Material contribuído por Greg
The Unsung History of the Japanese American Committee for Democracy
Greg Robinson
The Japanese American Committee for Democracy (JACD), a New York-based social and political group of the 1940s, has been effectively ignored in the history of Japanese Americans. The JACD held rallies to support the American war effort in World War II, helped Japanese Americans in New York to find jobs …
The Eyes Have It: Nisei Contact Lens Pioneer Dr. Newton Wesley
Greg Robinson
One fun area of work in history is discovering the connections between everyday products and their unheralded inventors. There is the street light, developed by African-American inventor and engineer Lewis H. Latimer. Or take the Bing cherry, developed by Ah Bing, a Chinese immigrant horticulturist in Oregon. Or there is …
Tsuyoshi Matsumoto—A Different Wartime Story
Greg Robinson
The Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 had immediate repercussions for Japanese Americans living throughout the nation—not least the Issei and Nisei civilians in Hawaii living near the naval base who were wounded by falling bombs. Amid the nationwide confusion and anger that resulted from the attack, people …
Be a Good Sport About it: Early Nikkei Athletes in Louisiana
Greg Robinson
Over the past several years, I have been engaged in large-scale research on the remarkable and largely-unknown history of ethnic Japanese in Louisiana, especially in the cosmopolitan city of New Orleans. (Readers of Discover Nikkei should check out the groundbreaking series on the subject by Anna Kazumi Stahl and Midori …
Defending Nikkei: Hugh Macbeth and the Japanese American Internment
Greg Robinson
Hugh Macbeth, Sr., a Black attorney from Los Angeles, is largely forgotten today, but he deserves commemoration as an outstanding defender of Japanese Americans during World War II. Born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1884, Hugh Ellwood Macbeth attended Fisk University and Harvard Law School, graduating in 1908. After living …
Speaking Up! Democracy, Justice, Dignity
Speaking Out in Seattle: The JANM Conference
Greg Robinson
I was privileged to attend the 2013 Japanese American National Museum conference in Seattle. It commemorated the 25th anniversary of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, granting surviving Japanese Americans redress for their wartime confinement. The conference was a concentrated and rather intense experience, for a number of reasons.
After Camp, Canadian Style: The Japanese Canadian Post War Experience Conference - Part 2 of 2
Greg Robinson
Read Part 1 >>One hint as to the prevailing spirit was that during the day several different people spoke of working in Jewish firms, which were the only ones that did not practice discrimination, or compared their experience with Jewish friends and classmates (Frank Moritsugu spoke of being hired in …