densho.blog

2012-04-09T07:47:00.001-07:00

Richard Yamashiro was a teenager during World War II. While in the Manzanar concentration camp, he remembers the dissent surrounding supporters of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) who were called the derogatory term inu, or "dog" in Japanese. They were accused of collaborating with the U.S. government and camp administration. In December of 1942, violence broke out at Manzanar when several JACL members were beaten up and those accused of the incident were held in the camp's jail. A large crowd gathered, including Richard Yamashiro, and in this clip he recalls observing the standoff between the Japanese Americans and the military police. Richard Yamashiro's full interview is available in the Densho Digital Archive.

View the Archive Spotlight interview excerpt

Archie Miyatake: Father Avoids Photography Restriction in Camp

2012-03-13T08:23:00.001-07:00

Toyo Miyatake, well-known Issei photographer, received permission to take photographs at the Manzanar concentration camp, California. However, because of War Relocation Authority rules, Toyo was allowed to set up the shot, but then only a white photographer could actually take the picture. In this clip, Toyo's son Archie tells the story of how his father managed to get around this restriction. Archie Miyatake's full interview is available in the Densho Digital Archive.

View the Archive Spotlight interview excerpt

Terminology Redux

2012-02-13T15:46:00.002-08:00

Since it had been a while, the Densho staff took some time to review our terminology policy and the “A Note on Terminology” statement on our website. Issues on terminology in general go back at least to the 1970s, when a series of landmark articles by Raymond Okamura noted the euphemistic quality of the official terms used by the government to describe the “relocation” of Japanese American aliens and “non-aliens” during World War II to “relocation centers,” all of which connoted a benign process undertaken for the benefit of the “evacuees,” “residents,” and “colonists.” Since that time, the Japanese American community has pushed to enforce the use of more fitting terminology: “mass forced removal,” “exclusion,” “inmates,” and so forth with various levels of success. There were notable battles over the use of the term “concentration camp” in the historical markers at Manzanar and Tule Lake in the 1970s and another waged by the Japanese American National Museum in 1990s when they took their “America’s Concentration Camps” exhibition on the road. In recent years, an effort called “The Power of Words” has taken on the terminology issue anew.

At Densho, the terminology policy and statement was put together when the organization started in the 1990s. When we reviewed it, we found that little really needed to be changed. The policy mostly points out the euphemistic terminology that had once been used and recommends that it not be used any longer except as part of a direct quote or when trying to make a point about the terms themselves. It also explains the distinction between “internment” and “internment camps” and what was done to the vast majority of Japanese Americans, cautioning about the proper usage of these terms. For the most part, the policy doesn’t state that this or that term must be used, as opposed to pointing out which terms should not be used or should be used with great caution.

The policy did indicate a preference for referring to both the temporary and longer-term camps in which Japanese Americans removed from their West Coast homes were held. Because no alternative term has come to be widely accepted, we had decided to use the euphemistic term “assembly center”—in quotes when referred to by itself and in capital letters when used as part of a proper noun, e.g. “Pomona Assembly Center.” For the long-term camps run by the War Relocation Authority, we had decided to use “incarceration camp” internally (most notably in the tagging of items in our archive) in part to stay away from any controversy that surrounded the use of the term “concentration camp.” We had hoped that that term would eventually be one that would become more widely used in the community.

This is the one thing we did decide to change. Since the term “incarceration camp” has not caught on the last decade plus—we seem to be the only ones using it—we have decided to go with “concentration camp” as our preferred term and the one that we will use internally. As before our “Note on Terminology” won’t be prescriptive—as in everyone connected with Densho must use it all the time—but it will move to the top of the list of the terms we prefer. We did decide to keep the policy on “assembly centers” even while recognizing the inconsistency (“Turlock Assembly Center” versus “Gila River concentration camp”) between the ways we refer to these two types of camps.

What are your thoughts on this change and on the terminology issue in general? Is there something else that we need to consider? Is there any good reason not to do this? We’d be interested in hearing your thoughts.

A Disappointing Comparison during the 70th Anniversary of EO9066

2012-02-01T11:53:00.001-08:00

From Densho's Executive Director, Tom Ikeda:

In 2008 I voted for President Obama hoping for comparisons with Franklin D Roosevelt, a Democratic President who entered office amid a financial crisis and who used the federal government to help working people find and keep jobs. However, I did not expect or want my comparison to extend to FDR's signing 70 years ago of Executive Order 9066, which authorized the military round-up and removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast. On December 31, 2011, after expressing some misgivings, President Obama signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act (the annual defense budget) with a provision that allows the President to authorize the military to imprison civilians indefinitely anywhere in the world, including American citizens, without charging or putting them on trial.

Although President Obama states he will not indefinitely detain U.S. citizens without a trial, by his authorization of the NDAA he has made it easier for future administrations to do so. Furthermore, any protections granted to an American citizen may be sidestepped if current legislation, the "Enemy Expatriation Act," making its way through Congress is passed and signed into law. This legislation would allow the government to strip citizenship from Americans "engaging in or supporting hostilities against the United States." It does not seem farfetched to imagine that criticism of our country's fight against terrorism or a contribution to a Muslim charity will one day be used as a reason to exile an American.

Join a conversation about the NDAA and Enemy Expatriation Act on Densho's Facebook page and let me know what you think. Or you can email me directly with your thoughts at tom.ikeda@densho.org.

Jim Matsuoka: An Unpleasant School Assembly in Camp

2012-02-01T11:51:00.001-08:00

Jim Matsuoka was grade school age when he and his family were sent to the Manzanar incarceration camp, California. In this clip, he remembers feeling upset by a speech made by a school principal during a camp school assembly. Jim Matsuoka's full interview is available in the Densho Digital Archive.

View the Archive Spotlight interview excerpt

Terrorism, 1945 Style

2012-01-18T09:30:00.000-08:00

One of the articles I’ve been working on for the Densho Encyclopedia on and off is a piece on the terroristic incidents that greeted the first Nisei to return to the West Coast in the early months of 1945. I had remembered reading a bit about houses being burned down, shots fired, and the like and wanted to have a short piece on that mostly forgotten topic.

In looking at the secondary literature, I was surprised to find that very few authors did more than touch on this subject. The book that devotes the most space to this topic, Audrie Girdner and Anne Loftis’s The Great Betrayal, was published over forty years ago and is itself largely forgotten. (Girdner and Loftis’s book was published in 1969, the same year as much more famous books by Bill Hosokawa and Harry Kitano.) Many subsequent books cite the stories told in The Great Betrayal.

Since the JACL has been putting digitized back issues of the Pacific Citizen online, I decided to take a look at the PC through 1945 to see how they covered these incidents. It was quite an eye-opener.

A little context: Despite growing support for the allowing “loyal” Japanese Americans to return to the West Coast among various parts of the federal government, this allowance was withheld for many months due to opposition from other sectors of the federal government and to the Roosevelt administration’s desire to table this politically unpopular issue until after the November 1944 elections. Literally hours after that election, plans were in place to open up the West Coast to Japanese Americans by the beginning of January of 1945.

To say that there was opposition to the return of the Nikkei to the West Coast is an understatement. One would think that the removal of all Japanese Americans from the West Coast would have quelled anti-Japanese sentiment for a while, and perhaps it did for a little while. But by 1943, there was renewed agitation, driven by a variety of factors including reports of unrest at some of the camps as well as the supposed “coddling” of the Nikkei, continuing reports of atrocities committed by Japanese troops in Asia, and economic interests on the coast that were benefitting from the absence of Japanese Americans, among many other factors. By 1943, seemingly dozens of new anti-Japanese organizations had sprung up to join the old ones and they competed with each other to put out more outrageous resolutions proposing to not allow Japanese Americans back to the coast, to strip Nisei of their citizenship, to deport all Issei, and so forth, with the apparent support of leading politicians and much of the population.

So it wasn’t a big surprise when one of the first families to return after the West Coast was officially opened up, the Dois of Placer County, California, saw the attempted dynamiting and burning of their packing shed as well as shots fired on their property, all while two of the Doi brothers were serving in the U.S. Army. Four locals were caught soon thereafter and were put on trial for arson and “attempted dynamiting.” One of the men subsequently confessed and implicated the others. Despite there being little doubt about their guilt, their defense attorney chose not to present any evidence of their innocence, instead using a white supremacy defense replete with references to the Japanese American disloyalty and the Bataan Death March, as if to say, “can you blame these people for their actions”? The jury agreed: after two hours of deliberations, all were acquitted.

Meanwhile, one incident after another took place. Three shotgun blasts into a Fowler home on February 10, another in Fresno on February 16, a home burned down in Selma. Shots fired into homes in Visalia and Lancaster on February 26, the Buddhist Temple in Delano burned down in February 27 followed by the Delano Japanese school going up in flames on March 11. A home outside of San Jose is set on fire on the night of March 6; when the family rushes outside to put out the fire, they are fired upon by a passing car.

There is a surreal element to the PC during this time. Each seemingly contains just two types of stories: stories about the exploits of the 442^nd in Europe, replete with heroism and tragedy and stories about these terrorist incidents, with details about bullets missing sleeping children by inches and how many of the victimized are returning Nisei war veterans. It’s hard to imagine what was going through the minds of those planning on returning to the West Coast or those considering it. Would you want to return to this?

By the summer, a couple of things had started to happen. Aside from the Doi case, arrests had been almost non-existent. To their credit, most state and federal officials—including some who had led the call for mass removal—decried the violence and called on local officials to step up their investigations. California Attorney General Robert Kenney went so far as to send a state “special agent” to the central valley to “assist” local law enforcement in their investigations and offered a monetary reward (put up by the ACLU) for any arrest and conviction of perpetrators. In the summer, a spate of newspaper editorials from around the country decried the violence, nearly all of them citing the parallels with Nazi Germany and making some version of the “is this what we are fighting for?” argument. Some local groups in the affected communities went out of their way to assist returning Nikkei. By June, a couple of arrests had been made in other cases, and in the fall, the Doi defendants were back on trial on federal charges. By the end of 1945, these terror incidents had dwindled—though did not stop entirely—and the attention of the vernacular press turned elsewhere.

Though a small footnote to the larger story of forced removal and incarceration, the story of these terroristic incidents is instructive. It is a story of how rhetoric, if left unchecked, can quickly turn to violence that is largely sanctioned by the community. It is also a story of how quickly that violence and much of the negative sentiment can be counteracted by decisive governmental action, which raises the question of what might have happened if the government had taken such action in early 1942 instead of mid-1945.

It is also a reminder of what Japanese Americans faced after camp in 1945, even as the war was coming to an end. Amazingly, it appears that no Japanese Americans were killed or seriously injured in the dozens of incidents that took place in 1945. (There are accounts in the PC of Chinese and Filipino Americans who were beaten up and a Chinese American stabbed by war workers after being mistaken for being “Japanese.” There were also a couple of Nikkei who were murdered in robbery cases that didn’t have obvious racial overtones.) But it’s hard to imagine that this “welcome” back to the coast didn’t leave scars of a different kind on those who experienced it.

Gordon Hirabayashi: Receiving Support from Mother for Wartime Stand

2012-01-05T12:11:00.001-08:00

During World War II, Gordon Hirabayashi defied the curfew and removal orders being enforced against Japanese on the West Coast. He turned himself in to the FBI, was found guilty, and served time for violating the curfew order and failing to report for "evacuation." In 1943 the Supreme Court upheld his convictions. In 1986, his case was reopened and his convictions surrounding the incarceration were vacated by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing in part that, "racial bias was the cornerstone of the internment orders." In this clip, Gordon describes how he felt upon receiving a letter from his mother who was in the Tule Lake incarceration camp. Gordon Hirabaysahi's full interview is available in the Densho Digital Archive.

View the Archive Spotlight interview excerpt

Rae Takekawa: FBI Raid and Mother's Outrage

2011-12-07T08:25:00.000-08:00

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Rae Takekawa remembers waking up to the commotion of an FBI raid of family home. Rae Takekawa's interview was conducted in 1998 and is available in the Densho Digital Archive.

View the Archive Spotlight interview excerpt

Sen. Daniel Inouye: Injured in Battle

2011-11-03T08:57:00.000-07:00

Senator Daniel Inouye, longtime Senator from Hawaii, served with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team during World War II. In this clip, he describes a battle in which he lost his right arm, earning a Distinguished Service Cross which was later upgraded to the United States Medal of Honor. Senator Inouye's interview was conducted back in 1998, and is available in the Densho Digital Archive.

View the Archive Spotlight interview excerpt

Densho Encyclopedia Sample Article: Children's Village

2011-10-19T15:11:00.000-07:00

The Densho Encyclopedia is a free and publicly accessible website project launching in the fall of 2012 that will provide concise, accurate, and balanced information on many aspects of the Japanese American story during World War II. We have started to release sample entries to showcase the content and give you a chance to preview the encyclopedia while it is still under development.

For this installment, we are featuring an entry about a lesser-known part of the concentration camp infrastructure. As the largest population centers in some of the desolate regions where they were created, the camps became like small, self-contained cities. Did you know that Manzanar even had an orphanage? Learn more in the entry, "Children's Village"...

Funding for the first phase of the encyclopedia is being provided by grants from the Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program, administered by the National Park Service, and by the California Civil Liberties Public Education Fund.

Atsumi Ozawa: A Japanese Peruvian's Story

2011-10-06T08:49:00.000-07:00

During World War II, Atsumi Ozawa, a Japanese Peruvian, was removed with her family from her hometown of Huancayo, Peru, and taken to the Crystal City internment camp, Texas. Her father had been arrested and taken beforehand, and in this clip, Atsumi describes a difficult train ride with her mother and sisters on their way to reunite with her father on the ship to the United States. Atsumi Ozawa's full interview is available in the Densho Digital Archive.

View the Archive Spotlight interview excerpt

Joe Yasutake: Thoughts from a Nisei after 9/11

2011-09-09T08:20:00.000-07:00

Joe Yasutake talks about the loss of civil liberties in the political climate following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Mr. Yasutake's full interview is available in the Densho Digital Archive.

View the Archive Spotlight interview excerpt

Densho Job Openings

2011-08-23T09:13:00.000-07:00

Densho is seeking to fill four positions in the coming months. To apply for the job openings listed below, please send your resume (Word, PDF, or Plain text) and a cover letter describing your interest to jobs@densho.org by Friday, September 30, 2011. Please put the title of the position to which you are applying in the subject field. All applications will be held in confidence. All submissions and questions should be sent via email -- please no phone inquiries.

Office Manager

Densho seeks an Office Manager to organize the day-to-day operations of the Densho office, perform general administrative tasks, and assist the Executive Director as needed. This individual will also provide key support for Densho's Education Program, and fundraising and outreach efforts.

Full job announcement: http://www.densho.org/assets/images/Office_Manager.pdf

Photo and Document Collections Manager

We are also seeking an individual with a strong working knowledge of Japanese American historical content to manage Densho's collaborative National Digital Repository Project. The Photo and Document Collections Manager will work with donors and institutional partners to acquire new content, provide training and support to Repository partners, and assist in the digitization process of photos and documents.

Full job announcement: http://www.densho.org/assets/images/Collections_Manager.pdf

Outreach and Communications Manager

We need a Communications and Outreach Manager to help develop a creative communications strategy for a national network of educators, and manage and contribute content for Densho's social media channels and external communications. This person will work not only to enliven Densho's external media presence but also to strategize outreach and further engagement in the Education Program.

Full job announcement: http://www.densho.org/assets/images/Communications_Manager.pdf

Web Application Developer

We are looking for a Web Application Developer to provide technical support for Densho's public website and its digital archive of video interviews, photos and documents. This contract position will be responsible for the design, implementation and subsequent maintenance of custom web applications supporting Densho's expanding organizational needs.

Full job announcement: http://www.densho.org/assets/images/Web_Application_Developer.pdf

Jack Dairiki: Witnessing the atomic bombing of Hiroshima

2011-08-02T16:32:00.000-07:00

Jack Dairiki was born in Sacramento, California, but went to Japan with his father in 1941. He was unable to return to the U.S. because of the onset of World War II, and was attending school in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb was dropped. In this clip, he describes the chaos in the city in the aftermath of the bombing. Mr. Dairiki's full interview is available in the Densho Digital Archive.

View the Archive Spotlight interview excerpt

Disaster in Japan

2011-03-12T08:27:00.000-08:00

The tragic earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on March 11 was a shocking event. The scope and scale of the devastation is difficult to believe. All of us at Densho express our deep sorrow for those who lost their lives, and are keeping the Japanese people in our thoughts as they begin to cope with what will be a long and difficult period of recovery.

Those of us on the staff have many friends and some family members living in Japan. Fortunately, we have been able to contact most of them and everyone is safe thus far. We were particularly happy to hear that our special events manager and finance specialist Naoko Magasis's mother, who is older and lives alone, was unhurt and is doing well.

All of us very much appreciate the messages of concern we've been receiving from Densho's supporters. Many of you have asked if there are ways that you can provide assistance to those who have been affected. While Japan has a large, well-organized emergency management system, there are several disaster relief NGOs who will be providing important support to the overall efforts. Densho has joined with other Seattle-area non-profits to mobilize funds for these NGOs:

Seattle Japan Relief

In addition, the non-profit Network For Good has set up a portal website for disaster relief at:

Network For Good Japan Quake & Tsunami Relief

We also ask those of you who live in Washington State or other areas along the west coast of the Americas to take this opportunity to prepare for seismic events like this one. You can start by visiting the Federal Emergency Management Agency's website Ready.gov, or your local emergency preparedness authority.

(Photo courtesy of TORU YAMANAKA/AFP/Getty Images)

Hiroshi Terry Terakawa: Wartime Experiences in Salt Lake City

2011-03-10T08:18:00.000-08:00

Recently Densho conducted a series of interviews in partnership with the Japanese American Museum of San Jose. One of the gentlemen interviewed was Hiroshi Terry Terakawa, who was living in Salt Lake City, Utah, during World War II. In this clip, he describes the protection he and other Japanese Americans received from the local Mormon police force.

View the Archive Spotlight interview excerpt

Aiko Tengan Tokunaga: Celebrations in Okinawa

2011-02-22T14:41:00.000-08:00

In this video clip, Aiko Tengan Tokunaga describes community gatherings after World War II in which villagers would create dance costumes and musical instruments using whatever materials they had on hand. Ms. Tokunaga was born in Okinawa during the war and barely survived infancy due to the devastation and dangerous conditions endured by her family. Ms. Tokunaga's full interview is available in the Densho Digital Archive.

View the Archive Spotlight interview excerpt

Gladys Koshio Konishi: Celebrating New Year's Day in Colorado

2011-01-06T09:25:00.000-08:00

To start off 2011, Densho presents a clip from a visual history interview with Gladys Koshio Konishi, who grew up in Fort Lupton, Colorado, where her family ran a produce farm. When she was growing up, her mother would brew homemade sake in a still in the basement to share with family and friends. In this clip, Gladys recalls her family's New Year's holiday tradition, in which sake played an important part.

View the Archive Spotlight interview excerpt

Justice Charles Z. Smith: Reflections on Pearl Harbor

2010-12-07T09:30:00.000-08:00

In this month's Archive Spotlight, Charles Z. Smith, former Washington State Supreme Court Justice, discusses his feelings upon hearing about the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Having never personally met a Japanese American prior to 1941, he describes believing in the war propaganda of the time and not being able to distinguish between Japanese Americans and the Japanese nationals responsible for the attack. This video clip is also featured in this month's From the Archive article.

View the Archive Spotlight interview excerpt

RIP William Hohri

2010-11-16T10:57:00.000-08:00

[Below is an excerpt from an obituary written by Martha Nakagawa. The photo is from an interview William Hohri did with Densho in 1997. Frank Abe also has a good post about Hohri.]

William Minoru Hohri, writer, civil rights activist and lead plaintiff in the National Council for Japanese American Redress (NCJAR) class action lawsuit, passed away on Friday, Nov. 12. He was 83.

Hohri, a former Manzanar inmate during World War II, is best known for spearheading the NCJAR class action lawsuit, filed on March 16, 1983, which sued the United States government for $27 billion for injuries suffered as the result of the WW II exclusion and incarceration of Japanese Americans in U.S. concentration camps. The court disallowed NCJAR’s lawsuit on technical grounds on Oct. 31, 1988. Many felt NCJAR’s near successful lawsuit had influenced Congress to pass the redress bill.

Aiko Yoshinaga Herzig who was instrumental in uncovering documents in the National Archives for Hohri had the following things to say.

“William Hohri was a man of integrity. His straightforwardness made a great impression on me when we first met some 30 years ago. He was a dedicated family man, a philosopher, a skilled author, and a courageous leader who took on the chairmanship of a movement that others feared to pursue — that of confronting the government directly in the courts by challenging the legality of the denial of constitutionally-guaranteed civil liberties of an innocent ethnic minority during World War II, and to make restitution for the injustice. He acted vigorously on his convictions to seek remedies for social inequities perpetrated upon oppressed minorities. I am among those who will truly miss our good friend William.”

2010-11-04T18:47:00.001-07:00

Earlier this year Densho traveled to Hawaii and interviewed Masamizu Kitajima, a Nisei from Ookala, Hawaii. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, his father, a prominent Buddhist minister, was arrested by the FBI and interned in various facilities. With little community support and five children to raise, Masamizu's mother decided to accept the U.S. government's offer and move the family from Hawaii to the Jerome incarceration camp, Arkansas, to reunite with Masamizu's father. In an excerpt from his interview, Masamizu describes his sudden understanding that his father wasn't coming home after being arrested. He realized that as the oldest son, he now had to assume the role of father-figure to his family, despite being only eight years old.

View the Archive Spotlight interview excerpt

Frank H. Hirata: A Nisei in the Japanese Army

2010-10-05T10:39:00.001-07:00

Densho recently interviewed Frank H. Hirata, a Kibei-Nisei from Spokane, Washington. At the age of ten, Frank was sent to live with his grandfather in Japan. During World War II, he was conscripted into the Japanese army, and was still in training when the war ended. Despite his early life in the United States, Frank became fully indoctrinated into the Japanese educational system, at one point believing himself "brainwashed," never questioning the anti-U.S. propaganda he was exposed to in Japan. It was only after the war, during the U.S. occupation of Japan, that he began to change his view of Americans after working with U.S. soldiers. In an excerpt from his interview, Frank recalls when this change in attitude occurred for him.

View the Archive Spotlight interview excerpt

Love and Caring: Fred Hoshiyama, YMCA Leader

2010-09-10T14:09:00.001-07:00

Fred Hoshiyama was born in 1914 in Livingston, California, where his parents helped to establish a farming community called the Yamato Colony. At the age of eight, he lost his father and had to help his mother on their “dirt farm.” He was attending University of California, Berkeley, when Pearl Harbor was bombed. At the Tanforan Assembly Center, California, and the Topaz incarceration camp, Utah, Fred organized YMCA programs for the young people (photo is of Boy Scouts at Topaz). His work in camp was a prelude to a lifetime career with the YMCA. Most notably, he developed NYPUM (National Youth Program Using Mini-Bikes), a program aimed at engaging high-risk youth in productive activities. In his interview excerpt, Fred describes how social differences were equalized in the incarceration camps.

View the Archive Spotlight interview excerpt: http://densho.org/archive
See other Archive Spotlights http://densho.org/spotlights

Real Friends: Standing by the Japanese Americans

2010-09-02T11:34:00.000-07:00

“Everywhere there is community feeling to be mended, vicious legislation to be defeated, many urgent jobs calling for attention from real friends of the real America.”—Letter from Friends of the American Way, a Quaker committee

Whether through principle or personal attachment, true friends of Japanese Americans did not abandon them after the attack on Pearl Harbor, when in public perception they were suddenly equated with the enemy. Interviews and documents preserved in the Densho digital archive give poignant testimony to the consolation that Japanese Americans felt when schoolmates, neighbors, and customers stood by them in spring 1942 and during their years of incarceration. Less cheering are the stories of long-time acquaintances turning their backs on Japanese American families when they most needed moral and financial support. While there is ample documentation of opportunistic Caucasians taking advantage of a population forced to “evacuate” at a week’s notice, Nisei interviewees also remember incidents of selflessness that help offset stories of self-interest.

read more of this story

The Manhattan Mosque Controversy through a Japanese American Lens

2010-08-27T09:46:00.000-07:00

A recent blog points to a short interview with Scott Kurashige, Associate Professor of American Culture at the University of Michigan. Interviewed for Public Radio International's "The World," Kurashige is asked about comparisons between the treatment of Japanese Americans after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the controversy over building a Muslim community center near the site of the 9/11 attacks in Manhattan. Kurashige sees a parallel between the controversy over the center and efforts to block Japanese immigrants from building Buddhist temples and shrines in the decades surrounding World War II. (Kuroshige's own grandfather was arrested after the Pearl Harbor attack because he was a Buddhist priest.) The historian also wrote a trenchant editorial about "the use and abuse of historical analogy" by opponents of the proposed Muslim community center.