Fighting Tradition
A Marine’s Journey to Justice
Fighting Tradition is Bruce Yamashita’s own story of his struggle to expose a pattern of racial discrimination against minorities that has existed at various levels of the Corps. Determined to be a U.S. Marine Corps officer, Yamashita enrolled in the 140th Officer Candidate School at Quantico (VA), where he was the target of persistent racial harassment by officers and staff. On the first day, a sergeant instructor yelled: You speak English? Well we don’t want your kind around here, go back to your own country! Later, another sergeant screamed: During World War II, we whipped your Japanese ass! For the remainder of the course, he was subjected to continuous racial taunts, unfair treatment, and physical abuse. After completing the entire 10 weeks of training, he was disenrolled due to unsatisfactory leadership, along with other minorities in his platoon. He protested. The Marine Corps said he was a liar.
With the support of a broad coalition of community and civil rights organizations, he fought a lonely five-year-long legal, political and media battle. After multiple Inspector General investigations, the truth finally came to light. Significantly, the case revealed statistics showing that there had been a pattern of discrimination against minorities at OCS for years. In 1994, Yamashita was finally commissioned a captain in the Marine Corps in the House Armed Services Committee Room on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. Most important, Marine Corps policies and procedures were changed forever, which would make the corps a better place for all marines.
As a third-generation American, his grandfather came to Hawaii from Japan to work on the sugar plantations in 1892. What followed was the American dream. Both of his parents were born in Hawaii, attended college and became professionals: civil engineer and college professor. His uncle, Daniel Yamashita, was a member of the famed 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the all-Nisei Army unit during World War II, and received the purple heart for wounds suffered during the Battle of the Arno River in Italy. In telling his story, the author uses a series of flashbacks to reveal his family history and stories of his youth, which sheds light on the depth of the injustice, and provides the compelling moral imperative to right a wrong.
Fighting Tradition is not only a moving story of personal sacrifice and vision, but contributes both directly and indirectly to our understanding of the complexities of institutional racism in a politically conservative, demographically shifting society. It is a unique window into the dynamics of race, government and the law and a stirring reminder of the importance of political mobilization by the individual to achieve justice.
