Day of Remembrance: February 19
Life being what it is-hectic and time-blurring-I last posted in LJ (or Dreamwidth) probably 18 months ago.
However, today is an important date, so important to me that I’m going to talk for a while and so I will need to use LiveJournal/Dreamwidth to expand way beyond the usual 140 characters I take up on Twitter.
Today is the Day of Remembrance, a date wherein Japanese-Americans commemorate the internment of their community. It was seventy-five years ago today that President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the incarceration of 120,000 men, women, and children of Japanese descent during World War II.
Among those 120,000 people were my mom, a 12-year-old girl at the time and my dad (a 2nd-year student in junior college) and their parents and siblings.
Possibly you have heard Japanese-Americans talk of “camp”. As you would have rightly guessed, we’re not talking about the kind where you go during the summer to become better cheerleaders or high-school musicians. We’re talking instead about the kind that has barbed wire and guard towers around the perimeter. With armed soldiers on duty.
Some people like to think that what’s done is done, and perhaps it’s time to move on after seventy-five years. I usually respond by pointing out that if we don’t remember history, we could end up repeating it-with all its errors and injustices.
I return to the topic of Japanese-American internment because Japanese-Americans are standing in solidarity with other groups who may feel threatened by the current administration's immigration agenda. One group that has become a target of the agenda is the Muslim community. The hostility towards everyone’s civil liberties is more evident as bigotry and xenophobia loom larger and larger on the horizon.
So as many other Japanese-Americans have done, I now say “Take a look at what happened in World War II to us. We know what it’s like to be scapegoats. No other group should go through that.”
And as so many have already said, I now say-and loudly, too-NEVER AGAIN.
However, today is an important date, so important to me that I’m going to talk for a while and so I will need to use LiveJournal/Dreamwidth to expand way beyond the usual 140 characters I take up on Twitter.
Today is the Day of Remembrance, a date wherein Japanese-Americans commemorate the internment of their community. It was seventy-five years ago today that President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the incarceration of 120,000 men, women, and children of Japanese descent during World War II.
Among those 120,000 people were my mom, a 12-year-old girl at the time and my dad (a 2nd-year student in junior college) and their parents and siblings.
Possibly you have heard Japanese-Americans talk of “camp”. As you would have rightly guessed, we’re not talking about the kind where you go during the summer to become better cheerleaders or high-school musicians. We’re talking instead about the kind that has barbed wire and guard towers around the perimeter. With armed soldiers on duty.
Some people like to think that what’s done is done, and perhaps it’s time to move on after seventy-five years. I usually respond by pointing out that if we don’t remember history, we could end up repeating it-with all its errors and injustices.
I return to the topic of Japanese-American internment because Japanese-Americans are standing in solidarity with other groups who may feel threatened by the current administration's immigration agenda. One group that has become a target of the agenda is the Muslim community. The hostility towards everyone’s civil liberties is more evident as bigotry and xenophobia loom larger and larger on the horizon.
So as many other Japanese-Americans have done, I now say “Take a look at what happened in World War II to us. We know what it’s like to be scapegoats. No other group should go through that.”
And as so many have already said, I now say-and loudly, too-NEVER AGAIN.