This week on Dateline…
Fifty years on from the Vietnam War, a Japanese American veteran searches for the soldier who saved his life when US army soldiers mistook him for the enemy.
As a Japanese-American fighting in the Vietnam War, Bruce Nakashima experienced a conflict of identity during the war that was made worse after he lost contact with his best friend.
vvvThere are moments from the Vietnam War that haunt Bruce Nakashima — moments he hasn’t spoken of in the decades since he returned home.
He’ll never forget the terror he felt in a helicopter, in 1966, wounded and weak, as he watched his fellow American soldiers throw Vietnamese prisoners to their deaths.
“I remember I was getting kind of weak, and I looked over at LV to make sure he was breathing, but he wasn’t conscious for a while,” Bruce recalled, referring to his friend LV Hendking who was wounded alongside him.
Bruce and LV were taken to hospital but separated shortly after the incident — it took them more than 50 years to find each other again.
9:30pm Tuesday on SBS.
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