Echoes of Conflict: Remembering Vietnam Speaker Series

Don Bannai and George Wada launched the Japanese American Vietnam Era Archives
in 2022 in an effort to collect the oral histories of Japanese American Vietnam veterans,
whose numbers were quickly dwindling. Many of these veterans were descendants of
the brave soldiers who served in World War II in the Military Intelligence Service and the
100th Battalion/442nd Regimental Combat Team, highly decorated units. Over the past
few decades, the focus had been on World War II veterans with little attention paid
to Vietnam veterans, whose return from war was largely met with hostility and
contempt.

Bannai and Wada began the project knowing that members of their generation who had
served and survived the Vietnam War also had stories that needed to be captured. Thus
far, they have recorded more than 100 sessions, with dozens posted to the library of
Congress website.

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