Tagged: history

Leslie Helm was born and raised in Yokohama, Japan. Most of his family members are of European descent, and you would be hard pressed to look into his face and see his half-Japanese grandparents reflected back. When he adopted Japanese children, he started exploring his own roots. Leslie Helm takes us along on his journey as a "Yokohama Yankee" — a story that outlines the racial and economic tensions that defined US and Japanese relations for much of the 19th and 20th centuries.

At the Duwamish Longhouse in West Seattle, Cecile Hansen traces her finger down a plaque of names. “Look at all our leaders, starting with the chief here,” Hansen says.

Charles Mitchell was a teenage slave of  Washington’s surveyor general, James Tilton. In 1860, with the help of the West’s underground railroad, Charles Mitchell escaped to Victoria, British Columbia, and won his freedom. Public historian Lorraine McConaghy tells Ross Reynolds the story and discusses how she came to write her latest book, "Free Boy: A True Story of Slave and Master."

March 19, 2013 marks 10 years since the beginning of the war in Iraq. A total of 3,489 Americans died in combat during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Nearly another 32,000 were wounded in action. The numbers obscure the thousands of individual stories from the War in Iraq. We hear stories of those who fought, worked and died in the war.