Concentration Camps - Made in America For The Japanese People
For most of us, there was little of that kind of dramatic discussion, no emphasis correlating with the outrage is placed in the schools on the matter of the Japanese Concentration camps during World War II.
What should have been passion and fervor in the delivery of this historical account was instead muted and monotone so as to allow the facts to fold in with other often boredom-producing materials provided in so many schools.
Your host would be a full fledged adult before coming to understand what happened at these concentration camps built, and the depth of pain and suffering.
This is (still another) mass kidnapping albeit on a much smaller scale - perpetrated against the Japanese people which included the forcible transporting of individuals, whole families from their homes and towns at which point they were held indefinitely by way of Executive Order 9066 signed by Franklin Roosevelt.
Propaganda pushed fear to its limits until a manufactured campaign was waged against the Japanese accusing that - not some, but all of them were spies for the Emperor of Japan.
They were essentially accused of being terrorists - which ought to sound real familiar.
We know that the basis of this prolonged evacuation was falsified given evidence shows that there were very believable reports abound that the Japanese people were innocent.
Some say as many as 200,000 Japanese were rounded up - some violently so, and instructed to take only what they "could carry" - and to sell what little they owned - furniture, appliances and the rest - on the way out.
The conclusion: a mere ten (10) people in the US were ever convicted of being spies during World World II, none of which were Japanese and all of whom were White.
In 1946 the last of these concentration camps were disbanded, but many Japanese folk returned to find everything they owned destroyed or in ruin.
Also, note that in Patriot Act fashion, the majority population claimed they were "defending themselves."
Banished and Beyond Tears
"Police banging on doors at all hours of the day or night, ordering frightened occupants to gather up only what they could carry."
"Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any and all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance to the Japanese Emperor or any other foreign government, power, or organization?:
"All issues (114) of six Black weekly newspapers published between the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the end of April 1945 were examined with special attention paid to the editorial and opinion columns."
"Tule Lake, a historical novel written by Edward Miyakawa in 1980 returns to us like a mocking bird reminding us of the human rights travesty committed against both citizens (70%) and aliens of Japanese descent by federal, state and local authorities."
The Story of the Japanese American Draft Resisters in World War II
"They were to join the same army that had been guarding them for years, and that continued to aim weapons and searchlights at their parents and siblings."
The Japanese Internment and the Racial State of Exception
"The camp leave clearance policies then rearticulated the friend/enemy distinction in forwarding the state's attempt to assimilate the 'loyal' Japanese Americans into the wartime society as racial friends.
This emergency project attempted to restore the 'normal situation' by striving to unify the liberal-democratic state as a nation of homogeneous people."
Religion and Resistance in America's Concentration Camps
"The orthodox view characterizes the
Japanese as defenseless, dependent, and abiding victims of circumstance. This
image was fostered by the paternalistic War Relocation Authority (WRA)
which administered the camps."
"This folder contains Administrative Instruction No. 100 outlining the policy of separating evacuees of doubtful loyalty from loyal evacuees, and designating Tule Lake as the relocation center for disloyal evacuees."
(A sad video about the beginning of the obliteration of a culture, and if what happened to the Japanese is like a "ticking time bomb, waiting for some other "poor" group - then that would be a scandalous 'tradition.')
Black Attorney Hugh MacBeth and the Japanese Internment
""It was such a devastating and traumatic kind of experience that most people of Japanese ancestry were reluctant to talk about it . . . We never even talked about it at home."
"It was Yuri Kochiyama, when Malcolm X was assassinated - who was the woman with the scarf on her head in pictures seen around the world who was cradling him at the Audubon Ballroom."
The Brave Resister in the Camps
"I hope to dispel the myth that we were all "Quiet Americans" - that after being stripped of our constitutional rights . . . removed from our homes, businesses and jobs, then interned in concentration camps in god-forsaken areas of the deserts and prairies, we all went quietly and sheep-like, into segregated combat units to become cannon fodder to gain acceptance by the Great White Father..."
What America did to Black people was the worst . . . also I met so many Asians who are racist against Black people . . . "
"Why is it that oppressed people would rather become like their oppressor . . . "
Children of the Camps
"Until we can talk about the experience and make a connection with our grief and anger, we will each still be unconsciously trying to get out of our own personal camp. Our experience was unique, but it's an example of the broader experience of racism, how it permeates lives, and how we each attempt to survive it. It's about trauma and suffering, but it also is about our strength."
America's Concentration Camps - Resistance in the Camps
"It was May 1942 when my sister Ida brought home a poster she had torn down from a telephone pole on her way home from school in California's San Joaquin Valley.
People who immigrated to the US, and saw the conditions and treatment of Black people thought this could "never happen to them."
Descendants of Japanese Internees File Amicus Brief in Support of Muslim Immigrants
"The brief outlines the damage the internment did to their families and to the laws of equal protection in the U.S. and draws parallels between what was done to Japanese Americans during the war" and its relationship with the profiling of Muslims.
Superman, Super Racist: A Japanese Teen Confronts Comic Book Stereotypes
"Recently Giant Robot Magazine published pages from comics from the 1940s featuring racist images of brown skinned, buck-toothed, squinty-eyed Japanese Americans being slaughtered by superheroes."
1942 - 1945 Japanese "Relocation" and the 442 Regiment in Color
"A few days later, the government required that all internees answer loyalty questionnaires, which was used to register the Nisei (the first generation of Japanese origin to be born abroad) for the draft.
Question 27 of the loyalty questionnaire asked males eligible to register for the draft:
"Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty, wherever ordered?" while question 28 asked all internees:
"Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, or any other foreign government, power or organization?"
(The short way to put this is that Japanese men served in the military while their families had been kidnapped).
Shifting Ground of Race: Black and Japanese in the "Multiethnic" Los Angeles
"The key research on black organizations' positions on the internment has been done by Cheryl Greenberg, a professor of history at Trinity College, who found that the NAACP, the National Urban League and the National Council of Negro Women were mostly silent about the internment."
"If it was a grave injustice to subject �enemy aliens� to prolonged detention on account of race and national origin in World War II, the brief says, it was at least as unjust to single out the Turkmen plaintiffs, who were accused only of overstaying their visas."
"Will you swear unqualified allegiances to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, or other foreign government, power or organization?”
"Japanese American men interned during World War II and who answered no to Question 27 and 28 on an Application for Leave Clearance were called No-No Boys."
"Many families have never recovered the economic gains they had made before the war. Much of what they had put into storage before heading to the camps was long gone."
Final Report; Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast 1942
"On February 14, 1942, I recommended to the War Department that the military security of the Pacific Coast required the establishment of broad civil control, anti-sabotage and counter-espionage measures, including the evacuation, therefrom of all persons of Japanese ancestry."
"I'm for catching every Japanese in America, Alaska, and Hawaii now and putting them in concentration camps.. . .Damn them! Let's get rid of them now!"
Congressman John Rankin, Congressional Record, Feb.19,1942.
"Langston Hughes wrote in 1944 about a white person telling a black church audience that 'these 'Japs' are really trying to wipe us white folks off the face of the earth' to which 'a dark, wrinkled old grandma in the amen corner' responded, 'It's about time!'"
Traditional Instrument, Unknown
Sakura, Themes and Variations
Cherry Blossoms
(Some of these variations are famous for "imitating the sound of 'Koto,' a traditional Japanese instrument:)
Japanese Folk Song
Thelonious Monk
"The Bootleg Series, 1963."
Japanese Percussionists
"Taiko means "drum" in Japanese (etymologically "great" or "wide drum").
Outside Japan, the word is often used to refer to any of the various Japanese drums and to the relatively recent art-form of ensemble taiko drumming.
Once Again
Rhymester
"Rhymester has been part of the Japanese hip hop scene since the early 90's and they are one of the more conscious rap groups that have been rapping about political issues and socio-economic issues affecting Japan.
They recently released an album called Manifesto in February and a single called ラストヴァース (Last Verse)" - Asian Rap Worldwide
Note, this is one of several panels that were not presented in succession at this gallery, and that are included in this list of panels that are being refurbished or made anew to make this gallery more rich from pole to pole
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