Vikki Powell stood on the wet lawn of the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific on Sunday and read a letter out loud to a father she never knew.

After an emotional week meeting World War II veterans who served with her father, Powell woke up at 3 a.m. on Sunday and poured 57 years’ worth of feelings into a letter.

She told Capt. James Claude Vaughn that she was sorry they never met — and sorry that neither of them got to experience a father-daughter relationship.

But after learning about her father from the nisei veterans he led into combat as a Caucasian Army officer, Powell finally told Vaughn that she was proud to be his daughter.

"I’m your daughter," Powell told her father, who died in Tucson, Ariz., in 1990 at the age of 71. "Always have been. Always will be."

Powell then tucked the letter into an envelope and left it at his grave marker — excited at what she’ll learn next from the relationships she made with the nisei soldiers in Honolulu.

Just two months ago, Powell discovered that her father earned the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts while leading Japanese-American soldiers into combat.

She made her first trip to Hawaii on Thursday to learn more about her father as the nisei veterans were presented Saturday with replicas of the Congressional Gold Medal that had been bestowed on some of the veterans of the 100th, 442nd Regimental Combat Team and Military Intelligence Service in Washington, D.C.

Everywhere she went to honor the veterans — at a Waikiki parade, at a banquet and at a Sunday ceremony at Punchbowl — Powell was treated like family.

"People were putting leis on me and wanting to have their picture taken with me," Powell said. "I said, ‘This is not about me. It’s about my father and your father and all of your uncles and brothers.’ Everyone told me, ‘You’re part of the family now.’"

On Friday, Powell showed up at the 100th Infantry Battalion clubhouse, where she saw a photo of her father as a lieutenant.

One veteran at Saturday’s banquet remembered Vaughn for a seemingly simple act.

"He told me, ‘Your father had a chance to not be with us.’" Powell said. "Not all the Caucasian officers stayed with the nisei soldiers. He said, ‘Because your father chose to remain with us and went with us to North Africa and into Italy, he was respected.’

"It meant a lot to them," Powell said. "And it meant a lot to me to hear that."

Powell learned from a nisei veteran recently that her father was an enlisted man at Schofield Barracks during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and was attached to a unit that later became the 100th.

Vaughn joined the nisei soldiers on the trip to California, en route to Camp McCoy, Wis., the veteran told Powell, but Vaughn was then sent to Officer Candidate School.

Powell later learned from sons and daughters of nisei veterans that she was getting more firsthand information than many of them had gathered in the decades following the war.

"To have any of them share anything with me has been a blessing," she said.

Powell now plans to return home to Oklahoma City.