TOKYO — When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, the first thing Hidekazu Tamura thought was: I’ll be killed by my fellow Americans.
It wouldn’t be the last time the Japanese American living in Santa Maria, California, felt that way.
Tamura has vivid memories of his time locked up with thousands of other Japanese Americans in U.S. internment camps.
Torn between warring nationalities, the experience led him to refuse a loyalty pledge to the United States, renounce his American citizenship and return to Japan.
Speaking to The Associated Press almost 75 years to the day Japan's surrender ended World War II, he says, “I have too many stories to tell."
