By Sue Shinomiya, SIETAR USA President
It’s Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. “What better way to introduce this month to my undergraduate class in comparative Japan and US cultures than to take them to the Japanese American Museum of Oregon (JAMO)?,” I thought. After all, the museum, dedicated to the history of Oregon’s Japanese Americans, was having a special exhibit on Minidoka, one of the World War II concentration camps located in deep rural Idaho. (Watch Minidoka: An American Concentration Camp on YouTube.com). About half of my students are from Japan, so surely they will learn something new about the US during World War II. I offered pre-readings and videos to the students such as George Takei’s recent graphic novel-style autobiography They Called Us Enemy, and a range of cultural explanations. But I always forget to prepare for the emotional impact of this museum – it hits you in the gut to know that this happened back then, and then it hits again knowing that we have not fully put this in the past.
What became clear very quickly during the museum visit was that not everyone, including the US students, knew about this dark chapter in US history, or about WWII in general. Let me recap: After the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Empire of Japan, some 120,000 US citizens and residents, for the simple reason that they were born with Japanese ancestry, were rounded up and sent off to 10 camps in remote locations across the country. Amid wartime hysteria, “It’s for their own safety,” they said. “They are a threat. How do we know they are not spies?” said others. The families were given no choice, no due process, and only one week’s notice before being shipped off at gun point to camps in the middle of nowhere, allowed to take only what they could carry, losing pretty much everything they had. Many even valiantly signed up to serve in the US military, meanwhile their families remained imprisoned back home. After the surrender of Japan ended the war, the camps were closed. The imprisoned citizens were freed, given just $25 to go back “home” and start their lives all over again.
After a decades-long campaign by the Japanese American community, forty years later the US government finally acknowledged that the threat from Japanese American citizens had been unfounded. In 1988, then-President Ronald Reagan issued a formal apology and signed the Civil Liberties Act into law, with a small payout for each living survivor, proving that reconciliation for injustice isn’t unattainable.
Visiting this museum always leaves me feeling drained yet determined. How do I debrief with the students, who might assume that Japanese culture, with its collectivist and harmonizing tendencies was somehow to blame? Should I bring up Japan’s treatment of its POWs? They had questions. How is it that the US, that on the one hand professes to believe strongly in freedom, equality, and justice for all, on the other hand, when faced with a threat, can so easily and efficiently commit large scale injustices based solely on perceived and often only skin-deep differences? Cultures can be full of contradictions and dilemmas – and this intercultural course is only 10 weeks long! Talking about national cultures seems comfortable, and cultural models and values continuum can give us a good starting point. But we also need to bring up the points of discomfort and intersectionality: of people, heritage, culture, prejudice, social justice and circumstance. In this moment it is especially pertinent to use our frameworks to put a spotlight on our dark wartime history of US concentration camps and its impact not just on Asian Americans, but on all of us.
We look around today to see a similar phenomenon of mass holding facilities, once again being filled with people and families with the wrong accent, heritage, skin tone, culture or paperwork, who face an uncertain fate. Didn’t we say, “Never again!” back then? I was glad I took the risk of introducing this uncomfortable topic in my class and encouraging cultural curiosity. Igniting the discussion with intention is at least a small step in the direction of bridging and positive change.
Have a meaningful Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month!
Image credit: JAMO.org
