(gentle music) (soft resonant music) (gentle piano music) (people chatter) - [Narrator] One family, three generations of military service, and more than 80 years of history, from Pearl Harbor to 9/11.

- I was there when Pearl Harbor occurred and I saw the planes coming in over Kolekole Pass and on to machine gun Schofield Barracks.

(gentle piano music continues) - To think that your father was part of the Greatest Generation, the fact that you can hear his story, hear the stories of others, it's the seminal event of their lives, and then I think of my own experiences based upon that.

- Good to see you.

- Bud Nakasone, age 98, lived through the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and later rose to the rank of US Army Colonel, serving during the American occupation of Japan.

Bud's son, Paul Nakasone, a retired four-star Army general, witnessed the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon.

- I was at the Pentagon on 9/11.

I remember it vividly in terms of what occurred.

It's interesting 'cause later on, of course, you know, the similarity of my father being at, in watching the attack on Pearl Harbor, and myself being at the Pentagon on 9/11, that was really, you know, kind of eerie.

- [Narrator] Though the Nakasones, father and son, each served in different eras and circumstances, they share in common a family ethic of education and national service.

We asked them to reflect on their life experiences before, during, and after two of the most profound inflection points in American history.

(gentle piano music ends) (water ripples) (light music) Bud Nakasone was born in Honolulu.

His father immigrated from Japan seeking work in Hawaii.

- My father came from Okinawa prefecture in Japan.

And he came to Hawaii as a laborer and he was working the pineapple fields as well as the sugarcane fields and did well to a certain extent, and then decided he wanted to go on his own and went out to raise strawberries.

He had me going up to my neighbor areas and we had to go sell these strawberries in a basket, 35 cents (chuckles), and we did well.

- So my grandfather came to Hawaii in 1910 and my grandmother came in 1914.

She was what we call a picture bride, literally came to marry someone that she had seen in a picture.

I knew my grandma, but I did not know my grandfather.

He had passed on, I think, before I was born.

But you know, they both came to make their way in the United States and it's amazing.

And so a very interesting family of 10 that my father came from.

- Family comes first as far as it goes.

And he made every effort to give us a good living.

Remember, we had 10 children in our family, and I was number five.

And of course, Japanese was most important so we had to go to Japanese language school, public school from first grade to sixth grade, and then we had to walk over a mile or so to get to Japanese language school.

But from 2:30 to about 3:30, we were in Japanese language school.

(light music ends) - [Narrator] Bud Nakasone was 14 years old and attending his first year of high school on December 7, 1941, the day of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

- [Interviewer] Can you tell me where you were and what you saw the morning of December 7, 1941?

- Well, first of all, I was at home.

We lived in Wahiawa, which is about 16 miles north of Pearl Harbor.

We were up in the heights area, about three miles above Wheeler Army Airfield.

Where was I?

I was out on the front porch.

(plane engines buzz) I was looking westward towards Kolekole Pass on Waianae Range and I saw coming through planes.

And I looked out towards Pearl Harbor and I could see the planes coming through.

I remember the pilots to this day.

And I could see, I could see the pilots and their goggles on and with the hachimaki, which means in Japanese the cloth binder around the helmet.

And they came and flew right over our home And then they came down and began machine gunning Schofield Barracks.

Oh my God.

(machine guns rattle) (planes buzz) And then they flew on out, and no more than three miles away is Wheeler Army Airfield.

They began machine gunning.

All the planes, the planes were put out on the airdrome, about 60 of them, 60 fighters.

They were the fighting planes to help defend Oahu.

And they had bunkers for these planes that they created before, but they did not have planes in the bunkers 'cause they were afraid that Japanese Americans like myself would be out there and sabotaging the planes in the bunkers.

So they brought 'em out.

They could be guarded with a jeep going all around.

(soft somber music) Well, as it turned out, the Japanese couldn't believe their eyes what they saw.

The planes were all lined up and one bullet would go through three planes and so on.

And by golly, what happened?

These planes were all going up in smoke.

And so that was the way Pearl Harbor greeted me.

- I'm seated next to Colonel Retired Edwin M. Nakasone, who is formerly of the Military Intelligence Service, the famed MIS that, you know, translated much of the Japanese intercepts during the war.

And also, my father served in the occupation forces in Japan right after the war.

- Right.

- [Narrator] After Pearl Harbor, the US military had an urgent need for fluent Japanese speakers.

The Military Intelligence Service Language School was established to train Nisei, second-generation Japanese Americans, as linguists.

Bud Nakasone was one of the 6,000 Nisei linguists trained in Minnesota and deployed to the Pacific Theater, where they served as translators and interpreters.

The school was first located in San Francisco and later moved to Minnesota at the invitation of then-Governor Harold Stassen.

After outgrowing its first location at Camp Savage, the school was relocated to Fort Snelling.

- So we liked Fort Snelling.

Fort Snelling was very kind to us.

- Bud's experience in that sense- - [Narrator] Japanese Canadian playwright Rick Shiomi is the author of the play, "Secret Warriors," staged in 2025 by the Minnesota History Theatre.

- My play, "Secret Warriors," is about the Japanese American soldiers who went through this Japanese language school in Minnesota.

The story follows two characters.

They volunteer, get into the program, and then they end up having served in the Pacific.

That's the basic story of the challenge that these Nisei, what they call second-generation Japanese Americans, faced because their families were incarcerated, and yet they still decided to serve.

So after Pearl Harbor, the experience of the Japanese Americans was like this tremendous shock I think.

There was a huge split between those who decided, like Bud Nakasone, to serve in the military service in spite of what happened and those who resisted and said, "No, we're not going to do anything until they treat us as full citizens."

(gentle music) - We had heard good stories about Minnesota being kind and friendly to Japanese American soldiers, and that was wonderful because we were accepted.

And what was wonderful was the fact that we knew Hennepin Avenue, and Hennepin Avenue has Chinese restaurants, and so we were able to take Chinese food on weekends and have a good time on Hennepin Avenue.

- [Rick] He constantly referred to how nice the people in Minnesota were.

And in fact, from his origins at Hawaii, he decided to come here after the war, and then ultimately met a woman here, got married, and all of that became part of the Minnesota story.

- [Narrator] After his six months of language training, Bud served as an interpreter in post-war occupied Japan.

- I was in the reserve by that time.

By that time, I had graduated and they had sent me over to Japan with the 1st Cavalry Division.

We were the language specialists for the division.

We knew the war was over and there were good reports about Japanese being very kind and friendly to American soldiers, and especially the Nisei soldiers who would be able to speak the language.

We were all very well versed in Japanese customs, Japanese food, and so on, and Japanese people, and there a very, very fine association as far as we were concerned.

(light music) - To think that your father is part of the Greatest Generation, the fact that you can, you know, be able to go to different events, hear his story, hear the stories of others, it's the seminal event of their lives, right?

This is what they have done and what they've contributed to, and then to hear this back and to know that your father was part of that, pretty neat.

(light music continues) - In talking to some of the other veterans, how much that sort of military service really ran in their families.

So there's a whole service to the country that I think is part of this whole phenomenon.

- As the director of a Minnesota museum dedicated to our veterans, having somebody like Bud still walking and talking with us, I believe he's our last remaining, you know, eyewitness to December 7, 1941.

So his role in Minnesota history is significant.

- Your family is your connection to history.

And your father is, you know, the person that you grew up, right?

He's the one that sets the, you know, the values, the ideas, the ways that you think about the world.

And you know, a lot of the things that I think about today really come back to what I learned from my own father.

(lively military drumming music) ("The Star Spangled Banner") - [Announcer] Making their way down the route are Adjunct General of the Indiana National Guard, Major General Dale Lyles, and Commander of the US Cyber Command, General Paul Nakasone.

(bright music) - [Narrator] Retired four-star Army General Paul Nakasone grew up in White Bear Lake, Minnesota and graduated from St.

John's University in Collegeville.

In a long and distinguished career, he held command and staff positions across all levels of the Army and rose to the highest ranks, with assignments in Korea, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

- From my perspective of having commanded now for five years, our focus is on doing operations against our adversaries and continuing to build our capability.

- [Narrator] From 2018 until his retirement in 2024, he served as commander of the US Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency.

His rise to top military brass began with lessons he learned as a child in White Bear Lake, Minnesota.

(gentle music) - [Paul] Mayberry, RFD.

You know, you couldn't have painted a picture more closely to what life was like in White Bear Lake in the '60s and the '70s.

Friends that lived next door to you.

We were all excited about different sports.

You know, there was no internet, so we were outside all the time.

It's a really neat place to grow up.

I think there's something special about White Bear Lake.

(gentle music continues) So you moved in there in '56, right?

- Yep.

- The first owner of the home and they just built, you know, almost Levittown-like homes in White Bear Lake.

And we lived in a community that was, I think, really the post-World War II generation as people came to buy their first homes.

And that home that we lived in was like many of the other homes.

As my father mentioned, you know, he had his own Levittown home, but he had a brick front and a fireplace also.

- Brick front, right.

- A little custom work done.

- Right, a little custom work, so it was good.

- [Interviewer] Gotta stand out a little bit.

- We ended up in White Bear Lake because I became a teacher and I became a history teacher at White Bear Lake Senior High School there.

And so that made us become involved in education all the time.

And we were very, very conscious of the fact that education will mean everything for us to proceed to become better in life.

- I think that whole idea of education permeates our family, this idea that... And my father always said this to both my brother and myself, that "You should do better than than I did because this is kind of the way that our family believes success."

And I think that has been passed on to us, that we wanted to, you know, instill in our family that idea of success, and success comes from education.

(gentle brass music) When I come back home to Minnesota, you know, the thing that I think about a lot is Memorial Day.

Memorial Day was a big, big time in White Bear Lake, Minnesota.

We'd have a parade and we would obviously be part of the parade.

And then after the parade, we'd go to the American Legion to have a free hot dog.

I remember watching the World War I vets, you know, being in the Memorial Day parade.

And I would see the color guard was traditionally made up of Korean War vets.

And these were young men at the time, obviously, and of course, time moves on now and you know, you realize as a young person that, "Oh, okay, that's just a veteran," but now you realize as you become older that this is really special.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] As a high school student, Paul found his calling working with computers.

This led later to a career in the military.

- So I was towards the Apple Lisa and, you know, the beginning of personal computers as I was in high school, and then certainly started to take off with Microsoft in college.

But it really was kind of foretelling in terms of what I was gonna do later in the service as I, you know, rose to be the commander of US Cyber Command and the director of the National Security Agency.

I went to St.

John's University on an ROTC scholarship, a four-year ROTC scholarship.

I recall that, really, the first two years, I was a little bit interested in that, but not a lot interested in it.

And then by my junior year, I really started to become interested because I knew that the following summer I was going to Advanced Camp and that was going to, you know, really tell what I was gonna do in terms of my assignments, my branch, where I was gonna be posted.

And I became more serious about the Army as at least an initial career.

(inspirational music) ROTC was really that opportunity for you to learn how to wear the uniform, learn how to march, learn how to fire your weapon.

It was a wonderful time.

It was during the Reagan buildup, so I was commissioned with 36 other second lieutenants, which was a huge class for St.

John's at that time.

Many of those are still my really, really good friends that we stay in touch, and so it was a very, very special program for me and one that I look back on with great fondness.

I joined the Army in 1986.

As I graduated from St.

John's University, I was commissioned, I was an intelligence officer.

I was certain that I was gonna do four years and come back to Minnesota and make my fortune.

And as I found out that Army service was a calling for me and I enjoyed it and I found out that I was pretty good at it.

And from that, I went overseas to Korea.

A couple things I enjoyed about being in the military, one was the fact that I enjoyed being a leader.

I liked being a platoon and I liked being a company commander.

I liked to be in charge of, you know, formations.

Those were one of the things that I quickly found was to my calling.

There's something, you know, even bigger than yourself in terms of what you were trying to achieve.

I was getting ready to get out of the Army at four years.

And I worked for a lieutenant colonel that said, "Hey, what are you gonna do next?"

And I said, "I think I'm gonna get out.

I'm gonna go back to Minnesota."

And he said, "Why?"

He said, "You're really good at what you do.

You should think about going to grad school.

You should think about commanding a company.

You should think about what the Army can, you know, be able to work with you on in terms of your future."

(people chatter) - [Narrator] The entire second half of Paul Nakasone's career would be shaped by one event.

(ominous music) - 9/11, the 11th of September, 2001, I was part of the Joint Chiefs of Staff working as an action officer.

And I remember coming in thinking, "Wow, it's just a a gorgeous day!"

And I remember coming back a little after eight o'clock and hearing that a plane had struck the Twin Towers.

(ominous music continues) And then suddenly as I was getting ready to go to my next meeting, we saw on TV the second plane strike the Twin Towers.

Within the next 30 minutes, one of my colleagues received a call from his wife saying, "Hey, they're reporting that the Pentagon has been struck by a plane."

What we didn't know, being on the other side of the building, is that obviously a plane had struck the Pentagon.

As we opened the door, smoke was just billowing through the halls, which was burning jet fuel from the other side of the building.

And then from there, I remember walking about five miles to a location where my wife could come pick me up.

And I would say that on really every 9/11 since then, I've really kind of thought about two things.

One was the beauty of the day walking into the Pentagon, and then secondly leaving the Pentagon and seeing the really black billowing smoke coming out of the other side of it.

Those are two images that I'll never forget.

You know, I kind of define my Army career really in two phases: everything before 9/11 and everything after 9/11.

And I would tell you that the Army after 9/11 was nothing like the Army before.

(helicopter propellers chop) It was busy, it was operating, we were at war.

You know, for the next 20 years, I found myself in Iraq and Afghanistan, in different places in the Middle East as we were obviously trying to ensure the protection of our nation.

You know, I just remember that night just coming home and just wondering what occurred.

I mean, how could we have missed this?

That's why we have to be vigilant.

I mean, this is what I take from our experiences on 9/11, this is what we should take from our experiences from Pearl Harbor, is that vigilance must be maintained.

And this is where we will continue to be a world power based upon our ability to navigate cyberspace.

(bright music) I think every single day about our national security.

And I primarily think about the strategic competition in which we're in today.

I call these borderless threats.

Cyber is a really good example.

Two friendly nations to our north and south and two large oceans no longer provide us that protection.

2021 for our nation is an inflection point with regards to cybersecurity.

We began the year with SolarWinds.

By March, Microsoft HAFNIUM.

By May, Colonial Pipeline.

By the summer, JBS, Kaseya all have been attacked in cyberspace.

We have seen supply chain, we had seen ransomware, we've seen zero-day attacks.

Up until May of 2021, for the most part, I would've said, "Hey, ransomware, that's a legal problem.

That's a legal issue that the Bureau handles."

Until, of course, 43% of our petroleum products on the East Coast are flowing through a pipeline that's hit by ransomware.

If that's not an example of a national security concern, nothing is.

This is our future.

And so one of the things that I've done over the past, really decade-plus, is make sure that we can navigate this domain of cyberspace safely.

- The future conflicts that this nation is gonna face will be in the cyber warfare realm, and Paul Nakasone was a pioneer in keeping us as safe as we can possibly be.

- There will always be a fight on the ground or the air or the sea, but there also is going to be a fight that's gonna take place in cyberspace and space.

(tense music) Whether or not that's with protection of elections, whether or not that's working with the FBI or the Department of Homeland Security to ensure that a critical infrastructure is safe or whether or not it's being able to work outside the United States to ensure that influence operations are not conducted upon our nation by foreign adversaries, that's what I've done for really the past 10 to 15 years.

(nostalgic music) - [Narrator] Whether by serving in occupied Japan, teaching high school history, or leading at the highest rank in the military, the Nakasones are driven by an ethic of national service.

Paul Nakasone credits his upbringing in White Bear Lake as the shaping force in his life of service.

- We talk about White Bear Lake and this wonderful community and you realize that it's a wonderful community because there are firefighters and policemen and teachers and people that are committed to making life better for others.

So today is Memorial Day, a day to honor those who gave everything in defense of our nation and our freedoms, to remember the fallen, to express gratitude and to remind ourselves of the values those that gave their last full measure of devotion died protecting.

I was raised here in the neighborhoods and schools of White Bear Lake.

The values I carried in the military service were first taught to me here by my parents.

It is here that many have gone forth to serve.

- Minnesota's military history is rich with families of service, fathers and sons, fathers and daughters, daughters and sons that have fought and defended the nation, and that story is no better epitomized by anyone than the Nakasones.

(nostalgic music continues) - [Narrator] By telling their stories, the Nakasones hope to engage America's next generation in striving for the greater good, from service to their community and to the broader nation.

- This is about national service, right?

This is this idea that you commit to something that's even greater than yourself.

I think that's what's been attractive to my father, that's what's attractive to me, this idea that there is something, some greater good that you're pursuing and your service is gonna lead to that.

You know, I think that whether or not you're in the military, whether or not you're in the Peace Corps, whether or not you're in the diplomatic corps, all these areas provide us an ability to make things better for the next generation.

And I think that that's so important about national service.

And it is, it is truly the great melting pot in terms of your own experiences and your own abilities to understand people even better.

- Yeah.

(nostalgic music) (people softly chatter) (nostalgic music ends) (gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues)