Today is a great day to remember accurate history of our country. Seventy-eight years ago, an attack on the naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, left thousands and thousands of Americans dead.
Just months after this deadly attack, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, paving the way for nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans — adults and children alike — to be taken from their homes and put into concentration camps on American soil. Our government falsely imprisoned them because of racist fear. Not one person in those concentration camps was convicted of espionage or other crimes against the U.S.
A great way to honor them is to learn their stories of those incarcerated. Densho is a nonprofit organization started in 1996 who gathers the oral histories of those Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II and now, collects the oral histories, but also the primary sources and other materials about the incarceration. (The organization’s name comes from Densho, a Japanese word that translates to “to pass on to the next generation.”)
It’s important to be honest about our history.
Today, you can honor people that fought, died and survived World War II. But you also should remember those we irrevocably wronged. On the Saturday Night Social, I hope you can be honest and find community and figured out ways we can all be better.