
(10:26):
And the proof is in the pudding. There are hundreds
of millions of people throughout the world who want to
come to this country, versus the minuscule few who say that,
you know, this is terrible and they want to leave.
But have I experienced racism? I grew up right after
Pearl Harbor. I mean the phrase, remember Pearl Harbor was
(10:49):
still sunk in everybody's mind, and for a long time.
I got to tell you, I wasn't real happy about
going outside on December seventh, But you know, I always
considered the source and frankly, the number of incidents in
my life of racism and prejudice are far outnumbered by
(11:11):
the goodness of our nation in terms of equal opportunity.
And when I was in high school, by the way,
as I mentioned, you know, we didn't have a lot
of money, so I had to work hard to earn
money so I could go to college. So when I
was in high school, I played in the band. In
high school, I became the first chair of clarinet in
(11:34):
the band, I was the principal woodwind of the orchestra.
But I also played in two combos to make money
on the side. So one was a Polish band, so
I played for Polish weddings. You know, since I played clarinet,
you know, I was pretty good with polkas. And by
(11:56):
the way, by the third set, everybody was so drunk,
nobody cared. And of course here I am a high
school guy, and you know, at weddings and things like that,
you know, people buy the band drinks, right, So needless
to say, I was not going to turn that down,
and so it was. That was a good gig. But
(12:17):
then also I played another band which played for Jewish
bar mitzvahs, so I told people I had them coming
or going either way. I knew all the synagogues on
the North North Side and suburbs of Chicago. And I
learned very early in life that I have a bad temper.
(12:40):
And my wife can attest to that, unfortunately, because although
she's stuck with me for fifty two years now, so
I guess I have some other redeeming qualities. But I
knew very early in life, when I say early in
grammar school, that I had a bad temper, so I
had to control myself. On the other hand, I was
always I was kind of a nerd, so I was
(13:03):
always picked on, especially during recess. But I had to
control my temper.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
I knew that.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
But one day a guy called me a jab and
I lost it. Literally I had him on the ground
in seconds and I was on top of him and
I was beating him, and the kids had to drag
me off of him, and they all looked in astonishment,
and he said, who is this guy? Worst Jim Mukuyama
that we know. There was a book years later that
(13:33):
I read and it was called Wild at Heart by
John Eldridge, and he starts the book by talking about
his son coming home from school one day and he
looked kind of down, you know. So Eldre says, son,
what's going on? He said, well, Dad, you know he
got this bully at school. I don't know what to
(13:55):
do about it. So Eldridge tells his son, He said, son,
you go back and you tell the guy to stop,
and if he doesn't stop, you hit him as hard
as you can. And I'm sitting there reading this, and
(14:16):
you know, I get this flashback and I'm saying yes,
and then my wife is there and she say, what
what do you you know? What are you doing? And
I said, I I know that every guy who read
that book that story would sit there and say yes.
But I knew every woman who read that story would
(14:37):
be in horror.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
You know.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
They say, no, you can't do that. You can't tell
our son to do that, you know, tell him to
go tell the teacher.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
You know.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Now, the good news is that I grew up in
the neighborhoods and we had a code, and the code
was you took care of things yourself, and you didn't
tattletale and go to the teacher and cry about you know,
because had we done that, kids who were tattle tales,
they were ostracized among the kids. I mean, it's the
(15:09):
worst thing you could do. And so I fortunately avoided
having anyone tell the teacher and read on me, so
I didn't get called, you know, to the principal's office.
That That was the thing I feared the most when
I was in school, because my parents taught me to
respect my elders and to respect my teachers. So if
(15:32):
they got called a school for anything, you know, I
didn't care what the principal was going to do to me.
I worried more about what my father was going to
do so my dad told us, my brother and I
never shame the Mukoyama name that means the family, and
never shamed the Japanese race. But you have been born
(15:57):
in America. You are America. This is your country, this
is your homeland, this is where your loyalty lies. And
you need to take the best of the Japanese culture
and add that to the American culture to make our
country the best it can be. Now, my dad, by
(16:20):
the way, a lot of people don't know this. Japanese
could not become naturalized citizens of the United States until
nineteen fifty two, and my dad had been here since
nineteen eighteen, so he was one of the first to
become naturalized. So he goes downtown to the Federal Center
(16:40):
to be sworn in and the judge, I still can't
believe this to this day. The judge asked my father,
what took you so long to become naturalized? And my
father had to give the guy a five minute Civics
lesson and he said, Judge, they just passed the McLaren Act.
This is eighteen fifty two, which is the first time
(17:02):
we've been eligible to become people of Japanese to set
so I mean, he was respectful, but you know, it's
incredible that that could have happened.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
And you've been listening to Major General James Mukayama. General
Mook tell his story, his story as a young musician
playing in Polish bands and then playing in synagogues, playing
Yiddish music and just having a good old time and
every once in a while a free drink.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
And he learned early in his life that.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
He had a bad temper and one day, one bully
pushed him too far. We learned also about what it
meant to his father to be Japanese, and also what
the Mukayama name meant, but also that his loyalties were
owed to America. Now he was an American. When we
come back, more of General Muk's story here on our
(17:53):
American stories, and we continue with our American stories, and
with General Mook's story, his family's immigration story continues.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
I just found out a couple of years ago from
my wife team across a wonderful treasure of a two
hour audio tape of my mother, who at eighty four
was interviewed, and it was an audio tape interview by
a researcher from the University of San Francisco, who was
(18:37):
researching Japanese Americas of my mother's generation. The interviewer kept
on asking you, well, tell me about your experiences in
Wyoming and Nebraska and Wisconsin and Oklahoma and California. Tell
me about racism that you experienced. And my mom said,
(19:00):
I did it. This woman could not believe it, and
she kept on probing her, and my mom said, no,
I mean we were part of the community. So my
senior year in high school, I worked from five o'clock
until ten o'clock at night Mondays through Fridays and eight
(19:24):
hours on Saturday. So as a senior in high school,
I worked thirty three hours a week. You know, I
was pretty busy with The lesson it taught me was
time management because I really had no time when I
came home at night. I got home probably around ten
thirty at night. I had to study. And by the way,
(19:44):
I had my best year in high school that year.
It had straight a's. That really made me focus. So
now I'm in college University of Illinois, so I'm in
the dorms with the roommate and just like any testosterol
Leyden guy. When I was in high school, one of
my favorite readings was Playboy magazine, so I actually saved
(20:10):
the centerfolds. So I wallpapered our ceiling and two of
the walls with Playmate centerfolds. Well, one day, my roommate's
mother came to campus to visit us without notice. She
didn't tell us she was coming. Obviously she told us
(20:30):
she was coming, we would have kind of cleaned up
our room, but she didn't tell us. Right, So there
it is. We're on the weekend. Knock on the door
and it's his mother, and she walks in and she
looks at the room and she looks at her sound
and she says, oh, Fred. And then I looked at
(20:52):
him and I said, yeah, Fred, you know our room
was famous on campus. Guys went not on our.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Door, you know.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
And I say, yeah, can I help you? No, we're
not here to see you. We just want to see
your room. When I graduated after getting my master's degree,
being an infantry officer, I volunteered for Vietnam, and the army,
in its infinite wisdom, sent me instead of Korea. So
(21:21):
I go to Korea to the second Infantry Division, which
was stationed on the Demilitarized Zone or DMZ, which separates.
Obviously the North from the south. Our mission was to
defend against infiltrators from the North, so we were going
up against the North Korean Special Operations and we were tripwires.
(21:48):
We knew that if the North was going to come across,
we'd be pretty well toast. So I'm on the DMZ.
I'm now a platoon leader for an infantry company, and
it was so good. I finally, after eight years of
ROTC and one year of graduate school, I'm finally doing
(22:09):
what I was trained to do in life, leading soldiers.
And it was better than what I thought it would be.
People say, well, gee, you know, how how did you
become a general? I often ask myself that too, in astonishment,
but my answer always is I had great non commissioned officers.
(22:31):
Those are the sergeants who made me look good. And
I had commanders who mentored me, and they didn't cut
my head off when I screwed up. And I did
my fair share of mistakes as a junior officer. And
so I'm leading this combat patrol, ambush patrol. And one
day I got a message that I was to report
(22:53):
to the battalion commander at the battalion headquarters you know,
normally that's not good. So I get on my jeep
and go down to the battalion headquarters and he says, Lieutenant, Okayama,
how are you doing. I said, sir, you know, it's
really great. I mean I'm leading troops and I'm doing
(23:14):
what I've been trained to do for eight years, and
I appreciate the opportunity to do that. And he said,
I see you have a master's degree, and I said.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Yes, sir.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
And then he said, I see you have a degree
in English. And I can see where this is going.
The colonel says, Lieutenant, how would you like to be
the battalion adjudant? And I said, sir, you know, I'm
honored that you would even consider me. But I'm really
happy doing what i'm doing now, leading these troops and
(23:51):
getting this experience. And he said, Lieutenant, I'm not looking
for happiness in my battalion. He said, you will report
on Monday morning, Yes, sir, So Monday morning, there I was,
and I became the battalion adjudant. You know, before I
when I was at the University of Illinois, there was
(24:11):
a very popular book that was out. It was called
The Ugly American and that book talked about how we
as Americans need to get our act together and when
we go overseas and not create a bad image of Americans.
So I had read that book, so I knew when
I was in the army, no matter where I'd be assigned,
(24:34):
I'd have to be a good representative of America. And
Korea was a wonderful experience for me. There was a
local village there and by the way, that part of
Korea was the poorest part of Korea. The government did
not invest in it because if the North Koreans were
to come across, it would be the first to go,
(24:57):
and so they were very poor, and we basically raised money.
Every payday, I would have a coffee can and I
put it out there, and we used to get paid
in cash, you know, they throw in twenty five cents
or fifty cents, which was a big deal in those days,
and we used that money to help the community. My
(25:18):
soldiers used to joke that if I ray in for
mirror of Chang Koree, I would have won. I'll tell
you one incident. What happened was out now, I'm the
battalion adjudant and I get a call from one of
the companies and the guy says, Lieutenant, we got a problem.
And I said, oh, you know, those are not the
(25:38):
words you want to hear. And so I said, okay,
what's up? And he said, we, by the way, in
those days, keep in mind, this is the sixties, we
owned the night We're the only ones who had night
vision devices. I mean these were classified top secret and
that's how we owned the night especially on the and
(26:01):
they were called starlight scopes, the night vision devices. And
he said, we had one of our trucks going through
the village today and somebody stole the starlight scope. I mean,
had that fallen into the hands of the North Koreans,
it would have been disaster.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
And you've been listening to Major General James Mukayama tell
the story of his life, his family's life, his military journey.
General Mook well, he went to the University of Illinois
after pulling thirty three hour work weeks while a senior
in high school and still managing straight a's. He said,
he learned time management graduates with the Masters. He volunteers
(26:46):
for the infantry during the Vietnam War, not what many
people were doing. Then talk about countercultural and then training
eight years to do what he dreamed of doing, leading soldiers,
as he said, it was better than.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
I dreamed it could be.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
And then getting an assignment in the military that he
wasn't happy about because well, his commanding officer wasn't really
concerned about his happiness.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
When we come back.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
More of Major General Mukayama's story, General Mook's story here
on our American Stories, and we continue with our American
(27:38):
stories with Major General James Mukayama. General muk Let's pick
up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
So I immediately hop in my cheep. I drive down
to the bill. I go to the chief of police,
who was a good friend of mine because I had
helped him with some things. And I said, Chief, today
of our trucks was going through the village about one
o'clock this afternoon. Uh, there was a black box in
(28:07):
the back at that truck. Somebody stole the black box.
I didn't tell them, well you know what was in it,
And I said, I don't care who took it. I
don't care why they took it. I need that box
back within one hour. I had the box. When I
(28:28):
was in combat, I never once worried about my personal safety,
because I knew if God was going to take me,
I'd be in a better place. What I worried about
was I was a commander of soldiers, and I was
worried about my responsibility and screwing up by making a
(28:50):
bad decision, because you know, when you're when you're leading
troops in combat, it's not like you're in business, where
if you have a business and it goes bankrupt, you
can restart again. But if you're leading soldiers in combat
and you make a mistake, it can cost lives. The
(29:12):
most precious commodity that any leader has is the lives
of his people. And so that's what kept me awake
at night. But never personal safety has not been anything
that I've ever worried about. And I've had my share
of medical situations from age and Orange. But now I'm
(29:34):
in Vietnam. I was committed. I was what was called
the lifer. I was a naive young Gung Ho regular
Army airborne officer infantry. But I had seen things. When
I was at the headquarters level, I could actually see
what was behind the curtains, and I could see that
(29:57):
the army was heading in a direction that was not good.
And I did a combat zone, and they're looking for managers,
not for commanders. You know, it's almost like the woke today.
Then they promoted me the brigade adjutant. A brigade is
(30:18):
about three thousand soldiers and that position is authorized the
major and I'm still the first lieutenant. And when I
was in that position, I saw all the officer efficiency
reports for every officer in the brigade. Those are your
report card that determines your career in the military. And
(30:44):
so I looked at the officer efficiency reports or oeers
of the battalion commanders. I knew every one of them.
I had interacted with them. I knew their capabilities, I
knew their strengths and weaknesses. And if Jim Mukuiama were
to rate the four battalion commanders, I would have rated
(31:05):
them one, two.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Three, and four.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
The actual ratings came out four, three, two one, and
so I was not real encouraged by that. I came
back to the States. I resigned my regular Army commission,
and I joined the reserves because I was committed to
twenty years and it turned out to be thirty two.
(31:28):
But that's what happened in Vietnam. Then When I finally
retired in ninety five from the military, I started volunteering
for veterans organizations. I was at a medical college in
Oregon giving a speech when my wife and I first
(31:50):
arrived to the hotel. We're checking in and we're going
up the elevator to our room, and I'm worrying my
Vietnam Veterans hat, which I wore every day every chance
I get. Why do I do that? I do that
to let people know that we have veterans in our communities.
They just don't know it. Not only that, but frankly,
(32:12):
it starts up conversations with veterans, at which time the
first thing I mentioned to the veteran after I meet
them is I asked them are they registered with the
VA And if their answer is no, then I kind
of talked to him about fixing that. But anyway, so
we're in this elevator going up and there's a hotel
(32:34):
and employee there, and he said, hey, I served in
Vietnam too. So anybody who knows veterans, what happens is
immediately there's a bond and we start talking and I say, well,
when were you there? He was there same time I
was sixty nine and seventy, and then I said, well,
(32:54):
what service were you in? And he was in the Army,
so obviously he was a man of great character. And
so we get off the elevator and he's still talking
and then he says, hey, did you hear that there's
going to be a general speaking, to which I said, well, yeah,
it's me. Then I gave him my card, I shook
(33:16):
his hand, and I said, welcome home. My generation was
treated so bad that when you tell people today, they
can't believe it. When I came back from Vietnam, I
was told not to wear my uniform in public. That's
how bad it was. Now, I was an United States
(33:39):
Army officer and I was airborne, so I wouldn't have
any of that. I wore my uniform when I came back.
But you know, guys were spit on people through urine
and feces on them, and they called them baby killers.
I mean, I had one guy who was a very
dear friend of mine. He had been with the hundred
(33:59):
and Stairborne in Vietnam, a platoon leader. He comes back
and he's treated like garbage, and so he goes to
his church. He was Catholic, and he went to his
priest seeking some understanding and you know, consolation, and the
priest looked at him and he said, you served in
(34:21):
the army in Vietnam, You're going to hell, at which
point the guy turned around and he never went back. Now,
later on in life, fortunately he did go back to church.
But that's what we encountered. The guys purposely just never
talked about their experience, and that, unfortunately has led to
(34:47):
the high rate of suicide among veterans in my generation.
And the good news for the current generation is that
when that happened to us, we all swore that this
would not happen to future generations of warriors coming back.
And I think we've been fairly successful in that. So, yeah,
(35:11):
I gave my speech that night. Next morning, we're in
the parking lot, I'm putting luggage into our car, and
who comes running out of the hotel but that employee,
And the guy had tears in his eyes, and he said,
nobody has ever said welcome home to me. So if
(35:32):
you know a Vietnam veteran, instead of saying thank you
for your service, please tell them welcome home. I literally
display our nation's colors every day. I have a flagpole
and in front of my house, I plant the flag.
I salute it in the morning, and then in the
(35:54):
evening at sundown. Because I don't have a light on
the flag, I have another ceremony where I salute the
flag and take it down. I want our neighbors to
know and to remember the sacrifices of our great nation
in the goodness of America. Frankly, the way I judge
(36:17):
things is if the United States of America had never existed,
the world would be in worse shape. But it's our
responsibility as Americans to live up to the foundations of
our country. I'm so grateful to live in this nation,
(36:37):
to have the opportunity to have served with some of
the finest people in the world, with my fellow soldiers,
and to share my life with my wonderful wife, who,
by the way, let my parents live with us for
twenty two years, same house. Imagine two women in the
(36:58):
same kitchen till they died. So I've just been so
blussed and every day is a great day. I have
my faith my family lived in the finest country in
the world.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
And a terrific job on the editing and storytelling by
our own Greg Hengler, and a special thanks to Major
General James Mukayama. General Mook to people who know him
and people who care about him. He's the author of Faith, Family,
and Flag, Memoirs of an Unlikely American Samurai Crusader, a
book printed under retired Navy Seal JOCKO.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Willinks Publishing Company.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Pick the book up wherever you get your books, Amazon
or the usual Suspects.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
And what a story he told.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
When I was in combat, I never worried about my
personal safety. I worried about screwing up. When you're leading
soldiers into combat, it can cost lives. By the way,
that story of the Vietnam VET thanking him for saying
welcome home tells you everything. The story glory of the
first Asian American to command a US Army division, Major
(38:05):
General Mukayama's story, General Muk's story here on our American
Stories