Some may think that an apology doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, but it does. It recognizes a wrong. The way the media and some politicians have framed and blamed the pandemic on “the Chinese” in particular have such parallels to the persecution of Japanese Canadians during WWII, it is frightening. It matters...Continue reading
Tag: The Present
Incarceration, Dispersal, and Dispossession
In my early teens, I took a tour through incarceration campsites. It was the first time I was able to contextualize my grandparents’ wartime lives; during the time when they should’ve been planning their futures, they were instead forced to exist in limbo for years. I don’t think it’ll ever be possible for me to...Continue reading
COVID-19 and Racism
The pandemic and subsequent rise in anti-Asian sentiment is just the most obvious way in which racism still permeating our society has revealed itself in the past few years. I think there’s an undeniable commonality with the WWII incarceration. Although COVID-19 is a different beast than a global war, “Asianness” continues to be the way...Continue reading
Intermarriage
I know my parents and certainly my husband’s parents didn’t want us marrying “out.” They were quite happy that both my sister and I married Japanese. But when it came to our children, my parents never said anything. I don’t know what the future is going to bring. I don’t know why there is such...Continue reading
We are not free until we are all free
My Nikkei community – do you remember your outrage, your parents or grandparents outrage when you were forced from your homes and shuttled off into deplorable living conditions or to war-ravaged Japan? Do you remember how you felt when your family was torn apart? When the uncertainty of their wellbeing kept you up at night?...Continue reading
It Is What It Is
About the past and the present—I don’t know. I… read? or I heard, wayyyyy back when—you know, decades ago—one of these wise Greek, philosophers, or maybe a philosopher out in the far east, said the same thing that we’re saying now: This is terrible—you know, what is happening to our community, or whatever. Nowadays, because...Continue reading