8.13.04
Friday the 13th and I’m in the office waiting out a storm. Hurricane Charley is down in Florida wrecking havoc along the coast. We’ve been getting hit by the remnants of the last big storm that passed by the area a couple days ago. There are also a bunch of other tropical depressions coming across the Atlantic towards the coast that might upgrade as well. Seeing all the doppler radar output and listening to the weather reports reminds me of Iniki, the last big hurricane to hit Hawaii back in 1991 (I think it was 9/11, kind of creepy). There is something about hearing about big storms that is intriguing and scary at the same time. I guess its been ingrained into my cultural identity to be wary of hurricanes.
Meanwhile another storm of sorts, a right-wing journalist has released a book in defense of the Japanese internment - working off of similar conditions we have today of war-time hysteria and racism we see today. I’ve heard of this writer before, after reading some of her articles spouting mostly rhetoric I kind of just shrugged her off as a person who has some serious issues as aspiring to the an Asian Ann Coulter. But her recent book, the implications of her arguements, and her biased depiction of Hawaiian history to prove a point hits too close to home to ignore.
Seems that she is using her ethnic background as an Asian-American, to give a sort of unspoken credibility to her arguement. Nevermind that a lot of haoles think that Filipinos are the same as Japanese all look the same whatever, some idiot on Amazon.com even posted that we should buy her book because she’s asian. She falls in that category of minorities who benefit from the freedoms that America stands for, and then turn around and shut the door behind them. As for being an advocate for profiling Muslims in order to prevent terrorism, she herself could easily be mistaken for a South East Asian muslim, and could be targeted for the very profiling that she advocates. This might seem superficial judgement at first, but honestly the internment was based a lot on facial features. I remember seeing manuals published during the relocation for Americans to distinguish between chinese people and dirty japs based on differences in physical traits.
Prior to defending the internment she’s published op-eds in newspapers heralding probably one of the worst war movies that claimed historical accuracy, Pearl Harbor by attacking the Japanese empire with angry rhetoric, going as far as to mockingly suggest that Japanese think that they actually won the war. From what I have been able to gather about this author, is strikingly similar to Iris Chang, the author of a book on the Nanjing massacre - they both seem to harbor a deep sense of hatred and racism towards Japanese. As Asian females they cater to the unspoken prejudice of Americans, as they can hide behind the authors asian features and shake their heads silently with vindictive frowns that America can do no wrong.
The author claims that her book uncovers unknown “truths” about the internment, that there were valid military and logical reasons for the policy, and that it was not based on racism or wartime hysteria. Her approach has all sorts of problems with it, by pointing to the legality (or constitutionality of Korematsu v US) of internment due to the fact that a large percentage of AJAs were not real “citizens”, while disregarding the immigration laws at the time that limited naturalization of issei.
One of the arguements in her book is that the concentration camps were not as bad as Nazi death camps, yet disregards that comparing Democratic America and Nazi Germany are like comparing apples and oranges, but both were driven by prejudice. She makes this claim by taking a historian’s quote totally out of context - in reality the passage she cites alludes to the binding sorrow of those who died in the Nazi death camps and those who died in relocation camps both died behind barbed wire.
The author points to the low rate of military enlishtment of AJA men from internment camps as proof of disloyaty, yet fails to put herself in the shoes of young Americans who were distrusted at first, singled out by race for evacuation and internment, and then asked to serve for a country that did not consider them equal citizens. She then goes on to minimize the struggles and sacrifices of the 100th and the 442nd, the MIS and the 1399th, suggesting that the 2001 upgrades of military awards were merely political pandering of liberal america reeling from collective guilt. Nevermind that several American statesmen, Republican, Democrat, and Independents have spoken against the internment as a dark stain on American history.
Another article joined Ann Coulter in accusing Transportation Secretary Mineta of mishandling airport security because of his childhood experiences in a concentration camp, and that the reparations movement in more recent years was unfounded. The arguement seems prejudiced itself, I seriously doubt it would come up if Mineta was haole. She goes as far to claim that in expressing concern with the current administration’s policies regarding Arab american detainees, Japanese Americans and Muslim Americans have united in undermining America’s safety.
Many of her findings grossly contradict with my own understanding (both academic and personal) of the Japanese relocation and internment. From the vets that I have talked, and their wives who lived through the internment, this author is grossly off base. I seriously question if she even bothered to talk to any of the survivors of the camps, and if she did, but still holds such a low regard for human suffering then she has got some serious issues.
My concern is that by pursuing her own political agenda while hiding behind her Asian American ancestry she gives her arguement an aura of superficial credibility. In writing this book she speaks to those who still carry closet racism and prejudice, telling people who still hold such beliefs what they want to hear - that the Internment was justified, necessary, and any lessons that we as Americans have learned from it can be disregarded and forgotten.
Of course maybe she’s just crying for attention. She submitted an op-ed/advertisement for her book to the Star-Bulletin coinciding with the JACL’s 75th anniversary “>being held in Honolulu. She starts off her piece by claiming that the JACL is not telling the truth about the internment. She’s become a token asian mouthpiece for Fox news, and other conservative/right-wing groups spouting a lot of venomous comments at a lot of people.