Victimized Twice 2 of 4

Victimized Twice:

The Stockholm Syndrome, Kibei, and the Model Minority in America’s Concentration Camps

            

Part 2 of 4:  American Citizen Rights; Kibei; “No-win” Scenario

What about the second choice, the choice to exercise your right as an American citizen to protest and resist illegal and unjust actions?  In the early 1940’s, this option for the Japanese Americans was inverted and used to create a “no-win” proposition.  If a person of Japanese ancestry were to question the illegal forced removal and incarceration predicated on the preposterous grounds of ethnic origin, the act of raising this question became irrefutable “proof” of disloyalty.  Adding absurdity-to-absurdity, hyper-loyal elements of the Japanese American community, including the JACL, would adopt and implement this “no-win” strategy by mimicking the rhetoric of racism.   These hyper-loyal elements insisted that the only way to for Japanese Americans to prove loyalty would be to not oppose injustices being heaped upon them and by passively complying with the insults and injustices of incarceration.

The US government devised a plan to use the above construct that would evolve into William Peterson’s framework for the “model minority.”  This plan was to divide the people of Japanese ancestry into two groups and pit them against each other.  The “loyal” factions (the “model minority”) would remain compliant and submissively in the concentration camps and the “disloyal” elements (the resisters) would be ferreted-out (with the help of FBI collaborators in the camps), discredited, and again be forcibly removed to, and isolated at the “Tule Lake Segregation Center.”  This was the strategy that Mike Masaoka and the JACL accepted and adopted. This segregation methodology tore the Japanese American community asunder and created factions that have remained un-reconciled to this day.

Tule Lake concentration camp still carries a stigma among the Japanese Americans today.  Many members of the Japanese American community bought into the government propaganda, or worse yet, they embraced the paradigms of loyal and disloyal. Many people in the Japanese American community today still think in terms of the people in “Tule Lake Segregation Center” (aka Concentration Camp) as trouble makers, disloyal, and as an embarrassment to the quiet and compliant “model minority” image of Japanese Americans.  The reasons for people being at Tule Lake were as varied as the people incarcerated there themselves.  As part of the segregation process, the vocal elements within the Japanese American community had been radicalized by the abuses of political power that had deprived them of their civil and human rights.  The dreaded Kibei element (the American born, American citizens who received part of their education in Japan) were feared and marginalized by both the US Government and the hyper-loyal Japanese Americans. The surviving documentation of Kibei meetings, however, illustrates that the Kibei were: 1) well-educated, 2) openly discussing American ideals and justice, and 3) outraged about the violations of civil and human rights that they and their families were experiencing at the hands of the very same government dedicated to human and civil rights.  In the best sense, the Kibei were being upstanding examples of American ideals. 

Sending children to be educated overseas, was in the 1930’s even much more expensive than it is to day.  The Kibei represented the wealthier and better educated elements of the Japanese American community.  As militaristic Japan and Nazi Germany of the 1930’s discovered, the best way to control people and deprive them of their rights is to discredit, marginalize, and imprison the intellectual community first so as to set an example of the dangers of questioning the power structure.  This was exactly what the US government did with the Japanese communities on the West Coast and later in the concentration camps.  Initially the US government marginalized and criminalized the intellectual components of the people of Japanese Ancestry by arresting all the Issei leaders on the West Coast immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor.  Later the same government silenced and discredited the Kibei in the camps by blaming them for all distention and conflict.  The US government was highly successful in this action because six decades later, “Kibei” is still a dirty word within a significant portion of the Japanese American community. Within the interviews archived at Manzanar National Historic Site, the frequency in which all the troubles, problems, and issues within the concentration camps were blamed on the Kibei element is very disturbing. 

Chad Montreaux

Newell, CA

Informal Interpretation Sites of Conscience 3

Informal Interpretation at Sites of Conscience 

            Part 3 of 4:  The Pitfalls of Belief System and Forgiveness 

People attracted to positions as interpreters at Sites of Conscience usually possess strong personal convictions about justice and injustice in addition to a passion for human rights.  Specifically, interpreters tend to have an emotional connection to the primary injustices associated with the designation of the site.  These personal beliefs can manifest as the third pitfall for interpreters.  The challenge for informal interpretation at Sites of Conscience is for the interpreter not to allow personal convictions and emotional needs to impair the visitors’ need to make their own emotional and intellectual connections with the site. 

Cultural norms and paradigms change over time.  Sites of Conscience can function as a spearhead for change.  Sites of Conscience elucidate injustices that were historically justified, institutionalized, and/or concealed. It is crucial to the mission of these sites to present the full range of impacts of these injustices on the groups affected by the injustices.  It is also crucial to the mission of Site of Conscience to illuminate the fallacies inherent in the enactment and rationalization of the injustice.  Bringing injustices to light and presenting the falsehoods of the reasoning that created the injustice are the tools that lead to changing cultural paradigms and can help heal people and nations.  Strong convictions about human rights can lead to demonizing the perpetrators of the injustice.  Interpreters at Sites of Conscience must find the balance between providing critique for the motivations and rationalizations of injustices without criticizing and marginalizing the perpetrators of the injustice.  Sites of Consciousness do not exist to punish people who perpetrated the injustice.  Interpreters at these sites must strive to avoid the pitfall of judging the past and of criticizing those people today who still find it difficult to accept that their culture is changing and who may be personally experiencing the paroxysms associated with shifting paradigms.   

Forgiveness presents the final pitfall for interpreters at Sites of Conscience.  Although forgiveness may play a prominent role in the process of healing, it is not a requisite requirement for the process.  The capacity of a visitor to a Site of Conscience to forgive the systems, institutions, and persons that perpetrated an injustice is predicated the unique, emotional and psychological composition of the individual.  In many cases, forgiveness may be antithetical to justice and to holding persons, systems, and institutions accountable for their actions and policies.  As Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said in 2010, “Forgiveness cannot happen in a vacuum.  There cannot be real forgiveness without justice.”  Indeed, many of the Sites of Conscience would not exist today if victims of the injustice simply forgave the policies, persons, and institutions that perpetrated the injustice.  It was the demand for justice from these victims that led to an acknowledgement of the injustice and started the processes to bring social awareness to these injustices.  For an interpreter at a Site of Consciousness, it is important to remember that forgiveness is an individual and personal choice.

Chad Montreaux

Newell, CA

A Cult of Abuse and Victimization Part 2 of 4

A Cult of Abuse and Victimization;

            The Dysfunctional Inner Circle of the National Park Service (NPS)

Part 2 of 4- A Collective Call for Help

In every Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey <http://www.fedview.opm.gov/> since 2004, the NPS has hovered in the bottom-most rankings for Employee Satisfaction results. The year 2012 was no exception with the overall ranking of the NPS work force dropping to 163rd for all federal agencies.  The NPS would rate dead last in the ranking if the overall numbers for NPS survey results were not bolstered by employees’ very high response to questions about their personal dedication and commitment to the mission and their beliefs that the work they are doing is worthwhile and important.

A careful reading of these employee viewpoint survey results will illustrate that the source of the overall low rankings for the NPS include very low responses to question related to: 1) the effectiveness of NPS merit system, 2) trust and confidence in manager and supervisors, and 3) opportunities for employees to effectively participate in fulfilling the mission of the agency.  All of these issues can be summed-up as the abuse of power by predatory NPS managers and supervisors.  The above website does not allow you parse the NPS results from the rest of the Department of the Interior (DOI).  The National Parks Traveler <http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2011/11/national-park-service-falls-best-places-work-rankings9091> does a fair job of outlining the generalities of the NPS data, considering this organization is responsible for promoting use of the National Parks.  To fully comprehend how damning the survey results are to the policies and actions of the predatory NPS management, I will refer your to the data website for the survey, which will require from you a certain familiarity with spreadsheet files to obtain the NPS results <http://www.fedview.opm.gov/2012FILES/FEVS2012_PRDF_CSV.zip>. It is not surprising that citizen access to the NPS survey results is difficult and convoluted.  Remember, a key step toward victimization requires the predator to isolate and control the victim.  An important component of this isolation and control for the NPS as a predatory organization is the control of information.  The Federal Employee Viewpoint Surveys clearly show that NPS employees are experiencing undue stress, anxiety, and impaired job satisfaction as a result of actions (or inactions) by manager and supervisors.  It is not surprising that the  results are of theses surveys are purposely obfuscated by the NPS and the DOI because ready access to these survey reports may create sympathy for the victims of NPS predatory and abusive managers.   Remember, from the first part of this series, that two of the requisite conditions for victimization, predation, and abuse involve isolating and controlling the victim.  Controlling information is an effective method of isolating a victim.  If a victim cries out for help and only the abuser hears the cries, does the victim still need intervention?

This culture of institutionalized abuse and predation within the NPS is implemented and perpetrated by the same three stages that Leslie Morgan Steiner describes for victimization in the cases of domestic violence in her book Crazy Love: 1) seduction, 2) isolation, and 3) dominance and control. In the NPS, these steps are particularly egregious because the cult of personality within the NPS effectively creates and sustains this victimization by providing the venue, opportunities, and institutional precedents for abusers within the NPS to prey upon their victims.  

Chad Montreaux

Newell, CA

A Cult of Abuse and Victimization Part 1 of 4

A Cult of Abuse and Victimization;

            The Dysfunctional Inner Circle of the National Park Service (NPS)

Part 1 of 4- Predation, Abuse, and Victimization

Leslie Morgan Steiner, in her book Crazy Love, describes the three steps of victimization in cases of domestic violence: 1) seduction, 2) isolation, and 3) dominance and control.  Also inherent in these cases of domestic violence is manipulation by the predator of the victim’s emotional involvement and commitment to the relationship with the predator. 

In the first step, seduction, the predator seduces the victim by extolling the virtues and importance of the victim in the nascent relationship developing between the victim and the abuser.  Regardless of whether or not this seduction is calculated or is unintentional on the part of the predator, the result is the same-- to disarm the victim with falsified, tacit promises of empowerment and safety for the victim in the developing relationship.  The seduction targets the victim’s trust and willingness to commit to a relationship for the values expressed during the seduction.  What makes this seduction is that the expressed values are deceptions and lies.  

The second step of victimization requires the predator to isolate the victim from family, friends, and any kind of support systems. During this stage, the predator chooses a situation that places himself in situation of complete control and dominance over the victim.

The final step of victimization occurs after the predator has effectively isolated the victim.   Once isolation has been achieved, the predator is free to control and dominate every aspect of a victim’s life.  At this point, the relationship transforms from the seduction-promised values of equality and interdependence to absolute dominance and control of the victim by the predator.  This is typically the setting where domestic violence and abuse occurs.  By this point the victim has been completely disarmed by the lies and deceit of the seduction and rendered emotionally and psychologically powerless by being removed and isolated from any form of advocacy, intervention, or support. 

I am not and would not posit that National Park Service (NPS) management is guilty of inflicting physical violence on NPS staff.  In fact, the NPS has very strong policies to protect all employees from victimization by physical violence.  On the matter of abuse, however, I am of the mind of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who stated: “[i]njustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”  If I may paraphrase, I would say:   “justification of abuse at any level is a justification of abuse at every level.”  As horrific as physical abuse is, I would posit that emotional and psychological abuse can be just as damaging to its victims.  The steps for emotional and psychological victimization are identical with the steps that lead to physical violence victimization.  The dividing line between physical abuse and psychological and emotional abuse is purely arbitrary and capricious.  The result of this division is that emotional and psychological abuse is 1000 times more prevalent in our society than physical abuse, and emotional and psychological abuse is at least 1000 time more acceptable in our society than physical abuse.  Within many United States government agencies emotional and psychological abuse is not only acceptable it has become institutionalized.  Nowhere is this problem of predatory and abusive behavior more egregious than in the National Park Service. 

Chad Montreaux

Newell, CA

Manzanar: 70 Years Later It's Business as Usual

Manzanar: 70 Years Later It’s Business as Usual

In 1942, as people of Japanese ancestry were being removed to the concentration camps throughout the interior west, the primary mission of the newly-formed War Relocation Authority (WRA) was to sanitize gross injustices and criminal violations of the Constitution, and to control the people illegally forced into these concentration camps.  To this end, the WRA created the facade of self-governance in the camps.  At Manzanar, this took the form of the “freely-elected” block leaders.  

The problem with this form of representation was that the Issei (people born in Japan) and anyone who was critical of the forced removal and illegal incarceration were immediately disqualified from participating in this self-rule.  This left a very small subset of the people eligible to participate in system that served, at best, as a rubber-stamp for WRA unilateral administration policies.  Many of the block leaders were reluctant and apathetic about their positions (this can clearly be discerned in statements made in the block leader reports available in the Manzanar archives). 

Providing the 10,000 + people in Manzanar with food became the biggest endeavor of the people incarcerated in the camp.  Unlike the block leaders, the kitchen workers represented a true cross-section of the population at Manzanar.  The Kitchen Workers’ Union formed at Manzanar in the summer of 1942 to help address working and health conditions in the camp and to assure equitable pay and distribution of food.  This union rapidly grew into the peoples’ most vocal mouthpiece for human and civil rights within the camp.  The WRA response to this threat against their authority was two-fold: 1) to persuade the FBI to enlist some of the hyper-loyal elements of Manzanar to act as informants and stir-up trouble, and 2) to discredit and criminalize the loudest voices of opposition to the WRA tyrannical authority within the union.  These actions directly contributed to the incident referred to as the “Manzanar Riot.” This incident resulted in military troops (called into the concentration camp by the WRA director of Manzanar) firing weapons, including a machine gun, into an unarmed crowd of the illegally imprisoned people.  This resulted in 6 people receiving gunshot wounds and two innocent young men dying from these injuries.

The WRA used the “Manzanar Riot,” as a catalyst to blame all the problems in the concentration camp on the kitchen workers’ union and subsequently outlawed all union activity in all the concentration camps.  These actions and this rhetoric by the WRA obfuscated the true causes of the unrest at Manzanar: systematic violation of civil and constitutional rights and illegal imprisonment.  As a result of actions by the WRA, the leaders of the union at Manzanar were removed from the camp to prohibit them from questioning the decisions and rhetoric of the camp administration.  Any true form of representation within the concentration camps vanished with these actions.

In the fall of 2011, the National Park Service (NPS) was presented with the required paperwork and the sufficient number of votes from NPS employees at Manzanar National Historic Site to become full-members of Labor Local 220.  The management of the NPS is notoriously anti-union and refused to recognize the union status of employees at Manzanar.  Eighteen months and two court decisions later (both decisions were in favor of the rights of Manzanar National Historic Site’s employees to unionize), the NPS management is still being obstructionist and filing sequential appeals to keep the employees from organizing at Manzanar.  Like the actions of the WRA before them, this action by NPS management is designed to deny the current workers at Manzanar their rights as employees and as American citizens.

It is no mere coincidence that the WRA and the NPS were both formed under the same department of the federal government, the Department of the Interior.  The agenda the WRA and the NPS converge over the span of 7 decades.  Their shared objective regarding authoritarian control over people is identical: to deny true democracy and representation to the people in their charged.   I would compel each of you to consider whether or not it is in the best interest of Manzanar, a historic site dedicated to human rights, social rights, and justice, to be administered by an agency that is so flippant and dismissive of employee rights as the National Park Service. Or do some people take perverse pleasure in knowing that Manzanar is once again in the hands of an agency that is mirroring the obsession with tyrannical power and the disregard for social justice and individual rights that characterized the WRA’s tenure over America’s concentration camps 70 years ago?

Please think about these things the next time you visit Manzanar.  And think about the amount of tax-payer dollars that have been squandered by the NPS to fight against the right of American citizens to organize.  Nearly every NPS employee you will meet and interact with at Manzanar, from the maintenance staff, to the grounds keepers, to the interpretive rangers, to the tour guides that lead school programs are qualified to join the union and have, in fact, shown an interest in doing so.  As these dedicated federal employees talk to you about the rights violations experienced by those incarcerated at Manzanar in the 1940’s, they themselves are experiencing similar rights violations at the hands of an agency, the NPS, that differs only by degrees from the WRA. But please, do not ask these hard-working folks about the union or the efforts and risk they have taken to bring the union to Manzanar.  The management at Manzanar, the upper NPS management in San Francisco, and the utmost NPS management in Washington, DC are all viciously anti-union.  If this management knew which employees at Manzanar were pro-union—let me just say, the NPS, like the WRA, has many avenues to discredit people and destroy lives. 

As we move toward a more democratic future, perhaps we should reconsider whether an agency of the same government historically responsible for civil and constitutional rights violations can be an effective steward of a site dedicated to revealing these types violations.  At best, the NPS interpretation of Manzanar can only be an ironic hypocrisy.  Perhaps it is time to consider removing Manzanar from the administration of the NPS and creating a non-governmental agency to operate and interpret Manzanar in a manner that is in the best interest of social justice and the American people. 

Chad Montreaux

Newell, CA

If you would like to know more about NPS anti-union activities, particularly at Manzanar contact:
Laborers Local 220 representative Douglass Kessler <estellack@aol.com>
Former NPS employee Nina Weisman <ninaweisman@hotmail.com>