Japanese American Internment
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Manzanar Fishing Club?
How is it I only learn about this movie just as the last sneak preview is playing?
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keep moving
This photo is floating around the net today. I wish my great grandfather, who had a photo studio downtown, had taken this… He was probably in the camps by then, everything he’d worked so hard for lost forever. It’s incredible to think that we are still making some of the same mistakes to this day.
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High School as Prison
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Fort Minor – Kenji
You might not have heard of Fort Minor, it’s a side project of Mike Shinoda’s (lead man of Linkin Park). In 2005 they released their first (and to date, only) album, The Rising Tied. In my mind this is one of the best hip hop albums released in semi-recent memory (which isn’t saying much, I’ll admit – the golden days of hip hop died with the Walkman). I bring up the subject of Fort Minor because I’ve recently been in contact with former Japanese American internees and their children who wanted more information on posts I’ve written here on internment. Anyway, the subject came up about internment in popular culture…
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$25 and a Train Ticket
You may have heard by now about Google’s partnership with LIFE magazine: 10 million photos recently released, most of which have never been seen by the public. You can check out the site here: http://images.google.com/hosted/life I started playing with it today and was really impressed. I think I’ll integrate it into an upcoming lesson for the computer class I’m teaching. I don’t really know why, but I started out searching for one thing and got drawn down another path, and then another, and then I finally ended up looking for photos of internment camps – and WOW – there’s photos in here I’ve been looking for all my life it…
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High School as Prison
Yearbooks of Japanese-American high school students interned at Tule Lake. I can’t remember which of my relatives was at Tule Lake… (thx Junie)
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keep moving
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massively attacked
I laid down on my bed for a few minutes to watch this Massive Attack DVD that I brought from Japan. The beats were on and my mind went into caramel dreams mode… next thing I know, I’m laying in a pool of sweat and drool, and I’ve just had the best nap in recent memory – I even fell asleep on my stomach, and that like never happens (I also fell asleep on top of a pile of crap on my bed so I woke up with shapes of a pen, the TV remote, and several CDs imprinted on my body). There are certain DVDs that have this tranquilizing…
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A Prison Camp Memoir
Excerpts from another great memoir over on the JPRI site: “The radio went dead. All the servants had long disappeared–stealing everything they could carry. I locked all the doors and shutters and stayed in the dark. The planes were flying very low now, using the tramcar lines along the boulevard as a guide. When they opened up with their machine-guns, I guessed that the troops were near. It was a long, long night. When dawn arrived, I couldn’t understand the sudden quiet, and ventured to the gate to look up to the main street. Imagine my astonishment when I saw thousands of troops marching softly past, carrying or riding bicycles!…
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Famous Japanese Americans
This post actually started off as an update to my previous post because I had forgotten to mention one of my newest finds. Guy Kawasaki has started a blog: Let the Good Times Roll He’s kind of an idol for business-minded Japanese Americans, along with Robert Kiyosaki. Politically-minded JA’s are probably more into Senator Inouye or Congressmen Matsui/Honda (or in Hawaii, George Ariyoshi, the first JA governor of a US state. Also, in Los Angeles this might be Paul Tanaka, the current Mayor of Gardena and assistant Sheriff). Academics? Francis Fukuyama or Michio Kaku. Musicians? Hands down, Hiro Yamamoto (original Soundgarden bassist), Seiji Ozawa (Boston Symphony Orchestra), or, more recently,…
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Monkeys & Teak
There was a post on Mefi today that got me to thinking about zines. I’ve been in Japan for over 10 years so my access to them has basically been whatever my brother sent me, as well as a few I managed to pick up on trips back home, but… I think I’ve always harbored a desire to start a zine. I came close to almost starting some type of project a couple times back in high school, but pretty much gave up after having an article on my grandfather’s internment during WWII published by the LA Times. For a nerdy teenager, it felt like the apex of my writing,…
