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Fred Korematsu Speaks Up, written by Stan Yogi and Laura Atkins, and illustrated by Yutaka Houlette, tells the story of Fred Korematsu’s fight to prove the wartime mass incarceration of Japanese Americans unconstitutional.

What I liked:

• I think this is an important book for all JAs to read, not just those of us whose families were incarcerated. In particular, the sections discussing how the JA community reacted to Korematsu’s actions during and after camp encourage us to consider how we, as a community, support and/or condemn our members. Additionally, as changes in technology enable 日系人 and 日本人 to interact in more and different ways, we begin to think of what it means to have a global Japanese community, and how such a community influences how we define Japanese-ness.
• The authors were, at certain points (though not all, as I discuss below), very direct in identifying white people as the ones discriminating against JAs. Most of the textbooks I used in school followed the white-as-default style and hardly ever identified white people as white, so this is an encouraging step in the direction of decolonizing education.
• Although I would expect no less when Yogi is a former ACLU employee, I appreciate the note on terminology regarding JA incarceration, on page 52.

What I learned:

• Korematsu was in Topaz?! I think I knew this, but I wasn’t consciously thinking of it until I saw it in the text. I wonder if my grandfather knew Korematsu, or at least knew of his efforts.
• Did Korematsu ever think back to the teacher who (re)named him “Fred” and feel any kind of anger or distress at the whiteness of this action? I know some JAs deliberately changed or shortened their Japanese names to adapt them to the English language, but there is a difference between an individual deciding to change their name on their own versus having a name from another culture imposed on them by someone else. I also think of US government boarding schools for indigenous/American Indian children, and how the imposition of English-language names was one way in which these children were forcibly assimilated into whiteness. Here, too, we might consider how some of the camps were built on reservation land, and how all of the camps were/are on indigenous lands. What do these shared but divergent histories mean in terms of current and future interactions between JA/Nikkei and indigenous communities?

Questions I had:

• The use of “American” seems to be inconsistent in the text, or at least, it was not clear to me how the authors intended to define the term. For example, on page 3, JAs are defined as, “American[s] of Japanese ancestry.” In this case, “American” seems to be tied to nationality and/or place of birth, rather than being used synonymously with white, and “Japanese American” seems to be broadly defined as any US citizen (though citizenship is not actually cited, so perhaps “US resident” is more accurate here) with Japanese ancestry, whether mono-racial/-ethnic or mixed race. What assumptions is the reader expected to make about the definition of “American” and why did the authors opt for this open-ended wording?
• By contrast, on page 4, the description of the racist, anti-Chinese cartoon first describes, “a White man attacking a Chinese immigrant,” but then references, “the anger many Americans felt toward Chinese people.” In this passage, is the reader expected to equate “Americans” with white people? If not, do the authors expect the reader to know enough about the history of people(s) of color in the US to identify the sociopolitical and economic tensions amongst them? Given my personal experiences in the US public education system, I doubt the latter, but I suppose education could have progressed drastically in the last twenty years.
• On page 10, there is a similar example in the passage, “Americans were angry that Japanese people were moving to the United States.” Were non-white people living in the US at that time angry about Japanese immigration – and in a political position to do anything about it? Although these are relatively minor issues of terminology in the larger scheme of things, I find this ambiguity troubling if the overall goal of the book is to encourage young readers to question and eventually reevaluate their understanding of what it means to be “American.”
• The blurb on Daniel Inouye* caused me to return, once again, to the question of how JA history is documented – who do we honor, and why? More specifically, when I read about figures like Korematsu, I think about what a JA history written specifically for our community would look like, free of any pressures exerted by the white gaze. What does it mean for us, as JA/Nikkei, as Japanese people, to respect and feel gratitude toward our prominent figures (感謝する, している), while simultaneously acknowledging what we owe to indigenous peoples and other peoples of color for the harm (being) inflicted upon them by these same figures? If we as JA/Nikkei claim ourselves as “American” as white people, how do we reconcile this claim with our complicity as non-indigenous occupants of indigenous lands?

Follow-up:

• I’ve been meaning to read Lorraine Bannai’s book on Korematsu for several years – time to get moving!

*I recommend reading the essay about Inouye in Asian Settler Colonialism as a starting point for contemplating his place in JA history.