グレッグ・ロビンソン

ロサンゼルス出身の黒人弁護士であるヒュー・マクベス・シニア氏は、今日ではその存在はほとんど忘れられていますが、第二次世界大戦中の日系アメリカ人を擁護するという称賛されるべき功績を残しています。1884年サウスカロライナ州チャールストンに生まれたヒュー・エルウッド・マクベスは、フィスク大学を卒業後、ハーバード法科大学院に進学し、1908年に卒業しました。『ボルチモアタイムス』新聞の編集者としてボルチモアで数年を過ごし、1913年カリフォルニアへ移住しました。

数十年後、マクベス弁護士は、ロサンゼルスの法曹界や政界で重要な役割を担うようになります。アフリカ系アメリカ人の原告や刑事被告人の支援に力を注ぎ、ジャズ界の偉人、ジェリー・ロール・モートンなど、著名人の弁護にもあたりました。また、人種分離法や住居供給上の人種差別に挑むため ...

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On May 4, 1943, a few days after his two columns on Japanese Americans appeared in print (and less than two weeks after Eleanor Roosevelt’s tour of the same camp) Pegler came to Gila River. Afterwards, Pegler wrote in his May 6, 1943 column that conditions were austere and trying, but asserted that many Japanese Americans – specifically Kibei - were disloyal and “savages like the Japanese soldier.” He cited a rumor spread by a nurse at the Gila River hospital that patients had cheered when reports came from Japan that airmen who had been captured after the ...

On March 28, 1945, the Manzanar Free Press ran a remarkable article relating to Japanese Americans. In discussing the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the case of Korematsu vs. United States, the text cited the noted (and notorious) newspaperman Westbrook Pegler, who had proclaimed in his nationally syndicated column “Fair Enough” that Fred Korematsu had been convicted for violating a rule issued by “a lieutenant-general”—referring to General John DeWitt –“but (who) might as well have been a corporal.” In addition to lambasting DeWitt for incompetence, Pegler criticized Justice Felix Frankfurter for the court’s decision, stating that ...

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Following their wedding, James and Mari Michener went on an extended honeymoon in Hawaii and Australia. In the period that followed, they moved to Hawaii, where James A. Michener did research for his bestselling 1959 novel Hawaii. However, two years later, the couple unleashed a storm of controversy when The New York Post journalist Joseph Wershba ran an article quoting Michener as saying that the couple had been forced to leave Hawaii due to racism against his Nisei wife: “On the day-to-day operating level at which my wife and I had to live, we met with more ...

One arena of public life in which Japanese Americans have achieved great visibility during the 20th century is the arts. A constellation of brilliant Nisei artists, including Isamu Noguchi, Ruth Asawa, George Nakashima, Shinkichi Tajiri, Frank Okada, and Satoru Abe, won renown on the national and international level for their work. Curiously, one of the most outstanding Nisei contributors to the American artistic and literary scene was Mari Sabusawa Michener, a woman who never produced any artwork or creative fiction on her own. Instead, she served as companion and supporter of her husband, the prolific novelist James A. Michener.

Both ...