Category Archives: history

Seriously? Controversy about Obama kids getting “Asian” food including teriyaki chicken on Dec. 7?

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Obama Family Portrait

This about takes the cake for lame-ass non-issues. WUSA9, Gannett’s DC affiliate (and sister station to Denver’s KUSA 9News, the top-rated station in Denver and home to Adele Arakawa, the Japanese American top-rated anchor), posted this video and text followup about the Obama girls’ private school serving Asian food on Dec. 7: “Sidwell Friends School, Sasha and Malia Obama’s School, Opts For Asian, including Japanese Food On Pearl Harbor Day.”

If you watch the video, it criticizes the yahoos who turned the lunch menu into political commentary about dishonoring those who died at Pearl Harbor 70 years ago. But the text is much more ambivalent and invites readers to get worked up into a frenzy, even with its headline spotlighting “Japanese Food.” Come one, teriyaki chicken? Yeah, it’s Japanese but it’s hardly un-American. Nothing to convene a new HUAC investigation over.

OMG — no one should have any Japanese food on Dec. 7. For that matter, we should have any German or Italian food in addition to Japanese food, on Memorial Day or Veterans’ Day. And don’t forget Korean and Vietnamese food… oh wait, there were Koreans and Vietnamese who were on our side. God forbid, if anyone gulped down any sushi yesterday, they’re traitor bastards.

This kind of crap is why I grew up dreading Dec. 7 every year.
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PHOTO: Who are these incredible women fighting fires at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941?

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Women firefighters at Pearl Harbor

UPDATE DEC. 13: NBC Nightly News reported last night that one of the women in the photo above has come forward, and said that the photo was not taken on Dec. 7, as has commonly been captioned every time it’s been published for decades. Instead, Katherine Lowe, who’s now 96 and still living in Honolulu, says she was at church the morning of the attack. But she and her friends from the Dole pineapple factory signed up as civilian volunteers and she’s sure the photo was taken sometime after Dec. 7, during a training session at Pearl Harbor. It’s great to have this incredible mystery cleared up, and from my perspective, the photo is still an amazing testament to the fact that a multicultural group of women worked together in the days following the Pearl Harbor attack, for the cause of protecting our country. It’s a powerful, moving image even though it wasn’t shot during the bombing.

I thought I’d seen pretty much every photo taken at Pearl Harbor 70 years ago — so many of them are so iconic. But here’s a new one that’s already seared into my visual memory: Women firefighters aiming a hose following the attack on the U.S. Navy base that terrible Sunday.

It was included in a series of photos on the MSNBC Photo Blog, and then posted by itself on MSNBC’s Open Channel crowdsourced investigative blog when the photo began to attract a lot of attention. None of the women are identified, but it appears that there are Asians and a Polynesian or Pacific Islander (maybe African American?) woman among the group.

I’m posting it here with apologies to Three Lions/Getty Images as a public service to help get the word out and hope that someone can identify any of the women. If requested, I’ll be happy to take down the image.

Maybe someone grew up with the grandmother telling stories about being on the dock at Pearl that day….

Thanks to TzeMing Mok on the APA Mavens list for the heads-up.

Visiting Japan is the best way to help the country post-earthquake and tsunami

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A geisha at Kiyomizudera in Kyoto

It’s such a cliche to point out that Japan is a contrast of old and new traditional and modern, but the comparison keeps coming up because it’s true, and is a part of the country’s cultural DNA. It would be a surprise not to see some people — women, men, old, young, children — dressed in traditional kimono at ancient temples and shrines. It’s not unusual to have a contemplative (dare I say, zen-like) centuries-old spiritual site plopped into the middle of one of the world’s most bustling megalopolises. Japan is home to 14 of UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites.

So it makes sense for me to start this series of blog posts with a photo of a geisha (or a maiko, a geisha-in-training) I saw seemingly floating amidst the crowds of tourists at Kiyomizuedera, one of the thousands of amazing temples scattered throughout Kyoto, the city that contains the soul of Japan. The geisha is a romantic stereotype of Old Japan, and yet, the tradition of geishas performing ancient music and dance continues today.

I returned this month from a two-week trip to Japan with my wife Erin Yoshimura and my mom, Junko. We traveled there for several reasons:

First, because Erin has never met my mother’s family in Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan.

Second, because as Japanese Americans, we both believe it’s important to connect with our roots and appreciate where our values come from and why we think and behave the way we do in the United States.

Third, because we think it’s a cool idea to bring out American side to Japan and see how it’s different from Japanese society.

And fourth, because traveling to Japan is a great way for people around the world to support Japan’s recovery from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that devastated the Tohoku region of northeast Honshu, Japan’s main island.

According to an Oct. 5 report from the World Travel and Tourism Council, tourism to Japan fell by 62% and 50% in April May over the previous year because of the disasters (including the man-made nuclear disaster at Fukushima). It’s been improving in the months since — in June and July tourism was 36% below 2010 levels. That’s a huge loss for a country that is the third-largest tourism economy in the world.

No, we didn’t visit Tohoku. We flew to Narita Airport outside Tokyo and took a connecting flight to Chitose, the airport that serves Sapporo in Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan. We spent a couple of days in Sapporo and met with my uncle Fumiya Mori and aunt Mistuko, then took trains to Nemuro, my mom’s hometown on the easternmost tip of Hokkaido. We spent several days there with my uncle Kazuya Mori and aunt Eiko (I adore her) and got to visit Akan National Park (sort of like Japan’s Yellowstone) and the Ainu Village that showcases the culture of the native people of Japan. From Hokkaido we flew to Tokyo and spent four busy days there, then took the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Hiroshima. We spent a coupe f days there, and visited the powerful Peace Memorial Park, which forever commemorates the atomic bomb blast of Aug. 5, 1945. We ended the trip in Kyoto before flying home from Osaka’s Kansai Airport.

Two weeks is a long trip, but it was worth it to squeeze in such a diverse array of destinations and see Japan from the dual perspective of foreign tourist and someone coming home after a prolonged absence.

LINKS:

View Day-by-day photo albums on Facebook from our trip to Japan.

View 34 short videos on YouTube of our trip to Japan.

2011 Japan Trip: Photo albums by day

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Senso-Ji Temple in Asakusa

Here are complete day-by-day photo albums of our trip to Japan on Facebook (you don’t need a Facebook account to see them, but you’ll need to log in to Facebook to share or post a comment). Many of the photos (like the food shots, for instance) will be included in individual blog posts.

DAY 1 – Flight to Japan, arrive in Sapporo | DAY 2 – Sapporo | DAY 3 – Arrive by train in Nemuro | DAY 4 – Nemuro | DAY 5 – Nemuro: Akan National Park, Ainu Village | DAY 6 – Leave Nemuro, Arrive Tokyo | DAY 7 – Tokyo: Meiji Jingu, Shinjuku, Shinagawa | DAY 8 – Tokyo: Asakusa, Shinagawa | DAY 9 – Harajuku, Shibuya, Asakusa (Sky Tree), Shinagawa | DAY 10 – Shinkansen to Hiroshima | DAY 11 – Hiroshima: Peace Memorial Park, Miyajima | DAY 12 – Kyoto: Kiyomizudera | DAY 13 – Bus Tours of Kyoto, Nara | DAY 14: Depart Kyoto, arrive Osaka’s Kansai Airport

34 short videos of our 2011 trip to Japan

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I recently returned from a fantastic trip to Japan, with my wife Erin Yoshimura and my mom. We flew first to Sapporo in the northern island of Hokkaido, where one of my uncles lives, and then traveled to Nemuro, my mom’s hometown on the easternmost tip of Hokkaido, where another uncle lives. Then we flew down to Tokyo for a few days, then Hiroshima, then Kyoto before flying home from Osaka’s Kansai Airport. It was grueling at times — two weeks is a long trip, especially with your mom! — but I really had a great time and it’s given me a lot to think about… and write about.

I’m still sorting out notes from the trip and organizing the zillions of photos. But I did finally finish editing and titling the many videos I shot with my Lumix LX5 camera. Here are 34 short videos with brief descriptions. Feel free to graze through them, or watch them all (they’re on my YouTube channel).

NOTE: I’ve signed up to include ads on some of my videos, including these ones of Japan. If you feel inclined to click on the ads that show up, I get a little bit of coin in return. If you want to get rid of them, just click the “x” in the upper right of each banner ad.

As I write blog posts, I’ll also embed these videos within them. So think of these vids as previews of some of the topics I’ll be covering.
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