Also posted this review of Strawberry Days if anyone is interested.

Two excerpts:

[Through the diverse experiences of people like Tom, Kazue and Rae Matsuoka, Cano and May Numoto, Toguro and Ed Suguro and others, such as Seichi Hayashida, Neiwert reveals the complexity of the internment as lived by individuals. Some, like Tom Matsuoka, acted quickly, getting himself and his family out of the camps by agreeing to work as agricultural laborers in Montana, where workers were in short supply. His daughter Rae described initial conditions there:

I know that when we went out there to live, and we went up there where the farm was, and he took us to where we were going to live, I wonder what my mother must have thought. There were two rooms and seven of us. One room was the bedroom. We had three little beds and a crib-like thing. We got no heat with that room. And the other room was where Ma did the cooking. And she would try to mop that floor, because she was so fussy, she would try to mop that floor and it would freeze.]

And,

[But the book is valuable for social insights beyond the internment. For example, Neiwert confronts the corrosive consequences of racism, frequently in unpredictable ways. For example, Nisei uncharacteristically spoke with him about how they were sometimes embarrassed by their Issei parents during the prewar years, people who either did not or could not conform to emerging white middle class norms:

I almost died when when I found out that one of my teachers had visited my parents to let them know how well I was doing in school. In those years, if you made honor roll or got a special recognition . . . , instead of writing a letter, they would visit home to bring the good news. Well, I just about died. I mean, of mortification, when I found out that this one teacher [had visited]. I said, “you didn’t feed her anything” and she says, “Yes”, yes she did. She had served sembei and those dried cherries and, oh my God–tea, not coffee!]

This book is about far more than the internment. The book also describes the flowering of an immigrant culture over several decades that was brutally destroyed by it. It reveals the extent to which prominent whites economically benefitted from exploiting them, and, ultimately, interning them and taking their land for development.

And, if you didn’t already know that Scoop Jackson was a bigoted scumbag, you will after reading the concluding chapters of this book.

Highly recommended for both content and the rigorous fidelity to a style of storytelling that puts the participants in the forefront and the writer in the background.

Why isn’t there a sense of honor (I know — wrong country now)? I’m sure they’ll all be taken care of later by their “friends” somehow.
But, Cyrus Vance resigned. The late British Minister (Robin Cook?) resigned over Iraq. During Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre, there were several resignations. In this White House they advocated torture and no one (who would have had a public influence) resigned. And a large minority of adults in this country stll think these yo-yos have high moral values? Sorry about the rant but the logical/moral disconnect just gets me every time I think about it.

The damned memo discussed liability under the US War Crimes act for WAR CRIMES and all they talked about was whether it was “quaint” to discuss messhall rights of detainees and soldiers. I still don’t get it – how that memo hits the light of day and anyone would work for those solicitors and peddlers of war crimes, as if it didn’t matter.

But it is a question now of where we go, isn’t it? Better to have immunizing legislation than to have knowing and know war crimes and war criminals with a DOJ and populace that will never pursue them? At this point, is one option any less damaging to the country than another?

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
*Gonzales ADMITTING in the memo that a) they were all on the hook for war crimes under domestic statutes and needed to make something up, and b) that the military was warning tht things — like what happened at AbuGhraib, Bagram, in the “buy ‘em and send to Gitmo” policies, etc. would happen and State – headed then by POWELL, agreed

OLC had no credibility whatsoever – no more so than if I put out a memo that Jane Hamsher can authorize war crimes violations. But they didn’t care – they weren’t going to jail; the President wasn’t going to jail; the President could pardon anyone he decided to make a criminal. The country could live with it – and have its best parts die with it.

At least someone, somewhere, is deciding maybe they should at least consider the peril they have so recklessly chosent to foist on others. Too bad the nation doesn’t get a shot at being immunized from what they did to it.

If that’s the case, the Lamont camp should point out the hypocrisy.

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I’ve been reading back threads and was very disturbed to read about an ad being run in CT connecting Lieberman with the increase of Neo Nazis in the military – funded by “liberal bloggers.”

The tactic certainly seems very Rovian, particularly in the timing. And what bloggers who frequent FDL, Kos, DU, etc. refer to themselves as “liberal bloggers?”

I do hope the Lamont campaign gets on top of this quickly and finds out who is really behind it.

Vincent Chin.

He never “became American”.

Ask the members of non-white groups who came to America; “becoming American” is an on-going experience, even generations after the first family arrived. PBS had an excellent series, “Becoming American: The Chinese Experience“; in it, different Chinese-Americans talk about how they are still not perceived as Americans solely because of their appearance. Japanese-Americans have had a very similar experience; even 60 years after WWII, they still receive the “becoming American” attitude.

The little Bavaria that creeps me out so much is now very much all-American, swarmed with white Americans of all ethnicities — but in which no black, yellow or brown-skinned Americans are welcome. Shocks me how very closely these folks have cloned the very thing some of them or their families fled.

Starts a little bit back in OK, then doubles up in WV.

So much road, so few stops as notable, or honorable.

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fyi – Bubba again. This time muting focuses attn on visual. They finesse the splices by showing (mebbe near the end, what I just saw now.) by cutting to (assumed to be in Bubba’s crowd, but no REAL visual evidence to that) of
1) 20-30 yr old white woman holding a baby.
2) mebbe late 30-early 40ish black woman (wearing a hat?) smiling/cheering(?)/clapping b/t Bubba’s fire ‘em up.
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So subliminal, ya might hardly notice, especially if you heart Bubba.
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Mayor of Fresno? Anyone else on the ballot? l->
ugh