At the March 1 Lunar New Year banquet for the Seattle chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association, I was asked to say a few words as one of the chapter founders on its 40th anniversary. I felt I had to say what is apparent — that in the last six weeks our nation has been turned upside down.
I opened by reflecting on the excitement we felt in 1985 at the vision of a national organization of like-minded journalists who saw the news through the filter of our own Asian American experience, a group that could be stronger together, that could work with our editors and managers in the news media for fair and accurate coverage of our communities, and that might ensure better coverage by including more Asian American writers and editors and photographers in the newsroom. And I recalled how we talked bravely then about holding government accountable, the idea that our job was to “speak truth to power.”
Flash forward 40 years, and my remarks continued from there:
Frank Abe and Ron Chew. Photo by Rod Mar.
In just the last six weeks our nation has been turned upside down, and you in particular are getting it from both sides.
As journalists, there are people in power who want to put you in jail for doing your job.
As Asian Americans, there are people in power who want to erase you and your history or take away your citizenship for being an immigrant or a descendant of non-European immigrants.
Don’t let them.
With the weaponized hysteria over diversity, equity, and inclusion, you all saw how the Pike Place Market canceled the Day of Remembrance. I was glad to see how the public pushed back. But the real issue there was fear, their fear of the new administration and any association with the event’s themes of resistance to authority. The Market bent a knee and complied in advance.
The very idea of an Asian American Journalists Association, the idea of an Asian American *anything* in public life, is going to come under scrutiny and attack. What you do at your job tomorrow, next week, next month, is going to matter a lot as our democracy continues to unravel.
Let me frame this post and the embedded podcast below by saying the issue here is not to shame the Pike Place Market Foundation for backing out of hosting the observance of this year’s Day of Remembrance in Seattle at the market stalls, which before the war were three-fourths occupied by Issei truck farmers from the Eastside and Green River Valley. The Market should be held to account, and they have since apologized.
No, I believe the bigger story here is that this was the first local instance of a public event being canceled simply out of fear — fear of reprisals from the new federal regime in Washington DC. under Executive Order 14151, among the flurry of orders signed on the day of the inauguration of the new president, under the banner, “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.”
The weaponizing of the term DEI is just a code word for race. We’ve moved past the dog-whistles, this is racism out in the open clinging to the fig leaf of coded language.
Shareholders of Costco, the Kirkland-based shopping giant, won national acclaim for refusing to buckle under to this manufactured hysteria and standing behind its diversity-hiring initiatives. That was a bright spot for the Northwest. Then I saw this post in my Bluesky feed on Sunday, February 9th:
I was among those who reposted Kiku’s message with a “WTF?” KING 5 News in Seattle got a statement from the Pike Place Market Foundation saying that the DOR’s message of resistance to mass deportation “did not align with its purpose as a social service organization.”
I have no inside information, but the Tsuru DOR program was evidently aligned with the Foundation’s values after the election. It was even aligned even after the inauguration. It was only after the intentional chaos of memos cancelling Black History Months and Latinx fraternal organizations throughout the government and military that the Market Foundation got scared and bent a knee. It complied to authority in advance, no doubt to protect the millions they’ve received in federal grants for their important social programs.
After an outcry, former Seattle City Councilmember John Okamoto and others communicated with the Market, the Foundation, and some individuals in leadership. The Market Foundation went into crisis communications mode and came back with a statement of “Our Public Apology.”
Like all authoritarians, this administration will test how much people will accept and how far it can go to execute its agenda. Compliance in advance only encourages more oppression. Columnist Naomi Ishisaka of The Seattle Times today summarized this episode in her column, “Fear, not courage, on display as Day of Remembrance moved from Pike Place,” and accurately identifies this as a critical moment:
“This period in our country’s history is going to require tremendous amounts of courage to stand up for the best of our values and principles — against a federal government and its allies determined to destroy them. Many organizations and individuals have already acquiesced to the will of the Trump administration to erase trans people, gut all programs that could advance equity and justice, and, as New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie wrote last week, reinforce segregation in government and public life.”
My thanks to Feliks Banel for allowing me to vent on his Seattle-based podcast, Cascade of History, not just about the Pike Place Market and the DOR but more broadly about the need for schools, libraries, and public agencies to resist pressure from this new federal regime to erase history and the experience of people of color, immigrants, and all marginalized, non-white, communities.
UPDATE: Tsuru for Solidarity moved the Day of Remembrance event to Chiyo’s Garden in the Seattle Chinatown-International District. This one felt different from all those previous.
Mike Ishii of Tsuru for Solidarity speaking, with his sister Leslie Ishii holding a photo poster of their grandparents.
At the first DOR we created here in 1978, we were 2,000 Nikkei strong in remembering the camps and standing for redress with our families. In 2025, of the hundreds who packed the garden space and peered in through the gates from Nihonmachi Alley off Jackson, close to half were white allies who stood and nodded at the remarks with graven faces, standing with us as “the friends we didn’t have in 1942,” and all of us taking a stand against the white nationalist glee we’ve seen in the last four weeks at the permission they now have from national leadership to attack, demean, and marginalize immigrants and people of color on all fronts.
(from left) Erin Shigaki and her father, Vince Schleitwiler and his son, and Shawn Brinsfield.Shawn Brinsfield brought the actual duffel bag carried to camp by his aunt, Monica Sone
Those dressed in period clothing to re-enact the forced removal included Erin Shigaki and her father, Vince Schleitwiler and his son, and Shawn Brinsfield, the nephew of “Nisei Daughter” authorMonica Sone, who brought the actual duffel bag she carried with her from Beacon Hill to the Puyallup Fairgrounds, marked with her childhood name of Kazuko Itoi.
Kazuko Itoi was the childhood name of Monica Sone.
In an instant, the election changed everything. It has profoundly shifted the context of the work we do toward the darkness that is openly promised by a new president.
Who knew when we started the Day of Remembrance that I’d still be talking about it 45 years later. Nevertheless, here we are, hitting the road for five DOR events in 2024. For further updates as the month progresses, check the Events page. Continue reading Five Events for the 2024 Day of Remembrance→
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→
It’s not often a book gets four minutes of TV coverage, so check out this feature that aired tonight on KIRO7 News in Seattle by clicking on the image.
As documented in our new book, JOHN OKADA: The Life & Rediscovered Work of the Author of No-No Boy, the Japanese American experience was in some ways the reverse of this week’s child separations on the southern border. In our case it was the fathers — harmless men like the fathers of both John Okada and Jim Akutsu — who were ripped from their children and wives in Seattle on Feb. 21, 1942, locked up in the Immigration Detention Center on Airport Way, and then paraded out at King Street Station the morning of March 19, 1942, and put on a train for the Justice Department alien internment camp at Fort Missoula, Montana. Their children and wives reached through an iron fence and screamed out to the men in English and Japanese, not knowing if they would ever see them again.
I shared this story yesterday with this five-minute interview with the BBC World Service that aired in London and worldwide on June 20.
I realize there’s too much to focus on right now, between keeping kids safe from guns, the Russian indictments, and more, but February 19 is coming up. Please join Dale Minami and others in making this Day of Remembrance a Day of Resistance as well by signing this open letter. This is part of a national strategy for Japanese Americans who remember the camps to formally stand with Muslim Americans, led by the one-time coram nobis attorneys who are getting the band back together to file an amicus brief in the names of Korematsu, HIrabayashi, and Yasui as the Supreme Court rules on the Muslim travel ban.
