Capers With Carroll

After breakfast, I hiked with Beat (Bay-AHT) and Urs, from the Youth Hostel at Pwll Deri to the ferry landing in Fishguard. For a while we shared the road with a large flock of sheep heading the same direction.

The four-hour crossing from Fishguard to Rosslare, Ireland, was uneventful. We sat on deck in pleasant weather and talked. Beat and Urs were nineteen, and apprentice architects in the city of Basel. Beat spoke English more fluently than Urs, but he was also aggressively working to improve. He kept a note pad in his pocket, pulled it out anytime I used a word that was new to him, and would ask me about the word's meanings and use. My own attempts at language learning had suffered from a lack of just this degree of diligence, so I took note of how the process should be approached. Beat already spoke Swiss German, High German, and French; he was working hard on English; and during the time I knew him, he picked up some Italian and Hebrew. I had fumbled through five years of French and a year of Japanese, but from watching Beat, the Spanish studies I would begin soon after I returned from Europe promised more success.

We landed at Rosslare, and went through immigration. Then, after we were in the parking lot outside, another agent came running after us. He had a spray canister to treat our boots, and told us that Wales was experiencing an outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease.

From Rosslare we walked into the city of Wexford, where we bought a few groceries in a small store, and asked for directions. Beat had seen mention of a campground, but by the time we reached it, the gate had been locked for the night. We rolled our sleeping bags out in the field beside the gate, and went to sleep.

At about midnight, a car pulled up at the gate. The German youths who manned it demonstrated recent indulgence in alcohol, which would not have bothered us, except that when they could not get into the campground, they decided to drive circles in the tall grass that hid us in our sleeping bags. Beat and I stood up, waving our arms. Meanwhile, Urs slept peacefully. The Germans did stop, about twenty yards short of running us over. Then they retreated to the far end of the field and attempted, drunk as they were, to set up a tent.

In the morning, Beat and I had fun showing Urs the tire tracks in the grass, and then set off. We hadn’t walked far, however, before we realized that none of the cars that had driven by us would have had room for three young men. We decided to split up. Beat gave me his address in Switzerland, and I set visiting him as a goal. Perceptive readers will notice how circumstances and opportunities were chipping away at my original plan to spend my year in Paris.

It was Sunday morning. I had now been in Europe for a week, even if it has taken a month for me to recount the story.

Tomorrow will be Fred Korematsu Day, as will January 30th in all future years, declared so by Governor Schwarzenegger and the unanimous desire of both houses of the California Legislature. Parallel days in Oregon or Washington might honor Minoru Yasui and Gordon Hirabayashi. In my own mind, it will be Jiro Morita Day, and by extension—like a Rosa Parks Day or a César Chavez Day—it will be a time to reflect on how citizens in a supposedly civil society can respond at those moments when civility is in jeopardy.

While I was growing up, each of my parents spoke of the pain and confusion they felt in 1942 when their Nisei classmates were sent away to government “Relocation Camps.” Later, while I was taking a year of Japanese language at Pasadena City College, the school offered “Sociology of the Asian in America.” The course might qualify among the ethnic studies courses that have just been outlawed by the state of Arizona, but I look back upon it as one of the most fruitful classes I ever took. Three hours one night a week, with a 20 minute break, I quickly began spending those twenty minutes—and the walk to the parking lot after class—with Jiro Morita. At 80, he told me he was taking the class “to stay young.”

I spent every possible moment asking about his long life.

In early 1942, when the United States government was preparing to lock up the entire Japanese community on the west coast, the Japanese themselves worked through intense debate over how to respond. Poet Amy Uyematsu, Mr. Morita’s granddaughter, writes,

Grandpa was good at persuading the others
after the official evacuation orders.
Detained at Tulare Assembly Center,
he was the voice of reason among his angry friends,
raising everyone’s spirits
when he started the morning exercise class.

(From “Desert Camouflage,” in Stone Bow Prayer)

Most of the issei (1st generation immigrants) and nisei (2nd generation/US citizens) decided that obedience to the government’s order would offer their best long-term hope for full integration into American society. Three American-born young men, however, decided to test their 14th Amendment rights and protections. Korematsu, Hirabayashi, and Yasui performed that most-American of exercises: they took it to court.

Korematsu (1919 – 2005), born in Oakland, first tried plastic surgery and a name change to evade the order for Japanese to report for relocation. When that failed, he agreed to let his arrest be used as a test case. Korematsu remained at the Topaz, Utah, internment camp while Korematsu v. United States worked its way to the Supreme Court. They decided against him, 6-3.

Although Korematsu was an unskilled laborer, both Hirabayashi (b. 1918, in Seattle) and Yasui (1916-1986, of Hood River) had earned bachelors degrees from their state universities. Yasui even held a law degree and the rank of second lieutenant in the U.S. Army's Infantry Reserve. The relocation order was preceded by curfews, which each man intentionally violated before surrendering to authorities. Eventually the Supreme Court linked the two cases and rendered a unanimous decision: The government had the authority to order detention and relocation of even U.S. citizens under its war powers. Korematsu’s conviction was not overturned until 1983, Yasui’s until 1986, and Hirabayashi’s until 1987.

Source

In the early 1970’s, I had a brief, chance meeting with Gordon Hirabayashi. During my two years at UCLA, I studied additional Japanese language and a year each of Japanese and Chinese history. I also volunteered as an ESL tutor at Castelar Elementary School (L.A. Chinatown), and as a summer counselor for an Asian session of Unicamp. This took me often into the Asian American Study Center, where Elsie Osajima, Mr. Morita’s daughter, was an administrative assistant. Once, when I entered Mrs. Osajima’s office on some errand, I found several people chatting with Mr. Hirabayashi. It was very like a similar meeting, during the same months, and no more than 500 yards apart, with former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Earl Warren. In each case, I knew it was a rare privilege to connect with an important moment in history, and yet the situation didn’t allow for me to ask questions. On the spur of the moment, I couldn’t even think of any.

However, the two meetings provide an interesting juxtaposition. Earl Warren, as Attorney General of California, was the driving force behind convincing President Roosevelt of the necessity for removing the Japanese from their homes and communities. The same Warren Court (1954-1969) that did so much to advance civil rights in so many other areas also could have been the court to reverse Korematsu, Hirabayashi, and Yasui. It didn’t. What my parents identified immediately as wrong when their high school chums were hauled away in 1942, the federal courts only caught up with in the 1980’s. Then, California recognition had to wait until 2011.

If there is a lesson in Earl Warren’s life, it is that for any community, prejudice is easiest to see from outside the area, or outside the era. Warren could see the prejudice against African Americans in the South, yet at the same time, he was either blind to, or unwilling to face prejudice against the Japanese in California. This brings us back to Arizona, today, and the efforts to redefine citizenship. Fred Korematsu looked back on his own case and pursued justice an a reversal of the court's decision, not for his own sake, but so that the United States could be counted on to give the 14th Amendment guarantees to every person ever born or naturalized in the United States, and in whichever state they might reside.

May it ever be so.

As I prepared this post, the miracle of Google allowed me to connect with Amy Uyematsu and Elsie Osajima. I intend soon to write more about Jiro Morita. He was an amazing man.

In the meantime, enjoy a civil Fred Korematsu Day. Pick an injustice, and ponder how to alleviate it.

September 13, 2012 update: The Morita family recently posted a selection of photographs, of which this picture most resembles Mr. Morita as I knew him.  It was taken on Reiko's and Jiro's 50th wedding anniversary, about two years before I knew him.
http://www.amerasiajournal.org/blog/?p=1840

Additional Resources:
Korematsu v. United StatesHirabayashi v. United States
Yasui v. United States
Ex Parte Endo

In this PBS video, Mr. Korematsu tells his own story.


This book targets readers from 3rd to 6th grades.


This book targets grades 7 through 10. Although it appears to be out of print, used copies may be available. Perhaps, now that California has an annual Fred Korematsu Day, it will be reprinted.


Gordon Hirabayashi - On the Day of Remembrance: A Statement of Conscience
In this nearly-two-hour from 2000, Gordon Hirabayashi discusses the Japanese Evacuation and its importance to history.





Disclosure of Material Connection: The Amazon links above are “affiliate links.” This means if someone clicks on the link and purchases the item, I will receive a commission. This has never happened to me as of today, and would only be a pittance if it did. I have no financial arrangement concerning any of the other materials I have linked with. I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

I’m vegging today after what has seemed like the most intense summer since 2000, when we pushed for seven weeks through Uzbekistan and eight countries in Europe. This summer, we drove some six thousand miles, going north to a family reunion in Wenatchee, WA . . .



. . . and south, to San Diego, for part two of the wedding that began with part one in China, last October.

Since the last time we had the whole family together for a picture, we’ve added six members.

Along the way, we enjoyed delightful visits with family and friends, some of whom we hadn’t seen in over a decade.


(Product review: The success of this summer was made possible by my Toyota Sienna, which will be ten years old this fall. It flipped 158,000 miles on Monday. During one, three-day, one-thousand-mile segment, it carried five adults and way-too-much luggage. It had all the power I needed going up steep grades, and comfortably handled curvy Highway 101. Thanks to Bob and Jim at The Auto Shop, the Sienna has never suffered a breakdown, or needed a tow. With the removable seats out, the Sienna has moved my children in-and-out of multiple apartments. With the seats in, it has carried countless kids on field trips or to Sunday school. What a blessing this car has been. Thanks, Vicki, for buying me this car, and for riding around with me all summer.)

So yesterday and today I’ve been moving kind of slow. I’ve pulled a few weeds, run some laundry, and started to think about school starting in ten days. I’m also trying to make amends to a blog that has been feeling abandoned.

A few thoughts:

• We live in a big, beautiful country. We saw parts of California, Oregon, and Washington that I hadn’t seen before, and revisited some places that were familiar. If I had stopped to soak in every vista that tempted me, I would still be on the road.


• Family is a tremendous blessing. This summer I got to spend time with my parents, the aunts and uncles who helped raise me (all now in their 80s), and with the cohort of siblings and cousins who grew up with me (and have grown with me now, well into middle age). The nieces, nephews, and cousins-once-removed pop up as spitting images of the previous generations, but with the twist of their own generation’s unique personality and outlook. I got quality time with the children I raised, the spouses my children have married, and my grandchildren. Pretty amazing.


• I need to learn more Portuguese. With Brazilians as son-in-law and daughter-in-law, and now a nephew with a Brazilian girlfriend, I listened to a lot of Portuguese this summer. I over-heard my Chinese-born daughter-in-law encouraging my son-in-law to “Speak only English!” His English is coming along, and we had several conversations we could not have had last time I saw him. My grandsons, also, are progressing as bilinguals. Yet there were times this summer when I wanted to follow a conversation, and couldn’t. I have been working recently on Chinese, but I need to redouble my efforts toward Portuguese.


• While I was gone, hundreds of luscious figs fell on the ground. Pity. I must redouble my efforts to see that no new figs go unappreciated while the season lasts.


• I went the summer without getting any writing done. (Okay, three paragraphs on my novel.) Now I will need to write at the same time I am teaching. I find that very difficult.

So, here’s to a wonderful summer. And now on to the challenges of a new school year. Life is good.

Yesterday I attended the memorial service for Luis “Lucho” Figallo, long-time Spanish teacher at Golden West, the high school where four of my five children attended. All four studied under Mr. Figallo, probably averaging two years apiece. That’s eight Back-to-School Nights, eight Open Houses, and somehow, we always got around to see Mr. Figallo, even when we didn’t have kids in his classes. Oftentimes we stayed late in his classroom. After all the other parents had gone home, Lucho would offer advice to my fledgling-Spanish-teacher wife. He was always ready to give help, switching back-and-forth between beautiful Spanish and his own ebullient brand of English.

For most of the nearly 20 years I knew Lucho, he insisted that he was “going to retire in another two or three years,” but he only left the classroom two years ago. He was a people person. He loved his students. He loved his subject. After teaching high school all day, he taught night school at the local community college, often to classes full of his former students. I saw a post today on the College of Sequoias site, from a former student at both schools who then went back into Mr. Figallo’s Golden West class as a substitute teacher. “. . . even though he wasn't there in person his loving presence was felt. I don't know if it was because of all the kind smiles on the student faces or if it was because of that jolly old piñata with Figi's resemblance.”

I know the history of that piñata. A committee worked on it, but it took its final form in a back bedroom at my house. And it did bear an uncanny resemblance to Figallo. He was wearing a beard in those days, but it was that smile (and if I recall, the Panama hat) that gave it away.

Each of my children who had him has fond memories of Mr. Figallo, but my greatest debt goes back to the year my eldest son entered 9th grade. We were just back from five years in Colombia, but my son was very unsure of his Spanish. Under Mr. Figallo, I saw his confidence grow. Then, just before Easter, Figallo pulled Matthew aside. The youth group from the church where Lucho was an elder needed a translator for their Spring Break trip to Mexico. Would Matthew consider helping out?

Matthew went. He was one of the youngest members of the group and had not been part of any of the team-building exercises or fund-raisers. However, as the translator, Matthew found himself where the action was, in a key position of leadership. He came home secure in his Spanish and suddenly aware of new gifts as a leader. But it did not stop there. Lucho continued to support and encourage Matthew through another decade and a half. The confidence Matthew gained studying under Mr. Figallo has carried him into fluency in German, Russian, and Portuguese and starts in a couple more. Thanks, Lucho.

Lucho grew up in Peru and came by himself to the US as a young man, learned English while working in a grocery store, and earned a masters degree in Spanish Literature. A coworker gave him a Bible. He studied it carefully and decided to base his life on what he found there. At the end of his life, battling cancer, he and his wife prayed that God would give him the strength to make one last trip to Peru, to say goodbye to the family he left behind, and to encourage their Christian walks. Coming back into Los Angeles, when the pilot announced “We are now beginning our descent,” Lucho said only, “I’m not going down. I’m going up.” With that, he stood in the presence of Jesus.

A life well lived.
Thanks, Lucho. I hope Mary has the piñata.

As a compulsive reader and pathological scavenger, I cannot pass a box of free books without stopping to rummage. Thus, one day last week on my way off campus, I stopped in the teachers’ room to glance through a stack of culls from the library shelves. Several books looked interesting, but a slim volume titled Boat Builder sent me into—not exactly an out-of-body experience—but certainly 50 years across time.

“Robert Fulton,” I said to myself as I glanced at the author: Judson.

I was not always a compulsive reader. My mother tells me that as a 3rd grader, I knew how to read by hadn’t quite figured out what it was for. I enjoyed having my parents read to me, but I can remember that every two weeks my mother would take me to the public library in hopes that some book would catch my fancy. It did not happen until I discovered the shelf of biographies by Clara Ingram Judson. In rapid succession, I read every book there. By the time I completed it, I was a lover of both reading and history.

She wrote about people: Thomas Jefferson: Champion of the People and Benjamin Franklin became more than role models, they became personal playmates. Each book enriched my understanding of what one human life could accomplish: Abraham Lincoln (back in print, 2007, Sterling Point Books: Abraham Lincoln: Friend of the People ), George Washington: Leader of the People, Theodore Roosevelt: Fighting Patriot, Mr Justice Holmes, Jane Addams and Hull House, Thomas Edison, Simon Bolivar, Andrew Carnegie, Cyrus McCormick, Sun Yat-Sen, Donald McKay and his Yankee Clippers, John Jacob Astor, William Gorgas curing Yellow Fever, and Christopher Columbus. She wrote about places as if they were people: Sault Ste Marie, and the St. Lawrence Seaway. I look down the list now on Amazon, and I remember every one of them.

By the time I got to high school, I did not need to read the history books. I had read biographies of almost everyone mentioned in the texts.

Today I earn my living herding twelve and thirteen-year-olds through history. I try to make it interesting for them by telling stories about the individuals who made our history. Many of those stories I picked up before I was ten, from reading Clara Ingram Judson. But beyond that, yesterday I turned in my thesis for a Master in Fine Arts in Creative Writing (fiction). It is a complex novel, at the surface a story about the death penalty, but at a deeper level it says a great deal about immigrants and immigration. So I was amazed just now as I looked at Judson’s list of books. There was another series she wrote, historical fiction, each book the account of one immigrant family. I had forgotten those books, yet I read the titles, and could fill in every country of origin:
Sod-house Winter: They Came from Sweden,
The lost violin;: They came from Bohemia, and books on immigrants from Ireland, France, Scotland, and Dalmatia. If you had asked me a week ago where I developed my life-long interest in immigration, I might have traced it to reading Carey McWilliams in my teens, but there it is: reading Clara Ingram Judson before I turned ten.

Going through grad school these past five years, I have often been asked to name an author who helped mold me. I always felt a little deficient for not having a ready answer. Now I have an answer, it’s just not what any of the questioners would expect.

Judson (1878-1960) would have been a contemporary of my great-grandmother. Among other things, she wrote cook-books for girls and a fiction series of “Mary Jane” books that I never read. You can get Mary Jane now as a Kindle Book, with the reader’s choice of foreign language embedded so that by placing the cursor over a word, the Spanish (for example, Mary Jane - Webster's Spanish Thesaurus Edition ), Italian, German, French, Bulgarian, Polish, Arabic, Kurdish, Farsi, Ukrainian, Czech, Thai, or Urdu translation will appear. Having spent my lifetime thinking about how immigrants assimilate (or fail to), that tickles me. Looking at what she chose to write about, I think it would have tickled Judson, as well.

At the end of my thesis, I have a three page selected bibliography. I know, novels don’t usually come with bibliographies, but mine is an historical novel and I’ve put a lot of research into it. As a compulsive reader and a pathological scavenger, I’ve collected ideas from all over. Actually, when I started writing the novel, less than ten years after Judson’s death, I thought I was working on a contemporary. It has only turned into an historical as it has taken me nearly four decades to complete it. In the course of preparation for publication, the thesis will be back in my hands at least once to make some corrections.

When it does, I am going to sneak one more book onto the bibliography: something, anything, by Clara Ingram Judson.

Natu found me eating breakfast in my stockinged feet and brought one of my big shoes, lifted my foot to maneuver it into place, and then ran off to get the matching partner. Pretty ambitious for a 28-month-old. Once my shoes were on, he went to the front door and stood beckoning. We located his shoes and a sweatshirt, and I put on my hat. Natu raced off to find his chapéu. His Portuguese-challenged grandfather defaulted to the chapeau of other-wise forgotten high-school French, which his grandmother corrected and sent us on our way. With chapéu, there is no conflict between Natu's Portuguese and the sombrero of my wife’s Spanish, and only a rough resemblance to her Italian cappello. As we race to keep up with our bilingual grandson’s Portuguese, it intrigues me that when the Portuguese varies from the Spanish, its cognates sometimes run after the French, and other times bow to the Italian.

Photo by Natu's Grandma

On our walk, Natu and I saw an “avião up in the sky!” (Which I heard as the Spanish avión, and no doubt confused him as I repeated it.)

He gets excited by the Christmas lights that are still up and is working hard on his colors. He nails yellow pretty consistently, but confuses blue, red, and green. Of course, with his mother they are azul, vermelho, e verde.

Over our heads, it was “Squirrels dançando!” while at our feet it was “Pinecones swimming!”



We stooped and I introduced him to water-logged acorns. He took one in each hand, “One acorn! Two acorn!” The numbers are also coming in both languages. I showed him how acorns have chapéu. He met that with the glee that only a two-year-old can muster.

“Acorn, chapéu!” we volleyed back and forth.

Natu and Papa both understand the first rule of language learning: ‘Put every new word to immediate use.’

If I seem to be on a jag about weddings, credit my children. Three have gotten married since last Christmas and a fourth is planning nuptials in April. In October alone, we held two CA weddings, seven thousand miles apart. If raising five children has taught me that no two siblings are alike, this year has taught me the same about weddings. For Timothy and Danielle’s wedding, CA stood for zip codes: 92870, 93907, and 93291, one for the wedding and one each for home town receptions for the bride and groom. Three weeks later, for Lucien and Angie’s wedding, CA stood for flights: Air China 984 and 1509, thirteen hours from Los Angeles to Beijing and another two hours from Beijing to Hangzhou. Then we drove most of two hours to Jinhua.

For Timothy and Danielle, the wedding rehearsal began about an hour late because the principals were stuck in Angels/Red Sox playoff traffic. (I never did hear who won.) After practicing the ceremony through once (and some parts twice), the party moved a few blocks for an Italian dinner. Rehearsals are not part of modern weddings in China, where ceremony is minimal and planning takes a back seat to spontaneity. But we did gather for lunch with the same participants who would have been invited to an American-style wedding-rehearsal dinner. We ate Chinese. (Well, that’s where we were!)

Invitations to Timothy and Danielle’s wedding suggested that guests (and perhaps especially the father-of-the-groom) not bring cameras, trusting that official photographer Shannon Leith would provide all the pictures anyone could desire. A nice selection of engagement and wedding photos are available at Shannon’s site. Invitations to Lucien and Angie’s wedding circulated via Facebook. There was no official photographer, and most of the pictures were snapped by the father-of-the-groom.

Even though Timothy (a very talented tailor) designed and made Danielle’s dress, they still followed the American tradition in which the groom does not see the bride on the wedding day until she walks down the isle.

Photo by Shannon Leith

Lucien and Angie broke a Chinese tradition that the wedding couple should be the first to arrive at the location where they would together greet the guests. This wedding couple arrived alongside the early guests and organized the decorating committee. Then they slipped away to dress.

Later, your photographer and the groom’s mother just happened to be present when Lucien appeared to escort his bride back to their shindig.

At Timothy and Danielle’s Episcopal wedding, Father David of Blessed Sacrament officiated, while Timothy’s good friend Rabi Kevin canted a call-to-worship and blessings in Hebrew.

Photo by Shannon Leith

Most Chinese weddings have no officiate, only a master-of-ceremonies. Lucien and Angie went one better. Angie served as her own MC. The languages were Chinese and English.

For Lucien and Angie, the primary expression of the bride’s ethnicity was the Korean groom’s trousseau, a gift from the bride’s grandparents. For Timothy and Danielle, it was Kransekake.

Photo by Shannon Leith

This Norwegian wedding cake is made from finely ground almonds, formed into a series of ever-smaller rings. The new couple (and some older couples) take one ring in their mouths, biting from opposite sides in a maneuver that requires proximity and coordination.

Photos by Shannon Leith

Then there was dancing, elegant and fun to watch.

Lucien and Angie also had a cake cutting followed by dancing. In this video, see if you can spot any differences. (For elegant dancing, watch for Angie’s 80-year-old grandparents.) Lucien may have started a new wedding tradition for the Chinese, bonfire jumping to his Uncle Forrest’s mandolin picking.


In the end, both weddings provided wonderful parties and great memories. We also come out of October with two delightful new daughters-in-law and . . . (just what is the correct English term for ones children’s’ in-laws? . . . in-laws-once-removed?) . . . friends-with-children-in-common.

Photo by Shannon Leith

Photographer yet to be identified

I think I have this straight:
Most expensive single item for Timothy and Danielle’s wedding: The Photographer
Most expensive single item for Lucien and Angie’s wedding: The Fireworks