Word: nisei
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...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...
Last fall A.J.A.s took over two principal bastions of Caucasian (haole in Hawaiian) power and status. George Ariyoshi was elected the state's Governor, and Fujio ("Fudge") Matsuda was appointed president of the University of Hawaii. Both men are nisei, or second-generation Americans; Ariyoshi's father had been a sumo wrestler in Japan. Today only two non-A.J.A.s hold major elective offices in Hawaii: U.S. Senator Hiram Fong, who is of Chinese ancestry, and Frank Fasi, mayor of Honolulu, an Italian American. A rundown of other important Hawaiian politicians reads like an A.J.A...
Heavily Decorated. Then came Pearl Harbor. A.J.A.s in public life withdrew rather than incur the wrath of the haoles. In huge numbers, the younger nisei volunteered for military service. They were rebuffed at first. But in 1942, thanks in part to the intercession of the late Governor John Burns, then a police officer serving as liaison between the FBI and the A.J.A.s, 7,500 were inducted and shipped to Europe. Half of them were killed or wounded; their units were heavily decorated. The proud survivors returned home and went to college on the G.I. Bill. A new professional class...
...Banzais. That was plainly evident during Hirohito's sojourn in the islands. The issei were excited-so much so that a protocol committee felt the need to urge them not to shout organized banzais at the royal motorcade. The nisei, however, were less curious. What about the sansei and yonsei (fourth-generation A.J.A.s)? Says Dennis Ogawa, associate professor of American studies at the University of Hawaii: "They think it's nice, but a lot of them would rather see Muhammad...