The Japanese-American general who was interned as a boy

Theodore Kanamine 1929–2023

Theodore Kanamine was an unlikely American patriot, interned in a prison camp by his own country but growing up to serve that country with distinction. He became the U.S. Army’s first Japanese-American active-duty general, serving in the Korean and Vietnam wars. A commander with the military police in Saigon, Kanamine later helped lead the Army’s investigation into the My Lai Massacre, in which U.S. troops murdered unarmed civilians. He was admired for his dedicated service. “I believe in the philosophy of ‘Duty, Honor, Country,’” he said in 2012. “I think my family and friends know this.”

Kanamine was born in North Hollywood, Calif., to immigrant parents who owned a market near the Walt Disney Studio, said The Washington Post. Disney himself would invite neighborhood kids, Kanamine included, to the studio to watch unfinished cartoons. But when he was 12, Kanamine and his family were sent on a train to an internment camp in Jerome, Ark., where “they were given blankets, pillows, metal cots, and not much else.” Two years later, they were resettled in Omaha. Kanamine got a law degree from the University of Nebraska but had to go across the border to Iowa to marry his white wife, because Nebraska law banned interracial marriage.

He soon “realized he couldn’t see himself as an attorney,” said the Los Angeles Times, so he joined the military and worked his way up. Promoted to brigadier general in 1976, he received numerous honors, including the Distinguished Service Medal. He credited his success to having the “personal discipline to know what is right, and to develop the skills necessary to do whatever the task is in the best way you know how.”