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Julian Saporiti and his Project No-No Boy

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Julian Saporiti and his Project No-No Boy

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I thought this article was interesting because it shows how No No Boy by John Okada still remains an integral piece of literature in the Asian American community. Julian Saporiti notes that while he himself is not Japanese, he found himself relating to Ichiro.

Saporiti stepped away from academia and turned towards music. Singing about topics like southeast Asian refugee camps and displaying images from the past. History should not be something that is only taught through literature and academia, but also through art. Saporiti does just that by traveling all over the world sharing stories about Asian Americans.

-Annabel

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Editor's note: This is one of several essays on The Margins exploring the legacy of John Okada's 1957 novel No-No Boy. Read the others here.

"It was strange, constant blue
and the same ghost every night..."
- Wolf Parade

In the winter of 2017, I started writing songs again. Music had once been my job, before I got burnt out and retreated to grad school at Brown University. I hadn't released an album in nine years. But after Trump was elected, something snapped. I lost interest in academic conferences and peer-reviewed articles or even getting a tenure-track job. I wanted to share my PhD research with a public audience. After spending years studying histories of oppression, incarceration, and refugees, I could see-illuminated by Trump's garbage fire of rhetoric and policy-the same shit happening again to new people.

So I transformed my research into songs. I wrote music about southeast Asian refugee camps, old Chinatowns, and sites of Japanese American incarceration. With a rotating cast of musicians, scholars, and artists, I have traveled the country, holding concerts at which I sing my songs, tell stories, and project archival images on a wall. The idea is to immerse diverse audiences in the mess of history. Songs can travel, and they can do things academic writing can't: live with ambiguity, inhabit small moments of emotion, provoke thought through metaphor, imagery, and swift juxtaposition.

I call the project No-No Boy. And after almost every concert, no matter where I am, someone asks me why.

I chose the name, in part, to honor John Okada's No-No Boy, the incredible 1957 novel that was just reissued by Penguin Classics surrounded by some disappointing controversy over rights and royalties. A lot of people call No-No Boy the "first Asian American novel." I'm not sure that's important, or even accurate, since "Asian American" wasn't a term until the late 60s or early 70s. But the book is immediate and visceral, and it gets at a deep feeling of being torn in two, which immigrant kids and minority kids-really, anyone who feels mixed up in some way-can relate to.

Okada writes about Ichiro, a tortured young man who comes back to Seattle after years of wartime incarceration-first in a camp for Japanese Americans, and then in federal prison. Ichiro was deemed "disloyal" by the US government, because he was one of around 20,000 people to answer "No" to two questions in a poorly-conceived loyalty questionnaire. To paraphrase:

Will you serve in the US military? No.

Will you forswear allegiance to Japan? No.

I'm not Japanese American. My mom grew up in South Vietnam. She left on a student visa after her grandfather, my ông cố, was assassinated.

Yet No-No Boy is one of the only novels in which I have seen myself. Okada's book is mired in melancholy, a perpetual state of not being able to let go of the old or grab on to the new. Ichiro is painted with guilt, resignation, anger, and confusion, cut in two with no reconciliation in sight. Like history itself, Okada's novel is messy, and this mess-with all of its contradiction and exhaustion-is honest and bewildering.

I was thinking of Okada recently, down in Texas. I was visiting Central American asylum seekers and the remnants of an old Japanese American incarceration camp. I met people who, like Ichiro in No-No Boy, are trying their best to maintain a tragic balancing act. People who are torn in two.

Among Japanese Americans, the term "No-No Boy" is contentious. Some might prefer to remember the men who said "yes"-the men who joined the military, helping to create a narrative of Japanese American military heroism. Recently, I spoke to the daughter of a jazz musician who was incarcerated at Heart Mountain, in Wyoming. "My father would be rolling over in his grave if his name was associated with No-No Boy," she told me.

But the stories of the No-No Boys have started to take on new meanings. For millennial activists in the Japanese American community, these are early civil rights stories, early examples of draft resistance. I have no personal connection to this history, save telling the stories of a few people who were in the camps and whom I care about deeply. But, as a historian and an American, I can think of no better entry point for examining this chapter of our collective American history.
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I met a No-No Boy. His name is Hideo.

Last summer, when I was in Honolulu to play a gig, I visited Pearl City with a few friends. At a modest corner bungalow, up the hill from Pearl Harbor, Hideo was waiting: a short, smiling Japanese American man, wearing spectacles and pushing 100. His family wanted to see "No-No boy meet the real No-No Boy." Hideo immediately handed me a beer, a good omen. As my friend Max later proclaimed, "Dude, Hideo-san is a fucking legend."

We feasted on a huge spread of Zippy's fried chicken, spam musubi, and too many delicious sides. We learned about Okinawan and Hawaiian history from Shari, a local historian, and Hideo talked about the war years. Then we played some music. I performed a couple of my songs for the small audience. My colleague Erin added harmonies, as she graciously did for most of 2018.

Then, as Erin and I sang about two teenagers waltzing in the root cellar at Heart Mountain, Hideo started dancing around the dining room with his family and friends. Everyone was moving in this cool Okinawan way called Kachāshī, which involves lots of swaying and wrists. Hideo got out his sanshin, an Okinawan version of the banjo-like shamisen, and shredded. I felt honored just to be there.

Hideo is kibei -born in Hawai'i, but educated back in Okinawa, Japan. He returned to the United States as a young man, just as the war broke out. Japanese Americans made up too much of Hawai'i's population to be locked up en masse, but young Hideo was considered dangerous because of his time in Japan. He was incarcerated at Sand Island with a bunch of Buddhist priests, Japanese language teachers, and community elders.

"They said, if you go to the mainland, you'll be free," Hideo told me. "They lied." He was sent to Topaz, a camp in the Utah desert.

When the loyalty questionnaire came around, Hideo answered No and No. "In Japan, we were taught that the emperor was God. How are you supposed to go against God?" They sent him off to Tule Lake, the segregation camp for "disloyal" Japanese.

Hideo was not outwardly angsty or moody like Okada's Ichiro. He wasn't a draft resister. Like most people in the camps, he was a person caught in the middle of a war, faced with tough decisions he had to make fast. Decisions that had no right answer.

Does Hideo have some feelings of resentment towards the government and how they treated him? Sure. But as we looked through old photos from his camp years, he laughed and told us about old friends. He talked about working in the mess hall. He spoke about daily life.

Adorning the small, square pages of a handmade autograph book, Hideo's cohort from Tule Lake scribbled messages you would find in any high school yearbook. "Good Luck, Buddy!" "See you around." And most strikingly: "Hideo, never lose that smile." Some version of this sentiment was scribbled on almost every page.

Hideo was a cook. He was an artist. He learned how to play mandolin and paint while incarcerated in four different camps. This was not Okada's tortured main character. This No-No Boy never stopped smiling. Today, when I think of the term No-No Boy, I think of Ichiro torn in two, but also of Hideo's complicated joy, perseverance, and musicality.
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Hideo rode out the end of the war at Crystal City Internment Camp, in Texas, just half an hour from the Mexico border. I wanted to see the place with my own eyes. So, during spring break, I flew to Houston and rented a car with two historians from Brown.

Our journey began in a nearly empty Chinese banquet hall, somewhere near Houston's Little Saigon. We had lunch with a friend's Vietnamese parents, Son and Thanh. "Eat more! You, eat. Yes! Eat!" Son told us. The squid, the chả giò, the rice, the pork, the chicken was shoveled onto our plates with a smile. In another life, Son was a sailor in the South Vietnamese Navy, protecting the doomed and temporary nation where my mother grew up. Son spent 10 years in a "re-education" camp after the communists took over. He mentions that only in passing, and then dishes out more food.

It's strange to look at people who have actually lived the history you've read so much about. Talking with Thanh, I can't help but picture her as a young woman, carrying a 6-month-old baby onto a desperately crowded boat, headed for anywhere but here, anywhere but home. They ended up in Pulau Bidong, a refugee camp on a Malaysian island that was once the most crowded space in the world.

I also think of my mother. Our family were longtime collaborators with the French, and had good connections and some money. My mother's grandfather held a position in the South Vietnamese Assembly. During the Tet Offensive, he was killed when someone threw a grenade into the family home. My mom was there. She left for Pennsylvania shortly after his murder. Sometimes I wonder whether she felt guilty for getting out before the rest of the family.

From Houston, we drove to San Antonio, and then to Crystal City. This camp was often called the "Family Internment Camp." It held mostly Japanese folks exported to the US by Latin American governments, as well as some Germans and Italians. These internees, many of whom were children with US citizenship, were sometimes used as POW trade bait by the United States.

As is the case at most of these sites, there is little left today. Three schools and some sports fields have been built on the grounds. There are some concrete foundations. A plaque, put up by the Texas Historical Society, white washes what happened here-pretty typical. My friend Diego wondered how locals feel about this history. "Probably the same way we did," I told him. We both went to middle school in Nashville, next to an old plantation where enslaved people once worked. "Disinterested."

Near the plaque, we met up with Matt from Justice for Our Neighbors, an organization that provides asylum seekers with legal aid and space in houses of worship. Matt also wanted to make a pilgrimage to Crystal City. After 10 minutes of walking around, a security guard rolled up. I thought we were in trouble, but he just wanted to show us other parts of the camp. We followed his white city pickup truck for about half a mile and came to the old swimming pool basin. There's a tree growing in the middle of it, but the huge concrete structure is intact.

Leading up to the trip, I had sifted through archival footage of the camp and found rare color films, showing people swimming and diving into this very pool. As we walked around, these movies kept flashing in my head. I thought about Hideo and what a relief a few hours in the water must have been. I also recalled a story that Nancy Ukai, a wonderful scholar and archivist, told me about two Japanese Peruvian girls who drowned in this pool.

Behind the basin, there is a huge metal tank which has been graffitied to memorialize the camp. Diego and I climbed on top of it. I lowered my head into the opening of the big empty container and sang a song I had written for our trip.

"I'mm goinnnnnnnnn' dooooooooooowwwwwwnnnnnnnnn..........
to Cryyystallll Ciiiiiiittttyyyyy........."

The reverb was gigantic, swirling and echoing. In the distance, Matt talked with the security guard. Diego took pictures. Our other companion, Juan, filmed the desolate fields stretching behind us.

We climbed down and I strummed an acoustic guitar, singing whatever words came to mind. As I sang, Kodachrome blue water rushed in around me. Prisoners from the archival footage swam all above me. I closed my eyes tightly. The vision stopped. It was time to go.
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In the 1980s, the US government finally apologized for incarcerating Japanese Americans during the war. And yet, within driving distance of Crystal City, there are many structures which detain and incarcerate new groups of immigrants, largely built on the same racial and cultural prejudices, economic fears, and media paranoia.

From Crystal City, we drove south to visit a refugee shelter called the Holding Institute in Laredo. Juan, Diego and I spent the day with the pastor who runs the shelter, Mike, easily one of the most inspiring and selfless people I've ever met. He toured us around the small compound, which caters to women and children who have been recently released from detention.

At the Holding Institute, waiting is what we saw. Heavy liminality. These folks were stuck in a place that didn't want them, but they couldn't go back to a home where they faced poverty or death. There was a palpable exhaustion. The kids seemed alright, watching Puss in Boots in Spanish or playing outside, but the adults were tired. Juan and Diego talked to a young woman named Anahi who had been kidnapped and robbed in Nuevo Laredo before making it across.

In the courtyard, I met a woman named Melissa. Born in Tennessee, she was blonde and sunburnt. Her husband had been deported back to Guatemala. She was stuck here because some folks back home told her she wouldn't need a passport to take a bus to central America. She did, and so did her baby son Caleb. They'd slept in a park the night before.

Melissa said she was hopeful that her last paycheck would get delivered to Laredo, so she could afford the passports and two bus tickets. It was going to be a month before their paperwork could be processed. Hopefully, her severely cracked cell phone would hold up. Hopefully, her rudimentary Spanish would do on the journey south. Mike was worried for her safety, and the baby's, but it was her choice. I've never seen someone so tired.

Mike took us down to the border, just a short drive away. "It's not a national emergency. It's a crisis of humanity," he said, looking at a bridge over the Rio Grande. "They've stopped letting people even set foot on American soil. They stop them right there." He pointed to a recently-installed checkpoint, halfway across the bridge. "Over the water, so they can't seek asylum."

He looked out at a father and son fishing in the river. "This isn't political," he said. "It's simple. It's feeding people who need food. It's providing shelter for people who need shelter...I see this as an opportunity for America's spiritual awakening."

That afternoon, I played a concert at the shelter. If you ever want to feel stupid and privileged, try playing a set of songs nuancing historical moments of suffering to a bunch of refugees. I had not thought this through. As Juan translated "boat people" into Spanish, I winced. I couldn't think of any happy songs to play. My mind could only focus on the children, and their eyes. As I sang, I saw their faces in old photographs of incarceration and refugee camps. I saw Hideo in the doorway. I saw my family by the altar.

After the concert, I felt embarrassed and useless. Luckily, in part because of the language barrier, people just focused on the music, which made me feel better. " Dile que tiene una voz muy bonita," Anahi told Juan, which lifted my spirits. She said that it was nice to just have some music, to have a distraction. We talked about visiting her in New Jersey one day.

That night, I ordered the "jumborita" at a Mexican seafood joint. "That sucked," I told the guys. "When I was singing, it was like double exposure. I kept seeing these faces from the camps. These archives and photographs and movies and stories, all at once. I was seeing projections on the walls, on their faces, all these ghosts just smashing together. My family. Everything at the same time."
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Last year, touring behind No-No Boy, I fell into a deep depression for the first time, and I began to feel haunted. All the stories and songs, town after town, the same ghosts every night. My brain stopped being able to make sense of the work. On tour, this became my constant state. My mind went places I had never known. Relationships crumbled. I reread Okada's novel. Ichiro's inability to relate to people around him felt relatable.

Night after night, I scratched at these histories with all their contradictions, horror, and psychotic repetition. Each concert felt like a blood-letting. Audiences would share their own powerful stories of trauma and loss. It was a lot to take in and too much to keep carrying. By Christmas, I felt completely isolated and ill. For several weeks, I did not want to wake up.

These feelings came back to me after the concert in Laredo. I said to Diego, "How is this still happening? They're the same everywhere, you know? These kids. They've always been the same. Man, I cracked. Singing up there, I fucking cracked."

The next morning, Juan got out of bed early and walked down to the lobby of the Red Roof Inn. He watched several men, sopping wet, dash past him and disappear. They had just crossed the Rio Grande. Shortly after, the Latino hotel manager asked him, "Did you see any wetbacks come through here?"

Before leaving town, we went to Walmart and bought all of the children's underwear, which is what the Holding Institute needed most. Juan bought a soccer ball to give to the kids, out of a mixture of kindness and indignation that a bunch of central American children were playing basketball. We dropped everything off and said goodbye. They were preparing breakfast for the 68 people who had spent the night there. At one of the picnic tables outside, a family was bundled in the yellow blankets every new arrival receives. We said adios to a few of the kids, got some hugs and high fives, and drove away.

We made one last stop, in Dilley, Texas. Dilley is home to the country's largest migrant detention center, which is disingenuously called the South Texas Family Residential Center. As we stood next to the barbed wire fence, Diego turned to me and said, "Man, if you told me it was the 1940s, I'd say we were looking at a Japanese internment camp."

At night, the detention center is visible from miles away. Stadium lights give it an almost supernatural glow. They are always on.

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The Ghosts of No-No Boy in a Nation That Still Imprisons Immigrants

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Editor's note: This is one of several essays on The Margins exploring the legacy of John Okada's 1957 novel No-No Boy. Read the others here. "It was strange, constant blue and the same ghost every night..." - Wolf Parade In the winter of 2017, I started writing songs again.

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I had previously thought that it was the U.S only that interned its citizens of Japanese ancestry. The Pearl Harbor attack was an attack on U.S soil. I thought that internment was uniquely an American issue. However, this video shows that that was not the case: approximately 22,000 Canadian citizens of Japanese ancestry were similarly displaced and interned. Their government had forced them to sell their boats and houses, forcing them to sign a form consenting to the sale. Yukiharu Mizuyabu, son of a fisherman, said: "We were forced to pay for our own imprisonment out of our own pockets, a requirement not even imposed on hardened criminals." Indeed, it appeared better to have been a criminal than to have been Japanese.

Muriel Kitagawa, a Japanese Canadian, wrote, "We are tightening our belts for the starvation to come. The diseases... the twisting of our souls... death would be the easiest to bear."

September 22, 1988 -- almost 50 years after the forced exodus -- Prime Minister Brian Mulroney formerly apologized for the internment and seizing of property Japanese Canadians faced during the war.

Take a look at the amazing photography exhibited in this short documentary. These were families assimilated to Canadian life: men and women in sharp suits and stunning pearls. But their epicanthic folds marked their otherness, their non-Canadian-ness, their non-whiteness -- the greatest blemish that no suits nor pearls could erase.

-Jenny

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Japanese Canadian Internment | Narrated by David Suzuki

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To remember the 75th Anniversary of Japanese Canadian Internment during the Second World War, Legion Magazine and David Suzuki tell the story of the injustices and atrocities done towards Japanese-Canadians across the country, and in particular, British Columbia. Visit www.legionmagazine.com for more information.

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Presentation/Lecture on Okada and No-No Boy

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Presentation/Lecture on Okada and No-No Boy

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I found this video about a week ago when I was taking a small break while in the middle of reading No-No Boy. It was incredibly interesting to watch the Japanese American National Museum put on this lecture about Okada, his life, and No-No Boy. The 3 presenters were Frank Abe, a journalist and producer of the PBS documentary Conscience and the Constitution; Greg Robinson, professor of history at Université du Québec a Montréal; and Brian Niiya, Content Director of Densho.org.

One thing I found quite interesting was the fact was the title of No-No Boy was most likely thought of by Charles Tuttle, Okada's publisher, rather than himself, since he did not title the novel when he first drafted it. Additionally, through his text, the way he used "No-No" could also be thought of as taboo, not just as "no" and "no" on the answers. I also liked hearing about how other Nisei share their first reactions to the book, a few of which were actually negative: not liking the book overall, disliking Ichiro's character, thinking him weak, and hating how the only character in the novel who had thoughts and feelings toward Japan was a crazy woman. Another discussion point brought up was whether or not Ichiro's self rants were self-hate or if it was the author's way to create self reflection and perhaps not such a one dimensioned character.

- Leo

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John Okada: The Life and Rediscovered Work of the Author of No-No Boy

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Interview with Internment Camp survivor 

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Interview with Internment Camp survivor 

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https://www.npr.org/2016/12/07/504602293/at-92-a-japanese-american-reflects-on-the-hardships-of-internment-camps

I thought this article was interesting because the novel No-No Boy did not delve into details about the conditions of the internment camps. Seeing her age reminded me that we only have a limited time to talk to survivors and uncover history that has been ignored.
-Carolina

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When the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga (then Aiko Yoshinaga) was a senior at Los Angeles High School.

She remembers the day the following spring that her principal took the Japanese students aside and said, "You're not getting your diplomas because your people bombed Pearl Harbor."

Japanese-American families on the West Coast were rounded up and sent to internment camps. Yoshinaga was worried that she would be separated from her boyfriend, so to the horror of her parents, Yoshinaga and her boyfriend eloped.

The Yoshinaga family was sent to the Santa Anita, Calif., detention center, and later to Jerome, Ark. Meanwhile, Yoshinaga and her new in-laws were sent to Manzanar, near Death Valley. Yoshinaga remembers their first day as hot and dusty, even though it was only April. The barracks where the family lived were crowded and sparsely decorated.

"The only thing that was in the 'apartments' when we got there were army metal beds with the springs on it, and a potbellied stove in the middle of the room," Herzig-Yoshinaga says. "That was the only thing. No chest of drawers, no nothing, no curtains on the windows. It was the barest of the bare."

She remembers being given a canvas bag and being told to fill it with hay for use as a makeshift mattress.

"In my case, I had never even had sex before I went into the camp. And trying to make love on a noisy, hay-filled canvas bag was just a joke!" she says.

The families eventually created room dividers out of sheets and began making a life in the Manzanar War Relocation Center. Yoshinaga gave birth to her daughter in the camp.

Not long after, she received word from her family in Arkansas that her father was gravely ill. Yoshinaga requested a transfer of camps and traveled, with the child her family had never met, to Arkansas.

"As we were pulling into the camp, [an] ambulance was taking my father to the hospital," she said. "So I grabbed my daughter and went to see him. And that was the one and only time he got to see her because he died sometime after that."

Her father died before the Japanese were freed from the camps. Yoshinaga says that it was years before she questioned the legality of the internment camps and detention centers.

It wasn't until she was living in Washington, D.C., with her third husband, Jack Herzig, that she started looking into her family's personal history in the camps. Her research broadened and she joined the redress effort, working to bring reparations to Japanese-Americans who lived in the camps.

In the course of her research, she discovered a report which quoted a government official saying that there was no national security reason for incarcerating the Japanese-Americans during the war.

"I think until then, it was mostly like, 'You know this was just an honest mistake that we put these people into camps,' " says Martha Nakagawa, who helped process Herzig-Yoshinaga's papers into the library at the University of California, Los Angeles.

"Without Aiko, the passage of the redress bill would not have gone as smoothly," she says. "It would have been difficult to prove that the government had done any wrongdoing."

The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 was signed by President Ronald Reagan, who said that it was a mistake for the government to incarcerate Japanese-Americans without trial during the war. It awarded victims and their families $20,000 and, perhaps more importantly, an apology.

At 92, Herzig-Yoshinaga now lives in Los Angeles - the place her family called home before they were forced out. She eventually did get her high school diploma, and her suburban home is filled with pictures of loved ones.

But she also has a black-and-white photo on her dining room wall of a jagged mountain landscape. In the foreground are rows and rows of barracks and barbed wire fences that made up the Manzanar War Relocation Center.

She says she worries now, when she hears people talk about creating a registry for all Muslims in the United States.

"We haven't learned from all these lessons!" she says. "It's happened once, and unless you are careful it could happen again."
NPR's Katrina Alarkon contributed to this story.

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At 92, A Japanese-American Reflects On The Lessons Of Internment Camps

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When the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga (then Aiko Yoshinaga) was a senior at Los Angeles High School. She remembers the day the following spring that her principal took the Japanese students aside and said, "You're not getting your diplomas because your people bombed Pearl Harbor."

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This is an interview with Professor Josephine Park, who studies poetry written by and related to interned Japanese Americans. There are a lot of poems from the Japanese people interned in these camps, and historians have often paid close attention to those written by children, as well as examining the poetry in general to get a sense of the attitudes and concerns of those affected by internment. I like this interview especially because Park discusses both the work of the Japanese artists as well as how we might view such poetry and resistance nowadays.
-Amy

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I've been looking at Japanese-American poetry in the past, from the activist Asian-American poets of the late '60s early '70s who had the experience of internment, but as children. They're typically born in the U.S., and that's how they became artists. It's not typically people who came from Japan and are laborers; the first generation of working-class people typically don't become artists. It's the second generation.

For that reason, now, in returning to internment, I'm interested in the adult experience of it. There has been much more writing on the experience of children in internment, or in what literary studies we've come to call the 'post memories' of internment: subsequent generations who go back and look at their grandparents' experience, something like that. There's a lot of post-reconstruction or imagining, especially because the adults who endured internment didn't always talk about it with their families, in subsequent generations. There's been a lot of focus on that. Now, in my research, I'm interested in that adult.

That's interesting. It's like a secondhand account even though there were firsthand accounts.

That's very typical, the concept of post-memory. That's very well-known through the Jewish experience of World War II. Right? The Holocaust, the fact that's a memory that seems to linger in families even for a generation that hasn't experienced it. You can see that among Japanese-American literature. It will often feature an account of internment even though they were born way after.

I'm surprised there are so many people doing poetry in the camps.

This is an important point. Internment was-it was a concentration camp and people were essentially prisoners of war, held by the military. But it was also a New Deal public works project. The War Relocation Authority, the WRA, who ran the internment camps, that followed the lines of the New Deal programs. The person who instituted the camps was FDR. It's very interesting to think of internment as a liberal social policy-which it was. At the same time, it's a wartime repressive formation. And a very important part of that liberal ethos, in a way, of the camps, disturbing as it is, there was an education system and there were classes on Americanization and culture, but the incarcerated population also set up their own schools.

Of course, they had to put their kids in school. Internment lasted three or four years, but for them it could have been forever. They didn't know. They were rounded up. They set up schools for the children, etc., but one thing really prominent was art classes. There were many art classes, you can find many cases of crafts in particular. Japanese-Americans tended to be in agricultural labor because of where they were recruited in Japan, largely to work in Hawaii on plantations. They tended to have a background in agriculture. And so, you see incredible examples of gardening and landscape work even in the camps, which often were in desert environments, which would be very hard to create these kinds of landscapes.

But, in addition to that, there is a longstanding association with Japanese and aesthetic achievement, and the concepts of Japanese as aesthetes was quite a well-known assumption in the U.S., which I think lingers to this day. You might think a Japanese person has especially artful powers, but why? It's very weird. But there are interesting reasons for that.

Japan is certainly known to export its culture.

It's also just that the aesthetic achievements of Japan were very highly regarded in the West. If you look at the late 19th century, there's an obsession with Japanes crafts at World's Fairs. To this day, we revere Japanese craftsmanship. And in the Gilded Age, Japan was a rising empire in the Pacific that would then be a major competitor, but there was a kind of romance between the U.S. and Japan, a sense of competition, that this is a place in Asia that modernized itself, and it didn't feel like the more 'differently' orientalist presentation of China, [perceived] as a backward and dusty and ancient race. Instead, the Japanese were rendered as a highly aesthetic race.

But one of the problems with that formation was you often see this idea of the Japanese as aesthetes, but also as warriors. The great anthropologist Ruth Benedict had this wartime study of Japanese commissioned, called 'The Chrysanthemum and the Sword.' And that was a very typical characterization of Japanese, that they were great at flower-arranging but also very good with swords.

Anyway, there was a real premium on poetry and the visual arts and crafts, and obviously that's a characterization of Japan, but you can see that in immigrant populations. There were some very prominent artists within the Japanese-American community and there are examples of art schools formed. You have case after case of flower-arranging classes or painting; there was a lot of art. And there were Japanese language newspapers in the U.S., before the war, and they would typically have a poetry section. There would have been someone who was a tomato farmer who had also potentially written a haiku. This would not be crazy to think of. Even in the activist period there was a pretty lively attempt to collect Japanese poetry, composed in the camps.

How are you finding these clippings?

I will say, first of all, I don't [speak] Japanese. I'm an Asian-American and it's a major weakness in my file. [Laughs] But I'm especially interested in-there were some newspapers published during internment and there's a literary journal called Trek, up at one of the camps called Topaz. That was a camp that probably has had a lot of focus, because Topaz, Utah, is where most of the people from the Bay Area went, and the Bay Area had a class of literati, and Topaz had many more artists and writers.

Trek [contains] art and writing. But there are many accounts of internment in diaries and autobiographical accounts of internment that include Japanese verse.

I'm interested in how that poetry can be an active thing to do in that period. We can think of poetry as being politically quiet, or a diversion, or an aesthetic escape, all those things-it's important for art to serve those functions if it needs to, but I think a lot of the poetry I'm looking at I see as an active way of working through their condition of incarceration.

More contemplative and quiet?

I'm resisting the sense that it's quiet. I want to say I see it as a very active engagement with their situation and not an escape from it. I see it as a really important mode of thinking through the condition of incarceration.

What's struck you from what you've found so far?

There's an understudied poet named Toyo Suyemoto, and her poetry, she was an incredibly learned poet and a wide-ranging reader, knowledgeable about English and American, Western, poetry, and she published her poetry from behind barbed wire during internment. Which makes her really important.

She was a young woman, in her 20s. She had her infant son with her. I'm really interested in her poetry for how she's using strict verse form, in which she's kind of thinking through the conditions of her incarceration. One thing I really appreciate about her is there's a posthumously published memoir of her internment experience, a moving document, and that's become really important in my research. In it, she talks about what it's like raising a 5-month-old baby in the camp, but also about her mother. Her mother's generation and some connections she sees between the third and first generations. She's not the kind of poet we've read in Asian-American literature where we've learned of an activist poet who's doing a really resistant, anti-governmental stance.

But [I'm interested in] poets like her. She's using pretty strict verse form, writing about the environment of camps, really paying attention to the adult experiences of the camps. And then I'm looking at the second generation, or people writing in English, conveying the experience of the first generation and how attentive they are to the nature they encounter in the camps. I'm interested in this great artist named Chiura Obata, a professor at Berkeley and a fine arts painter before he was interned. He taught art classes and he drew for that literary art magazine Trek. And for him, after being interned, he said that, for him, he learned something about nature in that experience. And he was deeply moved by the beauty of the Utah mountains.

That's telling he wasn't more bitter.

Exactly. And he did paintings about the experience of internment, and you can see the barracks and it's interesting, but he had incredible paintings of the mountains. Obata had this concept of Great Nature, and for him all of life-but especially for art-the teacher is Great Nature. And that's the wellspring. And to see that this sense of Great Nature could be a resource for him at the camps is incredibly important. There's a lot of scholarship on Obata, so it's not that he's been neglected, but scholars have been, for obvious reasons, attuned to that resistance to the camp experience-which is horrible, outrageous.

But I think Obata's management of his time in the camps through his aesthetic appreciation, that appreciation of one situation does not have to be-we don't have to critique that as being apolitical or insufficiently attuned to the experience. If anything, the embodied situation of the camps becomes more acute, in a way, through this aesthetic work. And I also think it's consoling, right? That there is a consoling benefit to it, and I think that we can be too hasty in thinking that consolation is also politically quiet or conservative. I don't think it has to be. In fact, I think consolation is an active way of engaging with your experience.

In my research, I've looked at Western theories of consolation, which is an ancient genre that goes back to Greek and Latin roots. But in that case consolation is a highly reasoned set of arguments that work through grief. If you console someone on the death of their wife, it's 'Oh, she had a good life.' You sit back and reason through. I see a lot of this aesthetic engagement as a reasoning-through-it's not rationalizing, they don't think they should be incarcerated. But it's, 'I'm in this situation. There's a beautiful moon tonight.'

For me, it's interesting to reconsider the expressions of internment. I'm interested in what kind of resources it can offer to have this aesthetic reaction.

I imagine few people have looked at this? It's specific.

It is kind of specific. There are a lot of really important artists, Japanese-American artists, interned. So, there is a good amount of scholarship. Obata, certainly. But I'm hoping that the kind of framing I want to put on it is interesting.

Thinking about Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, is there room to educate the public about what this might all mean, broadly?

I think it's really important. I'm thinking about ways to contextualize my interests to suggest ways it may be broader than my little interest. On the one hand, there is a whole universe of prison poetry, right? And poetry and incarceration go hand in hand. You can go back to the earliest ancient tradition and see poetry of exile, prison poetry from the start. And you will see that aesthetic expression is actually necessary. It's not like a pastime. It is necessary.

The African-American tradition, those are amazing poets. And the case of internment I can certainly fit into the larger category of prison poetry and think about the kind of function poetry had and why it may be necessary for that situation of incarceration.

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English professor explores poetic expressions of Japanese-American internment | Penn Today

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I've been looking at Japanese-American poetry in the past, from the activist Asian-American poets of the late '60s early '70s who had the experience of internment, but as children. They're typically born in the U.S., and that's how they became artists.

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As I was looking for contemporary pieces to relate to No-No Boy, I came across this group called the "No-no Boy." I was immediately captivated by the folklore style music and the intro lyrics of the first song called "St. Denis or Bangkok, From a Hotel Balcony"- "Soft language barriers, child of an immigrant, before the banh mi trucks were cool, lunch table embarassment..." The song is about Julian's (the lead singer) grandmother. Julian takes inspiration for his music, through his family's experience of living through the Vietnam war and he expresses his feelings of being a "No-no boy" through his art.
-Selena

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No-No Boy - Full Performance (Live on KEXP at Home)

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Interview with a Japanese-American Internment Camp Survivor

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Interview with a Japanese-American Internment Camp Survivor

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In this video, Shokichi "Shokes" Tokita narrates his experience in a Japanese internment camp to kids of various ages. I chose to share this video because it showcases the real life story of someone who lived through what Ichiro experienced. Although Shokes isn't a "No-No Boy", his story reflects Ichiro's in many ways because of how he felt shunned from society and abandoned by America - his home. I was especially shocked to learn that he and his family (total of 8 people) had to live in the poor conditions of their internment camp for 3 years, losing their business, house, and more in the process. I also wanted to share this video because I thought it contrasts the linear sense of identity we saw perpetuated in No-No Boy. There was a sense of pressure from Mrs. Yamada and many of those around Ichiro to "choose" one identity. I think this video is a reflection of the progress we, as a society, have made to slowly change that narrative. Now, we're having more open conversations on having mixed identities and the dark history of the US. Exposing these kids to these kind of conversations reflect a step in the right direction for shaping and educating the future generations.
- Anica

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Kids Meet a Survivor of the Japanese-American Internment | Kids Meet | HiHo Kids

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The Amache National Historic Site Act interests me greatly—I think it is really important for the United States to acknowledge its history rather than just pretend these injustices never happened. The article mentioned that the Amache Historical Site is “an unparalleled opportunity for Coloradans and Americans to learn about the horrors of Japanese internment, and ensure that our collective memory of these atrocities does not diminish with time.” Exposure to the history is important because I know for myself, the Japanese internment aspect of WWII was not really discussed much in the classroom in high school—it was not really until this class that I truly learned about the subject more in depth. - Olivia

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GRENADA, Colo. (CBS4) - A former Japanese internment camp in southeastern Colorado is one step closer to becoming a national park. Camp Amache is found near Grenada, in southeastern Colorado.

According to a tweet from Colorado Congressman Ken Buck, the Amache National Historical Site Act has passed out of a Senate subcommittee. Buck is calling for the bill to make it to President Joe Biden's desk.

The Amache National Historic Site Act recognizes injustices committed against Japanese Americans placed in internment camps and preserves the site for future generations. I am grateful that the Senate subcommittee voted to support the bill. Let's get it to the President's desk!

- Rep. Ken Buck (@RepKenBuck) October 6, 2021

"The Amache National Historic Site Act recognizes the awful injustices committed against Japanese Americans who were placed in internment camps, while preserving the site for the citizens of Colorado - and the United States - to visit and learn from in the future," said Buck in a statement. "I am grateful to my colleagues in the House for voting to pass the act and applaud my colleagues on the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources for moving it forward. I hope our Senate counterparts continue to prioritize swift passage for those who were detained at Camp Amache, and their families."

The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources heard the bill, with Sen. John Hickenlooper speaking in favor of the bill at Wednesday's hearing.

"The Amache National Historic Site would provide an unparalleled opportunity for Coloradans and Americans to learn about the horrors of Japanese internment, and ensure that our collective memory of these atrocities does not diminish with time," Hickenlooper said while discussing the bill with a National Park Service witness.

Lawmakers representing Colorado are pushing for the bill to make the camp's history more visible to the general public. Sens. Michael Bennet and Hickenlooper and Reps. Ken Buck and Joe Neguse introduced the Amache National Historic Act earlier this year to make sure the camp is more than a footnote in history.

"The forced removal of Japanese Americans during World War II to incarceration facilities like Amache is a shameful and dark period in American history that we must never forget," said Bennet in a statement. "Adding Amache to the National Park System preserves its story to help future generations learn from our mistakes. I'm glad the Senate held a hearing on this important bill, and I'll continue working to get this over the finish line."

"The landscapes, cultural places, and stories we choose to protect reflect our values as a nation. And the story of Amache is an important one, " said Neguse, Chair of U.S. House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands, in a statement. "As Chair of the U.S. Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands I was proud to usher our bill to designate the Amache National Historic Site through the House in a matter of months. I urge the Senate to move with the same swift urgency to consider and pass this bipartisan bill. Designation of Amache as a National Historic Site will help us to honor and preserve the stories of many survivors who lived through this dark moment in our nation's history, and provide education and healing for future generations. Our bill has broad, expansive support and completing the designation will honor all Amache survivors and descendants."

Gov. Jared Polis sent a letter to the National Park Service to express his support for the designation.

"As a former Amachean and as a volunteer for the Amache Field School, I have learned the importance of having Amache as a National Park unit, as it would illustrate the hardships and the perseverance of the incarcerated people. It would also point to the injustice of their being placed there, simply because of their ethnicity, not because of what they had done. Most importantly, it would signify the reasons that further groups, such as Muslims, should not be treated as were the Japanese Americans-there have been hints of this in current times," said Carlene Tanigoshi Tinker, Amache survivor, in a statement.

About 7,500 Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from their homes in the 1940s, after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Two-thirds of them were U.S. citizens.

The Amache site was one of 10 illegal internment camps created during World War II.

According to Congress, "This bill establishes the Amache National Historic Site in Colorado as a unit of the National Park System to preserve, protect, and interpret for the benefit of present and future generations resources associated with the incarceration of civilians of Japanese ancestry during World War II at Amache, also known as the Granada Relocation Center, and the military service of incarcerees at the Granada Relocation Center."

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Amache National Historical Site Act Moves Forward In Senate

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GRENADA, Colo. (CBS4) - A former Japanese internment camp in southeastern Colorado is one step closer to becoming a national park. Camp Amache is found near Grenada, in southeastern Colorado. According to a tweet from Colorado Congressman Ken Buck, the Amache National Historical Site Act has passed out of a Senate subcommittee.

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Darren Barnet Was “Overjoyed” to See Fans’ Reaction to Paxton’s Japanese American History Project in Never Have I Ever

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Darren Barnet Was “Overjoyed” to See Fans’ Reaction to Paxton’s Japanese American History Project in Never Have I Ever

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When we began discussing Japanese internment in class, it reminded me of this scene from the Netflix show Never Have I Ever. I couldn't find the clip, but this article goes into the significance the character researching his family history had for the actor and many fans.

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To say that Team Paxton had a good run in season two of Netflix's Never Have I Ever is an understatement. The latest season of Mindy Kaling's beloved teen comedy, released earlier this summer, spends ample time focusing on Sherman Oaks High School's resident teen heartthrob, Paxton Hall-Yoshida ( Darren Barnet), revealing that he's much more than just a pretty face.

In season two, Paxton goes on a journey of self-discovery after the show's protagonist, Devi Vishwakumar, cheats on him and indirectly causes a public, Mean Girls-inspired car accident resulting in a broken arm (goodbye, swim scholarship). Learning that everyone around him underestimates his intelligence, including his parents, he commits to succeeding in school so he can get into college.

There's no one more fired up about Paxton's personal growth than Darren Barnet, the 30-year-old actor behind the character.

"I was so excited to see where Paxton's story went," Darren tells Teen Vogue about filming season two. "There's definitely a superficiality to Paxton in season one, but there are still subtle hints that he has a heart. This season fully dives into his arc and demeanor, and you get to learn more about his family life and what makes him tick."

Unlike Paxton, Darren was highly academically inclined in school. Born and raised in Los Angeles as a middle child flanked by two sisters, Darren moved with their mom to Orlando, Florida, when he was 12. He tested into a magnet school across town that required a 3.5 minimum GPA and spent his high school years juggling all AP classes and the lacrosse team, where he was the captain. He attributes his work ethic to his mom.

"I'm not going to say she was a tiger parent, but she very much gave me my core values of hard work and discipline," he recalls. "My mom stressed that I had to do well in school and go to college, but because we had no money it was like, 'get a full-ride scholarship. Good luck!'"

Darren, who is mixed-race Japanese American, has always been proud of his heritage. But after moving to Florida, he was made fun of by his peers for being Japanese. The teasing would spark a long period of feeling like he wasn't white enough when spending time with his white friends or Asian enough among his Asian friends - a feeling that would stay with him after he graduated from college and spent the next seven years struggling as an actor.

"I felt like I couldn't fit in anywhere," he says. "Even coming into acting, I never really thought about leaning into my Japanese heritage because there's this feeling I have that I'm not Asian enough to do it. And I felt like if I was cast as a distinctly Asian character, there'd be controversy around that."

That would all change after Darren was cast in Never Have I Ever. Paxton was simply Paxton Hall until Darren was overheard practicing his high school Japanese with an assistant director on the show. Mindy Kaling and her team asked for his permission to make Darren's heritage a part of Paxton's character, and Paxton Hall-Yoshida was born.

Paxton's heritage plays the most active role in his character this season when he struggles to find personal family history for an extra credit project. Poring through a box of books given to him by his grandfather, he unearths a journal and a photograph of his family at Manzanar, one of the 10 camps the government sanctioned to incarcerate over 120,000 individuals of Japanese descent during the war. Paxton then brings his grandfather to class to talk about the injustice of being wrongfully imprisoned.

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Darren Barnet Unpacks NHIE's Japanese American Incarceration Story

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To say that Team Paxton had a good run in season two of Netflix's Never Have I Ever is an understatement. The latest season of Mindy Kaling's beloved teen comedy, released earlier this summer, spends ample time focusing on Sherman Oaks High School's resident teen heartthrob, Paxton Hall-Yoshida ( Darren Barnet), revealing that he's much more than just a pretty face.

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I was drawn to this story because I wanted to learn more about the real experiences of people who were “No-Nos.” I found this article captivating because of the combination of historical context, narrative explanation, and resources (the actual questionnaire document, photographs, surveys). The quotes were particularly intriguing because they included both people who responded and people reminiscing on their parents’ experiences. I also thought it was interesting to see people going back to Tule Lake to learn more and validate their history, who turn around and organize social justice efforts to fight against immigrant detention and help others who have similar experiences.

- Naomi

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For years, whenever Japanese Americans would get together after World War II, one question would come up: "Which camp were you in?"

Like where you went to school, what you did for work, and whether you rooted for the Dodgers or the Giants, it was a form of small talk but probed at something deeper. The question referred to 10 wartime prisons where the government locked up more than 120,000 men, women and children, a majority of them U.S. citizens, because of their ethnicity.

Those who answered "Tule Lake" say they were often met with silence, then scorn: "Oh, you were one of those."

Some even turned away in disgust.

Many of those who were sent to the Northern California camp had answered no to two questions on a loyalty test. One asked whether they would serve in the U.S. military, and the other whether they would swear absolute allegiance to the United States in its war against Japan. They came to be called the "No-Nos," and they bore the label of being disloyal to America in the government's eyes.

The stain was so strong that even after President Reagan apologized in 1988 for the "grave wrong" of mass incarceration, some people who had been at Tule Lake felt the need to hide their personal histories, even from their children, to avoid being shunned within the Japanese American community.

This March, 75 years after the closing of Tule Lake, that narrative is changing as survivors tell their stories and reclaim the camp's legacy, not as one of disloyalty and shame but as one of protest and courage.

The demand that fractured a community

In response to Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, the United States, without evidence, labeled anyone of Japanese descent as a potential enemy threat.

In the name of national security, the government's War Relocation Authority banished most people of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast to stark barracks in remote areas.

Government authorities soon began to discuss what to do with their prisoners. Some felt they could not keep them all indefinitely locked up without charges. They needed a reason to justify releasing people they had labeled as potential enemies.

In February 1943, wartime authorities issued a multi-question survey. It aimed to reveal "tendencies of loyalty or disloyalty," in part to determine who could be granted leave or drafted into military service. Versions of this "loyalty questionnaire" were handed out to adults in camps as a litmus test for fealty.

The last two questions caused great anxiety. Superficially, they were about military service and loyalty. In essence, they were asking how to be Japanese American, and on whose terms.

People had to make decisions based on very little information from the government, not knowing how their responses would be used.

Did saying yes to question 27 mean you would be sent away to fight?

Was Question 28 a Catch-22? If answering yes meant admitting you had a preexisting allegiance to Japan, were you justifying your own imprisonment? If answering no indicated disloyalty to the government, were you justifying your continued detainment?

Yes-or-no questions could not capture the complexity of their dilemma, survivors said in oral histories collected by historians.

How to answer these questions created a rift within the community that lasted for decades.

Among those who said yes, many felt they had to keep proving their loyalty as Americans to gain acceptance in their fight for equality, despite the indignity of the questions. They would swallow their anger and keep sacrificing their freedoms, in camp or in combat, in the hopes that their actions would underscore the injustice of their incarceration.

Some even excoriated those who disagreed with them for making the community look bad, which seeded the resentment toward the No-Nos.

The government treated anything other than a yes as a sign of disloyalty and moved to isolate those who said no.

They chose Tule Lake, where 41% of the inmates did not say yes, in part because so many people had refused to fill out the questionnaire.

In July 1943, the government converted Tule Lake into a maximum-security prison to hold all of the No-Nos. Approximately 12,000 people from the nine other camps who had said no or refused to answer were moved to join about 6,250 people already at Tule Lake.

The prison within a prison

The Tule Lake camp sits in the northeastern corner of California in a flat and treeless basin that was drained for farmland in the 1920s.

Before it became a center for No-Nos, it was comparable to the other camps. Afterward, it was defined by a fence topped with barbed wire, with 28 guard towers, Army tanks and a battalion of soldiers.

"Incarceration was a prison environment, and Tule Lake was the most prison-like of all the camps," said Barbara Takei, 71, who has been researching Tule Lake for two decades.

Camp authorities viewed mass gatherings with fear and suspicion. When inmates went on strike to protest wretched working conditions, authorities brought strikebreakers in from other camps. Community leaders who tried to negotiate for better amenities were thrown in the stockade, a prison within a prison. Armed soldiers conducted dragnet-style sweeps through the camp to ferret out anyone who went into hiding. The Army declared martial law in Tule Lake for two months.

Former California Assemblyman George Nakano (D-Torrance), 85, recalls that one day, as a boy of 9, he headed to the camp's canal for a swim. As he and his friends were about to jump in, a guard in a tower threatened them with his rifle for being too close to the fence.

George Nakano, right, with parents and siblings in a photo taken at Tule Lake dated February 1946. (Photo courtesy of George Nakano.)

Complicating camp dynamics, No-Nos from other camps were mixed with inmates already at Tule Lake. Factions sprung up, rumors ran rampant, and paid informants within the prisoner population made it difficult to know who could be trusted and what was true.

As the war drew to an end, the government began to plan for the closing of the camps. Incarcerated people at Tule Lake were asked whether they would stay in America or renounce their citizenship.

Some who decided to give up their citizenship had become disillusioned by how their country had treated them. Others had lost everything during incarceration and had no home to return to. Thanks to overseas propaganda carried over by short-wave radio, some believed that Japan was winning the war. Others feared their family would be separated if their immigrant parents were deported, so they renounced to ensure they stayed together.

Altogether, 5,589 citizens - 98% of whom were incarcerated at Tule Lake - gave up their American citizenship.

When Japan announced on Aug. 15, 1945, that it would surrender, and it had become clear that the country had been devastated during the war, many tried to reverse course - but it was too late. They were designated enemy aliens and prepared for deportation.

Some went to Japan. Some were left fighting their deportation when Tule Lake closed.

A new legacy

The trauma of incarceration didn't vanish after camp.

Japanese Americans were suddenly living among neighbors who had supported their incarceration and saw them as no different than the enemies America had just fought in the Pacific theater.

There was a palpable fear that you could be targeted again if you stepped out of line, said Satsuki Ina, 76, a psychotherapist and documentary filmmaker who was born at Tule Lake. "People lived behind psychological barbed wire to be accepted."

One post-war coping strategy was to be the model minority, Ina said. The other was to stay silent.

Parents demanded that their children pursue stable and secure careers after living through the nerve wracking uncertainty of incarceration. Children felt distant from parents who struggled to express their feelings.

Tule Lake No-Nos were further isolated for their resistance, which was viewed as disloyalty. The Japanese American Citizens League, one of the biggest groups within the community, formally condemned the No-Nos, a move they apologized for in 2019.

Ina didn't learn her parents had renounced their citizenship at Tule Lake until she was a college student at UC Berkeley during the Free Speech movement in the 1960s.

Her mother had omitted this part of their family history because she feared her children would be ashamed of them, said Ina.

"Stigma silences and shrouds you in shame," Ina said. "Healing comes from speaking our truths, being seen and heard in the safety and company of those who are open and empathetic to our experiences."

Since 1969, former inmates, students and others have been making trips to Tule Lake to revisit, learn and remember.

These trips evolved into biannual pilgrimages organized by the Tule Lake Committee, said Takei, who is also the committee's chief financial officer.

In the last 20 years, the committee has focused its efforts on validating the history of principled protest and resistance at Tule Lake. The 2004 pilgrimage recognized No-Nos, renunciants, and the attorney who fought to restore their citizenship.

"There is solace in returning to the site where violations occurred, and to be able to share and mourn with others who were subjected to the same dehumanizing treatment," said Nakano, the former state assemblyman. He returned to Tule Lake for the first time in 2004 to recognize that lawyer, Wayne Collins.

Grace Hata, 90, whose family was separated during incarceration until it reunited briefly at Tule Lake, said she had long tried to block out the memories. She never wanted to go back. But when she joined a Tule Lake Committee pilgrimage in 2012, she was able to meet people who could explain the situation and help her put things in perspective.

"I don't feel the guilt," Hata said. "I don't feel like a traitor. I don't feel bad like that anymore because it was the situation that drove us to having to make that choice."

Survivors of incarceration at Tule Lake who attended the 2018 pilgrimage. (Courtesy of Ginger Greenfield)

Ina credits the committee for challenging the "biased and distorted" narrative that their government-sanctioned segregation stemmed from disloyalty.

The committee's most recent trip, in 2018, came soon after the Trump administration was harshly criticized for separating immigrant families at the border with Mexico. Those incarcerated at Tule Lake as children came out in force to protest the separations from the site of the Tule Lake jail, drawing parallels with their own experiences.

From there, Ina and others teamed up with younger activists to form Tsuru for Solidarity. The social justice group draws its inspiration and its name from the Japanese word for "crane," which symbolizes peace and freedom. They protest against immigrant detention centers across the country.

"There was no organized protest when we were incarcerated," Ina said. "Now we use our culture, values and personal histories to protest the repetition of that history."

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They failed a 'loyalty test.' Now, Japanese Americans incarcerated at Tule Lake camp reclaim their stories

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For years, whenever Japanese Americans would get together after World War II, one question would come up: "Which camp were you in?" Like where you went to school, what you did for work, and whether you rooted for the Dodgers or the Giants, it was a form of small talk but probed at something deeper.

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Connections of Japanese internment to ICE detention

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Connections of Japanese internment to ICE detention

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To me, Japanese internment feels so distant from our present time and it is easy to believe that internment was so draconian that something similar would not happen again. What I found the most interesting about this piece is that it is a great reminder that the themes and ideas that originally drove Japanese internment are not as archaic as they might seem. The article describes Tsuaru For Solidarity, a Japanese American-based advocacy group that fights against detention against immigrants and refugees. The group wishes to be the "allies that the Japanese Americans didn't have."
-Darren

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'Never again is now': Japanese Americans driven by history in immigration fight

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Dozens of Japanese Americans will gather in Tacoma on Sunday to serve as allies in the push to shut down ICE detention centers.

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Honouliuli: The Lost & Forgotten Internment Camp

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Honouliuli: The Lost & Forgotten Internment Camp

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The piece I chose was former President Obama's statement on declaring the Honouliuli Internment Camp, known as Jigokudani (地獄谷), or "Death Valley,"  a national monument in 2015. I grew up 30 minutes away from this internment camp. It is the house that my great-grandparents built after the war in the 50s, but they had no idea that Honouliuli was so close to them. It wasn't until 1998 when information about Honouliuli came to light. The exact location of this camp was not discovered until 2002. In Hawaii, those who were interned were hand-picked. Because Japanese people made up around a third of the entire population that lived in Hawaii, interning everyone, as they did on the West Coast, would cause the economy to collapse and the capitalistic US would not allow this to happen.  Honouliuli was secluded both physically and in oral history. The camp itself was completely demolished, except for two buildings, in the years after the war was over. But the stories of Honouliuli as told by those who were interned were not well vocalized. The same shame that is felt by those in Okada's book is why these stories were not passed down. The selective nature of who was interned in Hawaii created a divide within the Japanese community in Hawaii, which further suppressed the oral histories of Honouliuli, as the US government and military tried to hide the atrocities of their actions, and those interned tried to reassimilate with society. It was not something people spoke about, as many people were ashamed of their experience and humiliated that they were hand-picked to be interned. Uncovering the trauma and realities that happened while Hawaii was under Marshall Law is becoming more known and there is a greater understanding of wartime conditions in Hawaii and the stories that many Japanese people have been keeping in for 75 years.

-Kylie

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ESTABLISHMENT OF THE HONOULIULI NATIONAL MONUMENT

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BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

The Honouliuli Internment Camp (Honouliuli) serves as a powerful reminder of the need to protect civil liberties in times of conflict, and the effects of martial law on civil society. Honouliuli is nationally significant for its central role during World War II as an internment site for a population that included American citizens, resident immigrants, other civilians, enemy soldiers, and labor conscripts co-located by the U.S. military for internment or detention. While the treatment of Japanese Americans in Hawai'i differed from the treatment of Japanese Americans on the U.S. mainland in ways that are detailed below, the legacy of racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and failure of political leadership during this period is common to the history of both Hawai'i and the mainland United States.

Early on December 7, 1941, Japanese air and naval forces attacked Pearl Harbor and other military installations on O'ahu. Before martial law was invoked, government officials began selectively rounding up Hawai'i residents on suspicion of disloyalty. They were confined at local jails, courthouses, and other facilities on six of the main Hawaiian Islands before being transported to the U.S. Immigration Station and Sand Island Detention Camp on O'ahu. Nearly all of the internees were of Japanese descent, including leaders in the Japanese American community who were educated, were teachers or priests, or were distinguished by virtue of their access to means of communication with Japan or to transportation from Hawai'i. Most would be sent to the mainland to be held for the duration of the war in Department of Justice and War Relocation Authority camps. Despite the government's allegations of disloyalty, none of the Japanese American internees from Hawai'i was ever found guilty of sabotage, espionage, or overt acts against the United States, and all later received formal apologies and many received redress compensation from the United States.

On the Island of O'ahu, the U.S. War Department sought a place removed from the active combat areas of Pearl Harbor for internment of individuals. The War Department chose Honouliuli Gulch, the bottom of which was hidden from view by the gulch's steep walls. The Honouliuli Internment Camp opened on March 2, 1943, with the transfer of internees from Sand Island and rapidly swelled in population with the influx of prisoners of war. Managed by the U.S. Army, it was the largest and longest used confinement site in Hawai'i.

Honouliuli is significant for having been used as both a civilian internment camp and a prisoner of war camp, with a population of approximately 400 civilian internees and 4,000 prisoners of war over the course of its use. Honouliuli was divided into seven compounds: one compound for administration and guards, one for civilian internees, and eventually five compounds for prisoners of war. The civilian compound was further divided into sections for male civilian internees of Japanese ancestry, female civilian internees of Japanese ancestry, and civilian internees of European ancestry. Historic documents indicate there were 175 buildings, 14 guard towers, and over 400 tents among the 7 compounds on 160 acres. Many internees referred to Honouliuli as Jigoku-Dani (Hell Valley) because its secluded location at the bottom of a deep gulch trapped heat and moisture and reinforced the internees' sense of isolation and unjust confinement.

The majority of Honouliuli's civilian internees were American citizens or permanent resident aliens -- predominantly Japanese Americans who were citizens by birth -- interned on suspicion of disloyalty. The remaining group comprised predominantly German Americans, though there were also Americans and aliens of Italian, Irish, Russian, and Scandinavian descent. Honouliuli also held women and children who were Japanese civilians displaced from the Pacific.

The 4,000 prisoners of war in Honouliuli included enemy soldiers and labor conscripts from Japan, Korea, Okinawa, Taiwan, and Italy. The prisoner of war compounds were guarded by an African American infantry unit as well as units of Japanese Americans from the mainland.

Honouliuli closed in 1945 for civilian internees and in 1946 for prisoners of war. With the closing of the camp, fast-growing vegetation quickly took over the site. Honouliuli was forgotten as Americans celebrated the victories of World War II and focused attention on the valor displayed by Americans at Pearl Harbor and abroad.

While both mainland and Hawaiian internment camps are sobering examples of wartime prejudice and injustice, Honouliuli reminds us of the differences in the way that forced removal was approached in Hawai'i and on the mainland.

The primary difference between the Japanese American experience on the mainland and on Hawai'i is that the internment in Hawai'i targeted a relatively small percentage of the ethnic Japanese population on the islands. Less than one percent of Hawai'i's ethnic Japanese population was interned in Hawai'i. This contrasts with the mass exclusion of all 120,000 Japanese Americans on the West Coast of the mainland. In Hawai'i, the Japanese American citizenry and immigrant population were over one third of the territory's total population. Without their participation in the labor force, the economy of the territory could not have been sustained and the war effort in the islands would have been crippled. Both the policies in Hawai'i and those on the mainland devastated Japanese Americans and their families and created a social stigma that was borne by Japanese Americans during and after the war. The selective nature of the internment in Hawai'i also sowed division within the Japanese American community in Hawai'i, leading to ostracism and other backlash against the targeted individuals and their families that would last their lifetimes.

The declaration of martial law served as the basis to authorize internment in Hawai'i, as opposed to the mainland where mass exclusion was authorized by Executive Order 9066. During the period of martial law from December 7, 1941, to October 24, 1944, the U.S. Army issued hundreds of military orders, some of which were applicable only to persons of Japanese ancestry and enemy aliens. For example, people of Japanese ancestry were restricted from residing in certain areas of O'ahu and were forcibly removed from their properties. These types of discriminatory policies created an atmosphere of fear and suspicion.

Finally, Honouliuli is significant because of the comparatively lower level of public understanding and awareness of the history of internment of civilians in Hawai'i during World War II. On the mainland during World War II, mass exclusion was well known. In contrast, the internment in Hawai'i was largely kept secret during World War II, and has only recently become the subject of scholarship and awareness campaigns. It was not until 1998 that information about Honouliuli resurfaced. After 4 years of research and exploration, the site was uncovered in 2002. In 2008, an archeological research survey was conducted at the site. Honouliuli remains an object of archeological interest.

Honouliuli serves to remind every American about the critical importance of safeguarding civil liberties and maintaining our values during times of crisis. It is important to recognize Honouliuli as a part of our shared national heritage and national consciousness. It is a place to reflect on wartime experiences and recommit ourselves to the pursuit of freedom and justice.

WHEREAS section 320301 of title 54, United States Code (known as the "Antiquities Act"), authorizes the President, in his discretion, to declare by public proclamation historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest that are situated upon the lands owned or controlled by the Federal Government to be national monuments, and to reserve as a part thereof parcels of land, the limits of which shall be confined to the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected;

WHEREAS Honouliuli's objects of historic interest were listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2012 as nationally significant for their association with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history;

WHEREAS, for the purpose of establishing a national monument to be administered by the National Park Service, the Monsanto Company has donated certain lands at Honouliuli to the United States, and the University of Hawai'i-West O'ahu has agreed to provide access across its property to those lands;

WHEREAS it is in the public interest to preserve and protect the historic objects at Honouliuli; NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by the authority vested in me by section 320301 of title 54, United States Code, hereby proclaim the objects identified above that are situated upon lands and interests in lands owned or controlled by the Federal Government to be the Honouliuli National Monument (monument) and, for the purpose of protecting those objects, reserve as a part thereof all lands and interests in lands owned or controlled by the Federal Government within the boundaries described on the accompanying map entitled, "Honouliuli National Monument," which is attached to and forms a part of this proclamation. The reserved Federal lands and interests in lands encompass approximately 123.0 acres, together with appurtenant easements for all necessary purposes. The boundaries described on the accompanying map are confined to the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected.

All Federal lands and interests in lands within the boundaries described on the accompanying map are hereby appropriated and withdrawn from all forms of entry, location, selection, sale, leasing or other disposition under the public land laws, from location, entry, and patent under the mining laws, and from disposition under all laws relating to mineral and geothermal leasing.

The establishment of the monument is subject to valid existing rights. Lands and interests in lands not owned or controlled by the Federal Government within the boundaries described on the accompanying map shall be reserved as a part of the monument, and objects identified above that are situated upon those lands and interests in lands shall be part of the monument, upon acquisition of ownership or control by the
Federal Government.

The Secretary of the Interior (Secretary) shall manage the monument through the National Park Service, pursuant to applicable legal authorities, consistent with the purposes and provisions of this proclamation. The Secretary shall prepare a management plan for the monument, with full public involvement, within 3 years of the date of this proclamation. The management plan shall ensure that the monument fulfills the following purposes for the benefit of present and future generations: (1) to preserve and protect the objects of historic interest associated with Honouliuli Internment Camp, and (2) to study and interpret the history of World War II internment and detention in Hawai'i. The management plan shall set forth the desired relationship of the monument to other related resources, programs, and organizations associated with World War II internment, detention, and exclusion.

The National Park Service shall use available authorities, as appropriate, to enter into agreements to provide for access to the monument. The National Park Service shall also use available authorities, as appropriate, to enter into agreements with governmental and nongovernmental organizations to provide for research, preservation, interpretation, and education at Honouliuli and additional sites associated with World War II internment in Hawai'i and exclusion elsewhere. The National Park Service shall also coordinate management with World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument, which commemorates the broader story of the war in the Pacific and its impacts on
Hawai'i.

Nothing in this proclamation shall be deemed to revoke any existing withdrawal, reservation, or appropriation; however, the monument shall be the dominant reservation.

Warning is hereby given to all unauthorized persons not to appropriate, injure, destroy, or remove any feature of this monument and not to locate or settle upon any of the lands thereof.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-fourth day of February, in the year of our Lord two thousand fifteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-ninth.

BARACK OBAMA

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Presidential Proclamation -- Establishment of the Honouliuli National Monument

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ESTABLISHMENT OF THE HONOULIULI NATIONAL MONUMENT - - - - - - - BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA A PROCLAMATION The Honouliuli Internment Camp (Honouliuli) serves as a powerful reminder of the need to protect civil liberties in times of conflict, and the effects of martial law on civil society.

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I thought this was rather interesting that Saporiti used his own family's experience to inspire his music. I also found it interesting that his family is Vietnamese. This mean's the "no-no boy mentality" if you will, extended beyond WWII into the Vietnam war.
- Greg

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Diego Luis/Courtesy of the artist

When you think of a university-level history lesson, or a book-length PHD dissertation, you might think "OK, that's probably gonna be a slog." Even if you're interested in the subject, it'll be a lot of dates and names and five dollar words... right? Not in the case of No-No Boy.

No-No Boy is a music project from Julian Saporiti that was born out of his doctoral studies at Brown University. You may have heard his music before as a member of the band The Young Republic, which we featured on World Cafe in 2006. But for his new project he weaves his own family history, including the experiences of his Vietnamese mother (as well as other immigrant stories) into gentle, catchy and accessible folk songs that feel instantly familiar.

His new album is called 1975. This this episode, you'll hear Saporiti perform songs from that album, and you just might learn a lot from our conversation. But don't worry, there's no quiz.
And a quick editor's note: There is a song in this interview that contains offensive language.

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No-No Boy Weaves Family And Other Immigrant Stories Into Catchy Folk Songs : World Cafe Words and Music from WXPN

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subscribe to World Cafe Words and Music from WXPN podcast subscribe to World Cafe Words and Music from WXPN podcast Diego Luis/Courtesy of the artist When you think of a university-level history lesson, or a book-length PHD dissertation, you might think "OK, that's probably gonna be a slog."

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This article discusses the creative process behind the cover art of the 2014 paperback edition of No-No Boy. One of the first things I was drawn to first when I saw this on the shelf at the BU Bookstore was the cover. The 2014 cover was designed by Thomas Eykemans and illustrated by Jillian Tamaki. It's so interesting to read about how everything from the font (modified Futura) to the illustration and colors used have a deeper importance and connection to the novel itself. They chose this specific font because it was a common and popular font of the 1950s when the book was first published. Additionally, they chose to use both red and blue colors on the cover to subtly reference the flags for Japan and the United States. Overall, I think this short article was helpful in my understanding of how the physical book itself relates to the experiences of Japanese Americans and the effort that designers and illustrators put into making covers that accurately reflect the themes and content of the text itself.

- Abby

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John Okada's classic novel, No-No Boy, tells the story of Ichiro Yamada, a fictional version of a real-life "no-no boy." During World War II, Yamada answered "no" twice in a compulsory government questionnaire as to whether he would serve in the armed forces and swear loyalty to the United States. Unwilling to pledge himself to the country that interned him and his family, Ichiro earned two years in prison and the hostility of his family and community when he returns home to Seattle. As Ruth Ozeki writes in her introduction to the new edition of the book, Ichiro's "obsessive, tormented" voice subverts Japanese postwar "model-minority" stereotypes, showing a fractured community and one man's "threnody of guilt, rage, and blame as he tries to negotiate his reentry into a shattered world."
First published in 1956, No-No Boy was virtually ignored by a public eager to put World War II and the Japanese internment behind them. It was not until the mid-1970s that a new generation of Japanese American writers and scholars recognized the novel's importance and popularized it as one of literature's most powerful testaments to the Asian American experience. In 2014, the University of Washington Press brought out a new edition of the book, with hopes of introducing it to yet another generation of readers. In this guest post, designer Thomas Eykemans discusses his process of creating the cover for this new edition of the book.

No-No Boy is among the most important books that the University of Washington Press publishes. It was vital for me to understand it as best I could before approaching the design of this new reissue. After reading it and learning about its historical context, I did extensive research into past iterations of the book, including a dramatization. It seemed clear that, as historical fiction, an illustration would be the most appropriate approach.

We reached out to Jillian Tamaki, an award-winning contemporary illustrator who teaches at the School of Visual Arts and recently released her second graphic novel. We were impressed with her dramatic and expressive work for clients such as Vintage and the Folio Society, and hoped that she might be able to contribute a fresh interpretation of No-No Boy.

After several rounds of sketches, we settled on a downcast profile of Ichiro overlaid with a bold title. The typeface is a modified Futura, a geometric sans-serif that was ubiquitous in the 1950s and appropriate to the era. The downward diagonals of the "N" and "Y" letterforms intersect the upward angle of the profile, creating a tense visual "X" that pulls the eye to the center before expanding outward. The soft, cool tones of the illustration contrast the intense warmth of the title while also alluding to the national colors of the U.S. and Japanese flags. These elements combine to evoke the deeply conflicted character of Ichiro and his struggles to find his place.

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John Okada's classic novel, No-No Boy, tells the story of Ichiro Yamada, a fictional version of a real-life "no-no boy." During World War II, Yamada answered "no" twice in a compulsory government questionnaire as to whether he would serve in the armed forces and swear loyalty to the United States.

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When I am studying a historical event from the past hundred and fifty years, I try to find video footage of it. I believe that it gives me a greater understanding of the effects of policies and the state on regular human people. I think that there is a relatability that you don't get with written word, pictures, or just audio, and your brain makes an unconscious connection between the people you see in the video and people you know in real life. In clips like these, I am always shocked by how many people I recognize, who look like people I have met and seen in my past. When I saw the forced smiles of the Japanese Americans sent to these camps, I got a better idea of the personal feeling of those afflicted by the racist policies of the United States, and a more complete understanding of the themes in No-No-Boy.

- Lukas

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This Man Filmed Life Inside an Internment Camp

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Story from a Japanese Internment survivor 

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Story from a Japanese Internment survivor 

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https://lompocrecord.com/news/local/the-story-needs-to-be-told-survivor-remembers-life-in-japanese-internment-camps-during-wwii/article_e1b2cfe6-a3d5-541d-827f-efe6d358fcff.html

In this article, it highlights a women name Margaret. She speaks about her time in Japanese internment camps and life before this event. She was a regular child playing in Northern California and was suddenly uprooted to a camp in Wyoming. She states that she views herself as two people- one before World War 2 and another person after World War 2. The experience has forever scarred her.

I found this article interesting because she is willing to talk about her story and how it changed her. She said that America was her country, and she never spent a moment in Japan. Yet, the government believed Japanese were “dangerous”, even the ones born here. In addition, her father came from Japan and joined the U.S. Armed forces to fight in World War 1. It this ironic and confusing image that her dad was willing to sacrifice for a country but instead of respecting his patriotism they place him in an internment camp as a “pre-caution.”

This relates to a part of No-No boy where a friend named Mike served in the U.S. army but was going to be placed an internment camp. He said that if the government was going to treat him like a Japanese, then he would act like one. I think this relates to this story because even though these people have sacrificed and displayed their allegiance to the country they are treated as foreigners.

This thought of being foreign and not accepted is still a theme in America. But I hope that these articles and educating others allows for a better understanding that Asian/Americans can respect and take parts from each culture. It is not this all or nothing image.

- Cameron

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At age 11, she was an active tomboy living on a farm in the Northern California town of Mountain View.

"I broke my leg kicking a football," said Margaret Nakamura Cooper during her talk as part of the Heart of the Valley series at the Santa Maria Public Library on Saturday.

At age 12, Margaret, her father Harry, mother Nelli and three siblings were among 120,000 men, women and children of Japanese ancestry, most of whom living on the West Coast, who were rounded up and sent to internment camps.

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'The story needs to be told': Survivor remembers life in Japanese internment camps during WWII

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At age 11, she was an active tomboy living on a farm in the Northern California town of Mountain View. "I broke my leg kicking a football," said Margaret Nakamura Cooper during her talk as part of the Heart of the Valley series at the Santa Maria Public Library on Saturday.

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Musician Julian Saporiti created a musical project that centers around Asian-American refugee camps, as well as the Japanese incarceration camps. He calls his project "No-No Boy" to honor John Okada's novel. He was inspired after Trump was elected, feeling that his years studying oppression and incarceration was being repeated because of Trump's ideology and rhetoric. He met a real no-no boy named Hideo and visited the Crystal City Internment Camp in Texas, where Hideo was held. I thought his journey was inspiring, yet I was disappointed that we were repeating history with holding facilities and separating families. I also remember how Okada's novel was a commercial failure and he died before his novel ever gained any real traction. Now, his work is celebrated in so many ways, and people look back on the Japanese-American detainment in a new light. Now, no-no boys are respected and revered for what they went through, in contrast to the spite and hatred Ichiro faced. It's sad that it takes the passage of time in order for us to reflect on past events in a new perspective, but I am glad that Okada's work is now being honored in a myriad of ways, such as being the namesake of Saporiti's music.
-Yuri

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Editor's note: This is one of several essays on The Margins exploring the legacy of John Okada's 1957 novel No-No Boy. Read the others here.

"It was strange, constant blue
and the same ghost every night..."
- Wolf Parade

In the winter of 2017, I started writing songs again. Music had once been my job, before I got burnt out and retreated to grad school at Brown University. I hadn't released an album in nine years. But after Trump was elected, something snapped. I lost interest in academic conferences and peer-reviewed articles or even getting a tenure-track job. I wanted to share my PhD research with a public audience. After spending years studying histories of oppression, incarceration, and refugees, I could see-illuminated by Trump's garbage fire of rhetoric and policy-the same shit happening again to new people.

So I transformed my research into songs. I wrote music about southeast Asian refugee camps, old Chinatowns, and sites of Japanese American incarceration. With a rotating cast of musicians, scholars, and artists, I have traveled the country, holding concerts at which I sing my songs, tell stories, and project archival images on a wall. The idea is to immerse diverse audiences in the mess of history. Songs can travel, and they can do things academic writing can't: live with ambiguity, inhabit small moments of emotion, provoke thought through metaphor, imagery, and swift juxtaposition.

I call the project No-No Boy. And after almost every concert, no matter where I am, someone asks me why.

I chose the name, in part, to honor John Okada's No-No Boy, the incredible 1957 novel that was just reissued by Penguin Classics surrounded by some disappointing controversy over rights and royalties. A lot of people call No-No Boy the "first Asian American novel." I'm not sure that's important, or even accurate, since "Asian American" wasn't a term until the late 60s or early 70s. But the book is immediate and visceral, and it gets at a deep feeling of being torn in two, which immigrant kids and minority kids-really, anyone who feels mixed up in some way-can relate to.

Okada writes about Ichiro, a tortured young man who comes back to Seattle after years of wartime incarceration-first in a camp for Japanese Americans, and then in federal prison. Ichiro was deemed "disloyal" by the US government, because he was one of around 20,000 people to answer "No" to two questions in a poorly-conceived loyalty questionnaire. To paraphrase:

Will you serve in the US military? No.

Will you forswear allegiance to Japan? No.

I'm not Japanese American. My mom grew up in South Vietnam. She left on a student visa after her grandfather, my ông cố, was assassinated.

Yet No-No Boy is one of the only novels in which I have seen myself. Okada's book is mired in melancholy, a perpetual state of not being able to let go of the old or grab on to the new. Ichiro is painted with guilt, resignation, anger, and confusion, cut in two with no reconciliation in sight. Like history itself, Okada's novel is messy, and this mess-with all of its contradiction and exhaustion-is honest and bewildering.

I was thinking of Okada recently, down in Texas. I was visiting Central American asylum seekers and the remnants of an old Japanese American incarceration camp. I met people who, like Ichiro in No-No Boy, are trying their best to maintain a tragic balancing act. People who are torn in two.

Among Japanese Americans, the term "No-No Boy" is contentious. Some might prefer to remember the men who said "yes"-the men who joined the military, helping to create a narrative of Japanese American military heroism. Recently, I spoke to the daughter of a jazz musician who was incarcerated at Heart Mountain, in Wyoming. "My father would be rolling over in his grave if his name was associated with No-No Boy," she told me.

But the stories of the No-No Boys have started to take on new meanings. For millennial activists in the Japanese American community, these are early civil rights stories, early examples of draft resistance. I have no personal connection to this history, save telling the stories of a few people who were in the camps and whom I care about deeply. But, as a historian and an American, I can think of no better entry point for examining this chapter of our collective American history.
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I met a No-No Boy. His name is Hideo.

Last summer, when I was in Honolulu to play a gig, I visited Pearl City with a few friends. At a modest corner bungalow, up the hill from Pearl Harbor, Hideo was waiting: a short, smiling Japanese American man, wearing spectacles and pushing 100. His family wanted to see "No-No boy meet the real No-No Boy." Hideo immediately handed me a beer, a good omen. As my friend Max later proclaimed, "Dude, Hideo-san is a fucking legend."

We feasted on a huge spread of Zippy's fried chicken, spam musubi, and too many delicious sides. We learned about Okinawan and Hawaiian history from Shari, a local historian, and Hideo talked about the war years. Then we played some music. I performed a couple of my songs for the small audience. My colleague Erin added harmonies, as she graciously did for most of 2018.

Then, as Erin and I sang about two teenagers waltzing in the root cellar at Heart Mountain, Hideo started dancing around the dining room with his family and friends. Everyone was moving in this cool Okinawan way called Kachāshī, which involves lots of swaying and wrists. Hideo got out his sanshin, an Okinawan version of the banjo-like shamisen, and shredded. I felt honored just to be there.

Hideo is kibei -born in Hawai'i, but educated back in Okinawa, Japan. He returned to the United States as a young man, just as the war broke out. Japanese Americans made up too much of Hawai'i's population to be locked up en masse, but young Hideo was considered dangerous because of his time in Japan. He was incarcerated at Sand Island with a bunch of Buddhist priests, Japanese language teachers, and community elders.

"They said, if you go to the mainland, you'll be free," Hideo told me. "They lied." He was sent to Topaz, a camp in the Utah desert.

When the loyalty questionnaire came around, Hideo answered No and No. "In Japan, we were taught that the emperor was God. How are you supposed to go against God?" They sent him off to Tule Lake, the segregation camp for "disloyal" Japanese.

Hideo was not outwardly angsty or moody like Okada's Ichiro. He wasn't a draft resister. Like most people in the camps, he was a person caught in the middle of a war, faced with tough decisions he had to make fast. Decisions that had no right answer.

Does Hideo have some feelings of resentment towards the government and how they treated him? Sure. But as we looked through old photos from his camp years, he laughed and told us about old friends. He talked about working in the mess hall. He spoke about daily life.

Adorning the small, square pages of a handmade autograph book, Hideo's cohort from Tule Lake scribbled messages you would find in any high school yearbook. "Good Luck, Buddy!" "See you around." And most strikingly: "Hideo, never lose that smile." Some version of this sentiment was scribbled on almost every page.

Hideo was a cook. He was an artist. He learned how to play mandolin and paint while incarcerated in four different camps. This was not Okada's tortured main character. This No-No Boy never stopped smiling. Today, when I think of the term No-No Boy, I think of Ichiro torn in two, but also of Hideo's complicated joy, perseverance, and musicality.
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Hideo rode out the end of the war at Crystal City Internment Camp, in Texas, just half an hour from the Mexico border. I wanted to see the place with my own eyes. So, during spring break, I flew to Houston and rented a car with two historians from Brown.

Our journey began in a nearly empty Chinese banquet hall, somewhere near Houston's Little Saigon. We had lunch with a friend's Vietnamese parents, Son and Thanh. "Eat more! You, eat. Yes! Eat!" Son told us. The squid, the chả giò, the rice, the pork, the chicken was shoveled onto our plates with a smile. In another life, Son was a sailor in the South Vietnamese Navy, protecting the doomed and temporary nation where my mother grew up. Son spent 10 years in a "re-education" camp after the communists took over. He mentions that only in passing, and then dishes out more food.

It's strange to look at people who have actually lived the history you've read so much about. Talking with Thanh, I can't help but picture her as a young woman, carrying a 6-month-old baby onto a desperately crowded boat, headed for anywhere but here, anywhere but home. They ended up in Pulau Bidong, a refugee camp on a Malaysian island that was once the most crowded space in the world.

I also think of my mother. Our family were longtime collaborators with the French, and had good connections and some money. My mother's grandfather held a position in the South Vietnamese Assembly. During the Tet Offensive, he was killed when someone threw a grenade into the family home. My mom was there. She left for Pennsylvania shortly after his murder. Sometimes I wonder whether she felt guilty for getting out before the rest of the family.

From Houston, we drove to San Antonio, and then to Crystal City. This camp was often called the "Family Internment Camp." It held mostly Japanese folks exported to the US by Latin American governments, as well as some Germans and Italians. These internees, many of whom were children with US citizenship, were sometimes used as POW trade bait by the United States.

As is the case at most of these sites, there is little left today. Three schools and some sports fields have been built on the grounds. There are some concrete foundations. A plaque, put up by the Texas Historical Society, white washes what happened here-pretty typical. My friend Diego wondered how locals feel about this history. "Probably the same way we did," I told him. We both went to middle school in Nashville, next to an old plantation where enslaved people once worked. "Disinterested."

Near the plaque, we met up with Matt from Justice for Our Neighbors, an organization that provides asylum seekers with legal aid and space in houses of worship. Matt also wanted to make a pilgrimage to Crystal City. After 10 minutes of walking around, a security guard rolled up. I thought we were in trouble, but he just wanted to show us other parts of the camp. We followed his white city pickup truck for about half a mile and came to the old swimming pool basin. There's a tree growing in the middle of it, but the huge concrete structure is intact.

Leading up to the trip, I had sifted through archival footage of the camp and found rare color films, showing people swimming and diving into this very pool. As we walked around, these movies kept flashing in my head. I thought about Hideo and what a relief a few hours in the water must have been. I also recalled a story that Nancy Ukai, a wonderful scholar and archivist, told me about two Japanese Peruvian girls who drowned in this pool.

Behind the basin, there is a huge metal tank which has been graffitied to memorialize the camp. Diego and I climbed on top of it. I lowered my head into the opening of the big empty container and sang a song I had written for our trip.

"I'mm goinnnnnnnnn' dooooooooooowwwwwwnnnnnnnnn..........
to Cryyystallll Ciiiiiiittttyyyyy........."

The reverb was gigantic, swirling and echoing. In the distance, Matt talked with the security guard. Diego took pictures. Our other companion, Juan, filmed the desolate fields stretching behind us.

We climbed down and I strummed an acoustic guitar, singing whatever words came to mind. As I sang, Kodachrome blue water rushed in around me. Prisoners from the archival footage swam all above me. I closed my eyes tightly. The vision stopped. It was time to go.
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In the 1980s, the US government finally apologized for incarcerating Japanese Americans during the war. And yet, within driving distance of Crystal City, there are many structures which detain and incarcerate new groups of immigrants, largely built on the same racial and cultural prejudices, economic fears, and media paranoia.

From Crystal City, we drove south to visit a refugee shelter called the Holding Institute in Laredo. Juan, Diego and I spent the day with the pastor who runs the shelter, Mike, easily one of the most inspiring and selfless people I've ever met. He toured us around the small compound, which caters to women and children who have been recently released from detention.

At the Holding Institute, waiting is what we saw. Heavy liminality. These folks were stuck in a place that didn't want them, but they couldn't go back to a home where they faced poverty or death. There was a palpable exhaustion. The kids seemed alright, watching Puss in Boots in Spanish or playing outside, but the adults were tired. Juan and Diego talked to a young woman named Anahi who had been kidnapped and robbed in Nuevo Laredo before making it across.

In the courtyard, I met a woman named Melissa. Born in Tennessee, she was blonde and sunburnt. Her husband had been deported back to Guatemala. She was stuck here because some folks back home told her she wouldn't need a passport to take a bus to central America. She did, and so did her baby son Caleb. They'd slept in a park the night before.

Melissa said she was hopeful that her last paycheck would get delivered to Laredo, so she could afford the passports and two bus tickets. It was going to be a month before their paperwork could be processed. Hopefully, her severely cracked cell phone would hold up. Hopefully, her rudimentary Spanish would do on the journey south. Mike was worried for her safety, and the baby's, but it was her choice. I've never seen someone so tired.

Mike took us down to the border, just a short drive away. "It's not a national emergency. It's a crisis of humanity," he said, looking at a bridge over the Rio Grande. "They've stopped letting people even set foot on American soil. They stop them right there." He pointed to a recently-installed checkpoint, halfway across the bridge. "Over the water, so they can't seek asylum."

He looked out at a father and son fishing in the river. "This isn't political," he said. "It's simple. It's feeding people who need food. It's providing shelter for people who need shelter...I see this as an opportunity for America's spiritual awakening."

That afternoon, I played a concert at the shelter. If you ever want to feel stupid and privileged, try playing a set of songs nuancing historical moments of suffering to a bunch of refugees. I had not thought this through. As Juan translated "boat people" into Spanish, I winced. I couldn't think of any happy songs to play. My mind could only focus on the children, and their eyes. As I sang, I saw their faces in old photographs of incarceration and refugee camps. I saw Hideo in the doorway. I saw my family by the altar.

After the concert, I felt embarrassed and useless. Luckily, in part because of the language barrier, people just focused on the music, which made me feel better. " Dile que tiene una voz muy bonita," Anahi told Juan, which lifted my spirits. She said that it was nice to just have some music, to have a distraction. We talked about visiting her in New Jersey one day.

That night, I ordered the "jumborita" at a Mexican seafood joint. "That sucked," I told the guys. "When I was singing, it was like double exposure. I kept seeing these faces from the camps. These archives and photographs and movies and stories, all at once. I was seeing projections on the walls, on their faces, all these ghosts just smashing together. My family. Everything at the same time."
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Last year, touring behind No-No Boy, I fell into a deep depression for the first time, and I began to feel haunted. All the stories and songs, town after town, the same ghosts every night. My brain stopped being able to make sense of the work. On tour, this became my constant state. My mind went places I had never known. Relationships crumbled. I reread Okada's novel. Ichiro's inability to relate to people around him felt relatable.

Night after night, I scratched at these histories with all their contradictions, horror, and psychotic repetition. Each concert felt like a blood-letting. Audiences would share their own powerful stories of trauma and loss. It was a lot to take in and too much to keep carrying. By Christmas, I felt completely isolated and ill. For several weeks, I did not want to wake up.

These feelings came back to me after the concert in Laredo. I said to Diego, "How is this still happening? They're the same everywhere, you know? These kids. They've always been the same. Man, I cracked. Singing up there, I fucking cracked."

The next morning, Juan got out of bed early and walked down to the lobby of the Red Roof Inn. He watched several men, sopping wet, dash past him and disappear. They had just crossed the Rio Grande. Shortly after, the Latino hotel manager asked him, "Did you see any wetbacks come through here?"

Before leaving town, we went to Walmart and bought all of the children's underwear, which is what the Holding Institute needed most. Juan bought a soccer ball to give to the kids, out of a mixture of kindness and indignation that a bunch of central American children were playing basketball. We dropped everything off and said goodbye. They were preparing breakfast for the 68 people who had spent the night there. At one of the picnic tables outside, a family was bundled in the yellow blankets every new arrival receives. We said adios to a few of the kids, got some hugs and high fives, and drove away.

We made one last stop, in Dilley, Texas. Dilley is home to the country's largest migrant detention center, which is disingenuously called the South Texas Family Residential Center. As we stood next to the barbed wire fence, Diego turned to me and said, "Man, if you told me it was the 1940s, I'd say we were looking at a Japanese internment camp."

At night, the detention center is visible from miles away. Stadium lights give it an almost supernatural glow. They are always on.

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The Ghosts of No-No Boy in a Nation That Still Imprisons Immigrants

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Editor's note: This is one of several essays on The Margins exploring the legacy of John Okada's 1957 novel No-No Boy. Read the others here. "It was strange, constant blue and the same ghost every night..." - Wolf Parade In the winter of 2017, I started writing songs again.

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I was drawn to this piece because I think that art allows people to express feelings that can't really be put into words. Along with the art that they created, the artists discuss what happened to their family members and how it's continued to affect them almost a century later. I also didn't realize that other countries (Peru, as mentioned in the article) deported people of Japanese descent to the U.S. to be sent to internment camps, so it's really valuable to get that perspective.

-Kate

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This is the latest wave of artistic response from those directly affected by the traumatic events of 1942-1946 that marked the U.S. history like an ugly, if rarely acknowledged, scar.

In the last decades of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century, about 200,000 Japanese people emigrated to Hawaii to work on the islands' sugar plantations. Some 180,000 moved to the U.S. mainland, the majority starting farms and small businesses on the West Coast, which makes the tragedy that followed a quintessentially Californian experience.

In winter of 1941, just about two months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, U.S. Executive Order 9066 signed by president Franklin Delano Roosevelt sent more than 120,000 Japanese-Americans to what this group of artists don't shy away from calling "concentration camps." California defined anyone with 1/16th or more Japanese lineage as sufficient to be interned. They were transported away from their homes and communities and jobs and personal possessions and imprisoned for as many as four years in tar paper barracks in heavily guarded camps throughout the American West.

"As a Californian, I feel responsible," says Gail Enns.

Enns is the curator of an exhibit opening Thursday, Sept. 9, at the Monterey Museum of Art that features pieces by eight Japanese-American artists, all directly addressing internment. She first encountered the art of sansei artists - sansei refers to third-generation Japanese immigrants - eight years ago in Sand City, and since then helped to put together 17 exhibits around the same theme.

Having one in Monterey is special, Enns says, because Monterey was one of very few places that welcomed Japanese-Americans back, with early attempts to proclaim it a sanctuary city for returning families.

But it was not all a rosy story. During World War II, some 3,500 Japanese and Japanese-American people in Monterey County were forcibly removed from their land and their homes to internment camps. Many families never returned.

It was not until 2018 - 72 years later - that the Monterey County Board of Supervisors issued a formal apology to members of the Japanese-American community, on the anniversary of the federal executive order on internment.

Enns and Carmel Valley-based sansei photographer Jerry Takigawa have been working together for years; other artists presented in the exhibit, except for now Georgia-based Tom Nakashima, reside and make art in California.

The third-generation Japanese-American artists represent the last connection to people who lived through this painful chapter in American history. Selected works of eight artists featured in this exhibit, titled "Shadows from the Past: Sansei Artists and the American Concentration Camps," showcases the collective impact of the wartime internment and lives in diaspora.

In addition to the exhibit, MMA will hold a virtual panel discussion with insights on the works and invite live questions from the audience. There will also be a history panel, treasures from the Japanese-American Civil Liberties Collection and the Remembrance Lantern Workshop by one of the artists, Na Omi Judy Shintani.

Enns visited the museum a week before the exhibit opening, during the installation of the artists' work. She was stunned to see the art going up: "It is really exquisite. I can't believe how quietly elegant it looks."

As the exhibit was being installed, the Weekly asked the participating artists about their work and revisiting this chapter of history now, during a time that anti-Asian hate crimes have been surging. A selection of their answers follows below.

Weekly: Why did you become an artist?
Wendy Maruyama: I have always been a visual person. As a deaf person, it seems to be natural for me to respond to things I see and to be able to make things with my hands. I am also a woodworker.

Masako Takahashi: I just don't feel like myself unless I'm making something. As a child, I was encouraged to make art. I entered a painting contest when I was 4 and won the first prize. In high school, I won a scholarship to the Art Institute in San Francisco (then called the California School of Fine Arts). I was an art major at Bard College, and later at UC Berkeley.

Na Omi Judy Shintani: Because of my mother. I was 3 years old and very active. She was trying to find something for me to do. We tried ballet, swimming; an art class did the trick.

Reiko Fujii: When I was 45 years old, my two children were becoming more independent. To avoid the empty nest syndrome, I decided I would go back to school to study art and work towards a master's degree. I am interested in the creative process of incorporating video, photography, glass, installation and book arts into multidisciplinary art pieces, using my family's and my own Japanese-American experiences.

Lucien Kubo: I have been active in the grassroots movement for social change. That has informed and inspired my art. As artists, we must be part of this reality. Whether it is about immigration, democracy, social justice, equality, global warming and the environment, art and involvement can be powerful tools.

What is your family story related to internment? How did you learn about it?
Fujii: My parents never explained what they meant when they talked about "friends from camp." When I was young, I always thought they were referring to some kind of summer camp. When I was in high school, my Auntie Haru explained it to me. She thought the experience in the camps and the stress related to returning home culminated in my mother's psychotic breakdown the day after I was born.

Takahashi: I was born in a concentration camp called Topaz, Utah. It's like a birthmark, something you may not dwell on, but cannot forget because it's part of you. I lived most of my life without focusing on the subject, but when my father passed away I was overcome with a sense of my ancestry. The kimono installation, "Generations" [featured as part of this exhibit], is the result.

Jerry Takigawa: My family's story is typical. The heads of households were taken early by the FBI to military prisons. The rest of the family moved later to assembly centers and then to the camps. Because of the careful way my parents depicted the incarceration as I was growing up, I didn't experience the full impact of that event until much later in my life. I could see it was a result of racism, economic opportunity and war hysteria - a failure of political leadership. In short, it was a mistake.

Lydia Nakashima Degarrod: My father grew up in Peru and suffered from the actions of the Peruvian and U.S. government during World War II. They were deported to camps in the U.S. My father, who was a teenager, had to escape to Chile to avoid being sent to a camp. He didn't speak much of this difficult period of his life. I learned about it mostly from my mother after he passed away.

Kubo: My parents and their families were interned in Topaz. We visited this camp and spent the day walking until we found the concrete foundations of my parents' barrack, their high school, and the hospital. It was a desolate place and I will never forget that day.

"It's like a birthmark, something you may not dwell on, but cannot forget because it's part of you."

Shintani: My grandfather from my father's side had an oyster farm in Washington. He was taken first, supposedly because he knew something about submarines and they suspected maybe he was a spy. My mother's family was in Hawaii when Pearl Harbor happened. There were too many Japanese in Hawaii to incarcerate all of them, but they took community leaders, including my grandfather, to a camp in Santa Fe. I didn't know any details until I was in my 40s.

Maruyama: When the war broke out, my grandfather chose to move his family inland rather than go into the incarceration camps. But their circumstances were equally harsh. Eventually they relocated to Colorado after discovering that Japanese-Americans were not welcomed in Utah. I didn't even know about the Executive Order 9066 until about eighth grade.
Almost 80 years have passed. How has your thinking about the events of 1942-46 evolved in the context of your artistic experience?
Maruyama: Even though 80 years seems like a long time, it happened not that long ago. What saddens me is that things have not changed at all. I also think that my parents' and grandparents' generation were incredibly resilient and I can't imagine going through what they had to go through if this were to happen today.

Takigawa: Over the past six, seven years, I've researched my family history. My parents' silence about the camps was designed to protect me from their feelings about what happened. But, like all secrets, their trauma was silently passed on to their children. I now have a better understanding of my own motivations and viewpoints by uncovering the past.

Takahashi: Current events, sadly, remind me all too constantly of the concentration camps of the past, including my own. At least I was not separated from my family. Many Japanese-Americans have recently been demonstrating against the disastrous incarcerations at our southern border.

Degarrod: Growing up in Chile, I was a witness to my grandfather's and my father's sense of displacement which I didn't fully understand until I was an adult. The events of World War II resulted in the severance of their connection to Japan. Working on the installation gave me the opportunity to reflect on these events and atone some of my family's pain.
Pick one of your pieces from the exhibit and describe it please.
Degarrod: "Scattered Seeds of the Cotton Bolls" is an installation of 75 flowers which I made to honor my family's memories and to atone their suffering. I achieved this in the making of the papers, by mixing the fibers of mulberry and yerba buena, an herb used in Latin America for soothing pain, and in the embroidery of the flowers by combining European techniques along with Sashiko, a Japanese way of mending torn clothing.

Takahashi: The kimono is an iconic Japanese garment. In Japan, black kimonos are worn by women and men for formal occasions like weddings and funerals. Installed, my kimonos touch gently at the sleeves, implying a passing along of something Japanese from one to the other. In some exhibitions I've installed as many as seven in a row, as at the Monterey Museum of Art.

"Art is a mirror - an opportunity for understanding - and a window to open minds."

Fujii: "The Detained Alien Enemy Illuminated" is a light box, where images fused onto the enclosed bottles are visible through the translucent Crystal City Detained Alien Enemy Detention Center address label images. These envelope images from camp are fused onto the windows on the front. All of the images on the bottles are of family, friends and acquaintances, representing stories they experienced while they were unjustly imprisoned in the desert for up to four years.

Takigawa: Yes. Yes. 2016, shows my parents together in front of a camp barrack. Their black-and-white image has been blurred to freeze a fading memory and there are shreds of paper showing two problematic questions from the government loyalty questionnaire required of the prisoners. Most of the Japanese community felt these two questions were an affront to their integrity, having been incarcerated without due process. I assume my parents answered "Yes" and "Yes" as they were not sent to Tule Lake with those who answered "No" and "No".

Shintani: Let's talk about my newest piece, Illuminations. I did a survey of 15 questions to understand what other survivors are thinking. I asked them questions, such as what they would like to ask their ancestors; I wanted to better understand this experience. Illuminations are about understanding thoughts of the descendants.

What do you hope viewers take away from this exhibit?
Fujii: The Japanese-American experience, especially their unjust incarceration, is part of American history. One of my main hopes is that we are educating people about that experience.

Takahashi: I filter my feelings through art-making. I hope viewers translate the work into their own personal language, and find meaning in it.

Kubo: The same racism that created the camps and detention centers is still alive with the white supremacy we see today. I like to think my art is part of a collective Asian voice, calling out for change in this world. We need compassion, democracy, equality and peace.

Shintani: I want people to understand the legacy of this injustice. And how it can live in families, from generation to generation. I feel like both an insider and an outsider.

Takigawa: Art is a mirror - an opportunity for understanding - and a window to open minds. There is a hope that those who experience the exhibition will leave seeing things a little differently. In times of crisis and uncertainty, we are most receptive and most in need of creative energy. It is through art that the heart is open. Art imparts empathy - and empathy illuminates history.

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Reflecting 75 years later, eight artists interpret the lasting legacy of Japanese internment.

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This is the latest wave of artistic response from those directly affected by the traumatic events of 1942-1946 that marked the U.S. history like an ugly, if rarely acknowledged, scar. In the last decades of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century, about 200,000 Japanese people emigrated to Hawaii to work on the islands' sugar plantations.

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This opinion piece by Carlene Tanigoshi Tinker encourages readers to dig up the past of the Japanese American internment camps both literally and figuratively. As a survivor of the Amache incarceration camp in Colorado, Tinker witnessed the dismal and dehumanizing conditions of these prisons firsthand. At 82-years-old, Tinker is still fighting to keep the memory of Amache alive by physically digging up people's belongings so that these fragments of a muted history can be memorialized. This act of preserving and protecting the history of Japanese internees is more pertinent than ever as education systems across the country attempt to shrink the already narrow lens of American history taught in classrooms today. I also thought about how Okada’s book could also be interpreted as an attempt to preserve the emotional effects of the internment camps on the Japanese American psyche. Just like Tinker, Okada manages to dig up these deep, painful memories so that readers in future generations can understand a fuller picture of Japanese American history.

- Emma

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A sign at the entrance to Amache in Granada, Colo. on Jan. 18, 2015. (Russell Contreras/AP)

While other children were sent to daycare, when I was 3 years old, I was sent to a Japanese American prison.

The Amache incarceration camp, or as the government called it, the Granada Relocation Center, was a part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Japanese incarceration policy at the start of World War II.

Amache is located on prairie land the government took from Colorado farmers through eminent domain. The climate was wretched and, for most people imprisoned there, Amache was far away and different from the places they were stolen from, such as my family's home in Los Angeles.

More than 7,000 Japanese Americans, most of whom were U.S. citizens who had never been to Japan, were rounded up, transported by train or trucks, and imprisoned at Amache - simply for being Japanese. Most of us lost our businesses, homes and farms, and 121 people lost their lives.

Oct. 15 marks the 76th anniversary of when Amache was closed by the same U.S. government that opened it a few years previous. And, on this anniversary, I remember.

I remember the story of the guards at one of the camps. I remember how my Japanese American uncle had to pick sugar beets, which were used to make bombs for the war, while my father had to shovel coal for the railroads.

I remember the shoddy barrack bathtubs that were open to the sky and the elements, where there was no place for private bathing, modesty or pride.

I remember waiting outside with hundreds of other Japanese American families, three times a day, every day for our meals that were served out of mess tents. During these times, my father would hoist me up on his shoulders to protect me from the never-ending sandstorms that would pelt our eyes, hair, noses and clothes with grit.

And, I remember how my parents, like so many other parents, never talked about Amache once the government closed the doors, without apology or assistance to help us reestablish ourselves in the United States. Their deep shame created silence on an experience that is unthinkable to current Japanese American generations.

I am 82 now. Most children of the camps across the United States are in our 80s and 90s, our parents long gone. I, like many other incarceration survivors, work hard to preserve the land and what is left of the barracks, guard watchtowers and fencing. After Amache was closed in 1945, the land was abandoned and left for the prairie to reclaim.

I volunteer with the Amache field school, a program through the University of Denver's anthropology department that offers for-credit and internship opportunities for students in the program as well as Amache descendants. We section off the land and sift through the layers of prairie soil, searching for my peoples' belongings. What we have found so far has been preserved and can be viewed in an online gallery. But there is so much more work to be done, and my time is running out.

I also work with the National Parks Conservation Association to preserve Amache into a national park site. The Amache National Historic Site Act was introduced by Reps. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) and Ken Buck (R-Colo.) and was overwhelmingly passed in the House of Representatives in July. The bipartisan bill will preserve the land and create a memorial where people can learn about the site's history.

I want people to walk through the gates of the camp, as my parents and I did. I want them to see the cots and naked, single lightbulbs in the rooms where we slept. I want them to feel the emotions of being trapped with their loved ones, political prisoners of war. With violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States on an alarming rise,I want people to know a fuller representation of Japanese American history so that it never happens again.

The Amache National Historic Site Act is now in the hands of the Senate. I urge them to pass it. All Amachean children are waiting for the justice, respect and honor our parents never saw. We must protect their stories and experiences for generations to come.

MORE FROM OPINIONS

HAND CURATED

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Opinion | I survived a Japanese American internment camp. We cannot forget that history.

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While other children were sent to daycare, when I was 3 years old, I was sent to a Japanese American prison. The Amache incarceration camp, or as the government called it, the Granada Relocation Center, was a part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Japanese incarceration policy at the start of World War II.

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This piece is called “Yellow Menace” and is by Isabel Reyes, a student in the No-No Boy spring 2018 course at Brown University. Whenever I think of something that is connected to a lot of history, I love looking for art that was inspired by it. That brought me to this artwork.

I found it fascinating that the piece is called "Yellow Menace," perhaps an indication of the movement away from the phrase "Yellow Peril." Also, the dragon is emerging from the shadow of the child and could be interpreted as protecting the child but could also be seen as threatening the child.

The child is dressed in white, the color usually used to symbolize innocence. The dragon looms over the child, representing the Asian identity that may one day force the child to make a choice they don't want to make.

- Yashi

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"Yellow Menace" by Isabel Reyes, a student in the No-No Boy spring 2018 course at Brown University. This was her final project and is now coming to buttons and stickers available on the 2018 U.S. tour...

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This article cues us into the ways that photographs (from three different photographers-one commissioned by the US government, one a volunteer to document the camps, and one from the interior) offer their own narrative framings of the Japanese internment. Images can reflect nationalist biases, feeding into ideas of what constitutes a “good” subject and the American nation and/or counter this agenda by “humanizing” Japanese internees whose names were otherwise replaced by a family number. While No-No Boy doesn’t take us into the camps, I thought about how Okada’s omission could parallel the government’s censorship of those photos conflicting with the official narrative (Lange’s photos, for example). Sidenote: who knew Ansel Adams (you know him! beautiful b&w landscape photos of the west/frontier) was buddies with the director of the Manzanar camp?

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Photos: 3 Very Different Views Of Japanese Internment

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An exhibit at LA’s Skirball Cultural Center features photos that three photographers — Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams and Toyo Miyatake — took at the Manzanar internment camp.