Bridge to the Sun

One of the biggest untold stories of World War II, kept hidden by the U.S. government-and when most of the records were declassified in 1972, many of the files remained untouched in various archives, often incomplete or not easily located . . . a gripping true tale of courage, bravery and adventure by master storyteller, historian, and New York Times bestselling author Bruce Henderson-the extraordinary Japanese-American Nisei soldiers who fought in Burma, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and who chose to risk their lives fighting their ancestral nation while their families back home in America faced suspicion, racial hatred, and under US Executive Order 9066, were forcibly incarcerated in detention camps.

Nisei: a first-generation American citizen born in the United States whose parents were immigrants from Japan.

The U.S. government, once officially at war with Japan, faced the difficult task of finding sufficient numbers of Japanese speakers to be trained as translators and interrogators in the Pacific theater, and turned to the Nisei-for help. Ultimately and despite their incarceration by the American government for "security reasons", more than 33,000 Nisei-internees, prisoners-eager to prove their loyalty to America, volunteered to serve in uniform. Highly valued as trained interrogators and expert translators, these American soldiers operated in elite intelligence teams alongside Army infantrymen and Marines on the frontlines of the Pacific, fighting for America from Guadalcanal to Burma, from Okinawa to Hiroshima's aftermath.

Bruce Henderson reveals, in riveting detail, the harrowing untold story of the Nisei and their major contributions in the war of the Pacific, through seven Japanese-American soldiers. The role of the U.S. Nisei soldiers was so far-reaching, General MacArthur said that because of their efforts, "never in military history did an army know so much about the enemy prior to engagement." After the war, these soldiers became translators and interrogators for war crime trials, and later helped to rebuild Japan as a modern democracy and a pivotal U.S. ally.