Good evening everyone [my name is Gary Miyashiro]. I am a GFA parent. My son, Travis Miyashiro is a Junior. My older son, Justin, graduated in 2005. They both enrolled at GFA beginning in middle school, so we have been a member of the GFA family since 1998.
I am a third generation AJA (American of Japanese Ancestry). We call ourselves “Sansei”. Actually I am a 3½ generation as both my maternal grandparents were born in the US, making them American citizens; they were “Nisei” and my mother was a “Sansei”. That’s an important fact, and I’ll get back to that later.
I was born and grew up in Hawaii, on a small, mostly rural island called Kauai. In the school that I attended, children of Japanese ancestry made up the majority enrollment. In fact, in my community, Japanese made up the majority population. So in my experience growing up, America was Japanese and I pretty much took my Japanese heritage for granted.
It wasn’t that racism and prejudice didn’t exist, but I never considered myself “different” or experienced real discrimination growing up. However, that all changed when I went away to college. I went to school in Boston, where I saw my first snow and the changing of the seasons. More importantly, coming East to New England was a cultural shock as I was now a minority, singled out as being different and often “looked down on” as being inferior. For my children, this is the world that they know and grew up in. In fact, for my older son, through most of his elementary school years in Redding, he was the only Asian child in the school. Growing up, we tried to instill in our children a pride in their Japanese heritage, that although they might be different, that in no way are they inferior.
But growing up, most of the Japanese people that I knew weren’t trying to be “Japanese”, but rather were trying to be “American”. In fact, to a great extent, the people of my generation denied their Japanese heritage. We didn’t speak, read or write Japanese. We learned English, we studied American history, or World History from an American centric point of view. We never learned much about Asian history, or the Japanese culture. We gave our children Anglo-Saxon names. I was not really conscious of this while growing up and it took a long time before I understood the reasons behind this. To understand why this occurred, you need to understand the Japanese experience in America and their desire to fit in (or more likely – their desire “to not stand out”, not appear “bad”).
Going back to the beginning then . . . the first Japanese settlers arrived in the United States (primarily in California) in 1869. By law, while naturalization rights were granted to free whites and people of African descent, they were not granted to Asians. In fact, in California, by law foreign born Asians were prevented from owning land or any business establishment. In 1924, the US Congress even passed an immigration act which at that time basically stopped all immigration from Japan.
Then December 7, 1941 and Pearl Harbor happened. That was a day that, in the words of then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “Shall live in infamy.”
Today is the anniversary of another day in American history that shall live in infamy. On this day in February 19, 1942, some 68 years ago, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, giving the War Department the authority to define military areas in the western states (stretching from Washington state to California and extending inland into southern Arizona) and to exclude from them anyone who might threaten the war effort. Thus began the Japanese relocation program that would over the next 3+ years, incarcerate in some 10 internment camps more than 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry - about 77,000 of whom were American citizens. They were to be incarcerated for an indefinite period without criminal charges, without proof of wrongdoing, or without benefit of trial.
It wasn’t until 46 years and eight presidents later before the United States would finally and officially admit that what happened to these Japanese people was wrong. The first declaration was by President Ford in 1976, when he officially rescinded Executive Order 9066. In 1982, a federal commission under President Carter determined that the decision to incarcerate was not justified by military necessity. In fact, the record does not disclose a single case of disloyalty or sabotage from any American born citizen of Japanese ancestry during the whole war. The commission determined that the decision was based on “racial prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.” Then in August 1988, President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 into law. This law acknowledged the injustice of the evacuation, relocation and internment of those of Japanese ancestry during World War II, contained an official Government apology and recommended legislative remedies and reparations. It also said that we must insure that this should never happen again.
And why is all this important to me? Well, for two reasons:
For me, Executive Order 9066 and all it resulted in is highly personal. My grandparents and my mother were a part of it. Even though they were American citizens, they were incarcerated along with all the others in an internment camp (they called it concentration camps), first at Tule Lake, CA and then later at Topaz, UT. When the order to evacuate came, families were given 10 days to get their lives in order. They could only take what they could carry, leaving their homes, possessions and memories behind. My mother lost her friends and spent her high school years in the internment camps. My grandfather lost his business, his livelihood, his stature as a man, as a father and head of the household, which to a Japanese male meant a great deal. He would never recover from this. And all of this was simply because they were of Japanese ancestry, because of what they looked like and not for whom they were as individuals.
And for my father, who was living in Hawaii at the time of Pearl Harbor, the impact of the war was slightly different. Although Executive Order 9066 was in effect in Hawaii, because of the larger Japanese population and the impact that relocating/incarcerating them would have on the local economy it was determined that large scale action would not be taken. For the Japanese in Hawaii, however, many lost their jobs and livelihood, property was confiscated, their movements were restricted and they were viewed with suspicion. In order to prove their loyalty and the loyalty of their families, many of the young men volunteered to serve in the military. An all Nisei (American born Japanese), volunteer unit was formed in Hawaii that was designated the 100th Battalion. However, not surprisingly, all the original officers were Caucasians. My father served as a rifleman in a unit of the 100th Battalion. They were sent to Wisconsin for training and later deployed to Europe where they would see action. Later on, a larger unit was formed consisting of draftees and volunteers, including many Nisei and Sansei coming out of the internment camps. This became the 442nd Regimental Combat Team (the 100th Battalion would later be merged into the 442nd). The 442nd RCT would become the most highly decorated fighting unit of its size in the history of the US military. They would earn almost 40,000 Purple Heart awards. The men of the 442nd fought with duty, honor and loyalty under the battle cry of “Go For Broke.” They rose above the binds of war and racism and responded to injustice with an untarnished record of valor.
But the America that my parents and other Japanese returned to after the war had not changed much. They still had to face racial hatred and fight a lot of battles to enforce their rights and freedoms. Even though they had fought and spilt their blood, and many had died to preserve those freedoms, they were still discriminated against and had their rights denied. They still had to prove that they were “Americans”. For many of them, that meant denying their Japanese heritage. So from this I learned that the discrimination and prejudice that the Japanese in America faced has shaped my life experience.
It is because of my history that whenever I see racial discrimination I get angry and passionate. So when 9/11 happened, that brought back all those memories. In the aftermath of the disaster, there was a lot of talk about rounding up all the Moslems and putting them in concentration camps. I could relate to and understand the uncertainties and anxieties that Moslems must have been going through around that time. But as it was for the Japanese in 1942, it would be wrong to suspend the Constitution and deny the rights of any American citizens. Why is it we seem to forget what America stands for?
My sons and I have had long discussions around this. I remind them of their heritage and the trials and battles that their grandparents went through to insure their futures and their rights and freedoms. And we must continue that battle to preserve personal freedoms, and as I tell my sons . . .
WE MUST NEVER FORGET!
(Interesting anecdote – In high school, we had a presentation on Pacific Rim cultures by University of Hawaii International Institute students. Two of the students stayed at my home overnight. One was from Japan, studying American culture, and the other was from Minnesota, studying Japanese culture. It was funny that the student from Japan spoke perfect English, with no accent, and the student from Minnesota spoke perfect Japanese (the formal court version). My parents spoke some Japanese, but mostly the common folk version. Remember I spoke no Japanese. It seemed funny to me at the time that I now had someone in my home from Japan and someone from Minnesota who knew more about Japan and the Japanese than I did.)