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Here is our newest library as we continue our work about diversity. 1. Click on the link. 2. Click on the link again to allow the library shelves to load. 3. Click on the book cover of the book you want to have read to you.

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ASIAN AMERICAN PACIFIC ISLANDER (AAPI) HERITAGE MONTH (with Pride month and Juneteenth) 

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Asian Pacific American Heritage Month - Choice Board

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May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month! Click on the link to bring you to a read aloud choice board.

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The Conscious Kid is an education, research and policy organization that supports families and educators in taking action to disrupt racism, inequity and bias

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Cartoon Network AAPI Heritage month videos

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Cartoon Network AAPI Heritage month videos

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These are great for all ages. (From Sarah G)

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As a Native Hawaiian Wahine, it is incredibly important to me that our keiki (children) are taught the history of my community and other Asian-American Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities. There is so much joy and brilliance from our communities along with harm and sadness that we have faced. Both must be brought to the surface of the conversations in our schools, libraries, and homes.

This month I am doing an AAPI Studies Series for Colorful Pages. My hope is to release a plethora of resources for educators, families, and librarians to ensure that our history and heritage is taught.

In this booklist, I share 15 books about AAPI Leaders for elementary students, consisting of mostly picture books! Each book is written or co-written by an AAPI author because we must center AAPI voices while teaching our heritage and history. I have organized this list into two categories: (1) Books Featuring Multiple AAPI Leaders, and (2) Books Featuring a Specific AAPI Leader.

Use these books to teach about amazing heroes and leaders from our communities! In my own classroom, we are studying about 3-4 AAPI Leaders per week and using graphic organizers to capture what we learned. I am hoping to post a lesson plan and materials later this month.

The Spectrum for Multicultural Lit.: Dependent on the Chapter

Age Range: 4+ years old

Asian-Americans Who Inspire Us is a picture book that tells the story of 16 Asian-Americans who are trailblazers in history. Each chapter features the biography of a hero accompanied by beautiful illustrations of their life. I used this eBook to read to my students so they can learn about important Asian-Americans for AAPI Heritage Month!

The Spectrum for Multicultural Lit.: Dependent on the Biography

Age Range: 6-8 years

Angel Trazo wrote this book after seeing the lack of literature representing Asian Americans! We Are Inspiring shares the stories of 32 Asian-American women and what they did in our world. I loved the diversity in the Asian-American women she included in this book. Trazo definitely paid attention to acknowledging the wide-breadth of identities in the Asian-American community!

The Spectrum for Multicultural Lit.: Dependent on the Chapter

Age Range: 3-6 years old

Written by Mia Wenjen, an amazing #OwnVoices author, Asian Pacific American Heroes introduces readers to 18 different leaders who identify as Asian Pacific American. It is illustrated with real-life photos. Asian Pacific American Heroes includes leaders like: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Chloe Kim, and Bruno Mars. This would be a fun read because it also includes leaders that children would be familiar with.

The Spectrum for Multicultural Lit.: Dependent on the Chapter

Age Range: 8+ years old

This is another picture book written by Mia Wenjen about AAPI Heroes! Changing the Game shares the biographies of 18 amazing women who excelled in their sport and overcame obstacles in their way. It includes biographies of: Eun Jung "EJ" Lee Ok , Chloe Kim, Miki Gorman, Victoria Manalo Draves, Evelyn Tokue Kawamoto-Konno, Julie Chu, Natasha "Tasha" Kai, Michelle Wie, Kristi Yamaguchi, Amy Chow, Anona Naone Napoleon, Michelle Waterson, Liane Lissa Sato, Catherine Mai-Lan Fox, Megan Khang, Mohini Bhardwaj, and Naomi Osaka. I really appreciate how Mia includes AAPI leaders from Pacific Islander communities and Southeast Asian communities, which often get left out unfortunately. The only thing to note about this book is that it JUST came out in May 2021 so shipping and distribution may be delayed (but you could still get it for the remainder of this year plus being prepared for next year).

The Spectrum for Multicultural Lit.: Conversation

Age Range: 4-8 years old

Julie Leung has written a couple beautiful picture book biographies of AAPI heroes from history. The Fearless Flights of Hazel Ying Lee tells about the life of Hazel Ying Lee, the first Chinese American woman to fly for the US military. It shares about her strength and bravery as well as the obstacles she had to overcome to achieve her dream.

The Spectrum for Multicultural Lit.: Mostly Exploration

Age Range: 4-8 years old

Fauja Singh Keeps Going is the true story of Fauja Singh. Fauja Singh was the oldest person to run a marathon. It shares Fauja Singh's determination to reach his goal and about his childhood in Punjab. I love the positive representation of the Sikh community in this picture book too!

The Spectrum for Multicultural Lit.: Between Representation and Exploration

Age Range: 6-10 years old

Kohala Kuamo'o: Nae'ole's Race to Save the King is a picture book that tells the story of Nae'ole racing across the Kohala district of the Hawai'i island to bring infant Kamehameha to safety. My little brother actually gave me this picture book for Christmas because it represents our Native Hawaiian culture and is bilingual (it has 'Olelo Hawai'i on one side and English on the other).

The Spectrum for Multicultural Lit.: Mostly Conversation

Age Range: 4-8 years old

Shining Star is the picture book biography of Anna May Wong. Anna May Wong was the first Chinese American movie star. In the book, Anna May Wong grew up wanting to be a movie star after seeing movies and being entranced by its adventure and excitement. However, in the 1930s, Anna May Wong experienced extreme discrimination and a lot of the roles offered to Asian Americans were stereotypical. She achieved her dream though as well as tried to search for more purposeful roles for her fellow Asian American actors.

The Spectrum for Multicultural Lit.: Conversation

Age Range: 4-8 years

Paper Son is the biography of Tryus Wong, who immigrated to America from China. Tyrus Wong eventually became an animator for Disney's Bambi. The illustrations of Chris Sasaki in this picture book are absolutely breathtaking. I love that students will be drawn into the story because of Wong's work on a Disney movie and then get to experience the story of a great Asian-American artist! It also provides a great way for students to think and critically analyze the experience of immigrants in America in the past and modern day.

The Spectrum for Multicultural Lit.: Mostly Exploration

Age Range: 9+ years old

Kamehameha the Great is part of a series of books that the Kamehameha Schools published to ensure that our Native Hawaiian history is passed down to our keiki (kids). It is an early chapter book. In Kamehameha the Great, it shares the story of King Kamehameha, the warrior that brought together the Hawaiian islands and created the Kingdom of Hawai'i. Each chapter shares about a part of his life. There are illustrations and printed pictures to help illustrate the main information. I highly recommend this book and others in Aunty Julie Stewart Williams' series for all elementary students. I have used this book to teach Native Hawaiian history to my Kindergarten students (I just picked certain chapters to account for their developmental needs and attention spans).

The Spectrum for Multicultural Lit.: Mostly Exploration

Age Range: 4-8 years old

As a childhood fan of Nissin Cup a Noodles, I am so excited to share this picture book! Magic Ramen is the true story of Momofuku Ando, who invented instant noodles. It writes about how the long lines for ramen after World War II was Momofuku Ando's inspiration for his culinary invention. Each page details the hard work and steps that Momofuku Ando had to engage in to reach his brilliant instant noodles! The illustrations paired with the story will engage any reader!

The Spectrum for Multicultural Lit.: Conversation

Age Range: 4-8 years

Journey for Justice is a picture book that tells the true story of Larry Itliong, a Filipino American labor leader. Larry Itliong was co-founder of the United Farm Workers and fought for the rights of farmworkers. According to the publisher, this is the first nonfiction illustrated Filipino American picture book!

The Spectrum for Multicultural Lit.: Conversation

Age Range: 9+ years

This was one of my favorite books growing up and I even submitted an unassigned book report on it in third grade! It is a biography about Queen Lili'uokalani who was the last queen of Hawai'i. She did so many great things during her reign and fought for the sovereignty of her Hawaiian people. This non-fiction chapter book is perfect to really dive into Hawaiian history at an age-appropriate level. It also is part of a series that Kamehameha Publishing has of many Hawaiian monarchs, such as Kamehameha the Great (see above). Please start teaching our true history!

The Spectrum for Multicultural Lit.: Between Exploration & Conversation

Age Range: 5-12 years old

Chef Roy Choi and the Street Food Remix shares about the life of Roy Choi, an innovative Korean-American chef. It talks about his contributions to the culinary world as well as the obstacles he faced during his life. The illustrations and text features throughout make this an extremely engaging picture book to read. I would suggest projecting it on a screen as you read so students can see all the different details!

The Spectrum for Multicultural Lit.: Mostly Conversation

Age Range: 5+ years old

In this picture book, Teresa Robeson writes a biography of Wu Chien Shiung. Wu Chien Shiung was a Chinese-American physicist who worked on beta decay and other atomic discoveries. She faced sexism and racism throughout her life and broke several glass ceilings in her field. Queen of Physics would inspire all students as well as show positive female STEM representation!

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View all posts by Kaitlin Kamalei Brandon

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Books About AAPI Leaders: An Elementary AAPI Studies List

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This month I am doing an AAPI Studies Series for Colorful Pages. My hope is to release a plethora of resources for educators, families, and librarians to ensure that our history and heritage is taught. In this booklist, I share 15 books about AAPI Leaders for elementary students, consisting of mostly picture books!

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Shout out to parent partners! This resource list was created by a parent partner in class: 

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Shout out to parent partners! This resource list was created by a parent partner in class: 

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1) A teacher runs a site called Colorful Pages that has awesome resources! Here's a link to her AAPI focused lessons from last year. She has a ton of excellent book recommendations too.

https://colorfulpages.org/2021/05/06/aapi-leaders-in-history-unit/

2) https://smithsonianapa.org/?fbclid=IwAR2B4DpXjbpy8nn1XUaQwoWeGYV7l-OkZ7emQFgpQwBBwbnCedDjSWl1SE4

3) The Wing Luke has many resources :  https://www.wingluke.org/education/

4) These video read alongs by AAPI “celebrities” would be great for K-2 https://www.theconsciouskid.org/storytime

5) SPL AAPI kids book list: https://www.spl.org/books-and-media/books-and-ebooks/staff-picks-for-kids/asian-pacific-american-heritage-books-for-kids?page=6

6) Pacific Islander Heritage Book list: https://diversebooks.org/resources-for-pacific-islander-heritage-month/

7) More book list:

https://instagram.com/asianlitforkids?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

8) Family friendly movies celebrating AAPI heritage month

https://www.romper.com/entertainment/family-movies-celebrate-asian-pacific-islander-heritage?fbclid=IwAR3ADbLwWIsUE8rnaY0VvcAZplix0IjOWYQVqn_Lu4acczj-vLnuAgLVi78

9) Not quite children friendly but these are some important dates for AAPI

https://time.com/5956943/aapi-history-milestones/?fbclid=IwAR0-Eso0qtoynF99kXwx26MI48rNCO9wSUzzMkel73NEMdJ0G1xIm-cgsGE

10) Scroll down to “Part1: Children’s Book List”

https://yuyuanshe.com/942509364558/the-asian-american-book-list-that-went-viral?fbclid=IwAR1wQ07vGyEUH6XcRXr238_jl6IxAhbk-lp2qftnUtzI3B64Fd-wIfYY81Q

11) This is a great source for books with different themes

https://bookshop.org/shop/hereweeread?fbclid=IwAR0H4Gjv-GHTn6tNXkLwMV6YaBibK4EkJADF0aljAmMqTKJEJPZ5loronTo

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Senate Bill 5264 was proposed to commemorate Chinese American heritage month, but it didn’t pass. Students could write to legislators to advocate for its passage if there is a special session.

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Favorite picture book read alouds (focus on East Asian cultures/communities and diaspora)

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Favorite picture book read alouds (focus on East Asian cultures/communities and diaspora)

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From Sarah G

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My friend's mom, Lien Pham, is a a seamstress for NASA-I highlight her work every year as an Asian woman in STEM. This is an article from NASA, will include a Youtube interview with her below.

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Lien Pham sometimes thinks of herself as a "spacecraft dressmaker."

She's been making thermal blankets at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, for 16 years. Just as clothing can be sewn too tight or too loose, thermal blankets -- the glinting material each spacecraft is wrapped in to regulate its temperature -- have to be cut to form. A thermal blanket has to provide just the right amount of heat -- not too much and not too little -- for the spacecraft to operate correctly.

Pham is a member of Flight Technicians Services, a group at JPL that contributes to all stages of spacecraft assembly. Her particular team, which designs and fabricates the protective thermal blankets, is called the shield shop.

At JPL, a place known for complex engineering, Pham has a different background: she began her career as a seamstress after her family immigrated to the U.S. from Vietnam. Her experience behind a sewing machine has informed how she makes thermal blankets.

We sat down to talk with Pham about her life and her work at JPL.
How did you start your career?
My family left Vietnam in 1978. At the time, we were persecuted as Roman Catholics in a Communist country. My family also had ties to the deposed South Vietnamese government and were targeted for political persecution.

When I first came to the U.S., my family settled in Los Angeles, and I found a job making lingerie for Olga. That was the only job I could get with my skills and limited English language ability. I made only $2.10 an hour.

To find a better job, I decided to learn a new skill. I attended a trade school in the San Fernando Valley [an area of Los Angeles] at night. They had basic courses in electronic assembly, which trained me in soldering and cabling.

In the 1980s, the aerospace industry in Southern California was booming. I found jobs at two big companies, Data Metrics and Litton, Inc., doing cabling for terrestrial vehicles and space satellites.

Spacecraft electronics are unique -- they're not like what you find at an electronics store at a mall. It takes a lot of skill to connect all the cables.
How did you find your way to JPL?
In 1994, I got hired on to the Cassini mission as a cabler for three years.

In 2000, my friend Mary Reave, a cabling engineer I worked with, told me they were hiring in the shield shop. She said, 'You should try it because you know how to sew.'

Although I loved sewing and had made some of my kids' clothes, I had never worked with thermal blankets. I told Mark Duran, my mentor at JPL, "I've never done it. But if you're willing to train me, I'm willing to try." I didn't know it would be something I'd enjoy and work at for 16 years.
What kind of materials go into a thermal blanket?
We use multiple layers of Mylar films with Dacron netting to separate them. For the outermost surface, we use Kapton film or Beta cloth, which resist temperature change.

We also use gold Kapton, which is good for conducting electricity. There's a black material called carbon field Kapton. That's for a charged environment, with a lot of electricity. It dissipates the charge.
What's the toughest material to work with?
Teflon. Some spacecraft require it, but tape doesn't stick to its surface. Tape is a part of the blanket-making process. At one point, we asked, "How are we going to build the material if the tape's not sticking?" We came up with a fabrication method that creates a hem like you would see in clothing, where the material is folded and then sewn.
What kind of tools do you use?
We use commercial sewing machines designed for thick material such as denim. It has a walking feed that pulls in the material and cuts our sewing thread automatically. We also use a variety of hand tools like a measuring scale, scissors, surgical scalpels, hole punches, a heat gun, leather punch and weight scale.
What do you enjoy about this work?
Most people don't see the end of a project. They just do their part and it moves on. I like blanketing because I'm able to contribute to a project from beginning to end.

On the Mars Science Laboratory, I was one of the last people to touch the spacecraft before launch. I was one of the last to touch the Curiosity rover that it carried to Mars. We had to install the last thermal blanket, called the Windbreaker, before sending the mission off to Mars.
Do you still sew clothing for yourself?
I still sew for my kids as a hobby. For example, my eldest daughter is getting married next year, and I'm spending a lot of time on bridal dresses for her and her bridesmaids.
Any advice for someone who is interested in space and JPL, but doesn't necessarily have a science or engineering background?
Work hard and keep an open mind. It's never too late to learn and take classes. There are a lot of people at JPL who didn't start in science or engineering, but almost all of them have the drive to learn new skills or search for training.

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Lien Pham sometimes thinks of herself as a "spacecraft dressmaker." She's been making thermal blankets at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, for 16 years. Just as clothing can be sewn too tight or too loose, thermal blankets -- the glinting material each spacecraft is wrapped in to regulate its temperature -- have to be cut to form.

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Read Aloud! Connected to culture and food

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Read Aloud! Connected to culture and food

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https://www.nps.gov/miin/learn/historyculture/bainbridge-island-japanese-american-exclusion-memorial.htm

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Leaving Bainbridge Island
March 30, 1942
National Archives and Records Administration

Let it Not Happen Again

After the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japanese forces on December 7, 1941, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. This order gave authority to the War Department to create zones from which Japanese Americans could be excluded. The first exclusion area designated was Bainbridge Island. On March 30, 1942, the Japanese Americans living on Bainbridge Island were gathered at the Eagledale Ferry Dock and sent to the concentration camp in Manzanar, California before being transferred to Minidoka.

Once World War II ended, about half of the Bainbridge Island Japanese Americans returned to the island to resume their lives, raise families, and pick up where they left off. But burning in their collective conscience was the Japanese phrase Nidoto Nai Yoni, which translates to "Let It Not Happen Again," and they vowed to honor and recognize the members of their community who spent part of their lives in American concentration camps because of their ancestry.

Getting to the Memorial

Upcoming Events
This site is managed by the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Community

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Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial - Minidoka National Historic Site (U.S. National Park Service)

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After the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japanese forces on December 7, 1941, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. This order gave authority to the War Department to create zones from which Japanese Americans could be excluded. The first exclusion area designated was Bainbridge Island.

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goes with article above

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Meet Lien Pham, The 'Spacecraft Dressmaker' Sewing Thermal Blankets At NASA | NBC Asian America

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Virtual Kodomo no Hiバーチャル・こどもの日 | Children’s Day Festival

Kodomo no Hi, also known as Children’s Day Festival, and hosted by the Japanese Cultural & Community Center of Washington, is an annual event that encourages children and families to explore and learn about Japanese and Japanese American art, culture, history, food and music. The event is free and open to the public. We hope you can join us from the safety of your home at our “Virtual Kodomo no Hi, ” which will include a new video every Sunday at noon (PDT) during the month of May, and Japanese cultural booklets and activity pack that are free to download!
https://www.jcccw.org/kodomo-no-hi

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Favorite Picture Book Read Alouds (focus on South Asian cultures/communities and diaspora)

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Favorite Picture Book Read Alouds (focus on South Asian cultures/communities and diaspora)

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from Sarah G

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Integrity is the practice of making choices that reflect our values as we strive towards realizing API Chaya`s vision of a just and equitable world free of violence. We at API Chaya believe that when we are open and transparent in our actions, we empower ourselves and the community to think critically and acknowledge the impact of our choices because where accountability is practiced, abuse has no place.

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Integrity is the practice of making choices that reflect our values as we strive towards realizing API Chaya`s vision of a just and equitable world free of violence. We at API Chaya believe that when we are open and transparent in our actions, we empower ourselves and the community to think critically and acknowledge the impact of our choices because where accountability is practiced, abuse has no place.

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https://www.adl.org/education/resources/tools-and-strategies/asian-american-pacific-islander-aapi-heritage-month

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Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month Resources

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Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month is a celebration of the culture, traditions and history of Asian American and Pacific Islander people in the United States. Use these resources to teach and commemorate this heritage in school, communities and at home.

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Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Reading Room

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Seesaw Activity - Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Reading Room

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A1 Revisited: The Seattle Times' coverage of the 1942 Japanese incarceration

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A1 Revisited: The Seattle Times' coverage of the 1942 Japanese incarceration

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Sometimes the only way forward is to look back.

This week marks the 80th anniversary of the first removals of Japanese Americans from their homes on the West Coast. Starting with 227 residents of Bainbridge Island on March 30, 1942, women, men and children were forced to leave their jobs, schools, homes and the lives they knew for an uncertain future. By the end, 120,000 Japanese Americans - two-thirds of them U.S. citizens - would be incarcerated in desolate camps in remote regions primarily in the Western interior during World War II.

Today, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 and the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans is widely seen as one of the country's grossest violations of civil liberties. But in the years leading up to it, the U.S. media's anti-Japanese fear mongering, racism and war hysteria created a rationale for the suspension of civil rights that was accepted by the public.

A rare number of media outlets - most notably the Bainbridge Island Review - took a principled stand against incarceration. Others, including The Seattle Times, did not. Eight decades later, Seattle Times Publisher Frank Blethen called that decision a "low point" in the paper's history.

Today we launch a project called A1 Revisited, scrutinizing our coverage of historic moments - starting with the day Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from Bainbridge - to begin to be accountable for the impact of past mistakes on our region.

Anti-Japanese sentiment

There's often a straight line drawn between the Japanese military's attack on Pearl Harbor and the incarceration of Japanese Americans. The logic goes, the Japanese military attacked Pearl Harbor and then in response, a vigilant and fearful U.S. government evacuated Japanese Americans for both their own protection and the protection of the larger community from potential espionage or disloyalty.

But what that framework obscures is that anti-Asian and anti-Japanese sentiment long predated Pearl Harbor.

Tom Ikeda, executive director and founder of Japanese American history organization Densho, said that in the 1920s, decades before Pearl Harbor, for example, prominent Bellevue business owner Miller Freeman pushed for laws to prevent Japanese Americans from owning land. Later, Freeman, as the founder of Washington's Anti-Japanese League, championed incarceration for Japanese Americans.

Much of the tension and agitation against Asian Americans stemmed from nativist fears of unfair labor competition and loss of white control of farming.

In 1942, a representative of the Grower Shipper Vegetable Association was quoted in the Saturday Evening Post, saying: "We're charged with wanting to get rid of the [racist slur for Japanese Americans] for selfish reasons. We might as well be honest. We do. It's a question of whether the white man lives on the Pacific Coast or the brown man."

Likewise, suspicion of Japanese Americans was fostered by the media well before the war. Certain racist conventions - derogatory slurs; the conflation of Japanese Americans with people in Japan - were already in wide use in The Seattle Times' pages before 1942.

Media

Led by publishers Hearst and McClatchy, newspapers along the West Coast beat the drum for anti-Japanese sentiment in the 1920s and later Japanese American incarceration in the 1940s, scholar Greg Robinson wrote in his book "A Tragedy of Democracy."

The Los Angeles Times famously published a 1942 editorial by W.H. Anderson arguing for the incarceration of U.S. citizens of Japanese descent, saying: "A viper is nonetheless a viper wherever the egg is hatched ... so a Japanese-American, born of Japanese parents ... grows up to be a Japanese, not an American."

In The Seattle Times, news and opinion coverage during the removal of Japanese Americans from the Seattle area might not have been as explicit, but it followed similar patterns.

In the March 30, 1942, edition, for example, a prominent A1 (front page) headline reads "First Photo of [racist slur for Japanese military] Destruction at Cavite Navy Yard," and then at the bottom of the page, "Tears, Smiles Mingle as [racist slur for Japanese Americans] Bid Bainbridge Farewell."

Longtime Seattle journalist and author Frank Abe said the use of the same derogatory slur for Japanese to refer to both the Japanese military and Japanese Americans created a "false equivalency."

"The use of the term for both groups confirms in the public mind the linkage of American citizens with a Japanese enemy," Abe said. "It validates the notion that ancestry determines identity, not just loyalty but identity."

Abe said the "happy spin" the reporter put on the removal of Japanese Americans on Bainbridge was "superficially sympathetic," but it ignored massive violations of civil liberties, due process and equal protection. The story goes on to embrace a number of other common tropes of the time, Abe said, such as the idea of Japanese Americans as pioneers going on a grand adventure, happily doing their part for the war effort.

There was also the theme of praising the Army for the "efficiency" of the removal, which is portrayed as "unfortunate but inevitable," Abe said. Every Japanese American quoted in the story was depicted as cheerfully resigned to their fate and even proud to do their part. The most sympathy in the story was reserved for a girl who had to leave her kitten behind.

Abe said the depiction served to assuage the "fear and ignorance" of the Seattle public. "It eased their guilt. It assisted them in looking away, because [though Japanese Americans] may have ended up crying ... they're also smiling."

The pervasive use of a slur to describe all people of Japanese descent allowed the public to see their fellow community members as outsiders and threats, Seattle poet, author and activist Larry Matsuda said. "They use the derogatory term of 'Jap,' which is dehumanizing," Matsuda said. "When you say 'Jap,' we're no longer citizens. We're Japs. We're foreigners."

And not just foreigners but enemies.

Vince Schleitwiler, a fourth-generation Japanese American in Seattle, teaches Japanese American studies and comparative studies at the University of Washington. His own family history illustrates the hypocrisy of the U.S. policy of treating Japanese Americans as enemies.

"I have German American family who were not incarcerated during World War II. My grandfathers on both sides of my family served in the military, but only one served while his family was in camp," Schleitwiler said.

"We can recognize how media coverage built either a political will to incarcerate Japanese Americans, or a sense of its tragic inevitability ... It had to be built," he said. "The reason people are interested in this now is because they see it happening again," he said, citing the incarceration of migrants and the mass incarceration of African Americans as events today that people believe are natural or inevitable.

On the opinion side of what was then called The Seattle Daily Times, the sentiment was often more dehumanizing.

The opinion pages regularly ran a syndicated Hearst column by Henry McLemore, who was unabashed about his ideas for how Japanese Americans should be treated. In one January 1942 op-ed in The Seattle Times, for example, headlined "This is War! Stop Worrying About Hurting [racist slur] Feelings," McLemore wrote, "I am for immediate removal of every Japanese on the West Coast to a point deep in the interior. I don't mean a nice part of the interior, either. Herd 'em up, pack 'em off and give 'em the inside room in the badlands. Let 'em be pinched, hurt, hungry and dead up against it. ... Sure, this would work an unjustified hardship on 80 per cent or 90 per cent of the California Japanese. But the remaining 10 or 20 per cent have it in their power to do damage - great damage - to the American people."

Unsigned editorials - the voice of the paper's opinion stance - were often less strident, but nonetheless helped to uncritically justify harsh treatment of Japanese American people depicted as security threats. Abe described one Seattle Times editorial, titled, "If They Want to Play Rough, It's High Time to Be Tough," as "hysterical and ill informed. It's just disinformation," he said.

A1 Revisited is an opportunity to interrogate our past coverage, noting where we went wrong, considering how we would cover these events differently today, and collaborating with community members and organizations, and asking critical questions.

On the other end of the spectrum was the response of Walt and Milly Woodward, the owners and publishers of the Bainbridge Island Review, one of the few publications to stand up to Executive Order 9066 at the time. In addition to editorials opposing incarceration, the paper engaged incarcerated Japanese Americans to write for the paper about the camp experience.

Seattle Times Publisher Blethen said while it's easy to second-guess past decisions, the Woodwards' courage is an inspiration. "I always wish that that generation of the Blethen family had had the same kind of gumption and compassion that Walt Woodward had, and was willing to stand up the way he did," he said.

Blethen said the process of looking back is a healthy thing to do. While The Seattle Times can't change past mistakes, "at least we can be very thoughtful about it going forward."

The legacy of a photo

Slurs, hateful rhetoric and omissions were not the only ways The Seattle Times dehumanized and removed the agency and voice of Japanese American story subjects. The paper's photographs caused as much harm as its words and painted a picture of Japanese Americans happy about their treatment.

One of the most jarring aspects of The Seattle Times' coverage of the Japanese American removal and incarceration is the expression on the faces of those forced to leave.

On Aug. 16, 1942, for example, the centerpiece of the front page was photos depicting Japanese Americans leaving the Puyallup Assembly Center, euphemistically called "Camp Harmony," for the Minidoka Relocation Center, near Hunt, Idaho.

Most of the people visible in the photos are smiling cheerfully. The Japanese American prisoners had spent months in the Puyallup site, living in rough-hewed barracks, with little privacy, stripped of their freedom and surrounded by armed watchtowers. Now, they were being shipped to parts unknown. And yet they were smiling.

One woman who was smiling in a front-page photo was Mitsuye Yamada, then 19. Before incarceration, Yamada and her family lived on Beacon Hill and she attended Cleveland High School. Shortly after Pearl Harbor, her father, an issei - or first-generation Japanese American - was arrested by the FBI, like many other community leaders.

The arrest was devastating for her family, Yamada said. They had no idea where her father was, or when or if he was coming back. Now 98, Yamada reflected at her home in Irvine, California, as she described that period as "the most overwhelming sadness."

Not only did they fear for his safety, the family also had to figure out how to survive, with their bank accounts frozen by the government after the arrest.

Like most of the 13,000 Seattle-area Japanese Americans sent to incarceration camps, Yamada's family was sent to the Minidoka Relocation Center in 1942. After she got there, Yamada wrote a poem titled "Evacuation" about her experience being photographed in Puyallup:
As we boarded the bus
bags on both sides
(I had never packed
two bags before
on a vacation
lasting forever)
The Seattle Times
photographer said
Smile!
so obediently I smiled
and the caption the next day
Read:
Note smiling faces
a lesson to Tokyo.
When she saw her picture in The Seattle Times, "I recognized the irony of the situation," Yamada said. Later, she said, she understood "they were going to use this photograph as a salve to their guilty feelings about what happened."

Her poems were eventually published in 1976 in a book called "Camp Notes and Other Poems," and Yamada went on to become an accomplished poet, author and human-rights activist.

Like Yamada, Larry Matsuda's family was first incarcerated in Puyallup and then Minidoka. In Seattle, Matsuda's family operated small grocery stores, but after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, white patrons stopped coming and their businesses could not survive the impacts of discrimination.

Matsuda was born in Minidoka in 1945.

The reverberations of his family's incarceration lasted long beyond their time in the camp.

After the war, Matsuda's father could not re-establish his once-successful businesses. He got a job as a janitor but then lost that, too. Later on, Matsuda's mom became clinically depressed and ended up at Western State Hospital. "You talk about post-traumatic stress, these are the kinds of things that I think they suffered," he said.

"Nidoto Nai Yoni"

As you enter the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial, there's a sign reading "Nidoto Nai Yoni" or "let it not happen again."

While it refers to the Japanese American incarceration, it also applies to the media's role in justifying and making the incarceration acceptable for the public.

Joseph Torres, the senior director of strategy and engagement for media advocacy organization Free Press, was involved in the organization's Media 2070 reparations project, examining the role of the media in perpetuating anti-Black racism. Torres said the recent wave of news organizations such as The Baltimore Sun, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Los Angeles Times looking back at their coverage is an important start.

"The role of the U.S. press has historically been upholding white racial hierarchies - that's been a primary role," he said. "Acknowledging the harm is the first step. But then institutions need to work with the community on what does repair look like?"

Torres said part of the work for the media is to give the community a say in defining what healing is for them.

That can involve breaking down some of the walls or customs that prevent newsrooms from representing community views directly - unfiltered. To that end, we collaborated with Densho on this project, soliciting feedback on our 1942 coverage and diving into the organization's library of resources about the incarceration.

In the moment, it's often hard to see the parallels between our present and our past. Japanese American social justice groups like Tsuru for Solidarity exist to remind us that today's migrant border camps or immigrant detention centers are contemporary echoes of our history.
This reporting was supported by the International Women's Media Foundation's Howard G. Buffett Fund for Women Journalists. Acknowledgments: Thank you to Brian Niiya, Frank Abe, Mitsuye Yamada, Hedi Mouchard, Vince Schleitwiler, Tom Ikeda, Lawrence Matsuda, Frank Blethen, Greg Robinson, Jonathan van Harmelen, Joseph Torres, Robyn Achilles, Cassie Chinn and Densho for sharing your expertise, stories and resources for this project.
"We need to learn from our mistakes, and let it not happen again," Matsuda said. "That's just a plea from a minority. And it's hoped that it resonates with the majority so that they can influence change," he said.

"Because liberty and justice for all, was not for all."

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A1 Revisited: The Seattle Times' coverage of the 1942 removal of 227 Bainbridge residents left a harmful legacy

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Sometimes the only way forward is to look back. This week marks the 80th anniversary of the first removals of Japanese Americans from their homes on the West Coast. Starting with 227 residents of Bainbridge Island on March 30, 1942, women, men and children were forced to leave their jobs, schools, homes and the lives they knew for an uncertain future.

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WEA APIM Caucus Education Resources

https://sites.google.com/view/wea-apim-caucus/apim-resources/teaching-education-resources

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Teacher's Guide

https://edsitement.neh.gov/teachers-guides/asian-american-and-pacific-islander-heritage-and-history-us

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Erasure of identities

Distinguishing between the different groups and cultures that are represented in the term AAPI is critical to avoid erasure of identities.

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Country List

List Asian countries and Pacific Islander countries to gain perspective of how many cultures are included in these terms AA and/or PI.

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Favorite picture book read alouds (focus on Middle Eastern cultures/communities and diaspora)

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Favorite picture book read alouds (focus on Middle Eastern cultures/communities and diaspora)

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Aki Kurose (1925-1998) was an American teacher and social-justice activist who helped establish Washington state's first Head Start program and worked to increase access to education and affordable housing, particularly among low-income and minority families.

She was incarcerated with other Japanese Americans during World War II and during this period was exposed to the Quaker values of peace advocacy and nonviolent conflict resolution by Friends working in camp. After the war, she joined several groups in Seattle working for peace, racial equality, and open housing, and became an award-winning elementary school teacher in the Seattle Public Schools system during her 25-year tenure with the district. She is the namesake of a middle school, a low-income housing community and a peace garden in Seattle, and the local chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League awards the Aki Kurose Memorial Scholarship each year.

Born Akiko Kato in Seattle on February 11, 1925, Kurose was the third of four children. Her parents had immigrated separately - her father Harutoshi arriving from Miyagi prefecture seeking work, her mother Murako from Kumamoto to study - and met through mutual friends in Berkeley, California. They moved to Seattle soon after marrying and leased an apartment building which Murako managed while Harutoshi took a job as a porter at Union Station. (The Katos were unable to purchase the property due to alien land laws which kept Asian immigrants, prohibited by law from naturalized citizenship, from owning land or real estate in Washington.)

From an early age, Kurose was encouraged to think outside expected gender roles by her parents' egalitarian and nontraditional relationship: Her mother obtained an engineer's license, operated the boiler room and furnace, and performed general maintenance around the building, while her father would bake jelly rolls every Friday evening for get-togethers with friends and neighbors.

Kurose lived and went to school with a diverse group of children from her working-class neighborhood in Seattle's Central District. Pushed together by red-lining and restrictive covenants that kept most of the city's neighborhoods off limits to Jews and people of color, the Katos frequently hosted African American, Chinese American and Jewish neighbors at social gatherings in their apartment, and Kurose and her friends "went in and out of each other's homes all the time". Her parents placed little emphasis on traditional Japanese values and cultural ties, and unlike many other Nisei at the time, she and her siblings attended Japanese language school only once a week instead of each day after their regular classes. Kurose instead spent her free time engaged with the Girl Scouts and her high school band and drama club.

The December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor came during Kurose's senior year at Garfield High School in Seattle, Washington. She later recalled brushing off her father's worries of trouble, unconcerned as she and her siblings were American citizens - but at school the next day, she was reminded of her "Japaneseness" and unequal status when a teacher told her, "You people bombed Pearl Harbor."

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, authorizing military commanders to create zones from which "any or all persons may be excluded," and over the next several months approximately 112,000 Japanese Americans were "evacuated" from the newly established Military Areas 1 and 2. The Katos were removed first to the Puyallup Assembly Center (also known as "Camp Harmony"), where Aki and her family were assigned a one-room "apartment" in a barracks on the parking lot of the requisitioned fairgrounds. The family was later transferred to the War Relocation Authority camp at Minidoka, Idaho.

Kurose completed her high school education in Minidoka and became involved with the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), which donated books to the camp schools and helped college-age Nisei obtain leave clearance to enroll in universities outside the exclusion zone. She left camp to attend the University of Utah in Salt Lake City but, after encountering problems with her living situation, she was forced to move and ended up at the LDS Business College instead. Kurose returned briefly to Seattle when the West Coast was reopened to Japanese Americans at the end of the war, but soon moved to Wichita, Kansas, and enrolled at Friends University. She graduated in 1948 and returned to Seattle to marry Junelow (Junks) Kurose, her best friend's brother and her brother's best friend. Junks, recently discharged from the Army, had been living in Chicago, where his parents resettled upon their release from camp, and the couple moved there.

In 1950, Kurose had their first child (Hugo, named after Junks' older brother, who had been forcibly conscripted into the Japanese army and died in the Pacific Theater of World War II), and the new family moved back to Seattle soon after. The transition was not easy. Discriminatory real estate practices, combined with a shortage of available housing, made it difficult to find a new home, so the family stayed with Kurose's parents until they were able to move into their own place. The local electrical and construction unions would not admit Japanese Americans, so Junks, an electrician, was unable to find work for some time before eventually taking a job as a Boeing machinist. During this time, Kurose worked for an interracial porter's union her father had started upon his return to Seattle. The city's largely Japanese American workforce had been replaced by African Americans during the incarceration, and employers capitalized on tension between the two ethnic groups when former camp inmates began to return and seek out their old jobs. Harutoshi helped organize the union, and Kurose was appointed its secretary.

Influenced by the discrimination she and her husband faced during their search for a home, Kurose became involved in the open housing movement in the 1950s, working first with the AFSC and later, in the 1960s, joining the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). During this time, the Kuroses had five more children; Aki enrolled them at a Seattle Freedom School, and brought them with her to civil rights marches and anti-war demonstrations. Sparking what would become a lifelong passion for education, she began taking classes in early-childhood education and development, started working in preschool programs, and joined a group of neighborhood parents to form the state's first Head Start program in 1965.

She began teaching for Seattle Public Schools through Head Start, eventually taking a job at an elementary school in 1974. Two years later, as part of the city's (reluctant and federally-mandated) move to desegregate its public schools, she was transferred from Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary, an urban, predominantly African American school, to the exclusive Laurelhurst Elementary in North Seattle. Her arrival was not welcomed by the parents of the until recently all-white student body, and Kurose was called to a meeting with forty concerned parents to defend her qualifications before she started teaching. (She would later describe the meeting as being "on trial", and recalled a parent telling her, "If you want to bring your rice bowl and chopsticks, it's okay".) During her first month, Kurose was monitored in the classroom each day by two parents, but she gradually won over the skeptical Laurelhurst community. When students of color were bused to Laurelhurst from the city's central area beginning in 1978, Kurose worked to ease their integration into the school and push her fellow teachers to promote a multicultural curriculum.

Despite the initial resistance to her assignment at Laurelhurst, Kurose eventually became one of its most well-loved and respected teachers, both locally and nationally. In 1980, she was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the National Advisory Council on the Education of Disadvantaged Children. She continued her own education, enrolling in a University of Washington graduate program in 1981 and receiving a Master of Early Childhood Education degree four years later. In the classroom, she encouraged her students to learn through hands-on experience instead of rote memorization, and she received numerous awards for her innovative teaching style. In 1985, she was named the Seattle Teacher of the Year, and in 1990 she was given the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching (PAEMST). Her work integrating peace advocacy with education was recognized internationally in 1992, when she received the United Nations Human Rights Award.

Upon her retirement in 1997, Laurelhurst students and parents dedicated the Aki Kurose Peace Garden on the school grounds. Kurose died the following year, on May 24, after a sixteen-year fight with cancer.

Aki Kurose Village, a family-friendly affordable housing community in North Seattle, opened in 1999, and in 2000 the Casper W. Sharples Junior High was renamed the Aki Kurose Middle School Academy, the first Seattle school named after an Asian American woman. Additionally, the Seattle JACL created the Aki Kurose Memorial Scholarship after her death, awarded annually to a Seattle Public Schools graduate applying to a Seattle community college or Washington state public university.

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Aki Kurose (1925-1998) was an American teacher and social-justice activist who helped establish Washington state's first Head Start program and worked to increase access to education and affordable housing, particularly among low-income and minority families.

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https://densho.org/

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https://www.bridgedelta.com/teachersguide