After Pearl Harbor, nearly all American-born sons — and some daughters — of struggling Korean immigrants were all too happy to respond to Uncle Sam’s call. It was like bagging two birds with a single shot: escape the sheer drudgery of hard stoop labor, and fight the enemy of their country and parents’ lost homeland.

On the ground among these second-generation soldiers was Los Angeles native Young Ok Kim, just one of two Koreans in the legendary Japanese American “Go for Broke” 100th Battalion and 442nd Regimental Combat Team. His “suicide missions” earned him the moniker “Crazy Korean.” Colonel Kim returned home a war hero. By the time of his death in Los Angeles in December 2005, he had earned 17 medals, including a Distinguished Service Cross, two Silver Stars and three Purple Hearts in both the Great War and the Korean War.

Up in the sky over Europe, there was the only known World War II flying ace of Asian descent. He was Oregon native Fred Ohr, who shot down six enemy planes as squadron leader for the famous 2nd Fighter Squadron “American Beagles.” To qualify as an ace, a pilot needs to shoot down five planes in combat.

Ohr became a part of the Army Air Corps only after he tagged along with a friend to the examination.

Major Ohr, a son of an Idaho farm sharecropper, survived over 150 air missions, earning more than 18 air medals, including two Silver Stars, two Distinguished Flying Crosses and even a Bronze Star when he was forced to fight on the ground during a retreat. 

After a campaign in Africa, his squadron members flew their P-51 Mustangs to Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, and began escorting bombers on long-range missions to targets where enemy fighter opposition was intense, including the infamous Ploiesti oil refineries in Romania, considered to be one of the most important strategic targets of WWII.

Ohr earned the Silver Star for “gallantry in action” while returning from Ploiesti. He came to the aid of a fellow pilot by successfully driving off a German plane’s attack.

And he wasn’t even the only Korean American in the Air Corps, says Dr. Ohr, 84, now a retired dentist in Chicago. In fact, Ohr’s uncle, Jackson Park, died in a bomber over Italy, and Ohr had escorted his own cousin, B-17 pilot George Hong, on bombing raids over Italy, something he learned only after the war was over. “He was just south of us in the bombing outfit, and we were flying cover for him,” said Ohr. 

Given the interest in the heroism of America’s past, especially after the Sept. 11 attacks, Ohr’s deeds — even his very presence — among this nation’s “Greatest Generation” is particularly striking. Numerous stories, movies and books have appeared that chronicle the histories of those who became swept up in the Great War mobilization.

The conventional narrative that has been featured in the popular media, however, has focused on the mostly young, white American men who went to war and conducted extraordinary acts of courage and bravery as part of the most turbulent event of the 20th century. In many ways, Ohr’s life follows that same trajectory: An ordinary young farm boy from Idaho who enlisted in the military and went on to accomplish deeds of extraordinary heroism. But you won’t find Ohr’s face in a Hollywood movie. As a young second-generation Korean American, Ohr was one of the few “Orientals” who fought for their country.