storytellers vs. hate | by lisa lipsey
Individuals who are of Japanese descent, born as citizens of another country, are called Nikkei. LGBTQ Nikkei are invited to connect, attend conferences and find support in the Okaeri community. As with most of the world, historically, Japanese cultural norms were not supportive of the LGBTQ community. In Japan, there is steady evolution in beliefs, norms and LGBTQ rights, including recently passed LGBTQ protective legislation. Okaeri translates to welcome home, or welcome back safely. The group also helps educate family and friends of LGBTQ Nikkei.
February is here, the month where the days get a little warmer and love is professed, traditionally with flowers. For Southern California Flower Growers, like my friend Noboru “Nob” Matsumoto (1933-2023), February was his busiest time of the year. Perhaps “busy” was best, as February was also a reminder of extremely painful times. February is the month his childhood was shattered by a presidential Executive Order.
Matsumoto and I spent two evenings a week, across the past five years, chatting and going on adventures of his choosing, a respite break for his family caregivers. During that time, I learned some Japanese culture and customs (beyond sushi, haiku, karaoke, koi ponds and anime), such as Omotenashi. I learned about the history of Japanese immigration to Hawaii and California. I learned how nearly 90% of Japanese descendants born in America were living in California before World War II. I also learned something my history classes glossed over: There were 10 concentration camps on American soil during World War II.
These camps — dubbed internment camps or Japanese resettlement camps — held innocent people and their children for more than four years. Any person, one-sixteenth Japanese or less, even orphans living in an orphanage, had to vacate their homes and appear at a Japanese relocation center. They were told to bring only the things they could carry, and no pets.
February 19, 1942, eight days after Matsumoto’s ninth birthday, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, stripping away the constitutional rights of 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent. The justification: They might be spies for the Japanese government. The motivation: racism. The injustice: There were no individual arrest charges, no court trials, no appeals and no substantiated evidence of wrong-doing, making this a complete and total violation of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
“When you tell my story, I hope it will serve as a warning and prevent something like this from happening again. I hope it helps liberate others,” Matsumoto said.
Civil liberty is an inalienable right for U.S. citizens. A person born here, or a naturalized citizen, cannot be held in camps or imprisoned by the U.S. government without due process of the law, a conviction, and timelines regarding their sentencing. In other words, a large group cannot be held behind barbed wire based on a characteristic or physical attribute. We are dubbed, in history books, and American tall tales, as nation founded on the ideals of liberty. Patrick Henry might be the most quoted, “Give me liberty, or give me death.”
Matsumoto recalled leaving their family home: “It was criminal, the people who showed up to buy our things, they got them for next to nothing, or just took them, because they knew we were being removed.”
They reported to Santa Anita Racetrack, which was taken over for military use.
“At Santa Anita, we lived in the horse stalls; it still smelled like manure. It was my mother, my grandmother, my Aunt Kay and us kids,” Matsumoto said. My Mom was very busy with four little kids. She was scared to know what was happening with my Dad and her father.”
His father and grandfather were picked up by the FBI about 7 p.m. on the night Pearl Harber was attacked. FBI records show the first order was to pick up anyone living on the West Coast who was born in Japan, or who was a leader in Japanese-American communities. Matsumoto’s father was born in Japan and was a foreman in his flower-growing business. The men were first taken to federal prison, and then moved to a federal internment camp in Missoula, Montana.
After three months in the Santa Anita horse stalls, the Matsumoto women and children were sent to the Rowher Camp in Arkansas, located on swampy land. “My mother told me the guard towers were there to protect us from people who wanted to harm Japanese-Americans. But as I grew up more, I came to see the soldiers’ guns were facing inside the camp, at us, not looking for trespassers,” Matsumoto said.
He recalled food shortages, limited communal restrooms, cramped one-room living quarters and chaotic mess halls. There was frequent flooding and a million biting mosquitoes. He recalled Auntie Kay listening each Friday to the Hit Parade on her transistor radio and writing down the Top 10 songs in America.
After three years in Rowher, the Matsumoto women and children were reunited with their father and grandfather, who were now living at the Tule Lake camp in Northern California. Matsumoto said this camp was worse than the one in Arkansas. The Tule Lake camp was known to be the most hardened. Any person of Japanese descent who protested internment was sent to Tule Lake and labeled by news media as disloyal, anti-American, dangerous and racist. At its peak population, the camp had 18,789 people on its roster.
At age 13, Matsumoto and his entire family were released from Tule Lake. “We could have gotten out a little sooner if my father would have agreed to have us moved to Japan. My father refused repatriation. He wanted to return us to our family home, our farm in San Pedro. He knew it would not be good to move back to a place where the atomic bomb had been dropped,” Matsumoto said.
It turned out that the Matsumoto family home, farm, car and equipment were taken over, and they had no real legal recourse. So, the family stayed in the Sierra Nevada area and his father took a job at the only place hiring “Japs,” the railroad. They were hiring men to lay down track. The work was back-breaking.
Matsumoto went on to be All-American: A Boy Scout, a high school football player and an Army enlistee at age 18. This was 1951, at the height of the Korean War. He was sent to a temporary outpost in Alaska, where he again lived in barracks and worked in the mess hall as a cook. “Alaska was beautiful in the summer and a frozen wasteland the rest of the time. It was hot in the kitchen, so the cold felt pretty good on your latrine breaks. I was always in trouble with the commander for taking my uniform jacket off and cooking in my skivvy undershirt,” Matsumoto said.
By 1955, his father had re-established himself in the flower-growing business in Los Angeles, and legislation was passed allowing Japanese-born immigrants to become naturalized citizens. After being discharged from the service, Matsumoto worked for his father and eventually took over the business when his father retired.
Fast-forward to the 1970s, Matsumoto, now married with two sons, found himself back at Santa Anita Racetrack’s horse stalls. This time with his horse, One Sunny Day, who took first place in several races. Talk about coming full circle. His is a fascinating life story. The people I meet are the reason why I love my day job.
In the five years I visited with Matsumoto, I learned so much about dignity and resilience. He has left a legacy. For me, his story is a constant reminder of why we should work together, across characteristics, be it race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation. Why we should continue to vote. Why we should continue to speak out, and continue to work toward stopping hate speech, misinformation and rash mob mentality. These are the key elements that led to the shameful and unlawful detainment of 122,000 American citizens. May we never forget.
Forty-three years after the last camps closed, in 1988, President Ronald Regan issued a formal apology to those who were victims of Japanese relocation, and he signed the Civil Liberties Act. This act has been a frontrunner in supporting rights and legislation for all Americans. Notably, the Japanese-American Citizens League was one of the first non-LGBTQ political groups to show support for LGBTQ protections and marriage rights.
Learn more about the history of the Civil Liberties Act, and hear the stories of Japanese Americans, in their own words: library.ca.gov/grants/civil-liberties
Learn how you can help stop hate in your community: californiavshate.org
If you visit Japan today, you will experience an understood culture of hospitality. The word used for this concept is Omotenashi. It means to greet people with anticipation, selflessness and sincerity. It is the norm at home, when visiting friends, and at school and work. Perhaps a bit more formal, but it feels akin to Hawaii’s cherished Aloha spirit. On the day-to-day level, Omotenashi is conveyed with a nod or bow as a greeting. It is putting another person, or the group, before self.
In my research and reading, I can see how the Omotenashi norms were vastly exploited during the U.S. government’s internment of Japanese-Americans. Films were screened in movie houses from coast to coast, made by the U.S. War Department. These films showed Japanese-Americas as compliant, friendly and comfortable, with all their needs met at the 10 remote camps scattered across the nation. These films did not include the barbed wire, armed guard towers, inadequate crowded housing units, or the lack of supplies and food. They showed camp church services, gardening, nets being made for the military, and kids playing baseball. There was a great desire to prove that America’s camps were better, more civilized and an example for the world. (Stop, think: A government bragging about their concentration camp best practices. WTAF.)