Tonight I spoke at an AAPI event and mentioned America's history of anti-Asian discrimination—including the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Asiatic Exclusion League, & Koramatsu & Japanese Camps.
Afterwards an older gentlemen approached me and said, "Thank you for reminding everyone the US Govt locked Japanese Americans in camps. I know—because I was born in those camps. I carry that with me til this day."
I was left in awe. A reminder—this isn't ancient history folks. It's contemporary reality.
@QasimRashid Within living memory is what it is. Star Trek's George Takei and his family were placed in one of those camps. He has a play, *Allegieance*, about his family's experience. https://amz.run/6gNl
In keeping with book bans and censorship, Scholastic Book Services made its licensing deal contingent on the removal of the mention of racism in the author's note for Maggie Tokuda-Hall's *Love in the Library, *a book about a camp. She declined. https://tinyl.io/8Zwx
Systems were methodically hacked and broken into, at scale. What am I supposed to do, celebrate China's mass pilfering? Are you denying this happened? Maybe we should applaud the Russians when they run away with Ukrainian toilets on their shoulders and accuse their detractors as being Russophobes.
BTW. What does this have to do with Chinese Anericans? I do not understand what you mean by AAPI. Why would my saying China equal Chinese Americans? Aren't they two separate things?
Edit: OK, I see your point. My comment should be a response to another post, not this one. It was late. Please forgive me. I harbor no bad feelings about Asian Americans, but China has been on my mind lately.
@QasimRashid My father, aunt, and grandparents were incarcerated at #Topaz. I am *always* shocked that many US Americans have no idea this even happened. We are losing their stories...thank you for sharing this man's voice.
@QasimRashid We're rapidly losing this generation now. My uncle was 6 when taken to Tule Lake; all our other relatives from that generation have passed. We built memorials in Hayward and Tanforan, featuring members of the Mochida family who were forever etched into history by Dorothea Lange's iconic photos; two of the Mochida family have died since we started those projects.
It's more than “living history”; it's a huge responsibility to act now while we can. 🥰
I have heard that many families lost property, in my state, that neighbors just "took over" and never returned it to their proper owners, including orchards and businesses. That should have been illegal, even then.
When Warren Furutani was growing up in Los Angeles in the 1950s, he sometimes heard his parents refer to a place where they once spent time — a place they called “camp.” To him “camp” meant summer camp or a YMCA camp, but this was something different. During World War II the US government incarcerated
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