Lind, Director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation, writes satirically about President George W. Bush's attempts to defuse anti-Islamic tensions following September 11, 2001, by "reporting" an imaginary meeting at which Bush commemorates Pearl Harbor Day with a "sunrise breakfast" attended by Japanese Americans, Japanese government representatives, and Shinto priests from Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, which commemorates Japan's war dead.
Leupp responds to William S. Lind's satirical piece with an essay that examines the history of Shinto, including efforts by the United States, during its post-war occupation of Japan, to uncouple the Shinto religion from its state-sponsored fascist trappings.
"It is mildly clever satire, penned with entirely vicious intent: to depict Islam in general as an enemy of America on a par with Japanese fascism in the 1940s, and Bush's understated, matter-of-fact acknowledgement that Islam isn't really the problem as treacherously naïve. Exploiting the often drawn (if misconstrued) parallel between the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941 and 9-11, it effectively alloys two racisms and two categories of religious bigotry."
Commentary agreeing with statements by federal judge A. Wallace Tajima warning of the parallels between internment of Muslim combatants and the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
Nakayama, an Anglican priest, relates his own childhood experience in Canada of racism following the attack on Pearl Harbor, and questions whether the historical lessons of that era have been forgotten in the events following September 11, 2001.
"The film weaves together personal stories of internment with perspectives from communities currently under attack. Former internees and their children, religious leaders, engineers, activists and ordinary people from both communities, now under the shadow of the 'war on terrorism,' revisit the dark days of Japanese-American internment in the hope that mass incarceration of innocent people will not be repeated."
"A standing ovation greeted Maha El Genaidi’s denouncement of "Bush’s secret government of oil barons and multinational corporations," as she blasted the attacks on Arabs, Muslims, and South Asians at the annual Day of Remembrance program. The theme of the program was "Race Prejudice, War Hysteria, and a Failure of Political Leadership," and it made the connection between the World War II internment of Japanese Americans into concentration camps and today’s attacks on civil liberties as the U.S. government wages war on Iraq."
"Daniel Pipes -- described by Law Professor Paul Campos of the University of Colorado as a 'well-known neoconservative intellectual'-- wrote in his daily column in the New York Sun on Dec. 28, 2004, that 'Yes, I do support the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.' Mr. Pipes continued: 'given what was known and not known at the time, the U.S. government made the correct and right decision."
Horizon (PBS affiliate KAET; aired January 21, 2002)
"Tonight on 'Horizon,' they were forced to leave their homes and moved to internment camps following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Now, 60 years later, a Valley man recounts the persecution faced by Japanese-Americans. Plus a look at how the events of September 11 affect civil rights and the use of racial profiling on this Martin Luther King day."
Includes taped segments by Mas Inoshita in which he describes his experiences as a child in Santa Maria (Calif.), when his father was arrested by federal agents, and his feelings following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, relating to treatment of Arab Americans and Muslims.
Shimomura describes the genesis of his recent paintings that draw parallels between the racial profiling that led to the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, and the recent racial profiling of Arab Americans following September 11, 2001.
Conference jointly convened in Los Angeles on November 4, 2004, by the University of North Carolina School of Law, the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, and the Japanese American National Museum, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Supreme Court case Korematsu v. United States.
From editor Eric Muller's Foreword: "The conference took what might be termed a multi-modal approach to remembering Korematsu, Ex parte Endo, Hirabayashi v. United States, Yasui v. United States, and other cases from World War II in which Japanese Americans used the courts to contest their eviction and confinement. Surviving participants in the cases -- law clerks, lawyers, and litigants -- shared recollections and impressions. Chief among these was Supreme Court litigant and civil rights hero Fred Korematsu, to whose memory this symposium issue is devoted. Children of men who contested the internment in court spoke about the personal legacy of their fathers' resistance. Conference attendees saw a dance piece, a play, and a film interpreting the internment and the legal challenges to it. And an array of scholars in law and history presented papers examining both the historical setting of the World War II cases on Japanese American civil liberties and their significance for the law and politics of today."
"On September 10, 2001, no one could have imagined that the sixtieth anniversary of the Japanese American civil liberties cases of World War II would be of anything more than historical interest. Instead, those cases today are intensely -- and tragically -- relevant to our most pressing national debates. By deepening our understanding both of what happened sixty years ago and of what is at stake today, the articles in this symposium contribute importantly to those debates."
"Face to Face explores what it means to be an American with the face of the enemy. These are real stories of fear, anger, hatred, loyalty and trust."
This web site, produced by Electric Shadows for ITVS Interactive, includes audio clips and transcripts from 18 individuals, organized thematically (e.g., "Fear", "Internment", "Identity", "Being American"), along with responses contributed by site visitors. The site also includes a glossary of Japanese American and Muslim American terms, and an "Activities" section that offers lesson plans, fact sheets, and links to related web resources.
Excerpt: "It was a curious and not altogether felicitous temporal juxtaposition in The New York Times on June 30: the first, a story in the Sunday Magazine by Ted Conover called 'In the Land of Guantanamo' the second, the same day, a story datelined Hunt, Idaho, by Sarah Kershaw headlined 'Japanese-Americans Relive Barbed Era.'."
"The Japanese-Americans and those interned at Guantanamo had at least one thing in common in addition to involuntary incarceration. The Japanese did not know how long they would be confined since they did not know when the war would end. Prisoners at Guantanamo do not know how long they will be confined because they have been labeled "enemy combatants," and like Japanese Americans during World War II, they can be held indefinitely."