Takashi Hoshizaki (right), a Heart Mountain draft resister, responds to a question during a discussion of the late Yoshito Kuromiya’s memoir, “Beyond the Betrayal: the Memoir of a WWII Japanese American Draft Resister of Conscience,” on June 4 at the Japanese American National Museum’s Tateuchi Democracy Forum. Also on the panel were (from left) historian Art Hansen, poet Lawson Fusao Inada and Kuromiya’s daughter, Gail.
Kuromiya, who passed away in 2018, was an artist, landscape architect and World War II draft resister. In his memoir published earlier this year, Kuromiya shares a first-hand account of the Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee and the long- and short-term consequences of his actions during the war. “Beyond the Betrayal” is the only book-length memoir by a Japanese American resister and affirms that the World War II Nisei could and did exercise their patriotism not only by serving in the military, but also by the act of refusing to do so in the name of civil liberties and social justice.
Photo by MARIO GERSHOM REYES/Rafu Shimpo