Back in the late '70s and early '80s, I taught a course named "20th Century Conflicts," about the diplomacy and wars of the 20th Century. That curriculum was about to expand as we went, of course, as we moved into the next century, taking on two more wars, one of which outlasted even Vietnam.
As we wound ourselves around World War II, we--that is, the Social Studies Department--decided to have some options about book reports we might want to have the students write about; not just any old thing, but something fairly germane to that war and things closely connected to it. So I thought that A Farewell to Manzanar was an excellent choice.
Short and simply written by Jeanne Wakasuki, it depicted her experience as a member of a family of Japanese-Americans incarcerated in an internment camp, the humiliation suffered by a group of true-blue, 100% Americans whose only crime was to look like the bandits who attacked Pearl Harbor and set us off to war with them. They were about as big a threat to our democracy and native soil as the bugs that bothered them in their tents.
The internees suffered a distinct lack of privacy, but they found solace in their mutual distress, as all prisoners do, justified in their imprisonment or not. The story ends kind of happily, of course, because it occurs to the government that not only will the Japanese Army not appear on American soil, but these harmless, perfectly patriotic people would not support them, as if they ever did. But the time lost to them, their once-thriving business and way of life, was pretty much irreplaceable.
That's partly why none other than Ronald Reagan, who otherwise started us down the path of national ruin, signed off on granting any of the survivors of Manzanar (located east of Fresno, California, on the edge of Death Valley, sufficiently detached from the Pacific Coast) and several other internment camps, one located as far east as Arkansas, $20,000 apiece in 1988. Of course, many of them had died by then, so the U.S. government got away with a bargain basement special. And $20,000 stretched out over 40 years really didn't amount to very much. But a Congressional committee that investigated the abuse concluded that it was racist, considering that the descendants of our other enemies, Germany and Italy, had not been similarly incarcerated.
So the gesture, the recognition of the unfairness and Reagan's official apology, was important. It was an admission that these people had been wronged. Unfortunately, the attitude did not live on. Overreaction to China's growing world importance, combined with the awful rhetoric of a stupid, racist ex-president, has resulted in some violent, unneeded confrontations in the streets of such cities as New York and Seattle, and injuries suffered by Asian-looking people who, like the temporary residents of Manzanar, are completely American and just want to live their lives happily and quietly.
Beyond that, the horrible influence of this awful man has led people at all levels of government to speak out against what they believe to be excessive diversity, as if such a thing could ever get excessive. Such people are in denial, again, because the numbers of non-white Americans are growing far faster than are the number of whites. It's like holding back a rockslide.
In the meantime, references to that growth are resisted. Another example has taken place here in the Milwaukee area, in the Muskego-Norway school district. A book called When the Emperor Was Divine, much like A Farewell to Manzanar in its scope and topic, was screened by a school board committee for Advanced Placement students and sent back to the faculty for reconsideration.
The reasoning, if it can be called that, echoed those who support the stupid ex-president. One school board member even wanted to re-emphasize the mentality behind the internment camps--that is, the attack on Pearl Harbor, as a decent explanation for removing these innocent people from their homes and jobs, located on the West Coast, just in case an invasion came and they decided to treason themselves against their adopted country. Again, these Japanese descendants were loyal Americans. Many of them were just as angry that their former country had slammed the U.S. Navy in a devastating, surprise attack.
Someone actually mentioned the "rape of Nanking" as a reason behind the internments. The two events are completely unrelated, unless you believe that normal, decent Americans would torture and kill other Americans the second their related barbarians hit our shores. That attempt to gin up paranoia, hopefully, got nowhere.
Actually, when finally given the opportunity, many of the Japanese-American men signed up to join the Army, which created a separate division of them, the 442nd, to fight against Axis forces in Europe. That division was the most decorated of all U.S. forces in the entire war. It was as if they somehow needed to prove themselves by fighting harder. One of those soldiers, Daniel Inouye, lost his arm before returning to serve Hawaii as U.S. Senator.
All of that seems lost in the current controversy. Another school board member complained that When the Emperor Was Divine contained "too much poetry," as if reading a book for an Advanced Placement course needed to have text, text, and pure text. Advanced Placement texts are written with advanced language. They posit complicated thinking, combining issues and viewpoints in a challenging way that flings a high school student into collegiate-level considerations. A little poetry wouldn't hurt a thing.
Some overreaction does, though. Trying to foster "balance" in the study of a conflict like World War II doesn't really work that well. Instead, it encourages the notion that there's something sinister behind Asians as a group, and Asian-Americans specifically. That's crazy. The leadership of the Japanese, as the Germans and Italians who were in power at that time as well, were made up of fascists. They utilized racial prejudice to inspire their peoples to fight and kill others who weren't of the same ethnic makeup.
Fascism makes one cold to the other forms of humanity which are evident amongst it. It lowers the estimation of the possibilities of others. It dismisses them as unnecesary. Would you like someone to find you unnecessary?
What we should be doing is emphasizing that in our history teaching, if only for the certifiably (by now) clear reason that such thinking is gaining momentum not only here, but worldwide. There is only one place all that is going, and that is to another world war. And the weapons we have now are far more frightening and devastating as the ones we merely scratched the surface with back in 1945.
Reading more, not less, about injustices like the Japanese-American internment can only help students who will soon turn into the leaders of tomorrow. It's not about just getting through a course en route to graduation. It's about adapting a compassionate, supportive mindset that accepts all people as fundamentally equal regardless of skin color. That we still have a way to go before that happens indicates the scope of the challenge. The quibbling in the Muskego-Norway school district won't help it.
Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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