Today is the 25h anniversary of the broadcast premiere of Conscience and the Constitution. It first aired on November 30, 2000, at10:00 pm on the Public Broadcasting System, presented by ITVS, the Independent Television Service. ITVS successfully placed the film on the PBS national hard feed, which meant the story of the largest organized resistance to wartime incarceration appeared in most major markets on the same day and time.
Continue reading For its 25th anniversary, find “Conscience and the Constitution” on a new streaming platform
Category Archives: “Conscience and the Constitution”
Asserting our history and defending civil liberties in 2025
On this date we’re in a strange transitional phase, preparing to defend democracy and civil liberties, books and libraries, history and knowledge and education, as they all come under concerted and coordinated attack in the four years to come. The example and literature of Japanese American resistance to wartime incarceration is more relevant than ever, and the script will continue to be written and rewritten to confront events as they unfold. Without question, we will look back at this time of relative peace and grace with nostalgia and a degree of anger at how we got here. However, we press forward, and here’s what’s on tap for the first half of 2025.
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REVIEW: “A Capstone Collection from a Beloved Historian”
“A Celebration of Art Hansen” was the centerpiece of the first-ever Nichi Bei Book Fest in San Francisco Japantown on July 27. Art and wife Debbie caught Covid from a cruise the week before so had to join us by Zoom in the Koho Co-Creative Space in the Peace Plaza, but it was still a celebratory event with stories told, tributes made, and city proclamations presented. Continue reading REVIEW: “A Capstone Collection from a Beloved Historian”
Video livestream: Three short films on the Heart Mountain resisters
May 11, 2024 will be the 22nd anniversary of National JACL’s apology in 2002 to what Paul Tsuneishi liked to call the “resisters of conscience.” To mark the occasion, Kimiko Marr and Japanese American Memorial Pilgrimages are producing a video livestream this Tuesday, May 14th, at 5:00 pm PDT/ 8:00 pm EDT that I’ve agreed to host. Continue reading Video livestream: Three short films on the Heart Mountain resisters
Now online: the Fair Play Committee files from the National Archives
This year we observe the 80th anniversary of the trial of 63 members of the Fair Play Committee at Heart Mountain for draft resistance, and the subsequent trial of the FPC steering committee for conspiracy to counsel draft evasion. Now, thanks to six years of work by staff of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation, we are able to view online the personal WRA files kept on those members of the largest organized resistance to incarceration, the story documented in our PBS film, Conscience and the Constitution. You can see the files by opening the box below:
Continue reading Now online: the Fair Play Committee files from the National Archives
In Memoriam: Roger Daniels, the dean of incarceration camp history
We mourn the loss of the dean of Japanese American camp history. Roger Daniels passed away peacefully in Bellevue, Washington, on December 9, surrounded by family, a week after celebrating his 95th birthday.
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REVIEW: “Interrogating the memoir of a resister”
Review of BEYOND THE BETRAYAL: The Memoir of a World War II Japanese American Draft Resister of Conscience by Yoshito Kuromiya, edited by Arthur A. Hansen.
University Press of Colorado. 234 pages. Hardcover, $34.95.
Reviewed by Frank Abe
Nichi Bei Weekly
July 21-August 3, 2022
Be sure to read the Endnotes to Yosh Kuromiya’s new posthumous memoir. They’re half the fun of reading this book.
Continue reading REVIEW: “Interrogating the memoir of a resister”
Interview: “(Nearly) Everything I Know about the Creative Process I Learned at Cowell College”
It’s been nearly fifty years since I graduated from Cowell College at the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1973. Organizers of the Class of ’72 reunion asked me to take part in their Alumni Week events and I will be glad to catch up with old friends.
Continue reading Interview: “(Nearly) Everything I Know about the Creative Process I Learned at Cowell College”
A season of professional development workshops
February was certainly a month dominated by speaking engagements around the Day of Remembrance and the 80th anniversary of the signing of EO 9066. My schedule for this spring and summer is lining up to be a season of professional development workshops to train the trainers, both educators and lawyers.
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The North American Post interview
In Seattle, the North American Post is the successor to the prewar Hokubei Jiji newspaper that Fuyo Tanagi helped edit, before she wrote the letter protesting the drafting of Nisei boys from camp for the Mothers Society of Minidoka. So it is an honor to be interviewed by Elaine Ikoma Ko in this wide-ranging exchange on No-No Boy, John Okada and We Hereby Refuse for the cover of the current issue of the Post.
Read the interview in the North American Post here.
Continue reading The North American Post interview