Word: nisei
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...West Coast after Pearl Harbor set the stage for some kind of drastic action. No rumor about Japanese Americans was too wild to be believed. Treasonous farmers were said to be growing tomatoes in arrow-shaped patches that pointed the way for enemy pilots to California defense plants. Nisei students were reported to be pouring into German- language classes at UCLA, presumably to help the Nazis. One story said wily Japanese saboteurs had quietly bought up land around West Coast military installations...
ASIANS. The "ABCs" (American-born Chinese) tend to be contemptuous of the "FOBs" ("fresh off the boat"). L.A. Filipinos have their own snickering Tagalog-language acronym?"TNTs"?for their new and often illegal arrivals. Nisei, or U.S.-born Japanese, are embarrassed by Japanese nationals who speak no English; newly arrived Japanese, in turn, are wary of L.A.'s native sansei (third generation) and yonsei (fourth). But all the Japanese seem to agree that they are superior to other Asians. And everybody picks on the Koreans. Says U.C.L.A. Sociologist Harry Kitona: "They regard the Koreans as the Mortimer Snerds...
...week run, demands the same attention. Blink and you will miss the Tower of Pisa looming outside a window in "a neighborhood called Little Italy." Glance at the evening paper and you will not see a young couple walk through a "Japanese garden" filled with blank-faced nisei standing in planters. Raid the fridge and you will miss the visit Sergeant-Lieut. Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) pays to a shoeshine wizard who knows everything about the Underworld-and about life after death, open-heart surgery and the fate of the Dodgers' pitching staff...
...displacement of Japanese Americans in 1942 was not entirely without benefit. The Federal Government allowed Nisei to work in rural mid-America, far from the strategic areas. As a result, in 1943 the school board of St. Edward, Neb. (pop. 720), hired Peter Ida to teach in its high school. Ida was a gifted man who had a positive and lasting influence on me and my 27 classmates...
Terrible ironies haunt the history. Fourth of July celebrations were bravely held behind barbed wire, in the shadow of sentry towers. Parents wasting away in tar-paper camp shacks proudly displayed starred banners indicating that their sons were American soldiers. Nisei (second generation Japanese Americans) members of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which fought gloriously in Europe, were sometimes required to have Caucasian escorts when they visited their interned families. (About 33,000 Japanese Americans served in the U.S. military during the war, some of them drafted right out of the camps.) After the war, many of the detainees found...