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Showing posts from November, 2010

Why write about the Japanese American Internment Camps

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When I was fourteen I came across a book, called Kim/ Kimi , about a young girl searching for her real father, who was Japanese American, only to discover he had been imprisoned in an American internment camp during WWII. I had never heard of these camps up to that point in my life. In Europe, yes, even China, but not here. Not in America. I had to know and therefore went to the library to begin my journey. Three years later I put together a 30 minute mini-documentary for a class project and then wrote a short story. Nine years later I expanded that story into a novel. Why? I don’t have any Japanese ancestry in my family tree. I live in the Midwest and grew-up in a medium size town where cultural diversity is a bit underdeveloped. My reason is simple: I don’t want to continue to live in a conical world. Consciousness does not develop and mature by existing in a frozen pond, therefore after I had graduated college in 2000, my husband and I drove to Bainbridge Island, jus

Who are the Issei, Nisei, Kibei, and Sansei?

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In Japanese, Issei means “first generation.” They had emigrated from Japan, beginning from the 1880’s up until 1924 when Congress stopped all legal migration. The Gentlemen’s Agreement Act of 1907, an unofficial agreement between the U.S. and Japan, was the first domino put into place in a series of racial discrimination. The oral contract was as following: Japan agreed NOT to issue any more passports to its citizens via the path to the United States in EXCHANGE for the U.S. tolerating their presence BUT would at least allow their wives and children to immigrate. And thus, the Picture Bride phenomenon came into the scene. At the same time, Hawaii- before it became a unionized state, turned into a loophole. The Issei could work in the Territory of Hawaii THEN migrate to the mainland. Unfortunately all of that came to an end when the Agreement expired and would never be renewed until a new immigration law was put in effect in 1953. Of course the Japanese were not the firsts to