First look at 'The Terror: Infamy,' debut set for August

The Terror: Infamy

AMC is giving us a first look at The Terror: Infamy, a series that takes place in a WWII Japanese American Incarceration Camp.

The network announced that the show will debut Aug. 112 at 9 ET/PT on AMC.

The biggest name associated with the horror series is George Takei, the Star Trek alum, who also created Allegiance, a Broadway musical based on his experiences in an internment camp.

The Terror: Infamy

The Terror: Infamy title is a take on President Roosevelt's "day of infamy' speech announcing the Dec. 7 attack on Pearl Harbor.

Besides Takei, who will portray a community elder, other cast members of the almost all-Asian American cast include: 

Mio as Chester Nakayama; Kiki Sukezane (Lost in Space) as Yuko, a mysterious woman from Chester’s past; Cristina Rodlo (Miss Bala) as Luz, Chester’s secret girlfriend; Shingo Usami (Unbroken) as Henry Nakayama, Chester’s father; Naoko Mori (Everest) as Asako Nakayama, Chester’s mother; Miki Ishikawa (9-1-1) as Amy, a Nakayama family friend; and Takei as Yamato-san, a community elder and former fishing captain.

The internment camp series is co-created and executive produced by Alexander Woo (True Blood) and Max Borenstein (Kong: Skull Island, Godzilla). Woo also serves as showrunner. 

The Terror: Infamy

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AAPI Lawmakers re-introduce bill In hopes of never repeating the history of Japanese incarceration camps

ASAM NEWS

U.S. Senators Tammy Duckworth and Mazie Hirono, along with U.S. Representative Mark Takano, have reintroduced a bill to prohibit imprisonment of American citizens based on race, religion, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, or disability days, reports CNN.

According to a statement on Sen. Duckworth’s website, the Korematsu-Takai Civil Liberties Protection Act of 2019 “would be a first step toward safeguarding vital freedoms that protect Americans from arbitrary detention with no due process.”

Named in honor of the late U.S. Rep Mark Takai and Fred Korematsu, a civil rights activist convicted for denying relocation orders, the act works against the historic case that justified the forced relocation and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

The bill — H.R.4680 —was initially proposed in December 2017, but failed to pass committee. Section 2 of the 2017 legislation referenced President Donald Trump’s policies and actions targeting individuals based on identity, such as the previous travel ban toward individuals from specific nationalities and religious backgrounds.

Sens. Duckworth and Hirono, and Rep. Takano, re-introduced this 2019 legislation a week before the Day of Remembrance, February 19, which marks the day in 1942 when Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 that sent over 120,000 Japanese Americans to U.S. concentration camps.

The co-sponsors of the Korematsu-Takai Civil Liberties Protection Act of 2019 include U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal, D-CT, Cory Booker, D-NJ, Dick Durbin, D-IL, Dianne Feinstein, D-CA, Kamala Harris, D-CA, Amy Klobuchar, D-MN, Ed Markey, D-MA, Patty Murray, D-WA, Jacky Rosen, D-NV, Brian Schatz, D-H), Tina Smith, D-MN and Elizabeth Warren, D-MA.

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Smithsonian exhibit about WWII internment camps travels to Arizona

ASAM NEWS

A Smithsonian exhibit on the WWII incarceration of Japanese Americans opened in Phoenix, Arizona Sunday (Jan. 27), reports AZ Central.
The walk-through exhibit entitled Righting A Wrong: Japanese Americans And World War II will “bring heart-wrenching personal stories, fascinating documents, stunning photographs, and engaging interactives to audiences across the nation,” states the Smithsonian website. “Embracing themes that are as relevant today as they were 75 years ago, the exhibition takes a deep look at immigration, prejudice, civil rights, heroism, and what it means to be an American.”

Arizona was home to two incarceration camps, both located on tribal reservation land. The Gila River War Relocation Center, on the Gila River Reservation south of Phoenix, held more than 13,000 Japanese Americans. At the Poston Relocation Center on the Colorado River Reservation south of Lake Havasu, 17,000 people were held. Both camps were open from 1942 to 1945.

The exhibit will be open through April 7, 2019 at the Arizona Capitol Museum. From there the exhibition will go to Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, followed by Minnesota, Utah, and New Mexico.

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Heart Mountain Internment camp to function as a classroom

In many ways, Heart Mountain functioned as a small town. Childred recited the Pledge of Allegiance.

ASAM NEWS

IN NORTHWEST WYOMING, Heart Mountain silently overlooks the towns Cody and Powell. Between Aug. 1942 and Nov. 1945, the town’s people witnessed the incarceration of over 14,000 Japanese Americans. 

One of the few remaining structures - a guard tower.

Now, according to The Billings Gazette, Montana State University-Billings (MSUB) is “offering a course dedicated to the Heart Mountain site” to educate students about a portion of history that is often overlooked.

MSUB geography professor Susan Gilbertz hopes that the university’s newly offered course will emphasize “questions about how place and time interact with cultural identity,” and questions like “where are [the] geographies of war that are not in the news or not visible to us?”

“Maybe it wasn’t a battle, but it was certainly something that happened because of war,” she said.

In light of the current political climate, Gilbertz also stated”This is a really good thing to do right now — to talk about immigrants to the American society…It’s right here in our backyard,” she said.

This holiday season, more than 14,000 migrant toddlers, children and teens, according to Time , spent Christmas in “U.S. government detention and processing centers across the country.”

Gilbertz states that she hopes to “use this real place to really force us to think about immigration, not in the abstract.”

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What's up, 2019?: Census question stokes fear in AAPI community; resurrects horror of Japanese American incarceration

VIEWS FROM THE EDGE

and ASAM NEWS

EVERY 10 YEARS, the United States is mandated by the Constitution to count every person in the U.S. 

The next Census will take place in 2020, but 2019 will be filled with debate over whether or not to ask the question about citizenship. Chief among issues is a question asking for the citizenship status of individuals.

Last year, against the recommendations of the Census Bureau, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross approved a request from the Justice Department to add the following question to the 2020 census: “Is this person a citizen of the United States?” despite the fact the question hasn't been used since 1950.

EDITOR'S NOTE: What's Up, 2019: is part of series of posts about issues facing the AAPI community in the coming year. 

• Trump wants to deport public benefit recipients
• Immigration reform strikes at heart of Asian America

"Make no mistake – immigrants and citizens who have immigrants in their household will be reluctant to participate in a census that asks about citizenship," warns Asian Americans Advancing Justice, a nonprofit legal advancy group in a statement.

"The resulting undercount will be devastating to the Asian Pacific American community because as a whole, they are the 'newest' Americans, with 92 percent of the community comprised of individuals who are foreign-born or are the children of immigrants," the statement continues.

Adding the question in 2020, in the current atmosphere of xenophobia spurred by the anti-immigration rhetoric coming out of the White House, will depress an actual count, say civil rights advocates. They believe that immigrants, no matter their legal status, will hesitate to participate in the decennial count out of fear that the information would be used against them to the point of getting deported.

Their fear is not unfounded. The reason the question was thrown out in the first place is because the Census was used to identify, locate and imprison Japanese Americans during World War II.

Despite the government’s denial, records confirm that the Bureau provided the U.S. Secret Service with specific names and residential addresses of Japanese Americans.

According to WAMU, U.S. Army Lt. Gen. John DeWitt, who oversaw and supported the mass removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast, wrote in a 1943 report for the War Department: “The most important single source of information prior to the evacuation was the 1940 Census of Population.”

“The consequences of adding this question are far too great to just sit by silently,” says Sharon Sakamoto, 75, who was born in the Minidoka prison camp located in Idaho.

TWITTER / NEW YORK IMMIGRATION COALITION

Rep. Grace Meng speaks at a New York City rally protesting the citizenship question.

Former Commerce Secretary Norman Mineta also opposes the proposed question and wants the government to remember its history. Mineta, 87, was sent to a Wyoming prison camp with his family when he was 10 years old, and worries that the intentions of the citizenship question is to intimidate. 

“One of the things it does is intimidate people,” he says. “All I could think of was what it was like for [Japanese-American] evacuees to be facing a census and whether or not that information could be used.”

Supporters of the question, added at the last minute and skipped the normal testing before being approved, say its inclusion is logical and necessary to enforce the Voting Rights Act.

“I’m perplexed and surprised that of the sudden concern over the Voting Rights Academy. We have legislation in Congress that we can work on together if they are concerned about the Voting Rights Act,” said Rep. Grace Meng after hearings involving Secretary Ross. “The Trump campaign, in my previous unrelated question, was about the Trump campaign sending out a campaign email asking about how people felt about the inclusion of this new citizenship question. So, they are, indeed, politicizing the census.”

After the hearings, it was learned that Ross lied to the members of the House Commerce Committee. While under oath, Meng asked Ross where the question came from and he lied, saying he wasn’t sure but that it wasn’t him or the White House that was involved. Emails show former White House aide Steve Bannon asked Ross to do it while he was still at the White House.

"He (Ross) lied to my face," said Meng. She said it is now clear that adding the question was politically motivated. Critics, including former Census Bureau directors, fear the administration will use the question to suppress voter participation and will undercount the immigrants who fear the information will be used tby Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport immigrants, no matter their status.

The controversial citizenship question has previously raised suspicions due to the current administration’s ongoing anti-immigrant tactics. And despite the government shutdown, the administration will still face a trial in San Francisco on Jan. 7.

The lawsuit by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra contends that if the Census undercounts immigrants, it would produce an inaccurate talley violating its constitutional purpose, which is to divide up seats in the U.S. House of Representatives based on the total U.S. population. 

Census numbers also are used to allocate billions of dollars in federal funds for infrastructure, law enforcement, education, health and other social services.

If immigrants shun the Census, it could reduce the number of congressional seats and the amount of federal funding in states with large numbers of foreign-born residents, such as California, which has been a thorn in Trump's side with its opposition to many of his proposals, New York, Nevada, Hawaii, Washington and also GOP-dominated states such as Texas and Florida. 

This summer, the U.S. Census is planning to field test a 2020 census form that includes the controversial citizenship question to find out if the question might affect responses to the upcoming national head count.

"This foolish decision will produce long-lasting negative effects. Immigrant communities, fearful of deportation because of the administration's rhetoric, will be less likely to respond out of concern their information is not confidential," wrote Rep. Grace Meng, D-NY, in a New York Times oped. 

"If our data is skewed, then our approaches to public health, infrastructure and other national issues will be faulty," she continued. "An undercount will mean our neediest communities may not receive much needed care. Students who rely on the National School Lunch Program may go without lunch, affecting their health and academic goals. In the end, a citizenship question will not produce an accurate census. It will create an inaccurate count, instill fear in our communities, and undermine our ability to help people."
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Tule Lake Committee denied motion to halt sale of monument land

At its height during WWII, Tule Lake incarcerated 20,000 Japanese Americans.

ASAM NEWS

EFFORTS by the Tule Lake Committee to halt the sale of an airport which they say will ruin both the integrity and tranquility of the incarceration camp have failed for now.
The 18-page ruling by the judge in the U.S. District Court in Sacramento Monday (Aug. 27) leaves the door open for the committee to file the motion again, which they plan to do.

“This is very encouraging, because the order gives us an opportunity to move forward. We have the opportunity for a new motion that focuses on the areas identified in the order.” said Barbara Takei to AsAmNews.

The Tule Lake Committee is seeking a preliminary injunction to stop the city of TuleLake from giving the Tulelake Airport to the Modoc Tribe of Oklahoma for $17,500 in legal fees, according to Rafu Shimpo.
The Committee is asking supporting organizations to file amicus briefs to protect the historic site from “adverse impacts” due to airport activities.

“The main issue is preserving the site,” said Takei. “The tribe has expressed a desire to expand aviation activities which is incompatible with preserving the site.”

Rafu Shimpo reports the city’s lawyer, Michael Colantuono, has referred to the Tule Lake site as a “piece of dirt.”

The Tule Lake Segregation Center, at its peaked imprisoned more than 18,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. It incarcerated those who refused to take a loyalty oath in protest of what they considered the unconstitutionality of the incarceration order.

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Japanese American researcher whose work led to reparations dies, age 93

LEGACY

AIKO HERZIG-YOSHINAGA, 1925-2018

ASAM NEWS

Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, the Japanese American activist whose research resulted in the financial and symbolic reparations to Japanese incarceration camp survivors, died in Torrance, California at the age of 93.

Herzig-Yoshinaga is notable for uncovering evidence that proved that the U.S. government’s decision to force Japanese Americans behind barbed wire during World War II was driven by racist intent rather than the protection of national security.

“Aiko Herzig Yoshinaga was the quintessential example that one person can change the course of history,” Mitch Maki, president of the nonprofit Go For Broke National Education Center, states. “As a self-trained researcher and archivist, she had the keen ability to identify key documents and draw the connections between them” — reports the Huffington Post.

Growing up in California, she recalled the hostility she faced by authorities after former President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order in 1942 forcing Japanese Americans into camps. According to the New York Times, she vividly remembers the time when her high school principal assembled the 15 Japanese students in her graduating class to tell them that “You don’t deserve to get your high school diplomas because your people bombed Pearl Harbor”.

At the age of 17, Herzig-Yoshinaga, alongside 120,000 other Japanese Americans, were evicted from their homes and forced to relocate to the prisons. After residing in the Manzanar prison camp in California, she was eventually relocated to those in Arkansas: Jerome and subsequently, Rohwer.

Herzig-Yoshinaga recollects the squalid living conditions. Receiving the bare minimum, she spent her war days in cramped quarters, sleeping on metal beds where her mattress was a bag stuffed with hay.

According to the Huffington Post, Herzig-Yoshinaga described, in an NPR interview, having “No chest of drawers, no nothing, no curtains on the windows. It was the barest of the bare.”

As much as Herzig-Yoshinaga wanted to forget her war years, her political involvement with various anti-war organizations inspired her to delve back into her past. Moving to Washington D.C. with her third-husband John Herzig in 1978, she dedicated her days scouring the National Archives to research the executive order.

It wasn’t until the 1980s when she finally made a breakthrough. Sitting on an archivist’s table was a red bound volume that held the original draft, supposedly the last copy in existence, of a 1943 government report — according to the Washington Post.

The report debunked the Pentagon’s claim that imprisonment was a “military necessity”. The report, written by Lt. Gen. John L. DeWitt, states that incarceration wasn’t because the separation of the “good” Japanese Americans from the “bad” ones was time-costly, but because “an exact separation of the ‘sheep from the goats’ was unfeasible” — reports the Washington Post. In other words, the document indicates a perceived deficiency in the Japanese race.

Her findings were instrumental to Congress’s decision to pass the 1988 Civil Liberties Act. This federal law granted $20,000 in reparations to every survivor from the camps and an official apology from former President Ronald Reagan — according to the NY Times.

Herzig-Yoshinaga, with her research partner and lawyer Peter H. Irons, also discovered a certificate stating that all copies of the report were burned. This document, alongside a 467-page report — written by lawyer Angus C. Macbeth– that consisted of Herzig-Yoshinaga’s research, was later on utilized to repeal the conviction of Fred Korematsu, a Japanese American who was arrested in 1942 for refusing to live in a camp. Gordon Hirabayashi and Minoru Yasui, additional challengers to wartime policies, also had their convictions overturned.

Despite Herzig-Yoshinaga’s significant discoveries that made achieving social justice for the Japanese American community a reality, she remained humble in her accomplishments.

“She never sought public recognition,” Lorraine Bannai, a law professor who worked on the Korematsu case states. “She would say, “It’s all these young people who did all of this work, and I’m privileged to be a part of it” — reports the LA Times.

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SCOTUS finally overturns infamous Korematsu ruling

ONE OF THE WORST decisions made by the Supreme Court was revoked in the Supreme Court decision rendered today in regards to the Donald Trump Muslim ban.

In the June 26 ruling by the conservative majority and in the dissent by the liberal minority, 1944's  ruling that justified the interment of 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent, Korematsu v. United States, was repudiated.

RELATED: A divided Supreme Court upholds Muslm ban

Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out in her dissent the “stark parallels between the reasoning of this case and that of Korematsu v. United States,” 

In the intervening years since Korematsu, our Nation has done much to leave its sordid legacy behind … Today, the Court takes the important step of finally overruling Korematsu, denouncing it as “gravely wrong the day it was decided.”…This formal repudiation of a shameful precedent is laudable and long overdue. But it does not make the majority’s decision here acceptable or right. By blindly accepting the Government’s misguided invitation to sanction a discriminatory policy motivated by animosity toward a disfavored group, all in the name of a superficial claim of national security, the Court redeploys the same dangerous logic underlying Korematsu and merely replaces one “gravely wrong” decision with another.

Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority decision apparently took offense and addressed Sotomayor's inference that Trump’s travel ban was the same thing as the internment of Japanese Americans.

Finally, the dissent invokes Korematsu v. United States, 323 U. S. 214 (1944). Whatever rhetorical advantage the dissent may see in doing so, Korematsu has nothing to do with this case. The forcible relocation of U. S. citizens to concentration camps, solely and explicitly on the basis of race, is objectively unlawful and outside the scope of Presidential authority. But it is wholly inapt to liken that morally repugnant order to a facially neutral policy denying certain foreign nationals the privilege of admission. See post, at 26–28. The entry suspension is an act that is well within executive authority and could have been taken by any other President—the only question is evaluating the actions of this particular President in promulgating an otherwise valid Proclamation.

The dissent’s reference to Korematsu, however, affords this Court the opportunity to make express what is already obvious: Korematsu was gravely wrong the day it was decided, has been overruled in the court of history, and—to be clear—“has no place in law under the Constitution.” 323 U. S., at 248 (Jackson, J., dissenting).

With that, Roberts' Court formally overturned one of the most shameful decisions rendered by the High Court.

Korematsu was decided after Fred Korematsu, a Japanese American of San Leandro, Calif., refused to relocate to an internment camp. U.S. officials arrested him convicted him for refusing to comply. He eventually fought his conviction all the way up to the Supreme Court — but the Court, in 1944, ruled that Korematsu was violated the executive order 9066 signed by President Frankly Roosevelt and the U.S. acted lawfully in attempting to intern not just him but other Japanese Americans.

Although Korematsu died in 2005, in 2011, the Justice Department issued a formal "confession of error" in the his case, acknowledging that government lawyers lied about the severity of the security threat posed by Japanese Americans.

Ironically, the confession was ordered by the acting solicitor general at the time, Neal Katyal, who represented the challengers to the Muslim ban.

Yesterday (June 26) Korematsu's daughter, Karen Korematsu, issued this statement:

"Yet again, I am disappointed by the Supreme Court's decision. The Muslim travel ban is unjust and singles out individuals due to the religion they practice, similar to Execudtive Order 9066 that unconstitutionally imprisoned my father due to his Japanese ancestry.

"In Korematsu v. United States, the Court ruled against my father, a decision that constitutional scholars, on both sides of the aisle, have continued to criticize. Although the Court overruled my father's case today,  it only has substituted one injustice for another.  

"This decision motivates me more to continue my work as Executive Director of the Fred. T. Korematsu Institute to educate, advocate and protect our civil liberties for all."

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The "terror" of Japanese American internment will be focus of TV anthology

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

A Japanese American familiy interned during World War II

AMC's TV SHOW The Terror will tell a story of a different type of terror in its second season.

The AMC anthology will be set during World War II and focus in on one of the darkest chapters of American history. The storyline will center on an uncanny specter that menaces a Japanese American community from its home in Southern California to the internment camps to the war in the Pacific, according to an AMC press release.

Donald Trump's zero-tolerance treatment of undocumented immigrants by putting parents and children in separate detention centers have drawn comparisons to the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

“We hope to convey the abject terror of the historical experience in a way that feels modern and relevant to the present moment,” showrunner Alexander Woo said in a statement. “And the prospect of doing so with a majority Asian and Asian American cast is both thrilling and humbling.”

I can't help but think the new storyline was inspired by current events. The national hysteria that engulfed the nation during WWII that led to the imprisonment of 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent is similar to the racist motivations spurred by the current administration. The biggest difference is that during WWII, Japanese American families were allowed to remain intact in their incarceration.

The first season of The Terror was based on a true story of survival of a British Royal Navy crew's perilous voyage into uncharted terriroty searching for the Northwest Passage. The second season's 10-episodes will feature an all-new cast featuring a host of Asian and Asian American characters.

 "The Japanese American internment is a blemish on the nation’s conscience," said Max Borenstein, an executive producer and writer. "I’m thrilled that AMC is giving us the chance to use that darkness as the inspiration for what I hope will be a trenchant, terrifying season of TV."
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Interior secretary's flippant remark mars hearing on funding for WWII internment camps

Rep. Coleen Hanabusa corrects Sec. of the Interior Ryan Zinke, "But, that's OK."

HAWAII'S Rep. Coleen Hanabusa's plea for funding for the WWII internment camps almost went off the rails when Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke responded in a manner that surprised everyone in the room.

Hanabusa shared the incidentl Thursday (March 15) morning in a hearing with the interior secretary, trying to persuade him to restore around $2 million in grant funds for organizations dedicated to preserving the memory of that ugly chapter in American history.

“I sit before you the granddaughter of two internees, both of my grandfathers were interned during World War II,” Hanabusa said. “It is essential that we as a nation recognize our darkest moments so that we don’t have them repeat again.”

“My grandfather was born in Hawaii and is a citizen by birth,” Hanabusa noted during the hearing. Despite being a U.S. citizen, however, he was imprisoned in an Oahu camp called Honouliuli ― though the prisoners there used a different name: “jigokudani,” or “Hell’s Valley.”

“Are you committed to continue to grant programs that are identified, I believe, as the Japanese American Confinement Sites grants program which were funded in 2017? Will we see them funded again in 2018?” Hanabusa asked.

For reasons that remain unclear, Zinke replied, “Oh, konnichiwa,” a Japanese greeting typically used in midday

After an awkward pause, Hanabusa, who is a 4th-generation American, broke the tension with a terse, “I think it’s still ‘ohayo gozaimasu’ [good morning], but that’s OK.”

The lone Asian/American in the hearing audience reacted to Sec. Ryan Zinke's remark - jaw drop

Zinke's odd remark later drew the reaction from Hawaii's Sen. Mazie Hirono. the first U.S. senator born in Japan and the first Asian/American woman elected to the chamber.“The internment of nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans is no laughing matter, @SecretaryZinke,” tweeted the senator.

“What you thought was a clever response to @RepHanabusa was flippant & juvenile,” Hirono wrote on Twitter.

After the brief exchange at the hearing, Zinke said funding for the grants “probably got caught up” by larger 2018 budgetary items, and vowed to work with Hanabusa on the matter.

The Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program, which Congress established to preserve sites where Japanese/Americans were detained during World War II, a time of rampant anti-Japanese sentiment. As the congresswoman mentioned, Trump’s 2019 budget proposal, unveiled in February, would eliminate funding for the program ― a move widely criticized by Asian/American activists.

“I will look at it and I will work with you on it because I think it is important,” Zinke told her.

“The JACS grant program is an important component of our country’s recognition of the egregious wrong that was done, and the need to remember and preserve that history so that it not be repeated,” stated the Japanese-American Citizens League in a letter.

Rep. Hanabusa's appeal and Ryan Zinke's odd response is the first 14 minutes.

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Proposed fence divides people at Tule Lake internment camp

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

During World War II, the Tule Lake internment camp housed almost 20,000 people, the vast majority of whom were Americans of Japanese descent.

ASAM NEWS

A PLAN to fence off Tule Lake, the involuntary home of nearly 19,000 Japanese Americans imprisoned during WWII has raised fears the historical site will be endangered. 
The Herald and News reports Modoc County in California has proposed building a 16,000 feet, eight-feet tall perimeter around the nearby airport to keep wildlife off the runway. In so doing, the fence partitions off part of the former internment camp, which has been designated a California Historic Landmark and a National Historic Landmark.
 
“The fence is a desecration of a site we feel is spiritual, a site where people go to mourn, a site that is for remembrance,” said Barbara Takei, CFO of the Tule Lake Committee, said to the Sacramento Bee. “With the fence, we will be shut out from where our families lived and permanently reminded of the racism and hostility that put us there in the first place.”
 
Negotiations around the fence lasted 18 months and ended with no agreement. The county is currently seeking public comment and those interested have until October 10 to submit those comments.

More information about how to send in your opinions can be found on Facebook.

“I think there’s a need for everyone to come to the table and see how we can move forward,” said Mike Ishi, another member of the Tule Lake Committee. “We’re not trying to destroy people’s livelihoods. I try to stay very open and sensitive to the local perspective. But this is a site that has international importance. People come from all over the world to see that site.”
 
Both sides criticize the other for inferring that racist motives are behind their respective positions for and against the fence. 
 
“We’re not trying to keep people out. We’re trying to keep people safe,” said Nick Macy of Macy’s Flying Service.
 
If approved, the earliest the fence would be built is October 2019.
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California schools will link WWII internment camps to current anti-immigrant actions

DOROTHEA LANGE

The famous photographer was commissioned by the U.S. government to chronicle the internment camps.

ASAM NEWS

CALIFORNIA GOV. Jerry Brown signed legislation that would draw connections for students and the public between today’s political climate and the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

The SF Chronicle reports AB 491 will fund educational programs that link current attacks on civil rights and the incarceration camps.

It is an obvious swipe at President Trump from the Democratically controlled California legislature.

“When the Trump administration is infringing on the rights of Californians, we’re not going to be afraid to challenge that, whether that’s through legislation or, as the attorney general (Xavier Becerra) is doing, through the courts,” Kevin Liao, spokesman for Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Paramount (Los Angeles County), said to the San Francisco Chronicle.

$3 million has been funded over the next three years for projects.

Japanese Americans since 9/11 have been outspoken in support of Muslim communities under attack.

Just two weeks ago, children of Gordon Hirabayashi, Minoru Yasui, and Fred Korematsu filed a brief in court opposing the Muslim American travel ban.

Hirabayashi, Yasui and Korematsu risked their livelihoods during World War II to oppose the incarceration orders back then, reported Rafu Shimpo.

“Rather than repeat the injustices of the past,” states the brief, the court “should heed the lessons of Korematsu, Hirabayashi, and Yasui: Blind deference to the Executive Branch … is incompatible with the protection of fundamental freedoms.”

The brief was filed before President Trump announced a new travel ban designed to get around the objections of the court, but which critics say is the same old same old.

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Wonder Woman battles WWII internment of Japanese Americans

This version of Wonder Woman might be better than Gal Gadot's movie Wonder Woman.

IF COMICS are not on your list of reading material, you're missing out on a quiet, but influential, revolution shaping the world view of millions of young readers.

On Friday, (Aug. 25) the same day that Donald Trump signed a memo against recruitment of transgender Americans for the U.S. military, Texas was preparing for Hurricane Howard and on the eve of Women's Equality Day (Aug. 26), DC Comics released Bombshells United, a group of female superheroes in a reimagined alternative universe (in contrast with to the universe where Batman, Superman, and Aquaman and a whole phalanx of male superheroes dominate.)

Marguerite Bennett, one of the most influential writers in the comic books today, has a very simple mission for her stories:

"Women as people - crazy, right?"

This year, the team of super women is tackling the missing chapter in America's history books: The internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. 

Indeed, the first story arc of Bombshells United is all about America’s failure to protect the rights of up to 120,000 Japanese/Americans when the federal government imprisoned them in internment camps for the duration of World War II.

In Bennett’s foray into WW II and Japanese American internment, she has cast Cassie Sandsmark and Donna Troy, as second generation Japanese/Americans whose friends and family are being held against their will.

Bennett was inspired to tell this story in Bombshells United after a trip back to her family home. She was flipping through a younger cousin’s history textbook and noticed that the chapter on World War II made no mention of Japanese American internment during the war. Perturbed, she asked to see another cousin’s high school level history textbook and found that that book made no mention of the tragedy, either.

According to Bennett, she felt that the story of the internment camps was being erased from American history. That “inspired these feelings of horror and rage and … motivation, I suppose. If this was the kind of thing that was being ignored and scrubbed out of the story (of World War II) ... if (the war) was being increasingly turned into good guys versus bad guys and one side is completely innocent and never did anything wrong … that needed to be addressed.”

She didn't want to be accused of misappropriating material that should be told by a Japanese American. She felt like she might "overstepping." However, she ultimately felt compelled to use her position as the writer of this deeply popular and historically-based series to “highlight something that should never ever be forgotten or removed from our national narrative.”

Marguerite Bennett 

Initially, Bennett expressed some reservations about whether she was the right person to tell this particular story. She said that she felt like she might be “overstepping.” However, she ultimately felt compelled to use her position as the writer of this deeply popular and historically-based series to “highlight something that should never ever be forgotten or removed from our national narrative.”

So, Bennett did a whole slew of research, talked to Asian/Americans writers and historians, read several novels about that era and visited Manzanar when she talked to some of the volunteers and survivors.

She will include a reading list of source materials so anybody who wants to learn more about this neglected chapter in American history can do so. She emphasizes that in her comic book, it is the Japanese/American community themselves who seek Wonder Woman as an ally. “I wanted to avoid a white savior thing at all costs, so I hope the power dynamics are very clear about who’s calling the shots in this story.”

Bennett said in a comicbook.com interview, “Japanese Internment needed to be addressed and kept current, especially in discussions of immigration policy and … you know, just watching history repeat itself.” Indeed, in the time between Bombshells‘ launch and now, it looks like America is heading towards repeating the same mistakes made in the past. When Donald Trump got elected as 45, Bennett began to see the whole Bombshells and Bombshells United in a new light.

While Bennett wants the comic book to be entertaining and fun, she also hopes the book proves to be an “inspiring” opportunity to learn about the history of the world – both the good and the bad. She wants readers to understand that while they may not necessarily ever have to fight an alien space god or some all-conquering evil entity, they still “have the chance to make a difference.”

'Bombshell United' super heroines

Besides  telling the story of Japanese/American Internment to a whole new generation, Bennett is able to portray a universe where women are in charge of their own stories. “I didn’t want it to be a story where (the premise was) ‘oh all the men are off and away, so I guess the women will have to do something,'” Bennett explained.

"From the start, this was an alternate history, so I didn’t want the characters spit upon or trodden under foot for the sake of selling a retro vibe," said Bennett. "From the very beginning I wanted to make sure that none of our heroines was in any way derivative of a male counterpart – the women come first in this world.

In the DC (and Marvel) universes, she says, "it tends to be a team of five dudes and one woman, and she then has to be everything, and no woman can ever be everything. With a large cast, a large number of women, they don’t have to be icons and idols, they can just be themselves," she explained. "It’s so refreshing to create the women as characters, and not as liabilities or ticking time bombs."

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