If Marvel Studios ever decides to make a film about real-life superheroes, it should seriously consider adopting Northern California scribe Bruce Henderson’s story of the Japanese American soldiers who fought in the Pacific theater during World War II. In “Bridge to the Sun: The Secret Role of the Japanese Americans Who Fought in the Pacific in World War II,” the best-selling author of “Sons and Soldiers” casts a spotlight on the incomparable bravery and patriotism of a small group of American-born Japanese men asked to participate in a war against their ancestral homeland.
In Henderson’s justifiably hefty tome, the untold story of the nisei (second-generation Japanese American) soldiers, initially scorned by the U.S. military in the wake of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, is finally revealed in full for the first time. The desperate need for recruits able to speak both languages eventually led to the creation of a highly classified service composed chiefly of young Japanese American men with previous experience studying abroad in Japan.
