Seventy years ago, during the Battle of Okinawa, two brothers of Japanese descent ended up fighting on opposing sides — the elder as a soldier in the U.S. Army and the younger as a member of Japan's student corps.
Shinei Gima, 90, who now resides in Hawaii, and his younger brother, Noboru, 87, who lives in Ginowan, Okinawa Prefecture, were born to Okinawans on Oahu Island before World War II.
When Shinei Gima was a second-year elementary school student, his family wanted to send him to live with his grandparents in Tamagusuku, then a small village in Okinawa and now part of the city of Nanjo.