bedlamsbard: natasha romanoff from the black widow prelude comic (pour (pretty_pixels))
[personal profile] bedlamsbard
Probably the movie or TV miniseries that I would most like to see, that does a ton of things that Hollywood otherwise likes to do and that American media likes, is something that will probably never happen, and that is a movie or a Band of Brothers-style miniseries about the 442nd Infantry Regiment, a.k.a. the Japanese-American regiment that was deployed to Europe in WWII because they were not permitted to deploy the Pacific, and that is the most highly-decorated unit, and if I remember correctly, one of the units with the highest number of casualties, because they had something to prove. They did all this while back in the States their families were being held in the Japanese internment camps that the U.S. government set up for Americans -- Americans -- of Japanese descent. Their motto was "go for broke."

Tell me that wouldn't make a fucking amazing ten hour or twelve hour miniseries. Start it with the attack on Pearl Harbor. Show the internment camps. Show the effects of them. Show what it takes to, when your country, your country, looks at you and says, "No. You look different. You talk funny. You can't be trusted. We're going to put you in a cage so we don't have to look at you," reply, "Give me the chance and I will lay down my life for you." Parallel the lives of the Japanese-American men who went off to fight and the men and women who stayed behind in the camps. Show what happens when war heroes come back, when the camps are closed, and families come home to find that their houses, their possessions, and their lives are gone, and all anyone who sees when they look at them is someone from Japan. Tell me that wouldn't make a good miniseries.

Of course, Hollywood will probably never do it, and even if they did, they'd probably either have the story be all about a white officer who realizes that gee, maybe the Japs aren't all that bad or cast non-Japanese-American actors as the mains. (Probably John Cho or Daniel Dae Kim, who are both good actors and fine-looking men, but are not Japanese.) Or both! Probably Hollywood (and the United States government) would like to forget about this ugly chapter of American history.

Do people even get taught about the Japanese-American internment camps anymore? I was -- but I was also a glaring Japanese-American figure in a classroom full of majority white kids, and whenever this came up in class the teacher would look at me and ask if my relatives had been in the camps, and if I was nisei or sansei or what. Well, no and nope. My family was still in Japan then. I don't technically count as nisei because my father isn't Japanese. Would I have been in those camps? Yeah, I would have, because my mother is Japanese. Not to mention I'm from the West Coast, which is where people were being interned, and we usually got the talk about how the -- hmm, the state fairgrounds at -- god, I can't remember what city it was right now -- was where Japanese-Americans from Washington were kept while the camps were being built. Yeah. In the fairgrounds.

I told English Flatmate N about the camps today because I was having my annual rant about how we'll never get a movie about the 442nd and she was horrified.

When I was home over break, I was flipping through Columns, the University of Washington alumni magazine (my dad is a UW alum), and saw this 1954 picture of the Valeda, the Japanese-American women's group that was formed because sororities and fraternities didn't allow Japanese-descent students to join. The men's group was called SYNKOA, after the UW students who died in WWII.

If I'd realized that sixty years ago -- 1954 was the year my mother was born -- I wouldn't have been allowed to join a sorority, I think I might have rushed at Tulane just because I could.

While I was googling for that picture, I found this article and this one from the UW and started crying. No, this wasn't my family seventy years ago. But it could have been.

(no subject)

Date: 2013-07-31 08:22 pm (UTC)
harpers_child: melaka fray reading from "Tales of the Slayers". (Default)
From: [personal profile] harpers_child
that would be a fucking amazing miniseries and i would watch the shit out of it. i didn't find out about the japanese camps until i was in high school and that was a throwaway comment. if they pretend it didn't happen they can just wait for people to die off and then rewrite history. which makes me want to punch things.

(no subject)

Date: 2013-08-01 11:04 am (UTC)
aella_irene: (Default)
From: [personal profile] aella_irene
The UK interned Germans and Italians as well, at least at the beginning of the war. With horrible irony, many of the Germans interned were Jews who had fled Nazi persecution. 64,000 of them were released within six months, after tribunals, the remaining ones were either kept in the UK, or sent to Canada.

(A family friend of ours was interned as an Italian.)

(no subject)

Date: 2013-07-31 08:41 pm (UTC)
starlady: Raven on a MacBook (Default)
From: [personal profile] starlady
They teach about them twice in California public schools. And that would be an amazing series.

(no subject)

Date: 2013-07-31 08:45 pm (UTC)
waywren: (Default)
From: [personal profile] waywren
I did (and I am a white texan female who has just turned 30) but not in public school. First I picked it up from a YA historical novel and when I brought it up in 3rd grade my teacher called me a liar.

I came in with books from the library the next day. *grin* Getting suspended=worth it.

But to really get taught about it, I had to deliberately sign up for the Japanese-American History class at CU Boulder.

Daryl Maeda is a god. XD And he's got a hell of a sense of humour, too--first day he cheerfully lampooned the class having been officially titled 'The Japanese-American Experience.' 'It gives me these images of some white guy going through a spirit quest or something with this wizened old Chinese actor pretending to be Japanese, and at the end the old guru says, 'congratulations, you've had the Experience.' We're here to make sure history isn't forgotten.'

Anyone who referred to them as anything but concentration camps got docked a tenth off their mandatory attendance grade.

....also, that would be a fucking amazing miniseries.
Edited Date: 2013-07-31 08:46 pm (UTC)

(no subject)

Date: 2013-07-31 11:36 pm (UTC)
waywren: (Default)
From: [personal profile] waywren
It may be taught in Colorado public schools because of the JA population; a lot of folks settled there during/post-camp because of the governor at the time basically crucifying his political career to welcome folks. THere's a statue of him in Denver's Sakura Square center, people were so grateful. Not a clue,though, as I was only in Boulder for college.

It was the BEST CLASS. I loved the hell out of it, and I learned so,so much.

...also I may just possibly have a massive crush on the professor, but more on his awesome than anything (though he's gorgeous. So is his wife and little girl, we got to see pictures during lecture one time.)
Edited Date: 2013-07-31 11:37 pm (UTC)

(no subject)

Date: 2013-07-31 10:49 pm (UTC)
cursor_mundi: (Default)
From: [personal profile] cursor_mundi
I was taught about it in middle school, though I'd heard about it previously as my family is from the West Coast and my grandparents spoke of the friends who suddenly vanished, and the businesses that closed abruptly; my grandfather on the other side was a Naval pilot, and he was also aware of it and very angry. The novel Farewell to Manzanar was required reading for us in...8th grade, I think, and my English teacher was very thorough in making sure we understood the context. I rather had the impression that the county reading lists were drawing on national standards, too, so I'm surprised to hear that it's not a well-known period. I grew up on the East Coast just outside of Washington, DC, and this was through a public school system (though a very good one), and as I recall the Holocaust Museum was opening around the same time (perhaps a few years later?), so we got very thorough groundings in the atrocities of the war and the internment camps were right up there.

(no subject)

Date: 2013-08-01 02:08 am (UTC)
edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
From: [personal profile] edenfalling
I don't watch much audiovisual media so I probably wouldn't watch that miniseries, but I would be very glad to know it existed. Alas for imperfect worlds. :-(

I am 31 and grew up in northern New Jersey, and we were taught about the Japanese internment camps -- not in great detail, but they were mentioned, and specifically mentioned as being a betrayal of what America is supposed to stand for. I can't remember what year this was specifically -- maybe junior year of high school?

There is a lot of history erasure that happens around wars and the way Americans react to people who share the ethnicity of the current enemy, whoever that happens to be. For instance, before WWI, there were thriving German immigrant enclaves all through America, with their own (German-language) newspapers and restaurants and holidays and so on. By the end of the war? Gone. Few people remained overtly German; instead, they presented themselves as generic white Americans of no claimed ethnic heritage. This is obviously nowhere near the horror of internment camps, and German immigrants at least had the option of passing, but it surprised me a lot when I learned that so many felt a need to pass.

(no subject)

Date: 2013-08-03 03:27 pm (UTC)
polarisnorth: a silhouetted figure sitting on the moon, watching the earthrise (Default)
From: [personal profile] polarisnorth
We definitely learned about the camps when I was in school, but then I'm from Washington. I think you're thinking of the Puyallup Fair, which I went to every year as a child.

I would watch the hell out of that miniseries, by the way. I think it's really important that what was done to American citizens by their own government not be forgotten.

Profile

bedlamsbard: natasha romanoff from the black widow prelude comic (Default)
bedlamsbard

December 2022

S M T W T F S
    123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
252627282930 31

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags