Showing posts with label internment camp. Show all posts
Showing posts with label internment camp. Show all posts

January 24 - Happy Birthday, Ruth Asawa

 Posted on January 24, 2021

I love getting special postage stamps from the U.S. Post Office. I sit at home, browse all the commemorative stamps online, place my order, and a few days later I have gorgeous stamps instead of ho-hum "Forever" flags!

The only problem is, once in a while the gorgeous postage stamps are a little too gorgeous! I almost don't want to use them!


The last time this happened to me, it was my Ruth Asawa stamps. I LOVED how intriguing and elegant these stamps looked on my envelopes - but I kinda sorta hated to send them out the door!! 

So...what better solution than to celebrate Asawa's life and work right here?

Ruth Asawa was born on this date in 1926 in a town near me in Southern California. 

Asawa's heritage is Japanese - and her family was treated terribly during World War II! Her father was arrested and sent to an internment camp in New Mexico, and for half a year the family had no idea where he was or if he was even alive. Once they learned he was alive and well, they still were not able to see him for six years! Asawa's sister was in Japan when the war broke out - and she had to stay there until the war was over! And Ruth Asawa herself - along with her mom, and five other siblings - were kept at a Southern California "assembly center" for about a year, until an internment camp was built in Arkansas.



It is ironic that Asawa's family was treated as if they were possible enemies - unAmerican - because a few years before the war, Asawa had won an art contest for her artwork on the theme "What makes someone an American?"

After graduating from the internment camp high school, Asawa went to college in order to become an art teacher. But she wasn't able to get a position as a practice teacher and was therefore not allowed to complete her degree, AND she wasn't allowed to return to California (because she was ethnically Japanese), AND she was told that working at a public school might be uncomfortable or even dangerous for a Japanese-American person. 

So Asawa ended up focusing on her art, and she entered an art program at another college. There she began experimenting with wire, a commonplace material. She tried a lot of different techniques - and she even went to a village in Mexico where villagers made wired baskets. 




Check out Asawa's beautiful sculptures:








Also on this date:














Economic Liberation Day in Togo










AND Talk Like a Grizzled Prospector Day
























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January 30 – Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution

Posted on January 30, 2014

Today we honor Fred Korematsu for saying “No.”


These horse stalls were used
for temporary internment.
Of U.S. citizens.
Who had broken no laws.
The United States did a horrifying thing in the wake of the also-horrifying Pearl Harbor attack. Because the U.S. was attacked by Japan, and was then at war with Japan, it rounded up more than 110,000 Japanese Americans – most of them U.S. citizens, many of them people who had never even been to Japan – just in case they were disloyal or Japanese spies. People lost their homes, their businesses, many of their possessions. They were imprisoned in “War Relocation Camps,” more commonly referred to as internment camps.

Eventually, American presidents and governmental commissions decided that the internment was wrong. Eventually, it was decided that the denial of U.S. citizens of their property and their rights was done on the basis of "race prejudice” and “war hysteria” – and internment survivors and their heirs were awarded more than $1.6 billion in reparations.

So let's get back to Fred Korematsu. He was born here in he U.S., in Oakland, California, on this date in 1919. When Pearl Harbor was attacked and war broke out between the U.S. and Japan, Korematsu was rejected by the U.S. Navy because he had stomach ulcers. So he became a welder so he could help with the defense effort by working in a shipyard.

One day he found that he was fired because he was “a Jap,” and therefore couldn't be trusted. Korematsu got another job, but was fired a week later when the owner of the company realized that somebody had hired “a Jap.”



Shortly after losing all employment, the order came that all people “of Japanese descent” report to Assembly Centers so that they could be organized and sent away to camps. Korematsu took the extreme action of having plastic surgery on his eyelids in the hopes of looking like a white man, changing his name, and NOT complying with the order.

But someone recognized him as being Japanese, and Korematsu found himself arrested. The ACLU approached Korematsu and asked if he would stand trial as a test of the legality of the Japanese American internment, and Korematsu agreed. He lost in court, appealed the decision, lost again, and spent most of the war in prison and in an internment camp in Utah. Many people, including many Japanese American people, disdained Korematsu for his opposition to the government. Some of the Japanese Americans had cooperated in hopes that they were proving their loyalty to the U.S. in so doing – and they found Korematsu's opposition threatening to those hopes. So Fred Korematsu felt as alone surrounded by other wronged Japanese Americans as he did in prison.

When the war and the internment were over, Korematsu continued to oppose the very real discrimination against Japanese Americans. And he widened his scope and began to speak out against all racism.


Vindicated at last!

Finally, in 1983, Fred Korematsu's conviction was overturned in court after he gave a stirring and powerful speech as his ending statement. Some people in the courtroom likened that speech to Martin Luther King's famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

In 1998 President Bill Clinton awarded Korematsu the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the U.S. He also was awarded several other more local honors, including being Grand Marshal of a parade and having an elementary school and a street named after him.

In 2001, after the tragic attack we call 9/11, Korematsu spoke out against U.S. governmental actions against people of Middle Eastern descent. He warned that what happened to his people should never happen to anyone again, and he warned against acting against a race or religion or ethnicity because of fear.

Until his death in 2005, at age 86, Korematsu continued to work on civil rights, serving on the Constitution Project, speaking out, and writing amicus briefs for court cases.

On September 23, 2010, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law a bill that designates today as Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution.


Also on this date:

























Plan ahead!
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September 13 – Yom Kippur

Posted on September 13, 2013

This evening the Jewish Day of Atonement begins. This is the holiest day of the year in Judaism, and it marks the end of the “High Holy Days” that began with Rosh Hashanah.



“Atonement” is the process of gaining forgiveness for wrongs that one has done. In Judaism, it is important to take several steps toward atonement:

  • One must sincerely regret (feel bad about) the misdeed. This is called repentance.

  • One should admit the misdeed to others as well as to oneself (and, Jews believe to God). This is called confession.

  • One should try to right the wrong, fix the mistake, or in some other way make up for the misdeed. This is called restitution.

Even those of us who are not Jewish can take the time to consider our mistakes and misdeeds. Feeling bad about our mistakes and confessing that we were to blame are wonderful steps to take, but trying to fix things seems most important of all.

“Restitution” is something that happens in the law as well as in religious contexts. A person who has stolen another's big-screen TV, for example, may pay the victim for the value of the TV as well as serve time in jail.

A U.S. citizen who was of
Japanese ancestry posted
this sign, "I am an American,"
over his business the day after
the attack of Pearl Harbor.

But he still lost his business
and was locked up in an
internment camp during the war.
Sometimes an entire society tries to do restitution to a wronged group. In 1988, the U.S. Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act, which was a formal apology to those Japanese Americans who had been deprived of their possessions, homes, businesses, and freedom during World War II. More than 100,000 Japanese Americans (more than half of whom were U.S. citizens) were imprisoned in internment camps, although they had committed no crimes! The 1988 act did more than apologize; it granted $20,000 to each surviving internee. Sure, it was more than forty years later, and sure, that amount of money didn't replace everything that was lost—but this sort of societal restitution is better than not saying or doing ANYthing!



Also on this date:


















Plan Ahead!


And here are my Pinterest pages on October holidays, October birthdays, and historical anniversaries in October.




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