Skyline College: Remembering Resistance: Faculty Share Wartime Stories, Marking 80th Anniversary Of Executive Order 9066

Press release from Skyline College:

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March 9, 2022

It was the first time anyone could recall the college tackling the topic of the WWII incarceration of Japanese and Japanese American citizens communally through an intergenerational event. Sociology Professor Rika Yonemura-Fabian moderated, drawing parallels to more recent tragic episodes of anti-Muslim and anti-Asian hate in our country. Many participants remained online well after the event had concluded to share stories and raise important questions.

Economics professor Masao Suzuki provided background on pre-war Japanese immigration and the roots of racism already grounded in American society before President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 prompted the incarceration of more than 120,000 Japanese/Japanese Americans for the War’s duration. Professor Suzuki, who had done his PhD dissertation on this history and its aftermath, also shared family stories of resistance during the War, and spoke of the more recent Japanese American movements for redress and reparations during the 1980s.

Librarian Jessica Silver-Sharp shared historical photographs by professional photographer Dorothea Lange and others, with a focus on the Tanforan horse race track where more than 8,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans were incarcerated temporarily before their transfer to inland concentration camps. Images also portrayed Japanese American wartime resistance by the so-called “no-no boys” and draft resisters, conscientious objectors, and those who organized themselves into committees to protest conditions of their imprisonment.

Photography professor Arthur Takayama, born several years after the war, shared some of the few family memories that had been passed down by his Los Angeles relatives and the later impact incarceration had on them. He and other speakers noted that the Issei (first generation) and sometimes Nissei (second generations) of Japanese Americans experienced feelings of shame about the incarceration they were keener to forget than pass down as family history.

silversharpj@smccd.edu

This press release was produced by Skyline College. The views expressed here are the author’s own.