Japanese internment camp survivor and veteran of three American wars, Casey Kunimura a true patriot
Veteran Casey Kunimura, 95, poses for a portrait on Thursday, May 21, 2020, in his front yard in North Ogden. As a Japanese American, Kunimura was put into an interment camp after Pearl Harbor was bombed. Despite this he went on to serve in WWII, The Korean War and Vietnam.
Casey Kunimura during the World War II era.
Veteran Casey Kunimura poses for a portrait on Thursday, May 21, 2020, in his front yard in North Ogden. As a Japanese American, Kunimura was put into an interment camp after Pearl Harbor was bombed. Despite this he went on to serve in WWII, The Korean War and Vietnam.
Veteran Casey Kunimura poses for a portrait on Thursday, May 21, 2020, in his front yard in North Ogden. As a Japanese American, Kunimura was put into an interment camp after Pearl Harbor was bombed. Despite this he went on to serve in WWII, The Korean War and Vietnam.
Veteran Casey Kunimura poses for a portrait on Thursday, May 21, 2020, in his front yard in North Ogden. As a Japanese American, Kunimura was put into an interment camp after Pearl Harbor was bombed. Despite this he went on to serve in WWII, The Korean War and Vietnam.
NORTH OGDEN — During his freshman year of high school in central California, Casey Kunimura was apprehended by government officials and forced to live in a rodeo grounds horse stall.
Though he’d been born and raised in the United States and lived nowhere else, Kunimura also lost his citizenship. He says his own government did these things to him for no other reason than his Japanese descent.
Despite this, the 95-year-old North Ogden resident went on to serve his country in three major wars. And some 78 years later, he still considers himself an American patriot, heavily involved with several veterans organizations.
Kunimura, his mother, brother, aunt and uncle were victims of Executive Order 9066 — the 1942 decree issued by President Franklin Roosevelt during World War II in response to the hysteria that followed the Pearl Harbor attack. That ultimately cleared the way for the deportation of Japanese Americans to internment camps.
The Kunimuras were forced to gather at a local high school in Gilroy, California, then were dumped off at the rodeo grounds, located in Salinas, California.
“They hadn’t set up tents or built temporary quarters,” Kunimura wrote in his memoir. “Each family was assigned an uncleaned horse stall for their living quarters … no matter how hard we tried, the stench from the damp dirt floor, trodden with horse manure and urine, could not be reduced much less eliminated.”
Like many other Japanese American families living on the West Coast during the war, the Kunimuras were eventually forced to relocate again from Salinas to be incarcerated at an internment camp in Arizona. The camps were set up all over the Western states, with more than 100,000 Japanese Americans held. Those victimized were forced to give up property and most of their possessions.
“I was no longer an American citizen,” Kunimura told the Standard-Examiner last week. “And I knew nothing but this country.”
After about a year at the camp, Kunimura was released as part of a work sponsorship program in Chicago. He tried to enlist in the military several times, but was denied at every turn. Eventually though, Kunimura’s country decided it needed him.
He was recruited to be a part of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, one of the most highly decorated units in World War II. It was made up almost entirely of Japanese American volunteers, mostly recruited from the internment camps. Kunimura joined the unit as a machine gunner, and fought heavily in France.
Kunimura’s service didn’t end after WWII. He later served in U.S. conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. He was an Air Force reservist for 22 years and spent his post-military life working for the U.S. government in civil service.
“I’m an American,” Kunimura says proudly. “My loyalty is to this country. Where else is it supposed to go? I look at it like parents. Whatever the old man might have done to you, he’s still your dad.”
At 95, Kunimura is still active in the veterans community. He’s a member of Ogden’s American Legion Baker-Merrill Post 9, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Disabled American Veterans and volunteers with Boys State activities. He lives with his wife, Dorothy, 88, in the North Ogden home they’ve owned since the 1970s. He credits Dorothy — who is also a veteran and served from 1950 to 1954 in the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps — for his longevity.
“It’s all the nagging,” Dorothy jokes.
Kunimura is humble and reticent to talk about himself and only agreed to be interviewed because his story is probably something people can ponder this Memorial Day weekend.
“He’s definitely not the kind of guy that likes to toot his own horn,” said Kunimura’s friend Terry Schow, one-time director of the Utah Veterans Affairs Department. “But with Memorial Day coming up, I can’t think of a person more worthy of a little recognition.”