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As "Japanese" As A Taco
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Never again:
(a) Lefsetz on Manzanar
(b) Official US National Park Service Website on Manzanar
(c) Jeff’s letter in the Lefsetz mailbag: Bob,
I've been enjoying reading your posts over the years, but never really had a reason to respond until now. I'm a fourth generation Japanese-American and I'm about as "Japanese" as a taco. I can't speak, read, or write Japanese. I've only been to Japan a few times and really haven't had a chance to connect with my roots. My friends often give me grief as being the "whitest" Japanese guy they've ever met. It's easy to lose one's cultural identity in the Land of the Free - and it's a conscious choice here in the Greatest Melting Pot on Earth. It's a beautiful thing. Really.
However, life was a bit different for my parents who grew up in the aftermath of December 7, 1941. On my mother's side of the family, they were already in Hawaii and were generally left alone. On my father's side, it was an entirely different story. He was "relocated" as the government called it, following Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 in February of 1942. They lost everything and were forced to leave their home in Long Beach with just a few belongings. They were moved to several spots in the interior of the country - my father sometimes jokes about how he has a soft spot for horse stables and chicken coops as those were what he lived in during the early part of his life. He was still fairly young at the time, but remembers how difficult it was for his mother and father.
In the post-war years, it was "best," as my father put it, to shed one's cultural roots if you were Japanese. He could speak decent Japanese, but never practiced in public. Instead, he became fully "Americanized." His family was lucky given that they were able to eventually move out of the camps since they found a farmer to sponsor them in Colorado. Growing up in Denver in the back of a laundromat, my father played on the "All-America" basketball team, and eventually went to college on the east coast, enlisted and fought in Vietnam, took his LSATs in Saigon and got accepted to Harvard Law, and later became the first Japanese to become a partner in a law firm here in San Francisco. Yeah, I'll admit it, I'm proud of my dad.
I recently lost my grandmother who lived to a ripe old age of 93. She never talked about the internment. My father rarely talked about the internment. Like my grandma, my father was never bitter nor angry at the government. They just moved on. Sometimes it's easier that way. Sometimes, it's easier just to be "American."
Thanks,
Jeff Yasuda
CEO
Fuzz.com
(d) After a harsh winter for her, her last one, we bury Jeff's grandma in the "Japanese Cemetery" next week. God rest her soul.
(a) Lefsetz on Manzanar
(b) Official US National Park Service Website on Manzanar
(c) Jeff’s letter in the Lefsetz mailbag: Bob,
I've been enjoying reading your posts over the years, but never really had a reason to respond until now. I'm a fourth generation Japanese-American and I'm about as "Japanese" as a taco. I can't speak, read, or write Japanese. I've only been to Japan a few times and really haven't had a chance to connect with my roots. My friends often give me grief as being the "whitest" Japanese guy they've ever met. It's easy to lose one's cultural identity in the Land of the Free - and it's a conscious choice here in the Greatest Melting Pot on Earth. It's a beautiful thing. Really.
However, life was a bit different for my parents who grew up in the aftermath of December 7, 1941. On my mother's side of the family, they were already in Hawaii and were generally left alone. On my father's side, it was an entirely different story. He was "relocated" as the government called it, following Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 in February of 1942. They lost everything and were forced to leave their home in Long Beach with just a few belongings. They were moved to several spots in the interior of the country - my father sometimes jokes about how he has a soft spot for horse stables and chicken coops as those were what he lived in during the early part of his life. He was still fairly young at the time, but remembers how difficult it was for his mother and father.
In the post-war years, it was "best," as my father put it, to shed one's cultural roots if you were Japanese. He could speak decent Japanese, but never practiced in public. Instead, he became fully "Americanized." His family was lucky given that they were able to eventually move out of the camps since they found a farmer to sponsor them in Colorado. Growing up in Denver in the back of a laundromat, my father played on the "All-America" basketball team, and eventually went to college on the east coast, enlisted and fought in Vietnam, took his LSATs in Saigon and got accepted to Harvard Law, and later became the first Japanese to become a partner in a law firm here in San Francisco. Yeah, I'll admit it, I'm proud of my dad.
I recently lost my grandmother who lived to a ripe old age of 93. She never talked about the internment. My father rarely talked about the internment. Like my grandma, my father was never bitter nor angry at the government. They just moved on. Sometimes it's easier that way. Sometimes, it's easier just to be "American."
Thanks,
Jeff Yasuda
CEO
Fuzz.com
(d) After a harsh winter for her, her last one, we bury Jeff's grandma in the "Japanese Cemetery" next week. God rest her soul.
Comments
The cruelty of the Nazi regime is one reason why I feel fairly disconnected from my roots as my grandfathers weren't people you want to be related with (and both of them were Nazis and did believe in Hitler).
Most spiritual philosophies say that you get your strength and energy from your anchestors - for my this is an ongoing fight - as said before I don't want to be related with these people. I never met my father's father and my moms father died when I was 2 years old. My father's mother escaped from her responsibility by choosing to be "a victim of the circumstances and her husband". My mom's mother decided to "not having known about the cruel things that happened" and she doesn't like to talk about the past at all. I don't feel guilty for what my grandparents did or refused to do - but I feel responsible that something like that will never happen again.
It is a mystery to me that the "white America" doesn't feel a responsibility to overcome the race issue and Guantanamo Bay detention camp seems to be accepted by most Americans.
You can't compare one cruelty/unjustness with another. I don't want to weaken the cruelty of the Holocaust by saying: Slavery + the genocide of the Native Americans + what happened to your folk should make the white America feel responsible to overcome race issues too. I can't understand that "proud to be an American" comes so easily from almost every American without facing the truth about the contradictory history of your contry. Doesn't seem to be a land of free from my point of view - at least not for all.
This executive order was absurd in a way. It must have hurt quite a lot of people who had fled from the regimes America was at war with.
D.S. - the issue of Guantanamo Bay is a huge issue over here and is totally Not acceptable to 100,000's + + + of Americans ... Here are groups consisting of collectively 100's of 1000's of people that are very ouspoken about the veil of bullshit our administration has tried to pull over American's eyes for the last 2 terms now :
http://worldcantwait.org/
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/detention/closeguantanamo.html
Congressman Robert Wexler = http://wexler.house.gov/ http://wexlerwantshearings.com/
On July 12th there is a REVOLUTION MARCH at Washington D.C. with keynote speaker being Ron Paul himself (he was the one that needed to become president), this is going to be HUGE..
http://www.revolutionmarch.com/Default.aspx?rnd=1897528264
Mr. Bush has never been my president. He gives the hand to the UN, The Supreme Court, wipes his ass with our US Constitution, blantantly disreguards the Geneva Conventions, admits to condoning torture = http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/LawPolitics/Story?id=4635175 , drills for oil in Yelowstone Park, Alaska, lifts bans on hunting endangered species of wildlife, installs the Patriot Act (or "Police Act" or "Spy on America Act") ... has put us in a recession, supresses scientific evidence concerning global warming and climate change in general, tries to pass the REAL ID act so we can all be tracked via RFID chips anywhere we go on the planet... the list goes on and on... I'd say he is pretty much pure evil wrapped in skin myself...
The sad thing is, over here in the land of constant consumption and chasing that dollar (and the administration wants us to constantly chase the dollar, work more and more hours so we can be soooo busy and tired that we don't have time to look into what our govt is actually doing), that many just simply don't care, or barely have time to think at all... then there are also many that do care , a lot. Like all of those links I just posted. I get the impression a lot of people just don't care or have given up... I post things about this stuff a lot here andd there and always get basically 0 response :
http://www.fuzz.com/fan/aquarium/blog/entry/hillary?page=2
http://www.fuzz.com/fan/Beradley/blog/entry/History-repeating-Itself
http://www.fuzz.com/fan/Beradley/blog/entry/OUR-ADMINISTRATION-WANTS-TO-ENSLAVE-ALL-OF-US-IN-CASE-YOU-DID-NOT-KNOW-PLEASE-WATCH (got 1 response here)
Also until very recently a vast majority of us had severly fucked up priorties as far as where our main focus's are or were... Things are finally changing as of lately (and could be too late - classic of course), but for the better portion of the past 7 or 8 years American's seemed to care more about fucking American Idol or who is doing who in Hollywood... instead things like waiging war illegally, our president basically telling the UN to go fuck themselves... killing our economy, killing 4000+ US military and over 1 million Iraqi civilians, destroying foreign relations, ignoring the stiuation in Darfur (obviously because there is no oil there)... things have absolultely been fucked up over here with our govt., but please don't think most Americans "accept" what is being done... Yes , we are supposed to have a democracy here, but the truth is we don't really have a say so in what our govt does. They give us the fair "opportunity" but do they actually listen?? Not to mention our electoral process is totally fucked and I have no faith in it personally... The case is we can be broken down into 3 groups concerning that issue:
1. the group that does care, but we have no say so in anything...if we really speak up the swat team comes out and gets violent.
2. those that do care but are either so busy they wind up not really caring anymore, or have given up on trying to do anything.
3. the poor souls that actually voted for Lil' Bush, but their pride gets them afraid to believe what their instincts are telling them, that if they really looked into things, they might have to change their views completely...and there for they choose to ignore reality.
OK I'll stop now...