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THE STREET |
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June 14, 2005: The street says former Bainbridge Island Historical Society Executive Director Erica Varga wasn't quite as sympathetic with the museum's new "internment" exhibit as we have been led to believe. Apparently she retuned from vacation to find the exhibit had been put up without her knowledge. Go figure! Could this along with talk she wasn't providing the correct amount of sympathy for the pro-reparations activists and the pro-reparations stacked museum board and officers have been the real reason for her sudden and unfortunate departure? Her replacement Theresa Cosgrove, blatantly pro-reparations (having worked previously at the Presidio she should know better) is now running the show and immediately after, we find the "internment" exhibit is now permanent. What a coincidence! Events continue to beg the question, "When did BIJAC hijack our history?" http://www.kitsapsun.com/bsun/cda/article_print/0,1983,BSUN_21158_3574303_ARTICLE-DETAIL-PRINT,00.html |
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June 16, 2005: The BIJAC folks are working on ensuring IslandWood comes around to their way of thinking. You may recall the "Lessons From History" conference set for May 1st was cancelled because nobody signed up. Julie Otsuka's book of fiction "When the Emperor was Divine" (and issued an Imperial Edict for the Japanese military to kill 17 million of its Asian neighbors) also received a big whoop-de-do at IslandWood. It must help to have IslandWood Science Coordinator Karen Matsumoto on the staff. I found this Matsumoto exchange to be particularly revealing: "Karen: I have been working in the field of EE for the past 25 years, and my personal experience has been that I have met few people of color involved at any level in environmental education. Most of the people who work in traditional environmental education are white and most of the issues they teach around are what we could call white people's issues. These are issues that are of concern to some white people in the U.S. but perhaps not to most people of color. Kristin: I agree 100% with your perception of the limited scope of traditional environmental education. I left the environmental field almost 15 years ago because of my frustration of what I have now come to understand as issues of white privilege and elitism. I think IslandWood's mission of inspiring community and environmental stewardship provides the opportunity for us to examine issues of both social and environmental justice. At the same time, I am deeply concerned that many organizations think that the solution to the lack of the diversity in their organization is to do anything they can to add more people of color to their staff without examining how deeply whiteness pervades their organization. I think those of us who work in predominantly white organizations need to examine how the power and privilege of being white has shaped the organizations within which we work. In many cases, environmental organizations focus on issues related to nature appreciation, endangered species, and wilderness preservation. I agree that these are exceedingly important causes but being able to commit to such causes is reliant on a large amount of privilege including living free from oppression and having the ability and interest to access such areas. Therefore, environmental education has often been nature education and has not looked closely at environmental and social issues that face people who live in poverty and people of color." http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/environmental/matsumoto_poppo.htm Frustrated with issues of white privilege and elitism? How deeply whiteness pervades their organization? The power and privilege of being white? Sounds like Matsumoto has a beef with white people. The next time you're asked to spend hundreds on dollars for your kids to walk on a Bainbridge beach, why not do it for free up at Hood Head and save your kids the mind numbing indoctrination of folks like Matsumoto. To think, the BIJAC folks call us the "racists"... |
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July 1, 2005: There's a movement down in California that is attempting to lobby the government to pay reparations to ethnic Japanese in Latin America who were interned (not relocated) in the United States during WWII. Their site is here. The Honorary Co-Chairs of "Here, in America?" are Nancy Pelosi, Mike Honda and Xavier Becerra, which is no surprise. What did surprise me is this picture with the phrase "WHO WILL BE NEXT?" plastered across the front. |
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The picture is used on a poster advertising the event at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. The picture succeeds in eliciting an emotional reaction from those viewing it without regard to historical context. It looks like a cop working over an old ethnic Japanese man. The truth is quite different. |
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The truth is the picture was taken in Seattle, Washington on November 24, 1945. The old man is a Japanese repatriate, still loyal to the now defeated Empire of Japan and embarking back to Japan. The cop appears to be helping load up his belongings. Whatever the cop is doing, it has nothing to do with the image manipulated by ethnic Japanese activists. It is disturbing to find Hastings College Of Law along with a list of scholars involved in perpetuating an untruth. This is not the first time the 1942 evacuation has been perverted to support an agenda and it is terribly dishonest. If you have questioned our concern with the current "internment" curriculum at Sakai School on Bainbridge Island, this is an example. The Sakai curriculum is a perversion. Blatant dishonesty is being fed to our kids as the truth. |