Day of Remembrance

Yesterday was the 70^th anniversary of Executive Order 9066, which authorized the mandatory relocation of mainland Japanese-Americans to camps sprinkled across the United States. It is called a day of remembrance. The optimistic slogan, used prior and since, is “Never forget”. But I can say, without sarcasm or humor, I have forgotten why I remember.

The Japanese Relocation Camps were not special. They were neither the most brutal, or the first, or the largest. They are not worthy of remembrance solely because I am Japanese, or because they directly affected my family. (Indeed, my family history of relocation predates February 19, 1942.) We cast off all manner of personal and familial history, either willingly or because the years put enough distance between us and the experience. One day, we look at it as one looks at a painting in a museum. We can still appreciate it, even be moved and shaped by it. But it is coded as non-life and external.

So it is not important to remember for those reasons that I believe I remember, or ought to remember.

So why do I remember?

I remember, and they are worthy of remembrance, because the camps were American.

For that reason alone I measure its tragedy and its place in history. For that reason alone I believe it is worthy of remembrance, a place in the heart, even as other, more violent, more brutal, more destructive, more identity-altering events from those crowded years clamor for the right to be remembered first, remembered best, even to escape non-life and be the cause, justification, and scapegoat for foreseeable tomorrows.

For the one article of faith – or the shadow of a piece of the faith – that I retain and cling to in my desperate casting about, is this: that we must not only judge ourselves against the standards of others, or, worse yet, their actions. We have our own standards, higher standards, and it is against those that our actions and inactions are to be measured.

The mass, forced relocation of Japanese-Americans isn’t comparable to the Nazi concentration camps. It doesn’t have to be. The American camps were wrong according to the standards we have, or ought to have, for ourselves.

Other nations do not engage in our occasionally self-consuming, debilitating, and masochistic self-analysis. And we skip it when exploring our past and present when it is expedient. But, in the end, it is a vital, even essential, part of the American identity. We must know. Failure is punishing. But willful ignorance of our principles and where we fall short is unforgivable and irredeemable.

This piece of history is perfectly placed for me, because those who were children there now walk slowly, burdened not by the legacy of a miscarriage of justice, but rather arthritis and cancer. Their eyes are not haunted by their experiences. They, too, have forgotten and moved on. I am not reminded of that past when I see them. It is distant enough that they, and I, are free of its shadow. 

And yet it is close enough to be unfree of its lessons.

Instead, I remember when I see, or hear, or feel, the shifting of the tide of expeditious and opportunistic prejudice against another. I remembered when, after 9/11, some called for the incarceration of Arab Americans. I remembered when, naïve but passionate, I marched in protest of the invasion of Iraq at a point when invasion was inevitable. I remembered when I saw Hurricane Katrina bring images of the Third World in America, to America. And I remembered when I argued with a relative, a child in Rohwer, in defense of gay marriage and civil rights.

I forgot at points in my life. When I did, and I failed to be my best, failed to live up to my responsibilities as caretaker of a small, but real, part of the dream.

So I remember, because it is a part of America, and I am American. 

The relocation of Japanese-Americans is a failure that has, and will continue, to pave the way toward greater successes, greater triumphs, that will vindicate the delicate blend of caution, wisdom, optimism, and patriotism that I believe is my duty and my true and better nature. I remember not to shame, or out of shame, but as a necessary part of embracing the identity, legacy, and responsibility of being an American, to take ownership of disappointments as well as progress.

I remember because I am a proud American, and remembering will make me a better one.