Nakanishi educates about internment
Prof anticipates position on Civil Liberties board
By Laryssa Kreiselmeyer
For Professor Don Nakanishi, head of UCLA's Asian American Studies Center, the internment experience of Japanese-Americans during World War II is both a personal and an educational matter.
Nakanishi said he and his family will never forget their experience, and he wants to educate others of the "government's mistakes."
This education will continue with his work on the Civil Liberties Public Education Fund board, to which President Clinton nominated him six months ago.
Nakanishi explained that though he was born after his parents' internment at a Poston, Ariz., camp where his older brother was born he knew that it had been a traumatic event in their lives.
"I grew up with it, but my parents talk very little about it. It's only with the passage of time that I've been able to unearth from them a lot of buried memories," he said.
Nakanishi remembered that his East Los Angeles schooling had included very little about the Japanese American internment, but he always painfully remembered Dec. 7, 1941, the day Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. He said that on every anniversary, teachers would ask the class if they knew what day it was.
"December 7 was a day I feared throughout my whole life. I remember feeling like everyone was looking at me," he said. "World War II profoundly affected my growing up."
In 1967, Nakanishi said he attended Yale in what he described as the "most diverse class ever," with seven African Americans, seven Latinos and seven Asian Americans in a total of 1,000 students.
He intended to go to medical school, but one experience in his freshman year, which changed the future course of his life, convinced him to become a political science student.
Nakanishi said that the dreaded reminder of the Pearl Harbor anniversary did not occur in any of his classes and the day passed uneventfully until he was studying in his dorm room that evening. A group of schoolmates burst in and pelted him with water balloons, all the while chanting "Bomb Pearl Harbor, bomb Pearl Harbor." One student approached him and recited from memory President Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1942 speech on the entrance of the United States in World War II.
Nakanishi laughed along with his friends about the water balloons, but said that this event was to become more important to him than he realized at the time.
"It really didn't hit me until the next day what I really had experienced. I was still being reminded of this event," he said.
A week later, he read the first of many books that were to follow about Japanese internment. Nakanishi said that this was the reason he chose to teach at UCLA rather than practice medicine.
The internment of Japanese Americans touched the lives of UCLA students as well. In 1942, Hitoshi "Mo" Yonemura, a UCLA student, was removed from school and sent to the camp at Manzanar, Calif. Yonemura was a popular student, head cheerleader and treasurer of the junior class. He was later killed in action in Italy fighting for the U.S. Army in 1943.
Three years ago, on the 50th anniversary of Executive Order 9066 that called for the involuntary relocation of all Japanese Americans in 1942, UCLA held a year-long commemoration. The program of art exhibits, speakers and seminars for professors was created and coordinated by Nakanishi.
"He is extraordinary. He has this combination of an incredible breadth of vision and also an openness to what various people are interested in," said Professor Valerie Matsumoto, who collaborated with Nakanishi on educational seminars for UCLA professors during the 1992 project.
Matsumoto said that faculty members still use the materials from the 1992 classes to educate their students about the internment, an example of the types of projects promoted by the Civil Liberties board.
To date, President Clinton has not appointed the last two members of the board and Nakanishi awaits official confirmation via Senate hearing, which he expects within another month.
After his nomination, he went through FBI and White House checks because the board will handle government money to fund activities.
The public education arm of the bill, in which Nakanishi will serve, will provide education for the entire country. Nakanishi would like to see events such as the 1992 UCLA commemoration on a national scale.
"I would love to see it have an impact on textbooks and a whole series of programs and activities to enhance knowledge and compelling lessons of that tragedy," he said.
Though he has not yet met with the other six appointed members, Nakanishi said that their charge is "open-ended" and there are many possibilities.
With his work at UCLA, collaboration with the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance and service on the Civil Liberties Board, Nakanishi said he hopes that the United States will not forget what happened during World War II.
"(The appointment) is a tremendous honor one of the greatest honors I've ever had. Fifty years from now we are going to still remember the terrible Holocaust that World War II was for the Jews and other people," he said.
In 1988, President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, which sought redress and reparations for Japanese Americans by providing $20,000 to individuals who were interned or survivors of those interned. The Act had a budget of $1.5 billion, and the "vast majority" of survivors have already been paid, said Nakanishi.
He said that many Japanese Americans were inspired to "break away from a long-standing silence" and demand reparations for internment during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
"The most unique contribution Japanese Americans can make is to tell you and (to) make sure it doesn't happen again," he said.