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 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

Informal Interpretation Sites of Conscience 4

Informal Interpretation at Sites of Conscience 

            Part 4 of 4:  The National Park Service-- Falling Short of the Challenge

By including Sites of Conscience into the National Park Service system, the NPS has created a mission mandate for social integrity and social leadership.  This mandate is implicit in the directives of the NPS Director’s Orders, which define the key components of informal interpretation for Site of Conscience as facilitating opportunities for visitors to make emotional and intellectual connections with the site and in prescribing that the interaction with visitors should be based on the visitor’s needs.  This mandate places interpreters into the intense emotional situations associated with Sites of Conscience on a daily basis.  These stressful emotional environments have the same potential of affecting the health and welfare of both visitors and staff as do the fumaroles and geysers of Yellowstone.  Yet, to date, the NPS has no system in place to monitor how these highly emotional interactions are affecting either visitors or staff.*  The Critical Incident Debrief may provide a good model for assessing the emotional effects and stresses on the staff at Sites of Conscience.  Yet because these emotional stresses may be cumulative, it would be important to have regularly scheduled debriefs (as with base-line hearing testing for staff working in noisy environments) rather than wait for the damage to manifest.

As interpreters at Sites of Conscience, we are in uncharted territory.  We have become the explorers of the social landscape created by these sites.  It is up to us to define, refine, and clarify our mission.  It is up to us to find effective and sustainable ways for visitors to make emotional and intellectual connections with the injustices represented by our sites without putting coworkers and ourselves at emotional risk.  It is up to us, through our informal interpretation to initiate a process for the visitors that may lead to healing, if they choose to do so. 

Chad Montreaux

Newell, CA

The author originally wrote this in 2011 when he was still idealistic and naive enough to believe that NPS had the honor, integrity, and dignity to operate Sites of Conscience.  From a 2013 perspective, the NPS most certainly does not posess any of these attributes.  Read the other postings on this blog if you have need of more information on the criminal dysfucntion of the NPS.

*The NPS does offer a free Employee Assistant Program (EAP) to help staff through emotional and psychological difficulties.  This program, however, is confidential and is forbidden by statue from communicating with the NPS.  The EAP counselors can neither provide “monitoring” information back to the NPS as to how the working environment is affecting the staff nor can EAP make recommendations to management as to improving the emotional health and welfare within the working environment. 

The EAP program and all leadership, team building, and employee training programs in the NPS exist so that NPS management can detract attention away from their own abusive and incompetent actions and to enable management to psychologically rape NPS employees.  Stay tuned to the blog for in-depth  details of this process.