Captions – Page 4 – Erik M. Bachman

The Kikuchi Diary (April 30, 1942)

March 31, 2018 gettingoffthepageLeave a comment

Lange

There goes a “thing” in slacks and she is taking pictures of that old issei lady with a baby. She says she is the official photographer, but I think she ought to leave these people alone. (Charles Kikuchi)

When the Emperor Was Divine

March 29, 2018 gettingoffthepageLeave a comment

Lange

So go ahead and lock me up. Take my children. Take my wife. Freeze my assets. Seize my crops. Search my office. Ransack my house. Cancel my insurance. Auction off my business. Hand over my lease. Assign me a number. Inform me of my crime. Too short, too dark, too ugly, too proud. Put it down in writing—is nervous in conversation, always laughs loudly at the wrong time, never laughs at all—and I’ll sign on the dotted line. Is treacherous and cunning, is ruthless, is cruel. And if they ask you someday what it was I most wanted to say, please tell them, if you would, it was this: I’m sorry. There. That’s it. I’ve said it. Now can I go? (Julie Otsuka)

The Man in the High Castle

March 27, 2018 gettingoffthepageLeave a comment

Lange

Hot winds blowing me who knows where. This is vision—of what? Can the animus endure this? Yes, the Book of the Dead prepares us: after death we seem to glimpse others, but all appear hostile to us. One stands isolated. Unsuccored wherever one turns. The terrible journey—and always the realms of suffering, rebirth, ready to receive the fleeing, demoralized spirit. The delusions. (Philip K. Dick)

Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944)

March 25, 2018 gettingoffthepageLeave a comment

Lange

This is not a case of keeping people off the streets at night nor a case of temporary exclusion of a citizen from an area for his own safety or that of the community, nor a case of offering him an opportunity to go temporarily out of an area where his presence might cause danger to himself or to his fellows. On the contrary, it is the case of convicting a citizen as a punishment for not submitting to imprisonment in a concentration camp, based on his ancestry, and solely because of his ancestry, without evidence or inquiry concerning his loyalty and good disposition towards the United States. If this be a correct statement of the facts disclosed by this record, and facts of which we take judicial notice, I need hardly labor the conclusion that Constitutional rights have been violated. (Justice Owen Roberts)

Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944)

March 23, 2018 gettingoffthepageLeave a comment

Lange

Regardless of the true nature of the assembly and relocation centers—and we deem it unjustifiable to call them concentration camps, with all the ugly connotations that term implies—we are dealing specifically with nothing but an exclusion order. To cast this case into outlines of racial prejudice, without reference to the real military dangers which were presented, merely confuses the issue. Korematsu was not excluded from the Military Area because of hostility to him or his race. He was excluded because we are at war with the Japanese Empire, because the properly constituted military authorities feared an invasion of our West Coast and felt constrained to take proper security measures, because they decided that the military urgency of the situation demanded that all citizens of Japanese ancestry be segregated from the West Coast temporarily, and, finally, because Congress, reposing its confidence in this time of war in our military leaders—as inevitably it must—determined that they should have the power to do just this. There was evidence of disloyalty on the part of some, the military authorities considered that the need for action was great, and time was short. We cannot—by availing ourselves of the calm perspective of hindsight—now say that, at that time, these actions were unjustified. (Justice Hugo Black)