The American Immigrant

Gordon Hirabayashi: Never Abandoned His Beliefs and Values

Thursday, January 05, 2012

The New York Times reports that Gordon Hirabayashi, 93, died January 2. Mr. Hirabayashi, a son of Japanese immigrants, adhered to the pacifist principles of his parents, who had once belonged to a Japanese religious sect similar to the Quakers.

The Times story notes that Mr. Hirabayashi was found guilty of violating both the World War II curfew and internment orders imposed on Japanese-Americans; he was sentenced to concurrent three-month prison terms. He later spent a year in federal prison for refusing induction into the armed forces, contending that a questionnaire sent to Japanese-Americans by draft officials demanding a renunciation of any allegiance to the emperor of Japan was racially discriminatory because other ethnic groups were not asked about adherence to foreign leaders.

In1987, a federal appeals court overturned Mr. Hirabayashi’s conviction for failing to register for evacuation to an internment camp and for ignoring a curfew.

In Peter Irons’ “The Courage of Their Convictions: Sixteen Americans Who Fought Their Way to the Supreme Court” (1988) Mr. Hirabayashi said: “When my case was before the Supreme Court in 1943, I fully expected that as a citizen the Constitution would protect me. Surprisingly, even though I lost, I did not abandon my beliefs and my values, and I never look at my case as just my own, or just as a Japanese-American case. It is an American case, with principles that affect the fundamental human rights of all Americans.”

Presidential Proclamation--100th Anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

On March 25, 1911, a fire spread through the cramped floors of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in lower Manhattan. Flames spread quickly through the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors -- overcrowded, littered with cloth scraps, and containing few buckets of water to douse the flames -- giving the factory workers there little time to escape.

When the panicked workers tried to flee, they encountered locked doors and broken fire escapes, and were trapped by long tables and bulky machines. As bystanders watched in horror, young workers began jumping out of the windows to escape the inferno, falling helplessly to their deaths on the street below.

By the time the fire was extinguished, nearly 150 individuals had perished in an avoidable tragedy. The exploited workers killed that day were mostly young women, recent immigrants of Jewish and Italian descent. The catastrophe sent shockwaves through New York City and the immigrant communities of Manhattan's Lower East Side, where families struggled to recognize the charred remains of their loved ones in makeshift morgues. The last victims were officially identified just this year.

A century later, we reflect not only on the tragic loss of these young lives, but also on the movement they inspired. The Triangle factory fire was a galvanizing moment, calling American leaders to reexamine their approach to workplace conditions and the purpose of unions. The fire awakened the conscience of our Nation, inspiring sweeping improvements to safety regulations both in New York and across the United States. The tragedy strengthened the potency of organized labor, which gave voice to previously powerless workers. A witness to the fire, Frances Perkins carried the gruesome images of that day through a lifetime of advocacy for American workers and into her role as the Secretary of Labor and our country's first female Cabinet Secretary.

Despite the enormous progress made since the Triangle factory fire, we are still fighting to provide adequate working conditions for all women and men on the job, ensure no person within our borders is exploited for their labor, and uphold collective bargaining as a tool to give workers a seat at the tables of power. Working Americans are the backbone of our communities and power the engine of our economy. As we mark the anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, let us resolve to renew the urgency that tragedy inspired and recommit to our shared responsibility to provide a safe environment for all American workers.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 25, 2011, as the 100th Anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. I call upon all Americans to articipate in ceremonies and activities in memory of those who have been killed due to unsafe working conditions.

BARACK OBAMA

Rennison Vern Castillo

Friday, March 18, 2011

The Los Angeles Times reports that Immigration and Customs Protection (ICE) will pay an Army veteran $400,000 for wrongfully detaining him.

Rennison Vern Castillo, a naturalized U.S. citizen served years in the U.S, Army, was detained for months as a suspected illegal immigrant. ICE also issued an official apology. Castillo, spent seven months in a federal detention center in Tacoma, Wash., on suspicion of being an illegal immigrant.

Castillo, 33, sued officials at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency's Northwest Detention Center, where he was held. He was born in Belize and was a child when his mother brought him to this country. He grew up in Los Angeles and become a naturalized citizen in 1998 while in the Army, where he served for seven years.

In 2005, he served an eight-month jail term in Washington for a felony count of harassing a former girlfriend. Instead of being released after completing his sentence, he was transferred to the federal detention center in Tacoma. A federal officer told him that records showed he was an illegal immigrant.

Castillo repeatedly told immigration officers that he was a naturalized citizen.

"They were disrespectful and told me that I would say anything to get out of detention," Castillo said in a statement. "It was a nightmare."

In January 2006, an immigration judge ordered Castillo deported. Castillo challenged the decision before the Justice Department's Board of Immigration Appeals, which blocked the deportation. Immigration agency officials released him a month later without explanation.

His detention was the result of a paperwork mix-up: His name was misspelled in immigration records and he'd been assigned multiple "alien numbers."

A Los Angeles Times article in April 2009 detailed Castillo's case and several similar instances of mistaken detention of U.S. citizens or legal residents. According to ICE, after the article was published, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton ordered changes in procedures to avoid future mistakes.

The agency "deeply regrets Mr. Castillo's detention and worked closely with the U.S. attorney's office in Seattle to seek a just resolution of this case," Kice said.

Matt Adams, legal director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, which represented Castillo, said: "It is important that the government recognized that closer attention must be paid to these cases, as it is simply inexcusable to have U.S. citizens locked up and placed in removal proceedings."

The Times report was published in cooperation with the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting in Berkeley, California.

A Youth From Sicily Makes America’s Iconic Comedies and Patriotic Documentaries

Monday, March 14, 2011

Frank Capra (1897-1991) was born in Bisacquino, Sicily. The son of farmers, his family immigrated to the United States, settling on a farm outside Los Angeles, when Capra was six years old. According to Stephen G. Marshall (American National Biography), Capra was the only one of fourteen children to attend college; he attained a degree in chemical engineering.

After serving in the army in World War I Capra couldn’t find employment in his field; he worked in various menial jobs until a San Francisco film maker hired him to direct short films.

Capra moved to Hollywood in 1923 to work as a writer for the Hal Roach Studios.

His 1934 romantic comedy, for Harry Cohn’s Columbia Pictures, It Happened One Night was the first film to win five Oscars, including best film, director, screenplay, actor and actress.

Now King of the Screwball Comedy Capra became the film industries’ most sought-after director. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, (1936), Oscar for best director; Lost Horizon (1937); You Can’t Take It with You (1938); Oscars for best picture and best director) Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Oscar nominations for best picture and best director, and Meet John Doe (1941), followed.

Capra served as president of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1935 to 1939.

After Pearl Harbor, Capra, then 44, volunteered for the Army. He directed and produced Why We Fight, a series of documentaries. Prelude to War won him an Oscar for best documentary of 1942, and the Why We Fight series won a special award from the New York Film Critics. Capra was discharged as a colonel; he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, Order of the British Empire, and the French Legion of Merit.

After the War Capra formed Liberty Films, with directors William Wyler, George Stevens, and Sam Briskin. He co-scripted, produced, and directed its first production. It’s a Wonderful Life (1947). In the 1950's he produced an acclaimed series of television documentaries for the Bell System: including “Our Mr. Sun” (1956) and “Hemo the Magnificent (1957).

His later films include a 1959 partnership with Frank Sinatra, A Hole in the Head.

Barney F. Hajiro: America's Oldest Medal of Honor Winner

Monday, February 07, 2011

The New York Times reports that Barney F. Hajiro, the nation’s oldest Medal of Honor winner, died on Jan. 21 in Honolulu at 94.

According to The Times obituary Hajiro, born in Hawaii, he dropped out of school in the eight grade to work for 10 hours a day, for 10 cents an hour, on a sugar plantation. He was a dockworker when he was drafted into the Army in 1942 and assigned to dig ditches. He resented not being able to carry arms.

As angry about Pearl Harbor as anybody, many Japanese-Hawaiians were eager to fight. Mr. Hajiro was one of the first to volunteer, in March 1943.

As part of a regiment composed entirely of Japanese-Americans below the officers’ ranks, Private Hajiro epitomized the unit’s brash motto, “Go for Broke!” His commanding officer’s report said he had run 100 yards through a stream of bullets, walked through a booby-trapped area and led the charge up “Suicide Hill” screaming “Banzai!” before taking out the machine gun nests. He was shot four times–then insisted the 40 other wounded be evacuated first.

But he, like Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, who was also a member of the regiment, did not initially receive the Medal of Honor for which he was recommended. Only in 2000, after 56 years and a belated Pentagon review, did President Bill Clinton present the medal, the nation’s top military honor, to Mr. Hajiro, Senator Inouye and 20 other Asian-American soldiers.

The 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a newly formed unit would go on to be called the most decorated regiment for its size and length of service: its 14,000 men earned 9,486 Purple Hearts, eight Presidential Unit Citations and 52 Distinguished Service Crosses, the second-highest individual honor in the Army. Mr. Hajiro won three of those.

Mr. Hajiro, who lived in Waiphu, on Oahu, and refused to buy a Japanese car. Though Mr. Hajiro came to be revered–accepting the French Legion of Honor, serving as grand marshall at county fairs–he never forgot where he had come from. On the day the Medal of Honor was pinned on his chest, he said, “Even after the war they still called me a Jap, you know.”

Frank Emi Leading World War II Internee Dies

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

The New York Times reports that Frank Emi, the last surviving leader of the World War II Fair Play Committee, died on Dec. 1.

After the War Department, at the urging of Japanese-American leaders, decided in 1943 to allow detainees to volunteer for an all-Japanese-American unit, many signed up. A major unit, the 442nd become one of the most highly decorated regiments in the United States history, earning 9,486 Purple Hearts and 21 Medals of Honor. But when the government decided to start drafting Japanese-Americans in January 1944, scores of internees saw it as the last straw.

"Many of the internees took the reopening of the draft as an unwarranted test of their patriotism." Eric Muller, a professor of constitutional law at the University of North Carolina and the author of "Free to Die for Their Country" (2001), said in a Times interview. "Some young men decided they had had enough. Why should they and their families who had lost all of their rights and privileges of citizenship, be asked to shoulder its greatest burden?"

In separate indictments, Mr. Emi and six other leaders of the Fair Play Committee were charged with conspiracy to counsel draft evasion. Four, including Mr. Emi, were sentenced to four years; two received two-year sentences, and the seventh was acquitted. They were sent to the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kan., where they were surrounded by hardened criminals.

Three months after the war, the convictions of the committee leaders were overturned by a federal appeals court; they were released after serving 18 months. The 300 charged as draft resisters lost their appeal, but on Christmas Eve 1947, President Harry S. Truman pardoned them all.

For decades, Mr. Emi and other draft resisters faced disapproval from other Japanese-Americans. During the war, the Japanese American Citizens League had called for them to be charged with sedition. But in 2000, at its national convention in Monterey, Calif., the league formally apologized.

And two years later, at a league ceremony honoring the resisters, Senator Daniel K. Inouye, a veteran of the 442nd Regiment and a Medal of Honor recipient, addressed the crowd in a video-taped message.

"Some young men answered the call to military service," Mr. Inouye said, "and they did so with honor and with great courage. Some young men chose to make their point by resisting the government's order to report for the draft. They too were honorable and courageous."