"Running from the Sun" - Thoughts
I know usually I post about works in the horror/vampire genre but there is a project and novel I am working on currently that I think deserves some serious attention and hopefully an audience.
The next book I am uncovering, is a serious dramatic work of historical signficance. It is the story of a Japanese-American girl and her family as they experience life in Japanese-American internment.
During March of 1942 through late fall of 1945 just months after V-J Day, 120,000 Japanese-Americans (2/3rds born in the U.S. and citizens) were forcefully removed and rellocated from their homes on the West Coast to concentration camps called "relocation centers" or "evacuation centers" for the duration of the war years. They were not charged with any crime, they were not given any due process other than 6 days notice to take what they could carry, and were not afforded their rights as citizens.
They were prisoners of their own adoptive country. They were segregated from the rest of society for their enthnicity, lineage, and appearence. Though born here in this country, the Nisei (2nd generation Japanese-Americans) were considered as much the enemy as the Japanese Imperial Army and Navy as were their parents, the Isei generation who had immigrated to America to escape the turmoils and hardships they hoped to avoid in Japan.
Had the Isei or Nisei generations returned to Japan, the men would have been likely conscripted into the armed services and families would have struggled to survive in a country that would not have fully accepted them. In either country, their loyalties were questioned.
The story I wish to present will be a story of a fictional family wrapped in the very real story of Japanese-American internment, racism, war, chaos, confusion, and betrayal. However, I wish to also present how despite these hardships, families have survived and have endured. A whole community has endured and re-built. Voices that were once silenced out of fear have begun to speak, shout, cry out, and in some cases finally voice their angers. My novel hopes to tap into these voices and bring them to our attention- through the eyes of a girl who in 1942-1945 was considered a threat to national security simply because of her appearence and lineage.
If a country is going to herd innocent women, children, and men into a camp surrounded by barbed wires and guard towers, it must not have taken much for the government to conjure their reasons. We say they did it out of blatant hysteria, paranoia, and fear. We say it was for the safety of Japanese-Americans. We say we did it because we couldn't trust them enough. What reasons did they have to send 122,000 people to the ten concentration camps that were scattered in the most remote and hostile enviornments in the U.S.? What morality was behind the decision to commit to acts that blatantly violated the rights of citizens?
If there was an incident that sparked Executive Order 9066, was it justification enough to incarcerate children along with their mothers and fathers? If there were acts of sabotage against the United States by members of the Japanese-American community, what made the U.S. government think it needed to respond to such acts with wholesale removal and rellocation of some 122,000 people?
While some say that what the U.S. did to the Japanese-American community paled in comparison to what the Japanese soldiers were doing to U.S. POWs and soldiers... let's be clear and frank about something. The Japanese-Americans who were interned were not soldiers, they were civilians. They were not involved in combat action against their neighbors or fellow Americans. They were farmers, shop owners, laborers, ordinary people like their neighbors around them. The actions of the Japanese Army and Navy were independent of the Japanese-American community. And the United States had no right to stoop so low as to employ POW tactics on civilians. The United States had no right to lump the actions or non-actions of the Japanese-American community with the heinous and gruesome acts of the Japanese Imperial Army or Navy.
Why a book about Japanese-American internment?
Think about it- how far is the U.S. government right now from commiting similar acts against the Muslim/Arab-American community right now? How close were they to commiting another Executive Order 9066 against the Muslim-American community after the events of September 11th, 2001? How angered and emotional we all were on that day that we might very well have green lighted such a proposal to ship every Muslim and Arab-American to some camp-like facillity without due process, charges, trials, or legal respresentation. What if, God forbid, another terrorist attack occured, would that be the straw that breaks the camel's back so to speak were we drop morality in favor of some percieved notion of added security or safety?
And as it stands, the U.S. doesn't have a very good track record when it comes to giving its own citizens equal rights and dignities under its Constitution. I don't have to remind you of the mistreatment and racism agaist the African-American community... Native American community... Irish-American community... Chinese-American community... etc. I don't have to remind you of places like Guantanamo Bay, Cuba... or Abu-Grahib, Iraq either.
I think now more than ever we start looking at ourselves and start taking a serious look at how American we are and how we see what being American is. When do we start accepting Americans for who they are and not by what they look like or what God they worship or where their ancestry comes from? Why can't we accept Americans for being Americans? Why not accept the diversity?
The next book I am uncovering, is a serious dramatic work of historical signficance. It is the story of a Japanese-American girl and her family as they experience life in Japanese-American internment.
During March of 1942 through late fall of 1945 just months after V-J Day, 120,000 Japanese-Americans (2/3rds born in the U.S. and citizens) were forcefully removed and rellocated from their homes on the West Coast to concentration camps called "relocation centers" or "evacuation centers" for the duration of the war years. They were not charged with any crime, they were not given any due process other than 6 days notice to take what they could carry, and were not afforded their rights as citizens.
They were prisoners of their own adoptive country. They were segregated from the rest of society for their enthnicity, lineage, and appearence. Though born here in this country, the Nisei (2nd generation Japanese-Americans) were considered as much the enemy as the Japanese Imperial Army and Navy as were their parents, the Isei generation who had immigrated to America to escape the turmoils and hardships they hoped to avoid in Japan.
Had the Isei or Nisei generations returned to Japan, the men would have been likely conscripted into the armed services and families would have struggled to survive in a country that would not have fully accepted them. In either country, their loyalties were questioned.
The story I wish to present will be a story of a fictional family wrapped in the very real story of Japanese-American internment, racism, war, chaos, confusion, and betrayal. However, I wish to also present how despite these hardships, families have survived and have endured. A whole community has endured and re-built. Voices that were once silenced out of fear have begun to speak, shout, cry out, and in some cases finally voice their angers. My novel hopes to tap into these voices and bring them to our attention- through the eyes of a girl who in 1942-1945 was considered a threat to national security simply because of her appearence and lineage.
If a country is going to herd innocent women, children, and men into a camp surrounded by barbed wires and guard towers, it must not have taken much for the government to conjure their reasons. We say they did it out of blatant hysteria, paranoia, and fear. We say it was for the safety of Japanese-Americans. We say we did it because we couldn't trust them enough. What reasons did they have to send 122,000 people to the ten concentration camps that were scattered in the most remote and hostile enviornments in the U.S.? What morality was behind the decision to commit to acts that blatantly violated the rights of citizens?
If there was an incident that sparked Executive Order 9066, was it justification enough to incarcerate children along with their mothers and fathers? If there were acts of sabotage against the United States by members of the Japanese-American community, what made the U.S. government think it needed to respond to such acts with wholesale removal and rellocation of some 122,000 people?
While some say that what the U.S. did to the Japanese-American community paled in comparison to what the Japanese soldiers were doing to U.S. POWs and soldiers... let's be clear and frank about something. The Japanese-Americans who were interned were not soldiers, they were civilians. They were not involved in combat action against their neighbors or fellow Americans. They were farmers, shop owners, laborers, ordinary people like their neighbors around them. The actions of the Japanese Army and Navy were independent of the Japanese-American community. And the United States had no right to stoop so low as to employ POW tactics on civilians. The United States had no right to lump the actions or non-actions of the Japanese-American community with the heinous and gruesome acts of the Japanese Imperial Army or Navy.
Why a book about Japanese-American internment?
Think about it- how far is the U.S. government right now from commiting similar acts against the Muslim/Arab-American community right now? How close were they to commiting another Executive Order 9066 against the Muslim-American community after the events of September 11th, 2001? How angered and emotional we all were on that day that we might very well have green lighted such a proposal to ship every Muslim and Arab-American to some camp-like facillity without due process, charges, trials, or legal respresentation. What if, God forbid, another terrorist attack occured, would that be the straw that breaks the camel's back so to speak were we drop morality in favor of some percieved notion of added security or safety?
And as it stands, the U.S. doesn't have a very good track record when it comes to giving its own citizens equal rights and dignities under its Constitution. I don't have to remind you of the mistreatment and racism agaist the African-American community... Native American community... Irish-American community... Chinese-American community... etc. I don't have to remind you of places like Guantanamo Bay, Cuba... or Abu-Grahib, Iraq either.
I think now more than ever we start looking at ourselves and start taking a serious look at how American we are and how we see what being American is. When do we start accepting Americans for who they are and not by what they look like or what God they worship or where their ancestry comes from? Why can't we accept Americans for being Americans? Why not accept the diversity?
posted by The Vampire, David at 2:48 PM
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