America's Worst Idea

America's Worst Idea 

Dear Reader:

This is a rather old-school blog.  You will not find anything flashy or eye-catching here. My attempt with this blog is to shed light on the issues of social and human justice that we all struggle with.  I worked for the National Parks Service (NPS) for ten years and was completely invested in concept of the National Parks as "America's Best Idea," a concept so effectively promulgated by Ken Burn's beautiful documentary.   After 9 years of faithful and outstanding service, I found myslef at odds with my vindictive and abusive supervisor.  Naively believing that the NPS was indeed the honorable, moral, and sincere organization the Ken Burn's described, I attempted to first address the issues with supervisor to the superintendent of my park.  When that failed, I brought my concerns to the attention of the regional NPS office.

Long story short-- I was forced out of the NPS by the combined might of my supervisor, superintendent, and the regional NPS office.  NPS management is one of the most corrupt systems in the US federal government.  I sincerely believe that the concept of National Parks is truly "America's Best Idea."  Placing such national treasures in the hands of a predatory and abusive bureaucracy like NPS management is a really, really bad idea.  Placing the an agency like the NPS in the position of stewards over sites of conscience and social justice is morally wrong and counter-productive.  NPS management lacks the honor, dignity, and integrity to represent the highest ideals of American democracy.  Placing critical historic sites of injustices in the hands of the NPS is in itself an injustice and is "America's Worst Idea."  

Maybe we cannot change all the injustice in the world.   I believe that we can begin a new age of accountability and transparency if we have the courage to bring light to the injustices that bureaucracies try to hide with levels of secrecy and "confidentiality." But we need to start somewhere.  I say, let's start with the NPS.  Let us speak about what has been forbidden.  Would not it be something if we could transform this high-profile agency into a standard for honor and integrity?

Chad Montreaux
Newell, CA

Victimized Twice 4 of 4

Victimized Twice:

            

Part 4 of 4:  Healing and the Failure of the NPS at Sites of Consciousness

At the 2009 Tule Lake Pilgrimage, more than 60 years later, that conflict between Japanese American victims of the forced removal and illegal incarceration who developed Stockholm syndrome symptoms, and those of the Japanese American community who refused to buy into the government denigration and fought for their human and civil rights would flare up into heated arguments.  I was shocked when I realized the implications this argument.  This bias for the veterans and against the resisters and protestors was still alive and well in the JACL, in the Japanese American community, AND in the NPS interpretation of the Japanese American stories.  In all the NPS interpretation materials, the Japanese American World War II veterans and their exploits were always given much more standing, type, and dialogue than the resisters and protestors.  Even here at the Tule Lake Pilgrimage, being a protestor or a resister was still (in 2009) looked at as an embarrassment rather than as a courageous person risking persecution to exercise the highest American ideal:  the right to oppose unjust and unconstitutional laws, policies, and policy makers.   Instead of being recognized as heroes of the story of the illegal imprisonment in their own right, the resisters and protestors still carry the 60+ year stigma of being “disloyal” and “trouble makers.”  It is not a coincidence that this is the very same rhetoric that the American government and the WRA branded this segment of the Japanese American population with back in the 1940s.  The majority of the Japanese Americans who were victimized by the injustices and illegalities of the forced removal and false incarceration were also victimized by the Stockholm syndrome.  These Stockholm syndrome victims identified and sympathized with the racist rhetoric of their captors (the American Government) and the cost of this capitulation was the “irrational” judgment against themselves and their own best interests as outlined above. 

The first step in the path to healing and recovering from trauma and victimization is to recognize the source of the trauma and victimization.  Those members of the Japanese American community, who were victimized by the Stockholm syndrome while the American Government held them hostage in concentration camps, were literally twice-victimized.  The denial of the human and citizen rights for the Japanese Americans held hostage in the concentration camps during World War II created a situation where these Stockholm syndrome victims accepted the “lack of abuse from their captors for an act of kindness.”  By “identifying” with the captors and abusers (the racist elements of the American Government) the victims (the Stockholm syndrome victims in the concentration camps) believed their captors would accept them.  To heal from this abuse and victimization, these Stockholm victims must first recognize that they were victims of this type of abuse.  Part of this recognition is to re-frame the Tule Lake, Kibei, and dissident stories into narratives that are as heroic as the stories of those who fought in the 442^nd and 100^th Battalion for the Americans in World War II.  This could go a long way to healing the long-standing schism within the Japanese American community. 

Do not look to the National Park Service (NPS) stewards of the America’s Concentration Camps for leadership in this matter.  The agency is to inflated with its own agenda for power to ever acknowledge that its sister organization, the War Relocation Authority (WRA) acted in the role of kidnappers and captors.   For the National Park Service and the American government the “model minority” paradigm perfectly suits the reasoning they need to justify the injustices and mistreatment of a segment of American citizens.  Go to Manzanar National Historic Site and you will see in the interpretive materials and hear from the brainwashed NPS interpreters a “balanced” story about internment.  The crux of this “balanced” story is that Ralph Merritt and the other WRA employees were well-intentioned heroes and kind overseers who made life in the camps pleasant.  You will neither find or hear anything about the intergenerational injury and damaged caused by an entire segment of American citizens being kidnapped and held hostage by the American government and the WRA overseers.  To apply the model of kidnappers and captors to the American Government and the WRA in the 1940’s would require the NPS to examine its own dignity, honor, and motivations and require this agency to reframe its mission for sites of conscience.  This is something the good-ole-boy, authoritarian NPS is incapable of doing. 

Chad Montreaux

Newell, CA

Victimized Twice 3 of 4

Victimized Twice:

Part 3 of 4:  Tule Lake; Stockholm Syndrome

Many of the workshops in the 2009 Tule Lake Pilgrimage were highly emotional and very informative, not just about what had happened during the forced removal and illegal incarceration nearly seventy years before, but as to how these traumas were still affecting people, families, and communities today.  During one break-out session, I sat and listened to several elderly Japanese Americans tell their stories.  Suddenly two middle-aged Japanese Americans were yelling at each other.  One of the gentlemen was a leader in the Japanese American Citizen League (JACL) and the other was from a family whose members had been out-spoken draft-resisters during the incarceration.  Yes, the Japanese American soldiers who served with valor during WWII while their families were in concentration camps deserved lauding and recognition.  And these soldiers’ actions provided numerous examples of how and why Japanese American were “full-fledged” American.  But the point is, this is America-- where people are innocent until proved guilty.  In 1942, the federal government declared all Japanese Americans guilty of being unworthy of American citizenship with no other evidence than a racist distaste for the Japanese.  It took as much courage to fight for the rights of yourself and your family in a concentration camp as it did to fight in the battlefield.  There is nothing more American than the right to protest, dissent, and practice civil disobedience when faced with institutionalized injustices.

Why did the JACL and other hyper-loyal elements of the Japanese American community buy into the federal government racist bullshit? There is a very disturbing undertone here that no one has ever had the courage to look at.  I suspect that the position taken by the JACL and by many people who went through the American concentration camp experience (and even for some of those watching the trauma from outside) can only be describe as the result of Stockholm syndrome victimization.  The Stockholm syndrome plays a key component of this narrative and deserves a closer look: 

From Wikipedia-

Stockholm syndrome, or capture–bonding, is a psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of abuse from their captors for an act of kindness. The FBI Hostage Barricade Database System shows that roughly 27% of victims show evidence of Stockholm syndrome.

Stockholm syndrome can be seen as a form of traumatic bonding, which does not necessarily require a hostage scenario, but which describes “strong emotional ties that develop between two persons where one person intermittently harasses, beats, threatens, abuses, or intimidates the other.” One commonly used hypothesis to explain the effect of Stockholm syndrome is based on Freudian theory. It suggests that the bonding is the individual’s response to trauma in becoming a victim. Identifying with the aggressor is one way that the ego defends itself. When a victim believes the same values as the aggressor, they no longer become a threat.

Inferred in the definition above, but not clearly stated in the concept is that the Stockholm syndrome produces a degree of self-hatred on the part of the victim.  This self-hatred is very clear in some of the absurd stands the JACL took in the 1940’s (like suggesting Japanese Americans should be allowed to take the role of suicide troops for the American military).  This stance clearly shows an “identification” of the victims (the Japanese Americans) with their “captors” (the racist-elements of the American government). This “identification” reflects and reiterates position the federal government posited at that time by describing Japanese Americans as not quite qualified for American citizenship by nature of their ethnic origin.  Let’s not mince words here or buy-into the US government rhetoric.  One-hundred and ten thousand people of Japanese ancestry, both American citizens and resident aliens were institutionally victimized, abused, and held hostage by the US federal government during WWII.  Nowhere was this crime more egregious than at Tule Lake.

Chad Montreaux

Newell, CA

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

Victimized Twice 1 of 4

Victimized Twice:

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

            

Part 1 of 4:  Self-hatred; Model Minority; Proving Loyalty

Soon after the United State entered World War II in 1941, all American citizens of Japanese ancestry were classified as 4-C (aliens) for military service and disqualified from service. This was a classic, egregious example of racial profiling.  In 1943, the federal government reversed this decision and ultimately began drafting young Japanese American citizens from the concentration camps they and their families had been falsely imprisoned in.  What were the choices for these Japanese American fighting-age men living in American concentration camps in 1943?  Two simple choices coexisted: 1) go fight for the country that wronged you; or 2) stand up for your rights as an American citizen, protest the injustice of the illegal forced removal and incarceration, and resist military service until justice was done.  Which course of action was the true “American” choice?  This simple question drove an enduring schism into the Japanese American community.  I would personally witness this schism at the 2009 Tule Lake Pilgrimage, more than 60 years after the decisions had been made.

The first choice, to willingly go fight for the American military to prove your loyalty was the choice embraced by the hyper-loyal factions of the Japanese American community including the Japanese American Citizen League (JACL).  JACL president Mike Masaru Masaoka who preached safely from Salt Lake City, an area removed and insulated from direct insult and injustice of forced removal and illegal incarceration, vehemently promoted this course of action.  Mike Masaoka advocated for the creation of Japanese American suicide troops who would spearhead attacks for the (white) American army.  Mike felt that this dedication to die for America would, beyond any doubt, prove the loyalty of all Japanese Americans.  There are so many elements wrong with this type of thinking, not the least of which is the self-hatred and self-loathing inherent in the concept.  This first option, to fight to prove you were an American, tacitly acknowledged and concurred the racist judgment against and illegal actions toward the Japanese Americans.

This first choice created the specter of the “model minority.”  The term “model minority” was coined in 1966 by William Petersen in his essay called "Success Story: Japanese American Style."  The down-side to this success is the requirement for a “model minority” group to remain deaf, dumb, and blind to institutional injustices heaped upon them.  The “model minority” paradigm required quiet and obedient compliance of the minority with whatever is asked of them by the racist elements of the people who govern them.  The reward for the “model minority” is assimilation.  The costs for Japanese Americans in adopting the “model minority” paradigm is two-fold: 1) the acceptance that their ethnic differences are not up to standards for inclusion in American society, and 2) a festering injury of self-loathing.     

Chad Montreaux

Newell, CA