asian heroes: i've got a few
i am often accused by ppl that know me of being insufficiently reverential about my japanese heritage. i do, in fact, have several japanese-surnamed heroes. f'rinstance: hawaiian ukelele virtuoso jake shimabukuro, who besides sharing a surname with one of my mother's dearest friends, looks a whole lot like i did when i was 10 yrs old; competitive eating champeen takeru kobayashi, who altho very slight of stature can consume industrial-sized quantities of hotdogs, krystal's hamburgers, and other all-'meercun foods; and ex-army chief of staff general eric shinseki, who warned back in 2003 how many g.i.'s it was gonna take to occupy iraq post-regime change and wound up getting shitcanned for his trouble. and who could forget the "go for broke" 442nd combat team my uncle fought with in italy and france during ww2? there are, of course, others. i swear there are.
posted by stashdauber at 3:40 PM
7 Comments:
wow! not sure, but weren't the 442nd the most decorated squadron during WW2? remember seeing something on the history channel WAY back when about the "nisei" (i THINK that's how ya spell it) who were an all japanese heavily decorated outfit who fough with mucho bravery and suffered unbelievable casualties. got to check a interesting but distressing exhibit on the nisei and the whole shameful internment thing at the smithsonian 2 years back. i also read that nisei was also a broad term used to describe second generation japanese folks here in the states around the mid-century point.
either way, you grandfather sounds like a damn righteous cat and one well worthy of your pride.
my GREATgrandfather allegedly hopped to the states from italy cause he murdered some cat. NOT exactly the kind of thang you beam with pride over...
442nd: yeah, highest casualties and decorations for a ww2 american unit that size. i learned about 'em from a van johnson movie called "go for broke" i saw when i was a sprout (had some of the actual 442nd cats in it) and a book called "americans" i read when i was in colorado.
nisei: means "second generation" in ja. issei = first generation, sansei = third generation (like me), yonsei = fourth generation. etc. etc. etc.
internment: true dat. lotsa lit on this but if you wanna get pissed, see the old spencer tracy flick "bad day at black rock." when congress finally decided to let the nisei serve in 1943 (after disarming all the aja [americans of japanese ancestry] that were serving in the hawaii national guard on 12/7/41), they went thru the internment camps (many of whose inmates lost everything they had pre-war to greedy neighbors) and tried to recruit. had a hard time of it. conversely, in hawaii, they had something like 20,000 volunteers for 2,000 slots (including my dad, who wound up serving in the signal corps and visiting japan for the first time as part of the u.s. strategic bombing survey in 1945, interviewing survivors of the tokyo firebombing and nagasaki a-bomb).
my uncle (mother's brother) was in the 442nd, not my grandfather. he lives in sacramento today and is estranged from the rest of the family. i dunno the reasons. both of my grandfathers were too old and in any event were ineligible to serve as they were "enemy aliens."
my mom's father was a blacksmith. he was married and had 4 kids when he went to hawaii by himself to "make his fortune." he worked on a sugar plantation making parts for the trains that carried the cane to the refinery. he was there by himself for 7 yrs before he brought his family over and had 3 more kids (including my mom). as a result, my mom has nieces and nephews who are almost her age.
my dad's father went to hawaii after _his_ father, a mining engineer, was killed in a demolition accident. by tradition, his oldest brother inherited everything as the first son and the second son was already in hawaii, so it made sense for my grandpa (third son) to go there. he had a pert checkered career: had a flower shop, sold fords for awhile, wound up working for a japanese import company until well into his '80s. my grandma was a "picture bride" -- the first time she met him was when she got off the boat. she'd been a schoolteacher in japan at 15, and taught japanese school in hawaii, then retired and worked in a department store. when she died (from alzheimer's, while i was stationed in korea, the yr my first dtr was born), something like 3,000 ppl (old students etc.) came to her funeral. a sweet lady.
sorry, i meant to say "uncle." my head is spun in like 8 million directions today (holiday-induced psychosis.)
think i'm gonna skip the tracy flick. i'm sure it'll get me the same kinda steamed my wife gets when she peeps the hollywood depiction of her ancestors in old john wayne flicks and the like.
the internment thing is bullshit. i actually think we're seeing some of the preliminary sentiments that led up to it in this day and time with muslim peeps. i'm not saying the gov't is gonna cart them all off, but i do see shades of "you're an american just like us IF/UNTIL we see your entire race as a potential threat" going around. shameful...
yeah, there's def a parallel between ww2 internment of japanese and gtmo detainees. the common thread, i'm afraid, is racism. my dad spent his 3 yrs in uniform writing ltrs to the secretary of war asking why his father was interned when he had 2 sons serving in u.s. forces. just imagine if they'd tried to remove all the germans 'n' italians from the east coast, even tho during the hitler time, there was a big german-american bund movement on long island (where i grew up). i had a running argument w/my old man the whole time i was in the airforce. his idea was that the u.s. would never have used the atomic bomb on germany (altho i pointed out that firebombings of berlin and dresden were as horrific). who knows? sho' is interesting, tho.
i def saw the nastier side of 'meercun nationalism when i lived in austin around the time of the iran hostages. the fratboys were targeting anybody who looked like an iranian, even tho the real iranian kids that were at ut were there 'cos their families had to unass their homeland when the u.s.-backed shah fell. there's some non-alanis style irony for ya. take any identifiable "them" and "us," add a little fear to the mix, and watch the assholes come out. feh.
the rationale for the internment wasn't to protect the internees, it was to keep 'em from performing acts o' sabotage.
earl warren, later chief justice of the supreme court, was governor of cali at the time and a big proponent.
lotsa japanese internment web resources if you're into it.
i just feel shitty for all the folks who came back from the camps to find their homes and businesses sacked and stolen by greedy vultures.
and manazanar was in CA. read a good book years back for the 'ole university called "farewell to manzanar." it was jeanne houston's memoir of growing up in that camp. i especially remember the mental toll it took on her pops. bascially killed him. good book though, a powerful read.
yeah, i saw a film version of "farewell to manzanar" on pbs a few yrs back. i'm not a big proponent of "victims 'r' us" kinda thankin', but i equate the impact of that experience on those who went thru it with the katrina peeps (like the ones who were staying at will rogers center here in the fort until a month or so ago). cataclysmic events, whether man-made or natural, have a lasting impact. i'm waiting for the litterchur of the katrina diaspora (and, eventually, of the gtmo detainees) to emerge.
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