James Kazuo Okubo is the only Congressional Medal of Honor recipient from Whatcom County. Yet he remains virtually unknown and unrecognized in the place that nurtured his unbreakable roots as an American citizen with an unquestioned duty to country, no matter how unjustly he and his fellow Japanese Americans were treated.

Born in Anacortes in 1920, he grew up in Bellingham and graduated from Bellingham High School in 1938 with dreams of becoming a dentist. He was a popular student in his junior year at Western Washington State College when he was unlawfully detained in 1942 and forced to board a bus in front of his home on H St. never to see it again. His large blended family were among the 33 longtime Japanese Americans residents and business owners from Bellingham who were taken to live in an American concentration camp in Tule Lake, Calif. then transferred to other camps for the remainder of the war. While his family was imprisoned, he volunteered to serve as a medic in the legendary 442nd Regimental Combat Team of U.S. Army defending the country that put them there.

His hero story was legend among the survivors of one of the bloodiest battles on the European front. He died in an accident in Michigan in 1967 – long before President Bill Clinton awarded Congressional Medal of Honor Medals to 22 cited, but previously unrecognized Asian American and Pacific Islander servicemen in 2000.

Western Washington University awarded a posthumous Bachelor of Arts degree to Okubo at Spring Commencement 2019.

This bench is the first permanent recognition of Okubo in Whatcom County.