Warning for use of 1940's era racial and cultural slurs/nicknames. I am aware this can be a sensitive point. If it bothers you, then please feel free to skip this chapter.

Nisei

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"You sure you want me?"

A little surprised, Steve looked up - and then down. He still kept forgetting just how tall he sat these days, kept misjudging his sight lines. Jim Morita stood in the doorway. Usually the man had a confident, good-natured demeanor, but now he seemed to have shed it completely; shoulders squared, hands shoved deep into his pockets, head cocked belligerently.

Steve set down his book and straightened in his seat, kicking the other chair under the table so it scooted back invitingly. "You're gonna have to be more specific than that," he said, trying to read the other man even though he already had a sneaking suspicion what was wrong.

Morita took a few steps forward, but didn't take the offered seat. Instead he gestured, indicating his face, his body. "Look at me, Cap."

Steve obligingly looked. "New shoes?"

Morita blinked and then snorted briefly, but the attempt at humor didn't seem to lighten him up. Instead, he bounced lightly on his toes. "Not my shoes, Cap. At me."

Pretty sure now that he knew where this was going, Steve leaned back. "You're looking all right," he said, refusing to take the bait. "They feeding you enough?"

The shorter man slapped his hands down on the table, patience spent. "Why do you want me?" he demanded, voice low and clipped. "Look at me, I'm a Jap, a Nip. Nobody trusts a face like mine."

"I do."

Steve's voice was so positive that it visibly threw the other man for a moment. The captain had been wondering if this would come up. Morita had agreed to join his team without hesitation, but since that night in the pub there had been quite a bit of backlash from some of the brass about Steve's choice of men. Apparently Morita had caught wind of it.

"I trust you," Steve repeated earnestly, "and so do the others."

"The other guys." Morita's words suddenly took on an edge. "So that's what it is. You got a Mick, a Froggie, a darkey, a Limey, and all you need is a Nipper to fill out the set - is that why you want me?"

"No." Steve's jaw tightened and his chair scraped against the floor as he leaned forward. "I've got a sharpshooter," he emphasized, "a weapons expert, a strategist, a translator, a demolitions man - and correct me if I'm wrong, but you're an American and the best comms man in the 100th."

Morita stared, and Steve realized this was probably the first time that someone in the army had valued his experience over his appearance. Then the shorter man let out a brisk breath, something like carefully veiled curiosity in his words. "So you don't care I look like a bad guy?"

Steve didn't answer right away. Instead he stretched out his leg and kicked the other chair a little more until Morita took the hint and sat down. They faced each other across the table for a moment, and then Steve sighed, running a hand through his hair.

"Look at me," he said, watching Morita steadily. "Blond hair, blue eyes. You want someone who looks like a bad guy? I couldn't look more Aryan if I tried, but that doesn't make me some kind of German bully. People may judge you from the outside, but it's what's inside that counts. You were one of the first men to pick up a weapon, defend the other soldiers, get them out of that Hydra camp. You're quick, and you don't let people push you around, and that's the kind of person I want on my team."

"I could be a spy." Morita's face was sharp, watchful, mouth twisting as he repeated the ugly words he'd probably overheard a thousand times. "Secretly loyal to the emperor. You'd never know until I betrayed you all."

"You aren't," Steve dismissed the suggestion instantly. "You've come too far and fought too hard. I toured through the west - I saw the camps."

He had done a show at one of them. He had been surprised, conflicted as the cars drove them from the station to the camp. Miles of chain link stretched out, barbed wire around long buildings in the middle of nowhere. Men and women and children, most of them American citizens, tried to live normal lives despite the heartbreaking circumstances and the anger and suspicion that surrounded them.

The kids had loved the show. Their parents had hung back, withdrawn, guarded, hurt. Steve hadn't known how to help, how to fix things, so he'd shaken the hand of every kid in the audience, taken pictures with most of them, and given them all the chewing gum he'd had with him.

He still wished he could have done more.

Morita looked down for a long minute, and when he looked up again his eyes were liquid, belligerent defenses draining away.

"My family had a nice house before they moved them to a camp," he said wistfully, heartache and bitterness mingled in his words. "Old racecourse - they live in the stalls. It still smells like manure, no matter how hard my mother cleans. My cousin in the National Guard had to give up his weapons, got demoted to a cook." He swallowed hard, tracing absent designs on the wood of the table, focusing on his fingers. "He wept when they made him hand over his gun."

There was nothing to say, so Steve didn't even try. The way he saw it, the men who wanted to defend their country were better Americans than their superiors who gave the suspicion-based order to strip them of their arms.

"I guess I'm just impressed you're still fighting on our side after all that," he pointed out after a while.

Morita shook his head and blinked quickly, stubbornly squaring his shoulders.

"They can call me a Jap," he answered resolutely, iron-edged. "They can call me a Nip, or a traitor, or a yellow-bellied snake - but I'm not any of those. I'm an American, same as they are, and I will fight to defend my country with the rest of them."

Steve nodded decidedly. His chair scraped again as he shoved it back and stood, extending his open hand across the table, trying with all his might to show in his face how serious he was. "That's why I want you on my team," he explained. "That's why we want you on our team. You still in?"

Morita didn't move for a very long time, looking up at him with unreadable eyes. Then, just as Steve began to think he never would, he rose and accepted the offered hand in a firm handshake.

"I'm in," he answered, head held a fraction higher than before, shoulders looser. "I - thanks for taking a chance on me."

Steve grinned, and let the tension of their conversation dissipate. "I think it's actually the other way around," he admitted, faintly sheepish. "I may have punched Hitler, but I've yet to see actual combat - at least, combat I was authorized to join. I'll take all the help I can get."

Morita stepped back, bouncing on his toes again, and looked the captain up and down. The sparkle was back in his eyes, his habitual good humor restored. "Oh, I guess we can probably make some kind of soldier out of you, Cap."

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If Morita still harbored any lingering doubts over whether or not he was accepted into the tight-knit band of men, all his unspoken questions were answered a few days later when Dugan punched two soldiers from another unit for making loud and crude rhymes about Cap and his Jap.

"Nobody talks that way about my pals," the larger man growled, mustache bristling fiercely. Falsworth nodded in pleasant agreement, looking down his nose at the uncouth bullies sprawled on the ground, and Jones slung an arm around Morita's shoulders.

Steve grinned into his glass and discreetly looked the other way, to all appearances unaware of the scuffle taking place only a few yards from his seat. His men had the situation well in hand, and he didn't want to step in just yet. Later he would need to reprimand Dugan for rowdy behavior unbecoming a soldier, but he already knew that the disciplinary speech would be delivered without heat and received unrepentantly - and he couldn't care less.

Because even as Morita made a joke and brushed the whole matter off with his usual pointed humor, Steve had seen the touched, astonished gratification in his eyes - and he knew that the man would never again wonder whether or not he was a member of the team.

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I agonized a lot about posting this one. It refers to a side of WWII in America that we're not very proud of.

The idea for this chapter was born when my great-uncle told me about his father who had witnessed the Japanese-American members of his National Guard division as they were ordered to disarm. He was disappointed with his supervisors for making that order - and right then I knew I had to write this. The story Morita tells about the men weeping as they gave up their weapons and Steve's thoughts about it were both taken from that conversation.

To be honest, out of all the nationalities and races Cap has on his team, it's most astonishing that he includes a Japanese-American - indeed, it's amazing that Morita was out there to be picked at all. Most of the Japanese-American soldiers already in the army were disarmed, transferred to inland American units, and demoted to lower tasks that wouldn't require weapons handling. By the time Steve Rogers picked his men, (I'm guessing late 1943), only one battalion of Japanese-American soldiers had been sent overseas: the 100th. It was more of a hard won test of loyalty than anything else, composed of Japanese-Americans from Hawaii, who didn't face quite the same stigma as the ones in mainland America.

Morita was from Fresno, California. His family would almost certainly have been put in an internment camp, and he would have faced deep turmoil and suspicion from both his fellow Japanese-Americans and the military officers on his decision to both join and stay in the army. However, those early Japanese-Americans who managed to fight proved their worth - not by words, but through their actions - and their example opened the way for more acceptance later in the war effort. To this day, the Japanese-American units of WWII remain the most decorated American units of all time, receiving honors from both America and France.

Jap/Nip/Nipper = Japanese citizen or person of Japanese descent. Shortened form of Japan. Shortened form of Nippon, the Japanese word for Japan. Derogatory terms, most commonly used during WWII.

Nisei = second generation American of Japanese descent. Combined from the Japanese words ni (two) and sei (generation). Not a derogatory term.

ChildofGod and A Guest and Fan: Thanks! I'm glad you're both excited for this. I know I am! Camaraderie was mostly focused on Steve, Peggy and Bucky, so I'm looking forward to exploring some of the other Howling Commandos in this one. Don't worry - there will still be plenty of my favorite trio.

LaughyTaffy: Yum, yum! I love candy. :) Thanks for dropping me a review! I smiled so hard that my friends started giving me weird looks. You're amazing - have a really good day!