Steve Padilla was with his father at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans when he witnessed something that absolutely floored him.
Padilla wrote about it in the LA Times.
“You see him?” someone asked. “He was in the 442,” apparently spotting the cap with the 442nd logo his father was wearing.
Another vet walked up to him. “Sir, I just want to shake your hand.”
Padilla calls his father Toke a “living reminder of of the sad but triumphant story of the Nisei, or second-generation Japanese Americans, who overcame the Axis abroad and prejudice at home.”
He writes about the impact his father had on the nation and on him as a son in the LA Times.
It’s a loving tribute from a son to his father that’s worth a read.
