Conscience and the Constitution

An archive of past updates from our home page.

Update: Saturday, February 4, 2006
George Kurasaki was one of those fellows we wished we could have known, one of the Heart Mountain boys who did not seek attention for himself. When we were searching for resisters to interview for our film, he
was among those who sent word back that they did not wish to be interviewed. But George finally did come out to join us. He came to the JACL apology ceremony to the resisters in San Francisco in 2002. We noted his presence there at the time, and now regret we didn't follow up with him to learn more. George passed away just after the new year. The San Jose Mercury-News recognized his life with this fine remembrance, "George Kurasaki, prankster on farm," in which we learn of his risking arrest for violating curfew and travel restrictions after Pearl Harbor in order to propose to his sweetheart, and of their getting married before eviction so they could stay together.

Seattle University forum noticeTwo new law school journal articles examine the Japanese American draft cases. The most recent is by Seattle University Law Professor Lorraine Bannai. Its publication in the Seattle Journal for Social Justice is being marked with a Day of Remembrance event, Honoring Courage: Remembering the Japanese American Internment on Wednesday, February 15, at 5:00 p.m. in the second floor gallery of Sullivan Hall, 901 12th Avenue. The event is co-sponsored by the school's Asian Pacific Islander Law Student Association. It's free and open to the public.

"I’ve written an article, focusing on Fred Korematsu, Gene Akutsu, and Yosh Kuromiya for their resistance to the WWII internment. I drew from the Conscience and the Constitution website and film and am grateful for all of your work.

To launch the issue of the Seattle Journal for Social Justice that the article will appear in, Seattle U. is hosting the event described in the attached. Gene will be speaking at the event. We very much would like to have members of the Japanese American community here to recognize the courage of those who were interned.

Again, thank you for your work on the resisters’ cause, upon which I could draw."
-- Lori Bannai

The other article was published by our good friend Professor Eric Muller, in the Spring 2005 edition of Law and Contemporary Problems, a quarterly published by the Duke University School of Law. Never short for words, Eric is Special Editor of the entire issue devoted to "Judgements Judged and Wrongs Remembered: Examining the Japanese American Civil Liberties Cases On Their Sixtieth Anniversary." The entire issue is worth reading and is posted online. Eric's article,"A Penny for Their Thoughts: Draft Resistance at the Poston Relocation Center," adds to our knowledge of the inner workings of the Poston resistance and the different sentences handed to three different groups of Poston resisters, with exhaustive research into Richard Nishimoto's diary, Community Analysis reports and letters from the project attorney.

Update: Wednesday, February 22, 2006
An eventful Day of Remembrance just past. The Fresno Bee on Feb. 19 published an op-ed from 16-year old Marissa Honda, an insightful piece in which she speaks of her faith in her generation to remember the legacy of the draft resisters, in contrast to her older relatives who lived through those times:

I can tell by their shifty eyes and serious expressions that many of them still feel embarassed by those who might have been seen as disloyal Americans. It is as if by supporting the resisters after 50 years, they still fear being labelled as disloyal Americans themselves.

It's a remarkable piece, inspired in part from a viewing of our film. You can read "Japanese (American) draft resisters deserve better," online at the Fresno Bee site, or download a large 1 MB Acrobat file to see how it looked in the paper. Renews one's hope for the future.

The Seattle University School of Law has now posted a streaming video of its Feb. 15th Day of Remembrance event, Honoring Courage: Remembering the Japanese American Internment. Go to this page for a link the full 90-minute video, which features Minidoka resister Gene Akutsu at the 40-minute-35-second mark, and some moving remarks from Karen Korematsu on how she's stepped into her father's shoes to carry on talking about his test case. That's at the 1-hour-2-minute mark. That same page will also link you to a full set of streaming videos from the "Judgments Judged and Wrongs Remembered: Examining the Japanese American Civil Liberties Cases of World War II on their Sixtieth Anniversary" conference held at the Japanese American National Museum back in November 2004. You can see the remarks from Frank Emi, Yosh Kuromiya, and Gene Akutsu, along with one of the last public appearances of Fred Korematsu. The whole enterprise helps promote publication of a new article on the resisters, "Taking the Stand: The Lessons of the Three Men Who Took the Japanese American Internment to Court," published in the Seattle Journal for Social Justice by Seattle University Law Professor Lorraine Bannai.

Update: Friday, March 10, 2006
Time flies. It's already time on Saturday, March 11, at 2:00 p.m., for the resisters' readers theater presentation, "A Divided Community," at the National Center for the Preservation of Democracy in Los Angeles. See the flyer which makes nice use of Yosh Kuromiya's original water color sketch of Heart Mountain. As before, three of the original resisters from the Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee members will take part in the staged reading. Yosh Kuromiya, Frank Emi, and Mits Koshiyama, in the center of the photo below, will be joined by WW2 veteran Paul Tsuneishi (far left) and actors Momo Yashima (far right) and Mike Hagiwara.

staged reading by resisters

Update: Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Just received news that the resisters' readers theater presentation, "A Divided Community," will be repeated at UCLA on May 2, at Kinsey Pavilion. See the flyer which once again makes nice use of Yosh Kuromiya's original water color sketch of Heart Mountain
.

Update: Tuesday, April 25, 2006
You know you've come a long ways when the things you did in your youth come back as "history." Join us at the University of Washington this Friday, April 28, for a day-long forum on "Remembering Japanese American Redress: A Symposium on History, Incarceration, and Justice." I'll be showing two surviving TV news clips from the first "Day of Remembrance" in 1978 and projecting photos and news clippings demonstrating the news coverage we earned that showed Japanese Americans nationwide that no mob would attack if they spoke up and stood for redress.

I'll be speaking at two screenings of CONSCIENCE coming up: “Friday Night At The Meaningful Movies” for the Wallingford Neighbors for Peace and Justice, May 5 at Keystone Church in Seattle, and Emerald Ridge High School in Puyallup, Washington, on May 12.

Update: Thursday, June 1, 2006
The bad boy of Asian American letters has done it again. The Manzanar Committee has discovered what the Organization of Chinese Americans and the Northwest Asian American Film Festival learned before them. Frank may make for a lousy guest, and I didn't hear exactly what he said, but I think characterizing his legitimate points as "name-calling" diminishes what he had to say and insults the intelligence of their constituency:

The Manzanar Committee expresses their deepest apologies to those who were offended by remarks made by Frank Chin, one of the speakers at the 37th Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage. Though the intention and focus clearly communicated to Chin in the Committee's invitation was to focus on his central role with beginning the annual Day of Remembrance and being part of a Pan-Asian movement that supported redress as well as encouraging youth today to become more politically aware and informed, Chin departed from this intention when he resorted to name calling against the Japanese American Citizens League and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. These are views which may reflect those of Chin but not the Manzanar Committee. Read more as an Acrobat pdf.

Update: Friday, July 21, 2006
I froze when I saw the subject line of Frank Chin's e-mail. This sad news speaks for itself:

LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN: MAKO

Mako died today at his home in Somis, in Ventura County. He was known by his first name only, and used his mother's surname Iwamatsu. His sister Momo Yashima was with him when he breathed his last. Neither he nor his wife Susie wants a funeral or a memorial, or any kind of service. He was the son of activist anti-militarist painters Taro Yashima and Mitsu Iwamatsu, who fled Japan before WWII. Mako was a sickly child and left with his grandparents in Japan. The story of Taro reunitijng with Mako after the war is told in Taro Yashima's "picture book," HORIZON IS CALLING.

Actors who worked with him and those who were trained by him or worked under his direction who feel him in their work may want to get together and get roaring drunk. I don't know. He spoke at Steve McQueen's passing, the star of THE SAND PEBBLES, Mako's first movie that won him an Oscar nomination. I had mixed feelings about RISING SUN with Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes, but saw this as one of Mako's best, most textured performances. He wasn't a bad guy or the butt of a joke. He played an executive of a corporation who loved golf. Perhaps because of his love of golf, he was very good.

If anyone out there wants a Mako film fest and get drunk, be sure to let me know. Asian-American art and culture has lost an inspiration to writers and actors, and art may have lost the only Asian with guts enough to put his talent where his vision is. He was an Asian American who could rough and tumble instead crawl and bat their eyes. This bottle is for you, Mako. -- Frank Chin

Mako believed in our film project on the resisters and lent his name to our fundraising efforts. He graciously provided the voice of the "resister singing in jail" that is heard in our film. He was proud of the discovery he made about the song that should accompnany the handwritten verses of "Song of Cheyenne," which we found preserved in the wallet of resister James Kado. And he frequently championed the language and dialogue of John Okada's No-No Boy as the authentic speech of postwar Nisei he wanted to hear more of in American film. In the movie about the resisters, I always wanted him to play Guntaro Kubota, the Issei leader who risked his freedom to help the young boys fight unfair conscription from camp. He will be deeply missed.

Update: Friday, August 25, 2006
Lt. Ehren Watada, U.S. Military photoThe case of Army 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, who has refused deployment to Iraq in principled protest against what he believes is an illegal war of occupation, has led many to compare his stand to that of the WW2 Nisei draft resisters. He himself made the link in his comments to Ben Hamamoto of the Nichi Bei Times:

As a Japanese American, Watada sees historical parallels between himself and those who resisted the World War II incarceration. “(The resisters) said ‘we’re Japanese American’ and we are part of this country no matter what the president says. They faced ostracization and imprisonment, but it was shown many years later that they were correct… What I’m doing is no different.”

The parallel is not precise. The Heart Mountain resisters did not object to fighting in WW2, only to the unconstitutionality of the forced incarceration of themselves and their families. But as I talked this week with John Iwasaki when he called from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, it hit me that the resisters and Lt. Watada do share this one similarity: both put themselves on the line to object to actions by their government. Iwasaki was localizing a wire story, "Japanese Americans criticize Watada," reporting a joint statement from 9 Japanese American veterans groups to publicly denounce Watada for disrespecting "a legacy of military service by Japanese American soldiers dating back to World War II."

"No Japanese Americans did anything like that, and that is why Japanese Americans are so upset," (Robert) Wada said, (a charter president of the Japanese American Korean War Veterans). "He is doing something that has never been done by Japanese Americans."

That's not exactly the case, said Seattle resident Frank Abe. He produced "Conscience and the Constitution," a documentary about Japanese Americans who resisted the World War II draft because they and their families were held in internment camps for years after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

Wada is "overlooking the fact that 315 Japanese Americans in World War II resisted the draft as a means of protesting the forced incarceration of their families," Abe said Wednesday. Read more.

Update: Monday, October 16, 2006
An online journal called Japan Focus ("regional and global perspectives on politics, economics, society, history & culture") has posted a new article that references our film and draws some material from our PBS Online site and this one, including our photos of Frank Emi in camp and Mits Koshiyama in court. "Japanese-American Incarceration Resistance Narratives, and the Post 9/11 Era" opens with a quote from James Omura and examines our film and Satsuki Ina's remarkable From A Silk Cocoon in the context of "fifty years of Japanese American counternarratives challenging prevailing views about the incarceration experience." Author Jean Miyake Downey says:

"Many thanks for your inspiration and sharing news of inspiring resisters during this time when we need to speak out again... My background is in the African American Civil Rights Movement/Solidarity Movement in Poland (nonviolent social change movements) and, growing up in the 1970's and not graduating from law school until 1988, in Florida, I bought the official versions of the incarceration, even though they smacked "false" to me. Before the age of internet, I remember seeing very little about the redress movement and Civil Liberties Act in the paper, and the takes were spinned, to minimize important aspects of the history. Of course, I knew about Fred Korematsu, but nothing about the FPC and other protesters."

Frank Chin also sent a 29-page script for what looks to be a proposed staged reading involving himself and the Heart Mountain resisters:

"Here's a piece linking the camp resistance that began with Hirababyashi, the draft resisters and Ehren Watada."

The script is titled "CITIZENS DEFENSE OF THE CONSTITUTION: THE JAPANESE AMERICAN RESISTANCE TO CAMPS OF 1942 to THE RESISTANCE OF LT. EHREN WATADA OF 2006." Read it online, unedited, as a PDF document.

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Updated: January 13, 2007

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