APEX Express – 3.31.22 Campu: Stories from the Japanese American Incarceration Paper

KPFA - APEX Express

A weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists.

Host Miko Lee introduces Densho’s podcast Campu, stories form the Japanese American incarceration during WW II. This is episode 2 entitled Paper. The series is hosted by siblings Noah and Hannah Maruyama.

Transcripts of Show

[00:00:00] Miko Lee: On APEX Express. I’m your host, Miko Lee,

[00:00:33] Miko Lee: Tonight, we highlight our sister organization Densho and their podcast series Campu, which tells the story of the Japanese American incarceration. As you’ve never heard it before. Follow along to the brother and sister team of Noah and Hannah Maruyama as they weave together stories of the Japanese American incarceration. From mother and daughter to brother and sister.

Tonight’s episode is called “Paper”.

Please go here for CAMPU’s transcripts and study guide.

[00:45:41] Miko Lee: You’ve been listening to Campu’s podcast called Paper. This is Miko from APEX express, and we’re so proud to be able to present Densho’s podcast, campu, and here are the brother sister team of Noah and Hannah Murayma talking about their family story and how it’s linked to incarceration. This episode was called paper. I just wanted to point out one thing in it. Noah makes mention of the fact that in Hawaii, there was not mass incarceration. And while that is absolutely true, there wasn’t mass. Meaning lots and lots of people. There was actually an incarceration that happened of Japanese Hawaiians that were there. And about 900 of the leaders in Hawaii were packed up.

Basically anybody who was connected to the Buddhist temples or anybody that spoke Japanese or Japanese teachers, they were all packed up and sent to a concentration camp some off island. And then actually there was one built on island for some of you that might’ve heard before. We did an episode with Alden Hiyashi about his book and his family’s legacy of being pulled out of Hawaii. Sent to concentration camps in Arizona, but there was in fact, a concentration camp for Japanese Americans and prisoners of war that was in Honolulu. And it is actually being created into a national park like the one at Manzanar to find out more information about that, in a couple of years, they will actually have an official park, it’s called the Honouliuli site. then I just wanted to reflect on this episode on paper and the impact that paper had on everybody from saying yes, yes or no, no. Or yes, no. And the impact it had on your family to just. The receipts that people left behind and what they meant. The other thing I wanted to bring up in terms of paper is letters.

I came across this book called Dear Miss Breed, True Stories of the Japanese American Incarceration During WW II. This is a book by Joanne Oppenheim. It’s the story of a white woman who is a librarian in San Diego. She lived in a community where many Japanese Americans lives. Many of the students that came to her library were Japanese American, and she had strong relationships with them. When the incarceration came about.

So stunned by this. She also had a sister that was living in Berkeley that worked at a church in Berkeley that also had lots of Japanese Americans. Both of them discussed how frustrated they were with the situation. They didn’t know how to deal with the prejudice, but they both decided they were going to do what they could do on their own. The sister in Berkeley helped create care packages for the families, help people to pack, help take them to the railroads and the sister Ms. Breed in San Diego, the librarian, packed for each of the students, one book along with a self-addressed stamped postcard and asked for them to write her.

In the late nineties, when she was cleaning out her house, she discovered over 200 of these letters that had been written to her over the course of the Japanese American incarceration. Once again, proving that librarians are quite amazing change-makers in the world. She wrote these letters to all these different students that were dispersed in different concentration camps, including Santa Anita and Posten.

And from that she was able to get a kid’s eye view of what happened. Some of the letters are quite polite, pretending like everything is great and everything’s okay. And some are filled with hurt and pain and descriptions of what they went through. The book also has in it, testimony from congressional hearings that the powerful Nisei did in order to get reparations. And then some of the facts about the numbers of the people that were incarcerated, and it also has lovely photographs and drawings. So it’s a wonderful way to look at the incarceration from multiple young people’s perspectives, all on paper, which is what this episode is about.

And then the next remaining episodes of the campu podcast, I’ll be sharing some of those letters, including some from Ms. Breed. And then mostly from the students themselves. Because we know first person narratives the stories of our people are the way that we can tell who we are and how we fit into the world around us and how we can understand the world so that we don’t make those same mistakes again.

Thank you so much for listening to apex express and for listening to the campu podcast, to find out more about the horrible treatment of Japanese Americans during world war two and how we can prevent such things from happening ever again. Thank you so much for listening

And next up is a song by bobby chris one life featuring scotty times seven produced by milk-bone

SONG

That was letter to mom by the shining sons from the UNEC by. On long beach may day mix tape. And before that was bobby Chris’s song one life featuring scotty time seven produced by milk-bone

thank you so much for joining us. Please check out our website, kpfa.org backslash program, backslash apex express to find out more about the show tonight and to find out how you can take direct action. We thank all of you listeners out there. Keep resisting, keep organizing, keep creating and sharing your visions with the world. Your voices are important. Apex express is produced by Miko Lee Jalena Keane-Lee and Paige Chung and special editing by Swati Rayasam. Thank you so much to the KPFA staff for their support have a great night.

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