DiscoverNikkei.org - War & Resistance - Comments

Pacific Citizen article about Michelle & Carly's project

vkm — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 02:50:13 -0700

The Pacific Citizen interviewed the two girls and just published an article in their publication which is also available online:

Two Teens Embark On Paper Crane Peace Memorial Project
Michelle Reed and Carly Gutzmann, both 14, plan to fold and collect 120,313 paper cranes - one for each internee imprisoned during WWII.
By Caroline Aoyagi-Stom, Executive Editor
Published September 19, 2008

Read the article >>

"Lourdes of the West" shrine at St. Elizabeth of Hungary Church

jbower — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 18:04:40 -0800

Very interesting article! The website of St. Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic Church, in Altadena, has additional information and several good images of the shrine created by Ryozo Kado.

A huge "Congratulations" to

Yoshi Masuda — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 06:36:38 -0800

A huge "Congratulations" to Brandon Shindo and his Professor Lane Ryo Hirabayashi for the opportunity for us Nikkei's and others to read his forum article titled: "Two Japanese American Soldiers, Two Best Friends, and a Crossroad."

Not only was it a well researched and presented article, it gives us "aging" Nikkei's the honor and integrity that a "4th generation" Japanese American, who are so very few, is willing to carry on our Nissei experiences and legacy into the future. The article is not only of Brandon's family history, but it is a representation of what the future holds for the Japanese American community.

We all highly commend, respect, and appreciate you for your efforts and hope that you will continue on with your Asian American Studies. In addition to his family, all of us Nikkei's are very proud!!!

great project!

vkm — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 00:44:33 -0800

It's so great that you were able to talk to your grandmother to learn new stories about your grandfather and great uncle. Both of my grandfathers passed away before I was born and both grandmothers are now gone. I keep thinking that I should talk more to my older uncles and aunties about our family history, but it's so easy to put it off because there's always too much else to do.

I hope that you continue to find out more about your family history. You did such a great job on your Nikkei Album collection. We'd all love to see more!

インタビュー：　Kerry Yo Nakagawa

yn — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 09:36:17 -0700

全米日系人博物館は、『アメリカン・パスタイム』の話をまとめたKerry Yo Nakagawaさんをインタビューしました。
インタビューは博物館のストアーのサイトで読むことができます。
>> Baseball in the Camps: Behind the Scenes of "American Pastime"　（英語）

Interview by Yuri Kochiyama

yn — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 20:25:22 -0700

Yuri Kochiyama talked about her father's arrest and other experiences in Real People.
Please check them out.
Yuri Kochiyama (Real People, Discover Nikkei Web site)

REgenerations Life History Project

vkm — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 00:10:55 -0800

Have you heard of the Japanese American National Museum's REgenerations Oral History Project: Rebuilding Japanese American Families, Communities, and Civil Rights in the Resettlement Era?

I think most of the interviews were conducted around 1998, so it's been some time now, but they focused on the resettlement era in four regions - Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Jose.

If you're interested in the resettlement era, you might want to take a look at those. You can access them from this page on the www.janm.org site: www.janm.org/nrc/

photographic records & accompanying descriptions

vkm — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 00:02:56 -0800

Thanks so much for including links to those photos. I've heard of those sites, but had never really looked at the photos before. I do wonder in what ways the photographs were used by the WRA (or did they ever publish them?).

Even more interesting to me than the photographs themselves are the captions that go with them. Particularly the first two examples seem written more for the general "American" public. They remind me almost like a next step to Ansel Adams' Manzanar photos in which he portrayed all-American families, childrens, veterans, and professionals to try and "soften" up the masses and show them that these Japanese Americans returning to society were not dangerous spies.

Obviously, the WRA was very careful in what types of photographs were taken, and especially in determining which ones that the public would see. Many of Dorothea Lange's WRA photographs were never published until recently. Do you know how widely these were distributed during the resettlement period?

questions posed

vkm — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 18:02:40 -0800

Thanks for your article. You posed some interesting questions at the very end, but it would be really helpful to respond if you could provide some of your thoughts and personal opinions in response to those same questions.

For example, your question, "How has sexism impacted Nikkei women in the Americas in terms of intra- and inter-ethnic group settings over time?" What are your theories or observations?

I have to admit that I don't know much about Nikkei women experience outside of the United States. It's only recently that I've even talked to some who were here living or visiting. My experience working on this project has really been like opening a wonderfully huge new world, and I'm eager to hear what you've learned so far.

similarities in responses

vkm — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 01:55:45 -0800

What you said at the beginning of your post about having to ask your relatives to find out details about events you had to learn about in books first. That reminds me a lot about the responses of Japanese Americans about their WWII experiences when asked by their children.

In fact, it echoes some of what was said in the interview clips with Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston in which she talks about how she came to write Farewell to Manzanar. I've also heard her speak a few times, and she likens it to the silence or feelings of guilt by victims of rape or abuse.

It's been said many times that after the war, many/most of the Japanese Americans on the mainland tried not to stick out. They became the best "Americans" they could be because their experiences during WWII taught them that to be seen as "Japanese" was a detriment, even punishable. I wonder how much of that same thought applied to the Japanese Peruvians because of the wartime experiences of their countrymen.

All the oppression that I

shiguerutsuha — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 16:56:31 -0800

All the oppression that I now know Japanese Peruvians experienced, I learned through books (except for the case of dekasegis). The contract labor experience, the extradition of 1800 Japanese Peruvians to the US during WWII, the anti-Japanese riot of 1940, I had to read about. When I asked my parents, aunts, uncles, etc. they said "yeah... that happened" and then went on to tell me the details they could remember. the point is that I had to bring it up. Had I not taken the initiative to research these things myself, i'd still probably think that "there weren't any problems."

Now a days, when I talk to Peruvian Nikkeis in the US who have not been here as long as I have, there seems to be an impression that racism is not as bad in Peru as it may be in Japan or the US. I couldn't believe it! Quickly I resorted to thinking, "surely, there must be racism in Peru!" What I'm finding out from my own research is that maybe (depending on the data examined and available) it is not a matter of whether "there weren't any problems" or if there were, but rather a difference in how the particular national rhetoric of each country frames racism. Van de Berghe (1974) and De la Cadena (1998, 2000) explain that racism in Peru is silent and reduced to class, morality and education. They have developed a "silent racism" or a "racism without race."

So while I think the analysis that Hirabayashi makes is probably right in that geography and geopolitics alone did not determine the experience of Japanese immigrants and descendents across various Latin American countries, I find even more interesting trying to figure out if there are differences between Nikkeis' understanding of what racism is and how it works. i think it'd be incredibly important to first understand the racial hegemonies and structures of each different country.

Also, Hirabayashi's interactions with Japanese Nikkeis in Latin America bring forward question of methodology on research of race and ethnicity. How can we be sure that when we talk to Nikkeis from other countries about these subjects, we are really talking about the same thing. Race? what's race? some of us will understand our nationality to be our race. So I'm Peruvian. what does that mean??????

I think that Nikkei pan-ethnicities provide a very special mine of data just waiting to be digged. Everytime I meet a Nikkei the differences that we have are astounding, and at the same time, the similarities that we have are just as jaw dropping as well. Figuring out how these differences have emerged and how the similarities have been maintained (even after an entire century of divergent migrant histories) is mind boggling and begs to be researched.

De la Cadena, Marisol. 1998. "Silent Racism and Intellectual Superiority in Peru." Bulletin of Latin American Research 17: 143-164.

----. 1998. Indigenous Mestizos: The Politics of Race and Culture in Cuzco, Peru. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Van den Berghe, Pierre. 1974. Class and Ethnicity in Peru. Leiden: Brill.

Shigueru J. Tsuha

assimilation?

shiguerutsuha — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 16:22:03 -0800

First of all, i wonder how dominant wra images were in terms of their public display over photographs from other sources. Is it easier to find wra photographs? is it harder to find non-wra photographs? Also, how successful was the use of these images in the campaigns that the wra launched?

I think the issue of resettlement of Japanese Americans is incredibly important to look into, particularly from a social scientist perspective. I recently read an article that compared the assimilation of Japanese Americans to mainstream US society to the assimilation of Chinese Americans to mainstream US society. They argued that Japanese Americans had more successfully assimilated even though they had suffered more structural racism (the Chinese American population was not incarcerated) (Thompson 1979). The conclusion was that successful assimilation to mainstream society was not really determined by the structural racism experienced by a given minority. This author failed to discuss the forms in which resettlement took place in his article. Japanese American resettlement was partly designed to avoid "clustering" and the emergence of Japan towns. This lacking of community obviously must have forced the resettling communities to depend on non Japanese American institutions in order to survive and continue their lifestyles (for example, attending a white church instead of a Japanese American one).

I would be very interested on what this manuscript produces in terms of uncovering the forms in which the push for assimilation took place. And also finding out how the Japanese adapted to the lack of community of the places in which they were placed in.

Thompson, Stephen I. 1979. "Assimilation and Nonassimilation of Asian-Americans and Asian Peruvians." comparative studies in society and history 21: 572-588.

Shigueru J. Tsuha

Children of Kibei and the Trauma of War

dmatsumoto — Sun, 21 May 2006 01:08:46 -0700

Frederick Cloyd’s essay, “Snowflakes in the Valley of the Fire,” painfully brings to the reader’s attention the realities survivors of war must face for the rest of their lives and the burden that they unwittingly or not, pass onto their children. No doubt, Mr. Cloyd himself has experienced the trauma of being a multiracial child born during the American occupation of Japan, in addition to witnessing his mother’s recounting of her horrific past – watching her mother murdered by fellow Japanese, living through the B-29 bombings in Osaka, seeing the Hiroshima atomic bomb survivors while searching for her sister, and surviving the extreme poverty and decimation of post-war Japan.

Such stories can become a large part of the child’s life. My father and his fellow Kibei friends have similar stories of loss and violence. As a child growing up in Los Angeles during the 60s, I heard, during holiday gatherings and the like, the repeated recounting of experiences of starvation and executions in Manchuria, teenagers inducted into the Imperial Navy, and detailed descriptions of unsuccessful searches for family members in Hiroshima. My unspoken and self-centered response as a child was that they should move on and go on with their (now) suburban, middle-class lives.

With the exception of the hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors), Kibei may not be seen as victims through the course of history: rather, Kibei can be perceived by some as perpetrators – as miserably failed colonizers, or as traitors who bore arms for the enemy. I can therefore understand the silence of many Kibei (including my father) on the topic of war among the broader Nisei community, as well as among the general American public.

Recently I came across essays from children of Holocaust survivors who refer to themselves as the “Second Generation.” Common themes in their writings include the need for some of their parents to silence all mention of the Holocaust or its immediate aftermath, or conversely, the need to seek others with similar experiences and constantly and consistently recount the details of their survival; and the overriding desire for their children to have “perfect” lives with the ensuing issues of control and perfectionism demanded of their children.

Author and illustrator Maurice Sendak, perhaps best known for his book, Where the Wild Things Are, largely experienced the Holocaust through his mother. Though born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, many of Sendak’s relatives in Poland (including children similar in age) were killed during the Holocaust. His mother routinely reminded Sendak of his more fortunate status, which weighed heavily on his psychological makeup. A few years ago, Sendak illustrated the adaptation of Brundibar, an opera performed by children of Terezin, a Nazi concentration camp. Although his parents were not in Europe during the Holocaust, much of his extended family was, and this aspect of his life influenced many of his works as an artist.

Do other children of Kibei have similar thoughts about their childhood memories of their parents’ wartime experiences?

reflection on 'war' articles

vkm — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 15:15:26 -0800

Although I am more familiar with the story of the 442nd than most, I find that I am still deeply touched every time I hear/read about the courage of those soldiers despite everything they faced.

I hope that I am one day able to retrace the journey taken by the veterans in the "Remembered Valor" piece. I'm sure visiting the sites first-hand, seeing the monuments, meeting the people of those areas who even now are still so grateful for what they accomplished...it will make it all more real to me than just the statistics and accounts alone.

I had heard about Shinkichi Tajiri before - I see the "Friendship Knot" at Weller Court here in Los Angeles as I walk about J-Town - but I hadn't known much about him as a person or artist, and I'm not sure if I knew that he was a 442 veteran. I always wondered how he ended up in the Netherlands.

thanks for posting the quote!

vkm — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 23:46:06 -0700

That quote really underscores why it's so important for us to keep telling the story of the Japanese American soldiers during WWII - both in Europe and in the Pacific. Thanks so much for posting it!