Ten Thousand Things
Multicultural Webfinds

"Ten Thousand Things" is a Buddhist expression representing the dynamic interconnection and simultaneous unity and diversity of everything in the universe.

Feb. 19 - "Day of Remembrance" & July 3-6, 2008 - "Whose America? Who's American? Diversity, Civil Liberties, & Social Justice" Japanese American National Museum Conference in Denver

Artwork by Karl Tani

From February 16-19, Japanese Americans and civil liberties supporters are observing the DAY OF REMEMBRANCE to commemorate February 19, 1942, the day President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing the unconstitutional forced removal and relocation of 120,000 Japanese Americans, from their homes in Hawaii and on the West Coast to remote prison camps, throughout the Second World War.

This mass relocation would have gone down in history as justifiable without the legal challenges by a few Japanese Americans and their supporters who lost their initial legal challenges in 1944. Almost four decades after the war's end, in 1983, Fred Korematsu's conviction was overturned after his attorneys proved U.S. governmental wrongdoing: In the original case, federal attorneys argued that the removals were justified, concealing that there had been no evidence of sabotage by Japanese Americans at that time, and that official investigators concluded that Japanese Americans posed no national security threat. A few years later, Gordon Hirabayashi's conviction was also overturned.

After vigorous grassroots campaigning by Nikkei and other civil rights activists, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 on August 10, 1988, legislating monetary reparations and an official apology to thousands of Japanese Americans whose human rights had been violated half a century earlier. The National Coalition for Redress/Reparations morphed into Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress. Its members now focus on the educational representations of incarceration history; the protection of civil liberties of Arab-, Muslim-, and South Asian Americans in the racist-charged, post-9/11 atmosphere; and the defense of conscientious objector Agustin Aguayo and Lieutenant Ehren Watada, who refuse to fight in what they considered an illegal war in Iraq.

Japanese Americans are also lobbying for justice and reparations for thousands of Japanese Latin Americans whom the U.S. government kidnapped, incarcerated, and used in hundreds for prisoner-of-war exchanges with Japan during the Second World War.

The Japanese National Museum is holding its national conference, "WHOSE AMERICA? WHO'S AMERICAN? DIVERSITY, CIVIL LIBERTIES, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE" from July 3-6, 2008 in Denver, Colorado.

The conference will examine the relevance of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 during the current period of erosion of civil liberties in the U.S. and globally. Other topics include preserving and expanding Nikkei communities; conflicting representations of the incarceration; and neglected stories about resistance. A complete listing of programs is available at the museum website.

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