This week’s piece represents a fifth entry in the series of annual columns I have produced for Nichi Bei on the Queer heritage of Japanese Americans. In past pieces I have looked at the hidden and sometimes complex sexual history of early Japanese immigrants; the evolution of widespread anti-gay prejudice in mid-century Japanese communities, […]
The Great Unknown and the Unknown Great
THE GREAT UNKNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN GREAT: The Japanese American fight for gay and lesbian rights
June 16, 2011 by Leave a Comment
THE GREAT UNKNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN GREAT: Multiracial pacifist and activist, Yone Stafford
June 9, 2011 by Leave a Comment
One of the more pleasant aspects of doing “The Great Unknown†is the responses that I get to my columns from readers, including friends and family members of the people whom I write about. They not only offer praise but provide additional information and inspire further work. Not long ago I did a column about […]
THE GREAT UNKNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN GREAT: The life and times of resister Gordon Hirabayashi (Part 2)
April 21, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Note: This is the second of a two-part column. In 1951 Gordon Hirabayashi defended his doctoral thesis in sociology. His subject was the adaptation and status of the Doukhobors in British Columbia’s Slocan Valley. It was an intriguing choice of subject. Members of this sect of pacifist Christians from Russia, who believed in holding land […]
THE GREAT UNKNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN GREAT: The life and times of resister Gordon Hirabayashi (Part 1 of 2)
April 15, 2011 by Leave a Comment
As we remember the wartime removal of Japanese Americans, one outstanding figure to celebrate is Gordon Hirabayashi, a man of principle whose legal challenge to official injustice went all the way to the Supreme Court. Jeanne Sakata’s 2007 play “Dawn’s Light†has now brought Hirabayashi’s wartime tale exploits to countless audiences. However, there is a […]
THE GREAT UNKNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN GREAT, The life and times of Hisaye Yamamoto: writer, activist, speaker
February 24, 2011 by 1 Comment
Hisaye Yamamoto, who died on Jan. 30, 2011 at the age of 89, remains known primarily as a literary artist, a crafter of powerful short fiction — such as her signature stories “Seventeen Syllables†and “Yoneko’s Earthquake†— as well as assorted newspaper columns. Yet the story of her development as a writer is less […]
THE GREAT UNKNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN GREAT: The tragic and engaging activist Sam Hohri
January 1, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Like many other people, I was saddened by the news of William Minoru Hohri’s passing. I greatly respected his achievements in organizing the forces for Japanese American redress, and his various other contributions to racial justice in the United States. I was interested to read the various memorial tributes. One element that seemed absent from […]
The Great Unknown and the Unknown Great: ISSEI WOMEN: Shio Sakanishi, a pioneering figure in education
November 4, 2010 by Leave a Comment
In April 1939, the writer Edward Larocque Tinker offered a laudatory account in his New York Times column of a new book “The Spirit of the Brush,†an anthology of commentaries on art by Chinese classical painters between 367 A.D. and 960 A.D. Tinker noted that the editor of the collection, Dr. Shio Sakanishi, was […]
THE GREAT UNKNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN GREAT: Issei Women,Giving birth to a community
October 14, 2010 by Leave a Comment
This overview article starts off a series of portraits from a whole class of “unknown greatsâ€: Issei women. Of all the ethnic Japanese in the United States in the first half of the 20th century, the lives and experiences of immigrant women have been arguably the least studied by family and community historians, despite notable […]
THE GREAT UNKNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN GREAT: The censorship of Japanese American history
September 9, 2010 by Leave a Comment
The story of Executive Order 9066 and the mass removal and confinement of Japanese Americans during World War II is a difficult one for many people to wrestle with, even today. The inability of Americans to deal fully with the wartime treatment of Japanese Americans can be demonstrated by looking at two different incidents of […]
THE GREAT UNKNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN GREAT: Norman Thomas and the Defense of Japanese
July 8, 2010 by Leave a Comment
Norman Mattoon Thomas (1884-1968), leader and perennial presidential candidate of the Socialist Party, distinguished himself by his tireless defense of the human rights of Japanese Americans during World War II. He was the only national political figure to take a public position against Executive Order 9066, which he decried as “totalitarian justice.†In newspaper articles and public speeches, […]
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