SEATTLE — Bill and Melinda Gates announced the Microsoft Alumni Foundation’s 2011 Integral Fellows winners Nov. 16. at the third annual celebration to honor former Microsoft employees for making a meaningful difference in the daily lives of others. The Foundation, which was established in 2007, aims to make a difference in the world through the […]
SUS ITO: The life of an American soldier and noted biologist
November 11, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Susumu “Sus” Ito is renown within the medical field for his work with the gastronomical tract. Despite retiring as a professor from Harvard Medical School in 1990, the 92-year-old continues to go into the lab in Boston a few times a week to study. His work has won him recognition around the world and has […]
Ceremony to honor medal recipients Feb. 2012 in San Jose
November 10, 2011 by Leave a Comment
SAN JOSE — Community leaders and Congressional leaders are organizing an event to honor veterans, their family members, as well as the widows, who unable to attend the Congressional Gold Medal ceremony that was held in Washington, D.C. The event is being scheduled to take place in San Jose’s Japantown in February of 2012. The […]
THE GREAT UNKNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN GREAT: The astonishing history of Japanese Americans in Louisiana (pt. 2)
November 10, 2011 by 2 Comments
Editor’s Note: This is the second in a two-part series. The Second World War hit Louisiana’s Japanese population hard. On Dec. 8, the Japanese consulate closed its doors and its Japanese alien employees were incarcerated. Japanese shrimp boats were grounded, and the Hinata art store in New Orleans closed its doors. The Hinata daughters, anticipating […]
Petition launched to rename Arizona park to commemorate wartime incarceration
October 27, 2011 by Leave a Comment
CHANDLER, Ariz. — The city of Chandler, Ariz. drafted plans for “Nozomi Park” in 2005, but has since suspended indefinitely its plans due to budgeting shortfalls. The 70-acre park was meant to honor those of Japanese descent who were incarcerated in the state during World War II. The park’s name, which means “hope” in Japanese, […]
New book on resisters examines wartime definition of patriotism, civil disobedience
October 20, 2011 by 1 Comment
CHICAGO — A new book being published by Temple University Press in November is re-examining wartime definitions of citizenship, patriotism, prisons, and civil disobedience through the lives of Gordon Hirabayashi and a group of Nisei draft resisters who called themselves the “Tucsonians.” “Prisons and Patriots: Japanese American Wartime Citizenship, Civil Disobedience, and Historical Memory” is […]
Why all the fuss over language?
October 20, 2011 by 1 Comment
“At what point are we, as Americans of Japanese ancestry, going to resist having our history written for us by others?” Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, a Nisei survivor of the World War II incarceration, asked this question. She is revered as the researcher who found the document that proved the government claim of “military necessity” as the […]
THE GREAT UNKNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN GREAT: Nisei exclusion at Penn (Pt. 3 of 3)
October 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Editor’s Note: Part of this piece was previously published as ‘Admission Denied,’ in the Pennsylvania Gazette, January-February 2000 issue. Until the story of her exclusion was broadcast nationwide, Naomi Nakano had been, by her own admission, rather removed from the controversy. She had not participated in the protests, and The Bennett News had been careful […]
Bob, Cherry, and Denny
October 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment
We learned in the spring of 1989 that what HR 442 had authorized — $1.2 billion for 60,000 internees or $20,000 per victim — was not the way the bill should have been written. Applications at the Justice Department for individual payments showed that there were 80,000 living Japanese Americans eligible. The actuaries were wrong. […]
What Dad said
When I was 11 years old, I watched “Go for Broke” on television. The 1951 film is about the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which was comprised of Nisei soldiers. My father was working on our car in the driveway. I did not hear him come into the living room behind me. Dad said: “Those guys […]