Don’t miss Chris Cheng on Virtual Seminar No. 20 next Friday, August 7, at 12:00 PM MT discussing the novel. More information and registration HERE.
The history of the 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team presents one of the most powerful paradoxes of the American experience during World War II. While Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from their homes and incarcerated under Executive Order 9066, thousands served in a segregated military unit and fought for a nation that had denied their own families basic civil liberties.
This history provides the foundation for Proven in Blood: A Novel of War, Betrayal & Belonging, a forthcoming historical novel by Top Shot champion Chris Cheng. The story follows Daniel Tanaka, a Japanese American student at the University of California, Berkeley, whose family is incarcerated following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Despite the loss of his freedom, Daniel volunteers for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and is sent to fight in Italy and France while his family remains confined behind barbed wire in the United States.
Through Daniel’s experience, the novel explores questions extending well beyond the battlefield: What does citizenship require of individuals, and what obligations does the nation owe them in return? How should loyalty be understood when it must be demonstrated to a government that has treated an entire community as suspect? What does the service of the 100th/442nd reveal about the relationship between military sacrifice, race, civil rights, and American identity?
Cheng spent six years researching the history of the unit through military records, memoirs, and other primary and archival materials. He also traveled to Italy and France to study the landscapes where its soldiers fought. This commitment to place-based documentary research reflects the important role historical fiction can play in public history. Although fictional narratives do not substitute for scholarly analysis, they can make the human consequences of government policy and military service accessible to audiences who might never encounter the subject through conventional academic literature.
Cheng also brings a distinctive background to the project. Best known as the winner of Season Four of the History Channel’s Top Shot, he is an author, sports shooter, firearms instructor, and advocate for Asian American, LGBT, and Second Amendment civil rights. Cheng serves on the board of directors for the Asian Pacific American Gun Owners Association (APAGOA) and the Pink Pistols. His education in political science and international policy further informs a project situated at the intersection of military history, constitutional rights, national belonging, and collective memory.
For those interested in following the project before its scheduled September 2026 publication, Cheng has launched a Kickstarter campaign. In addition to standard editions, the campaign includes limited collector’s editions and a signed pre-production manuscript that documents the novel’s development. Whether approached as a work of historical fiction or as an entry point into the history of Japanese-American military service, the project offers an opportunity to revisit one of the most consequential and insufficiently understood chapters of the American experience.