4 Matching Annotations
  1. Jan 2022
  2. www.nps.gov www.nps.gov
    Words Can Lie or Clarify corrected 12-14-09
    4
    1. shelbae 20 Jan 2022
      At what point are we, as Americans of Japanese ancestry, going to cease to resist having our history written for us by others? Is our empowerment so weak that we must capitulate and surrender our right to state our own history in our own words? .... If the [concentration camp] words are unacceptable in the title, why would they be acceptable in the text labels and what assurance is there that you would not be asked to remove them later also? (29)

      It is so interesting to me how historians differ the language between Nazi Germany and Japanese internment in the United States, when the human rights infractions were sometimes and often so similar. The United States would be desperate not to call their actions 'concentration camps' or 'death camps', but rather a term that more people at the time were unfamiliar with; internment. Despite what you called it, people were still unreasonably and forcibly removed from their homes and restricted/tortured on the basis of their ethnicity.

    2. shelbae 20 Jan 2022
      As I have tried to show, there has been a long history of euphemistic language about the wartime atrocity that was wreaked upon the Japanese Americans of the West Coast during and after World War II. Begun with malice aforethought by government officials, politicians, and journalists, it has been continued, largely in thoughtless innocence, by scholars. As we are in the seventh decade after the promulgation of Executive Order 9066, it is high time that scholars begin to call things by their right names. Let us hear no more about the ‘internment of the Japanese Americans’. (20)

      Global citizens (especially in the age of the internet) are so vulnerable to changes in phrases and words; the coronavirus pandemic and it's related current events demonstrates that to us. Quarantine and isolation are often confused to mean the same thing when they do not. The January 6th insurrection is synonymous with 'domestic terrorism', but calling it a terrorist attack would come off as vulgar or unpatriotic to sections of the United States. Saying 'reform the police' would get more agreement than 'defund the police', just as 'death' and 'murder' of George Floyd would do the same. Our choice of words is so fundamental to the truths we tell, the story we accept, and how we see the reality of our social, historical, and political landscape.

    3. shelbae 20 Jan 2022
      I adopted the survival strategy of suppressing my fear and frustrations, studied diligently, worked hard, and avoided controversy. In the process I behaved like many other politically naive Nisei who strove to fit perfectly the “model minority” stereotype.

      It breaks my heart to see someone live in survival mode like Aiko did. Not quite being old enough to understand how detrimental this is to you, but knowing that working hard and staying quiet was more comfortable than breaking the racist mold that was carved for you.

    4. shelbae 20 Jan 2022
      wrote the memo because I saw my responsibility as staff researcher to be more than a mere compiler of conclusions and summations of existing publications. Thereafter I focused my attention on primary sources in the National Archives and other repositories.

      In 2001, 'Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change Groups' was created by Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun at ChangeWork. The quote I highlighted remindered me of this production, as Jones and Okun reflect on the pillars and characteristics of a society founded in white supremacy; one pillar of white supremacy, they found, was worship of the written word. Herzig-Yoshinaga must have felt that she had a responsibility to comment and highlight the written word of political figures in the United States, but also that her work would be taken most seriously if written down.

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    nps.gov/tule/learn/education/upload/words_can_lie_or_clarify.pdf