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25 November, 2002
THE IMPORTANCE
OF
REMEMBERING INTERNMENT
Ask most older Japanese Americans about their camp experiences, and they probably won't respond with tales of campfires, canoes and archery competitions.
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The media may tout the accomplishments of the "Greatest Generation" that lived through WWII, but for the Nisei generation that suffered through those years under an unfair and unconstitutional act of the US government, accolades from the likes of Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather might ring hollow. Even if they have great accomplishments in their lives, there is a dark empty spot in the timeline that typical tributes to their generation can't fill. Most still find the "camp" years difficult to talk about, and many have buried their memories instead of airing them out.
But not the 600 or so attendees of the All-Camp Summit, sponsored by the Japanese American National Museum at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel on Nov. 15-17 in Los Angeles.
Many were former
internees and they were there to talk about their experiences and exorcise
their demons of long ago. The rest were people like Erin and me - younger,
interested Sansei, Yonsei and Gosei as well as a lot of non-Japanese -
who believe it's important not just to remember that the internment happened
and work to keep it from happening again, but also to discuss its effects
and how it still affects our community.
|
The media may tout the accomplishments of the "Greatest Generation"
that lived through WWII, but for the Nisei generation that suffered
through those years under an unfair and unconstitutional act of
the US government, accolades from the likes of Tom Brokaw and Dan
Rather might ring hollow.
|
JANM's mammoth effort was the first of its kind; individual camps have had reunions of internees for years, and individual groups are working to help preserve the camps as historic sites. But this was the first time a conference has been held that attempted to represent all ten of the camps created by the War Relocation Authority. The event lived up to its subtitle, "Ensuring the Legacy," because it didn't just cover internment as just dry history, but presented it from the perspective of personal anecdotes.
I have to admit that for years I thought that Japanese Americans have dwelled too much on the trauma of internment, and that as a community, we need to move forward while acknowledging that this injustice occurred in our past. My family doesn't have internment in its past, and I couldn't really empathize. But after attending the summit, I appreciate how important it is to maintain the memory of internment. Partly, it's because there are still too many Americans who don't know that this happened in our own country. But it's also because within the JA community itself, there has been a silence about internment that has affected the generations that have been born since the war.
One of the most affecting panels I attended during the Summit was one moderated by Satsuki Ina, the Sacramento-based therapist who made the powerful documentary, "Children of the Camps." She had the over 70 participants - most of whom had been interned as children - sitting in a circle and relating stories about their experiences. Some had not ever shared their memories with anyone, and they were inspired to speak and lift the burden of their stories by hearing others open up. For many, being imprisoned as children left them with hazy, happy memories, and only later in life did they begin to recall the stress and emotional turmoil within their families by the sudden uprooting and incarceration, and the effects of that stress not only on their parents' generation, but also on their own as they grew up, and even on their children's generation.
Dr. Ina, along with others such as Amy Iwasaki Mass and Erin Yoshimura, who are looking at aspects of internment in our lives today, are forging important new ground for the JA community. Internment isn't just an unfortunate thing of the past, it unfortunately still resonates and impacts us today.
The All-Camp Summit held panels on a variety of other topics, including the efforts to preserve camp sites for their historic importance (the National Park Service held a workshop, as did a group from Arkansas working on a project called "Life Interrupted" that will preserve the history of Rohwer and Jerome, the two camps in that state); ways to preserve your life history and family artifacts (I especially learned a lot in a workshop on how to find your family tree both in US government and Japanese records); life for those who not interned, and the experience of Japanese Americans in Hawaii; and two sessions with Tom Ikeda of Densho, the Seattle-based online archive that is aiming to be the definitive resource for oral histories about internment. One important panel, "Lessons: Connections Between WWII and 9/11," looked at current events.
Many of the panels and workshops were well-attended (I bounced around from room to room during some of the sessions), with 50, 60 or 70 people and more absorbed in the discussions.
The Summit also featured powerful speakers, including Dale Minami, the attorney who led the team that successfully reopened and overturned the Supreme Court cases against Fred Korematsu, Gordon Hirabayashi and Min Yasui for refusing to be interned for the keynote address. Attendees also heard from Ishmael Ahmed, executive director of the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services; George Takei, best-known as Mr. Sulu on "Star Trek" who is also a JA community leader and former childhood internee; Sybil Jordan Hampton, an educator who was one of the original public school students involved in the civil rights movement of the 1960s; and Hawaii Senator Daniel Inouye.
But for me, the many less-known and unknown individuals who took the time to talk to us not just in workshops and panels but also during receptions and over meals in Little Tokyo were just as powerful. Some were attendees, some were volunteers helping make the event a success. Some weren't even attending the Summit - they were family friends of Erin's parents, who were themselves interned as children.
Through these one-on-one conversations I heard more personal insights and experiences, and learned about situations I wasn't aware of (one family that had left Amache in Colorado to farm in Utah was forced to re-enter camp at Topaz in Utah because of racial harassment).
These conversations, the panels, workshops and speakers of the All-Camp Summit, as well as the helpful behind-the-scenes tours of the museum, have left me with enormous respect for JANM as an important institution for all of us to support. And, they've left me with newfound respect for internees and newfound understanding of the tragedy of internment. Like it or not, it's a part of Japanese American history and I won't be dismissing it in the future.
Here are some Web sites worth visiting
for more information on internment:
Japanese American
National Museum
Densho Educational Web site
The
Japanese American Internment
Exploring
Japanese American Internment
Children
of the Camps
A
More Perfect Union (Smithsonian Institution)
Rabbit
in the Moon