(Transcript) Ep 4: Shikata Ga Nai (It Cannot Be Helped)
Ep 4: Shikata Ga Nai (It Cannot Be Helped)
**(Currently being edited for spelling)
Noor:
Three, two, one. This is a recorder.
Speaker 1:
Why are you recording?
Noor:
I'm recording because I have a story that I want to share with you all.
Speaker 1:
What are you recording?
Anna Shinoda:
Did you guys know that Nora's a journalist?
Noor:
Do you know what a journalist is?
Speaker 1:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). [inaudible 00:00:19].
Mike Shinoda:
We were just talking ... Oh, my god, this is so funny because we were just talking about journalism in the car this morning.
Noor:
These are my friends, Mike and Anna [Shinoda 00:00:27]. I love watching them parent.
Mike Shinoda:
We were talking about the fact that it's very hard to tell stories in a way without bias. And even if people are trying not to have bias, they'll probably have bias, anyway.
Noor:
Did you all have any opinions about bias?
Speaker 2:
I don't think it's good.
Anna Shinoda:
I was in the backseat.
Mike Shinoda:
You don't think it's good?
Anna Shinoda:
I don't know.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Noor:
I was just sitting at the same dinner table a month ago, telling them about my new project, Rep.
Noor:
The last time that we came and we visited, and the night before we had to go fly back home, we stayed here. And I shared with you the investigative series that I've been working on. And do you remember what one of your first reactions to what I said was?
Mike Shinoda:
I remember saying that, when Muslims were, in recent history, in the last few years, getting stopped from entering the country, that the Japanese Americans were standing up and saying, "We've lived through this."
Noor:
Mike is Japanese American. You might know him from Linkin Park or Fort Minor, where he raps. His father, his 11 siblings, and their parents were all interned in Poston, Arizona.
Mike Shinoda:
It happened in World War II, there was internment camps. We're headed in this direction and we've already seen what that looks like.
Noor:
At Your Service, an iHeart Media Present, Rep, chapter four, [Japanese 00:02:17], It Cannot Be Helped. I'm in LA for an event, but I extend the trip an extra day with the intention that maybe an interview for Rep will line up. I have a list of who I want to talk to for the series and it just isn't working out. Adam, who's my partner in everything, tells me ...
Adam:
You're the one who tells people not to show up to a story with a pre-written script. The entire point of Rep is to be open to where the story takes you and to challenge the stories you knew. You need to surrender to the project and it'll take you exactly where it's meant.
Noor:
And later that day, I meet a woman named Hinako. Hinako is a makeup artist.
Hinako:
My name is Hinako Murashige.
Noor:
I have the pleasure of working with Hinako to get ready for a dinner that I'm attending. And I'm drawn to her artistry because of her work with one of my favorite musicians, Saint Vincent.
Annie Clark:
I was getting ready for this event, and I mentioned the event and Hinako said, "Oh, yeah. I'm working with someone who's going to the same event, Nora. She's a journalist."
Noor:
That's the voice of the one and only Annie Clark, also known as the Grammy-winning artist, St. Vincent.
Annie Clark:
Well, long story short, we show up to the event and Nora and I are sat at the same table. And we got to talking and fawning over Hinako.
Hinako:
I was hoping you guys meet.
Annie Clark:
And I guess a series of little, tiny miracles led to this story unfolding.
Hinako:
I am from Hiroshima. As you know, we had atomic bomb. So that was 1945. Especially my generation, I was born in '75, so in the school, start from first grade, we just watching the footage. The American Army shot or videotaped everything, what happened right after the atomic bomb was bombed in Hiroshima. So I had a very specific, I guess, growing up experience.
Noor:
I think about how, when I mentioned Rep to my friend, Mike, he first thought of his own community, Japanese Americans, specifically ones who were interned in camps during World War II. So I shared this with Hinako and I ask her, knowing that survivors may be in their 80s and 90s, "Is there any chance you may know someone?"
Hinako:
My husband is first generation of Japanese Americans and they don't really speak up, but I knew that my father-in-law, mother-in-law went to Japanese concentration camp during World War II.
Noor:
She tells me her father-in-law happens to live close by. And I realize he is the person that I was meant to interview next.
Noor:
Yeah. I have it. I arrived at a senior living community called Atherton, just an hour outside of LA, with traffic.
Speaker 3:
Hi.
Noor:
Hi.
Speaker 4:
Hi.
Noor:
Hello.
Speaker 3:
All right.
Noor:
Hi.
Speaker 3:
Hi.
Noor:
I'm only expecting to meet Steven, Hinako's husband, and Don, Steven's father, but to my incredible surprise, two other people show up to our interview.
Don:
Hi. I'm Donald Shogo Murashige. I'm one of the ones here that are the older ones. And then we could talk about things that we had experienced during, before camp, and after camp, and not necessarily at camp because we were kind of young, but there's a lot of things that we have heard that we could pass on.
Speaker 3:
How old are you?
Don:
I'm 50 ... No, 85.
Noor:
85.
Don:
Yeah.
Noor:
Wow. Thank you.
Mitsuru:
My name is Mitsuru Shiozaki and I'm 87.
Nancy:
I'm Nancy Shiozaki.
Noor:
Oh, it's your birthday today.
Nancy:
83. I have to get used to 83.
Noor:
Mitsuru, who goes by Mitz, and Nancy showed up for this conversation because they, too, were forced to live in internment camps with their families when they were children. You see, in February, 1942, a couple of months after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, forcing over 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry into internment camps for the next three years. The reason, the US Government claimed to be worried about Japanese spies. Of course, no one who was incarcerated was ever convicted of espionage.
Mitsuru:
Hi.
Nancy:
Hi.
Mitsuru:
Actually-
Nancy:
My sister is also here, if you want to talk to her.
Noor:
Hello. Is this your sister? Nice to meet you. Can you give your full name and, if you're comfortable with, your age?
Kosko:
Sure. [Kosko Tinaka 00:08:14]. I live here at Atherton. I'm 82.
Etsko:
My name is [Etsko Seguchi 00:08:21] and I'm actually the same age as Kos. We're twins.
Noor:
You're twins?
Etsko:
Yes.
Noor:
How did you not tell me that part?
Etsko:
I don't always do that.
Noor:
Let me go get my twin sister.
Noor:
At this point, word about my visit spreads at the senior living community. People continue to join our group, eager to share their stories. And I quickly realize this is the turning point for Rep, the story about the stories we tell. During World War II, the American narrative featured Japanese people as the villains. As a Muslim American, I relate to this storyline and I want to know how this experience shaped who they are today.
Noor:
Well, I just think it's so special that we came here, thinking we were going to be talking to two people, and then I look back and there's 10 people. So out of everybody here, raise your hand if you were ever in one of the camps. One, two, three, four, five. Five people.
Etsko:
[inaudible 00:09:31].
Kosko:
Say what camp you're from.
Mitsuru:
Camp Poston, Arizona.
Nancy:
Heart Mountain, Wyoming.
Don:
Gila, Arizona.
Kosko:
We started out from our farm to Santa Anita and then, from there, we went to Rohwer, Arkansas.
Etsko:
Well, I was just [inaudible 00:09:55] with Kos, but we went to Rohwer, Arkansas. And actually ...
Noor:
Now, we are all gathered together outside, 10 of us and counting. Sitting at a table with an umbrella giving us shade, it's a perfect sunny California day. The sky is extra blue, birds are out, and Don gets right into it.
Don:
The reason why I have to really [inaudible 00:10:19] names is the fact that I go by Don when I was in English classes, going to school, but all my relatives and really good friends know me as Shogo, but either one, I will answer to either one.
Noor:
Why would going by Shogo make someone closer to you than the people who call you Don?
Don:
I don't know, because Shogo is always a part of the Japanese in me. My mother was born in America, my father was born in Hawaii. So the only ones in Japan would be my grandparents. So my folks are the second generation. There's a Japanese hospital in Los Angeles. That's where I was born.
Noor:
Okay. Here's the scene. You're born in the States. Your parents probably are, too. The government of the country that your ancestors are from attacks the US and, a few months later, your family gets an aggressive knock on your door. You have days to pack up your entire lives, whatever you can carry in two hands, and you move to internment camps to live in inhumane conditions. For how long? You don't know. Suddenly, because of something that has nothing to do with you, as a person, you are now deemed the enemy.
Noor:
How old were you when you were there?
Kosko:
We were three years old when we went into the camps.
Don:
And the other thing is all of the camps had set up the barbed wire all the way around. They had towers that were going for security. And so it's not like it was a summer camp, something like that, never was like that.
Noor:
This is important to note. People were living in barrack structures with no plumbing or cooking facilities. Almost 2,000 people died while interned at these camps.
Kosko:
So when people mention December 7th to me, I said, "Let me tell you what happened on December 7th," and I tell them my father's experience and our father's experience.
Noor:
December 7th, 1941, also known as Pearl Harbor.
Kosko:
When I get asked about that, it's my opportunity to tell them what really happened.
Noor:
And what happened was, two months later, Kosko and her family were told to pack and they were sent to camp in Santa Anita.
Kosko:
We lived in the horse stall. My mother, dear heart that she is, after ... Well, she never wanted to be near a horse again because we lived where the horses lived. And you made your own mattresses by ... They gave you mattress ticking and we spilled it with straw. That was our bed.
Noor:
Sleeping in horse stalls is a devastatingly common story for families who were interned. It was one of the first things my friend Mike told me about his own family's experience.
Kosko:
The government just took the land. It didn't matter that the Indians were there, nothing. Eminent domain, they took it. And placed like Topaz in the middle of nowhere, Manzanar, Arkansas was in the marshes of the Mississippi River.
Etsko:
The swamps.
Kosko:
The swamps, yes. Rice was grown in Arkansas before, but then, while they were there, they taught them how to make better rice [inaudible 00:13:51].
Etsko:
[inaudible 00:13:51] farmers.
Kosko:
Vegetables, too, because the people were not used to having meat and the kind of food that southerners ate. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's not what we ate. So they grew their own vegetables, too.
PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:14:04]
Speaker 5:
... but it's not what we ate. So they grew their own vegetables, too.
Noor:
Okay. So tell me about, as a child, do you remember the things that you were feeling or the story that you were writing in your head about what was happening in your life? [Mitz 00:14:15] is eager to share. He was seven years old. When he went to camp.
Mitz:
My dad had a strawberry farm in San Luis Rey. When the war broke out, he had no idea that it was taking place because, being out in the farm, you're isolated until the federal government said that you have ... I forget how many days you had a week or something like that to gather all the things that you can carry with you and then go to the Union Station. And then from there, they're going to send you to Poston, which is in Arizona.
Don:
Yeah, Poston. Huh? You went to-
Mitz:
On the way there, at one of the stops that the bus took, I asked my mom, I said, "I want to go home," and she says, "We are going home," and that's at Poston, our new home.
Don:
Oh, that's your home.
Mitz:
Yeah. They tried to make the best they can with what they had. And so they grew watermelon. And then, in our block, the men had dug a big hole and put some ... I think they had coy. Yeah, there was coy there. And so they put it in that pond and they built a bridge over it, like they have in Japan, those arc bridges. So it was a way of forgetting, trying to forget what had happened and to do the best they can. She got denied, can't be helped, so let's go forward and not complain or be angry about what had happened.
Noor:
[Japanese 00:15:57], it cannot be helped. That's the Japanese phrase Mitz just used. And it's a phrase that comes up often when talking about the camp experience.
Mitz:
Sometimes, I think it's God's plan, God's doing, that puts us through things like that for better things I had.
Noor:
I understand the spiritual sentiment of [Japanese 00:16:23], that it cannot be helped or undone. Muslims use the phrase [foreign language 00:16:29], God's decree has already been decided or predestined, but at what cost?
Speaker 5:
I don't know about loss or gain, but my father was a farmer in the Orange County area. And he lost everything, the equipment. This is about March, April. The crops are coming in. They had worked all winter to get the crops ready and, all of a sudden, we had to leave everything. We had to sell our refrigerator for a 10th of the price or, if they didn't sell, we just left it. But when you say cost, my father, after the war, could not go back to the farm because he wasn't a citizen. At that time, he couldn't even buy property. And we weren't old enough to buy it in our name. So my father became a gardener in Pasadena, lifelong gardener. So he totally changed his occupation, as well.
Speaker 5:
It's interesting that people say that Japanese are natural gardeners. The reason they're gardeners, and there are so many of them, is that's one of the few occupations that they could take up independently after the war. People weren't hiring them. And I was always proud of my father was a gardener. I didn't realize he had no choice. He had to bring food to the table. Today, in fact, there is a demographic change. Most of the gardeners are Hispanic now. It's kind of interesting.
Noor:
It's impossible to quantify how much life in internment camps impacted the people who were forced to live there or, rather, exist there. And that's the thing with generational trauma. It shows up in all of our communities from very different experiences, but in very similar ways.
Don:
The experiences that I had, I think I still feel that it affected my life and that that'll never change. It just affected my life. And so I try not to think about it because they are experiences that are not very good. I probably don't talk about camp life. He probably never knew.
Noor:
Steven?
Don:
I don't know whether he knew that I went to camp, but maybe just ... No, you didn't know.
Steven:
I knew that you went to camp, just like ...
Noor:
This father/son interaction feels familiar, realizing what we think we know about our parents versus what we actually know.
Don:
Yeah, just like my folks. They never talked about it.
Noor:
As a child, as a young person, do you want your parents to talk about it?
Don:
No.
Speaker 5:
They didn't talk about it unless you asked them. And we were probably in high school when we had to start making history reports that we really started talking about it, but we lived the experience.
Noor:
When I first started on this journey, I wanted to begin with a story that I had heard about in my own family, but it was never fully unpacked in our familial conversations. It still isn't fully unpacked and maybe it'll never be in my own lifetime. You see, trauma is passed down for generations, but the sooner we start talking through the things we've gone through, the sooner we can heal ourselves and our families.
Speaker 6:
Rep.
Noor:
After a couple of years of living in an internment camp, Don and his family are finally allowed to leave.
Don:
You stay there all that time and then, when the camp breaks up, the government decides, "Well, that's about all." They give you ... I think it was $25 to get back where you want to go. And then, when they come back here, there's no place to live. There's nothing really set up for the Japanese to come back here. There's just ... you're on your own. My family was lucky in that, before the war, there was a family across the street, three French ladies, and they owned a lot of property around where we lived or my folks were renting from them. And so when we had to go to camp, they held all of my folks' stuff. So we owe those French ladies a lot because they took care of a lot of the daily things that you would really need. You come back here with nothing, looking for a job, and it's just very difficult.
Steven:
[inaudible 00:21:37].
Mitz:
The thing that impressed me, and I thought about it later, is that ... You heard that term, [Japense00:21:45], can't be helped. And that was a popular saying that it can't be helped. And so he did the best he could, at the time, to manage. And then when they told us that, "You can only take what you can carry," I was seven years old and I had two sisters. One was five and the other was four. They couldn't carry anything. So my dad had to take a great big trunk and just stuffed it with whatever he could. And of course, my mom, she had arms to take my sister with. So that was what we had to live with, whatever you can carry, which wasn't a whole lot.
Noor:
[Japanese 00:22:34] reminds me of the survival mentalities of so many families building lives in America. In 1981, 35 years after the last internment camp closed, the US Government's commission on wartime relocation heard the testimonies of Japanese Americans across the country who spoke out for the first time about their incarceration during World War II.
Amy:
My name is Amy [Iwasoki Nash 00:23:06]. I'm a clinical social worker and have worked in the profession for 23 years. My specialty has been working with Japanese Americans. I was six years old when the war broke out between the United States and Japan. We wanted to believe that America did not hate and reject us. This is the same psychological defense that beaten and abused children use. Mental health experts have found that abused children prefer to believe that they were bad rather than to believe that their parents are bad. Like the abused child who still wants his parents to love him and hope that, by acting right, he will be accepted, the Japanese Americans chose the cooperative, obedient, and quiet American façade to cope with an overtly hostile, racist America.
Amy:
The problem is that acceptance by submission exacts a very high price. It is at the expense of the individual sense of true self-worth. Though we may be seen by others as model Americans, we have paid a tremendous psychological price for this acceptance. On the surface, we do not look like former concentration camp victims, but we are still vulnerable. Our scars are permanent and deep.
Noor:
Here's another survivor testimony from the 1981 hearings.
Speaker 7:
My name is [inaudible 00:24:42]. I had three girls when World War II broke out. The eldest was six and the youngest was two. The facilities as such were the most primitive, as far as I could determine. The outhouse had no partition, just a board and holes cut into them. This was epitome of human degradation. You learned quickly that, in order to survive, you must adapt yourself to the standards as set up by the army. To try and explain to the children that the reasons why they must accept these new rules, rules of the new social existence, was one of the most difficult things to explain. In retrospect, how does one evaluate these years of internment, the loss of the human dignity, self-esteem, pride, whatever? The lost years for my children, myself, my parents, my brothers and sisters can never be replaced.
Noor:
The process of evaluating trauma your family has gone through is a journey that takes generations to heal. And maybe what can be helped is unpacking the layers underneath the regurgitated story you've told of your past.
Mitz:
One of the things that personally happened because of the war was the fact that Japan had started the war. And so what happens is that, my sister and I, as we were growing up, we were leery of having anything Japanese in our life at the time. So I didn't learn how to speak Japanese. And I think primarily because of the war that just didn't want that in my life at the time. So that's when I was growing up. And my sister is the same way. So us two, we speak no Japanese at all, hardly any at all. I wish I knew how to speak Japanese. I really do. And we missed out on that because of the war.
Noor:
Can I share a memory with you?
Mitz:
Yeah.
Noor:
When I was 13 ... My whole childhood, I grew up in a very majority white, conservative town. And my parents tried so hard to teach me Arabic. They're both immigrants from Libya. And I remember my mom filled out a school form one time and it said, "Do you speak any other languages at home?" And she had written Arabic, as well. And I was so embarrassed at school that I hid the form and I put it at the bottom of the pile of the forms because I didn't want anybody to know that I spoke Arabic.
Noor:
And then I went to gymnastics practice and, before my class started, my mom was making me do my Arabic homework, but I was giving her such a hard time. And then the gymnastics teacher came and said, "What are you working on?" My mom, frustrated, said, "She's doing her Arabic homework," and the teacher was so surprised. She said, "You know how to speak a second language?" She said this with curiosity and astonishment. And she, totally serious, was like, "That's incredible." And I remember, unfortunately, I needed that validation from a white woman who wasn't ...
PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:28:04]
Noor:
That validation from a white woman who wasn't the same faith or race or religion or as I was. Now as an adult, I realize like I was so embarrassed because I didn't want for people to think that I was different. And as I hear your story, that wasn't your fault. It wasn't your fault that you didn't want to learn that. It was because that was the story that was being put on youth. And so of course, it's so hard now as an adult to think about that and to look back on that. But what would you say to that child version of yourself and your sister now?
Speaker 8:
Yeah, I regret it, that happened because probably should have just gone on just a regular learning how to speak at least a little bit of Japanese, but as it ended up, hardly at all. It's something that you missed that you really hope that you could change. But, I don't know.
Speaker 9:
Speaking about speaking Japanese. Well, my parents asked me to go to Japanese school, which I did for three years, but I didn't particularly care for it. In fact, when we finally moved to a permanent place here in Monterey Park, I told my parents we should speak English because here we're in America here. And so I was speaking English and they were listening in English, talking back in Japanese.
Noor:
Mitz's Parents were willing to meet him halfway. This is something that's familiar to me too, some of my own family would do the exact same thing. But what I also found compelling is how Mitz was trying to convince his parents to embrace the culture of the same country which had just finished imprisoning his family. But he was American so he wanted his family to leave behind their Japanese culture and embrace America's, he wanted to assimilate. Which many who come here can relate to, but that pressure of assimilation erases the richness of our diverse cultures, which make up America to begin with. Of course, America in the 1940s wasn't exactly eager to celebrate diversity. But what was American culture saying about its Japanese American citizens.
Noor:
In her essay, the daughter of Fu Manchu, Dr. Shoba Sharad Rajkopaul, writes about the stereotypes of Asian peoples in pop culture at the time. She writes that, quote, during the World War II years, the Japanese were depicted in an openly negative light in Hollywood films. Until then it was the Chinese who were seen as the quintessential Asian villains. This dynamic flips back and forth and Rajkopaul writes after, quote, the communist takeover of China in 1949, the Chinese became once more the favorite Hollywood whipping boy, along with the Viet Cong, end quote.
Noor:
There's this idea of the good Asian versus the bad Asian, the good Muslim versus the bad Muslim, and you can apply it to any sub community. It's that same model minority game that America encouraged all its new immigrants to play. Later on it would be my community that became Hollywood's new favorite threat. Now Islamophobia and demonization of Muslims has replaced yellow peril, which is another reason I relate to what Mitz is saying and why they seem to relate to what I've known.
Speaker 11:
Personal security precautions to avoid becoming a victim of an attack, avoid crowded public-
Noor:
Many of us know what it's like to watch TV or movies and see people who you relate to be portrayed as the villain. But what was it like for them back then before there was internet? How often did young Mitzever see himself on the screen and not have it feel offensive?
Speaker 9:
Didn't see too many Japanese people on the screen. In fact, they had other people that were dressed up like Japanese. So I thought, why aren't they getting regular Japanese people to play the part?
Noor:
For instance, in 1944 one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, Katharine Hepburn, played a character of Chinese ethnicity. But to be convincing, she did the role in yellow face. And no one batted an eye in 1956 when John Wayne, America's cowboy, played Genghis Khan in The Conqueror. This kind of casual racism was just that common.
Speaker 10:
There was no media representation, but there were Japanese films because I went to the Japanese theater even after the war. But there were Japanese films. [inaudible 00:33:28] you know him. So we knew a lot of the Japanese actors, but they were not represented in the films we saw here.
Noor:
So what is the difference to you all between American, Japanese culture, American culture and Japanese culture?
Speaker 10:
We are part of the Japanese American culture because of where we grew up and we were a small enclave of people, but we were Americans. I consider myself an American. The Japanese part, I lived in Japan, I moved to Japan, lived there for about five years and really appreciate the culture, the history, where they are today, but I am not Japanese. I'm Japanese American.
Speaker 12:
That's interesting. I also lived in Japan for a number of years for my husband's employment. And I always thought I was Japanese until I stepped off the plane and realized you're not Japanese, you're American. But I very quickly realized that I am not Japanese. I appreciate the Japanese culture, but I'm an American, totally an American. Soon as I opened my mouth, they knew.
Noor:
Isn't that the story of whenever you go back to the motherland, you can never hide that.
Speaker 12:
That's right. Yeah. I have the American accent.
Noor:
It's incredible to see you all so confident. And there's a deep understanding, like we are American, but for that period of time, America did not see you all as American. Isn't that the difficulty with the story of America, is you come to this place where you create your life and there's endless possibilities for you to do so. But you all are a part of a community that experienced one of the most horrific acts of oppression that this country has ever inflicted on people. And they not only told you, we don't see you as American. They furthered the narrative and said, we see you as a threat. How do you reconcile that?
Speaker 10:
I can't relate to that because I was so young, but my parents did. And the [inaudible 00:35:50] in quite often, that's just the way it is. We are here, we're not leaving. Yes, we're being punished. The rug has been taken out from under us, but my parents never gave up and said, I am not going to be an American. And that's why I give them credit for not being bitter, I think I would've been. The way I've grown up with the freedom I've had, but my parents didn't have that freedom because they couldn't be citizens. The world was very different at that time.
Noor:
Was there ever a fear that this could happen again?
Speaker 10:
Whenever I have an inkling that it might happen again I said, I will fight it because this is wrong. At our age we didn't realize it, but we were considered the enemy. We were considered the enemy because we were, we were in America, but our ancestors are Japan.
Speaker 12:
We look like the enemy.
Speaker 10:
We look like the enemy. We were not the enemy, but we look like the enemy. And therefore we were treated as the enemy.
Noor:
At this point, everyone in the group starts talking about war hysteria, and it's eerie how I feel the kind of hysteria they're talking about. In January, 2017, when President Trump signed the first version of his Muslim ban, the conversations in my own family's household were reflecting on what happened to Japanese Americans during World War II.
Speaker 10:
We definitely can relate with what you are going through. I'm very sympathetic to Muslims and I try to reach out to them, but I can relate to what you're going through as a second generation.
Steve Nagano:
The organization that we're associated with is called the National Coalition for Regis and Reparations.
Noor:
That's the voice of Steve Nagano. He was here visiting his mother and happened to join our group along with his wife, Patty, while we were all sharing stories.
Steve Nagano:
Right after 9/11, I think it was two weeks after we had a candlelight vigil, and since then we've had support with them. And we started a program called Bridging Communities, in which we worked with Muslims groups. As a matter of fact, a bunch of us have done presentations in mosques. We always had since Manzanar pilgrimage, since 9/11, we've had a group take a bus of Muslims to Manzanar, one of the camps. It's the closest camp to Los Angeles.
Steve Nagano:
I would like it to be part of our Japanese American culture to stand up against injustice, particularly injustice against people who are racially profiled or racially separated. And that's why right now our biggest effort is to try to get a commission in Congress for black reparations. And we participate in the demonstrations at the airport against the Muslim ban, the power of the executive order 9066 was incarceration Japanese. And so of course the Muslim ban was also an executive order.
Speaker 9:
I really appreciate what you're doing, because this is a way of making America aware of what had happened and the experience that people went through would be a way of possibly not having that done again. Having this information that you're doing, which is fantastic, if they could put that in the history books and let the world know what had happened so it wouldn't happen again.
Noor:
What is the power of story in all of this?
Speaker 10:
Very powerful, but it has to be written down. It can't be just oral, it has to be written down for the next generation. And I've tried to tell my children and grandchildren more and more each year, they don't know it all yet because I don't think it all comes out at once.
Noor:
I feel this severity deeply, the importance of documenting our history and knowing we are a part of each other's stories.
Speaker 9:
I think the stories, if told, in truth, that it makes the event alive, what had happened. Story is a way of making things so that it makes us a part of it.
Speaker 13:
Rep.
Noor:
When I originally started working on Rep, I thought this project was going to focus on the story of representation around American Muslims. And when I was at the Chinoto's house a month ago, Mike planted the seed for this Japanese American story, being a part of Rep reminding me of our own interconnectedness. Rep is less about a group of people and more about how, the way we tell stories about ourselves and each other, our impacting all of us.
Speaker 14:
What's your name?
Noor:
Uter Noor, N-O-O-R.
Noor:
So I've just picked up some sushi for family dinner at the Chinoto's and just told them all about my day.
Noor:
Thank you.
Speaker 15:
So they were that's my dad's age, I bet you heard things about gardens.
Noor:
Yes.
Speaker 15:
You heard things about like watching movies on the sides of buildings or on the sides of water tower-
PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [00:42:04]
Speaker 16:
Watching movies on the sides of buildings or on the sides of water towers and playing baseball, and how they connected with one another and tried to make it feel like a community and not like a prison. Even though the guns are on the towers pointed inside. That perspective is specific to that group of people who is young enough that it would be confusing to them.
Speaker 16:
And so the older generation who was more affected and who were more weighed down by the actual experience because they had an awareness, those people don't talk about it, didn't talk about it. They were hard. My older aunts were very- … It was so hard to get a story out of them. And when you did, when you did get a story out of them, their stories were always like, "But it's not a big deal. Oh, and but we got through it and, oh, so and so was so helpful."
Speaker 16:
It's like, "No, no, no, so and so was really helpful. So and so died in the camp. There's a severe injustice that went on and you're not acknowledging it."
Speaker 16:
And they go, "Yeah, yeah, that's true, but we don't focus on that."
Noor:
Shikata ga nai.
Speaker 16:
Shikata ga nai.
Noor:
Shikata ga nai.
Speaker 16:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Noor:
And that just kept coming up?
Speaker 16:
Yeah, it cannot be helped. That's it cannot be helped. Shikata ga nai. That's very specific to the Japanese American experience. So, imagine that's a cornerstone of the way to deal with these things. But also, by the way, it extends into if somebody has cancer they act that way. If somebody's life is falling apart families will act that way. But this specifically, for them to have that as part of the culture and then to speak up on somebody else's behalf, that's a pretty big act in Japanese American culture.
Noor:
Hinako texted me right before we got here and said, "What a day you brought to us. I talked to them after the interview and everyone said that it was so much more than they expected and they so appreciated that you asked them about their feelings and not just facts. I was very surprised that they were expressive because Japanese American people, especially the old generation, don't usually express their feelings at all even to their family. So, it was huge even to Steven and me to be there and listen to them."
Speaker 16:
Yeah, that's a common theme you'll hear is that the young generations are always so excited to hear the stories of the old generations because they'll tell the happy stories easily and readily, but the difficult times are not stories that they give up very readily.
Speaker 17:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). I remember when you interviewed Auntie Nesan for Nakenji Song, that your family was kind of shocked that she would do the interview-
Speaker 16:
I heard from a bunch of relatives. They were like, "You recorded stories that day that her children hadn't heard." And it was I'm not journalist, I had this song and I wanted to know- … I wanted to get the song right.
Noor:
Well, I think that we all can just ask our elders about their lives so that we know where we came from. And that seemed to be the theme. But the way that everything kind of just tied together and that it was all interconnected. That's something that I've never seen the power of story unfold that way. You have to trust that the story is going to reveal itself to you.
Speaker 16:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Noor:
So, thanks. Thanks for the news tip.
Speaker 16:
Hey. Obviously I had no idea what I was doing.
Noor:
Hinako, the person who so generously introduced me to her family, we stay in touch.
Speaker 18:
So, when I was working with you, I knew what you do and I really admire what you are trying to do and you achieved. Honestly I was really speechless because that generation, Japanese old people, they don't really say their emotion parts. Wow, these people has a lot inside and just either didn't have an opportunity or they didn't want to speak up so much. But that day was everybody speaking what everybody wants to speak. That was amazing and felt so organic and it was meant to be.
Speaker 18:
[inaudible 00:46:48], my husband and I told my father-in-law, "Wow, I didn't know you speak that much."
Noor:
Why do you think that day everyone felt like they could be open with each other?
Speaker 18:
I don't know, but that energy was different. I thought you were going to ask them so many questions, but everybody just like, "Oh, I have a story." So, I think that's important to just generation-generation to hand it over and keep the story going. I think that's why we are doing this, right?
Speaker 19:
Can I say something?
Speaker 16:
Go ahead.
Speaker 19:
I just wanted to say that in class we're learning about the times where people were enslaved and I was thinking with my friend Jane that, well, what if we were in those times? How would we feel? If it was a little- … I think it was earlier or later I would probably be put in the Japanese internment camps or she would be an enslaved person. How would that feel to be in those people's shoes? What would we do about it if we were them?
Speaker 16:
Did you have any ideas of what you would do?
Speaker 19:
I said that I don't know what I would do because if it was a life or death situation then I'd probably want to live. I would just probably follow what I was supposed to do.
Speaker 16:
Yeah, great story.
Noor:
Thanks. Thanks everyone. The end.
Speaker 20:
Wow, what a day.
Speaker 16:
Lots of weird- … What do you call it?
Noor:
Miracles.
Speaker 16:
Coincidence?
Noor:
They were actual miracles.
Noor:
Whenever I've talked about this experience with my friends and family, I go back to the word miracle. But what it really is is the result of remaining and committing to being open to a story. Little moments built up to all of this. Mike sharing how he related to rap, how I met Hinako and St. Vincent on the same day. Right before I headed over to the group interview, my cousin stopped by my hotel. I hadn't seen her in years and the first thing she tells me is how her driver spontaneously gave her a card handwriting a Japanese saying on it to alleviate stress and anxiety. My cousin handed the card to me not even knowing that I was working on this story.
Noor:
And later, when I left the interview, to head back to the Shinodas, my driver, who was German, started speaking Japanese in the car, telling us he was married to a Japanese woman for almost 40 years. There are so many of these in between moments.
Noor:
And I share with you all because the miracle is knowing how interconnected we all are. And how when we choose to witness the connectedness in our stories we also choose to heal.
Noor:
Steven Nagano, who joined the group later, and told us about his work with Muslim Americans, shared something else with me that I keep thinking about. He said, "It wasn't until gaining redress and reparations and the U.S. government issuing an apology that the shame Japanese Americans associated with incarceration was finally lifted." He continues to tell me that it was only soon after that that there was a surge in books, movies, and plays that spoke to this experience.
Noor:
The story of Shikata ga nai completely changed how I approach rap. Less controlling what story comes next and more surrendering. Because it's through this witnessing, affirming, and documenting of our stories that our future can be helped.
Noor:
So, this is rap. I'm Noor Tagouri, as always at your service.
Noor:
Rep is a production of At Your Service, School of Humans, and iHeart Podcasts. This show is written and produced by me, Noor Tagouri, and Zarin Burnett. Editing, production, sound design, and scoring by James T. Green of Molten Heart. Theme song written and composed by Maimouna Youssef, a.k.a. Mumu Fresh. Our senior producer is Amelia Brock. Our associate producers are Tyler Donahue and Betsy Cardenas. Mix and master by [inaudible 00:52:00] Frasier. Audio assembly by Mary Do. Fact checking by Marissa Brown. Archival of 1981 hearings are from Nikei for Civil Rights and Redress and Visual Communications. Violin Tsunami Song is written by Karo Isibashi, performed by Kishi Bashi, courtesy of Joyful Noise Records by arrangement with Terror Bird Media. Kenji Song, words and music by Mike Shinoda, copyright Universal Music, Z Songs on behalf of itself and Fort Minor.
Noor:
Our executives producers are Adam [inaudible 00:52:38], Zarin Burnett, Jason English, and me, Noor Tagouri. Special thanks to Virginia Prescott from School of Humans and Will Pearson from iHeart Podcasts.
Noor:
I'd also like to thank Hinako, Steve and Don Mirashigei, the Shinoda family, Steve and Patty Nagano, Annie Clark, Mitsuru and Nancy Shiozaki, Kazko Tanaka, and Etsgo Saguchi for trusting us with the story. And if this podcast resonated with you and you would like to support our show, please rate and review and share it with someone you think may enjoy it.
Noor:
Tune in to Rep next time. I'm Noor Tagouri, as always at your service.