Harry Ueno: Hero to Japanese Americans in Internment Camps

Harry Ueno stood up to corrupt officials during the internment of Japanese Americans at Manzanar during World War II.    Mr. Ueno, born in Hawaii, took a job on a merchant ship as a teenager and abandoned it when it docked on the American mainland. He settled in Los Angeles, where he married and reared three sons while selling produce.

That life was interrupted in 1941 after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Mr. Ueno and his family were taken to the Manzanar internment camp, at the base of Mount Whitney, which eventually housed 10,000 men, women and children.

While working in the mess hall, Mr. Ueno realized that camp operators were selling sugar, which was intended for his fellow internees, on the wartime black market. He confronted them and was arrested for beating up JACL leader Fred Tayama. An uprising ensued for Harry's release but then turned ugly as groups of men went looking for those who they thought were spies and began beatings across the camp. But at the police station where Harry was being held, the young soldiers panicked and fired into the crowd; two young internees were killed; eleven others were wounded in the official record. (Many more were wounded however didn't go to the hospital in fear of being arrested and therefore treated themselves. That number is unknown.) For more than three years, Mr. Ueno was moved from jail to jail around the West, spending a year in solitary confinement, though he was never charged with a crime or given a hearing.

After the war, he received $15 and a train ticket to San Jose, Calif. He began a new life there, raising strawberries and cherries and retiring in 1972. His story has been included in an oral history, "Manzanar Martyr"; a documentary film by a fellow internee, Emiko Omori, "Rabbit in the Moon"; and a book about the internment, "And Justice for All."

He died at the age of 97 in December of 2004.


http://www.choosingtoparticipate.org/resources/library/rabbit-moon-documentary-memoir

A Life Lived: Her story had plenty of drama, Hollywood-style

Myrtle Goldfinger was caught in a confused cultural dichotomy: She was born in Tokyo but moved to Southern California with her Japanese parents when she was just a year old. She looked Japanese, but her attitude was pure American. She was gorgeous by many counts, but not her own, because having grown up in Hollywood in the 1930s, her idea of beauty was all-white, all-American. Even in old age, Mrs. Goldfinger wouldn't leave the house without first putting on eye makeup to make her eyes look wider, said her daughter-in-law, Danna Kostroun.

"People don't want to see Asians," she'd say in declining an invitation to attend, for example, a grandchild's music recital.

Mrs. Goldfinger married twice, and both of her husbands were white Americans. Her son, Marian University political scientist Johnny Goldfinger, recalled that when he married Kostroun, a white woman from Ithaca, N.Y., "it was the happiest day of (his mother's) life." But despite her self-doubt, Myrtle Machiko Goldfinger, who died Feb. 18 at 94, was ambitious. She could sing, and she could dance, and if she didn't have what she considered all-American beauty, she did have beauty. This she exploited.

Her father, Imahei Takaoka, was a fire-and-brimstone Christian minister, a founder of the Hollywood Japanese Independent Church. He died young of tuberculosis, leaving his family poorly fixed. It was then that Mrs. Goldfinger's drive showed itself. She went into show business, getting sporadic work as an extra at the movie studios in Hollywood. She got at least one bit part, as a maid serving tea, at the age of 16. She went into vaudeville, she and her two sisters hitting the road as the Taka Sisters. For the time, the act was somewhat risque. Mrs. Goldfinger laid it out one time (with some embarrassment) for her curious daughter-in-law. Kostroun, who has a Ph.D. in history from Duke University, teaches history at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.

"They'd dance around in a sort of 'Three Little Maids' routine (from Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Mikado"), like a traditional Japanese dance," Kostroun said, "then the band would go into some fast jazz, and they'd throw off their costumes and dance to the jazz." The sisters performed all over the country, but the biggest sensation they caused was when one of them was murdered, knifed by a jealous boyfriend. The boyfriend was white. "The newspapers played it as an East-West love triangle," a cautionary tale of "the dangers of 'exotic love,' " Kostroun said.

In 1942, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Mrs. Goldfinger and her family were among the more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans to be rounded up and put in "War Relocation Camps." Mrs. Goldfinger spent most of the war at the Manzanar camp in the California desert, about 200 miles northeast of Los Angeles. She passed the time teaching ballet to the children.

After the war, she married and had a daughter. The marriage failed, and she moved to Tokyo to take a job as an interpreter for the American occupation forces. There she met her second husband, Arthur Goldfinger, who was in Tokyo with the Air Force. They married and had a son.

The Goldfingers returned to the U.S. in 1969 and settled in Mobile, Ala. Mr. Goldfinger taught high school history; his wife did secretarial work. Mr. Goldfinger died in 2006. Mrs. Goldfinger became deeply religious, a committed Seventh-day Adventist. She lived uneasily with her own past. She came to believe it was wrong to watch movies, and here she'd been in them -- she appeared in the 1934 James Cagney vehicle "Jimmy the Gent." And the dancing. She asked her daughter-in-law not to tell her parents about the dancing.

Late in life, Mrs. Goldfinger was faced with still more drama: Hurricane Katrina. She and her husband, both 89, didn't have to evacuate, but they went weeks without electricity. They soon moved to Indianapolis to reside with their son and to live out their years here. Mrs. Goldfinger is survived by two children, four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren

Will Higgins@ indystar.com

Obituary for Myrtle Goldfinger

Spies and traitors: New exhibit in Philadelphia traces their impact on our lives

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Exclusive to the National Constitution Center's showing of 'Spies, Traitors, and Saboteurs,' visitors can view glass and granite fragments from the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, as well as a shoe that was recovered from the wreckage, on loan from the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum. (CAROL H. FEELY, CONTRIBUTED PHOTO / March 12, 2011

Twisted pieces of metal, salvaged from planes that struck the World Trade Center's twin towers in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001 are stark testimonials to the deadliest act of terrorism on American soil in the 21^st century. But they're just one chapter of a larger story being told at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

"Spies, Traitors & Saboteurs: Fear and Freedom in America" details many more events and time periods in which Americans have been harmed by enemies within the country's borders. They range from a Revolutionary War plot to kidnap George Washington and John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, to 1960s church bombings in the South and the Oklahoma City bombing.

The exhibition is not intended to make visitors afraid of their own shadows or suspicious of every person they meet. "We hope the exhibit will stimulate dialogue about how we can defend our country while also protecting the individual rights and freedoms that are at the heart of our democracy," says David Eisner, president and CEO of the Constitution Center.

The traveling exhibition, prepared by the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., explores stories of espionage and treason since the nation's birth and examines counter-intelligence measures that affect our daily lives.

"America changed forever on Sept. 11, 2001. The National Constitution Center is the perfect venue for a conversation about what wrenching and lasting change has come to mean to all of us," says the Spy Museum's Karen Corbin.

Those who explore the exhibition will rediscover the courage of first responders who ran toward the burning and collapsing twin towers. And they'll learn of other acts of courage in the face of terrorism, like Dolly Madison's efforts to save Washington's portrait from the burning White House when the nation's capital was under British attack in 1814.

They'll also learn of less-than-admirable moments in our history, like the internment of Japanese Americans — which was triggered when a Japanese pilot returning from the Pearl Harbor attack crash-landed on the Hawaiian island of Niihau. With the help of a Japanese American, he took hostages and terrorized a community. According to the exhibit's information, "This incident perpetuated fears about Japanese Americans that ultimately led to the unprecedented incarceration of thousands."

Visitors also will have the chance to express opinions on questions raised in the exhibition about how the nation responded to events.

Using newspaper headlines, historic photographs, artifacts and video and themed room settings, the exhibition's timeline traces more than 80 acts of terror that have taken place in the United States from 1776 to the present.

One of the most intriguing incidents detailed in the exhibit is the account of the explosion at Black Tom Island in New York Harbor on July 30, 1916. "Although it is something people have forgotten about, the explosions at the island's munitions depot — triggered by German saboteurs at the outset of World War I — were felt as far away as Philadelphia. The response to that incident was the Espionage Act of 1917 that's still on the books today," says Steve Frank, staff historian for the Constitution Center.

He adds, "Some of the threats to national security have come from abroad, but others have been homegrown."

He points to the section dealing with the Ku Klux Klan — probably America's best-known terrorist organization. The section containing graphic proof of their shocking levels of violence, maybe something visitors with young children should skip. Its evolution from vigilante groups inflicting terror on former slaves after the Civil War to its position today as one of many white supremacist groups is a thought-provoking stop for adults and teens.

The exhibition is organized in nine segments: Revolution: 1776-1890; Sabotage, 1914-1918; Hate, 1865-present; Radicalism, 1917-1920; World War, 1935-1945; Subversion, 1945-1956; Protest, 1969-1976; Extremism, 1992-Present; Terrorism, 1980-Present.

Among artifacts and presentations found in the displays:

•Glass and granite fragments from the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City and a shoe found in the wreckage.

•A ritual Ku Klux Klan red robe worn by the Klan "Kladd," who was the elected Klan officer presiding over secret rituals and ceremonies and KKK "business cards," which warned Americans that their every move was being watched.

•A badge and ID card carried in 1917 by an operative of the American Protective League who spied on fellow Americans on behalf of the U.S. Justice Department during World War I.

•A Weather Underground video presentation featuring an interview with ex-Weather Underground member Bernadine Dohrn.

•A replica of an anarchist's globe bomb that was presented as evidence in the 1886 trial of men tried in connection with the Chicago Haymarket riot.

There are designed "environments" too, like a militiaman's closet of weaponry and camouflage clothes, as well as a room set up like the 1950s office of an FBI agent. In the agent's office are file cabinets that can be opened to view the files kept on Americans who were suspected of being Communists, including Lucille Ball.

The beloved, red-headed comedienne apparently had registered to vote as a Communist in 1936 and again in 1938. As it turned out, she had done it only to please her grandfather. The ensuing investigation and interrogation by the House Committee for Un-American Activities failed to turn up anything more on Lucy. Observed her husband, Desi Arnaz, "The only thing red about Lucy is her hair, and even that's not legitimate."

By Diane W. Stoneback, OF THE MORNING CALL

Roger Shimomura's “Shadows of Minidoka”

It’s easy to forget a barbed wire barrier when you weren’t behind it. Roger Shimomura, his family and more than 120,000 other Japanese were. Shimomura never forgot. “Government,” he said, “has a very, very short memory.”

Shimomura unveiled “Shadows of Minidoka” Friday night at the Lawrence Arts Center to a bustling crowd of wine sippers, art aficionados and passersby. The two-room gallery, which will be open to the public until March 12, features Shimomura’s acrylic paintings and collected artifacts. The works reflect on and resurface the two years he spent at an internment camp for Japanese Americans in Minidoka, Idaho during the second World War. “We’re looking at something more than paying lip-service to diversity and history,” said Carol Ann Carter, professor of painting and former colleague of Shimomura. The paintings rely on recurring symbols to imprint their meaning and ensure that the viewer refamiliarizes oneself with this American tragedy. “Shadow of the Enemy” depicts the silhouette of a pigtailed young girl skipping rope — the atypical villain. In most pieces, no matter the mood, barbed wire dangles around the exterior.

“The proliferation of barbed wire represents the confluence of symbolic confinement as well as actual confinement,” Shimomura said. “People are not free to live their lives as America promises is their nationalistic right.”  The most gripping evidence of injustice lies within the room of artifacts. Among other items, propoganda, government orders, newspaper clippings, camp artwork and letters on the gallery’s walls tell the story of the prisoners’ plight. 

“I have been trying to analyze the psychology of the people while calming my own resentment against some of the asinine benevolence of this benign-intentioned government and the workings of human nature in the raw,” wrote an evacuee to friends in a letter from 1942-43. Ben Ahlvers, exhibitions director of the Lawrence Arts Center who installed the art, cited the artifacts as “the cornerstone” of the exhibition. “The conglomeration of all of those parts make for a personal connection,” he said. Richard Thomas Barkosky, Haskell University freshman of Tucscon, AZ, was a youthful outlier in the mostly middle-aged gathering.

“It reminds me of comic books,” Barkosky said of the acrylic works. “It’s cartoony.” Though the lucid style of painting may oddly juxtapose such austere subjects, Shimomura is able to remove personal influence from his art. “The anger, pain and frustration,” he said, “stops when I decide what I am going to paint.”

Roger Shimorua's Website
http://www.rshim.com/

Lawrence Art Center
http://www.lawrenceartscenter.org/Exhibitions/2011/images-rs/SHIMOMURA_Gallery_Guide.pdf

This article is a reprint

http://www.kansan.com/news/2011/feb/14/shimomuras-work-brings-dark-history-light/

How were Japanese Americans compensated for internment?

Right after the war, no one was compensated. Those who had once owned land, (and it was only the children of the Japanese immigrants who could own property since their parents were denied access to American citizenship,) if families didn't sell their properties before the evacuation or during the war to pay taxes and storage fees, and if families were lucky enough to have good friends to watch over their property, squatters claimed right to their land and the law did little to protect the Japanese-Americans from these illegal gains. 

In 1953, those whose American citizenship had been revoked were reestablished. Also that year, all Asian immigrants were finally allowed American citizenship despite the many decades they had already been living in the U.S. In 1988, President Regan gave a public apology, but it wasn't until 1992 when President George Bush Sr. issued $20,000 checks to the survivors. Compensation came fifty years later, after everyone had reestablished their lives, but not every accepted the checks out of anger and silent protests; others gave it to family members and charities.


Answers.com (answered by K.P. Kollenborn, historian)

Caleb Foote, Law Professor and Pacifist Organizer

Caleb Foote, whose moral sense influenced him to go to prison for refusing to do even noncombatant work in World War II, then led him to become a law professor known for advocacy of criminal rights.

Mr. Foote was born in Cambridge, Mass., on March 26, 1917. He graduated in 1939 fromHarvard, where he was managing editor of The Harvard Crimson, and earned a master's degree in economics in 1941.

The Quaker faith of his mother drew him to pacifism, and he was hired that year by the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a pacifist organization, to open its Northern California office. His draft board had denied his request for conscientious objector status in 1940, deciding that his religious argument for the status was based more on humanist principles than on theology.

Mr. Foote then refused an order to report to a camp to perform alternative service, and as a result in 1943 he was convicted for violations of the Selective Service Act.

"Only by my refusal to obey this order can I uphold my belief that evil must be opposed not by violence but by the creation of goodwill throughout the world," Mr. Foote said in an interview with The Associated Press.

He served six months at a federal prison camp, then resumed his work with the fellowship, spending much of his time speaking out against the internment of Japanese-Americans. In 1943, he helped produce a pamphlet on the subject, titled "Outcasts," with the photographer Dorothea Lange.

In 1945, Mr. Foote was again sentenced for draft law violations and served a year at a federal penitentiary. He was pardoned by President Harry S. Truman. From 1948 to 1950, Mr. Foote was executive director of the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors.

excerpt article By DOUGLAS MARTIN, from the New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/03/us/03foote.html

How were Japanese American internment camps organized?

They were structured like a military camp- with a few exceptions because they were harboring civilians and needed to replicate a functioning community. They layouts were formatted in square sections, dividing blocks Families, bachelors, and orphans lived in tar paper barracks which were not insulated with a couple of belly pot stoves. They ate at mess halls, had latrines and laundry facilities which were placed at each square footage of blocks. As the camps progressed, fire stations, hospitals, newspapers, schools, and some local businesses were added. Community and social events were vital in persevering moral. Dances, creative classes, educational classes, and sports flourished.

Although the military police overlooked the camps up in the watchtowers, and although the camp directors with other higher authorities in camps were white, security police were Japanese-American. Other political positions were held by the Japanese-Americans who handled the organization of the camps which included labor unions, farming, and other essential social aspects. Only the young adults with American citizenships were allowed to hold these positions; excluding their fathers who many use to be community leaders themselves. They were forbidden.

This is just a broad overview and each camp was a little different based on location and who ran the camps. Some had more liberty freedom than others, such as they were allowed to take photos of the camps; other camps were divided into further segregation and discord.

For more information, these are good resources:

Tateishi, John. And Justice for All: An Oral History of the Japanese American Detention Centers. New York, New York: Random House, 1984.

Gesensway, Deborah and Roseman, Mindy. Beyond Words: Images from America's Concentration Camps. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1987.

Weglyn, Michi. Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America's Concentraion Camps. New York: William Morrow and Company. 1976.

Answers.com (answered by K.P. Kollenborn, historian)