- Storytelling, it can be traced back to our earliest states, moving from pave art or hieroglyphics to tails ink done in a paperback book.

It's an integral part of our humanity, a way to educate or entertain.

But for far too many, legacies of these kinds of cultures, triumphs, and people have been washed away, pushed down by oppression or lack of visibility.

Today, we're looking to preserve.

I'm Kylie Ambu.

And on this Mutually Inclusive, we're celebrating the story of one of West Michigan's own, Virgil Nishimura Westdale and the Nesei soldiers of World War II.

(bright music) (menacing music) During World War II, humanity witnessed a cataclysmic clash of nations, the effects of which traveled far beyond the battlefield.

- [Anchor] We've also had new statements and new evidence about the final and extensive preparations now underway for the invasion of Western Europe.

- [Kylie] In the United States, ears remain glued to radios for updates most focused on the conflict abroad.

But Japanese Americans faced a unique battle on their home front, a community caught in the crossfires of war.

- [Anchor] We interrupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin.

The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii by air, President Roosevelt has just announced.

- A date which will live in infamy.

United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked.

- [Kylie] The 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor marked the beginning of a dark traumatic chapter in US history.

Suspicion and xenophobia towards Japanese Americans served as a painful reminder of just how fragile freedom is.

But while these stories of internment camps get scribbled into history books, another saga is fighting to be preserved, the legacy of the Nesei soldiers.

These Japanese Americans who risked their lives on the battlefield as loved ones were held in encampments back home would become one of the most successful troops in the nation's history.

While these war heroes came from every corner of America, a very special journey starts here in West Michigan.

In 1940s America, a quilt of diverse patches covers the landscape representing language, culture, race, and religion.

Every individual stitch making a unique impact on the nation's fabric.

Across Michigan farm fields, a young Virgil Nishimura begins to weave his own story.

- Virgil story is amazing.

His father was an orphan, 15 or 16-year-old boy who came over here, grew up, got married to a lady in west southern Michigan.

- [Kylie] Born to a Caucasian mother and Japanese immigrant father, Virgil is one of five children.

The kids are known as Nesei, second generation Japanese Americans.

- Being biracial, that wasn't typical.

The fact that he was born and raised in the Midwest, that was not typical.

- Growing up, they were extremely poor.

I remember my dad telling me that sometimes in the winter, all they had to eat were potatoes that they had stored in the cellar that, you know, they grew during the spring and summer.

- [Kylie] As the eldest son, Virgil spends his days tilling the land on the Nishimura's peppermint farm.

It's been a difficult time since his mother passed four years ago from Blight's disease, and he's taken on a brunt of the work.

- And that was a very sad situation.

Very sad.

And so then my dad had five kids and his wife died, our mother.

And he said we have to work on the farm.

- His father kind of forced him into a good work ethic, kind of like my dad did with me.

Just had a servant attitude, did his best with everything.

- [Kylie] Despite his father urging him to quit school and focus on the farm, Virgil narrowly manages to graduate and is eager to explore new heights.

- Growing up in the Depression, you know, nobody had a lot of money.

He borrowed 30 bucks from a friend to take flying lessons, and that turned into being able to excel and teach pilots how to fly.

- For a young man who was very humble and everything was just work, work, work to start this hobby and realized that you're really gifted at it, that was a huge point in his life.

- [Kylie] He goes on to join the pilot war-training service funded through the US government where he quickly soars to the top of his class as an acrobatic flyer.

It's a new identity he's eager to claim.

In the cockpit, he finds a place he fits, excels, and feels at home.

- I knew how to maneuver that plane to get the most out of it.

I knew when we were approaching a stall and I could feel it.

I knew.

And so I felt that God had given me the gift of flying.

- I've jumped out of a lot of airplanes.

I want the pilot like Virgil.

He did so well that he got his pilot's license.

Then, Pearl Harbor happened.

- And that's when I became very quiet about who I was.

- [Kylie] On December 7th, 1941, life in America changes drastically as flames from Japanese bombs strangle ships at the docks of Pearl Harbor, killing more than 2,400 people and launching the United States into its second world war.

On the home front, panic begins to set in.

The United States serves as a place of belonging for thousands of Japanese American families, like the Nishimura's who've built their lives, businesses, and memories on American soil.

The US is their home.

But trust waivers amongst the country's leadership.

- Our government decided that anybody who was one 16th Japanese was an enemy alien living in the United States.

- I think a lot of people are familiar with what happened to Japanese Americans during World War II being placed in internment camps, just a complete violation of their civil rights.

- [Kylie] 9066, it's a number etched into the memories of Japanese Americans throughout generations.

The executive order that forced thousands of people of Japanese descent into US internment camps.

- If you were a Japanese family that owned a small business, you were given like two weeks to sell your business and go to these occupation camps that we had.

And if you couldn't sell it, you just lost it.

- Because Virgil was not in one of the excluded zones growing up in the Midwest, his family was never put into an internment camp, but he still suffered losses.

- The manager of the office said, "There's a CAA inspector here that wants to see you."

And I said, "I wonder why."

And she didn't say anything but I could tell there was something wrong.

- They just said, "I need your license.

Sorry."

And then they took his license.

Never said a word about why they were taking it.

My dad kind of surmised it was because he was part Japanese and with the internment camps and everything, he wasn't sure where it was gonna go from there.

- [Kylie] Virgil is stripped of more than his wings.

Being biracial, known as Hapa amongst Asian Americans, he grapples with his identity.

In most circles, he passes as Caucasian.

And while he isn't ashamed of his Japanese heritage, there's difficulty in weighing the scales of his self-view with the prejudice of white America.

- I felt like maybe I was kind of a second class citizen at the time because I was half-Japanese and half-Caucasian and I wasn't sure which one I was really, in a way, I was just as much Caucasian as I was Japanese.

- [Kylie] After five difficult months, Virgil enlists in the Army Air Corps, now under the surname Virgil Westdale.

- English translation of the name, Nishi means West, Mura means village.

Well, you couldn't say West Village for a name because that sounded like a city.

Somebody in the family thought of the word dale, like hill and dale, so that's how Westdale came about.

- [Kylie] Under his new identity, Virgil is able to regain his pilot's license and moonlights as a commercial flight instructor.

But his second act is, again, cut short.

- After about three or four months, things started happening again.

- I don't know if the name change threw him off for a while, but they caught up with him, took his license, and then transferred him to the 442nd.

- I got a notice from the war department and it said, "By order of the president, you are transferred from the Air Corps to the Army as a private."

- At that time, the Army was putting together the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which was all the Japanese young men who wanted to serve our country.

- [Kylie] With little information, Virgil finds himself drafted into the army, awaiting calls to join the segregated Japanese American unit with fellow Nesei soldiers.

Denied his aerial ambitions, he must quickly adapt to a more grounded military life.

- So I went from being an instrument flight instructor down to a private in the Army who had the lowest rank you could get.

It was just unbelievable.

I went from $9 an hour down to 13 cents an hour.

That was a difference between the two.

- I mean, imagine being so talented and so gifted at flying, and it's something that your country desperately needs.

There was very few pilots, the government knew it, and that's why they created the civilian training program.

You're the best in your class and they say, "We don't want you.

Give us your license."

And it's only because you are half Japanese.

- [Kylie] There's heartache as the freedom of the skies slips away, now replaced with the stressors of war.

As Virgil sets off to join his new unit, the 442 Regimental Combat Team, a new unexpected challenge emerges.

- Virgil never knew any Japanese Americans.

The only Japanese person he knew was his father.

So ironically, being sent to serve in the segregated unit is the first time he came into contact with his Japanese roots.

- We knew nothing about what the Regimental Combat Team even meant.

And it was in Camp Shelby, Mississippi, is where I had to go.

And I looked at, looked around, and I saw the GI's around there, but they're all Asian.

And I thought, "This is strange."

- [Kylie] Similarly to his Caucasian circles, Virgil is once again the odd man out.

Unable to communicate on a cultural level with his fellow Nesei soldiers, it's difficult to find footing.

- When Virgil went to Camp Shelby, Virgil was 6'1.

The average Nesei soldier was 5'5.

So he towered over them.

He resembled his mother's features.

So when he went to report, his officer who was Japanese American said, you know, "How may I help you, sir?"

He didn't realize that Virgil was there to be in that unit.

- And he says, "Well, there must be some mistake."

And my dad said, "Well, I'm half-Japanese."

And even the soldiers kinda disrespected him for a while because he didn't look Japanese.

He had one friend named Hana that was the same.

He's half-Caucasian, didn't look Japanese.

So they became pretty good friends.

Eventually bonded with the Japanese American soldiers, whether they were half or full Japanese, it didn't matter.

They fought side by side.

You depend on people having your back when you're fighting in a war.

- The 442 consists of multiple units.

Virgil is assigned to the 522 Field Artillery Battalion where he works as a computer operator.

- Taken the data and put it into the fire direction center.

And when we said fire for effect, we better be right, which we always were.

- [Kylie] The stakes are high for these Nesei soldiers who now face two wars: the battle against the Axis powers and the painful fight against racism back home.

With anti-Japanese propaganda plastered to America's walls, relatives in internment camps, and discrimination within its armed forces, there can be no mistakes.

The unit says they must go for broke.

- It was a group of amazing soldiers.

Very dedicated, very honorable.

They wanted to prove that they were a hundred percent American and they had a mission to do the best they could do.

They were probably the best unit that the Army had.

- They got in for the last full year of World War II.

They fought through basically all of France and they became the most decorated regiment in the history of the United States Army.

- [Kylie] But this success wasn't without cost.

- Hana, all the 442nd guys knew that he was my friend.

I remember them putting him out on the back of a weapons carrier and said, "Would you like to look at Hana?"

And I said, "Well, where is he?"

And they said, "He was killed."

And that was quite devastating.

We got a call from the 442nd and they needed help because they were pinned down.

And so they asked our artillery support right away.

So we had to hurry up and get organized and get in there.

And we did.

It really affected me when I talked about the first time because we slaughtered that hill.

We really did killed 120 Germans right up on that hill, and in about five minutes, six minutes.

- They were the best artillery battalion in all of the army.

They had perfected the timing for when the artillery would explode.

It wouldn't hit the ground and drop like you see in the movies.

It would explode above wherever the enemy positions were.

Highly effective in combat, demoralizing for your soul.

Hill 140 is something that Virgil carried with him to the end of his life.

- [Kylie] Soldiers endure physical and mental wounds playing pivotal roles in rescuing World War II's lost battalion from German grips in France and liberating French cities from Nazi occupation.

- The rescue of the lost battalion, it is the most famous battle that the Japanese Americans were involved in.

And it's also one of the top 10 most significant battles that the US Army has ever taken part in.

- They were fierce fighters and they rescued the lost battalion after several other troops failed.

They suffered huge casualties to save 187 soldiers of the Texas Battalion.

And my dad always used to say, you know, "Was it worth it?"

And he said, "Well, you ask any one of those 187 people, and they'll say, 'Yes, it was.'"

- [Kylie] But no amount of battles or bloodshed prepares them for what awaits in Southern Germany, Dachau.

- One of the first things that they did was, the battalion, by accident, go down this road.

They did, and there was a concentration camp there.

- And none of us knew what Dachau meant, really.

We figured it was just another town.

But as we approached, we could see that they were in striped clothes.

Two of our guys shot the lock off compound and the guys wouldn't come out.

They thought that maybe Japan had come to help Hitler.

There was a ranked smell in the area, and the extermination furnaces were still warm.

How sickening that was to see that happen.

They wanted to be comforted.

They wanted the comfort from kind people.

And of course, we were military, and that even made it even better because they felt protection.

And a lot of the guys pulled their blankets out of their pack and wrapped them up, wrapped up these prisoners 'cause they were freezing.

Just unbelievable cruelty from Hitler.

- The liberation of Holocaust victims in and around Dachau, a lot of people don't know that story, but it's something that meant a lot to Virgil.

And well into his nineties, he was traveling around the world fulfilling his role as a Holocaust witness because it was really important for him that it was never denied and that people did not forget.

- [Kylie] As World War II draws to a close, Virgil and the 442 returned victorious.

While racism still lingers, Virgil is now armed with a renewed identity of what it means to be Hapa, Nesei, a Japanese American.

- When you're gone for 20 months and you're moving to New York Harbor and you see the piers lined up with people waiting to say hi and then I saw the Statue of Liberty, I looked up at that lady and I thought, "Hmm."

I said, "America is still free."

And I looked at her and I saluted her.

This is the honest truth, I saluted her.

And I thought, "Gee.

I can see her with my imagination say, 'Welcome home, soldier.'"

And so the war was worth fighting for.

- [Kylie] The 442 would go on to receive more than 9,000 Purple Hearts, 21 Medals of Honor, and seven presidential unit citations, no longer proving themselves as Americans, but rather US heroes.

Virgil marries and starts his own American dream outside of combat and flight, instead creating roots in West Michigan with his wife and three children.

But part of Virgil's heart will always belong to the sky.

- When he got outta the army, he was thinking about going back to flying, but his grandmother told him, "Virgil, you arrived home safely.

Don't fly."

- [Kylie] As piloting becomes a pastime, Virgil dedicates his life to other pursuits.

His heart holds an unwavering dedication, be it from war, upbringing, or simply willpower.

While some dreams fade and others emerge, one thing becomes certain.

Virgil has no thoughts of slowing down.

- Growing up with him is kinda like trying to see the forest through the trees.

- This man never really retired.

He went back to school.

He became an engineer and had 25 patents.

Just a brilliant scientist.

When he retired from that, he went on to work at TSA and became TSA employee of the year, beating out 40,000 other employees.

- And he just kept working and working.

TSA, he worked until he was 91, and they retired him because he was just too old.

But he would've loved to stay there and work until he was a hundred.

- [Kylie] Time goes on, seconds and minutes turning into years.

While xenophobia will never be eradicated, Virgil and many other Japanese Americans find prosperity and post-war opportunity.

But despite this movement and new generations coming into the fold, the effects of war, an encampment endure, something America attempts to rectify - The Japanese Americans who were interned, they received an official apology and a monetary sum of $20,000 in 1988.

But it was the apology that helped shed the shame that people still had about what happened to them.

Virgil, because he was not interned, never received the apology, never received the funds.

So he worked diligently to try to prove that what happened to him was not anything of his own doing.

- [Kylie] It's a kind of peace Virgil wouldn't know until his latest years, a tranquility born out of years of torment.

- When he was working at TSA, he asked his boss, "Could you please help me obtain my records?"

And he came with boxes and boxes of documents.

Virgil sifted through every single piece of paper until he found on very, very faint microfilm.

And it said, "It is in our opinion that he is performing at an ability to receive his air core license."

It is only solely because of his ethnicity that they were rejecting it.

Because of that, he was able to submit to say, "I never received my ID badge."

And he received 163 years later in the mail.

But that tells you how much it meant to him.

- [Kylie] While Virgil's career as a pilot ended decades ago, a beautiful opportunity emerges.

Finally holding his official license, the sky is once again his to explore, his to take for one more flight.

- Well, a good friend of mine, Lieutenant Colonel Steve Kenyon, he had called me up and said that he had a friend of his who was a flight instructor with the Army Air Corps and had never had an opportunity to fly an airplane again since that time.

So he said, "Would you mind taking him up flying with you?"

Of course, I had to say yes to that.

We took off from Sparta, Michigan and headed to late Michigan.

About halfway there, I said to Virgil, I said, "Do you want to take over the airplane?"

He goes, "Yeah."

And he grabbed the controls and he flew the airplane and he flew for probably about 40 minutes.

- It was just a wonderful journey.

So I sat in the backseat and when Virgil took over the controls as the right seater, we thought he was gonna do some aerial loops and so forth 'cause that was his expertise in the Air Force.

But it was really wonderful.

- [Kylie] It's an experience Virgil earned decades ago when oppression and racism ran rampant across the US soil, a treasure he never gave up on, and a memory that would carry him through to his final days.

On February 8th, 2022, Virgil celebrates his last chapter of life.

At just over 104, he's among the oldest decorated World War II combat veterans in America.

Today, there are still faint reminders of Virgil's legacy and the 442 hanging in museums, making their way onto postage stamps, and city plaques.

But many Japanese Americans are pushing for more visibility.

They say as life continues, so should the influence of the Nesei soldiers.

It's a test of time as these communities strive to safeguard this history and preserve its stories for generations to come.

- [Jennifer] Someone like Virgil, they come along maybe once a lifetime if you're lucky.

- [Fred] There's a lot of people alive today, especially in this country, that don't really appreciate what their forefathers have done.

- [Denny] What a fantastic role model he is for all of us.

Virgil Westdale is, and remains, one of my personal heroes.

(gentle music) (bright music) - That was such an impactful story.

It is sentimental for me as someone who identifies as Hapa.

Just to see someone of similar background leave such a legacy, I personally feel like we could not have asked for a better way to end our season.

- Absolutely, Kylie.

Because when we first launched the show, our goal was to connect with our community on these real life stories, celebrations, and underrepresented issues.

And I'm just so very grateful for everything that we've been able to highlight.

And we wanna thank you all so much for taking this journey with us.

- Absolutely, we cannot wait to see you next time to share even more community conversations.

Until then, like Jen said, thank you so much for helping us get through this season and for being Mutually Inclusive.

(bright music)