Monday, October 09, 2006

Endowed chairs are increasing at all kinds of universities, including more with a sharper focus, some academic experts say.

Donors Fund UCLA Chair on Japanese American Internment
A reception celebrates the nation's first academic chair dedicated to the topic.
By Deborah Schoch, L.A. Times Staff Writer October 8, 2006

While Lane Ryo Hirabayashi was growing up, he heard family stories of how his uncle Gordon defied the World War II internment of Japanese Americans in a case that decades later helped prompt a historic congressional apology.At a UCLA celebration Saturday, Hirabayashi took his own place in Japanese American cultural history as the first professor in the nation to hold an academic chair dedicated to the study of the internment.

"To me, I feel that this is a family obligation," the 53-year-old anthropologist said.On hand to salute the new Aratani chair and Hirabayashi was a large group of prominent Japanese American scholars, artists and political and business leaders. Some were former internees. Some knew Gordon Hirabayashi, who went to prison in 1942 for refusing to obey a curfew. Their stories and his family's will be studied in his nephew's courses by undergraduates born too late to hear stories from relatives who were adults during World War II.On a sun-dappled campus patio, well-wishers greeted longtime friends and praised George and Sakaye Aratani, among the largest donors to Japanese American educational and cultural causes.

The Los Angeles couple gave $500,000 to fund the Aratani chair and strengthen the study of the relocation of 120,000 Japanese Americans, as well as postwar efforts to redress that wrong, and the Japanese American community.

Endowed chairs are increasing at all kinds of universities, including more with a sharper focus, some academic experts say.

"In the past it was typical to see an endowed chair in history, for example, but not one tied specifically to a specific act or period of history," William G. Tierney, a USC professor and director of the Center for Higher Education Policy Analysis, responded to an e-mail from The Times.

The Aratani chair will be part of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, the country's largest such academic program.

The professor holding the chair will be expected to teach at least one course on the Japanese American internment, redress and community or related issues, and to organize or aid public education programs on the subject.

"Clearly, the aftermath of 9/11 demonstrated the importance of learning and applying the lessons from the Japanese American experience to current and future situations," said the center's director, UCLA professor Don Nakanishi.

Hirabayashi will teach his first course in the next term.U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) recalled in a speech that he visited an internment camp when he was a soldier during the war. He described the shock of seeing barbed wire, machine guns and "people who looked like us in there."Speakers also included Aiko Herzig, well known for her 1980s research for the U.S. Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, and Irene Hirano, president and chief executive of the Japanese American National Museum.

A former internee, George Aratani — founder and former chief executive of the Mikasa china and Kenwood electronics firms — lost his family's fresh produce business while he was in a camp a during World War II. Many others lost all they owned."A thing like that," he said Saturday, "should never happen again."

Several speakers said the new chair is being created as the U.S. government faces many of the same wartime pressures that can isolate a racial or cultural group — in this case, Arab Americans. They suggested a parallel between those pressures and what they or their families experienced in the camps.Hirabayashi himself sees similarities.

"What I want to make sure is that people remember the past so that we can make better policy decisions," he said in an interview last week.Some Japanese Americans born after the war say their relatives would not discuss the West Coast internment camps where they were forcibly relocated after the December 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor.

But in Hirabayashi's home, there were no such secrets. At an early age, he learned that his parents and grandparents were moved from their home south of Seattle to a camp at Tule Lake in Northern California.

I can't even remember first hearing about it. It was never hidden," he said.He learned that his uncle Gordon, then a 23-year-old University of Washington student, defied a curfew imposed on Japanese Americans. Gordon later turned himself in to federal authorities in Seattle rather than be moved to a camp. He was convicted of violating military law, and spent two years in prison.

His was one of three major U.S. Supreme Court cases that challenged the internment. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the government and against Hirabayashi. "In the height of the hysteria, I think Gordon was very, very brave," Hirabayashi said. He has been told that his paternal grandmother begged her oldest son not to defy authorities. "My grandmother was very, very afraid that the family would be split up and they would never see one another again … but Gordon felt very strongly that he needed to do this." Hirabayashi, born after the war, got to know Gordon during family summer vacations. His uncle became a professor at the University of Alberta in Canada. His father, James Hirabayashi, was the first dean of the School of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University.

In 1983, Gordon Hirabayashi emerged again as a national figure when petitions of coram nobis — legal efforts to highlight errors of fact in court — were filed on behalf of him and two other Japanese Americans who had challenged the wartime relocation orders. The petitions brought to light legal flaws in the relocation, and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Hirabayashi's conviction in 1987.

The next year, President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which blamed the relocations on racial prejudice and failed political leadership.

Gordon Hirabayashi still lives in Alberta, and though he could not attend Saturday's ceremony, his name came up frequently in speeches and conversations.

Lane Hirabayashi has been a faculty member at San Francisco State University, the University of Colorado and UC Riverside, and has written three books, including two on the wartime camps. Now he is finishing two more books, one of which deals with the resettlement of Japanese Americans after the war.After hearing Hirabayashi's remarks at the UCLA ceremony, George Aratani said he was greatly impressed.

"I wish I had someone like him in my business," Aratani said as he sat on the patio of the UCLA Faculty Center during the reception. "I can see from listening to him today that he has a real determination to do the job."


http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-endow8oct08,1,124559.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california&ctrack=1&cset=true

More brainwashing here....

http://www.aasc.ucla.edu/archives/jainternmentchair.htm


"UCLA' s Asian American Studies Center Establishes Nation's First Endowed Chair Focusing on Japanese American Internment"

The UCLA Asian American Studies Center has established the first endowed academic chair to focus on the World War II internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans and their campaign to gain redress. The chair, which is the first of its kind in American higher education, was created with the generous donation of two internment survivors.

The George and Sakaye Aratani Chair on the Japanese American Internment, Redress and Community also will focus on the decades-long campaign to gain redress and a national apology, which culminated with the passage of the 1988 Civil Liberties Act. In addition, the chair will examine the historical and contemporary trends and issues facing the Japanese American population, and support research, teaching and professional service activities on these topics by existing or newly recruited UCLA faculty.

"The purpose of the chair is to ensure the World War II incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans, as well as their subsequent efforts, will always be remembered, taught and written about for generations," George Aratani said. "There are many important lessons that Americans and other peoples can learn so that similar tragedies never happen again."

As a young man, George Aratani and his mother were forced to leave the family farm in the central California town of Guadalupe and enter the internment camp in Gila River, Ariz. His family lost everything they owned. Aratani went on to become the founder and chairman of Mikasa Dinnerware and Kenwood Electronics, two internationally recognized corporations. Over the years, George Aratani and his wife, Sakaye, who was interned in the Poston, Ariz., camp, have made significant contributions to numerous nonprofit organizations and educational institutions.

"We are greatly honored that the Aratanis have endowed this academic chair," said Professor Don Nakanishi, director of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center. "It will ensure that the unjust removal and incarceration of thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II, as well as their extraordinary campaign to gain redress, will be taught to future generations of students at UCLA and will be the focus of continued research and public education by UCLA scholars for many years to come." "We are also thrilled that this academic chair will support teaching, research and public service dealing with historical and contemporary trends and issues facing Japanese American communities," Nakanishi said.

"Clearly, the aftermath of 9/11 demonstrated the importance of learning and applying the lessons from the Japanese American experience to current and future situations."

George and Sakaye Aratani have supported the UCLA Asian American Studies Center for many years, and previously have established endowments for undergraduate scholarships, graduate fellowships and undergraduate community internships. They also have established endowments with UCLA's Center for Japanese Studies. "George and Sakaye have supported many organizations in the community, and have taken active voluntary leadership roles to build and enhance these programs," Nakanishi said. "They have left an unmatched legacy of commitment and generosity."

Annually, the chair holder will be expected to teach at least one undergraduate or graduate course on the Japanese American interment, redress and community, or one in which major emphasis is placed on the three topics to illuminate broader societal lessons and issues. He or she will be expected to organize or participate in a public educational program designed to share the history and lessons of Japanese American internment, redress and community with the general public. The George and Sakaye Aratani Chair is the third endowed academic chair to be established at the UCLA Asian American Studies Center.

The other two chairs also were the first of their kind. The Korea Times-Hankook Ilbo Chair for Korean American Studies was the first one dedicated to supporting Korean American Studies. The Chair in Japanese American Studies was established in the late 1970s by Japanese American alumni and friends of UCLA to promote Japanese American Studies. It was the first academic chair on Asian American Studies in all of American higher education. The latter chair was first held by the late Harry Kitano, a professor of social welfare and sociology and a pioneer in the social scientific study of Japanese Americans and other minority populations in the United States.

The chair is currently held by Robert Nakamura, a professor of film and Asian American Studies and a renowned filmmaker who has produced award-winning documentaries on Japanese Americans and other Asian Pacific Americans for more than three decades. The center was established in August 1969 as one of four ethnic studies centers at UCLA. It has become the foremost national research center on Asian Pacific Americans. The center's mission is to interpret, define and forge the separate collective identities of Americans of Asian and Pacific Island heritage, and to integrate multidisciplinary approaches to the understanding of significant historical and contemporary Asian and Pacific American issues.

UCLA Welcomes First Academic Chair on WW II Internment Camps

Admittedly my blog and site have been much neglected over the last few months. Now that summer is well over and we are back into fall I expect to devote more time here. In fact the site and blog are due for a complete overhaul so look for some significant improvements and updates over the winter.

In the meantime here is the latest atrocity. Rich people with an agenda lobbying universitites to adopt a politically motivated agenda. Very sad and pathetic.

UCLA Welcomes First Academic Chair on WW II Internment Camps

LOS ANGELES, October 8, 2006 - The University of California, Los Angeles, celebrated the arrival of the nation's first scholar to hold an academic chair dedicated to studying the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

A large group of prominent scholars, artists, business and political leaders gathered Saturday at a university reception for Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, whose family was detained in the wartime camps.

Hirabayashi will hold the Aratani chair, funded with $500,000 from George and Sakaye Aratani, at the UCLA Asian American Studies Center.

Professors holding the chair must teach at least one course on issues related to the internment program that relocated 120,000 people, and organize or aid public education programs on the subject.

The Aratanis are among the largest donors to Japanese-American educational and cultural causes.

For Hirabayashi, a 53-year-old anthropologist, this critical piece of Japanese-American history is tied to his own family's past.

"To me, I feel that this is a family obligation," Hirabayashi said during Saturday's event.

His parents and grandparents were moved from their home south of Seattle to a camp at Tule Lake in Northern California.

As a child, Hirabayashi heard family stories of his uncle Gordon Hirabayashi's imprisonment in 1942 for refusing to obey a curfew imposed on Japanese-Americans. Decades later, this act of defiance helped prompt a congressional apology.

"In the height of the hysteria, I think Gordon was very, very brave," Hirabayashi said.
Lane Hirabayashi has been a faculty member at California State University, San Francisco, the University of Colorado and the University of California, Riverside, and he has written three books, including two on the wartime camps. He will teach his first course in the next term.

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Of course the article failed to mention some important quotes from the Supreme Court Decision such as:

“THE ALTERNATIVE WHICH APPELLANT INSISTS MUST BE ACCEPTED IS FOR THE MILITARY AUTHORITIES TO IMPOSE THE CURFEW ON ALL CITIZENS WITHIN THE MILITARY AREA, OR ON NONE. IN A CASE OF THREATENED DANGER REQUIRING PROMPT ACTION, IT IS A CHOICE BETWEEN INFLICTING OBVIOUSLY NEEDLESS HARDSHIP ON THE MANY, OR SITTING PASSIVE AND UNRESISTING IN THE PRESENCE OF THE THREAT. WE THINK THAT CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT, IN TIME OF WAR, IS NOT SO POWERLESS AND DOES NOT COMPEL SO HARD A CHOICE IF THOSE CHARGED WITH THE RESPONSIBILITY OF OUR NATIONAL DEFENSE HAVE REASONABLE GROUND FOR BELIEVING THAT THE THREAT IS REAL.”

Chief Justice StoneHirabayashi vs. United States