Dennis Prager Show - An Unlikely American War Hero
Aired: 2025-11-11
Duration: 08:21


=== Faith, Family, and Flag: Memoirs (03:45) ===

[00:00:00]  So I have a veteran, very high-ranking veteran, I might add, a major general, James Mukoyama, U.S. Army retired.
[00:00:12]  And he wrote a book.
[00:00:14]  When did it come out, General?
[00:00:17]  Actually, the official release is this week.
[00:00:19]  Oh, cool.
[00:00:21]  And there's a great picture of him serving in Vietnam as a young man.
[00:00:27]  And the book is Faith, Family, and Flag.
[00:00:31]  Is it up at dennisprager.com?
[00:00:34]  Well done.
[00:00:37]  Faith, Family, and Flag.
[00:00:38]  Listen to the subtitle, Memoirs of an Unlikely American Samurai Crusader.
[00:00:46]  We'll find out why unlikely is appropriate.
[00:00:51]  Jocko Willink, who does Prager U video for us, wrote the forward.
[00:00:57]  It's one of the most popular videos, by the way.
[00:01:00]  Major General James Mukayama.
[00:01:04]  So, General, thank you.
[00:01:06]  You have a beautiful page here, largely about me, and I can't tell you how moved I am by that fact.
[00:01:15]  You flew in from Chicago just to be here.
[00:01:18]  Is that right?
[00:01:18]  That's correct.
[00:01:19]  I was given the option of doing this over the internet, and I said, no way.
[00:01:25]  If my wife and I get a chance to be with Dennis and Alan, we're there.
[00:01:30]  Are you sure about Alan?
[00:01:32]  Oh, absolutely.
[00:01:34]  You know, I'm a big Prager U guy, so I've seen him on the book of the month with Michael.
[00:01:41]  And, you know, he did Tale of Two Cities, and he did The Intellectuals.
[00:01:46]  And so, and, of course, I've seen you, too, because you did the first one.
[00:01:50]  Boy, you really know.
[00:01:52]  No, we're very moved by that, Alan and I, just so you'll know.
[00:01:56]  And thank you for coming.
[00:01:58]  And Mrs. Mukayama, thank you for coming as well.
[00:02:01]  So if I would have spoken to you when you were 15 years old and said, you know, you'll be a major general in the U.S. Army, would you have said, that sounds great, or what are you talking about?
[00:02:13]  No, I would have said probably not a large chance.
[00:02:18]  At that point, actually, when I joined the Army, there had never been an Asian American admiral or general in the Armed Forces.
[00:02:31]  I wasn't the first.
[00:02:32]  I was like the third or fourth, but I was the first to command an Army division in the history of the Army.
[00:02:41]  And where was that?
[00:02:42]  That was the 70th Infantry Division training out of Livonia, Michigan.
[00:02:48]  My career, I had five years of active duty, two combat tours, one on the DMZ in Korea, one in Vietnam.
[00:02:56]  And I was a regular Army airborne guy.
[00:02:59]  I was what they called the lifer.
[00:03:01]  And when I came back from Vietnam, I said, you know, I don't want to do this 24-7.
[00:03:08]  So I resigned my regular Army commission and I joined the Army Reserves because I was committed to serve 20 years, period.
[00:03:16]  And so I actually served 32 years.
[00:03:20]  But my division, the 70th, was an Army Reserve Division that was mobilized for Desert Storm.
[00:03:27]  So it's like I died and went to heaven.
[00:03:28]  I mean, I took my division of Fort Benning, Georgia, and we took over the training of the infantry soldiers at Fort Benning.

=== My Mother's Wisdom (04:50) ===

[00:03:37]  So I have no idea what the answer will be.
[00:03:41]  So you were the first Asian American to command a combat unit.
[00:03:46]  Is that correct?
[00:03:46]  No, not combat.
[00:03:47]  It was an Army division here in the state.
[00:03:50]  Right, no, I know.
[00:03:51]  Right, fair enough.
[00:03:53]  So they went to combat, whether they went with you or not.
[00:03:56]  Okay, it doesn't matter.
[00:03:58]  What I want to ask you is, America is accused of being xenophobic and racist.
[00:04:04]  Did you experience that much in the Army?
[00:04:08]  Because you're a first.
[00:04:09]  No, as a matter of fact, through my Army career, I actually caught myself forgetting the race of our soldiers.
[00:04:21]  It didn't make any difference to me whether they were white, black.
[00:04:25]  And it didn't make any difference to them about you.
[00:04:27]  Right, right.
[00:04:29]  Everybody to me was olive green.
[00:04:33]  I love that.
[00:04:33]  I love that.
[00:04:34]  My dad, may he rest in peace, was an officer on a transport ship in World War II in the Pacific for two and a half years, I believe.
[00:04:46]  And he was a committed Jew.
[00:04:50]  He would have Sabbath services on Friday night for Jews who were on board.
[00:04:57]  So everybody knew he was a Jew.
[00:04:59]  And the captain of the ship, my father told the story, and it meant so much to me as a child, means a lot to me now.
[00:05:07]  And the captain basically told everyone on board: if he ever hears an anti-Semitic word, that guy is doomed.
[00:05:18]  And my father said, two and a half years, his being a Jew was not an issue.
[00:05:23]  That's what you're saying.
[00:05:25]  Yes.
[00:05:25]  Whatever the color of the Navy, that was the only color that mattered.
[00:05:30]  See, that's why it is so awful charging Americans with systemic racism and xenophobia.
[00:05:41]  It's probably the least racist, least xenophobic country in the modern world.
[00:05:47]  Absolutely.
[00:05:48]  And I reflect on that in my book because my mother, bless her soul, grew up during the Depression.
[00:05:59]  Her family had lived in Montana, in Nebraska, in Wisconsin, in Oklahoma, in California, until she married my dad and she moved up to Chicago.
[00:06:12]  And she was interviewed by a University of San Francisco researcher about the Nisei, the second generation Japanese Americans.
[00:06:21]  And it was like a two-hour interview.
[00:06:23]  And this woman kept the researcher kept on asking my mom, well, when did you experience racism?
[00:06:31]  Oh, God.
[00:06:32]  And you know what my mother said?
[00:06:35]  She said, I didn't.
[00:06:39]  And this woman was just, you know, she kept on probing.
[00:06:42]  And in fact, during World War II, we were in Chicago.
[00:06:46]  And my family, my parents had assimilated into our community.
[00:06:53]  We didn't have a Japan town, so to speak, right?
[00:06:57]  And our neighbors, not realizing that Japanese could not become naturalized citizens of the United States until 1952, they sent a telegram to our congressman vouching for the loyalty of my father as an American citizen.
[00:07:19]  And that's so we did not experience that.
[00:07:24]  The interview of your mother, that's who you're talking about.
[00:07:29]  So I have you, you'll love this.
[00:07:35]  As loyal a listener as you might be, I don't know if you would remember.
[00:07:39]  I played this once on my show.
[00:07:43]  A black in Poland, born in Poland, and parents African, and he's a championship boxer in Poland.
[00:07:56]  And the interviewer on Polish television kept asking him, So you experience a lot of racism here in Poland, don't you?
[00:08:04]  And the guy kept saying, No.
[00:08:08]  And she was so annoyed with him.
[00:08:11]  So your mother's story is exactly the same thing.
[00:08:15]  You're not experiencing all this anti-Asian, anti-Japanese racism in America.
[00:08:20]  We'll be back in a moment.