Author Q&A: John Tateishi
John Tateishi has a conversation with Heyday Books about the lessons of Redress and why it's important to tell his story after all this time.
Which piece of contextual background information about Redress would you give to book buyers?
The basis for the book is a little-known episode in this nation’s past—the forced removal and incarceration of the entire Japanese American population, 120,000 persons, most of whom were American citizens, and the others, legal resident aliens. It’s a story of American citizens being held prisoner in American concentration camps surrounded by barbed wire, and under surveillance by soldiers armed with machine guns in guard towers. While that episode is a story about the failure of democracy for one group of Americans, the redress campaign is a story about the courage of this nation’s leaders in living up to their promise to protect the ideals of democracy, even forty years later.
Why do you think it’s valuable to put out Redress now, over thirty years after Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act?
History always serves important lessons if we have the wisdom for self-examination. The redress campaign brought to light how easily the Constitution can be ignored and how dangerous that is to us as a democracy. But what we learned from the campaign served to inform a more intelligent response after 9/11, with the important lesson that race should never trump facts and reason, and that as a nation governed by laws, we could prove ourselves a great nation by the treatment of our fellow Americans in light of the tragedy of 9/11.
In the book you discuss several Japanese American cultural norms in terms such as shikataganai (it can’t be helped) and gaman (endure the unbearable with dignity). What role has redress come to signify after the campaign?
The idea of seeking redress from the government ran counter to most of the cultural values of Japanese Americans, and, many felt, was anathema to who we were as Americans of Japanese ancestry. The idea of redress was viewed as disgraceful by many among us, but what resonated with many Japanese Americans was the altruistic goal of ensuring what happened to us would never happen again to any group in the future. We could ensure that only if we embarked on this difficult journey. Everything we did during the war, including fighting for this country after losing our rights, was done in the belief that it would help make this a better country.
The basis for the book is a little-known episode in this nation’s past—the forced removal and incarceration of the entire Japanese American population, 120,000 persons, most of whom were American citizens, and the others, legal resident aliens. It’s a story of American citizens being held prisoner in American concentration camps surrounded by barbed wire, and under surveillance by soldiers armed with machine guns in guard towers. While that episode is a story about the failure of democracy for one group of Americans, the redress campaign is a story about the courage of this nation’s leaders in living up to their promise to protect the ideals of democracy, even forty years later.
Why do you think it’s valuable to put out Redress now, over thirty years after Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act?
History always serves important lessons if we have the wisdom for self-examination. The redress campaign brought to light how easily the Constitution can be ignored and how dangerous that is to us as a democracy. But what we learned from the campaign served to inform a more intelligent response after 9/11, with the important lesson that race should never trump facts and reason, and that as a nation governed by laws, we could prove ourselves a great nation by the treatment of our fellow Americans in light of the tragedy of 9/11.
In the book you discuss several Japanese American cultural norms in terms such as shikataganai (it can’t be helped) and gaman (endure the unbearable with dignity). What role has redress come to signify after the campaign?
The idea of seeking redress from the government ran counter to most of the cultural values of Japanese Americans, and, many felt, was anathema to who we were as Americans of Japanese ancestry. The idea of redress was viewed as disgraceful by many among us, but what resonated with many Japanese Americans was the altruistic goal of ensuring what happened to us would never happen again to any group in the future. We could ensure that only if we embarked on this difficult journey. Everything we did during the war, including fighting for this country after losing our rights, was done in the belief that it would help make this a better country.