Good morning,
Wishing everyone is having an enjoyable long weekend and a meaningful Memorial Day!
GROWING UP JAPANESE IN ANAHEIM IN THE SIXTIES
I was relating to some friends the other day my brief experience learning Japanese as a child. It was some 60 years ago. A neighbor family—the only Japanese-American family in our neighborhood—had a boy my age. We played in with other kids in the neighborhood—often in the street and sometimes dodging cars, but that’s another story! My friend’s mother approached my mother and asked whether I might be willing to learn Japanese with her son. He would only take lessons if a friend was taking lessons with him. For whatever reason (perhaps both being from minority ethnic groups in otherwise WASP-y Orange County), she chose me. Although I recall sitting with his mother learning phrases and having a notebook in which I practiced drawing characters, I recall nothing else from these lessons.
As I was recalling the story to some friends, I started to think about this lone Japanese family on our block and started doing some math with the dates. At the time we were less than a generation removed from a war fought against the Japanese. What must it have been like to have been among the few families in Anaheim that traced its roots to Japan, particularly given the relative proximity of the bloody battles of the War in the Pacific?
Back then, we were only 18 years removed from the end of the Second World War. As a child, the war seemed like part of ancient history, barely distinguished in time from the Civil War or, for that matter, ancient Rome. To a Japanese-American family, the war must have felt much more recent. In fact, it was “just yesterday” in the scheme of things.
TIME AND PERSPECTIVE
How far were we away from this war, in which many of our parents’ generation fought? For perspective, from our current vantage point in 2023, going back 18 years in time translates to the year 2005. That year was four years after 9/11. It was the year of Batman Begins, Harry Potter and the merciful last movie of the ill-conceived Star Wars prequel. Green Day had just released Boulevard of Broken Dreams. Meanwhile, American Idol occupied the two top slots in TV ratings. The first iPhone still was two years from being released. There was no such thing as streaming. The point is that 18 years just isn’t that long of a time—and then again, it is quite a distance away.
So how must it have been to have been Japanese in America, so recently after a brutal war fought throughout the Pacific? How must it have been to have witnessed in movies the endless negative depictions of the Japanese in World War II? And what must it have been like to suffer the likely strange looks from neighbors, many of whom fought in the war against a country of your ethnic brothers and sisters?
THE CRUELTY OF THE TIME
The Second World War was fought against totalitarian regimes throughout the world—primarily the axis of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. A brief word on Germany: In the “cruelty derby,” one has to give the award to Nazi Germany for the holocaust. To this day, as many books as I have read, stories I have heard, museum exhibits, TV shows and movies depicting that era, either directly or in context, I still cannot fathom how a nation can fall under the thrall of such a sick and depraved leader and his comrades-in-arms. What makes it more incomprehensible is that it happened in one of the most enlightened, artistic, learned, civilized nations of the time—as it slowly and inexorably descended into the massive killing of fellow citizens and neighbors. But I digress…
There were war crimes and brutality in the Pacific War, as well. The harshness of Japanese troops in Manchuria (named “Manchukuo” by the occupiers) and their brutal treatment of Koreans during the period leading up to the broader war and throughout wartime both were awful. The war itself was as brutal, if not more so, than the war in Europe. Fighting was often hand-to-hand on little-known and inconsequential islands throughout the Pacific (consequential at the time, only insofar as their ability to act as jumping-off points for military operations).
In the meantime, people on the West Coast lived in fear of attack. Citizens organized to stand watch on with binoculars on beaches, worried about a Japanese invasion or attack from over the Pacific. Anger with the Japanese could not have abated that much in the 18 years since the war.
THE IMPRISONMENT OF AMERICAN CITIZENS
Fear of attack gave way to a jingoism that extended well beyond foreign nationals within our borders, to include our fellow citizens. Amidst this paranoia about the threat from Japan, America embarked on a program of separating Japanese citizens from their homes, jobs, and communities. Through the period of 1942 through 1945, Japanese-Americans were interned in “camps” in undesirable areas, as a result of the fear generated by the attack on Pearl Harbor. What America did to its Japanese citizens was incomprehensible and a gross abuse of their civil rights. Over 120,000 Japanese-Americans, most of them citizens of this country, were affected. Often overlooked is the fact that similar laws existed in Canada, Mexico and South America.
Curiously, no such overt racism and harsh treatment was displayed against Americans of Germanic. Fear, coupled with latent racism, is a strong motivator for people’s inhumanity. Racism, as we know, is not a stranger to America. Blacks were enslaved—not atypical in world history or even in the 19th century—but unique in its duration in America. There were racial quotas on immigration and racism to “the other”—particularly Southern European, semitic, and Asian people. This was all deemed acceptable to most people.
It’s hard to believe that in this nation, a mere dozen years before my birth, we rounded up our Japanese-American fellow citizens and imprisoned them, without probable cause or justification, where no crime had been alleged, much less committed. The story of Manzanar and other such camps should be taught in schools. It is important we know that, even in the most democratic of societies—one that prides itself on its equal treatment under the law—things can veer horribly wrong.
It may seem like long ago, but it happened during our parents’ lifetimes. Fear of “the other” causes people to do unconscionable things to each other. Of course, America didn’t descend into general extermination of fellow citizens (a la Europe in the 1940s or Rwanda or the Armenian genocide, or the killing fields of Pol Pot), but what happened was uncivilized, cruel, and un-American. While we tell our national story in schools, this dark period should serve as a lesson from which to learn.
For a good summary of the Japanese relocation program, the History Channel does a pretty good job: https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/japanese-american-relocation
JAPANESE AMERICAN COURAGE
Despite what they went through, most Japanese Americans remained fiercely devoted to their country. It is a lesson particularly apt for retelling on Memorial Day. I’m moved by this excerpt from an article about the internment: “In 1943, Japanese Americans who had not been interned were finally allowed to join the U.S. military and fight in the war. More than 17,000 Japanese Americans fought; the all-Nisei 442nd Regiment, which fought in the Italian campaign, became the single most decorated unit in U.S. history for its size. The regiment won 4,667 medals, awards, and citations, including 1 Medal of Honor, 52 Distinguished Service Crosses, and 560 Silver Stars. Many of these soldiers, when writing home, were writing to Relocation Centers.”
Families in relocation centers…and yet fighting for their country… An interesting story to contemplate on this Memorial Day.
Have a great day,
Glenn
From the archives:
When I went to the WW II Museum in NOLA, the tour started on the European front. I thought, nobody could be worst than that. Then you go to the Pacific side, and you’re not sure at all.