Asian Pacific American Heritage Month: Third Annual Asian American Voices
Reclaiming our past: The Untold Stories of Asian America
Reclaiming our past: The Untold Stories of Asian America
Part 1 of 2
By Heidi M. Pascual
To celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, Asian American student leaders at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison decided to do something big and different this year. While it
was definitely hard work, they put their minds together and held a three-day series of arts,
academic scholarship and commemoration, in collaboration with the UW Asian American
Studies program and other groups.
Day 1 (April 30) featured a performance arts showcase titled “Go Back to Where you Came
From,” held at Memorial Union’s Tripp Commons. Performers did spoken word numbers, and
transitions between each act consisted of carefully selected videos or slide shows. The event
highlighted Japanese American internment, violation of civil liberties in America yesterday and
today, as well as the problems of identity being experienced by minority groups in America
today. The room also offered an exhibit of students’ art work reflective of the day’s topic.
Emcee Vora Savengseuksa set the tone of the night by educating the audience about a
Japanese internee during World War II named James Wakasa, who was killed by the military
police. “What many people don’t know was he was one of our very own students here at UW-
Madison, almost a century ago,” Savengseuksa said. “Why is he important to us?” She then
talked of artists, students, intellectuals, babies, young ladies, women, men and children who,
“like James Wakasa, were innocent American citizens and legal residents of this country, of
Japanese ancestry, victimized by the United States war powers in a time of mass hysteria [due
to the fear of] so-called foreign invasion.”
Connecting the experience of Japanese Americans during World War II to the present time,
Savengseuksa stressed that the same can happen again to any group because “they simply
look like the enemy.” She cited what has happened after 9/11. “To our misfortune it is happening
again, as evidenced by post 9-11 crimes against Middle Eastern Americans, Muslim Americans
and Arabic Americans,” Savengseuksa said. “And this is also evidenced by immigration
enforcement or federal authority to deprive immigrant detainees of their constitutional rights and
assume that building stronger and higher walls would prevent the illegals from coming in. … As
we take our civil liberties for granted, how would you feel if you were taken away because of
your race, gender, or religious affiliation? And all of these justified by the powers that be. What
does it mean to belong somewhere? And how does it feel to renegotiate your identity for the
sake of assimilation?”
After Savengseuksa’s introductory remarks, a video about Japanese American internment,
produced by the U.S. government Office of War Information, was shown. The documentary
started thus, “Following the outbreak of the present war, it became necessary to transfer
several thousands Japanese residents from the Pacific Coast to points in the American
Interior.” The narrator in the documentary, Milton Eisenhower, said that with the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government became concerned that among the more than 1,000
Japanese along the West Coast, one-third of whom were aliens, some of them could potentially
be dangerous. Military authorities, he said, determined that all of them, citizens and aliens alike,
will have to move. The video highlighted how the military helped the Japanese transfer inland
and many of them, the narrator said, were happy to cooperate and sacrifice in the U.S. war
effort. The Santa Ana Race Track became a “community for 1,700 people, and the military
provided nourishing food for all.” The final movement to relocation centers happened shortly
thereafter.
After that heart-breaking documentary, the students presented “Go Back To Where You
Came From” spoken word acts by Gilbert Jose, Justice for Palestine’s Jehad Algharabli (Arabic
poem) and Muhammad Sankari (English translation), Crystle Dino, James Hillmer, Erica
Nakanishi Stanis, Chanel Matsunami Govreau, Kim Anh Truong, and Domineike Chestand.
“YouTubing Asian Americans” was a collection of media stereotyping Asians. Art works in the
exhibit (right photos) that reflected issues of identity and home included those done by Crystle
Dino and Kao Phetchareun. The evening was capped off by musical numbers by MECha and Son
Mundanza.
Day 2 (May 1) was an academic symposium held at the UW-Madison Law School, aptly titled
“The Body of Evidence: Recovering the New/ Forgotten.” The symposium panel was composed
of Dr. Victor Jew (UW-Madison), Prof. Kent Ono (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), and
Prof. Elena Tajima Creef (Wellesley College); with Prof. Leslie Bow (UW-Madison) as moderator.
The symposium keynote was delivered by Prof. Sumi Cho of DePaul University College of Law,
whose speech focused on national security and the racial sovereign, from internment to
incarceration and immigration.
By Heidi M. Pascual
To celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, Asian American student leaders at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison decided to do something big and different this year. While it
was definitely hard work, they put their minds together and held a three-day series of arts,
academic scholarship and commemoration, in collaboration with the UW Asian American
Studies program and other groups.
Day 1 (April 30) featured a performance arts showcase titled “Go Back to Where you Came
From,” held at Memorial Union’s Tripp Commons. Performers did spoken word numbers, and
transitions between each act consisted of carefully selected videos or slide shows. The event
highlighted Japanese American internment, violation of civil liberties in America yesterday and
today, as well as the problems of identity being experienced by minority groups in America
today. The room also offered an exhibit of students’ art work reflective of the day’s topic.
Emcee Vora Savengseuksa set the tone of the night by educating the audience about a
Japanese internee during World War II named James Wakasa, who was killed by the military
police. “What many people don’t know was he was one of our very own students here at UW-
Madison, almost a century ago,” Savengseuksa said. “Why is he important to us?” She then
talked of artists, students, intellectuals, babies, young ladies, women, men and children who,
“like James Wakasa, were innocent American citizens and legal residents of this country, of
Japanese ancestry, victimized by the United States war powers in a time of mass hysteria [due
to the fear of] so-called foreign invasion.”
Connecting the experience of Japanese Americans during World War II to the present time,
Savengseuksa stressed that the same can happen again to any group because “they simply
look like the enemy.” She cited what has happened after 9/11. “To our misfortune it is happening
again, as evidenced by post 9-11 crimes against Middle Eastern Americans, Muslim Americans
and Arabic Americans,” Savengseuksa said. “And this is also evidenced by immigration
enforcement or federal authority to deprive immigrant detainees of their constitutional rights and
assume that building stronger and higher walls would prevent the illegals from coming in. … As
we take our civil liberties for granted, how would you feel if you were taken away because of
your race, gender, or religious affiliation? And all of these justified by the powers that be. What
does it mean to belong somewhere? And how does it feel to renegotiate your identity for the
sake of assimilation?”
After Savengseuksa’s introductory remarks, a video about Japanese American internment,
produced by the U.S. government Office of War Information, was shown. The documentary
started thus, “Following the outbreak of the present war, it became necessary to transfer
several thousands Japanese residents from the Pacific Coast to points in the American
Interior.” The narrator in the documentary, Milton Eisenhower, said that with the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government became concerned that among the more than 1,000
Japanese along the West Coast, one-third of whom were aliens, some of them could potentially
be dangerous. Military authorities, he said, determined that all of them, citizens and aliens alike,
will have to move. The video highlighted how the military helped the Japanese transfer inland
and many of them, the narrator said, were happy to cooperate and sacrifice in the U.S. war
effort. The Santa Ana Race Track became a “community for 1,700 people, and the military
provided nourishing food for all.” The final movement to relocation centers happened shortly
thereafter.
After that heart-breaking documentary, the students presented “Go Back To Where You
Came From” spoken word acts by Gilbert Jose, Justice for Palestine’s Jehad Algharabli (Arabic
poem) and Muhammad Sankari (English translation), Crystle Dino, James Hillmer, Erica
Nakanishi Stanis, Chanel Matsunami Govreau, Kim Anh Truong, and Domineike Chestand.
“YouTubing Asian Americans” was a collection of media stereotyping Asians. Art works in the
exhibit (right photos) that reflected issues of identity and home included those done by Crystle
Dino and Kao Phetchareun. The evening was capped off by musical numbers by MECha and Son
Mundanza.
Day 2 (May 1) was an academic symposium held at the UW-Madison Law School, aptly titled
“The Body of Evidence: Recovering the New/ Forgotten.” The symposium panel was composed
of Dr. Victor Jew (UW-Madison), Prof. Kent Ono (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), and
Prof. Elena Tajima Creef (Wellesley College); with Prof. Leslie Bow (UW-Madison) as moderator.
The symposium keynote was delivered by Prof. Sumi Cho of DePaul University College of Law,
whose speech focused on national security and the racial sovereign, from internment to
incarceration and immigration.
(From top left) Vora Savengseuksa; Gil
Jose; Justice for Palestine-Jehad
Algharabli (Arabic poem) and Muhammad
Sankari (English translation); Crystle Dino;
James Hilmer; Dominique Chestand; Son
Mundanza
Jose; Justice for Palestine-Jehad
Algharabli (Arabic poem) and Muhammad
Sankari (English translation); Crystle Dino;
James Hilmer; Dominique Chestand; Son
Mundanza
Prof. Creef showed photo slides that highlighted how Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II
were photographed to create certain images. She showed photographs of Ansel Adams, a civilian photographer
who, because of his friendship with the camp director, was allowed easy access into the camps to take photos
as he wanted. “Adams was a civilian photographer who was angry that his Japanese gardener had been
interned and he felt that it was a great injustice that Japanese Americans were thrown behind barbed wire,”
Creef said, adding that Adams bravely published a photo booklet in 1944, “Born Free and Equal”’ about loyal
Japanese Americans in a California county. “He published it at a time when everything Japanese, Japanese
American, was rat poison. And he should be commended. His book tried very hard to reframe, repackage images
of Japanese Americans behind barbed wire.” Such books were banned or burned at that time.
When Creef got hold of one of the original Adams’ booklets in 1994, she said it was a weird book. While filled
with shots of scenes of camp life, there was a preponderance of Japanese American school girl headshots.
“There were extreme headshots, like yearbook photos, super extreme,” Creef said, and showed photos of smiling
young girls, “revealing all-American, innocent citizens.” This part of Creef’s presentation drew some pleasant
laughter from the audience. “Clean, bright, rather well adjusted …” she said, “the figure of the school girl is
never threatening … so female bodies really are in many ways the most tamed, most domesticated, most easily
assimilable into mainstream American culture, and they will grow up to become bodies of wives and mothers,
mothers of the nation.” Adams’ photos of young women who served either as a nurse or a civilian worker in the
military, Creef added, showed that Japanese American teens, young women, were literally stitched into
productive war-time discourse — cooperative, loyal in serving the nation.
Creef then switched to a few photos of young men in the archive. Showing an Adams’ photo of a group of
schoolboys with their hands folded on their laps, she said, “As they grow older, they can go to only one of two
directions — either they will be reframed in wartime discourse as those mythologized heroic Japanese American
soldiers ... who were so loyal and patriotic they spilled blood proving how American they were; they were
decorated with purple hearts and medals they were called the ‘Christmas Tree Brigade.’ Or they will go the other
way; the disloyal, not soldiers but the resisters.”
A famous photo of Japanese American boys in an internment camp was taken by Toyo Miyatake, who
smuggled a camera into one camp. “It contains two symbolic images that are banished in the official War
Relocation Authority Archive: barbed wire and a guard tower,” Creef explained, as images like these were
censored out at that time. “This famous photograph certainly captures the sense of teen-age longing, boredom,
confinement.”
Creef showed some more photos in the archive that clearly projected a bias for Japanese American women,
showing them as responsible for making their barracks look like “home.”
Next issue: Keynote and Day 3, “Remembering James Wakasa”
were photographed to create certain images. She showed photographs of Ansel Adams, a civilian photographer
who, because of his friendship with the camp director, was allowed easy access into the camps to take photos
as he wanted. “Adams was a civilian photographer who was angry that his Japanese gardener had been
interned and he felt that it was a great injustice that Japanese Americans were thrown behind barbed wire,”
Creef said, adding that Adams bravely published a photo booklet in 1944, “Born Free and Equal”’ about loyal
Japanese Americans in a California county. “He published it at a time when everything Japanese, Japanese
American, was rat poison. And he should be commended. His book tried very hard to reframe, repackage images
of Japanese Americans behind barbed wire.” Such books were banned or burned at that time.
When Creef got hold of one of the original Adams’ booklets in 1994, she said it was a weird book. While filled
with shots of scenes of camp life, there was a preponderance of Japanese American school girl headshots.
“There were extreme headshots, like yearbook photos, super extreme,” Creef said, and showed photos of smiling
young girls, “revealing all-American, innocent citizens.” This part of Creef’s presentation drew some pleasant
laughter from the audience. “Clean, bright, rather well adjusted …” she said, “the figure of the school girl is
never threatening … so female bodies really are in many ways the most tamed, most domesticated, most easily
assimilable into mainstream American culture, and they will grow up to become bodies of wives and mothers,
mothers of the nation.” Adams’ photos of young women who served either as a nurse or a civilian worker in the
military, Creef added, showed that Japanese American teens, young women, were literally stitched into
productive war-time discourse — cooperative, loyal in serving the nation.
Creef then switched to a few photos of young men in the archive. Showing an Adams’ photo of a group of
schoolboys with their hands folded on their laps, she said, “As they grow older, they can go to only one of two
directions — either they will be reframed in wartime discourse as those mythologized heroic Japanese American
soldiers ... who were so loyal and patriotic they spilled blood proving how American they were; they were
decorated with purple hearts and medals they were called the ‘Christmas Tree Brigade.’ Or they will go the other
way; the disloyal, not soldiers but the resisters.”
A famous photo of Japanese American boys in an internment camp was taken by Toyo Miyatake, who
smuggled a camera into one camp. “It contains two symbolic images that are banished in the official War
Relocation Authority Archive: barbed wire and a guard tower,” Creef explained, as images like these were
censored out at that time. “This famous photograph certainly captures the sense of teen-age longing, boredom,
confinement.”
Creef showed some more photos in the archive that clearly projected a bias for Japanese American women,
showing them as responsible for making their barracks look like “home.”
Next issue: Keynote and Day 3, “Remembering James Wakasa”
“The Body of Evidence and the Evidence of the Bodies: People Set in Motion by the Decision of 1942-1943” –presented by Dr. Victor Jew,
was a detailed narration of James Wakasa’s life and how he was gunned down mercilessly by military police in an internment camp; it even
included a description of his wound. Jew stressed that James Wakasa lived a life traveling in the U.S. Wakasa, Jew said, was a post-graduate
student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and served his adopted country during World War I as a civilian training instructor at Camp
Dodge in Iowa. Jew explained how the Japanese American community in Wakasa’s internment camp in Topaz reacted after Wakasa’s killing.
They stopped working and demanded proper representation in investigating the killing. However, the Secretary of War wrote to the Secretary of
was a detailed narration of James Wakasa’s life and how he was gunned down mercilessly by military police in an internment camp; it even
included a description of his wound. Jew stressed that James Wakasa lived a life traveling in the U.S. Wakasa, Jew said, was a post-graduate
student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and served his adopted country during World War I as a civilian training instructor at Camp
Dodge in Iowa. Jew explained how the Japanese American community in Wakasa’s internment camp in Topaz reacted after Wakasa’s killing.
They stopped working and demanded proper representation in investigating the killing. However, the Secretary of War wrote to the Secretary of
State that, “Prisoners may be killed in order to prevent their escape, therefore, constituting plain
legal justification for the position taken by this government.” Jew stressed that the word
“prisoners” clearly described the Japanese Americans detained in internments camps. He said,
they were “not internees; not evacuees; not residents,” but “prisoners,” deprived of liberty and
property. With the killing of Wakasa, a “prisoner” was deprived of his life as well, in the absence
of due process and for no justifiable reason.
Prof. Kent Ono’s presentation, titled “Making Memory: Japanese American Films About the
Incarceration”
“Why remember now?” Ono asked. “It might have made sense to remember right after the
incarceration. It might have made sense to remember before there was a redress movement to
demand payment to people who were incarcerated. It might have made sense before the
government offered its apology for the incarceration of Japanese Americans. Why remember now?”
Ono explained that there are a number of reasons to do so. “First, a lot of people just don’t know
about the incarceration,” he said. “Secondly, the larger public hasn’t gotten much information.
There hasn’t been a lot of details provided in the mainstream media. Third, there have been
attempts to eliminate memory in history.”
He said that when Japanese Americans were incarcerated, one of the things that was taken
away from them was cameras, because the war authority felt they might document their
experiences inside the camps. The government instead hired very prominent anthropologists to do
studies of people who were incarcerated during WWII. Ono then showed film clips about Japanese
American internment, explaining in the process why stories about it from the perspective of the
internees themselves started only in the ‘80s. Japanese Americans in general, did not want to talk
about it; they wanted to forget their traumatic experience, much like the victims of the Holocaust.
Prof. Elena Tajima Creef’s presentation titled, “Interning Gender in the War Relocation Authority
Photograph Archive”
legal justification for the position taken by this government.” Jew stressed that the word
“prisoners” clearly described the Japanese Americans detained in internments camps. He said,
they were “not internees; not evacuees; not residents,” but “prisoners,” deprived of liberty and
property. With the killing of Wakasa, a “prisoner” was deprived of his life as well, in the absence
of due process and for no justifiable reason.
Prof. Kent Ono’s presentation, titled “Making Memory: Japanese American Films About the
Incarceration”
“Why remember now?” Ono asked. “It might have made sense to remember right after the
incarceration. It might have made sense to remember before there was a redress movement to
demand payment to people who were incarcerated. It might have made sense before the
government offered its apology for the incarceration of Japanese Americans. Why remember now?”
Ono explained that there are a number of reasons to do so. “First, a lot of people just don’t know
about the incarceration,” he said. “Secondly, the larger public hasn’t gotten much information.
There hasn’t been a lot of details provided in the mainstream media. Third, there have been
attempts to eliminate memory in history.”
He said that when Japanese Americans were incarcerated, one of the things that was taken
away from them was cameras, because the war authority felt they might document their
experiences inside the camps. The government instead hired very prominent anthropologists to do
studies of people who were incarcerated during WWII. Ono then showed film clips about Japanese
American internment, explaining in the process why stories about it from the perspective of the
internees themselves started only in the ‘80s. Japanese Americans in general, did not want to talk
about it; they wanted to forget their traumatic experience, much like the victims of the Holocaust.
Prof. Elena Tajima Creef’s presentation titled, “Interning Gender in the War Relocation Authority
Photograph Archive”
| (Clockwise from above left) Prof. Leslie Bow emcees; Dr. Victor Jew; Prof. Elena Tajima Creef; Prof. Kent Ono |
