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
Category Archives: JACL
In Memoriam: Martha Nakagawa, resistance storyteller
This is one of the hardest things I’ve had to contemplate writing. These In Memoriam posts have mostly been devoted to celebrating the lives and marking the passage of Nisei wartime resisters and those whose lives they’ve touched. I know I’m not alone in still being in a state of shock at having to memorialize the life of someone so young and vital as Martha Nakagawa of Los Angeles.
Continue reading In Memoriam: Martha Nakagawa, resistance storyteller
In Memoriam: Holly Yasui
As a community we are grieving the loss of Holly Yasui, youngest daughter of Min Yasui and producer/director of the award-winning film, Never Give Up!: Minoru Yasui and the Fight for Justice.
“Greetings from Ground Zero” letter in Konch
My “Greetings from Ground Zero” letter from Seattle appears in this special pandemic issue of Ishmael Reed and Tennessee Reed’s Konch Magazine.
Continue reading “Greetings from Ground Zero” letter in Konch
“The Lim Report” now back online: the Mueller Report of its time
Thanks to your requests, we’ve spent some time to make “The Lim Report” available online once again. In many ways, it was the Mueller Report of its time.
Deborah Lim’s work was explosive for the details she revealed of JACL cooperation and collaboration with the government in our own wartime incarceration, its suppression of resistance, and its demonization of the no-no’s and renunciants at Tule Lake. Continue reading “The Lim Report” now back online: the Mueller Report of its time
The first Day of Remembrance, Thanksgiving Weekend 1978
Forty years ago on Thanksgiving weekend, we gathered at Sick’s Stadium in Seattle’s Rainier Valley to kick-start the popular campaign for Japanese American redress.
Here’s the inside story of how it all came together, and where it led. Thanks to Natasha Varner for commissioning this piece for the Densho Blog.
https://densho.org/the-first-day-of-remembrance-thanksgiving-weekend-1978/
In Memoriam: Yosh Kuromiya, the man who drew the line
The last major Nisei figure interviewed in our film is gone. We are mourning the loss of Heart Mountain resister Yosh Kuromiya at the age of 95. Continue reading In Memoriam: Yosh Kuromiya, the man who drew the line
What #Resistance Means Now
Documenting the history of Japanese American incarceration, and the resistance to incarceration, was always important, but it remained just that — history, something good to know about, to make sure that mass exclusion on the basis of race “never happens again in America.” But when rangers in the National Park Service have to go undergound, and Smokey the Bear is raising a fist in flames, you know something has gone terribly wrong.
We have just passed the tipping point and now live with an authoritarian American government. #Resistance is a trending hashtag. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich posts a daily “Resistance Report” on YouTube. Former sportscaster Keith Olberman rebrands his show on GQ as “The Resistance.” Reuters is instructing its reporters how to cover the new Administration as if it were a banana republic. And the story of the Heart Mountain resisters is getting renewed attention.
Thanks to host Bill Radke and producer Shane Mehling for having me on Seattle’s NPR affiliate today, on KUOW’s “The Record,” to connect the Japanese American resistance to the current actions in the streets. Here’s a link to the full 11-minute conversation, which has been well-received. As I said to Bill, I feel both validated that the Fair Play Committee is getting recognized, and appalled that we are now talking about a very real threat to Muslim Americans and Mexican Americans for the purpose of fulfilling a campaign promise to a resurgent white nationalism.
Continue reading What #Resistance Means Now
Access needed to site of the barracks at Tule Lake
None of the 24,000 Japanese Americans sent to live in the shallow volcanic lakebed of Tule Lake for the duration of World War II wanted to be there, but their presence makes this a National Historic Landmark.
In hindsight, an airstrip operating on a site of this historic significance is not an appropriate or compatible use, but before anyone could know that, the government after the war granted homestead rights to farmers, and in 1951 granted two-thirds of the main detention and barracks site to the city of Tulelake for an airstrip, which today hosts just one business, a crop-dusting service. It’s not easy to see without an aerial view, but the airstrip runs left to right in the photo below.
Continue reading Access needed to site of the barracks at Tule Lake
Tule Lake preservation gains national support
The irony was not lost on some, but kudos must go tonight to the JACL National Council meeting in Las Vegas, for providing the first national resolution in support of preserving the Tule Lake Segregation Center as a National Historic Site.
Continue reading Tule Lake preservation gains national support