Nakanishi educates about internment
Prof anticipates position on Civil Liberties board
By Laryssa Kreiselmeyer
For Professor Don Nakanishi, head of UCLA’s Asian American
Studies Center, the internment experience of Japanese-Americans
during World War II is both a personal and an educational
matter.
Nakanishi said he and his family will never forget their
experience, and he wants to educate others of the "government’s
mistakes."
This education will continue with his work on the Civil
Liberties Public Education Fund board, to which President Clinton
nominated him six months ago.
Nakanishi explained that though he was born after his parents’
internment at a Poston, Ariz., camp  where his older brother
was born  he knew that it had been a traumatic event in their
lives.
"I grew up with it, but my parents talk very little about it.
It’s only with the passage of time that I’ve been able to unearth
from them a lot of buried memories," he said.
Nakanishi remembered that his East Los Angeles schooling had
included very little about the Japanese American internment, but he
always painfully remembered Dec. 7, 1941, the day Japan bombed
Pearl Harbor. He said that on every anniversary, teachers would ask
the class if they knew what day it was.
"December 7 was a day I feared throughout my whole life. I
remember feeling like everyone was looking at me," he said. "World
War II profoundly affected my growing up."
In 1967, Nakanishi said he attended Yale in what he described as
the "most diverse class ever," with seven African Americans, seven
Latinos and seven Asian Americans in a total of 1,000 students.
He intended to go to medical school, but one experience in his
freshman year, which changed the future course of his life,
convinced him to become a political science student.
Nakanishi said that the dreaded reminder of the Pearl Harbor
anniversary did not occur in any of his classes and the day passed
uneventfully until he was studying in his dorm room that evening. A
group of schoolmates burst in and pelted him with water balloons,
all the while chanting "Bomb Pearl Harbor, bomb Pearl Harbor." One
student approached him and recited from memory President Franklin
D. Roosevelt’s 1942 speech on the entrance of the United States in
World War II.
Nakanishi laughed along with his friends about the water
balloons, but said that this event was to become more important to
him than he realized at the time.
"It really didn’t hit me until the next day what I really had
experienced. I was still being reminded of this event," he
said.
A week later, he read the first of many books that were to
follow about Japanese internment. Nakanishi said that this was the
reason he chose to teach at UCLA rather than practice medicine.
The internment of Japanese Americans touched the lives of UCLA
students as well. In 1942, Hitoshi "Mo" Yonemura, a UCLA student,
was removed from school and sent to the camp at Manzanar, Calif.
Yonemura was a popular student, head cheerleader and treasurer of
the junior class. He was later killed in action in Italy fighting
for the U.S. Army in 1943.
Three years ago, on the 50th anniversary of Executive Order 9066
that called for the involuntary relocation of all Japanese
Americans in 1942, UCLA held a year-long commemoration. The program
of art exhibits, speakers and seminars for professors was created
and coordinated by Nakanishi.
"He is extraordinary. He has this combination of an incredible
breadth of vision and also an openness to what various people are
interested in," said Professor Valerie Matsumoto, who collaborated
with Nakanishi on educational seminars for UCLA professors during
the 1992 project.
Matsumoto said that faculty members still use the materials from
the 1992 classes to educate their students about the internment, an
example of the types of projects promoted by the Civil Liberties
board.
To date, President Clinton has not appointed the last two
members of the board and Nakanishi awaits official confirmation via
Senate hearing, which he expects within another month.
After his nomination, he went through FBI and White House checks
because the board will handle government money to fund
activities.
The public education arm of the bill, in which Nakanishi will
serve, will provide education for the entire country. Nakanishi
would like to see events such as the 1992 UCLA commemoration on a
national scale.
"I would love to see it have an impact on textbooks and a whole
series of programs and activities to enhance knowledge and
compelling lessons of that tragedy," he said.
Though he has not yet met with the other six appointed members,
Nakanishi said that their charge is "open-ended" and there are many
possibilities.
With his work at UCLA, collaboration with the Simon Wiesenthal
Museum of Tolerance and service on the Civil Liberties Board,
Nakanishi said he hopes that the United States will not forget what
happened during World War II.
"(The appointment) is a tremendous honor  one of the
greatest honors I’ve ever had. Fifty years from now we are going to
still remember the terrible Holocaust that World War II was for the
Jews and other people," he said.
In 1988, President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, which
sought redress and reparations for Japanese Americans by providing
$20,000 to individuals who were interned or survivors of those
interned. The Act had a budget of $1.5 billion, and the "vast
majority" of survivors have already been paid, said Nakanishi.
He said that many Japanese Americans were inspired to "break
away from a long-standing silence" and demand reparations for
internment during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
"The most unique contribution Japanese Americans can make is to
tell you and (to) make sure it doesn’t happen again," he said.