Japanese Americans get the spotlight in Japanese American National Museum conference in Denver

It’s been a couple of weeks since the Japanese American National Museum‘s national conference was held in Denver. Sorting through the many bits of video I took over the conference, which ran July 3-6, my favorite parts were the tribute to JA veterans on the Fourth of July, and the July 6 bus tour to Amache, the internment camp in southeast Colorado.

The conference brought a bevy of famous and not-so famous speakers and panelists (I moderated a panel on Hapas, mixed-race Americans who are the future of the JA community) to Denver’s nice new Hyatt right by the nice new Convention Center. The famous included the likes of actor George Takei, a superstar in the JA pantheon; Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawai’i), a Medal of Honor World War II veteran of the all-JA 100th Battalion/442nd Regimental Combat Team; Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.), who as a baby was interned at Amache with his family; former Congressman and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Norm Mineta; JA leaders and activists such as John Tateishi and Dale Minami; authors including mystery novelist Naomi Hirahara; Cynthia Kadohata, who writes books for pre-teens; and Uma Krishnaswami, who writes multicultural children’s books from a South Asian perspective.

The conference, which had the awkward and ungainly title but righteous theme of “Whose America? Who’s American?,” also brought more than 800 attendees and volunteers for the four-day span, meeting and greeting and learning about the history, present and future of not only Japanese Americans but also of Americans in general. One of the noteworthy speakers was Anan Ameri, the director of the Arab American National Museum, who spoke at a Plenary Session alongside JA scholars about internment, civil rights and the question of American identity posed in the conference title.
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Hooked on HGTV?

One of the dangerous things about finally having cable TV, is tuning in to HGTV. For one thing, the network gives Erin way too many ideas for projects for us to tackle around the house. For another, it reveals my lack of ability to do most of the do-it-yourself projects that show up on the network’s programs.

What we noticed tonight, after several hours, was how diverse the network is with its shows’ hosts — especially the number of Asian Americans.

First we watched Hong Kong-born Vern Yip in “Deserving Design,” sort of a scaled-down version of the ABC hit show “Extreme Makeover Home Edition,” in which Yip, a doctor-to-be turned architect and designer, does makeovers of parts of a home for someone who deserves it. In this show, he helped a woman with cancer redo her kitchen and bedroom.
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School district officials object to valedictorians speaking Vietnamese

I know I still need to blog the JANM conference, but I had to write about this: Officials at a Louisiana school district are trying to prevent students from including foreign languages in their graduation speeches.

The brouhaha was sparked by Vietnamese American cousins Hue and Cindy Vo, who were co-valedictorians at Ellender High School’s graduation in Houma, Louisiana. Cindy Vo spoke one sentence in Vietnamese dedicated to her parents, who don’t speak fluent English, from the podium.

Co len minh khong bang ai, co suon khong ai bang minh,” she said, and explained to her English-speaking classmates that the sentence roughly translates as “always be your own person.”

Her cousin Hue gave more of her speech in Vietnamese, but again, the point was to pay homage to her parents.

At least one member of Terrebonne Parish school district, Rickie Pitre, took offense to the Vietnamese passages, and he says that all graduation speeches should be given in solely English, or that passages can be paraphrased in foreign languages — but only after they’re spoken first in English.
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JANM conference: Reception at the Consul General’s home and media coverage

It’s been a busy start to the conference organized by the Japanese American National Museum. We worked from home, setting up media coverage including sending a reporter and photographer from The Denver Post on a bus trip to Amache, the WWII internment camp in southeast Colorado. The result this morning is a powerful, well-written A-1 — front page — story by Jordan Dresser, with photos by Helen Richardson (kudos to the DenverPost.com staff, who added a couple of the extra photos from the print edition onto the online story).

Last night Erin and I attended our first official conference event, because Erin wasn’t feeling 100% during the day. We went to a reception for the conference at the home of Kazuaki Kubo, and mingled with Denver’s Japanese American leadership, and the likes of former JANM Executive Director Irene Hirano (who recently married Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawai’i, who wasn’t at the reception but will be at the conference today for the veteran’s salute), former Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta and actor/JANM President George Takei.
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Digging up the past at the Amache internment camp

The JANM conference that starts today in Denver has a whole bunch of interesting and important panels, workshops and discussions. I’m moderating one on Saturday, about Hapas — mixed-race Asian Americans. But some of the most powerful parts of the conference will be the ones that bring people together with their past.

Today and Sunday, caravans of buses will be taking conference attendees to southeast Colorado, to the Amache concentration camp near the town of Granada (the official name of the camp was Granada Relocation Center) where more than 7,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned during World War II.

Erin and I will be hosting one of the buses on Sunday. The day will begin at 6am and we’ll return in the evening — the drive to the camp takes about 3 1/2 hours through desolate eastern plains terrain.

I’ll blog about the trip afterwards, but I wanted to share a couple of links about Amache:
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