WEBVTT

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[chime]
[water drop echoes]

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[TED intro plays]

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[applause]

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-I'm a veteran
of the Starship Enterprise.

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[audience laughs and whoops]

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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
from all over this world:

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many different races,
many different cultures,

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many different heritages
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
[chuckles]

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[scattered applause]

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I am the grandson

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of immigrants from Japan
who went to America,

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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

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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

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by Japan,

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and overnight,

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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,

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and fear,

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and with outright hatred

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simply because

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we happened to look like the people
that bombed Pearl Harbor.

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And the hysteria grew and grew

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until on February 1942,

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the President of the United States,

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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

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with no charges, with no trial,
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 20,
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,

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my baby sister,
and me up very early one morning,

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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 luggages to carry,

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and we walked out
and stood on the driveway

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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 duffel 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

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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

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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,

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I thought it was kind of nice
that they lit the way for me to pee.

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[audeince laughs]

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I was a child,

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too young to understand
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

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in the prison 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,
a barbed-wire prison camp,

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became my normality.

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When the war ended,

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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,

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and the hostility was intense.

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Our first home was on Skid Row

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in the lowest part of our city,

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living with derelicts,

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drunkards, and crazy people;

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the stench of urine
all over on the street,

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in the alley, 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,

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a drunkard came staggering down,

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fell down right in front of us,
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,

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home.

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My parents worked hard
to get back on their feet.

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We had 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,

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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 a teenager,

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and I became very curious
about my childhood imprisonment.

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I had 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 to life,
liberty,

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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 could--

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I couldn't find anything about it.

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And so, I engaged my father after dinner

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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 a 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

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who cherish the ideals of our system

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and actively engage

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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 World War.

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When Pearl Harbor was bombed,

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young Japanese Americans,
like all young Americans,

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rushed to their draft board

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to volunteer to fight for our country.

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That act of patriotism

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was answered with a slap in the face.

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We were denied service

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and categorized as "Enemy non-alien".

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It was outrageous to be called an enemy

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when you're 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

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a 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

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that there is
a wartime 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.

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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

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from behind those barbed-wire fences,

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but because they cherish 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,

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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,

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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's 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 allied battalions

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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

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to add to the fight,

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but the men of the 442nd
came up with a unique,

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but dangerous idea.

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The back side of the mountain
was a sheer rock cliff.

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The Germans thought

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an attack from the backside
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 1000 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,

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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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and 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 month stalemate

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was broken by the 442nd

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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,

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who said to them,
"You fought not only the enemy,

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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 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--

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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

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an even better America,

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to making our government

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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 have gone through,

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I can stand before you
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]

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[musical sting]
[outro music]