Sacramento State was founded in 1947 right after World War II, partly to accommodate the abundance of U.S. military veterans seeking an opportunity to receive higher education through the GI Bill.

In honor of Asian-American WW II and Korean War veterans, the Asian-American studies program presented a discussion panel made up of veterans who served despite being discriminated because of their ethnicity on Monday.

Each telling the tales of their own wartime and internment camp experiences, the four panelists have dedicated most of their lives to bringing awareness to the service and struggles of Asian-Americans in the military.

Gary Shiota and Kiyo Sato presented a slideshow together from the WWII era and narrated the presentation with stories of their personal experiences.

Sato described a time when FBI agents savagely searched her home in Sacramento with no warrants and no motive besides the fact that her family was Japanese.

The agents tore out drawers and flipped mattresses looking for what she called, “clues that they were spies for the Japanese.” One agent even sat down to read her diary to her alarm. She wanted to grab it out of his hands but she knew these were terrible times, Sato said. Fathers were being taken away from their families and she didn’t want to take any risks.

“Get out in 10 days and only take what you can carry,” Sato said her family was told by the government.

After internment camp in Poston, Ariz., Sato volunteered to serve in the Army during the Korean War.

Shiota was raised in Lodi and said he remembered being told the same thing only he didn’t know where he and his family were supposed to go, how long they had to be gone and if they were ever going to be able to come back. His family was sent to an internment camp in Rohwer, Ark.

After being released from internment Shiota was drafted, sent to Japan and served in the Military Intelligence Service.

Chinese-American Ping Leong is an 87-year-old WWII Navy veteran who lives in Sacramento. Leong was a Second Class Aviation Machinist Mate and received the Navy Asiatic Pacific Medal and the Good Conduct Medal during his Navy career.

Leong talked about his “uncomfortable” experience during WWII when he was stationed in the Pacific Islands around the time of the Pearl Harbor attack.

“Our planes were too small and too weak at that time to fight against Japan,” Leong said. “We were inferior to the brave and intelligent Japanese fighters.”

Leong said he was lucky as the Japanese bombs never came his way and he was able to return home, eventually being stationed to McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento.

“He served in war because he was needed, went through hardships because it was necessary and lived humbly because it was natural,” Phillip Leong said regarding his father.

Filipino American Pastor S. Engkabo Jr., who was born in Stockton, Calif., was a serviceman in the Korean War after he was drafted to the Army from his home in Sacramento.

Engkabo remembered always having to wear a pin on his lapel of a Filipino flag crossed with an American flag to make business owners aware that he was not Japanese. That was the only way he could get any service when he went out.

His most horrible memories of war, Engkabo said, were of starving Korean children eating out of garbage cans and not being able to do anything about it.

“War is hell,” Engkabo said. That statement would turn out to be the theme of the evening as veterans in the audience elaborated with their own personal hell stories at the end of the panel.

Upon returning from war, he took a trip to the unemployment office in search of a job. After receiving an offer to work driving a truck and picking peas, Engkabo said he told them to “take that job and shove it” and made a lifetime of success for himself.

“Overall, I have survived adversity and had a good life,” Engkabo said.

“I really enjoyed hearing the perspectives from the Chinese and Filipino American panelists,” Devin Yoshikawa, a Japanese-American student majoring in ethnic studies said.

Yoshikawa said because he is Japanese, he had heard lots of stories about the era of WWII and Japanese internment camps mainly from other Japanese.

Sato has dedicated many years traveling to schools and attending events to educate people about the struggle of Asian-Americans in the military. She authored a book in 2007 entitled “Dandelion Through the Crack.”

“We are like dandelion coming out of a crack in the cement that has been stepped on for a long time, Sato said, but today we bloom.”

Gina Cruz can be reached at [email protected].