Manzanar Committee &#187; Japanese American

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Tagged: civil rights, Day of Remembrance, discrimination, DOR, JACL, JANM, Japanese American, Japanese American Citizens League, Japanese American Incarceration, Japanese American Internment, Japanese American National Museum, NCRR, Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress, racism, Robin Toma

Dr. Donald Hata, Artist Hatsuko Mary Higuchi Featured At Gardena JCI Day of Remembrance Program

Gann Matsuda — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 04:55:40 +0000

To download a printable flyer,
click on the image above.

GARDENA, CA — The Bridge – JCI Heritage Center will host a Day of Remembrance commemorative program on February 26, 2012, from 1:00 to 4:00 PM, at the Gardena Valley Japanese Cultural Institute (JCI) in Gardena, California, in honor of this year being the 70th anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, that authorized the unjust incarceration of Japanese Americans into American concentration camps during World War II.

Featured in the program are Dr. Donald Hata, Emeritus Professor of History at California State University, Dominguez Hills, who was incarcerated at the Gila River concentration camp in Arizona.

Also featured is artist Hatsuko Mary Higuchi, who was incarcerated at the Poston concentration camp. Her art work will also be on display.

For more information, click on the image to the right to download a printable flyer. You can also contact the Gardena Valley JCI at (310) 324-6611, or by e-mail at info@jci-gardena.org.

Gardena Japanese Cultural Institute: 1964 West 162nd Street, Gardena, California, 90247-3650 (via Google Maps):

Tagged: civil rights, Day of Remembrance, discrimination, Don Hata, Donald Hata, Gardena, Gardena Japanese Cultural Institute, Gardena JCI, Hatsuko Mary Higuchi, Japanese American, Japanese American Incarceration, Japanese American Internment, Mary Higuchi, racism

Community Members Invited to Join Manzanar Volunteer Day – March 3, 2012

Gann Matsuda — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 03:27:28 +0000

To download a printable flyer,
click on the image above.

The following is a press release from the National Park Service.

To honor its 20th Anniversary as a National Historic Site, Manzanar is hosting its Fourth Annual Volunteer Day on Saturday, March 3, 2012, from 8:30 AM to 1:00 PM.

Owens Valley residents, their families, friends, and others are invited to join the Manzanar staff in an outdoor work project followed by a catered lunch and program presented by Archeologist Jeff Burton.

The Volunteer Day work project involves clearing a section of the historic Chicken Ranch to preserve this rarely seen section of the site.

The chicken ranch was created during World War II for the Manzanar War Relocation Center which held over 10,000 Japanese Americans. The ranch was established to supplement the food needs of the internees and the War Relocation Authority employees and their families. The Japanese American crews constructed the chicken facilities during the summer and fall of 1943. They maintained it during the next two years, supplying over 113,000 eggs and over 8,000 harvested chickens.

Volunteers will be provided with shovels, pruners, rakes, brooms, and wheelbarrows to remove vegetation from the area. Work will be supervised by park staff.

Manzanar welcomes community involvement in the preservation of this special site. Staff and community members will work together to improve the site, get to know each other, and have some good, dirty, outdoor fun.

Please wear sturdy, closed-toe shoes, a hat, and sunscreen. Manzanar will provide water, food, work gloves, a commemorative water bottle and bandana will be given to every participant.

The day’s schedule is as follows:

8:30 AM – 9:00 AM: Arrive, park and sign-in at the Interpretive Center parking lot
9:00 AM: Welcome, outline of work, safety message
9:15 AM – 12:00 PM: Work project
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM: Picnic lunch provided by Friends of Manzanar, discussion by park archeologist about Manzanar’s Chicken Ranch, past and present

Volunteers should RSVP as participation is limited. Please call Park Ranger Carrie Andresen for more information and to RSVP at (760) 878-2194, extension 3314.

Manzanar National Historic Site is located nine miles north of Lone Pine and six miles south of Independence on the west side of U.S. Highway 395.

For more information on Manzanar National Historic Site, please visit the web site at http://www.nps.gov/manz or call (760) 878-2194.

-30-

Tagged: Carrie Andresen, Carrie Andresen-Strawn, civil rights, concentration camp, discrimination, Japanese American, Japanese American Incarceration, Japanese American Internment, Jeff Burton, Manzanar, Manzanar National Historic Site, Owens Valley, racism

Cast in Bronze: Terminology Symposium in San Francisco, October 22, 2011

Gann Matsuda — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 14:09:18 +0000

By Soji Kashiwagi

The main reason for holding a day-long symposium on terminology and the use of U.S. government euphemisms during World War II was not, according to event organizers, to take on the role of the “word police” and tell members of the Japanese American community what they should or should not say regarding what happened some 69 years ago.

In fact, Mako Nakagawa, the Seattle-based author of the Power of Words Resolution which was passed by the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) National Council in 2010, said that those who lived through the experience “…have earned the right to call it whatever they want.”

Instead, the event’s focus turned toward educating those in public institutions and museums who cast words in bronze that, as Lane Hirabayashi describes, “…are not strictly or historically accurate like ‘internment,’ or ‘relocation,’ on plaques, memorials, exhibits, and installations in Interpretive Learning Centers.”

Barbara Takei, a Sacramento-based researcher/writer and member of the Tule Lake Committee, added that one of the goals of the symposium was to help generate more dialogue within the Japanese American community “…about self-definition and the right and responsibility we have to use language that does not hide or minimize the terrible injustice that was suffered by our families. Future generations will not understand the violation to our civil and human rights if we use language that minimizes and hides the story in language that is euphemistic and incorrect.”

Entitled Cast in Bronze: Terminology and Memory of the Japanese American World War II Incarceration. the symposium was held on Saturday, October 22, 2011, at the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California, in front of about 100 participants, several of whom traveled to San Francisco from all over the Bay Area, Sacramento, Fresno, Los Angeles, Seattle and New York.

Sponsored by Hirabayashi and the Aratani Endowed Chair, UCLA Asian Americans Studies Center, and the Tule Lake Committee, the event featured a distinguished panel of historians and experts, including Tetsuden Kashima, Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Washington; Roger Daniels, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Cincinnati, Don Hata, Emeritus Professor of History at California State University, Dominguez Hills, Karen Ishizuka, filmmaker, author and independent researcher, Mako Nakagawa, President, Mako & Associates, Satsuki Ina, psycho-therapist and film producer, and Dave Kruse, Superintendent, Tule Lake National Monument.

The presence of Kruse from the National Parks Service (NPS) was significant because the NPS was one of two groups that were questioned about its continued use of terms like “internment camps,” and its reluctance to use “concentration camps,” the term the majority of the panel agreed was more accurate.

The NPS, which currently manages the historic sites at Manzanar, Minidoka and Tule Lake, has been developing an official version or remembrance of the incarceration story.

“These are the places where the public will learn about how an unpopular minority group was stripped of their rights by the government that was supposed to protect them,” said Takei. “Why would we want them to tell the story using the government’s lying, dissembling language?”

Kruse explained the reasons why the NPS has preferred to use “internment camp” and other U.S. government euphemisms.

One is that the NPS wants to use the actual language used by the U.S. government at the time. To replace the words with something else, it believes, would alter the history. Another reason is that the general public, when visiting the sites, is more accustomed to the word “internment camps.” When NPS staff have used the words “concentration camps” some visitors have either become offended, or cannot comprehend its meaning in the context of the camps. An additional reason is that the NPS wants to avoid controversy, and is looking toward the Japanese American community to come to a consensus on the terminology before it feels comfortable using it.

Another community respondent, Karen Kai, also prefers to use the term “internment camp.”

Panel speaker Tetsuden Kashima explained that “internment camp” is defined as a place where aliens are imprisoned. His Powerpoint presentation illustrated the difference between the internment camps the Department of Justice established to detain Issei community leaders, and the concentration camps that were administered by the War Relocation Authority (WRA). Since the Nisei were American citizens and not aliens, Kashima said “internment camps” does not accurately define the ten WRA camps.

“Whomever controls the vocabulary, controls the narrative,” Kashima added.

Daniels, a long-time authority on camp history and among the earliest proponents of the term “concentration camps” to describe the WRA camps, stated, “Clarity, like liberty, must be won and re-won, from generation to generation.”

He added that getting this right is vitally important to more than just the Japanese American community.

“This is a national question,” he noted. “And we ought to get it right.”

Daniels went on to say that there’s no precedent for President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066.

“There’s no past history,” he said. “There’s nothing like it in American History. FDR never talked about 9066 publicly or privately.”

He also said that during the war, the WRA camps were not called “internment camps.”

“On the West Coast,” he said, “They were called ‘Jap camps.’”

Ishizuka, a former curator at the Japanese American National Museum (JANM), shared her struggle to use the term America’s Concentration Camps in a 1998 JANM exhibit at the NPS site at Ellis Island, New York. Opposition to the term came from the NPS, and members of the New York American Jewish community, some of whom felt that JANM’s use of the term would diminish the horror of the Nazi concentration camps. After tense negotiations, and with Senator Daniel Inouye’s assistance, an agreement was reached and JANM moved forward with the use of the term at Ellis Island.

Together with the American Jewish leaders, they issued a joint statement which Ishizuka shared at the symposium:

A ‘concentration camp’ is a place where people are imprisoned not because of any crimes they committed, but simply because of who they are. Although many groups have been singled out for such persecution throughout history, the term ‘concentration camp’ was first used at the turn of the century in the Spanish American and Boer Wars.

During World War II, America’s concentration camps were clearly distinguishable from Nazi Germany’s. Nazi camps were places of torture, barbarous medical experiments and summary executions: some were extermination centers with gas chambers… Despite differences, all had one thing in common: The people in power removed a minority group from the general population and the rest of society let it happen.

Neil Gotanda, Professor of Constitutional law at Western State University, responded to Nazi Germany’s euphemistic use of the term “concentration camp” instead of the more accurate “death camps” by saying: “For Jews, their story begins with the words “concentration camps.” For Japanese Americans, their story ends with the words “concentration camps.”

Nakagawa passionately spoke about her arduous journey to get her Power of Words resolution passed by the JACL’s National Council by a vote of 80-2 at its National Convention held in Chicago last July. Since then, her resolution, which strongly advocates for the use of “concentration camp” and other accurate terminology, went to a special committee of the JACL which was assigned the task of implementing it by developing an educational handbook for school distribution.

However, the handbook’s language, released earlier this year, had been altered from the original resolution. The words “concentration camp” were omitted, and replaced by “relocation center” with quotations around it. After an emergency resolution to block the implementation of the handbook was passed at this year’s JACL Convention in Los Angeles, Nakagawa’s resolution is back in committee, and the appointed chair of the committee is the same individual who rewrote her resolution in the first place.

The committee chair, Greg Marutani, attended the symposium, but declined to comment after Nakagawa was questioned as to why her resolution was being stalled.

Takei was disappointed that Marutani did not address the questions and concerns regarding Nakagawa’s resolution.

“Greg could have reported that he was appointed to chair the implementation committee by JACL president David Kawamoto, and that he is in the process of selecting who will serve on the committee or announcing who is serving, and, that once his committee meets, they will prepare a report for the next convention in Seattle 2012 on how the resolution would be implemented,” she said. “Why was this so difficult?”

Hata, who spoke about how he and his late wife Nadine proposed in the early 1970s to impeach the JACL’s national president because of JACL’s refusal to testify at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights public hearings on civil rights issues of Asian Pacific Americans, once again called for impeachment “over the current internal struggle over accurate terminology that pits the will of the membership against national officers and surrogates who openly defy, delay, and obstruct,” said Hata. “Impeachment seems to be an appropriate remedy for such failure of leadership, along with a final open discussion of the Lim Report, or the inexorable downward death spiral of no new members will continue, and perhaps deservedly so.”

Hata, who later said that a strong JACL is needed by the Nikkei community, still did not back off his claim that JACL needs to “clean up its act” before it can move forward.

Since no one spoke on behalf of the JACL, the questions raised went unanswered and unresolved.

But one question was answered in the mind of Judy Shintani, a Sansei symposium attendee from Half Moon Bay. “Before I was not comfortable using the term ‘concentration camp,’” she said. “But after hearing everyone speak today, I’m now comfortable with the term, and will start using it.”

A 91-year-old Nisei woman from Fresno, after reviewing a list of government-issued euphemisms, emphatically stated: “I was not ‘relocated.’ I was forcibly removed and incarcerated in an American concentration camp!”

Reactions such as these are rewarding for the symposium’s organizers.

“The audience response was great,” said Barbara Takei. “Most of them stayed the entire day, and wanted to spend more time talking in the small group sessions.”

“In terms of fulfilling the objective of holding an educational forum, getting the best possible speakers to comment on the history, the issues, and the practices entailed in the ‘terminology struggles’ over the years, I was very happy with how everything went,” said Lane Hirabayashi.

As for next steps, both Hirabayashi and Takei emphasized the need for the Japanese American community to continue to work with groups such as the NPS.

“We need to try and insure that the National Park Service understands the concern around proper, accurate, terminology to describe both what happened, and how it felt to those who were incarcerated,” said Hirabayashi.

“Do we want the story to be told using the euphemistic language of the WRA and the Army, or should the exhibits help the viewer understand the experience from the point of view of the Japanese Americans whose dignity and civil and human rights were violated,” Takei asked. “We need to develop a collective voice to make sure that we have greater control over how our history and experiences are remembered.”

Playwright Soji Kashiwagi is active with the Tule Lake Committee, and is the Executive Producer/Writer of the Grateful Crane Ensemble. He writes from Pasadena, California.

The views expressed in this story are those of the author, and are not necessarily those of the Manzanar Committee.

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Tagged: Aiko Herzig Yoshinaga, Barbara Takei, civil rights, Dave Kruse, David Kawamoto, discrimination, Don Hata, Greg Marutani, JACL, Japanese American, Japanese American Citizens League, Japanese American Cultural And Community Center of Northern California, Japanese American Incarceration, Japanese American Internment, Judy Shintani, Karen Ishizuka, Karen Kai, Lane Hirabayshi, Mako Nakagawa, National Park Service, racism Tule Lake, Roger Daniels, Satsuki Ina, Soji Kashiwagi, Tetsuden Kashima, Tule Lake National Monument

National Defense Authorization Act: Nikkei Community Must Redouble Efforts To Defend Constitutional Rights

Gann Matsuda — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 07:57:51 +0000

Manzanar Committee Co-Chair Bruce Embrey, shown here during the
42nd Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage
on April 30, 2011.
Photo: Gann Matsuda

by Bruce Embrey

LOS ANGELES — President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on December 31, 2011, allowing indefinite detention without charge or trial to be codified into law. As a result, Americans citizens and others could be subjected to imprisonment without ever being charged or convicted of a crime. This provision of the NDAA denigrates the very foundations of this country, and undermines the Bill of Rights. Without question, it threatens the very foundation of our democracy.

Seventy years ago, 110,000 members of the Japanese American (Nikkei) community, our families and friends, were subjected to imprisonment without ever being charged by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, when he signed Executive Order 9066. The Nikkei community was denied habeas corpus, rounded up by the United States military and incarcerated behind barbed wire in desolate places.

Indeed, indefinite detention is an indelible part of our experience. In this sense, the Nikkei community is part of the democratic conscience of the United States.

The Constitution and the Bill of Rights did not protect our community from unjust incarceration. It took decades of struggle, testimony, and countless challenges for the government to even recognize this injustice as an act of “race prejudice, wartime hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.”

The experiences of the Nikkei people during World War II demonstrates that freedom, even in this democracy of ours, must be protected. Now, on the 70th anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066, we witness a direct assault on the rights of habeas corpus and the Bill of Rights.

We must remember our history and oppose any and all attempts to undermine the Constitution of the United States of America. We must remember, and we must be vigilant, because it appears that the Congress and the President of the United States have forgotten.

Post 9/11, the Manzanar Committee, along with many in the Nikkei community, condemned the persistent and virulent racist acts against the Muslim community. Echoes of the past—hysterical, baseless fears, fueled by racism, sounded so similar to what our families and friends endured prior to, and during World War II, and, now, in an eerily familiar fashion, baseless fears are leading to the erosion of our civil rights.

For more than four decades, the Manzanar Committee has organized an annual Pilgrimage to the site of the former Manzanar concentration camp to pay our respects and honor the survivors. We demanded the government recognize this injustice and that this never happen again. Today, Manzanar and the sites of the nine other War Relocation Authority camps are historical landmarks. Some area units of the National Park Service, staffed by rangers telling our story. The Pilgrimage continues and has grown. Manzanar At Dusk, led by college students and other young people, has grown. Hundreds participate in this intergenerational event, where abstract stories of endurance and struggle come alive.

Yet, despite all the progress made in reclaiming our rightful place in American society, it appears that the fundamental lesson of the incarceration of 110,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry has yet to understood in the halls of power. Therefore, it is incumbent upon us, on this very important anniversary, to redouble our efforts to defend the Bill of Rights, and, in so doing, honor our civil rights heroes like Gordon Hirabayashi, Min Yasui and Fred Korematsu.

This is our legacy.

Bruce Embrey is Co-Chair of the Manzanar Committee.

The views expressed in this story are those of the author, and are not necessarily those of the Manzanar Committee.

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Tagged: Barack Obama, Bruce Embrey, civil rights, discrimination, Executive Order 9066, Fred Korematsu, Gordon Hirabayashi, Japanese American, Japanese American Incarceration, Japanese American Internment, Manzanar At Dusk, Manzanar Committee, Manzanar Pilgrimage, Min Yasui, Minoru Yasui, National Defense Authorization Act, President Barack Obama, President Obama, racism

Deporting “Troublemakers” Redux

Gann Matsuda — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 08:00:30 +0000

Barbara Takei (left), shown here with Manzanar Committee member Joyce Okazaki (center), and Mako Nakagawa (right), during the
2011 Manzanar At Dusk program on April 28, 2011, at
Lone Pine High School in Lone Pine, California.
Photo: James To

Editor’s Note: Like Soji Kashiwagi, Tule Lake Committee leader Barbara Takei recently shared her thoughts on the National Defense Authorization Act that was recently signed by President Obama, more specifically, two companion bills. Her commentary piece is published here with permission.

Time of Remembrance observances are coming up in another few weeks, a good time to do something to assure, “never again.”

This year, in the context of the National Defense Authorization Act that provides for indefinite military detention of the accused, we need to be more vigilant than ever, especially with two companion pieces of legislation introduced this session of Congress. The two bills, S. 1698 and HR 3166, resurrect the spectre of the little-known government denationalization and deportation program that the Department of Justice used to strip nearly 6,000 Americans of their U.S. citizenship while they were imprisoned at the Tule Lake concentration camp during World War II.

Denationalizing Dissidents at Tule Lake

On July 1,1944, Public Law 405, that originated from racist California legislators and drafted by then U.S. Attorney General Francis Biddle, was signed into law by President Roosevelt. This law, known as the 1944 Renunciation Act, led to thousands of Japanese Americans imprisoned at Tule Lake to be categorized as “enemy aliens” no longer protected by the Constitution. The government prepared to deport these so-called “disloyals” and “troublemakers” to Japan when the war ended.

This unprecedented deportation program, aimed at thousands of Japanese American dissidents, almost worked. The deportations were stopped by Northern California ACLU attorney Wayne M. Collins, who spent the next twenty years in a lonely, but overwhelmingly successful fight to restore citizenship to thousands of Japanese American renunciants.

The denationalization program was one of World War II’s extreme instances of the abuse of power, used against American citizens who protested the denial of due process, and the injustice of their incarceration in America’s concentration camps. Yet, the government’s mistreatment of Japanese American “troublemakers,” and the unprecedented program to purge thousands of American citizens through the denationalization process, is unknown to most Japanese Americans, and to the general public. The victims who renounced their devalued citizenship were silenced, stigmatized by other Nikkei, and marginalized by the perpetual government-created loyal/disloyal paradigm that defined protest as disloyalty. The Army and the Department of Justice suppressed details of their maneuverings, thus avoiding scrutiny and subsequent legal challenges to their actions.

The Enemy Expatriation Act, S. 1698 (Lieberman) and its companion bill, HR 3166 (Dent) await action in Congress. These bills would enable the government to strip American citizens of their U.S. citizenship if they are accused of “engaging in or purposefully and materially supporting hostilities against the United States.”

The bills are also being described as closing a loophole in the National Defense Authorization Act, signed into law on the eve of 2012 by President Obama, that provides for indefinite military detention of the accused. The denationalization legislation could be applied to U.S. citizens who are indefinitely detained, stripping away their rights as American citizens and enabling their treatment as foreign enemy combatants.

These companion denationalization bills are an assault on our nation’s belief in civil liberties and civil rights, threatening unpopular groups with the same type of mistreatment that dissident Japanese Americans experienced while imprisoned at Tule Lake.

During this time when Japanese Americans and other civil rights advocates are planning Day of Remembrance programs—memorializing the 1942 Presidential removal order Executive Order 9066 that banished 110,000 persons with Japanese faces to desolate concentration camps, stripped of their rights, their humanity and their dignity—we must not close our eyes to what is happening again.

Unless we wish to render the phrase “never again” meaningless, we must continue speaking out to prevent other human and civil rights travesties like Executive Order 9066, the Renunciation Act of 1944, and streamlining the deportation of people who are deemed “troublemakers.” More than ever, we need to renew our efforts at education and advocacy.

Takei is CFO of the non-profit Tule Lake Committee. For the past decade, she has researched and written about Tule Lake’s segregation history, and has served as an advocate and fundraiser for the Tule Lake concentration camp site.

The views expressed in this story are those of the author, and are not necessarily those of the Manzanar Committee.

Text of House Resolution 3166/Senate Resolution 1698
112th Congress, First Session
Introduced In Both Houses on October 12, 2011
House Sponsors: Charlie Dent (R-PA) and Jason Altmire (D-PA)
Senate Sponsors: Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Scott Brown (R-MA)

A Bill To add engaging in or supporting hostilities against the United States to the list of acts for which United States nationals would lose their nationality.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the “Enemy Expatriation Act.”

SEC. 2. LOSS OF NATIONALITY.

(a) IN GENERAL.—Section 349 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1481) is amended—

(1) in subsection (a)—

(A) in each of paragraphs (1) through (6), by striking “or” at the end;

(B) in paragraph (7), by striking the period at the end and inserting “; or”; and<

(C) by adding at the end the following: “(8) engaging in, or purposefully and materially supporting, hostilities against the United States.”; and

(2) by adding at the end the following:

“(c) For purposes of this section, the term ‘hostilities’ means any conflict subject to the laws of war.”

(b) TECHNICAL AMENDMENT.—Section 351(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1483(a)) is amended by striking “(6) and (7)” and inserting “(6), (7), and (8).”

NOTE: As of this writing, H.R. 3166 was referred to the House Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement on October 24, 2011, and. S. 1698 was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary on October 12, 2011.

Tagged: Barbara Takei, civil rights, discrimination, Japanese American, Japanese American Incarceration, Japanese American Internment, National Defense Authorization Act, racism, Tule Lake, Tule Lake Committee

Open Letter To President Obama Protesting The Signing Of The National Defense Authorization Act

Gann Matsuda — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:20:40 +0000

Playwright Soji Kashiwagi, who is active with the Tule Lake Committee, recently wrote a letter to President Barack Obama, criticizing him for signing the National Defense Authorization Act on December 31, 2011. Kashiwagi, who writes from Pasadena, California, has graciously permitted us to repint it here.

Soji Kashiwagi
Photo courtesy Discover Nikkei

January 10, 2012

The Honorable Barack Obama
President of the United States
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear President Obama,

Before I begin, I must say that I have the utmost respect for the Office of the President, and I want to thank you for the job you are doing under difficult circumstances and in an oftentimes hostile environment.

That being said, I must also express to you my deep disappointment and outrage at your “under the radar” New Year’s Eve signing into law of the National Defense Authorization Act.

I know you are aware that the law’s provision that gives the President authorization to order the U.S. Military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial, civilians, including American citizens, suspected of terrorism, anywhere in the world is a complete breach of our U.S. Constitution. You also know that the 5th Amendment provides, in part, that “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law.” This new law, according to writer Andrew Sullivan, “is a legal and indefinite abolition of habeas corpus.”

The words, “authorization to order the U.S. Military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial, civilians, including American citizens” and “suspected” sends a chill down my spine. These words became a tragic reality for 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II, when President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 authorized the U.S. military to forcibly remove American citizens, without cause or due process, and imprison them in ten desolate concentration camps located in the badlands of America—for over three years. It wasn’t until many years later that these “suspected” citizens were found to be innocent and this completely unnecessary—and unconstitutional—action against them has been proven to be a massive civil rights disaster unprecedented in American history.

Having read your books, I know you are very aware about this dark chapter—and how our Constitution was trampled on in the name of “military necessity” (which was later proven to be false). I know you have voiced “serious reservations” about this bill when you signed it. And yet, instead of vetoing the bill, you signed it, and with that signature, you have opened the door for future presidents to do the exact same thing that was done to my family and the families of 120,000 other Japanese Americans.

I know you know that this was wrong, and yet you did it anyway. And I’m here to remind you that the consequences of those actions and the long-term damage done to Japanese Americans over 70 years ago are still being felt to this day. Allow me to share just a few of them with you.

My father, Nisei American Hiroshi Kashiwagi, was born in California, and grew up as a loyal, patriotic American, just like the rest of those of his generation. He had never been to Japan, and had no loyalties to Japan. And yet, based on his Japanese race, he was branded a “non-alien,” forcibly removed from the only home that he knew and detained with the rest of his community at the concentration camp at Tule Lake, California. And because he refused to answer two deeply flawed, government-issued “loyalty” questions, he was branded a “disloyal,” a “troublemaker” and one of the “bad Japanese Americans” for daring to defy the U.S. Government and protest his unjust incarceration. By refusing to answer, he says, “I was fighting for our civil rights.”

However, history has not been kind to those who protested against these infamous loyalty questions. The “disloyal” stigma of shame they have carried for all these years has been a heavy load to bear, and sadly, the wounds from this experience are still not completely healed, and probably never will be. Tragically, thousands who answered “No-No” to the loyalty questions have already gone to their graves with this heavy—and might I add unnecessary—burden still on their shoulders.

Along with my father and other protesters, there was another civil rights hero by the name of Gordon Hirabayashi, who recently passed away at the age of 93. Hirabayashi believed the Government’s actions were racially discriminatory. He refused to go to camp on Constitutional grounds, and went to prison because of it. His appeal against the U.S. Government went all the way to the Supreme Court.

“When my case was before the Supreme Court in 1943, I fully expected that as a citizen the Constitution would protect me,” he was quoted as saying. “Surprisingly, even though I lost, I did not abandon my belief and values. And I never look at my case as just my own, or just as a Japanese American. It is an American case with principles that affect the fundamental human rights of all Americans.”

Over 40 years later, Hirabayashi’s conviction was overturned when it was proven to the courts that the incarceration was based on racism against Japanese Americans and not on military necessity.

Before he was exonerated, Hirabayashi said: “I want vindication not only for myself. I also want the cloud removed from over the heads of 120,000 others. My citizenship didn’t protect me one bit. Our Constitution was reduced to a scrap of paper.”

Our Government’s failure to defend our Constitution has had long-term negative consequences on a large group of innocent Americans. I have given you just a couple of examples, but the stories of suffering, hardship and loss are in the tens of thousands. I know you have said that you will not enforce parts of this law that encroach on the Constitutional rights of American citizens. However, Andrew Clark Arand, a professor of government at Georgetown University, said it best in a January 6, 2012 Reuters article: “Signing something and saying you are not going to follow portions of it is problematic,” he said. “I believe that the framers of the Constitution would have felt that’s exactly the kind of legislation you need to veto.”

I agree, and believe our Founding Fathers are turning over in their graves at the thought of this law. So is Gordon Hirabayashi. My mother, who was a nine-year-old girl when she was imprisoned at Tule Lake, wants you to know that she’s disappointed in you. My father, now 89, was outraged and wants to know, “What were you thinking?”

Last August, I was appointed as a Human Relations Commissioner for the City of Pasadena, California. At the swearing in ceremony before the Mayor and members of the City Council, I took a solemn oath to “…preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” It is the same oath of office that you took. In the future, my hope is that you will continue to live up to this oath and steadfastly refuse to render our Constitution a worthless scrap of paper. My hope is that the mistake that is now signed into law will not come back to haunt our fellow Americans in the future. It has happened before, and for the sake of all the innocent Americans who suffered in America’s concentration camps, we must not let it happen ever again.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,
Soji Kashiwagi

The views expressed in this story are those of the author, and are not necessarily those of the Manzanar Committee.

Tagged: Barack Obama, civil rights, discrimination, Gordon Hirabayshi, Hiroshi Kashiwagi, Japanese American, Japanese American Incarceration, Japanese American Internment, National Defense Authorization Act, President Barack Obama, President Obama, racism, Soji Kashiwagi, Tule Lake

43rd Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage, 2012 Manzanar At Dusk Program To Be Held On April 28, 2012

Gann Matsuda — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 00:24:26 +0000

A portion of the crowd attending the 42nd Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage
on April 30, 2011, at the Manzanar National Historic Site.
The cemetery monument is featured in the background.
Photo: Gann Matsuda

LOS ANGELES — The 43rd Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage, sponsored by the Los Angeles-based Manzanar Committee, is scheduled for 12:00 PM PDT on Saturday, April 28, 2012, at the Manzanar National Historic Site, located on US Highway 395 in California’s Owens Valley, between the towns of Lone Pine and Independence, approximately 230 miles north of Los Angeles.

Each year, hundreds of students, teachers, community members, clergy and former incarcerees attend the Pilgrimage. Planning is underway for the afternoon event, as well as for the Manzanar At Dusk program, scheduled from 5:00 PM to 8:00 PM that same evening at the Lone Pine High School gymnasium, located at 538 South Main Street (US Highway 395), in Lone Pine, nine miles south of the Manzanar National Historic Site, across the street from McDonald’s.

Manzanar At Dusk is co-sponsored by the Cal Poly Pomona Nikkei Student Union, the UCLA Nikkei Student Union, the UCSD Nikkei Student Union, Lone Pine Unified School District, and Lone Pine High School.

Further details about the Pilgrimage and the Manzanar At Dusk program, including information on bus transportation from the Los Angeles area, will be announced at a later date.

Pilgrimage participants are advised to bring their own lunch, drinks and snacks as there are no facilities to purchase food at the Manzanar National Historic Site (restaurants and fast food outlets are located in Lone Pine and Independence, which are nearby). Water will be provided at the site.

The Manzanar Committee is dedicated to educating and raising public awareness about the incarceration and violation of civil rights of persons of Japanese ancestry during World War II and to the continuing struggle of all peoples when Constitutional rights are in danger. A non-profit organization that has sponsored the annual Manzanar Pilgrimage since 1969, along with other educational programs, the Manzanar Committee has also played a key role in the establishment and continued development of the Manzanar National Historic Site. For more information, send e-mail to 43rdpilgrimage -at- manzanarcommittee.org, call (323) 662-5102, or check their blog at http://blog.manzanarcommittee.org.

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Manzanar National Historic Site

Lone Pine High School

Tagged: 43rd Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage, civil rights, discrimination, Japanese American, Japanese American Incarceration, Japanese American Internment, Lone Pine High School, Manzanar At Dusk, Manzanar Committee, Manzanar National Historic Site, Manzanar Pilgrimage, racism

Dancing With Grace – Gracious And Graceful

Gann Matsuda — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:12:14 +0000

Editor’s Note: The following piece by Jenni Kuida, a tribute to former Manzanar Committee member Grace Harada, was originally published in January 2002, in the Rafu Shimpo, and on her family’s web site. She posted a link to her story on Facebook on January 18, commemorating the tenth anniversary of Harada’s passing. We thought it would be a fitting tribute to publish it here as well.

Former Manzanar Committee member Grace Harada (center), shown here with Jenni Kuida (left) and
Sue Kunitomi Embrey (right), who passed away in 2006.
Photo: Jenni Kuida

You might not have ever met Grace Harada. But if you’ve been to an Obon at Senshin Buddhist Temple or the Manzanar Pilgrimage in the last thirty years, chances are, you have surely seen her. She was the petite Nisei woman dancing Bon Odori in the inner circle, leading Sansei like me, trying to follow along in the outer circle. I would always seek her out when stumbling through the moves, because I knew that if I followed her, I’d be ok.

Sadly, she passed away on January 18 at age 76. Only one week earlier, she suffered from a massive stroke and slipped into a coma. Just like that. At the memorial service for Grace at Senshin Buddhist Temple, Reverend Mas Kodani spoke fondly of Grace, using the words “gracious” and “graceful” to describe Grace. He talked about how Grace loved to dance. She lived her life doing what she loved to do. She found true joy in dancing, and in teaching dance to others.

She did not perform for money or fame, but she danced for the community, for her daughters, her grandchildren, and her two great grandchildren. She danced for the pure love of it. Rev. Mas’ advice was to find what you love and do it. Accept that you’ll make mistakes along the way, but to find your joy in life. Like Grace did.

People like Grace are true gems in the community. She wasn’t a high profile person. But she was a leader by example. Through Grace’s love of Bon Odori, she shared her knowledge of Japanese folk dance with literally thousands of people on the last Saturday of every April at Manzanar, and each summer throughout the obon season. She even helped create new Japanese American dances at Senshin. I can’t imagine how many people have danced with, beside and behind Grace, following her graceful feet and arm movements.

Grace was one of my favorite people on the Manzanar Committee. I started volunteering with the Manzanar Committee about six years ago, but Grace has been with the Committee since its beginning. I think she only missed the pilgrimage once, when she was having problems with her knees. She was that dedicated.

What I liked most about Grace was her cheerful spirit and her deep compassion concern for others. After Sue Embrey, Manzanar Committee Chairperson, stopped driving recently, Grace would always make sure that Sue had a ride. I also remember her speaking more than once about how easy her life had been, compared to the struggles that her parents and other Issei faced living in America.

Every year at the Manzanar Pilgrimage, we would end the day with the traditional tanko bushi, honoring the 10,000 former internees who lived at Manzanar. Grace would always be out there, whether it was in the extreme desert heat, or the bitter cold wind, wearing her turquoise blue yukata jacket, head tilted, fingers together, demonstrating the movements, and showing us what to do.

I have seen pilgrimage first timers join in the tanko bushi without hesitation. I think it was Grace’s generous nature and her smiling face, that put people at ease. She had a way of making it look so easy, accessible, and fun.

A lesson for us Sansei, Yonsei, and Gosei is to learn all we can from the wisdom keepers like Grace, who hold knowledge about these Japanese and Japanese American cultural traditions. Because without them, these traditions and cultural practices will die with them. Grace was a role model to young people, but she was not alone.

There are hundreds of every day people like her, volunteering their time, sharing their knowledge at every turn, from their own inner circles. Whether they are dancing at obon, helping to maintain or build their community centers, telling children about their wartime camp experiences, or continuing to fight for redress, we have many gems in the Japanese American community. Gems who are unrecognized for their efforts, but do so because it is what they love to do.

Finally, Grace’s sudden passing is a reminder to us all that we should not take friends and family for granted. We should treat people with kindness and honesty, as Grace did. I don’t know who will lead the tanko bushi at the pilgrimage this year, and that makes me a little sad.

But I know that as we commemorate the 60th anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066 in 2002, that she would want someone to take her place, to teach a new generation of dancers and pilgrims. I also know that Grace will be dancing at Manzanar in spirit, gracious and graceful.

Sansei activist Jenni Kuida, a former secretary and webmaster for the Manzanar Committee, writes from Culver City, California.

The views expressed in this story are those of the author, and are not necessarily those of the Manzanar Committee.

Tagged: Grace Harada, Japanese American, Jenni Kuida, Manzanar, Manzanar Committee, Manzanar Pilgrimage, Sue Embrey, Sue Kunitomi Embrey

Manzanar Committee Statement On The Passing Of Civil Rights Champion Gordon K. Hirabayashi

Gann Matsuda — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:19:06 +0000