Beyond Manzanar:
      Background Information / Links to other websites

Index:

• In the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001.
• Japanese American and Internment links.
• Iranian American links.

Links to articles in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

We condemn all terrorist attacks on innocent people. But scapegoating innocent, uninvolved people just because they come from the same ethnic group, and attacking them physically and legally in group retaliation for acts done by a few extremists, will only serve to justify the claims of the terrorists. Instead, we must work together with the communities under suspicion, supporting and sustaining the moderate and democratic voices within them rather than embittering them with displays of American racism and bigotry.

In World War II Japanese Americans in Hawaii were not interned and therefore willingly volunteered in large numbers to join the US Military, anxious to show their loyalty to the US. On the contrary, the mainland Japanese Americans, larger by far in numbers but held prisoner with their families in desolate internment camps, were understandably bitter about being asked to defend a country that dispossed them and locked them up solely for being of Japanese ancestry. The 442nd all Japanese American Regimental Combat Team became the most decorated in World War II, even helping to free the Dachau sub-camps in Germany as their own families languished behind barbed wire in American internment camps. (See Chang, Thelma. "I Can Never Forget: Men of the 100th/442nd," Sigi Productions, 1991)

June 28, 2004 Supreme Court rulings on detentions without trial:

• "Supreme Court Backs Civil Liberties in Terror Cases", Fred Barbash, Washington Post
  On June 28, 2004, in two crucial decisions on the scope of presidential wartime powers, the Supreme Court rejected the Bush administration's claim that it can hold suspected terrorists or "enemy combatants" on American soil without access to the courts.
  
  
• "Resisting arrest", by Gary Kamiya, Salon's executive editor
  (Click through an add to get a day pass for the salon website)
  In October, 2003, Fred Korematsu joined a friend-of-the-court brief to the Supreme Court, arguing that the extended executive detentions of "enemy combatants" are unconstitutional. His words bore the moral weight of authority of a man who had taken the internment of his own ethnic group to the Supreme Court in the 1940s. He lost then, but the internment was subsequently declared "not justified" when in the 1980s a document was found "from one of the Justice Department lawyers to the Solicitor General of the United States saying we are telling lies to the Supreme Court."

Personal reactions to 911 from the two of us:

Zara Houshmand:
• "No 'us' or 'them:' An Iranian-American tries to explain." The Iranian, September 26, 2001
• "Another day and counting," (poem) The Iranian, October 22, 2001

Tamiko Thiel:
• "Deja Vu / After the Fall" Written for the CYNETart Festival, November 2001.

Other articles on the Internet:

• "Guantanamo Bay Prisoners Plant Seeds of Hope in Secret Garden,"
  Andrew Buncombe, The Independent. (April 29, 2006)
  "With their bare hands and the most basic of tools, prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have fashioned a secret garden where they have grown plants from seeds recovered from their meals. For some of the detainees - held without charge for more than four years and who the US say are now cleared for release - the garden apparently offers a diversion from the monotony and injustice of their imprisonment."
  
  
• "Caught in the Backlash," ACLU report (pdf file) on post-9/11 backlash against people perceived to be from the Middle East (November 13, 2002)
  
  
• THE SILENCE ON TERRORISM Michelle Chihara, AlterNet
  Everyone professes to love free speech, just not in their backyard. While the debate rages over exactly when and where speech should be free, the bigger questions are going un-discussed.
  
  
• TOUGH LOVE Michelle Chihara, AlterNet
  Dissent in the war against terrorism is being labeled as unpatriotic. But love of country doesn't have to be uncritical, or bumper-sticker ready. The daughter of a Japanese American interned in the camps during WW II explains why.
  
  
• "Bush, the CIA and the roots of terrorism" Michael Moore, AlterNet
  Let's mourn and grieve, but let's also examine our own contribution to our unsafe world -- be it lax airport security or the CIA training the terrorists who attack us.
  
  
• "Anti-Arab passions sweep the U.S." Janelle Brown, Salon.
  Despite Bush's calls for tolerance, firebombings, shootings and other acts of violence strike Islamic worshippers.
  
  
• "Hiding in Brooklyn: Afgan American fears for safety" Fariba Nawa, Pacific News Service
  An Afghan-American writer living in Brooklyn wonders what might happen when officers sent to prevent a racial backlash against Arabs leave her neighborhood.
  
  
• "A Time for Peace, Not Retaliation" Elijah Wald, TomPaine.com
  If there is one lesson in today's World Trade Center tragedy, it is that tougher security measures will not prevent future terrorist acts. Only peaceful policies will.
  
  
• "The End of Video Game Wars" Naomi Klein, AlterNet.
  War is most emphatically not a game, but until September 11, most Americans treated it like it was. Perhaps Tuesday's attacks finally ended the era of the video game war.

Japanese American issues and culture:

The Internment:

• In 1984 the U.S. District Court in San Francisco ruled that the military justification for the internment of Japanese Americans during WW2 was "not justified." In fact it was a lie, perpetrated by the government and the military at high levels up to and including President Roosevelt.

  As then Representative Norman Mineta (now Secretary of Transportation in the George W. Bush administration) remarked as he introduced H.R. 442, The Civil Liberties Act of 1985, "... documents recently discovered under the Freedom of Information act revealed that government attorneys suppressed key evidence and authoritative reports from the Office of Naval Intelligence, the F.B.I., the Federal Communications Commission, and Army intelligence which flatly contradicted the government claim that Japanese Americans were a threat to security. ."
  https://web.archive.org/web/20110608211342/http://bss.sfsu.edu/internment/Congressional%20Records/19850219.html
  
  See also page 29 (online - p21 internal numbering) of National Security Archive amicus curiae brief, 2005:
  https://www.aclu.org/files/nsl/legal/NSArchive_Amicus.pdf

  The court ruling applies to this specific instance only and left standing the principle of mass internment of an entire group without due process "in cases of military necessity" - and no legal action was taken against the people or institutions that ordered the internment under false pretenses. Ethnic groups whose countries of origin are considered rogue states by the American government can legally be interned without trial.

  For more information see:

  Robinson, Greg. By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2001

  Personal Justice Denied - Report of the U.S. Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, University of Washington Press, Seattle, WA, 1996.

  For the text of the ruling see: http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/cases/pp/korematsu_II.htm.

Further sources of information:

• "Rabbit in the Moon," award-winning documentary film by Emiko Omori, provides an excellent overview of the human cost of the Internment. There is an extensive PBS companion website and the film can be ordered on video.
  
  
• "Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites ", National Park Service covering all internment camps.
  
  
• CLPEF Website, (Civil Liberties Public Education Fund), created to educate the public about the internment.
  
  
• CONSCIENCE AND THE CONSTITUTION, a film about the 85 Nisei who refused to be drafted out of the concentration camp until their rights were restored and their families released. The government prosecuted them as criminals, and Japanese American leaders ostracized them as traitors.
  
  
• "Internment and Evacuation of San Francisco Japanese" , newspaper articles from the The San Francisco News, 1942. Website of the Museum of the City of San Francisco
  
  
• American Concentration Camps, collage panorama photos of Internment camps by Masumi Hayashi.
  
  
• Further collection of links to "Stories and Images of Japanese-American Internment."

Manzanar:

• "MANZANAR: Ringo-En", Owens Valley History website.
  
  
• "Manzanar yearbook site", Diane Yotsuya Honda
  
  
• Manzanar Committee website
  
  
• "Manzanar National Historic Site", National Park Service
  
  
• Eastern California Museum in nearby Independence has exhibits on Manzanar and local history.
  
  

Japanese culture:

• Shinto, the ancient indigenous religion of Japan. Much of the Japanese reverence towards nature comes from Shinto beliefs.
  
  
• Overview of Japanese garden design, by Marc Keane. His book "Japanese Garden Design," Charles Tuttle 1996, is the best overview of the historic and cultural development and symbology of Japanese gardens that we have found, and was a primary source in the construction of our Japanese paradise garden.
  
  

Iranian American issues and culture:

Politics:

• Flying between film festivals in Hong Kong and South America, Filmmaker Jafar Panahi refused to submit to fingerprinting and mug shots while in transit at JFK Airport (required of all Iranian citizens.) He was kept chained to a bench for 10 hours while his film "The Circle" was screening in New York to applause and acclaim. See article in A filmmaker feels the circle tighten / Iran's Panahi put in chains -- in U.S.
  For current concerns, see www.antidiscrimination.org/
  
  
• Misrepresentation: Persephobia and the press. Study by Genevieve New on Iran's representation in the British Press.
  
  
• No solidarity: Iranians in the U.S. by Mehdi Bozorgmehr, Associate Professor of Sociology at the City University of New York.
  
  
• "The Struggle for Iran", educational radio program from the Stanley Foundation and NPR, hosted by Walter Cronkite, deals with the hostage ordeal in Iran. http://www.iranproject.org/index.html
  
  
• Window of Opportunity: Images of Iranians in the U.S. Media, review of a book by Yahya R. Kamalipour
  
  
• American Iranian Anti-Discrimination Center (AIADC), website fighting discrimination against Iranians in the U.S.
  
  
• American-Iranian Council, Inc. (AIC), website.
  
  

Culture:

• A World Between: Poems, Short Stories and Essays by Iranian Americans, edited by Persis M. Karim and Mohammad Mehdi Khorrami and with contributions from Zara Houshmand. The first book of Iranian American poetry ever published.
  
  
• To See and See Again: A Life in Iran and America. A book beautiful book about growing up between Iran and America, written by Tara Bahrampour. Link takes you to a review in Salon Magazine.
  
  
• THE PERSIAN GARDEN: Echoes of Paradise a review of a book by Mehdi Khansari / M. R. Moghtader / Minouch Yavari