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February 7, 2000
WHY WON'T PREJUDICE GO AWAY?
Last week, I received a disturbing e-mail from a friend of mine who's active in the Native American community. It included an excerpt from the Winter 1999/2000 newsletter of the Association of American Indian Affairs, which reported that Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado was requesting a Justice Department hate-crimes investigation into a newspaper ad that ran in South Dakota, calling for an "Indian Hunting Season."
| Those words "Hunting Season" have been used before -- and they were aimed at people of Japanese descent. |
This announcement also quoted the ad, though most of the statements are so vile I can't make myself repeat them here. The newsletter toned down the hatred and explained some of the offensive content: "The ad declares open season on the Sioux reservations, sets a limit of ten kills per day and other regulations for where and in what manner Indians may be killed."
"For those that think anti-Indian sentiment and feelings are a relic of the past, I urge them to read this product of a twisted and hateful mind," Campbell told his Congressional colleagues. "At the turn of the millennium here in the greatest nation on earth, there are pockets of hate that continue to thrive. After my tenure here in Congress, I know full well the limits of government. I know we can pass no law forcing people to respect each other, or forcing them to be tolerant. But this ad goes beyond mere hurtful worlds and actually advocates murder and I condemn it in the strongest possible terms."
I applaud Campbell, who's American Indian, for his public stance and hope the Justice Department brings charges against those who wrote the ad, even if it was meant in jest. It's an awful sick joke if it wasn't serious, and I'm sure there are people out there who'd take the ad at face value.
But I actually don't think it's a joke, because those words "Hunting Season" have been used before -- and they were aimed at people of Japanese descent. And it wasn't meant as a joke back then.
I know this because of a visit to the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles' Little Tokyo district. The museum is housed primarily in a beautiful and gracefully-designed contemporary building across from its original home in a converted Buddhist church (which is now an extension of the museum). When I was there, the museum featured an art exhibit of paintings by Hisako Hibi, including some haunting images of the Internment experience as well as later abstract works. (The next rotating exhibit is a history of Japanese Americans in sports, which opens March 4.)
A large part of the museum features a standing exhibit that shows the Japanese American history starting with the immigrants of the 1800s and early 1900s, and then not surprisingly focuses for a large part on Internment and the wartime JA experience.
Among the touching personal artifacts on display are diaries, items of clothing, hand-made toys and memorabilia from the earliest Japanese American shops and businesses. But there are also remnants of the times that reflect the hatred that many Americans felt for anyone of Japanese descent during the war -- a hatred that was easy to aim at anyone with an Asian face or a Japanese name, whether the person was Japanese or American by birth.
The call for an "Open Hunting Season on Japs" on pins and posters carried a venom that poisoned not just the Japanese that the U.S. was at war with, but anyone on American soil that had roots across the Pacific.
It's the sad legacy of those times that Asians can't be easily separated in the minds of many between those of us who carry Asian nationality and those of us who are Americans by birthright or by naturalization. We all truly do "look alike" from a racial perspective, and that's why it was so easy for Americans to accept Internment during the war, and why it's still easy to make blanket statements that cover all of us even though we may be Americans. Immigrants from European backgrounds have the advantage of looking... well, European, and assimilate more easily into America's historically Caucasian society.
And don't think that the war was the only reason that emotions ran so high against Japanese people, or that those feelings don't still fester with those who bear hatred towards anyone who's not like themselves. Less than a decade ago, I encountered a couple of teenaged boys on the highway between Denver and Boulder who chose to play "road rage" with me, and when I finally cornered them on a suburban side road, their only reasoning for acting like idiots was my race.
"Go back to where you came from, you Jap!" was their battle cry, along with calling me a "chink" (they weren't particularly bright teenagers) and yelling at me to take my Acura back with me to where I came from.
I was pretty rude replying to them (it must be the American side of me coming out!), and in strong language I pointed out that they happened to be driving a Honda Civic, which was a Japanese car made by the same manufacturer as my Acura. We parted ways after much argument but no physical harm.
Those boys are probably out of college by now, and working and voting and raising families -- a scary thought. I wondered after I read Sen. Campbell's words if those boys could believe in something as heinous as an "Indian Hunting Season" or one aimed at "Japs."
I'm afraid they could. I wish I could make people like that visit the Japanese American National Museum. They'd get a lot out of the trip.
You can visit the Japanese American National Museum at 369 East First Street, Los Angeles, California 90012 or call 1-800-461-5266. The museum's Web site is at http://janm.org