Update: Saturday, Jan. 11, 2003 A
memorial service will be held later today in Riverside, California for Grant
Emi, the son of Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee leader Frank Emi. Grant
passed away on Jan. 4th after a battle with stomach cancer.
The photo at right shows
Frank with Grant as a baby in camp, just as Frank was learning about the
Constitution and Bill of Rights from Kiyoshi Okamoto and helping him develop a
group to provide information to the young men who were receiving draft notices
inside an American concentration camp. Emi was arrested and tried for conspiracy to counsel
draft evasion.
Grant grew up to have four children of his own. He took part in our second
ceremonial homecoming for the resisters in 1993, at the Centenary United
Methodist Church in L.A.'s Little Tokyo. It was called "The Return of the
Fair Play Committee," and in it Grant was able to honor his father's
wartime stand by re-enacting
Frank Emi's interrogation by Heart Mountain project director Guy
Robertson and project attorney Donald Horn.
By
phone, Frank says he's feeling very sad, and our thoughts are with him and his
family. Due to the
service, Frank will not be attending today's party for two books on the Heart
Mountain resisters at Reikai's Kitchen, in Little Tokyo Towers. Due to the
service, Frank will not be attending today's booksigning for two books on the
Heart Mountain resisters at Reikai's Kitchen, in Little Tokyo Towers. This is
something William Hohri organized after getting turned down by two other Little
Tokyo institutions that were reluctant, he says, because the topic of the two
books is "controversial." Read William's
article.
Update: Monday, February
10, 2003
"A scary time for
civil liberties." That's the headline in today's Seattle newspapers
following yesterday's Day of Remembrance event, "Civil Liberties Denied:
After December 7 and September 11," sponsored by the Densho
Project at Seattle Town Hall. It featured
civil rights attorney Dale Minami and a raw personal testimony from a
21-year old Syrian student who told an eerily familiar story of FBI agents
bursting into her home to arrest her and her family following September 11th.
Read all about it in today's
Seattle P-I and
Seattle Times. In about a week I hope to be able to link to a RealMedia
streaming video of the entire event, as presented by King County
government access cable TV station that I now manage. As the nation prepares
for war, this event as have many others show the parallels between the
Japanese American incarceration and Homeland Security today.
KEN
LAMBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Nadin
Hamoui, 21, a Syrian student, breaks down yesterday while describing how
she and her parents were detained after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks. She spoke at a program on civil liberties sponsored by Densho:
The Japanese American Legacy Project.
"Conscience and the Constitution" will screen at another Day of Remembrance
observance in New York City on Saturday, March 8, at the Japanese
American Association of New York. The screening is being organized by Tsuya
Yee, granddaughter of none other than writer/historian William Hohri.
On a lighter note, the
film will also be seen at the Spaghetti Junction
Urban Film Festival in Atlanta sometime between Feb. 26and March
1. Festival organizers have chosen to screen "Conscience" as part of a tribute
to our celebrated film editor, Lillian Benson, A.C.E., the first
African-American woman inducted into the prestigious American Cinema Editors
guild. It's a well-deserved honor and our congratulations to Lillian, who found
the emotional core in the reels of video we brought to her, and took what was
essentially a book and turned it into a visual experience.
Update: Monday, March 3, 2003
You can now watch a 1-hour, 11-minute
RealMedia streaming video of "Civil Liberties Denied: After
December 7 and September 11,", sponsored by the Densho Project at
Seattle Town Hall
[free
RealOne Player required].
Update: Monday, March 10, 2003 Memorial
services are being held later today for Joe Norikane, a good and funny man
who resisted the draft from the Amache, Colorado concentration camp and was
imprisoned with 44 other Nisei resisters at a federal labor camp northeast
of Tucson, Arizona. Friends remember him as a man who spoke from the heart
with a great sense of conviction and humor. He came to the Heart Mountain
resisters homecoming in Los Angeles in 1993 and handed me an envelope of
photos. I took one look and realized they were the only known photos of Fair
Play Committee founder Kiyoshi Okamoto, taken just after the war while he,
Joe, and the Kubota's were living at a Wyoming boarding after the war, just
after their release from prison. They were the photos we used in the film.
The memorial service will be held Monday, March 10, at 2 p.m. at Walnut
Grove Buddhist Church, 1405 Pine St. Inurnment will be at Sacramento
Memorial Lawn. Thanks to
Martha Nakagawa for the photo and Kenji and J.K.
for the details.
Japanese American journalists J.K. Yamamoto and
Kenji Taguma (left to right) lit some candles at the recent Day of Remembrance
ceremony in San Francisco. The Associated Press circulated the photo to the left
nationwide. Kenji dedicated his candlelighting to the memory of Nisei journalist
James Omura, the number one enemy of the JACL in wartime and the only Nisei
journalist to editorialize in support of resisters like Joe.
"Conscience and the Constitution" has just been booked in Honolulu
for several
showings at theRestaurant Row 9
Theaters art house as part of a series held in connection with a University
of Hawaii conference commemorating the 442nd RCT and 100th Battalion from
Hawaii, and civil liberties before and after the war.
Update: Wednesday, March 12, 2003 Sounds like the
Day of
Remembrance observance in New York City last weekend was a great success. Thanks
to them for screening our film:
"Thanks
for all your help and advertising of our event ... Everyone was really moved
by the film and the subject matter. Many sansei too were moved (and yonsei
like me too). After the film, we had planned on just going right into our
potluck and social time, but people really wanted to talk about the film, so
we had a group discussion for awhile. It was great!"
-- Tsuya Yee (the organizer)
"The
DOR event was wonderful thanks to your film. Even old timers were moved by
it. There were around 60 people...maybe more and they all wanted more
information about it."
-- Julie Izuma (co-chair)
"It was a hit. I was
very moved by the stories of the men and their families, both struggling
against our government, then the struggle within the community. It's a great
history lesson to show how people fought in other types of battlefields."
-- Stan Honda
Update: Sunday, March 16, 2003 Our
posting of the obit for Amache resister Joe Norikane drew the attention of the
Contra Costa Times in the San Francisco East Bay Area, which phoned us for a
quote which you can read online, "WWII
resister humble but strong-willed,"
and reprinted the photo below which was taken by Martha Nakagawa.
Update: Friday, April 4, 2003 At the
University of Hawaii they're gathering this
weekend for a conference commemorating the 442nd RCT and 100th
Battalion from Hawaii, and civil liberties before and after the war.
"Conscience" will screen on the dates below at the
Restaurant Row 9
Theaters art house as part of a series held in connection the
conference. The program is called "On the Home Front" and also on the bill are
Bob Nakamura's "Toyo Miyatake:
Infinite Shades of Gray,"
and John Esaki's "Words Weavings & Songs."
Friday & Saturday,
April 4 & 5
at 1:30 p.m.
Monday, April 7 at 7 p.m.
Sunday & Tuesday, April 6 & 8 at 4:30 p.m.
Restaurant Row 9 Theaters 500 Ala Moana Boulevard
Update: Tuesday, April 22, 2003 Well, the war has come and apparently the war has gone and the feared
mass backlash
against Americans of Mideast descent did not materialize. Does that make our
obligatory role as watchdogs of civil liberties any less vital? That's one
of the topics I hope to address in the keynote address next week at the
White River Valley JACL scholarship banquet.
Just two months ago, following the Feb. 9 Day of Remembrance event in
Seattle, you'll remember the headlines here were "A scary time for civil
liberties." You can watch a
RealMedia
streaming video of that event, "Civil Liberties Denied:
After December 7 and September 11," sponsored by the Densho
Project at Seattle Town Hall [free
RealOne Player required],
as presented by the King County government cable TV station I
now manage.
Update: Monday, June 2, 2003 Answered a few questions for some students in this year's National History
Day competition, and this one came last week from a 10th grader in Pennsylvania.
Dear Mr. Abe,
In your opinion, do you think what happened to the Japanese Americans
(internment) can happen today?
Thanks, Julie
To help answer that, I
suggested she take a look at my keynote address to the White River Valley JACL
banquet held
April 30th.
Coming up
on June 23 and 24 we will be conducting four
workshops for
instructors in the
Prince William County Public Schools in Manassas, Virginia. We will be showing
clips from "Conscience..."
and leading discussions around the
question, "Who writes history?"
Earlier this year we noted the
passing of Amache resister Joe Norikane. The family sent along some very nice
notes that offer more insight into the character of a good man:
Thank you
for your touching tribute to my father. I do not think that he liked all of
the attention, but he thoroughly enjoyed talking with people who were
interested in the story of the Resisters. Thanks again for remembering him.
Sincerely, Joey Norikane
Thank you very much for
having Joe's obituary and also acknowledging that he gave you the picture of
Mr. Okamoto for your very informative and educational documentary,
Conscience and the Constitution. I really felt warm inside to see
him included in the resisters.com. Ditto for our children. Many people didn't
know he was one of the resisters. I didn't know until about 15 years after we
were married. When he did tell me I told him I'm glad he protested the draft
because I too believed it was unconstitutional....We miss him every day.
Sincerely, Mrs. Norikane
Update: Wednesday, July 23, 2003 Another summer teachers workshop coming up, this one at Seattle University
organized by
multicultural leader Mako Nakagawa, with the theme, "Democracy in America:
Then and Now."
Update: Thursday, September 4, 2003 Writer
Frank Chin has finally obtained a host for a meeting in his effort to find an
audience for his recent book, "Born in the U.S.A." The
date is February 20, 2004, at the University of Oregon at Eugene. Taking part
will be Chin, Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee leader Frank Emi, Jim
Hirabayashi, younger brother of curfew violator and draft resister Gordon
Hirabayashi, and Ashland poet Lawson Inada. Chin writes, "We will be making
presentations on the JACL betrayal of civil rights and the resisters who went
to
court in defense of civil rights."
An informal poll of likely
readers of the book, who own the book, has not yet turned up anyone who has
actually read it. Stores also don't stock the book, so the best way to find out
for yourself what's in it is to
order it online through Amazon.com.
The book draws from interviews conducted for
Conscience and the Constitution and his other years of extensive research.
If you've read it and have some reactions, by all means please
email us.